FAQS

Since we started the company in 2008, our goal was a monitoring tool designed to meet the needs of the leading advertising agencies.

Below are a few features engineered for agencies to help grow both their clients’ businesses, and their own.

• Agencies can manage multiple clients from a single interface where each client’s sub-campaign is kept separate.
• Agencies can easily compare performance across multiple clients and even create customized benchmarks
• Agencies have the option of using our API to move data directly into any internal system
• Some of our agency clients use our white-label option so that their clients only see the agency’s branding. We can even white-label our Help Center.
• We can help you find more clients! Our monitoring tool can be used to identify potential new clients for an agency. Watch our video ‘Smart Prospecting for Agencies‘ to see how.

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  gives you detailed click and spend data by vertical!

It provides historical paid search, organic search, and PLA statistics organized into vertical categories like Lodging, Apparel, Hobbies, Finance, etc.  Clients receive insight into unlimited competitors across 1,200+ verticals across millions of keywords for Google and Bing.

Lighthouse™ is sold by the vertical at a starting price of $300/month per vertical.  Platform licenses are available to all 1,239 vertical categories.

Data Consists Of 

• Paid Search Statistics.  Ad Spend, SOV, Clicks, CPC, CTR, Avg. Rank, reach, impression share, ad copy, and offers.
• Organic Search Statistics.  Ranking, page share, & listing copy across universal search results including organic, local, hotel finder, news, videos, images, shopping, and more.
• Product Listing Ads Statistics.  SOV, page share, product price, # of merchants, product descriptions, seller ratings & reviews, and PLA page placement

Learn More About Lighthouse

• BLOG: “Top 5 industry insights you can learn using Lighthouse”
• VIDEO: “How to improve SEM, SEO & PLA performance with Lighthouse by The Search Monitor”
• VIDEO: “How to defend Your PPC spend with Lighthouse by The Search Monitor”
• VIDEO: “How to improve prospecting using Lighthouse by The Search Monitor”
• Visit our Competitive Ad Intelligence overview page

Lighthouse for Travel

Hotels, Cruises, Resorts, Airlines, OTAs, and Auto Rentals have a unique need for geo-targeted information at the city level.  Lighthouse for Travel specifically provides a unique data set across more than 200 popular US destinations with historical data on Ad Spend, SOV, Rank, Ad Copy, Clicks, & CPC.

Lighthouse for Travel also includes Hotel Finder listings that appear in organic search results, with daily rate results coming in Q1 2015.

See a Demo With Data & Reports on Your Industry

The Search Monitor specializes in providing competitive intelligence for agencies. Below are a few of the reports our agency clients find most helpful.

• Paid Ad Monitoring (Learn More)
  • Rank Report
  • Market Share Report
  • Ad Copy Report
  • Keyword Report
  • Special Offers Report
• Organic Listing Monitoring (Learn More)
  • Listing Report
  • Rank Report
• Shopping Monitoring (Learn More)
  • Seller Report
  • Item Detail Report
  • PLA Report
• Display & Mobile Ad Monitoring (Learn More)

All reports can be scheduled to be sent to you or anyone else. Many of our agency clients have PPC competitive analysis automatically emailed monthly for their clients. Others receive weekly Market Share reports for their clients’ Hot Competitors. We can show you how to set up these automatic reports.

Yes. Our main competitive product (Lighthouse) makes it easy to identify new ‘good-fit’ clients for an agency.

Let’s say you are the Business Development lead for your agency and need to identify 50 prospects that are a good fit for your business.

• You want companies that are in the verticals where you have expertise—or would like to move into–and are the right size for your agency
• You want companies who are under-performing their benchmarks in their vertical or companies whose performance is not as good as your agency’s results
• You also want to know which vendors your prospects use for tracking, bidding, and campaign management

This information will give you a targeted list of ‘best-fit’ prospects and the information needed to craft the perfect pitch about why they should select your agency.

With Lighthouse, this list can be ready in an instant. And since Lighthouse data comes from The Search Monitor’s partnership with comScore, you can rest assured that you’re getting the most precise data available.

Watch our video ‘Smart Prospecting With Lighthouse‘ to learn more.

Yes. You can easily spread out your purchased keyword group across multiple clients in one account.

Yes. If your competitors are using keywords that you have loaded into your campaign manager, we will identify them.

However, we do not have visibility into your competitor’s Google Ad Words account or Bing Ad Center Account.

All of our packages come with the ability to geo-target search engine monitoring by ZIP, city, state, region, and country in every location. This includes global search engines such as Google, Bing, & Yahoo and local ones such as Baidu, Yandex, and Naver.

Why You Must Geo-Target Your Ad Monitoring

• Find advertisers that are displaying your trademarks in their ad copy, but only in certain markets. You’ll need this proof to submit to the engines for removal!
• Find affiliates who break your rules in select locations, such as where your office is not located (since they think you only check there)
• Identify resellers that are unauthorized to advertise in certain cities
• Learn how competitors change their offers and landing pages by geography
• Identify new countries to enter for paid search

Industries That Benefit From Geo-targeting

Industries that benefit the most from geo-targeting include localized retailers, telecom, travel, automotive, and finance.

For example, travel clients may want to learn about advertised room rates, OTA activity, or brand infringements per market serviced. Clients who work in cooperative search marketing scenarios with resellers and distributors can benefit from ensuring rank compliance and keyword/ad copy synchronization.

The Search Monitor uses thousands of IP addresses across the globe to simulate a user in a specific location. We can target any country, city, or region, and the language of the ad.

Want to learn more? Ask us for examples of how geo-targeting can help your vertical. Or, request a demo with your list of geographies.

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