Here’s the video and slides from today’s presentation at the Search Insider Summit. Remind me not to chug 5 Hour Energy before getting on stage next time. Although I needed it to rip thru 35 slides in 15 minutes!

Today I participated in a session at ad:tech San Francisco called, “Connecting the Dots with Paid Search” moderated by “Marketing Pastor” Melanie Mitchell.

My presentation focused on a new approach to search engine marketing that can not only help improve performance within the SEM channel but across other channels as well. The idea is focusing on the people behind the keywords to get a sense of their true value to your business. It’s not rocket science. It’s people science.

Here’s my deck:

In yesterday’s MediaPost Search Insider column (+10 and -10 for Google +1), I shared 10 things I love and 10 things I hate about Google +1. It just so happens that the lists contained the same 10 things. Behold the definition of a love/hate relationship!

As a leading provider of digital marketing software used to direct over $15 billion USD in online sales, my company, Kenshoo, has access to a treasure trove of data. As a way to help marketers benchmark their online advertising efforts, we’ve begun aggregating and analyzing performance data across our retail customer base, which includes 5 of the top 10 global retailers per Forbes and 5 of the top 10 U.S. retailers per NRF.

Earlier this month, we released some of this research in the Kenshoo 2010 Online Retail Holiday Shopping Report. Beyond helping online marketers see how their campaigns measured up to the Kenshoo U.S. Retail Index, this report provides a great look into key consumer online shopping trends.

In all, we assessed over 3 billion total search advertising impressions, 60 million clicks and 3 million online sales transactions for the period beginning 21 days prior to Thanksgiving and ending the weekend after New Year’s Day in 2009 and 2010.

Here are the key findings:

Here are the major trends we identified:

And here is 1 of the 23 pretty charts including in the report that you can cut and paste into your next presentation (with proper attribution, of course):

The full report is available for download here and also includes 7 actionable implications for marketers and 5 predictions for search marketing and online advertising in 2011. Spoiler alert: it’s going to be a Googley year!

It’s 8:05pm est and today’s deal on LivingSocial just passed 1 million sales. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the deal was a $20 Amazon gift card for $10. And in case you’ve been living under a really big rock, LivingSocial is a Groupon-esque deal-of-the-day company.

Like a million other deal-seekers, I bought mine but what caught my eye was this disclaimer…

Unlike the deals I’m used to seeing from Groupon and the like, the brand promoted in this deal (Amazon) was apparently not involved. From what I can gather, LivingSocial just bought a bunch of Amazon gift cards through an affiliate and sold them for half the value. Maybe there was some sort of discount for bulk purchase, but it’s possible LivingSocial paid as much as $10 million to acquire 1 million new customers.

To be sure, not all of these people who bought this deal are first-time LivingSocial customers but the last reported subscriber-count for LivingSocial was 10 million, so this promotion could have bumped LivingSocial’s list by over 10%.

Add in all the great PR LivingSocial has received from this deal and this could rank as one of the best awareness and acquisition campaigns any company has run in a long time. Forgetting about the free media impressions and just looking at the sales metrics, LivingSocial’s cost per acquisition here was $10. That’s $10 for a customer that has now given permission to LivingSocial to send a deal of the day every day until he or she unsubscribes. (I wonder if LivingSocial’s unsubscribe experience is as memorable as Groupon’s per chapter 19 of the book?)

It’s difficult to quantify lifetime value of a new customer for LivingSocial, unless you work at LivingSocial, but it’s easy to surmise that the figure is above $10. If LivingSocial’s deal terms and margins are similar to Groupon’s, we’re looking at 50% of the spread between what customers pay and merchant’s value. It’s likely LivingSocial will make back that $10 acquisition cost and then some the very next time a subscriber makes a purchase.

And who knows what the impact all this PR and the 1 million subscriber adds will have on LivingSocial’s valuation but one can easily see  it climbing much higher than an incremental $10 million as a result of today’s deal.

Now, I could be very wrong about all this. Amazon could have sanctioned this deal. After all, it is an investor in LivingSocial. And/or Amazon could have sold the gift cards to LivingSocial at a bigger discount or done some back-end revenue-share  making the acquisition costs for LivingSocial much lower or potentially even driving this deal into stand-alone profitability. It would make sense for Amazon. I’m sure many of the one million buyers will never end up using the gift card and, those that do, may spend much more than $20 with their purchase. Not to mention all the branding and PR mentions that Amazon has gotten out of this deal.

Regardless of how the deal went down, this seems to be a true win-win for LivingSocial and Amazon. And it’s a testament to the power of the deal-a-day business. Surely, LivingSocial and Groupon are more than “just coupon websites.” And it’s easy to see why these companies matter and why Google is so eager to get into this business.

It’s now 9:29pm est and another 80,000 sales have been made. And there’s still another 10 1/2 hours left in the promotion.

Update Jan. 20: So much for lifetime value. LivingSocial just sent out the instructions for redeeming the gift card at 12:04am est, officially not making good on its promise yesterday to notify me “tomorrow” with that information. Apparently, I’m not the only one who was eagerly awaiting my gift card as the LivingSocial site seems to have crashed completely. Not a good first experience. Might need to update the title of this post to “How LivingSocial Lost 1 Million New Subscribers.”

Over the past week, I’ve been busy “Future-Proofing.” Below are links and lists from bylines I’ve written sharing my expectations for the coming year. We’ll see how things shake out but the one thing I’m certain of is that 2011’s gonna be Googley!

Ten Search Marketing Hot Spots To Watch In 2011
1. Local
2. Social ads
3. The social graph
4. Mobile
5. Attribution
7. Display
8. Video
9. Search
10. Apps

10 Crazy 2011 SEM Predictions
1. Facebook will create its own search engine
2. Apple will create its own search engine
3. Groupon will create its own search engine
4. EBay will create its own search engine
5. Google will fall below 60% U.S. search query market share
6. Google will buy TiVo
8. Comcast will buy Yahoo
9. Adobe will buy AOL
10. You will buy my book

Image Source: iStockPhoto (actually paid for)

Yesterday, McGraw-Hill released an eBook compilation of short essays from its authors on “What’s Next” for 2011. The topics range from innovation to investment to sales to leadership to, of course, search. It’s a great, quick read from some of the “leading minds in business” so be sure to download your copy.

Here’s my take on what’s in store for search next year…

2011: The Year That Search Got Social
by Aaron Goldman

Search marketing and social media are on a collision course. And 2011 will be the big bang. The implications for marketers, search engines, and social networks alike will be profound. Here’s what you need to know.

To date, search has been the primary way people have found things on the Internet. Looking for a place to eat? Google it! Want to know what camera to buy? Google it!

That’s changing though. As more and more people join Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, the answer to these questions is no longer, “Google it!” It’s now, “Ask your friends.” Or, “Ask your followers.”

As it turns out, your friends, families and others in your social circle (read: people) are better indicators of what you might like than webpages stuffed with keywords and links (read: webmasters).

Who’d have thunk it?!? That Zuckerberg guy, that’s who.

Indeed, Facebook stands positioned to lead the next wave of innovation in search marketing. And this will likely benefit Microsoft, of all companies. In early October, Facebook and Microsoft announced that “likes” (all those little “thumbs up” buttons that get pushed on Facebook and other sites across the web) will be integrated into the Bing search algorithm.

Now, instead of search engines deciding what websites are most relevant to you based on the number of links they have, rankings will be based on the number of likes they have. And, more importantly, likes by people in your social graph.

So, how can you make sure your organization is prepared for this shift in search power?

For starters, make sure you’re “well-liked.” Put that button on your website and encourage people to click it. As an example, Walmart recently started running promotions that offer exclusive discounts to people who like its page.

And don’t forget Twitter. Set up an account and start tweeting. If the “like” trend is any indication, it won’t be long before Twitter followers and “retweets” are applied to search engine algorithms as well.

But don’t fire your search engine optimization team just yet. Google still controls over 70% of the global search market so it’s critical to make sure your website is well-optimized for keywords and links.

That said, it won’t be long before Google gets social. Whether it’s an acquisition of Twitter or a new social network called Google Me, you can be sure the Big G will be bringing the big guns.

So, as 2011 draws near, the best advice I can give comes from Chapter 8 of my book. Test everything.
Get more likes. Get more links. Get Googley. Get Facebooky. Get Bingy. Get Twittery.

As Google CEO Eric Schmidt himself put it, “The mistake we always make is we assume the success in the next 10 years will be the same as the success in the last 10 years. The dominant players always get it wrong.”

When it comes to search marketing, success in 2011 will not be the same as 2010. The future is social, whether you like it or not.

Aaron Goldman is Chief Marketing Officer at Kenshoo, a global leader in search marketing and online advertising technology for advertisers, agencies, and local marketing providers. He is also the author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google.

Today I kicked off my role as MC of the MediaPost Search Insider Summit with an intro to the theme of “All Roads Lead Through Search” and an interpretation of 2Pac’s California Love with my man Rob McEvily (who also created the poster above) working the beatbox. Skip to about 10 minutes in if you just want the rap and see below for the lyrics…

Update: Check out Day 2 with the Fresh Prince of Deer Valley!

I’d like to welcome everybody to SIS,
This show is unstoppable, you know it’s the best.

The sessions will be hot and we’ve got skiing galore,
Be sure to pack your vest before you head out the door.

We’ve got all search geeks in this room, where the search geeks be?
The search geeks that never leave the spreadsheets empty.

And these geeks, they run the marketing machines.
Spend a lot of coin on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

I’ve been in the game for 10 years so I’m old school,
Ever since Sergey and Larry were countin’ links fool.

Now it’s 2010 and we’re way past beta,
It’s like we unlocked the Fort Knox of data.

It’s all good from the conference to the slopes,
If you ain’t meetin’ others, you ain’t makin’ the most.

So throw your hands up if you feel the same way.
Welcome to SIS. The show starts today!

SIS, no doubt about it.
SIS, knows how to party.
In the city…. city of Park.
In the city…city of Park.
Keep on searchin’, keep on searchin’, yeah!

That’s the title of the guest post I penned for the McGraw-Hill Professional blog today in advance of Small Business Saturday.

In it, I share tips for Googling your small business to get to the top of, well, Google!

After hosting me a couple months ago, multi-cultural marketing machine and my main man, Joe Kutchera, has embarked on a blog tour of his own to promote his new book, Latino Link.

In this video, Joe shares 3 tips for connecting with Hispanic audiences. Unfortunately, there’s no rap at the end but maybe I can start working with him on his flow in time for his next book. :)

Be sure to check out JoeKutchera.com/LatinoLink for a sample chapter and more info on buying the book. Hasta la vista, baby!