The Search Monitor
The Search Monitor, an online advertising competitive analysis service, launched today. A product like this has been long overdue. It’s a more detailed approach to measuring what your competitors are doing online with their marketing campaigns.
Press release follows:
The Search Monitor is an online monitoring service that tracks competitive advertiser activity on paid search, blogs, news, and web sites, announces the product release of three new automated monitoring utilities: Competitor Monitor, Trademark Monitor, and Affiliate Monitor.
With this launch, interactive agencies, SEM and SEO marketers, affiliate managers, and legal compliance teams gain critical insight into search marketing strategies, affiliate activities, trademark infringement, and brand buzz. The Search Monitor offers important information that can only be gained by careful 24×7 automated monitoring, and surfaces the information in 3 easy to use reporting sections:
1. Competitor Monitor gives insights into competitive bidding strategies, competitor market share and visibility, ranking on sponsored search, ad copy strategies, and promotions like free shipping, trials, or sales.
2. Trademark Monitor eases the tasks associated with reputation management by auto-detecting advertisers sponsoring branded keywords, use of trademarks and slogans in ad copy and display urls, and brand buzz on blogs, news, and web sites.
3. Affiliate Monitor simplifies oversight of affiliate programs by auto-identification of affiliates using sponsored search to detect violations of rank requirements, keyword restrictions, ad copy requirements or restrictions, and landing page copy requirements or restrictions.Search engine marketing has become a critical component for advertisers. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), North American advertisers spent $12.2 billion on SEM in 2007 and that figure is estimated to more than double to reach $25.2 billion by 2011. The Search Monitor was developed to provide the tools necessary to optimize the sizable investments being made in this medium and to protect brands from competitive threats.
“There is a big problem in the industry known as ‘Piggybacking’ which is when smaller advertisers use the trademarks or slogans of bigger advertisers in ad copy or display urls to lure consumers into clicking on their ads”, says Shaun Martinec, a TSM founder. “For our larger brand clients, we have discovered as many as 1 in 10 competitors engaging in this practice. We were quite alarmed to learn that some violators are parked domains, phishing, and spyware sites. With The Search Monitor, our clients are able to catch these activities and react quickly.”
Another advantage of having a monitoring tool such as The Search Monitor is that marketers and agencies can glean insights into competitive online advertising campaigns including ad copy, promotional offers and ad placement strategies. This has proven to be invaluable information to many of the clients already using The Search Monitor. “When we started using The Search Monitor, we envisioned it as a nice add-on. We were surprised when it rose to a critical component of our offerings - it is now a Must Have ” says Troy Lerner of The Booyah Agency.
TSM was started by an old industry friend of mine, so I can really endorse it. It fills a very important niche, especially within the affiliate marketing industry - merchants have really been missing a piece of software that can assist in keep a leash on their affiliates. Try it out.
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