IBM Unica Search

Online marketers spend more on paid search than any other type of online media. So getting the most out of this investment with effective search bid management is top of mind for online marketers. But how can you manage millions of keyword ads effectively and efficiently across many different search engine accounts, regional offices, currencies, and languages?

The answer is Unica Search OnDemand, a robust and flexible tool for search bid management used by advanced search engine marketers and agencies worldwide. Alongside NetInsight and Interactive Marketing OnDemand in Unica’s product line for online marketing, Unica Search OnDemand offers:

• Automated bid management and optimization: automatically adjusts bids to optimize  conversions, ROI, CPA, ad impressions, offline sales or other performance metrics that drive your business
• Flexible and granular control over bid strategies: enables automated optimization through self-learning strategies, while providing marketers hands-on control at portfolio, ad group, and keyword level when needed
• The broadest search engine coverage available: works with Ask, Baidu, Google, Looksmart, Microsoft Search, Miva, Yahoo!, and Yandex - in one interface.
• Landing page rotation, testing and reporting: optimizes the web content searchers see after clicking through to reduce bounce rates and increase conversions
• Robust support for multiple divisions, currencies, and languages: uniquely enables multi-national enterprises to manage bidding and reporting across business units, currencies, and geographies without juggling separate accounts
• Accurate numbers in reports: uses the actual bid costs, impressions, click-thrus, and other metrics provided by search engines instead of estimates and averages
• Large-scale PPC campaign management: facilitates mass updates to keywords and keeps campaigns consistent through bi-directional synchronization with search engines
• Customizable user interface: enables agencies to “white label” using their own branding or corporations to customize with their own look-and-feel

Companies using Unica Search OnDemand include Fortune 100 brand-names and leading media agencies around the world

The advanced search bid management capabilities in Unica Search OnDemand improve paid search results by helping online advertisers to:

• Reduce time-consuming manual efforts for configuring and monitoring paid search campaigns across multiple search engines
• Reduce paid search costs by identifying and automatically shifting spend from underperforming keyword ads to those that can drive better returns
• Increase conversions and revenues after the ad click-through by rotating and testing different landing pages
• Improve budget allocation across the global enterprise through the broadest search engine support available and powerful multi-national, multi-currency capabilities within a single account
• Share insights on results across large enterprises through role-based views that are filtered according to each user’s region or product responsibility
• Deploy quickly and at low cost using Unica’s SaaS delivery, already used by hundreds of marketing organizations and more than 20,000 individual marketers

Unica Search OnDemand also helps search engine marketing agencies grow their businesses with capabilities to:

• Manage hundreds of clients through productivity tools and an intuitive user interface  designed to support service providers managing numerous clients
• Reduce time-consuming report distribution by providing secure self-service report access to clients
• Instill client trust and confidence through reports based on the actual numbers provided by search engines instead of less accurate estimates or averages
• Maintain brand identity with a “white labeled” user interface
  

Broadest and deepest search engine API integration

Unica Search OnDemand:

• Integrates directly with all major global search engine APIs, including Ask, Baidu, Google, LookSmart, Microsoft Search, Miva, Yahoo!, and Yandex, in all languages, currencies, time zones, and character sets 
• Supports both search and content networks as well as targeted placements of image ads across the fixed and mobile Internet
• Synchronizes bidirectionally so that users can update any aspect of their campaigns through the Unica Search OnDemand user interface and also make changes directly through the search engines’ bid management consoles. Changes on either side are automatically synchronized
• Ensures accurate reporting by using the actual bid costs, impressions, click-thrus, and other metrics provided by search engines, instead of estimates or averages

Multi-level paid search campaign management

Unica Search OnDemand users can manage bid strategies at keyword, ad group, and portfolio levels.

• Keyword level strategies include budget strategies, positioning strategies, targeting cost per lead (CPL), cost per acquisition (CPA), ROI, cost of advertising or cost per sale, as well as day parting
• Ad group-level strategies include day parting and ad optimization functionalities
• Portfolio strategies apply to groups of keywords, which users can select from a mix of search engines and match types. Bid strategies are then applied to achieve a goal for the portfolio including optimum ROI, target ROI, optimum profit, optimum clicks, and optimum cost per lead

Scalable to large numbers of keywords

Unica Search OnDemand eases the burden on large-scale search engine marketers. 

• Unica Search OnDemand can manage unlimited numbers of keywords
• Users can filter large numbers of keywords to focus on manageable subsets using campaign, ad group, text, bid strategy, or performance metrics such as ROI, CPA, sales, clicks, impressions, average CPC, or current position, as well as by time period
• Bids, strategies or ad copy for filtered sets of keywords can be changed individually or collectively.

Advanced support for search marketing agencies

Agencies manage a substantial portion of the world’s search engine marking, so Unica Search OnDemand offers advanced capabilities to help them support clients more effectively.

• Agencies can set up customized interfaces to display exactly the right information for each client, in the format best for them
• Agencies can differentiate themselves and deepen client engagement through a flexible user interface that can be “white labeled” with the agency brand, logo, colors, and fonts
• Because Unica Search OnDemand handles multiple currencies, agencies can bill clients in US Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, and other major currencies
• Unica Search OnDemand supports the different billing models agencies use, even for different client accounts within one agency
  

See the recent acquisition press release for Unica Search OnDemand.

Webcasts
Learn how to get more from your paid search investment

• View the recorded web seminar, “Optimize Pay-Per-Click Spend,” to learn real strategies that you can use now to put your online demand generation activities on a new and better trajectory