Archives for the month of: March, 2009
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Google Trialling Favicons

March 30, 2009 //
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The social world of Twitter and the Search Marketing blogging community has been buzzing today with screenshots of Google trialling the use of favicons in Adwords creative, presumably to judge the impact on CPC.  So far I have seen examples in the bingo and car insurance markets with numerous PPC. Ads showing a favicon alongside the display URL.  Que hundreds of search marketers testing positioning of favicons to try and get theirs included. 

Its an interesting test from Google but surely if it was to be deployed across Google Adwords companies would become wise to it and all 10 would have the favicon in place?  How about, as an interested alternative, allowing only the ads which achieve a CTR. above a certain threshold to show the favicon?  A reward for writing well targeted creative and following Adwords best practice, surely that’s more beneficial than introducing something which will become nothing more than decoration for the SERP in a few months.

favicon in google ppc

favicon in google adwords

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Categories PPC

How to Monetise Social Media?

March 30, 2009 //
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Last.fm announced last week it is to begin charging for live streaming of music content for consumers outside of the UK, US and Germany. Users outside these three countries will pay 3 euros a month to listen to Last.fm Radio, the site’s streaming music service. The company has been clear this is simply a business decision as it doesn’t cover its cost through standard advertising models outside of these 3 territories. Within the UK, US and Germany Last.fm Last.fm can cover its licensing costs through advertisement revenue using its existing sales force.

The announcement of the plans sparked a uproar in the social community with many bloggers quoted by the BBC as being against the plans.

“A word of the wise: if this charge ever comes to the UK, I’ll be ditching my subscription immediately. Right now, you’re just making Spotify look more and more attractive,” said blog poster StudleyUK.

To be clear, Last.fm have not shown any inclination to introduce a similar model in the UK and have stated they have no need to as their ad funded model works quite well, but I suppose you never know what might happen if their trialsin other countries are a success.   I have to say I agree with StudleyUK, I already prefer Spotify to last.fm for Internet music streaming and there is no way I would be paying for Last.fm whilst Spotify remains free.

This is a major challenge facing all social tools on the market at the moment.  As traditional ad models become a thing of the past and the number of social utilities entering the market increases, how do their owners produce a revenue stream without charging for membership?  Twitter has a similar problem and has hinted they may begin charging for corporate accounts. 

CPM based ad models, or anything untargeted are a no go, other than for a simple quick win, and start charging for membership and your users will be off to the nearest competitor in an heartbeat.  Facebook are doing well with their flexible targeted CPC model but not all social utilities have the luxury of so much user information.  All of a sudden in the complex digital world we live in, millions of users isn’t going to be the ticket to a large valuation it used to be.  Smart investors are going to need more convincing on revenue models before parting with their cash.

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Categories Social Media

The Future of Digital Communications

March 26, 2009 //
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Slightly off theme for the Digital Lookout but this is pretty amazing.  Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry present their version of the future of digital technology and communication tools.  Forget the space taking, power sapping, Microsoft Surface, you dont need it when you can have all the same functionality on any flat wall.  Minority Report here we come!

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Categories Digital Marketing

Google Catching Up In the Behavioural Targeting Game

March 17, 2009 //
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Google’s latest move into the world of behavioural targeting has been hit with a lot of publicity, but in reality, all they are doing is catching up with the game.  Yahoo and Microsoft have been using behavioural targeting functionality based on users search queries and pages browsed for a number of years, and charging a premium for the service.  But now Google have stepped into the game and all of a sudden it is big news again.

Obviously anything Google announce is going to be big news, but there isn’t much really to their new service that isn’t available in other portals.  They have tried to cover themselves from a privacy perspective by allowing people to select their areas of interest but really, is anyone other than those working in the digital arena going to now where to find these settings? No.  In reality the ability to select and deselect interests is a token gesture to the privacy police.  And of course they are going to sell it to advertisers as an opt in on interests and charge additional for the targeting options.

There is added complexity with Google due to their adsense network and it not being only their properties they would be targeting you on, but other than this, it is nothing more than Yahoo and MSN have been doing with their display advertising for years.  Of course the major benefit of Google is they will have much more data to work with than Yahoo and MSN combined so the targeting should be more accurate and more detailed, but other than that, its just Google catching up in the display advertising game.

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Categories Display Advertising

Yahoo! Search Marketing Introduces Targeting Options

March 17, 2009 //
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Yahoo! has announced on the launch of additional targeting across both its search and content network.  They are set to introduce demographic, geographic and adscheduling options to their search marketing portal which will bring them up to speed with the competition in PPC.

There is nothing too exciting about the functions they are introducing they are all available on either Google or MSN already, but they are the first to introduce them all in one place.  Google has geographic targeting and adscheduling, but no demographic.  MSN has the demographic targeting (for what it is worth).  But now Yahoo! will have them all in one place, and their additional volume over MSN should make their demographic targeting more useful than MSN’s has ever been.

Its nice to see Yahoo! pushing forward with releases like this to boost their search offering as towards the back end of 2009 it appeared they may have been giving up the battle in search engine marketing.  The functions arent yet available in Yahoo’s Search Marketing Center but it will be interesting to see how effective they are once they are launched.

yahoo ad scheduling

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Categories PPC
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