24/7 Real Media Offers Search Analytics

Interactive marketing and technology company 24/7 Real Media Monday debuted Insight SE, which analyzes campaigns running on more than one search engine to determine which keywords and engines perform best and where sales prospects drop out.

The tool is more competition for the most established players in the search campaign management space, aQuantive’s GoToast and Did-it.com’s Maestro.

The 24/7 Real Media tool allows marketers to make ROI comparisons between ads on competing search engines and between different sets of keywords. Hence, it allows an easy comparison between different engines and keywords of both gross sales and dollars earned per dollar spent.

“Most of the major search engines have their own analytic product,” noted Dave Hills, president of media solutions for 24/7. “Ours augments these products by allowing you to see in one place all your activity on different search engines, both paid and unpaid, and relate that activity to sales revenue.”

Marketers can define also their own metrics for success. They can look at their results online or download them into Excel. Additionally, they can integrate the Insight SE system with their own enterprise data systems.

“A customer might click on a Google ad, go to the corresponding site and get picked up by the SE system. SE would note what they did, what they bought and how much they spent, and relate that back to cost per click. If the person used algorithmic search, it would do the same thing,” Hills said.

Insight SE is being introduced on a cost per click basis, Hills said. The company has seen lots of activity lately. In early February, in a windfall for the company, Lycos U.S. inked a 5-year deal with 24/7 to outsource display ad sales, ad serving and analytics for its Internet properties.

Also, in late February 24/7 reported it had slightly exceeded Wall Street prognostications with a net loss of $5.9 million for the fourth quarter. The company also raised its guidance for the first quarter of 2004.