Archive for the ‘Online Advertising’ Category
Share it - loose it
I’ve always been a fan of tech videos on the web. I remember the good old days of Tech TV, previously ZDTV, now defunct. The newest of them, Techfluff.tv just recently launched its 3rd episode on Europe’s number one Web-Tech conference in Paris, Le Web ‘08. TechCrunch just recently covered the show explaining that “every week TechFluff delves into the world of web-celebrities and tech startups, particularly the London scene”.
I think online video has always presented monetizing challenges even more so through its syndication channels. This past summer at TechCrunch 50, I heard Ashton Kutcher talk about his theory on this topic and how he was using product placement on his show, Blah Girls. I can understand how that might work for an animation of sort but its difficult to execute product placement opportunities when it comes to on-site interviews.
Take Kevin Rose’s Revision 3 for instance, I know that he has sponsorship opportunities on every show and he executes them well but do you think online advertisers expect more? I think so, I think online advertising is much more about direct response (call to action) type of advertising then branding or sponsorships. Take a look at the evolution of banner advertising and how far that has gone.
I don’t think showing a sponsor on a show has enough stickyness to it but if they can figure out a really clever way of incoporating the sponsor into the content that would be cool but then again does that break the editorial code of conduct?
HELP US!
Since the start of my career, I have had a never ending feud with Google about their double ad serving policy. For starters, Google’s customer service team is setup in such a way that they help first time search rookies the same way they help Google certified companies. There should be some benefit to being a Google Adwords certified company other than just being able to showoff their logo. I personally believe that these folks should be escalated up the ladder a bit; why else did we spend the time to take your certification. It’s annoying that every time, I ask a question, I start at the bottom with the same canned answers. Not to mention, that we spend in excess of a million dollars a year with Google. (more…)
I have so many prospects that spend so much money on search marketing but haven’t taken the time to consider that good design and content will get them more actions. We measure return on investment (ROI) based on conversions or how frequently a visitor reaches a goal on your website. Generally that goal is to get the visitor to a thank you page for filling out a lead or an order form.
The first step to increasing your ROI is to define your goals. It could be multiple goals. For example, the BOALT website has two goals: a contact inquiry and request for proposal form. If you don’t have goals on your website - that’s a problem. You might want to consider adding a form or two.
Search Marketing has increasingly become more competitive over the past couple of years which has significantly raised cost-per-click’s which in turn raises businesses cost-per-acquisition’s. So what does this mean mean? Businesses are forced to raise their the costs of goods or services.
Your probably saying, “tell me something I don’t know!” O.K., I signed into my Google Adwords account today and Google asked me to raise my bid from $9.98 to over $98.00 in order to be on the first page. I’ve verified this with Google and it’s no error. They claim that some CPC’s for certain industries have already exceeded $100.
So who ultimately suffers? The consumers. Businesses will just continue to raise their prices to offset the CPA. Can you really blame them?
Retargeted Advertising is probably the most effective form of online advertising and only a handful know about it. It’s mainly been used by the big guys; Fortune 500 companies were the only ones who could afford it up until now.
My first experience with retargeted advertising was through a media spend I placed for one of my clients through Advertising.com. I was skeptical at first because the minimum buy-in was roughly 30k a month but the results were so impressive they yielded a $10 ROI. Ok, so how does it work and what is it.
This past weekend, I gave a presentation at SocialDevCamp East which was held at the University of Baltimore. The presentation was on Industry Specific Social Media Strategies. The format consisted of a presentation, a contest and then an open discussion in the end.
Members of the audience were given an opportunity to pitch the perfect social media strategcy as it pertained to their industry and then everybody voted on which strategy was the best. Mary Hartney from the Baltimore Sun won first prize which was an Apple Nano.
In my presentation, I spoke about 3 specific industries: hospitality, real estate and automotive. I also provide information on social media demographics, campaign measurement and some random tools on how make managing your social media life easier.
Thank you again to everybody who attended my presentation. Feel free to download the presentation.
Thank you for the posts:
Rob Blat, Mark Scrimshire, The Money Shovel
Sexy creative is not enough to generate leads and orders through the web. There are many different attributes that can ultimately affect your bottom line. The concept is not too hard to understand but most of our clients don’t want to spend money on multivariate or A/B testing.
Take a look at our startup, RushMyPassport.com. We average approximately 100 orders a day and a redesign of our homepage increased our sales by almost $4k per day. Yep, that’s right, over $100k a month.
So, what’s the secret formula. It’s not rocket science, the trick is get over yourself, it’s not about what you want. It’s about what the masses want. Once you understand this, you’ll attain more than desirable results.
TechCrunch was liveblogging Google’s third quarter conference call today. I was glad to hear that Google had a good quarter considering recent events in the economy.
I know that a lot of companies are trimming the fat in a lot of departments and it was nice to know that paid search still remains a huge priority in the eyes of corporate America.
I think that paid search is the most effective form of advertising and this just reinforced my position. So any clients who are thinking about cutting their budgets, be wise and don’t cut paid search!
There has been a lot of skepticism from online media buyers about
Facebook and whether it holds its weight especially in comparison to search. To
date, I have never had any success come from advertising on Facebook. I think it’s all hype.
It reminds me of the days where we used to buy unused impressions on different IM clients for CPM’s that cost less than a dollar. I think social networking in general might engage the end user too much and I think the click-thrus that you do get are mostly accidental. Check out Facebook compares to other search engines below.
