Creating Compelling Ads: SES San Jose 2005

I just wrapped-up preparations for our Creating Compelling Ads session at SES San Jose 2005. Although it's not marked "new" on our conference-at-a-glance schedule, there is a big change. Previously, this was called "Creating Compelling Ads & Landing Pages." This time, we're devoting an entire session just to the creative of ads. Landing pages will be covered in a separate session, which I'll describe more in a future post.

When session moderator Andrew Goodman and I were emailing to prepare for this, he compared writing ads for search with being "haiku-like." It's a good analogy. There's so little space -- especially with Google -- to make the pitch and capture a lead with these ads. Yet people do, and with amazing results.

Some day, I hope we'll finally get awards going for the search industry to honor the amazing work that can be done with the creative in search ads. It's something we've discussed at the show before.

In the meantime, Andrew along with panelists Joe Agliozzo from BetterPPC and Harrison Magun from Avenue A | Razorfish Search, will focus on how you can create those haiku-like ads with big payoffs.