An Interview with Rich Stokes: About AdGooroo

Michael F. Shaughnessy - 12.1.09
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

1)      First of all, what is SEM insight?

SEM Insight is a keyword tracking tool that gives you visibility into any advertiser’s search marketing campaign. Search engine marketers use it to track both paid and organic rankings, figure out how much their competitors are spending online, find niche keywords to target, and exploit holes in competitors' campaigns.

Our approach is based on the philosophy that by understanding where you stand relative to your competitors, you gain access to insider information that can be used to greatly increase your advertising return.

As an example of this, most advertisers don’t realize that their ads are appearing infrequently or not at all on the search engines. Yet it is almost obvious once you consider the fact that in a typical industry, there are more than 700 advertisers competing for placement within a mere 11 ad slots. Only a few advertisers can win that game and those tend to be the ones who are aware of exactly where their ads are not appearing.

2)    Now, what is this AdGooroo?

AdGooroo provides advertising intelligence to search engine marketers. We maintain a global network of servers (currently in over 20 countries) which monitor internet advertising activity in those regions. We analyze this data and deliver it to online marketers with the intention of helping them drive more traffic and improve their ad return.

We have several views in the data: strategic views for the CMO and tactical views for the campaign manager who is “in the trenches.” Our data is highly actionable.

Along with SEM Insight, other AdGooroo tools include Trademark Insight, which monitors competitors bidding on trademarked terms or using trademark terms in ad copy and Display Insight, which monitors competitors’ ad network campaigns, including banner, text and rich media ad formats.

3)    I know what a search engine is, but how does this fit into the big picture?

Search engine advertising is the most profitable and reliable form of advertising the world has ever seen. The proof of that statement lies in the fact that it has grown to a $30 billion+ industry in less than ten years.

For many companies (particularly small and medium businesses, especially in B2B), this is the most (and sometimes only) viable form of advertising. Done properly, the return on ad spend can be stunning.

4)    Why are you offering this service to colleges and universities?

Our industry has not yet reached maturity and as a consequence, there is a lack of truly qualified professionals. We believe that by supporting the academic community, we can both encourage the future growth of search advertising as well as raise the standard of professional excellence over the next decade. We intend to do this by offering our services to academic departments and professors for the purposes of conducting research into Internet marketing and making real world search marketing data available to students through labs and classrooms.

5)      What is the AdGoooroo Academic Program?

AdGooroo is offering a free SEM Insight license to faculty and staff who work full or part-time at qualifying accredited educational institutions, as well as reprint rights to select chapters of my book, “Mastering Search Advertising: How the Top 3% of Search Advertisers Dominate Google AdWords” and data from AdGooroo’s Quarterly Search Engine Advertising reports.

6)      What kinds of research and what types of research would these programs facilitate?

The AdGooroo Academic Program gives marketing students real-world search engine data to incorporate into their coursework. The program will enable students to analyze search marketing campaigns, get an accurate snapshot of the main players in any industry and see how they perform on the top search engines in the U.S. or globally.

7)      Would I be able to get a copy and how would I go about it?

The AdGooroo Academic Program is open to faculty and staff at qualifying educational institutions (public or private vocational school, correspondence school, junior college, college, university, scientific, or technical school) which have been accredited by a national accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education. Interested educators can request an AdGooroo Academic Account at http://www.adgooroo.com/adgooroo_academic_program.php.

8)      How important is it for business and marketing students to learn about this stuff?

Ad dollars are increasingly migrating online, and many are turning to online advertising because it offers accountability not obtainable through other channels. Marketers know what each click costs and how often each click works. Search marketing in particular revolutionized the idea of pull marketing versus traditional push via TV, etc. Students who don’t learn performance-based marketing, and search marketing in particular, will be at a large disadvantage later.   

9)      What have I neglected to ask?

Can marketers monitor the performance of their search advertising campaigns without using competitive intelligence?

No, not well.  Anyone in Chicago can type in a search query and see what comes up. However, most marketers running ads beyond a particular market, and you will not see the true user experience in Columbus, Ohio from your computer in Chicago.  Now expand this problem across not just a few keywords, but thousands or even tens of thousands. This manual process would not be a terribly effective use of your time, if indeed, it could be achieved at all.

Utilizing a tool like AdGooroo automates this process and normalizes the data across various time frames and geographic regions, providing marketers with both the efficiency and accuracy they need to properly manage their campaigns.