The effects of display on search and vice-versa will differ according to all the usual reasons marketing succeeds or fails. An indication of the influence display may have on search can be found in the DRTV arena. A recent study on the link between DRTV and search by US digital marketing agency SendTec brought encouraging results. SendTec studied the branding effects of a DRTV campaign in 30 local markets across a number of cable networks. The results were impressive; a 1,230 per cent increase in daily searches and a 58 per cent increase in click-throughs.

The most recognizable brands enjoy incredibly high search rates. In the US, the word ‘Google’ tops out at 27 million searches a month on rival search engines. Even allowing for Americans, the number of brand searches is staggering. And millions of brand searches mean that brand advertising is working quite nicely thank you very much.

Search can also be a branding medium. Last year, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) ran a survey with Nielsen Net Ratings on the brand effectiveness of search marketing. They looked at unaided brand awareness, familiarity and brand image associations. The results showed that ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) can be more effective at building brand awareness, especially if the SERP ad holds the top spot. A separate survey by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization also found that amongst almost 300 US companies surveyed, branding was the number one reason the larger companies continued to invest so heavily in search marketing.

Defining the link between one online solution and another may be complex, but identifying the extent of any relationship is worth millions. The ultimate prize for us all is being able to track paths for conversion and identify connections between the display campaigns and the search campaigns.

Of course, once identified, you’ll want the ability to optimize both search and display campaigns in real-time. That’s the only way to maintain the best allocation of media spend throughout a campaign. With optimization, you can change the look and feel of your display campaigns based on the search terms that your customers use.

Integration anyone? A much-hyped solution to rising costs, falling marketing returns and perhaps even world poverty, integration is as much misunderstood as it is under-used. Once you have the ability to track user behaviours between display and search then integration becomes more achievable and so more desirable. Because once you establish a pattern of behvaiour you can start applying each tool – search, rich media and standard ads in the way that suits the tool, the audience and the proposition best.

Common sense dictates that all this integration means a streamlined campaign management process. Campaign management – which can be as complex as it is tedious – will only work if it’s undertaken through the same interface.

That takes powerful and robust online solutions. A few technologies have built the vehicle, revved up the engine and are well on the road to delivering a single platform to manage display and search.

Whilst we are some way off before we see the introduction of universal tagging, there will be shorter term gains to be had by unifying search and display in one platform.

Being able to generate reports that look at campaigns across both search and display is a major advantage. Even without tagging, correlations can be more readily drawn between activities. Reports don’t only have to be generated post-campaign. Real-time reporting opens the door to real-time optimisation. This is the next step in instant control for marketers. Allocate more spend where it counts and tweak search and display campaigns according to real-time results of both.

Results are everything. But nothing without resources. So much resource could be improved if search and display were more closely linked. Currently, you may have one team managing search and another managing display solutions. That may also mean outsourcing to two separate agencies. And then these agencies use different technology solutions to serve and report on both search and display. The extra time, money and hassle not to mention the unreliability of co-ordinating different agencies and different results means that search and display need to converge if we want to carry on enjoying the online revival.

Ultimately, convergence of search and display means a single tagging mechanism on landing pages to track behaviours. By this time next year, it will revolutionise digital marketing. The new breed of unifying marketing technology will even let you serve and track ads across mobile. No doubt a happy and long-lasting marriage awaits as online and mobile search and display grow ever-closer.