One of the most common things that people interested in internet advertising get consumed by is how much overall traffic or “clicks” we can get for their website without much or any relevancy to the quality of traffic. When people call our firm asking for specific numbers I usually can’t give them the answers they are looking for. You may ponder why, why an advertiser trying to promote someone’s website would not be able to tell a client such such vital information, but the reason is simple. It’s that the word “click” has become such a buzz word that people have lost site of the real goal of advertising, conversions. Internet marketing is unfortunately saturated with a lot of unethical companies that guarantee, or claim to guarantee, a certain number of “clicks” that will be driven to your site. Honestly though, it is crucial for people to detach from this sort of logic. From here, one must ask, what’s important?

What’s important for a person trying to embark down the road on internet advertising is targeted traffic. Clients will watch their hits, or clicks, or Alexa rank and form opinions about their performance by these metrics which may have little correlation with the true success of their business. In the end, it depends on the goals of your site. If your site is a content site, and your goal is to sell advertising, maybe this is a fair calculation, or one of a handful, that are relevant. However, if your business, like most, have specific goals, such as a sale, a lead, a form fill-out, or a phone call, these are the numbers that truly matter. The usefulness of a guaranteed 100 clicks, which are from broad, un-targeted audiences, pales in comparison to as few as 10 clicks, from a highly targeted one. A meager 10 clicks could produce even a single conversion that sometimes, even a high click volume will not yield. Clicks do not always translate to business, and though it may make you feel warm and fuzzy knowing that a lot of people visited your site, it is not necessarily indicative of a successful business. This lack of information is definitely not the consumers fault, internet advertising is a big new world that a lot of people are not well versed in. However, it is the job of ethical corporations, like ours, to try and present this information as readily as possible, so that people can form clearer, more rational ideas and expectations about their advertising ventures.

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They happen few and far between, but when they do, we sure are glad we have call recording so we can enjoy and share with others. I have compiled a list of the Top 5 calls we have received so far in 2007. I am not sure how these users made it to us, but I am always glad when they do. I want to make it very clear that we are always as helpful as possible with all of our phone calls and provide as much guidance as possible.

I also want to state that all of these calls were generated from users who were actually on a page of the Wpromote site, got through our automated “Thank You for Calling Wpromote” intro and then hit 1 to reach a sales representative at Wpromote.

Number 5

Caller: “Hi, I need you to please cancel my Google AdWords campaign… What do you mean you aren’t Google?”

This is actually a common call. I simply remind them that they called Wpromote again and send them to Google.

Number 4

Caller: “I need to be on the top of Google…what do you mean I need a website? I need a website to get on the Search Engines?”

Another common mistake. I simply let the caller know that yes, a website is indeed needed to get listed on the list of websites.

Number 3

Caller: “I just bought A1-some-url.com and need you to put me in the Search Engines, I will go right to the top from there. What do you mean the search results aren’t alphabetical!?”

Tough debate between number 3 and 4. I think they could be interchangeable. There is an argument to be made that number 3 is further ahead than 4, because he has the website part down. Regardless, I simply let the caller know that the Search Results are actually not determined by alphabetical order and was able to point him in the right direction.

Number 2

Caller: “Hello, I would like to register my new sunbeam toaster warranty with you. What is the next step?”

This caller caught me off guard, touché. I simply let the caller know that the next step is to call the toaster company because as much as we love toasters, we are a search marketing firm.

And the Number 1 call of 2007…so far:

Caller: “How do I get my Norton Anti Virus protection to work in my Internet Explorer?”

Admittedly, this is a fair question. I am just not sure how going to the  Wpromote website followed by the Wpromote Search Engine Marketing voicemail followed by the prompt to press 1 to open an new account with Wpromote, led him to believe I had the answer.

As always, I did the best I could and told him to get a Mac.

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Last week Nielsen/Netratings released the August 2007 results on the top 10 search providers in the United States.

Not surprisingly, Google continues to reign supreme, taking home 53.6% of searches and recording a 39.8% year-over-year growth in total searches. According to Nielsen, they recorded nearly 4.2 billion searches — in August alone. That amounts to nearly 50 billion searches a year, a number which is simply impossible to fathom. That averages out to over 166 searches in Google annually for every adult, child, and baby in the United States.

Following not even close to the heels of Google was Yahoo, tallying a 19.9% share of searches.

The biggest gainer in the bunch was MSN, which recorded over a billion searches in August, and had 69.8% year over year growth. They came in third with a 12.9% share of searches.  I can only assume that this massive jump is due to the release of the Windows Vista OS, which come loaded with MSN search as the default search preference for users.

Looking at these numbers, it is hard to fathom anybody truly challenging Google’s lead. There are still plenty of ways that Google can trip up, from the recent privacy concerns to simply the law of large numbers preventing Google from continuing such absurd growth (though this still does not diminish their market share, just potentially their sky-high stock price).

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Today, Google announced that the international community hasn’t done nearly enough to promote privacy protection for Internet users. Google’s global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, was quoted as stating that serious advances in the field of privacy protection need to be made very quickly, i.e. within the next five years.

This story is striking as it finds Google arguing from a standpoint that is either very suspicious or very refreshing. As the world’s preferred search engine and as the purveyors of arguably the largest cache of personal information in history, Google is in a position to financially benefit from the exploitation of such information more so than any other online player; the announcement that more needs to be done to protect this data is surprising coming from Google.

So far, Google has done well by its users. Considering how much Google knows about us, we should probably consider ourselves lucky that Google has shown as much restraint as it has through the present. To this end, Google’s vocal distaste with the lack of privacy protection should be reassuring that Google has no plans on changing its policies anytime soon. Perhaps, the fact that this announcement comes in the wake of MySpace’s decision to use personal data for advertising purposes is no coincidence. If Google can’t/won’t benefit from the use of personal information, maybe they feel that no one else should either.

If this is the case, then I applaud Google, as I believe that we should always err to the side of the protection of privacy, considering how slippery that slope can get due to the transparency of user actions online. However, it is possible and even likely, depending on your level of paranoia, that Google’s announcement is less beneficent than it seems. After all, if Google spearheads the efforts to create global privacy rules, which they may feel are inevitable, then they can have a hand in their creation. Google is the most influential online entity right now; who’s to say where they’ll be in five years or where their competition will be? If Google has influence in shaping such rules, even in an indirect manner, then they will be among the companies with the best opportunity to circumvent them.

Few people like leviathans and even fewer people trust them. Google has managed to become one without really instilling the kind of hatred or mistrust that predecessors like Microsoft have dealt with. However, this issue of privacy protection has the potential to turn people against Google due to the sheer volume of data that Google has on its users. So, does Google truly wish to protect our privacy or does it simply want a hand in shaping the future of privacy protection for its own benefit? Or is Google just preempting it’s doubters with a solid PR move by calling for concern without actually proposing anything more than an arbitrary five-year deadline?

It’s still too early to tell, but we’ll be paying attention to Google’s future actions and, more importantly, to the actions of its peers who have either remained silent on the issue or have already moved to begin using our personal data for financial gain.

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Intuitively and simply designed products and interfaces are the “end all, be all” in business. Businesses live and die based on this functionality.

In this regard, Yahoo! has seemingly missed the boat on their sponsored search advertising interface. The interface that Yahoo! employs isn’t “awful” by any means, but it does seem to lack intuitive design. The consistently top performing products and companies are always those that look at their customers and try to imagine their quintessential needs and wants. They are able to synthesize this with powerful features, yielding a stellar good. Perfect examples of this would be Google AdWords and Apple’s iPod. Both products perform exceptionally with customers because they offer so much flexibility and such ease of use, while mitigating much of the technical jargon and difficult procedures that their competitors sometimes incorporate.

Regarding Yahoo!’s oversights, we must first turn to their bidding system. In Yahoo!, when you reach the portion of the sponsored advertising campaign creation process that has to do with setting keyword bids, you are prompted with a graph that attempts to detail an estimated amount of clicks, impressions and so on. Yahoo! also suggests a generally too-high starting bid amount. In order to correct the bid, it requires that you change the bid amount and hit an “update” button, otherwise your new price settings are not applied.

Perhaps Yahoo! was trying to take the guesswork out of bidding and trying to help novice advertisers achieve better visibility. If so, I disagree with the approach. Where monetary aspects are being introduced, it is best to err on the side of saving money rather than improving visibility. Google, for example, doesn’t suggest an initial price; it lets you put in an amount you think would be reasonable for keyword bids and then gives you the option of seeing if those prices are “high enough” to get activity. Bid first, then show the graph; it’s simple, accurate and effective, without seemingly trying to extract additional money from the user.

Another function of Yahoo!’s interface that lacks intuition is their system of labeling disapproved ads and/or keywords. Whereas if you were to ever enter a Google adgroup, and see that your ad was disapproved for some reason, you would get this nifty little link right under the ad saying, “Disapproval Reason” which, when clicked on, drops down another small window explaining the reason. Easy to find, easy to use, easy to understand. Turning to Yahoo!, we see a completely different take on trying to “help” customers fix problems with their advertising. Upon entering a problematic adgroup in Yahoo!, you might be able to find problem warranting icons that are easy enough to spot, but not very easy to figure out. In a very round-about manner, a user is forced to access an editorial review portion of the interface, and then forced to run a mini report in order to finally find an explanation for why Yahoo! disapproved of something. Once again, in trying to assist the user, Yahoo! ends up making a seemingly simple function more difficult to execute.

Despite the full blown Internet Age that we are in, there is still a need to design and implement products that don’t take a lot of brain power to understand and use. Intuitive design is not only a pleasure to work with, it also saves time for the user, which makes the user more likely to continue to work with and even invest more heavily in the system. Yahoo!’s efforts at improving design should be commended, however, greater emphasis should be placed on the real-world interaction with the system so that simple kinks and pratfalls are avoided before the final version is foisted upon the clients.

Yahoo’s January redesign was certainly an improvement over the old system, however, there are still many improvements that could be made to improve the user experience. Yahoo! has shown the desire to improve their interface; I just hope that they can match their desire with results that will help them close the “intuition gap” with Google.

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I have to say that I am genuinely sad to read details about the final issue of Business 2.0, which I will unequivocally place in the top 5 of my favorite magazines.

Clearly, the last 5 years have been tough ones for the print industry. With the explosion of the web, ad dollars have been in competition, and ultimately billions have moved from traditional media to online, making the likes of Google rich. Newspapers have shed staff around the country as they struggle to remain solvent, and I have heard rumblings for months that Business 2.0 was struggling for survival.

In fact, another of my favorite magazines, Fast Company, only remained alive because Joe Mansueto, the founder of Morningstar, purchased both Inc Magazine and Fast Company and made the pledge not to shutter the latter, despite a common consensus that most any other buyer would do so.

Regardless of how the web has changed the way we consume media, nothing will replace my love of lounging around in a pocket of free time, flipping through my favorite magazines from cover to cover; Business 2.0 was one of the very few to have reached this status, along with Wired, Inc. and The Economist (given sufficient time!).

So it is with sad irony that the very same technology and online companies championed by the likes of Business 2.0 (along with the likes of Red Herring and Industry Standard, also long since deceased) — have led to the move of ad dollars online and the demise of these very publications.

Goodbye, Business 2.0 — I, for one, will miss you.

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According to the State of Retailing Online report released today, Online retailers plan major investments in improved web site design.

“88% of the 150 retailers responding to the survey have prioritized improving product detail pages, 80% adding online images and 76% A/B testing of offers and promotions. In fact, 14 types of web site improvements were rated investment priorities by more than half of the merchants participating in the survey.”

This movement is welcomed here at Wpromote, as we are constantly stressing to our clients the need for a site that captures user attention and landing pages that convert at a high rate. Often users who are new to Search Marketing ignore the aesthetics and move right into the “how much traffic can I get and what does it take to be number one?” I constantly encounter greenhorns and professionals alike that are too eager to increase visibility and efficiency to take a step back and look at the actual site they are promoting.

By taking a portion of your marketing dollars and putting them towards site improvement, you are ultimately increasing the worth of each dollar you put towards marketing in the future. Today’s users are becoming increasingly savvy and competition in the search engines is growing daily. Your customer is only a back button away from your competition at all times. By keeping your site up to date or ahead of the times you are able to create buyer confidence and generate return visitors.

When talking to potential customers about site quality and effectiveness of landing pages, I generally check to make sure that they have a few basic things. The first is good content related to their major terms with a strong call to action. It is also key to have a site structure that is easily navigable. Contact information should be made visible on all main pages. This not only helps users reach you, but also increases legitimacy in eyes of the consumer.

Overall, the biggest step is overcoming aesthetic hurdles. Many users have had the same look on their site since it was created in the 90s. Sometimes you have to break it to people that the flying toaster no longer inspires user confidence…

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If the Internets were so inclined, they could probably write a pretty good biography on you.

They know which pages you browse, which searches you run, which products you buy, which pictures and movies you look at, which blogs you read and more, not to mention the fact that they have your social security number, credit card number, home address and other scary-specific private information floating around somewhere inside them. They know what you like; they know what you don’t like; they know who you are.

Perhaps the only reassurances that we, as users of the World Wide Web, have are the following:

1) We browse with at least some anonymity through our IP addresses, which, hypothetically could be being used by anyone,

2) Many companies promise-promise-promise that the information that you submit will never be used for the forces of evil,

3) There are millions of us browsing billions of sites… nobody would single us out, right?

Well, the news today is that MySpace is going to begin using personal information to advertise to its users. Do you like movies? Prepare to see a lot more Netflix ads when you login. Are you a big sports fan in Philadelphia? What a coincidence because ticket brokers in your area and stores that sell Eagles merch are going to be all over your home page! MySpace–under the guise of getting better, more interesting ads to its users and providing a more targeted audience for its advertisers–is going to begin using the information that you enter on your page to help sell you stuff that you may or may not want.

In the linked AP article, Peter Levinsohn, the head of Fox Interactive Media which runs MySpace spoke of a user named “Jill” that blogs about the hot, new items that make her wish list. Levinsohn goes on:

“[Jill] even goes so far as telling us she needs new boots for the fall. How would you like to be an advertiser selling boots to her?”

He’s right: if you read Jill’s diary, you’ll know exactly what she wants for Christmas. The problem is that you’re reading Jill’s diary, which is wrong… right?

One could argue that by airing her laundry (both clean and dirty), Jill has foregone her right to privacy. The information, now on her MySpace page, is in the public domain and if MySpace uses that information in a manner as benign as showing Jill better ads, then there is no violation being perpetrated. After all, Jill already sees ads all over MySpace and maybe she’s too young for a mortgage quote, the current ad on her home page. What does Jill care if that same ad space now displays those new boots she wants so badly?

Whether Jill knows it or not, she really should care. After all…

• Jill isn’t making the information truly public; she is making it public to her friends and peers. Perhaps, she has even blocked her page from the prying eyes of people who aren’t her friends. That would hardly count as making your information public, right?

• Jill may not be old enough to be accountable for the responsibility of knowing how to keep her private information to herself. After all, at least 1 in 9 MySpace users are under 18. This figure is likely a low estimate, as many young people lie about their age so that they can participate in all aspects of MySpace, some of which are restricted from minors.

• Jill may not realize the implications of sharing her information online. There are no mandatory educational seminars for first-time MySpace users. MySpace could very easily slip a line or two about using Jill’s information into a lengthy, “just click it and move on” styled terms of service agreement when she creates her account.

• Jill has no reason to trust that MySpace is going to restrict usage of her information to the placement of better ads on her site. Once MySpace discovers how valuable this information can be, what is to stop them from selling or otherwise misusing it? Perhaps, MySpace has always had access to her information but once its system begins actively exploiting it are we to simply take MySpace and Fox at their word that they will stop with ads? Do we have a choice?

From the standpoint of an advertiser, demographically targeted ads are a wonderful thing. A savvy marketer could use such metrics to save huge amounts of money and effectively streamline an advertising campaign. From the standpoint of a consumer, demographically targeted ads are great, too. Imagine only seeing ads for things that you already liked! The problem arises when we stop thinking of ourselves as “advertisers” and “consumers” and start thinking of ourselves as people living in an era where privacy–for better or for worse–is a very fragile thing.

With MySpace, the information use would be contained to the things you write in your profile, comments, blogs and messages. MySpace probably doesn’t know your social security number or your credit card number; it definitely shouldn’t know your address or telephone number unless you were foolish enough to post it online. However, if MySpace successfully leverages personal data for the purpose of advertising and nobody makes a fuss, why in the world would Google, Yahoo or MSN hold back? How many people browse online with their Yahoo profile open or with their MSN instant messenger program active? How many people use the Google shortcut plug-in to perform the majority of their searches?

In the last of the three scenarios, the data is already being gathered and aggregated. The higher-ups at Google are currently in the midsts of deciding which information is okay and which information is not okay to use, should they launch some sort of demographic targeting tool. Personally, I use that toolbar to visit thousands of sites per month (some of which might make my friends and family blush) and I know for a fact that I don’t want that information being used to define me to advertisers or anybody else. However, if people don’t abandon MySpace in the wake of their new ad targeting, why should Google et all hold back their efforts to proceed with demographic targeting? More likely, if people actually find the new ads helpful and begin using MySpace even more, wouldn’t other online companies privy to such information be foolish not to use it?

If the Internets were so inclined, they could probably write a pretty good biography on you. When they do, though, how will you feel about what is written about you?

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As reported today, Yahoo! continued the recent frenzy of acquisitions by purchasing Zimbra, a popular maker of an email and calendar suite, for a cool $350 million in cash. This seems to be capping off a flurry of activity by interim Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang who took over after the departure of Terry Semel.

This is a very, very smart acquisition in my opinion. Yahoo! currently is heavily invested in the e-mail space, with the Yahoo! mail system counting over 250 million users worldwide. I imagine the purchase will allow Yahoo! to leverage much of Zimbra’s excellent email, calendar and collaboration technology, already popular among it’s educational and corporate clients.

This purchase is setting up what will turn out to be a bloody battle of the desktop and the home page:

• Google’s much-loved Gmail faces off with both Yahoo’s much-improved new web-email offering and Microsoft’s Hotmail product. As the web-based email reaches new levels of usability, Microsoft Outlook, the king of corporate email, suddenly doesn’t look so invincible.
• Google Apps is a direct shot at Microsoft Office, and Zimbra’s collaboration and calendar tools look to be heading the same direction.
• Google’s domination of the search market hardly looks in doubt, but Yahoo! and MSN are throwing major resources towards winning back the almighty advertising dollar, with purchases of aQuantive and Right Media just a few months ago.

One of the biggest questions will be whether or not web-based software such as Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, can become functionally capable enough to actually start taking market share from Microsoft Office. They have come a long way to be sure, but as cool as I think Google Apps is, and as much as I hate shelling out for dozens of copies of Office each year it seems, there is no way in the foreseeable future that even an open-minded, web-loving company like Wpromote will take that plunge.

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In the same week that Google got into bed with Capgemini to help it break into the business application market, MSN criticized Google’s ability to produce such programs up to the standards that consumers are used to seeing from companies like (oh, I don’t know) Microsoft, for example. CNET News covers the blow-by-blow in wonderful detail, however, I did want to highlight one quotation in particular from a Microsoft rep in an address from Monday:

“We believe competition is good for customers and the industry. That said, customers tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that enterprises need.”

Let’s pause here. Okay, have you stopped laughing yet?

You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to know that the one thing that Microsoft cannot tolerate is competition. Well, let me rephrase that: Microsoft loves competition, just not competition that it cannot trample, buy out or render obsolete through immense investment in R&D. Okay, let’s proceed with more of the quotation:

“[Google’s] enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe, and in combination with other fringe services only account for 1 percent of the company’s revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut (them) down given it will (affect) them in a minimal and short-term way? Should customers trust that this won’t happen?”

Touché, Microsoft. This is truly a sound criticism and, to be sure, no company knows more about a service suffering as a result of low priority than Microsoft. Working in the sphere of search engine marketing, we deal with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN adCenter on a daily basis. Microsoft projections for Q3 indicate that the entire medium of Online Services will generate less than 5% of the gross revenue for the quarter; MSN adCenter is one of the several components of Microsoft’s Online Services division. Perhaps this is why MSN adCenter lags in every conceivable area behind Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing when it comes to its interface, its customer support and its ability to deliver an efficient advertising experience to its clients. Clearly, Microsoft–the great juggernaut–doesn’t lack the intelligence or the resources to make adCenter into a reasonably usable product. Perhaps they just don’t see search as a priority; perhaps Microsoft doesn’t care.

The criticism of Google’s corporate application services (known as Google Apps Premier Edition or “GAPE“) have already been deflected by Google’s reps, one of which described it as “at best, cheeky.” Microsoft, which used to have such a knack for outworking, outwitting and generally outdoing its competition for so long, is finally running into some of that “competition” it believes in so strongly. Explorer loses ground to Firefox every quarter; Apple is as hot as it’s ever been; the Motorola Q and Microsoft Zune were viewed as underwhelming at best; MSNBC continues to be super-boring and to suffer bad ratings.

For centuries, the Romans suffered attacks from barbarians at the outskirts of the empire, winning a few battles here, losing a few there, never feeling truly threatened in the capital. But now, for the first time, a real threat to the heart of Rome seems imminent. Google, a considerably smart, efficient and hungry competitor is bringing the battle to Microsoft’s doorstep: desktop applications. Now, I’m not saying that GAPE will replace Office or that the two can’t possibly coexist, however, I will say that it will certainly be interesting to see if Google can succeed in this arena the same way it has in every other arena in the world (and out of the world!).

So far, Microsoft has responded with weak speculations that Google’s apps might not prove reliable at some nebulous future date. If (but more likely, when) GAPE proves a viable alternative to the antiquated Office applications, though, what will Microsoft have to say?

More importantly, what will Microsoft have to do?

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