“We may be at an inflection point in the evolution of search, which finally breaks out of the ‘immediate ROI’ calculus toward a more holistic understanding of what’s really important. The challenge, of course, is a company’s operational ability to track, report, and analyze those numbers that span channels and departments.

The catalyst for true search/media integration and a breakdown of operational silos may actually be business-threatening times like these; breakdown, break-through as they say.”

Gerry Bavaro
EVP, DidIt.com
(via MediaPost)

“Forget about ROI. Social media (when you get there) will be a cost of doing business...”

Joe Pulizzi
Z Squared Media LLC
Author, Get Content Get Customers

“Search doesn’t build brand, search connects people to brands at just the right time…

We don’t spend a lot of time interacting with search messages. This is spot scanning at best, not a thorough assessment. We don’t read listings, we glance at words. When enough hits register to establish relevancy matches with the goal of our search, based on the words we used in the query and those that remain locked up in our prefrontal cortex, we click.”

Gord Hotchkiss
(Via MediaPost)

In response to MediaPost’s Steve Baldwin’s piece ”Is Search An ‘Ugly Cousin’ With a Rusty Collecting Pan?...“

“I don’t disagree with Mr. Baldwin’s judo analogy and the reality of how search works… but I disagree with the grain of salt approach to conversion attribution.

We are not trying to say to cut search spending necessarily. We are saying that it’s vital to understand the interrelationship—and interdependence—of the various parts of your marketing mix in order to understand what drives positive behaviors.

The problem in today’s world is that since search is often getting credit for single-handedly driving conversions, the first place marketers look when cutting back is display and other programs; however, if they cut those programs without knowledge of how it might affect search, they could well end up showing up for the harvest with nothing to reap… because they hadn’t done enough/any planting and weeding. No one is saying abandon or dramatically scale back search—just that search is one component of an overall (hopefully) integrated plan.”

John Ardis
VP, Corporate Strategy
ValueClick, Inc.

"It is time to find a new balance in marketing, to bring the pendulum back toward the center.

Marketers can start this process by embracing the fact that analytically led marketing is here to stay. It isn’t a trend and it isn’t an option… But analytics must be married with content, the traditional bastion of marketers. And content has never been more important… Analytics and content are therefore intrinsically linked and cannot function properly without one another… Yet they are often siloed by organizational and technical obstacles. It is no longer sufficient to be good at content and analytics separately. It is time to move marketing to the next level, to bring content and analytics together. It is time for smart content.”

Joe Stanhope
Director of global product marketing
Alterian
(via Chief Marketer Mag)

“The issue we have with navigational search is that… it completely obliterates the value we’re creating from other digital marketing we’re doing… The idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—In many cases it’s not.”

Young-Bean Song
Microsoft
(via ClickZ)