Yahoo! Category

Contextual Advertising with PPC Campaigns

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Where you get your information can say a lot about who you are and what your interests are. With the plethora of information available today relying on one news outlet almost seems impossible, but if that happens to be the case for you please use the content of this blog to become more familiar with the abundance of information that is at your fingertips.  This blog will provide a wide variety of outlets for general news, niche updates, and a look at news filters that publish content for specific demographics.  For any online marketers out there this blog will also show you how to find the specific venue or audience to speak to for PPC campaigns based on various online analytics.

screen-shot-2010-08-23-at-53827-pmAccording to my Google analytics Weather.com is one of the most visited news websites right now, but because this blog is written from Los Angeles I will have to trust Google that this is an essential website across the country.  The runner up for the most visited news website is CNN.com.  Not a big surprise, given that CNN is a Turner channel, which is owned by the conglomerate TimeWarner.  CNN has the resources to provide coverage of events around the world, so why wouldn’t they have a commonly known and relied upon website.  One of the most popular newspapers in the United States also has the third most visited news website, NYTimes.com.  The next two most popular news websites are The Huffington Post and Foxnews.com.  These two websites typically represent the liberal and conservative points of view on any given topic, so I will let you visit both to construct your own opinion.

screen-shot-2010-08-23-at-71138-pm

Once you have checked your emails and are caught up with the day there might be a slight inclination to see what trouble Hollywood is up to.  The collage above represents the 6 most popular websites to visit when hunting for current gossip.  Again the top runners are not a huge surprise because they are supported by very large media companies.  There is only one website up there that is not owned by a large media conglomerate, and that is the blog Perez Hilton.  I will not be supplying the URLs for these sites because I don’t want to compete for your attention.

screen-shot-2010-08-23-at-73817-pmI have already run out of room, but just in case the guys have not found all of their essential tips for the day, check out the pile of logos above for a nudge in the right direction.  If I only had five minutes to spare for guy advice, I would check out the home pages of Men’s Health, ESPN, and Google Trends.

Being in Marketing I know that it is very important to stay up to the moment in a wide variety of topics, so I also rely on websites that aggregate popular topics like PopURLS.com.  Just like I rely on websites to provide me with the latest updates in news, companies should rely on their PPC campaign managers to determine what sites are applicable to their sought after demographic.  A very successful tactic in reaching out to a specific demographic is contextual advertising.  I am all out of room for this entry, so you are going to have to go to that last link to find out how this PPC approach works so well.

Please let me know if I missed any informative news websites or your favorite site to stay in the loop.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Business, Daily non news Stories of Interest, Editorial, Google, Internet News, MSN, Marketing, Online Advertising, PPC, Technology, Viral Marketing, Wpromote, Yahoo!, ppc management | No Comments »

Best In Show, Waiting for Guffman Director tapped by US Census to Direct a Series of Viral Videos

Monday, March 15th, 2010

It’s not often Hollywood and society come together to achieve a common goal, but when they do, the results are often dynamic, and this is the case with “Snapshot of America,” a video project funded by the US Census Bureau to let American citizens know 2010 is a census year.

‘Census year, what?’ you may be thinking. Is it that important? Well, a lot of people think it is, and the Census Bureau tapped none other than Hollywood mockumentary impresario Christopher Guest (Best In Show, Waiting for Guffman) to direct a series of five videos starring Ed Begley, Jr., Rachael Harris, Michael Hitchcock and Jennifer Coolidge, all whom have worked with Guest before, to get you excited about filling out those census forms!

2 of the five videos are being shown on television with the rest seeded online, and Wpromote is happy to announce our involvement in helping to spread the good word. Check out one of the videos here:

Wpromote’s resident viral marketing machine, Jesse Bouman, gives a little insight into the narrative behind the series:

The story is that major Hollywood director Payton Schlewitt, played by Ed Begley Jr., has come up with the idea to take a ‘Snapshot of America’ and brings his production team together to make it happen. The goal is to get all 300 million Americans in one shot, but an assistant makes it apparent in each video that the U.S. Census is doing the exact same thing already.

The U.S. constitution requires the census to be conducted every 10 years. The purpose? To count every American living in the United States, provide a snapshot of the country in terms of who its residents are and what they do, and help states receive funding for important things like emergency services, bridges, hospitals, job training centers, schools and more.

The census also determines how many seats each state is allotted in the U.S. House of Representatives…pretty crucial stuff.

So, when you receive that census form in the mail, and no doubt many of you already have, take a moment to fill it out — it may seem trivial, but it’s actually very important. Plus, if you don’t fill it out, a census worker could come to your door to interview you, and who wants that??!

For more information on the US Census 2010 video campaign, or to get help with a viral campaign of your own, please contact sales@wpromote.com

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Posted in Internet News, Viral Marketing, Wpromote, Yahoo! | 3 Comments »

Last Call, 2009: Here Are 6 Posts from The Wpromoter That Help Put the Year In Perspective

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

2009 was a lot of things, but one thing is wasn’t? Boring. As we’ve said before, A LOT happened this year, and the bloggers here at Wpromote worked hard to keep up. We hope we succeeded in providing you a valuable and entertaining mix of content.

As we approach the beginning of a new decade, let’s take a look at six posts from The Wpromoter that highlight some of the most important online news from 2009.

  • The Google Witchhunt

Calling it a ‘witchhunt’ is probably extreme, but let’s face it - everyone had a reason to sue Google this year. Whether Google is at fault is not for us to decide - we’ll let the courts handle that. Get an overview of some of Google’s battles from Michael Block, Wpromote’s VP of Client Services and resident PPC expert, in “Tues News: 6/30 (Google vs. Everyone Edition).”

  • The Quest for Better ROI

A recession year in terms of spending on advertising, everyone was looking for ways to increase ROI. The beauty of online marketing tends to be accountability, but another huge benefit is the ability to make nominal tweaks and notice relatively instant results. Check out this roundup from Wpromote’s President and CEO, Mike Mothner, called “8 Things You Aren’t Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results.”

  • The Twitter Phenomenon

Twitter made it cool to ‘do you’ in 2009. If you’re still unsure what all the fuss is about or simply want a better understanding of the microblogging service that took the world by storm, check out my post, “Tweeting to Transparency: 4 Reasons to Be Who You Are in 2009.”

  • The Viral Marketing Explosion

It’s effective, powerful, and ‘cool.’ It has that ‘everybody’s doing it and so should we’ cache to it. But viral marketing is not a paint-by-the-numbers tactic, and poorly executed viral campaigns can cause a brand more harm than good. Get some tips from Jesse Bouman, Wpromote’s Viral Marketing and Social Media Manager, in his informative post, “3 Common Viral Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.”

  • The Broadband vs. Broadcast Battle

Another big development this year was the growing popularity of online video and the effect it had on consumer viewing habits and the broadcasting industry as a whole. Get an overview of the way online video is changing the TV game in my post, “Hulu Desktop App Challenges Cable Networks.”

We hope you enjoyed this recap. Here’s to more great content, and lots of success in 2010! Happy New Year!

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Posted in Daily non news Stories of Interest, Editorial, Google, Online Advertising, Random!, SEO, Social Media, Technology, Tues News, Twitter, Viral Marketing, Yahoo! | 2 Comments »

Google, Yahoo, or Bing? Take the Blind Search Test.

Monday, August 10th, 2009


If you’ve been paying attention to the Internet world lately, it has likely come to your attention that there is a new player in the search game called Bing and the Microsoft and Yahoo deal which has been discussed ad-nauseum since Microsoft offered Yahoo $45 billion in early 2008 has finally come to a close.

Image courtesy of blog.taragana.com

Image courtesy of blog.taragana.com

What does it all mean? It is going to take time to sort it all out. Whatever the effects of the merger, the effects it has on user experience and advertisers are most significant, and much can be said in that regard. As resident PPC expert and VP of Client Relations, Mike Block, says in his recent blog, Tues News: 8/4 (Big Deals Edition):

Anyone who has spoken to me about my opinions regarding the Big Three (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) in search knows that I rank the user experience with Google at the top, Yahoo as a distant second and Microsoft as an even more distant third. When Bing came out and made some noise, it was my opinion that Bing would be nothing more than an expensive flash in the pan unless Microsoft could make the user experience better for the advertiser through its adCenter product. As it stands, the stubborn folks over at Microsoft still make bulk changes very difficult to perform, offer a poor quality account editor that is incompatible with Apple computers and employ customer service representatives that have always seemed overworked at best and poorly trained at worst.

Block’s quote sums up looming questions regarding the effects of the Microsoft/Yahoo merger quite nicely. Now, lets assume for the sake of this blog that Microsoft gets its adCenter product together and releases a version up to par with Google’s AdWords interface in terms of ease-of-use and user friendliness. This means the backend experience for the advertiser is equal, and relevancy and ease-of-use on the front end is what matters in determining who gets crowned the king of search. In that case, a tool like the one recently released by Microsoft employee Michael Kordahi could well come in handy.

Its a blind search test and its pretty neat. Not only can you see your search results in all three major search engines at once (the blind test is not the only way to do this but still), you can also get an unbiased answer as to which search engine you prefer.

Not surprisingly, according to a recent post on TechCrunch, it has been found users tend to rate anything with the Google logo as better than its competing product/service/what have you. This means Yahoo results with a Google logo tacked on top will rate better than Google results branded with the Yahoo logo, but the blind search test removes this bias and lets you compare apples to apples.

I’ve done a few tests already. So far, I’m averaging an equal preference for Google and Bing results depending on the search. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think! Its pretty cool.

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Posted in Google, Internet News, Microsoft, Yahoo! | 8 Comments »

Will Bing Give Google A Run For Its Money?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing

Did anyone expect Bing to have an impact? The question is becoming moot as studies show Bing users are more likely than Google users to click on an ad. The new question is how and to what extent.

According to a study done by online advertising network Chitika, who analyzed 32 million ad impressions across a network of 50,000 websites, users of Microsoft’s new search engine may be more receptive to advertisements, based on a 1.5% click-through rate for Bing compared to. 97% for Google and 1.24% for Yahoo. The ‘why’ behind Chitika’s findings can be speculated at length, although it seems a bit early in the game to come to any real conclusion. It has been nearly 2 months since Bing’s official June  3rd launch, and heavy promotion to the tune of 100 million ad dollars is likely to have made an impact in driving users to the site. As many have said, it makes sense a user clicking on an ad directing them to Bing is likely to click on an ad within Bing, but this is hardly conclusive evidence and making any sweeping generalizations about Bing users is premature.

Nonetheless, the findings of Chitika’s study are interesting, and help flesh out the argument that Microsoft may have a real shot at stealing some of the paid search market from Google. Looking at ComScore’s June 2009 search engine rankings report, it is clear Bing’s .04% increase in market share in June puts nary a dent in Google’s 65%, and while growth is good at a time when internet activity seems to be reaching a plateau, it is too early to say just how well Bing will fare over time, and whether Google has any reason to worry.

The Microsoft/Yahoo deal may actually happenOn the other hand, if the impending merger between Microsoft and Yahoo materializes, and according to online sources like TechCrunch, a Yahoo/Microsoft merger is likely to happen as soon as this week, it may give Google reason to refine their search strategy.

If the impending MSFT/Yahoo deal isn’t reason enough for Google to step up its game, maybe the fact that my Google search results are becoming less relevant and more convoluted is.

This first struck my attention early last year when I found it was taking me longer to find what I needed online. I figured my disappointment with Google’s search results was the result of algorithm changes and SEO, and I assumed I needed to adjust my approach and use more long-tail keywords. But things just seem to be getting worse.
Today, a search for one of my blog post’s returned a content aggregator site as the #1 result. I clicked, hoping it would take me to my post immediately, and my virus detector alerted me it was blocking the site for malicious activity.

I know this stuff happens, Google, but really? Malicious sites in the top 10 results? Not to mention the random blog posts and reviews returned when I’m looking to buy a product, or the overall proliferation of well-optimized fluff. I used to swear by you Google, but I am ready to try something new.

What do you think? Have you spent any time using Bing? Have you noticed Google search results becoming less relevant? Do you think a Yahoo/Microsoft deal will change the way we search? Post your thoughts below! I’ve added Bing to my list of search engines in my Firefox toolbar, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Posted in Google, Internet News, Microsoft, Yahoo! | 4 Comments »

3 Online Advertising Trends You Should Know About By Now

Monday, May 11th, 2009

In scanning my Google reader for blog fodder over the past several weeks, I noticed the same three topics coming up over and over: social media, mobile advertising, and real-time search. Some of you may be familiar with these trends, and if you are an online marketer, let’s hope you are. For those late to the party or looking for a little clarification, here is a brief overview of three things  reshaping the way users experience the web and advertisers do their jobs.

1 - Social media is a big deal

courtesy of Mobasoft.com

It’s been in the spotlight for awhile, but the time has come when no marketer can afford to ignore social media, if only for the fact that competition is fierce, and all your competitors are using it.

Campaigns are becoming more integrated and the ad industry must get social or risk being left behind. This is not to say traditional forms of advertising are disappearing while blogging, social networking, and video sharing take over, but traditional campaigns now require an interactive component to be competitive, and that component usually involves social media.

Still don’t believe social media is a big deal? Check out this list of ‘20 Reasons Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media,’ culled from powerhouse media agency Universal McCann.

2 - Mobile advertising

From lab.77agency.com

With smart phone’s becoming the mobile phone of choice,  and the iPhone’s ease-of-use changing the face of mobile search, marketers are becoming increasingly aware of the value in mobile marketing.

According to an article in Mediaweek last month, “smart phone users are clicking on ads (53 percent), requesting more information or a coupon (35 percent) and making purchases via their handsets (24 percent).” If those kinds of stats don’t impress you, they are impressing marketers, and with mobile use predicted to rise over the next several years, optimizing content for the mobile web is a top priority for major brands.

Moreover, innovations like ‘shakable-ads‘ are giving users more compelling reasons to interact with brands while using their phones, making it clear that when it comes to mobile marketing, the possibilities are endless.

3 - Real-time search is on the rise

Twitter real-time search

If you’re an early-adopter or work in the web/tech industry, you’ve probably realized Twitter search is infinitely useful. Likewise, when it comes to accessing real-time, up-to-the-minute data like emergency broadcasts, sports scores, or verdicts, Twitter search beats Google, hands down.

The next logical step? Monetization. And the first to figure out how to make text ads work in real-time search will likely be Twitter. The microblogging service recently announced its plans to begin indexing links included in user tweets, as well as monitor the rank and reputation of Twitter users, and its only a matter of time before Twitter will begin serving text-ads, as well.

I hope this recap was informative. See you next time!

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Posted in Business, Internet News, Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media, Technology, Yahoo! | 7 Comments »