Divining Rods III - Pôle Nord

The acquisition of Pôle Nord by Publicis Groupe is very much of today's media zeitgeist. Not entirely unlike Rupert Murdoch's spate of acquisitions, it is 'old' advertising learning from new.

Pôle Nord as a company has earned its stripes by servicing e-commerce companies. For those of us who have worked in online marketing for established companies, this is an impressive place to prove yourself. Established companies tend to be burdened by complexities of multiple corporate objectives and legacy systems. E-commerce, typically, has a sharp focus on a single bottom line - delivering the maximum return on what is usually almost 100% online spend through a single sales channel.

This is the smithy at which Pôle Nord's tools were forged. As a result, they are very exciting. Word Catcher delivers unparalleled insights into SEM effectiveness charting brands against competitors within key categories in terms of volume of search terms and position on the listings.

Click 2 Sale is sufficiently flexible that it is an ideal divining rod . It's an automated bid management tool that works with APIs and javascript coding to create a platform which allows advertisers to maximise their investment by delivering as much relevance as possible - matching a wide variety of 'post-click actions' to keyword data with sufficient ease that marketers can devote their time to adding the human touches which are so important to real relevance.

The future of marketing will be when machines do jobs appropriate for machines, humans do jobs appropriate for humans and the rigour of e-commerce marketing meets the magic of 'old' advertising.