As Advertisers Expand Online, Covario Adds Web-Based Tools to Measure Their Success

Covario’s meeting by industry analyst Shar VanBoskirk of Cambridge, MA-based Forrester Research.

VanBoskirk says companies spent an estimated $15.4 billion in the United States on search marketing in 2009, or more than half of the $25.6 billion total spent on all forms of interactive marketing, which includes online display advertising, e-mail marketing, social media, and mobile marketing. She projects that total will more than double, to almost $55 billion, in five years—with search marketing accounting for $31.6 billion of the total.

The expanding market for different categories of interactive marketing also helps to explain why Covario recently acquired NetConcepts, a Madison, WI-based specialist in search engine optimization for retailers and e-commerce websites.

Covario originally was focused on search analytics, and provided software-as-a-service to help big Fortune 500 companies optimize their websites, for example, by identifying the search terms that users most frequently use when they are shopping online. But Covario now is moving to help companies understand how effective their interactive marketing is in terms of spending for online TV, display, and social media advertising.

Covario spokesman Paul Borselli told me the NetConcepts deal enabled Covario to launch a new Web-based service, called Mobile Site Optimizer, that makes advertisers’ websites “mobile friendly” for the RIM Blackberry, Apple iPhone, and other major mobile devices.

During its conference, Covario also announced the release of another software-as-a-service program designed specifically for large corporate advertisers and their agencies. The Web-based service, called Display Advertising Insight (DAI), enables advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their online display advertising. Covario says that advertisers who combine its DAI service with Covario’s existing Web-based programs that measure paid search advertising and organic search will have a comprehensive view of how successful their online marketing really is.




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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.