Strategy

First, Vongo’s SEM agency approached the search engine, requesting that these two syndication partners be removed. They battled with the engine for over a month to no avail. If the problem occurred with any other syndication partners, the engine would have gladly removed them from the campaign, but it was not so flexible with Shopping.com and DealTime. The engine was steadfast in their decision, leaving the SEM agency little choice but to counter with equal fortitude—they flicked the “off” switch on syndication for the entire campaign. Due to Vongo’s significant daily ad spend, removal of syndication partners would not go unnoticed for long by the search engine. And while it did reduce the CPD, it also reduced Vongo’s opportunity for downloads and visibility.

The SEM agency bided their time, waiting for the search engine’s response; however, after a quiet month on the part of the engine, patience wore thin as did Vongo’s visibility and download opportunities. The SEM agency decided they had to take another approach in the interim.

The ten keywords with the most click volume were pulled from the campaign. These terms and phrases were given the special treatment—they were placed in a separate campaign, given unique bid parameters and received their own highly-specific ad copy. And like all elite, they were placed on a pedestal; these ten keywords were only displayed on the search engine itself, not the syndication partners. All other keywords were syndicated through every partner, even the two that previously performed poorly.

This strategy was utilized until the engine could take the ad spend crush no longer; hungry for Vongo’s full search budget, the engine decided to compromise. The two poorly-performing syndication partners were removed from Vongo’s entire account, rather than simply on a campaign level. The SEM agency could fearlessly flick the syndication “on” switch, knowing not one campaign would syndicate on those partners.