My Own John Battelle Moment

I and many in the SEM industry chuckled back in May when John Battelle - the guy who wrote the book on Google, literally - talked about what at the time was his first experience creating and running an AdWords campaign. After all, it was like a doctor explaining in mid-surgery that he really enjoyed the newfound art of operating.

That said, I have my own admission to make - I just looked at IP log files for the first time ever, in this case in the context of my own blog and some politically-themed search marketing campaigns I've been running.

There were dozens of cases of the same IP logging multiple (and in some cases dozens) of hits, often [disturbingly] from syndicated AdWords ads, this despite my having set content bids that were a fraction of my search bids.

So much can be done with log data, but so much human intervention is required to unlock that value. Web analytics packages exist, but as one Omniture SiteCatalyst user told me the other day: "it'd be nice if someone could create a plug-in that actually analyzes the data and takes action on it."

Something tells me online marketing technology is still in its infancy...