Sponsored by:

Speaker:

David Worlock, Chief Research Fellow, Outsell

Moderator:

Davina Lines, Managing Director, Netimperative

The Panel:
Andy Black, Convera
Ian Eckert, TSL Education
Bill Murray, Haymarket Media
Bill Furlong, Search Channel
Pete Swabey, Information Age
Giles Grant, Incisive Media
Iain Fletcher, Convera
Graham Charlesworth, Convera
Allyson Hohman, DoubleClick
Chris Closset, Steak Media
Alasdair Cross, Adprecision
Justin Morshead, Adprecision
Matt Brocklehurst, Latitude
Rory Maw, Speedcard Services Limited  

Robert Proctor, Adify
John Gurier, Weboptimiser
David Ding, Weboptimiser
Lisa Higginson, Harvest Digital 
Andy Greaves, Linkshare

Robin Langford, Netimperative

The following is a summary of the key points discussed during the roundtable. To listen to the debate in full, download the two MP3 files at the foot of this page.

Session 1

The roundtable began with a short presentation from David Worlock, chief research fellow at market research firm Outsell, who gave an analysis of the B2B and STM (Scientific, Technical and Medical) publishing markets as they stand today.

(To view the slides provided by Outsell http://www.outsellinc.com/, entitled ‘Sizing the Information Market’, click on the PowerPoint presentation at the foot of this page.)

He began by looking at the B2B sector in the context of the information market, saying it made $26bn in revenues in the US in 2006, representing 6% of the information market. He added the sector is forecast to maintain steady growth until 2010.

David highlighted three driving changes within the sector: The growing integration of publisher’s content into their reader’s daily workflow (i.e. through electronic media such as the internet), the rise of community-based publishing, and the reliance on search engines to drive traffic.

For the purpose of the presentation, David focused on search, but added that all three should be considered in any overall strategy. From a B2B publisher’s perspective, he emphasised the importance of vertical (or ‘specialised’) search engines as opposed to more generic, consumer orientated search engines such as Google.

He highlighted the shortcomings of Google’s engine for people working in spefic business areas, such as engineers seeking building plans. He felt in these cases searchers were not getting back the results they were hoping for, and there is a need for vertical search engines that can guarantee and degree of ‘predictability’ in their results.

Andy Black from Convera asked David if he felt some of the more business-orientated search engines, such as Lexis Nexis and Factiva, where doing a sufficient job in this area. David thought they were not, pointing out that having large data is seldom enough, and said there remains gaps in the market for smaller search engines which can deliver higher quality results with less data.

The rise of bloggers was thought to be a threat to the publishing sector, but Outsell’s research showed it had played little role in taking traffic away from B2B sites. David added that the growing convenience of the web and changing online habits was changing people’s networking habits, and people were coming to   expect more than they had before’.

David said that if search is such a dominant force in the ad market it cannot be left for Google to control the fortunes of B2B and STM publishers.

This lead the panel on to discuss the role of vertical search, with Ian Eckert from TSL Education talking about his previous job at SearchMedica, a search engine designed for doctors. The company found that 47% of GPs admitted to using Google during regular consultations with patients.

The doctors wanted a better service with more reliable results, and Search Medica developed a database to cater for this market. Ian pointed out the search engine also functioned as a highly targeted ad platform for pharmaceutical and medical companies, which were able to serve their ads to doctors at the specific point in time that they were thinking about using their products and services.

The panel looked at the variety of advertising models available to B2B publishers, such as search, directories and newsletters, and discussed the logistics of each. Bill Furlong from Search Channel thought the cost-per-click model, typically used in the B2C field, was less suited to the B2B sector.

Instead, he touted the use of a ‘fixed fee program’ where advertisers buy groups of keywords priced inline with typical CPM rates. Ian h agreed with this method, and said ads are easy to sell to brands through sponsorships of categories, which they are able top sell at a premium price.

Graham Charlesworth from Convera asked if the SearchMedica platform was able to sell ads easily. Ian said it was possible to sell up the inventory but getting the price right involved a difficult balancing act. He said if they set too high a price barrier, the doctors would ‘just go back to using Google’.

Bill Murray, from Haymarket Media, thought that from a publisher’s perspective, search revenue was less important that delivering customer satisfaction.  He said a well-executed search engine on a site would help generate customer loyalty, which in turn could generate more reader data and greater targeting opportunities for advertising in the long-run.

David Worlock said this statement was in-line with Outsell’s own research. When asked for their primary motivations to implement search on their site, the top three answers publishers gave were:

1. Service values

2.  Competition

3.  Revenue

The panel then discussed the value of manually tagging content, compared with using auto tagging technology, or simply letting search engine technology index content for you. David Warlock thought that, when it came to vertical search at least, tagging was more important and the panel thought the technology behind, auto-tagging was currently insufficient to reach requirements of good search results.

Ian moved this idea onto user-generated content within publisher’s sites, and whether they should ask people submitting comments to manually tag their work. The panel thought this could turn away users by asking too much of them, when they are already adding value to your site for free.

Session 2

David Worlock began the second session by looking at the importance of ‘ad experimentation’ to find the optimum format for each site. He used an example of contextual advertising on a fly fishing site and asked if it is better to target a reader with an advert for bait when they are reading the fishing website or when they are reading a news site? He thought it was better to target them when they are reading a generic news site, as they are in a more receptive frame of mind.

Davina Lines then moved the debate onto the long-running debacle facing publishers: subscriptions versus ad revenue. She used the recent example of the New York Times ditching its subscription model in favour of online advertising revenues, and asked if this was a major turning point.

Bill Murray through it was, and cited Google’s move to buying news feeds directly from major agencies such as Reuters and The Associated Press to display in Google News as another key moment in the sector. He said this demonstrates how Google no longer stands by its purported aim to ‘get users off its site as fast as possible’ and onto the sites they are searching for. Bill said if this was the case, why are they buying in this content, rather than sending users onto other news sites?

The panel looked at whether the New York Times move could lead to other bastions of paid content, such as The Wall Street Journal, to follow suit. Bill Murray hoped not, and praised the WSJ’s online subscription model. He thought even Google recoignised that some news content was worth paying a premium for.

David Worlck went on to assert that there are some sectors that are best left to specialists, and cited the shortcomings of Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic as examples of where other players could step in and produce better search services.

Bill Furlong then discussed the introduction of Google Custom Search (also known as Google Co-Op) which uses social media to get users to tag content. He though they were using this as a tool to identify markets that there was sufficient demand to expand into.

To listen to the debate in full, download the 2 mp3 files below.

Venue kindly provided by Latitude.