• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, December 4, 2014

Google and WPP’s Mindshare have developed a real-time marketing tool designed to help brands track fast emerging trends, allowing them to adjust paid media outlays accordingly.

Called “Search As Signal,” the tool has access to aggregated, indexed search trends that can be filtered by country to give marketers information on whether they are trending up or down relative to their norm or the category norm, the agency said.

With proprietary category definitions crowdsourced, analyzed and defined by Mindshare and Google, SAS looks at brand and category activity across an array of online and social channels and alerts clients to new trends. 

The companies have been collaborating on the search technique for several years. An early version of the tool was used in a 2012 UK search campaign for Kleenex. Over 95% of the searches during the flu season appeared to align with a major commuter rail line where the campaign was focused. By redirecting paid media along the rail route, the campaign achieved a 40% sales lift, the agency said at the time.

The results that Kleenex achieved with the help of the search tool helped convince the agency of the need to analyze and adjust paid media along with owned and earned media with what Mindshare calls its “adaptive marketing” approach. (Others call it real-time marketing.)

Early this year, Mindshare unveiled a system called The Loop to aid clients with real-time marketing efforts.

The Search-As-Signal tool, which the companies said provides up-to-the-minute searches and trend developments across different products and service categories for every single market globally, will be incorporated with The Loop process.

“Clients know that staying on people’s minds means tapping into what they care about,” said Colin Kinsella, CEO Mindshare North America. “That means brands moving in sync with cultural trends, or being at the right time and in the right place when people are searching in a category. Given the reach of Google, Search As Signal gives us the early indicators that are critical for our clients to stay ahead of the marketplace. And, in combination with our other insight partners for The Loop, the data tells a significant story for us to turn into action.”