As means of introduction, Adam is Group Product Manager for Lycos InSite and is in charge of building a comprehensive suite of search marketing tools. He has general management responsibilities for vision, execution, and delivery of Web-based platforms.

Adam explained further,

“I am charged with building a search marketing platform for Lycos. We launched our first product based on paid inclusion into FAST Web index in February of this year. We were very quickly able to prove that by nature of our brand and presence, search marketers would come to visit for search marketing services.

“Two weeks ago, we launched our second product, InSite AdBuyer, a cost-per-click ad auction engine. Both of these products are designed around concept of contextual advertising, so that a searcher is presented with highly relevant information when performing a search.

“While our platform is currently focused on our own index, we seek to provide one-stop access for all search marketing needs, including multiple index submission and multiple bid-management capabilities. All of these are designed to drive traffic (i.e., customer acquisition). We are also looking further down visitor experience to ROI side to encompass campaign management.”

The following are questions asked by Academy students to Mr. Soroca.

Question: “I see when I do a search on Lycos that there is an 'advertisement' on right side. Is this InSite AdBuyer?”

Adam: “Correct. Those are AdBuyer cost-per-click ads. Our advertisers bid to be in 1st, 2nd or 3rd positions.

“These are highly targeted ads as they are exact match keyword driven. So behind scenes, advertisers are involved in a bidding auction to vie for that space.”

Question: “When someone clicks 'place your ad here' link, does it show what bids are for keywords in question, so you know what you have to bid against?”

Adam: “No, actually we don't display prices on front end. To view prices for particular keywords, advertisers must sign up for an account and view that in advertisers’ area.”

Question: “What results does FAST supply to Lycos?”

Adam: “FAST currently provides Lycos with our search results. Our paid inclusion platform enables Web site owners and marketers to guarantee that their Web content is included in Web index and frequently refreshed. This differs from paid placement in that paid inclusion customers do not necessarily show up in top of results just because they paid us. This content is viewed by relevancy algorithm and displayed appropriately.

“Currently this program is available to small/mid size companies for an annual subscription. For larger companies, it will be available at a cost-per-click (those sites >1,000 URL’s). Paid placement and paid inclusion are two separate products. If you bid for placement, you pay for actual clicks. If you buy paid inclusion, that means that your pages are guaranteed to be in Web index (spiders can't find everything), and content will be updated every 24-48 hours. So, if your content changes, index will reflect that much more quickly. With an index of 2.1 billion documents, it can take FAST a while to recrawl entire index. This program guarantees you are in there.”

Question: “So, you have to pay for inclusion before you bid for placement? Is this what I understand?”

Adam: “They are two separate programs. The paid inclusion relates to FAST and Web index. The paid placement relates to three ad panels that display on Lycos Search.”

This enlightening chat shed light on one of leading pay-for-performance advertising providers (providing keyword-targeted text ads to search engines and other large portals) and offered tips for achieving better results when purchasing keywords.

Craig began by giving some background information on FindWhat.com.

“FindWhat.com.com is a leading performance-based marketing company that introduces buyers and sellers online. We allow advertisers to bid on keywords, and then we distribute those keywords to over 200 distribution partners. We serve approximately 1 billion searches per month and handle well over 700,000 transactions per day. We have 20,000 plus advertisers from all over world.”

Craig is one of founders of FindWhat.com, and as a result of his strong dedication to developing FindWhat.com, he was recently chosen as one of nominees for 2002 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of Year Award.

Craig answered following questions from Academy students.

Question:

One billion is a very large number. How much of that comes from US?

Craig:

We concentrate on US marketplace at this point, so to put a percentage on it, I would say 95+% comes from US.

Question:

What is your vision for FindWhat.com? What are we going to experience in 2003?

Craig:

I've been hinting around on several earnings calls that we were looking at both international initiatives and diversifying our primary traffic (distribution partners). I would say both are strong possibilities for 2003.

Question:

Are there any major partners (in North America) that you could hint about?

Craig:

We recently announced a new relationship with Terra Lycos. We are providing a turnkey keyword advertising service to both Lycos and HotBot Web properties. They brand and sell service, and we provide our complete private label product comprised of keyword-targeted pay-for-performance ad service, account manager interface, and customer service.

Question:

My company just opened an account with you. Is there any way to automate our system for bidding purposes?

Craig:

We do offer several automated functions but have not focused on automating bidding process for several reasons. For example, if you have multiple bidders with a high "cap" and system automatically increases bids, then you would have artificial increases that give an unfair advantage to larger companies since they have larger budgets. This has recently been seen in other systems that have introduced such functions.

There are many other reasons, but important thing to understand about FindWhat.com is that we are focused on keeping a "fair playing field” for all advertisers. We feel there are many different ways to market a product online. But to date, there has not been a "fair" way for thousands and thousands of advertisers to participate. Again, we are focused on helping advertisers of all sizes rather than ones with largest budgets.

We feel that in long run, this will build a larger and stronger company.

Question:

What are your recommendations for a beginner pay-per-click client at FindWhat.com? For example, strategy, budget, etc.?

Craig:

Concentrate on your keywords and descriptions. Give our reps a call. As I mentioned earlier, we serve over 1 billion searches per month, so if you want to get traffic, you need to be identified by user as a site that has product they are looking for.

Question:

When bidding on your keywords, does FindWhat.com have an auto bid function to help reduce bid gaps between #1 and #2 position?

Craig:

We implemented several functions that help eliminate gaps you are mentioning. But if you really want to keep tabs on it, we suggest you log in frequently or contract a bid management company.

We do have a BidOptimizer feature, which will allow you to choose position you wish your keywords to obtain (positions 1 through 5) within FindWhat.com results. This feature also allows you to put in a maximum bid price. If, for example, keyword you wished to have number one position had a current bid price of $1.00, BidOptimizer would put your bid to $1.01, unless you had a max bid price of less than a dollar. In that case, it would put your bid at one penny over next possible bid position, within your cap limit.

Question:

In your opinion, what are top three mistakes made by new users?

Craig: