Tracking what happens after ad clicks 'is most important'

Businesses need to track user activity after clicking on an ad link, a blogger has claimed. Gerry Bavaro wrote in Media Post's Search Insider that businesses should not focus exclusively on bid management and the ways in which search and other media are bought. Sophisticated landing pages and page-to-ad relevancy testing are necessary to find "the combination of post-click elements" most likely to "convert" users to an advertisement's subject, he said. Mr Bavaro predicted future online marketing trends in which such testing will become more "ubiquitous" and effective. The systems would need to "immediately route clicks to a theoretically unlimited set of experiences" most likely to attract the user to the product being advertised. A new Search Help Centre was launched by the Internet Advertising Bureau earlier this month. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft came together for the project, which will help keep online advertisers well informed and advised on issues such as intellectual property rights and trademarks.