Microsoft ad executive: search ads overrated
October 21st, 2007 by 
Chris Harris
A very interesting insight from Brian McAndrews, a Microsoft SVP in charge of advertising and publishing, used to run aQuantive until Microsoft acquired them. He says that search is getting paid too much to deliver people to websites as the final stage of the advertising process.
This is part of an effort by his team to give advertisers a fuller picture of how all of their advertising is contributing to web visits & sales. This concept is being named “conversion attribution” by McAndrews & his team. Frank Watson at searchenginewatch.com made a good point that this sounds great until you realize that every activity on the web has to be recorded in cookies to get this to work.
Here is a 15 page presentation where McAndrews makes his case for conversion attribution in slightly more detail.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. I bet that if you do the math on how often and when people see various ads you will find out that search ads are less important than most people think they are today. However, the bad news for advertisers, is that this probably just means they’re not paying enough for the other forms of advertising. I seriously doubt search is anywhere close to maxed out on the revenue they’re receiving from each search.
However, search is normally a part of the last leg of the buying process - which is always the hardest part. Closing the sale generally earns an outsized share in the offline world. Why should we expect things to be so different online? I think McAndrews is on to something, but maybe not as much as he’d like.
Posted in Innovation, Technology | 