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I think a downturn will really be an eye opener for many younger internet marketers. Looking at a range of clients and a range of industry sectors, I have been paying particular attention to the changing sands of conversions from brand as opposed to conversions from generic keywords. I think this is an interesting metric. Come the bad times, people instinctively more to people and places they trust. As we see from the banks - a "guarantee" means little. "Trust" means a lot.

In marketing terms, "Trust" equates to "Brand reputation". So I am expecting more visitors to start their journey using a brand search than they did bofore. Obviously, this will differ from sector to sector, but if you want to book your holiday for next summer, are you likely to go with:

1. The Cheapest?

2. The one offering the best value for money or

3. The company you have heard of?

I'm trying to measure the hypotheiss that more people will tend towards 3 than they did last year.

Of course... probably even more are tending towards camping in the Lake District... but that's not the point. The point is that established brands can live off the fat of their brand equity for far longer than fly-by-nights and probably afffiliates too (although affiliates can benefit by switching allegiance to the safe brand merchants).

The second change is that we are now looking at changes IN CONTEXT with a vertical. We had a fashion brand who's traffic dropped by 20% last month (although we take some solace in saying their adspend dropped by 50%). When we look at this traffic against their main competitor, we see that the competitor's traffifc dropped by 30%. This month we'll get the ad-spend back up and also the traffic - but it helps now to look at this in relation to whether you are doing better or worse than the other guys.

Maybe your analytics system could add a column called "sector average" to see direct from the stats if you are doing better or worse than the competition?

Interesting stuff Dixon Thanks

I hear in the US travel companies are being encouraged to put the ABTA equivalent status in ad copy to instil trust that holiday makers will be able to get home if the airline/travel agent goes bust!

I shall of course be passing your idea onto the Analytics team :-)

Trust is the key metric here - whichever way we spin it. How that would be represented in an analytics system I leave to Microsoft boffins :)

To be honest, I find that there is a limit to the marketing budgets being allocated, with some serious stress added on to measurable campaigns.

What I find myself doing it pulling in all the data for this year (which is considerable in terms of spend), and analysing the success points of the campaign, identifying "wasteful" ( in terms of acquisition, not awareness) keywords and fine tuning the campaign to maximise ROI.

This means a huge number of "vanity" search words are being relegated to SEO and not paid search - while before we use to play off the paid campaigns against each other such that in the end the high cost per acquisition keywords were being compensated for by "brand" based keywords, allowing a far larger reach.

We are no longer measuring the long term conversion of keywords, its what sells on last click, despite this not being the best strategy, but allows us to further fine tune the spending on the campaign.

Taking on D.J's example above, many "cheap keywords werent being bid upon for "brand reputation" purposes, while now, they may open themselves up for exploitation by certain brands.

Very interesting stuff Dixon - I very much like the idea of having some sector averages. Not only would this allow us to accurately measure the market place response as a whole, but it would also be a great tool to reassure clients and keep their ad spend online.

I am however not convinced by the branded search argument laid out  -  I reckon they' ll go for option one. I would... In tough times like this, I believe price/service is going to be the winner, and that ads should be optimised with price offerings, competitive claims etc.

There is also an argument to be made that branded searches' conversions can be captured by SEO listings, so you could take the £ allocated to branded terms and reinvest into hot trends: (that's if your competitor is not like me, bidding on your trademark and saying "hey, im cheaper and better")

I have seen some very dramatic increases on keywords like "cheap {product}", "{product} prices" and "compare {product} prices". I have noticed this through manual checking, reporting, analytics and Hitwise -which has a huge UK sample. We have therefore already started optimising for these terms and presenting ads relating to price offerings.

We always knew that the average internet surfer was looking for a bargain, so in tough times it makes sense that people turn to the internet to compare prices and shop for the cheapest. I remember reading that all the price comparison websites had increased their spend as we entered the recession, as this was great news for them!

There is no reason why online ad spend should decrease - yes times are tough and people are spending less, but that means poeple are more carefull about what they spend. so they go online to snoop for bargains, and that's where we have to be ready.

I am always looking for fast moving keywords in order to maximise on search trends, so having the ability to display fast moving keywords, either through the interface or just a simple twitter account (@MSN_HotTrends??) that would help advertisers identify new keywords oportunities and capitalise on this recession.

MHO

Eloi said: "In tough times like this, I believe price/service is going to be the winner, and that ads should be optimised with price offerings, competitive claims etc"

Maybe it's a Brit thing, but I doubt it...

Price is OK if you are buying a physical thing where you know the quality - like an iPhone or a DVD (assuming it is not a rip-off) but much LESS of a factor the more esoteric the purchase or enquiry. I gave travel as an example - but let's take it to the extreme. Do you want the savings account with the highest rate of interest at the moment? I hear "IceSave" - part of and Icelandic bank had the best returns for months... Fancy that investment now?

Or you could just put it in government bonds and go for "safe". The "clever money" all around the world seems to be going for safe - not for profit at the moment.

I think Dixon is right on the money with his example of the banking market. In this case, yes, you definitly need more trustworthy brands etc. Another good example of this would be the mobile phone on contract market, where do don't always go with the better price offering - the cheapest network might have very poor coverage for example...

I believe that one of the reasons for this is that in these markets, people are aware of the existence of malignant small print (0% credit card - for 6 months only then it's 15% // £19.99 per month - for the first 3 months then it's £59.99/month) and therefore less suceptible to the price offerings which can be seen as.. dodgy. I think this has always been like that, and is not a syndrome of the recession. Although as Dixon explains, this trend might just accentuate.

But with 'physical things' I do think price offering will be stronger. A flight is a flight, I (a searcher) want to pay the smallest possible amount on a ticket so I can spend more once I m arrived... It might be different in business and first class, as you buy those tickets for the service, but what proportion of the total market is that ? (I'd actually be very interested if someone had figures on this..) And isn't there a chance that businesses will start flying their staff economy class instead of first class in order to save pennies? I know the BBC should... :)

All in all, Dixon's idea of market averages is great, and would allow us to measure the market response from one industry to another... And reassure clients along the way if necessary.

My thoughts on the IAB figures are that digital has, yes, proven the most recession-proof - particularly search - but that growth has still slowed across the board, and particularly in display.

It's a bit early to see how budgets will be affected for '09 but certainly as an advertiser I'd be pumping what cash I had into ROI-focused channels - that means digital - and chiefly search and CPC/CPA-led banner advertising. But I'm pretty sure I'd be wrong to do so.

Rishil gives some evidence to support the view that advertisers will move - worryingly - to 'last-click' advertising strategies. The figures will tell them that's the most effective way to go and supporting that view will be the fact that the true impact of dropping spend throughout a customer's online journey will be concealed since drops in results will be put down to the recession.

All in all, brand spend will suffer more then it ever did in recessionary times because advertisers now have genuine ROI-led channels to choose instead. But we all know that dropping brand spend affects the performance of DR channels - we just still don't know how yet.

So if I were after some useful measurement at the moment it would still be focused on working out what the real impact of dropping pre-last-click advertising would be...

NMA and Hitwise are now starting to report that searches for "scond hand" goods are up 22% in the UK.... People are going to be influenced by prices offerings, lets be ready!

www.nma.co.uk/.../UK+web+searches+for+second+hand+goods+up+22.html

Oh and here:

www.hitwise.co.uk/.../creditcrunch.php