June 23, 2008

SEW Experts: Hot, Tiny Ads: Banner Ads for Mobile Screens

Mobile content ads have to work especially hard, given their small size. In today's Content Advertising column, "Hot, Tiny Ads: Banner Ads for Mobile Screens," David Szetela winds up the Content Advertising series with a recap of best practices for designing small ads with big impact.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 16, 2008

SEW Experts: Google Mobile Advertising on the Content Network

Creating a mobile ad campaign that displays banner ads on Google's mobile content network can be ideal for businesses that rely on phone calls to start or close a sale. In today's Content Advertising column, "Google Mobile Advertising on the Content Network," David Szetela explains how to do this without requiring a mobile Web site design, because clicks on the ad will be directed to a Google-supplied mobile-friendly page describing your business.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 9, 2008

SEW Experts: Google Mobile Advertising: Start Now!

Mobile advertising revenue is expected to dwarf current ad spend on search and content networks. In today's Content Advertising column, "Google Mobile Advertising: Start Now!," David Szetela breaks down the dynamics of mobile search advertising as an essential starting point to creating great mobile content ad campaigns.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 19, 2008

SEW Experts: Placement-Targeted Campaigns: Taming the Beast

Having trouble with Google AdWords placement-targeted campaigns? In today's Content Advertising column, "Placement-Targeted Campaigns: Taming the Beast," David Szetela shares the secrets of getting those stalled campaigns off the ground, churning out conversions like the best search campaigns.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 12, 2008

PPC Advice, Podcast Style

If you're interested in pay-per-click marketing, you've no doubt checked out our Content Advertising column by SEW Expert David Szetela, founder and CEO of Clix Marketing. If you're looking for more advice from David, you can find it via his brand-spanking-new podcast airing on Webmasterradio.fm beginning today, "PPC Rockstars."

The show will be broadcast live on Mondays at 4:00 PM EDT, 1 PM PDT, 21:00 GMT, and available for download soon after. In each week’s show, David will feature a current or future PPC Rock Star, and have a discussion about one particular aspect of PPC advertising. David's first guest is one of PPC’s brightest stars, Matt Van Wagner of FindMeFaster.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Google AdWords Editor a Great Tool for Content -- and for Yahoo/Microsoft!

Time is money, and these two tips will free up many moneymaking hours for you. In today's Content Advertising column, "Google AdWords Editor a Great Tool for Content -- and for Yahoo/Microsoft!," David Szetela explains how Google has created a tool that will increase ad revenue for itself, but for Yahoo and Microsoft as well.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 5, 2008

SEW Experts: Want to Double Conversions in One Month? Split Those Ad Groups

Would your boss be happy if your campaign conversion rates doubled in 30 days? In today's Content Advertising column, "Want to Double Conversions in One Month? Split Those Ad Groups," David Szetela puts his strategies to the test. By splitting ad groups and paying attention to display URLs, advertisers can improve their content advertising results.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2008

SEW Experts: Killer Site Targeting: PPC Content Scrape & Bake Tools

Successful placement-targeted content campaigns depend on showing your ads on all the right sites. In today's Content Advertising column, "Killer Site Targeting: PPC Content Scrape & Bake Tools," David Szetela outlines a new tool and methodology for finding the right destinations for your ads.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

April 21, 2008

SEW Experts: B2B Advertising Brilliance: Word Frequency Techniques for Killer PPC Campaigns

Creating ad groups for a business-to-business (B2B) content advertising campaign can be done by examining the pages that show up high in the results for your targeted keywords. In today's Content Advertising column, "B2B Advertising Brilliance: Word Frequency Techniques for Killer PPC Campaigns," David Szetela explains how to create top performing content ad groups for a B2B ad campaign.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

April 14, 2008

SEW Experts: Content Ad Campaign Keyword Strategy Revisited - Part 2

A keyword-targeted content ad group's keywords should describe the pages/sites where an ad should appear. The best keyword list is composed of words/phrases that appear most frequently on the target sites' pages. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Ad Campaign Keyword Strategy Revisited - Part 2," David Szetela goes through this keyword research process with an imaginary site.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:42 AM | Permalink

April 7, 2008

SEW Experts: A Look at Demographic Bidding for AdWords

Google's new demographic bidding for content campaigns seems to promise much better control over where ads are served, and hence better ROI. In today's Content Advertising column, "A Look at Demographic Bidding for AdWords," David Szetela explains why he considers it a "must try" tool for content advertisers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2008

SEW Experts: Content Ad Campaign Keyword Strategy Revisited

The keywords you choose for a content ad campaign should play a different role than they do for search ads. That's a point that's often tough for search advertisers to grasp. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Ad Campaign Keyword Strategy Revisited," David Szetela outlines a new method for building content keyword lists, that will enable you to gain ultimate control over the destinations for your ads.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 24, 2008

SEW Experts: Non-Text Contextual Ads: Quality Score and Bidding Strategy

Running banner ad campaigns on Google's content networks requires different thinking than text ad campaigns -- thinking that's surprisingly counter-intuitive. There's no way for a content-matching algorithm to judge the relevancy of an ad group to a landing page, when there's no text in the ad copy. In today's Content Advertising column, "Non-Text Contextual Ads: Quality Score and Bidding Strategy," David Szetela outlines a bidding strategy for "buying CTR" as a way to possibly influence minimum bid price and ad rank for non-text ad groups.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 17, 2008

SEW Experts: Tips for Google Site and Category Exclusion Tool

Google has launched an important new tool that prevents your Content Ads from showing on poorly-performing sites: the Category Exclusion tool. In today's Content Advertising column, "Tips for Google Site and Category Exclusion Tool," David Szetela shares some best practices for using the tool to exclude whole swaths of site types that are not likely to convert for your site. Share your thoughts on this new tool for AdWords in the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 10, 2008

SEW Experts: Every Picture Tells a Story: Non-text Contextual Ads

Like contextual text ads, image ads must distract the user and sell a product quickly. In today's Content Advertising column, "Every Picture Tells a Story: Non-text Contextual Ads," David Szetela gives four examples of image ads that accomplish this with varying degrees of success.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 3, 2008

SEW Experts: Contextual Advertising Best Practices: Banners and Video Ads

Ready to step out of your contextual advertising comfort zone? The world of graphic and video advertising may seem scary at first, but the rewards can be huge. In today's Content Advertising column, "Contextual Advertising Best Practices: Banners and Video Ads," David Szetela outlines some of the non-text ad options for contextual advertising.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2008

SEW Experts: Google AdWords Targeting: Expect More, Pay Less

Google AdWords placement-targeted campaigns on the content network can be a useful tool, if you can find the sites that support it. In today's Content Advertising column, "Google AdWords Targeting: Expect More, Pay Less," David Szetela discusses AdSense publishers' options for showing or blocking placement-targeted ads.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

January 28, 2008

SEW Experts: Inside AdWords and Contextual Advertising: The Tipping Point

Once the ugly stepchild of online ads, contextual advertising has shed its "remnant inventory" reputation. In today's Content Advertising column, "Inside AdWords and Contextual Advertising: The Tipping Point," David Szetela looks at the evolution of online content advertising, to help you understand where the category has been, and where it's going.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

December 17, 2007

SEW Experts: B2B Marketing, Road Rules for Content Advertising

B2B marketing is tough. B2B search marketing is even tougher. The most challenging form of B2B marketing, without a question, is content advertising. In today's Content Advertising column, "B2B Marketing, Road Rules for Content Advertising," David Szetela offers some best practices in B2B advertising.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

December 16, 2007

AdSense Ad Review: Good for Advertisers?

A few days ago Frank Watson blogged here about a new AdSense feature that lets site publishers exclude AdWords ads they feel may be inappropriate for their sites.

AdSense publishers will be able to view ads that advertisers have directed to their sites via Placement Targeting, and choose to block ads they don't feel are "relevant" to their site visitors.

This will certainly be used by AdSense publishers to (attempt to) maximize AdSense revenues - - publishers will block ads that they deem "low-revenue" in favor of ads that visitors will click on more frequently.

But is it good for advertisers? Well, yes and no...

Most AdWords advertisers who create Placement Targeted campaigns have done time-consuming research to identify sites that have proven (or are expected) to be relevant, in terms of producing valuable clicks and conversions. Knowing their ads can be blocked at the whim of an AdSense publisher might make advertisers more reluctant to spend the time necessary to target their advertising.

AdWords advertisers will be able to see the reason an ad was blocked - if the AdSense publisher chooses to provide it. Google says "This feedback gives advertisers more insight on how to increase coverage by adjusting ad quality, content, and relevance. We also use this information internally to help improve products."

Nice theory -- but will AdSense publishers really provide (optional) constructive feedback?

As I've pointed out in my SEW Experts column, Content advertising requires significant work and diligence -- arguably more than for Search advertising. Dealing with blocked ads -- understanding why an ad was blocked, and possibly even corresponding directly with a site owner to appeal the decision -- could just add unnecessarily to the advertiser's workload.

Hopefully this won't happen often - and the system will work to each side's satisfaction and benefit.

But let's keep an eye on it.

Posted by David Szetela at 11:31 AM | Permalink

December 10, 2007

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Best Practices in Action

In previous columns, David Szetela advocated turning off your content ad campaigns. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Best Practices in Action," he puts together all of the best practices he's shared in an example of a campaign that will finally perform, equipping you to turn your new and improved content campaigns back on.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

December 3, 2007

SEW Experts: How Google, Yahoo Content Ad Matching Really Works

If you think you know how Google and Yahoo perform content ad matching, you may be surprised. In today's Content Advertising column, "How Google, Yahoo Content Ad Matching Really Works," David Szetela takes a detailed look at how content advertising campaigns really work -- how Google and Yahoo match your ad groups to appropriate pages of site content, and display your ads there.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 26, 2007

SEW Experts: The 5 Commandments of Content Advertising

Content algorithms operate in ways that are counter-intuitive, and to some extent different than the search engines' explanations imply. Before you get into content advertising, you need to know what to do, and what NOT to do. In today's Content Advertising column, "The Five Commandments of Content Advertising," David Szetela describes best practices for structuring and creating content campaigns.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 19, 2007

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Explained - Part 3

Content ads need to work harder than search ads to distract the reader's attention from the Web site content that attracted them in the first place. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Explained - Part 3," David Szetela shows you some ways to test your content ads, and offers some good and bad examples to study.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 12, 2007

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Explained - Part 2

Content ads are not search ads, and need to be thought of differently. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Explained - Part 2," David Szetela reminds advertisers that ads created for the content networks perform a different job, target different users, and require a different strategy. He gives you five types of successful copywriting tips for content ads to get you started.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 5, 2007

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Explained

Little-understood, content advertising consumes a big portion of many advertisers' PPC budgets. But for many advertisers, content advertising performs far worse than their search campaigns. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Explained," David Szetela, founder of Clix Marketing, kicks off his new column that will explore the myriad problems with content advertising, and the ways advertisers can solve those problems.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 2, 2007

When Business Mags Venture Beyond Wall Street

When the well-known business magazines venture beyond Wall Street and even Main Street to find stories, don’t be surprised to see your contextual and search ads running on their august domains.

There’s a battle currently waging among publications hungry for larger online audiences. They acknowledge the need to reach site visitors who are distinct from their print readers, and are positioning themselves in different ways to grow online revenues.

At the recent Future of Business Media conference, we heard a wide range of plans and tactics discussed by Forbes and others. Magazine publishers are deciding how much to invest in more web-only content and resources, including video and other multimedia options. Like other web publishers, they are actively exploring social elements both on and off their domains.

For advertisers, all of these plans translate into more opportunities to reach responsive audiences. Publishers say they will attract more dollars from travel, tech, shopping -- pretty much all the productive ad categories.

See more below, including my take on what the publishers shared this week.

Forbes: CEO/President Jim Spanfeller, Board Member Roger McNamee They aim for “wide aperture versus narrow aperture” as the web audience is much larger with completely different demographics. People don’t have much free time, so they seek sites with a broad range of news, features, interpretative elements, etc. The brand is fully separate and distinct online. Forbes produces a mix of articles, images and video for the web. My Take: One of the earliest players in online multimedia and web-only content. We all know them for their highly-promoted Forbes slide shows related to lifestyles of the rich and famous. Let’s see how they grow from here. Text Ads: Quigo/AdSonar contextual ads; No search ads seen.

Time Inc: Chairman/CEO Ann Moore

Digital revenues are finally growing much faster than print. They still have “lots of work” to do on their digital offerings in the U.S. and are also pushing internationally. Video will be part of their focus and investment online. The crown jewel is CNN Money, which appeals to the wider audience. It gets “glorious CPMs” and is profitable. My Take: They are riding the Main Street coverage approach. The well-known Fortune brand isn’t mentioned much at all, nor getting leveraged online. Also, they decided to shutter Business 2.0 due to low performance. It will be interesting to see how their video plans pan out. Text Ads: Quigo/AdSonar contextual ads; Google search ads.

Business Week: Group President Keith Fox

They are a “liquid brand” where print content flows to online version. In addition, they include or link to content from other places. Business Week has a profitable business model, with strengths in auto, tech and finance ads. The magazine was recently redesigned, keeping in mind the multiple channels. However, they aren’t “bullish on video” right now. My Take: This brand stays relatively small, because it is sticking more closely to what we know as business news. They aren’t investing much in original web content. It’s a tough battlefield, as BW directly competes with Yahoo and other news outlets. Text Ads: Google and Industry Brains contextual ads; Business.com search ads.

The Economist: Publisher and Global Marketing Director Susan Clark

This brand reaches a high-end, global audience with a wide range of international news. The magazine is a ritual pleasure. The Economist offers the same content online, with additional news and columns to keep things fresh. While the first year of content is freely accessible, you have to pay (or be a print subscriber) to access archives and audio. Interestingly, they keep tabs on their online reputation and see Facebook communities which are self-forming about their brand -- but stay away from them. My Take: This brand has a true identity. They aren't doing anything revolutionary online, but will continue to appeal to advertisers who want to reach their small but well-heeled niche. Text Ads: Economist classifieds; No search ads seen.

Conde Nast Portfolio: Publisher David Carey

This well-funded Conde magazine is “challenging the legacy titles” with a long-term commitment. The print version covers forward thinking content, while the site is about immediate news. About 85% of content is created for the Portfolio site. The publisher says, “Advertisers like productive customers…and you’ll see good pickings from readers.” They aim for category diversity -- including business, luxury, travel and lifestyles. My Take: Great out-of-the-block effort, achieving 1mm uniques on site already. Like Forbes, they threaten the status quo by re-defining business news and establishing their niche. Text Ads: No contextual or search ads seen.

Mansueto Ventures: Publisher John Koten

Better known as Inc. and Fast Company, the publisher reports a 15% increase in revenue this year, described as a turnaround. “Our success is not dependent on [the] business category,” and is not trying to be all things to all people. They are pursuing lifestyle coverage, and want to appeal to their two defined communities. Today there are Facebook efforts for Inc. and blogs for Fast Company. My Take: These brands seem more participatory than the others titles. With consistent targeting both off-line and online, they have strong prospects based on growth of their social networks. Text Ads: Google contextual ads for both; Google search for Inc; Fast Company's own links appear on search and other pages.

Posted by Deborah Richman at 3:44 PM | Permalink

September 18, 2007

Archives Mean Ad Dollars

Publishers have always guarded their archives, as one of the last bastions of online, fee-based revenues. There’s been a nice and reliable revenue stream, but the rules are changing. There’s even more money to be made in advertising now.

Today, the NYTimes opened up its TimeSelect business. Lost in the headlines was some interesting news: all archives back to 1981 will be freely accessible. Plus all public domain archives between 1851 and 1922 will be opened too. NYT will continue charging for articles from 1923-1980, which are likely wrapped into previously arranged re-distribution deals.

This is big news, at least if you’re a publisher with any archives. Several key points of advice as you compete in the ad-based world:

* Accept the gauntlet that's been laid down. Think hard about whether you should continue with any paid or premium access at all. * See if you are operating with any restrictions. Look at your old library or business deals, with Lexis-Nexis, Gale/Thompson and ProQuest. * Take control of your distribution now. Figure out your widget strategy and other ways to make content searchable or available off-domain.

Most importantly, have all your domain ducks in a row. As you open the doors, make sure you optimize your organic and site search traffic. Actively feature or make content from your archives more "findable" when visitors arrive on your site.

If you're a publisher with archives, you possess ideal content for targeted, contextual advertising. That’s a gift not to be squandered!

Posted by Deborah Richman at 10:38 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2007

BuzzLogic: Finding the Buzz

Today I had the chance to speak with the executive team at BuzzLogic, an early stage tech company that tracks "buzz" around topics or companies. Buzz is defined by the company as any chatter throughout the blogosphere that can have influence on consumer behavior.

The idea is that pinpointing the thought leaders or influencers around a given topic allows marketers to home in on those sources in their marketing strategies. Think of it sort of like a form of BuzzMetrics that has been productized as a software license.

The product itself is a web based application and service layer that targets PR firms and brands of all sizes that wish to pinpoint where these conversations are happening. The resulting activity can involve joining a blog comment thread or positioning paid advertisements near the conversations or top “influencers” in a given area.

There were some interesting tools shown in the demo I was given, such as a graphical representation of all of the inbound and outbound links to the top blog posts on a given subject. This is meant to show marketers from an "overhead" view, where conversations are happening and where they should position themselves.

This could have some nice tie-ins to the work flow of existing SEM products. Given the geographical and site targeting options available in with many SEM platforms like Yahoo! panama, BuzzLogic could supplement them as a first step to determine where targeting should occur. A future version of BuzzLogic's product will in fact be able to drill down (via IP address) to see where conversations are originating geographically in addition to their web domain. It's early days to see what kind of value this could add to search marketing, but the possibilities can begin to be extrapolated.

Posted by Mike Boland at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2007

ContextWeb Lets Publishers Name Their CPM

Contextual ad network ContextWeb is rolling out a new pricing model that allows publishers in its network to set their own CPM rates for their inventory. Publishers have long felt that Google's AdSense program favors advertisers, leaving publishers with little control over pricing their inventory.

A test of the "Open PO" pricing model has been running at 100 publisher sites, including The Boston Herald, The Denver Post, World Now and Weather Underground. The model is now being made available to all publishers.

"There's been no innovation in business models of ad networks presented to publishers in 11 years," Jay Sears, ContextWeb's SVP of strategic products and business development, told SEW. "In every previous model, the risk has been on the publisher. It's time for the ad networks to shoulder the risk."

He's specifically calling out Google, which has traditionally been very limited in transparency toward publishers. Sears says that when Google launched AdSense in 2003, it was a step backward for publishers, who gave up a defined revnue share from ad networks to get an undefined share of revenue, with limited visibility, from Google.

While most current ad networks allow advertisers to choose the price they're willing to pay, and require the publisher to accept that bid or hit the road, ContextWeb is promising publishers a new level of control over the pricing of their ad inventory. Under Open PO, a publisher will tell ContextWeb the minimum CPM they'll accept, and only those ads exceeding that price will be shown. If an ad does not fit that requirement, ContextWeb can serve an ad from a competing ad network of the publisher's choice. ContextWeb will continue to give pricing control to advertisers as well, offering CPA, CPM, or CPC models for its ads.

If the pricing is set properly, ContextWeb can usually fulfill 100 percent of the publisher's inventory, said CEO Anand Subramanian. "A lot of inventory is undervalued, and a lot of inventory is overvalued," he said. "One publisher shouldn't have to subsidize the poor performance of another publisher, but that's what's happening with some ad distribution networks."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:26 PM | Permalink

February 27, 2007

Forbes.com Joins Quigo's Ad Network

On the heels of its glowing review in the NY Times in which it was credited with forcing Google's hand on transparency of publisher sites, contextual ad provider Quigo announced that it has signed Forbes as a distribution partner, according to ClickZ News. The multi-year, exclusive relationship with the media giant calls for the white-label delivery of content-targeted advertising using Quigo's AdSonar Network. In recent months, the company has also struck partnerships with ESPN.com, CareerBuilder.com, the New York Daily News and others.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:47 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2007

Adify To Provide Ads for Washington Post, Newsweek

Adify's "Build Your Own Network" ad platform will be used by the Washington Post and Newsweek for their online publications.

The company will provide advertisers for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive blogroll initiative.

Jeff Burkett, director of business development for WPNI, said, “This type of endeavor – combining our ad space with that of third-party publishers into new ad units – is a media industry first and we sought a partner that could remove the complexity of quickly getting it off the ground. With Adify, we started with a solid foundation and needed only to focus on our core competencies of identifying the right content for our readership and attracting advertisers.”

Larry Braitman, Co-founder and CEO of Adify, added, “In a highly fragmented media environment, established media brands like Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive have a unique opportunity to help consumers discover new, high quality third-party content that builds on the value they already deliver. By leveraging Adify’s Build Your Own Network platform, these brands can extend this value and create exciting new advertising offerings, while enabling small publishers to reach new readers and advertisers.”

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:49 PM | Permalink

February 22, 2007

Search Biz Lends A Hand

In the analytics area, the big search and portal businesses are lending a hand to the display ad marketplace.

It makes economic sense. Jupiter Research reports online display revenues of $5.8 billion and search market revenues of $6.5 billion during 2006.

Let's look at how we're helping marketers analyze behaviors and optimize their display ad results.

In the March issue of Business 2.0, there’s an excellent overview called “The Quest for the Perfect Online Ad.” (Print edition.)

Harnessing Behaviors:

In the article, we are reminded that people only conduct searches around 5% of the time. During the remaining 95% of time online, people reveal their interests through additional browsing behaviors. While standard searches have been put to good use, these other behaviors can be harnessed more effectively.

Display advertisers can target people based on their click streams, or all the pages they are visiting across domains. If someone is looking around for cars, then advertisers can reach her in many more places.

Using Cookies:

Of course, cookies make this possible. Yahoo, AOL and MSN all set cookies to follow your (actually your computer's) surfing behaviors. Others suppliers like Tacoda and Revenue Science operate in a similar way with tags.

At Google, Gokul Rajaram says they are not applying cookies because they don’t want to keep track of individual users. They rely on comScore analytics for targeting audiences overall, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

Improving Targets:

With the behaviors collected, however, it’s possible to show display ads in a far more sophisticated fashion. Marketers can target audiences based on specific interests rather than on a domain basis. The audiences they are reaching don't seem to be complaining, either.

It’s been several years in the making, but these analytics are finally taking off. According to Carla Hendra, co-CEO of Ogilvy North America, “Marketers now all have to understand the power of algorithms.” Since Ogilvy can target and also adjust ads quickly, she says that optimized ads perform up to 30% better than status quo.

At this juncture, behavioral and analytical power may re-ignite the display marketplace and the billions at stake. We'll be watching.

Posted by Deborah Richman at 5:50 PM | Permalink

February 20, 2007

IndustryBrains Continues to Grow Vertically

Since 2002, IndustryBrains has focused their contextual advertising program on a site-specific approach, giving advertisers the option for targeting premium content sites within their vertical marketplace.

Today, Marchex, the parent company of IndustryBrains, announced partnerships with seven new content publishers in several verticals: Business & Finance, Information Technology, and Home & Living. Marchex already has over 100 vertically focused and brand-name online publishers, such as BusinessWeek Online, The Motley Fool, and the Ziff Davis online properties.

The most recent partnership deals include InvestorVillage.com, Homes and Land, CIO Index.com, and WorldGolf.com, among others.

“As the company that created the site-specific approach to contextual advertising more than five years ago, we are very pleased to build upon our leadership position by adding seven high quality online publishers to our platform since the beginning of the year,” said Erik Matlick, IndustryBrains CEO. “As 2007 progresses, we look forward to further increasing our market share while helping all of our new partners more fully realize the value of their online brands, and providing advertisers with direct access to many additional highly targeted audiences.”

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 1:14 PM | Permalink

January 24, 2007

It's Elementary, My Dear Watson™

Earlier today, Intellext™ and AOL announced the launch of the AOL@SCHOOL desktop sidebar, designed to help K-12 elementary school students with their homework, but without having to search the open Web for the answers. Instead, this smart application proactively returns relevant content from hand selected educational resources related to the topic the student is working on - whether it be online, in a word processing or other desktop application. Students can also actively use the sidebar for deeper research into their homework topic.

The desktop sidebar was created using Intellext’s next-generation Watson™ contextual search technology in conjunction with AOL@SCHOOL’s search engine. Students can have the sidebar installed for free at school or home, and the tool can interpret the topic the student is working on and automatically find safe, age-appropriate and relevant search results from AOL@SCHOOL’s collection of the best K-12 education content on the Web.

In a conversation with Dr. Jay Budzik, co-creator of Watson™, he noted the partnership has been a terrific opportunity to private label the contextually relevant search technology. By using a content publisher of high-quality educational resources such as AOL@SCHOOL, they have created an engaging learning environment while ensuring safe search for kids, presenting results without commercialization.

“This software will transform the way that students do their homework,” added Mark Stevens, AOL's Education Director and General Manager, added “At AOL@SCHOOL, we are dedicated to making learning fun and engaging while keeping kids safe as they surf the Web.”

While librarians may argue that students need the process of research to learn, today's educators are growing increasingly frustrated that traditional online search tools are not able to return the most relevant or safest results, and see this tool as a more efficient research tool for students. Since the tool proactively returns matching topics as the students get deeper into their work, they are exposed to related concepts they may not have discovered by researching on their own. The student then can dig deeper into the new materials and learn more actively. Product research showed the relevant content returned in the sidebar gets used in a different manner by students, and more frequently, added Budzik.

You can learn more about the tool and download the AOL@SCHOOL sidebar here.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 5:12 PM | Permalink

December 26, 2006

Google Adsense the New Gator?

Rebecca Lieb writes over at ClickZ that Adsense may be in danger of going the route of Gator/Claria, as contextual advertising bloopers happen to good merchant sites.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 11:47 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2006

Text Link Ads Aquired By MediaWhiz

Text Link Ads has been acquired by MediaWhiz as of yesterday. Text Link Ads (TLA) sells text advertisements on web sites and RSS feeds, they also have a publisher network where small publishers can earn money selling TLA ads on their own site. The dollar figures were not disclosed as part of the release. The Link Building Blog says notes that "the people you will be dealing with tomorrow at TLA will be the same people you have always dealt with since our doors opened in 2003." They will be moving from Cincinnati to New York in a few months to run TLA from within MediaWhiz. Patrick Gavin, co-owner of Text Link Ads, said, "We are excited to join MediaWhiz's team and their suite of products. It is a great opportunity to leverage our publisher base by offering more ways for publishers to make money. This deal will also allow us to offer our advertisers new ways to send traffic and sales to their websites." There are related articles at The Cincinnati Business Courier and the official press release here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:12 PM | Permalink

September 28, 2006

Fun and Profit with Search Ad Arbitrage

Clever (some would say evil) search advertisers are taking advantage of price differences in search advertising programs by buying comparatively inexpensive paid links in search results that drive users to pages with contextual ads with higher payoffs. While this search arbitrage is profitable for those who do it properly, it also aggravates other advertisers who complain that it drives costs up. And searchers aren't always happy with the practice either. The subject of search arbitrage was the focus of a lively debate at a recent SES panel, and guest writer Cat Seda covered the fireworks in today's SearchDay article, Search Arbitrage: Good or Evil? .

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:53 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

Text Link Ads Launches Feedvertising

Techcrunch reports that Text Link Ads has launched a new product named Feedvertising. Feedvertising is an advertising solution that allows advertisers to place text ads within RSS feeds. It also allows publishers to get paid for including those ads in their RSS feeds. There is a great tutorial for those who are a bit confused about RSS and ads in RSS at TubeTorial. Also the Link Building Blog has more details here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:12 PM | Permalink

September 4, 2006

Google To Fingerprint Voices With PC Microphones

This weekend The Register published an article named Google developing eavesdropping software. The article describes how Google uses existing PC microphones fingerprinting technology to show relevant ads that appeal more to you. The article goes on to explain how the sound fingerprinting works; it "breaks sound into a five-second snippets to pick out audio from a TV, reducing the snippet to a digital "fingerprint", which it matches on an internet server." Privacy folks are worried about the repercussions of such software.

Postscript Barry: I should link to Google Paper Explains Listening To Your TV Can Help It Put Ads & Info On Your Computer we covered back in Jun. 9, 2006.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:50 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Seevast: It's Kanoodle & More

Catching up on some industry news earlier this month, Kanoodle has done some restructuring. Previously, Kanoodle offered both search and contextual ads. Now, Kanoodle only offers search ads. Contextual ads are being sold through a sister business unit, Pulse 360. Meanwhile, the Moniker domain traffic service has been acquired and will run as a third sister business. Above all of these is a new operating company, Seevast. For more, see this ClickZ story: Kanoodle Makes Acquisition, Becomes Seevast.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:36 PM | Permalink

July 24, 2006

GoDaddy Launches Private Label Domain Park Program

GoDaddy has long placed ads on registered domains that customers have parked at GoDaddy. Now, GoDaddy is allowing webmasters to sign up for a paid monthly subscription to CashParking, that would see webmasters get a share of the profits made from all clicks on the parked domain.

The unique aspect of GoDaddy's program is that they are giving the domain parking service to those who may only have a small number of domains in their portfolios, while Google normally only accepts those into the program with domain portfolios numbering hundreds of thousands of page views per month.

GoDaddy's domain parking program is serviced by Google's AdSense for Domains program (formerly known as Domain Park), with ads being displayed with the Google AdWords program. And example of the GoDaddy landing page can be found at fishinginia.com

For more analysis on the CashParking program, please see JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 2:44 AM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

eBay AdContext To Promote Auctions Via Contextual Based Ads

I covered this morning the news that eBay is launching a contextual advertising program named eBay AdContext. The program uses contextual based technology to match eBay auctions with the content from the publisher's Web pages. Publishers will not get paid on a PPC or CPM basis, but rather it seems like they will be paid a commission of the sale generated from the click. The commission percentage seems to be as low as 35%, according to CNN Money and as high as 70%, according to USA Today.

I suspect those who run Google AdSense and/or Yahoo Publisher Network would not be allowed to run eBay AdContext. But the two programs, eBays versus Google's and Yahoo's are pretty different, in that one is promoting auctions and the others are promoting a pool of advertisers bidding on keywords.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:22 AM | Permalink

June 9, 2006

Google Paper Explains Listening To Your TV Can Help It Put Ads & Info On Your Computer

There are many people discussing a recent patent Google was awarded for picking up on ambient audio from your TV and pairing those sounds to your computer to serve up ads based on what you are watching (or something like that). Google Research Scientists, Michele Covell & Shumeet Baluja, described the technology as;

We showed how to sample the ambient sound emitted from a TV and automatically determine what is being watched from a small signature of the sound -- all with complete privacy and minuscule effort. The system could keep up with users while they channel surf, presenting them with a real-time forum about a live political debate one minute and an ad-hoc chat room for a sporting event in the next. And, all of this would be done without users ever having to type or to even know the name of the program or channel being viewed. Taking this further, we could collect snippets from the web describing the actors appearing in a movie or present maps of locales within the movie as it takes place (no matter if users are watching it as a live broadcast or as a recoded broadcast).

There are two additional articles that have good coverage of this, that I am aware of. The first is at Small Biz Pipeline and the second is at TechCrunch. I particularly like how TechCrunch pulled out the four main points of the paper, as such;

+ Personalized information layers Heres what Tom Cruise is wearing in the show you are watching and here's where you can buy the same clothes in your zip code. + Ad hoc social peer communities If you would like to chat about this show, ten of your college friends are watching it right now as well. + Real-time popularity ratings Nielsen requires hardware and the results aren't available in real-time. You might want to know if there is a spike in viewers watching the show on channel 9 right now. Advertisers might want to know that too. + TV- based bookmarks Click to save a show or clip into your video library and there will be more than just a few shows available for watching later.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:43 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2006

Are You A Click-O-Phobic?

This morning I wrote about ad click-o-phobia, a new condition setting in with publishers. Basically, publishers that have contextual ads (AdSense, YPN, etc) on their pages are not allowed to click those ads. Hundreds of publishers have been banned from clicking on their own ads and this resonates with the publishers, so much so that some of them are afraid to click on any ad - not even their own. Heck, I'll be honest, I subconsciously do not click on contextual ads, because I am trained not to click on my own. I suffer from click-o-phobia!

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:53 AM | Permalink

April 13, 2006

Typo Domain Spotting Tool & Domain Registration Stats

I've got some domain name related items I'm throwing into this post: a new typo-domain spotting tool from Microsoft, new stats on the difficulty of getting a short domain plus stats on how many sites there are on the web.

Strider URL Tracer with Typo-Patrol is a new downloadable tool from Microsoft Research that lets you discover typo domains, domains that are misspellings of popular web sites.

Why bother checking? So you can know who might be trying to tap into your brand name or so you can protect children or naive web surfers from landing at the wrong sites.

If it's the latter, anti-phishing features built into the toolbars from Google, Yahoo and MSN Microsoft Windows Live are likely more useful for you and won't require the .NET download.

Typo domains have gotten renewed attention in part because of recent reports on how people are earning large amounts of money off of them. See these past articles from the SEW Blog for background on this:

I'm still working on a follow up about the issue and how these domains are funded by the major search players of Google and Yahoo. The short good news answer is neither company says that typo domains are kosher. If they spot them, they're supposed to be ousting them from their domain monetization programs. The short bad news answer is that it seems like there's much more work that could be done to kill these off.

Need a good example of a type domain? Try windowsmessenger .com. When I was on a trip recently, I wanted my wife to try and reach me on my watch through MSN Messenger (a long story that I'll explain some other time on my personal blog, Daggle).

I told her to install MSN Messenger. She guessed at the domain, ending up at this place. It looks like the MSN Messenger site, which isn't surprising since it frames the real site in order to run Google AdSense ads alongside it. In my view, that's misleading and the type of thing I hate to see supported.

Yes, it's not a proper typo domain, in that it's not a misspelling of the real messenger.msn.com site. But it's close enough in intent to be annoying. FYI, messenger.masn .com is a better example of a typo domain for MSN Messenger. The new typo tool helped me spot that one. And yes, it's carrying ads from Google.

Back to the tool, I thought one of the best features is how you can point it at a web page, then watch what other sites get contacted as a result of your visit. For example, a visit to msn.messenger.com (the real site) shows me that Omniture gets contacted (probably to track my visit for Microsoft), as does live.com and msn.com (probably my live.com and msn.com cookies kicking in). Google also gets contacted, the result of my Google Toolbar calling back to the mother ship to get PageRank data.

In other news, The Search For A Domain Name came out at the end of last month has lots of interesting stats on the availability of domain names. Want a three letter domain name? Sorry, they're all registered. It also has stats on the length of domain names and other tidbits.

And who owns a domain name? Whois information can tell you, but only if it's accurate. ICANN has a system designed to let people report if they find inaccurate or missing whois info about a domain. Spotted via ResourceShelf, now out is a report (PDF format) on how the system performed over the past year. The system got 63 percent of problems solved.

Finally, got a domain name? You'll probably want a web site next. April 2006 Web Server Survey from Netcraft reports there are now more than 80 million sites on the web, with charts gong back to October 1995.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:26 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2006

Yahoo! Publisher Network Launches YPNBlog.com

The Yahoo! Publisher Network has jumped on the blogging bandwagon and launched their own blog at YPNBlog.com. They plan to keep the publisher community up-to-date with news, tips and advice, publisher profiles and interviews, a weekly Publisher Spotlight, as well as guest columnists writing on issues important to YPN publishers.

There is a full rundown on the new blog at JenSense or you can visit the blog here.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 10:24 AM | Permalink

March 29, 2006

Measuring the Quality of Blog Advertising Campaigns

A new study from Receptional suggests that Google's PageRank and the cost of an advertising campaign are particularly bad indicators of the effectiveness of a campaign. In fact, using Page Rank alone as an indicator of quality typically generates a worse return on investment than running a campaign at random.

The best indicator? Genre of content. Imagine that—relevance matters! More on the study, including a link to the full report (free; no registration required) is available here.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:56 AM | Permalink

February 22, 2006

ContentAds, MSN's New Contextual Program, To Launch This Year

MSN's new contextual ad program now has a name, ContentAds, and a launch date of 2006.

The name and launch date were revealed in the description of the "Introducing AdCenter" session at Microsoft's upcoming Mix06 conference.

MSN wouldn't reconfirm the name and date, providing only this statement:

We recognize the strategic importance of syndication and contextual advertising.

For more details, see my extended write-up at JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 9:05 AM | Permalink

February 16, 2006

PPC Ad Impressions Grow 16% in 6 Months

A new Nielsen//NetRatings study shows that "sponsored link advertising impressions" grew from 55.4 billion to 64.3 billion or 16 percent during the past six months (August 2005 and January 2006). Google in August 2005 earned 36.2 billion, which increased to 41.1 billion in January 2006, a six-month increase of 14%. Yahoo percentage growth was larger than Google's, accounting for 19.2 billion in August of 2005 with an increase to 23.2 billion in January 2006 or a 21% increase in the past six-months. These figures include all of Google's and Yahoo's search partners and contextual networks. For the full release download the pdf.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 5:11 PM | Permalink

January 30, 2006

Kanoodle Gets MSN Spaces Contextual Deal

Kanoodle has announced it will be providing contextual ads to the MSN Spaces service. What's odd about this is that MSN has their own contextual ads program apparently in the works (see here and here at JenSense). Then again, it could be that Kanoodle will serve as a stop-gap for MSN until it has its own program online, when Kanoodle might then shift to being backfill.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:52 AM | Permalink

January 26, 2006

Rich Media Advertising Coming to Google AdSense

Google AdSense has begun contacting publishers about participating in a new beta test which would see publishers running rich media advertising instead of the standard text and graphic ads. Their rich media offerings include interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads.

While expanding and floating ads would be expected in rich media advertising, interstitials is an interesting choice by Google to include in this beta test. Interstitials are ads which are displayed as a full page ad before the user is redirected to the webpage they expected to see.

For more details and how this beta test could impact other rich media companies, there is a detailed entry on JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 3:30 PM | Permalink

January 16, 2006

New York Times On AdSense Earnings & Revenue share

New York Times published a piece on AdSense today, featuring Shawn Hogan of Digital Point discussing his AdSense earnings (roughly $10k per month) and how he shares his revenue with the members of his forum.

Also noteworthy is the fact that New York Times quotes a very specific revenue share figure, something that Google has always kept very quiet, stating that publishers such as Digital Point earn roughly 78.5 cents on every dollar. There are more details over on JenSense.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 12:29 PM | Permalink

Jennifer Slegg Joins SEW Blog As Contextual Correspondent

I've written before that Search Engine Watch doesn't focus on contextual advertising because it's not search. Having said this, with two major search engines pushing contextual products toward search advertisers, we do some limited coverage. Plus, sometimes contextual issues can overlap into search.

We're going to be doing a bit more coverage out on the blog now thanks to our new contextual ads correspondent, Jennifer Slegg. Many of our readers probably recognize Jen's name, as she publishes the excellent JenSense blog that we've pointed at from time to time.

Many others know Jen through her long-time work as Jenstar moderating the Google AdSense forum at WebmasterWorld. She also does the same for the Google AdSense forum at our own Search Engine Watch Forums plus moderates in the Yahoo Publisher Network and Contextual Ads & Alternatives sections, as well.

Expect to see Jen posting items that are especially of interest from the contextual world here, giving you a summary and pointing back to JenSense for those seeking a deeper drilldown. Welcome aboard, Jen!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:14 AM | Permalink

January 5, 2006

Search Engines Making Millions Off Type-In Traffic From Domains

Masters of their Domains is a great article from Business 2.0 that WebmasterRadio's Monte Cahn of the Domain Masters show turned me onto before the New Year. It goes into great depth about the sheer amount of money that "type in" traffic is generating for those who own hot domain names. That money is coming from players like Yahoo and Google -- who you might recall got some fire from me for not allowing advertiser to opt-out of domain-generated traffic.

For the record, I do have follow up calls being set up with Yahoo and Google to talk more about that situation, so I'll come back to it in more depth with their views. Google AdSense For Domains Program Overdue For Reform -- And Yahoo & Microsoft Should Also Take Note is my past article on the topic.

Monte sent me the article, but I only finally got to reading it today in the post-holiday digout after Barry pointed out a WebmasterWorld debate spurred by it. Some folks are upset over the sheer amount of money "domainers" are making, especially when it seems some may not be following the various ad program rules and advertisers themselves can't opt out.

AdSense For Domains Garbage Traffic is our own, earlier Search Engine Watch Forums thread where people are getting just as heated. It also covers that while officially you can't automatically opt-out of domain-driven traffic if you buy search-targeted traffic, some have managed to gain exceptions.

One of the most gripping aspects of the Business 2.0 story comes at the end:

In the meantime, Google and Yahoo are trying to keep the type-in business coming--and execs from both companies are using the Delray Beach conference to court the folks who control it. As the party at Delux winds down, 14 Yahoo executives pile into a stretch Hummer with a few of the domainers, including Schilling, who has an exclusive contract in which Yahoo serves all the ads for his sites. The limo heads 35 miles south on Interstate 95 to Scarlett's Gentlemen's Club. The men kick back in the VIP section, outfitted with plush booths and red velvet curtains.

When the woman in charge of the area comes by and mentions the cost of the booths, the Yahoo crew gets nervous. And in the end, no one wants to submit the $1,000 tab to the expense department back at headquarters. Finally, Schilling pulls out a roll of cash and pays up. Not a big deal for a guy who owns a share of a jet. But considering that Schilling's traffic generated more than 1 percent of Yahoo's $3.6 billion in revenues last year, you'd think one of those guys could have stood up and taken one for the team.

That all happened at the Traffic domain conference last year, an invite only event. Next one happens at the end of this month in Silicon Valley.

Elsewhere in the story, one Yahoo exec is cited as saying type in traffic may make up 15 percent of search revenue. It's no wonder both Google and Yahoo haven't made it easier for people to opt-out, given the amount of money at stake.

Nevertheless, it's something they should do. It's not that domain traffic is necessarily bad nor that domainers are necessarily doing anything wrong. But there's a difference between the person who did a keyword search as opposed to someone who did a navigational guess (a type in) versus someone who sees ads placed contextually on pages. Advertisers deserve the transparency of doing these as separate buys.

After three years, Google finally got it through their heads that contextual needed to be a different marketplace than search targeted traffic. Actually, I feel like they dragged this out so long precisely because they didn't want to risk losing money that contextual pulls in. Excuses like not wanting to allow site targeting or separate buys made three years ago so as not to "confuse" advertisers always sounded lame.

At least Yahoo understood that contextual needed to be separate from the start, or sort of. That's sort of because what's classed as "search" by Yahoo might not be considered "search" to an advertiser.

In both cases, neither player is putting domain traffic into its own box, and that needs to be done -- so advertisers themselves have a better choice.

I'll leave with something I put in our own forum discussion. A big change that would help is if Google dumped the idea that "AdWords" is a program for buying ads while "AdSense" is a program for carrying ads. It's incredibly confusing.

Consider this. Through AdWords, you want to buy ads that show up in search results. Many think that's what AdWords is. It's not. AdWords just lets you buy AdSense For Search, which also includes AdSense For Domains. Then there's AdSense For Content that you might also purchase through AdWords. All clear? And if you carry AdSense, chances are you really mean you only carry AdSense For Content.

Honestly, let's shift to this:

  • AdWords = Ads that show up when someone does a keywords search, currently called AdSense For Search  
  • AdSense = Ads placed contextually, currently called AdSense For Content  
  • DomainSense or DomainPark = Ads placed on parked domains, currently called AdSense For Domains

Do that, and things are much, much clearer. Want to buy search targeted ads? Buy AdWords. Want to carry those ads? Sign-up to carry AdWords. The same word will mean the same thing to two major parties that are involved. And want to opt out of a particular program? Easily done, or it should be.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, AdSense For Domains Garbage Traffic.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:00 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

Google AdSense For Domains Program Overdue For Reform -- And Yahoo & Microsoft Should Also Take Note

MS Research: Typo-Squatters Are Gaming Google from eWeek covers Microsoft researchers discovering Google's long-standing DomainPark program (AKA AdSense For Domains), where if you have a popular domain name with lots of traffic but no content, Google will kindly hand you some AdSense ads to turn it into an earner. While it is long-standing, I'd say it's also generally little known and definitely upsetting to people who come across it for various reasons.

In Google AdSense For Domains Program Overdue For Reform -- And Yahoo & Microsoft Should Also Take Note for Search Engine Watch members, I do a detailed look at the history of Google's program plus issues it and Yahoo's similar program raise for the search industry in general. Below is a summary for everyone.

  • Google Buys Applied Semantics from Search Engine Watch covers how Google inherited the lucrative DomainPark program when it purchased Applied Semantics back in 2003. Google later changed the name of DomainPark to Google AdSense For Domains.  
  • Tapping into typo traffic was happening even back then. The IRS.org site (as opposed to IRS.govo) I wrote about as an example in 2003 still runs with paid links today.  
  • Complaint On Yahoo PPC On Placeholder Sites and NonConverting Traffic Coming From Google's DomainPark Program are forum threads that show how advertisers question how relevant traffic can be from sites that someone never intended to go to in the first place.  
  • Far from being gamed, as the eWeek article suggests, anyone in the Google domain program should have been reviewed or approved by Google itself.  
  • Antivirus vendor F-Secure gives a good example on its blog today of how typo traffic helps tap into those probably trying to reach F-Secure. It goes further and shows how this also costs F-Secure money in that Google puts F-Secure's own ads on the typo site.  
  • Advertisers who opt out of contextual are NOT opted out of Google AdSense For Domains, as Strange Log Referrer - Advice Please? explains.  
  • From first hand experience, Google doesn't seem to worry that typo domains violates its own rules against trademark violations, since when I queried why serachenginewatch .com, a misspelling of our own searchenginewatch.com domain, was allowed to carry ads, Google flagged no issues with it.  
  • Google's in the mixed message situation of saying that contextual ads can't be on parked domains yet completely allowing the minute someone's accepted into the domain program.

Overall, I don't have an issue with non-typo domains being in these type of programs, since it's hard to say they really harm another site or the surfer coming to them.

In contrast, for the person who is running a misspelling of our searchenginewatch.com site -- or the same for the person doing the misspelling of the F-Secure site, there's little doubt they're hoping to benefit off the brand traffic these two sites have helped.

Navigation is a big part of search, and you'd think the search engines would want to ensure people were navigating to the right site. Instead, Google and Yahoo both seem happy to benefit by making money off these misspellings. That should change. Forget whether there's a trademark violation. Just outright ban the use of domains where it's obvious the site owner is hoping to tap into typo traffic.

At the very least, Google should make AdSense For Domains a program that really is independent of AdSense For Search and allow people to opt-out. It certainly should be pondering the mixed message of telling AdSense For Content people that they can't put ads on parked domains on the one hand yet running a massive program that does exactly that on the other.

And lest the Microsoft researchers feel to happy, they'd better understand that Microsoft fully intends to have its own contextual program in the future. That program almost certainly will face a decision on whether to provide paid links to parked domains. If Microsoft's not careful, its own researchers might end up reporting on typo domains that make Microsoft money.

FYI, I am following up with Google and Yahoo on the issues raised in the story and will post a follow up article in the near future.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, AdSense For Domains Garbage Traffic.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:35 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Locally Targeted Ads, Links, and Offers Coming to CBS Station Sites

DMNews reports in the article: Viacom Eyes Local Sponsored Links for CBS Station Sites, will soon launch locally targeted ads on CBS sites powered by Kanoodle.

Visitors will see on content pages and search results pages customized links and targeted advertiser offers.

It's at the intersection of local sponsored links as well as the explosion of locally targeted content," said Mark Josephson, chief marketing officer at Kanoodle, New York. "It's fast becoming a de facto component of all content on the Web." The CBS sites will use Kanoodle's LocalTarget product, applying a topic-matching approach to listings on city-specific Web pages.

More in this news release from Kanoodle.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:31 PM | Permalink

September 30, 2005

Feedster Plans Self-Serve RSS Ad Program

According to a Media Daily News article: Feedster to Release New RSS Ad Product, placing advertising in Feedster RSS feeds will become even easier in the next few weeks when the RSS search tool launches a new, "self-service" program (aka AdSense like) as compared to the RSS ad program Feedster currently provides.

The Media Daily News also reports that Feedster will release a "feed-profiling tool" later this year.

The product, Redlitz said, will profile a blogger's feeds using Feedster's index--and will deliver ads based on the overall content of the feed over time, not individual posts. For example, a blogger who writes about politics 80 percent of the time would still receive politically relevant ads the other 20 percent of the time when he blogs about, say, his cat.

Just a thought. For many RSS users the lack of advertising, to this point, is a reason I frequently hear as one of the reasons they like it so much. I wonder if increased advertising, any advertising for that matter, will stop current users from using RSS and slow its growth and acceptance with people who haven't tried it.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:23 AM | Permalink

September 8, 2005

Miva Partners To Give Mirror Group Contextual Ads

Miva has signed a deal to provide contextual ads to the Mirror Group Newspapers, which includes the Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, The People, The Sunday Mail and The Daily Record. The release isn't up on the Miva site yet, so I'll paste what I received below. There's no mention that search targeted ads will also be shown.

London, UK 8 September 2005, MIVA, Inc., (NASDAQ: MIVA) the leading independent Performance Marketing Network, today announced the signing of an exclusive content deal with MGN Ltd (Mirror Group Newspapers).

The appointment, which follows a competitive pitch, will see MIVA provide relevant and targeted Pay-Per-Click Ads across the home, article and channel pages of the following MGN sites:

- Daily Mirror www.mirror.co.uk

- Sunday Mirror www.sundaymirror.co.uk

- The People www.people.co.uk

- Sunday Mail www.sundaymail.co.uk

- Daily Record www.dailyrecord.co.uk

Under the terms of the deal, MIVA's design team will develop fully customised implementations that will be integrated within the five MGN sites. MIVA's top three, content driven Pay-Per-Click Ads will be displayed on each page, with advertisers selected according to their current ranking in MIVA's real-time online auction.

"MIVA demonstrated a thorough understanding of our market and the benefits content-driven listings can have on both revenue and the perception of our individual brands amongst internet users," commented Julia Smith, MGN's Head of Digital. "MIVA's flexibility, in terms of its customised design solutions, editorially-led approach and the way it structures deals really stands it apart from the competition," she continued.

"We're delighted to have formed a partnership with a publisher as prestigious as MGN," commented Seb Bishop, Director and Chief Marketing Officer, MIVA. "The company's focus on combining branding and user experience with revenue generation fits perfectly with MIVA's philosophy and will ensure that the listings we provide benefit partner, advertiser and user alike," he continued.

MGN is a key addition to MIVA's network of partner sites. In July this year, the sites for the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, The People, Daily Record and Sunday Mail attracted nearly three million unique users and almost twenty million page impressions*. MGN is currently redesigning its stable of sites to create a more consistent look and feel. In the four months since unveiling the redesigned www.mirror.co.uk site, users have increased by 79 per cent*.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:01 AM | Permalink

August 4, 2005

Goodman on Yahoo's Publishing Network

The always thought provoking Andrew Goodman says that much of the commentary and discussion about Yahoo's new contextual ad program thus far is not, "looking at this from the advertiser's point of view."

From Andrew's post: As things stand, content match option on Yahoo has the dubious honor of being "even worse than Google AdWords content targeting". If it continues to operate in its present fashion, it'll just be helping even more dubious publishers cash in on a few ignorant advertisers who don't track. Even if 75% of advertisers know what they're doing, the remaining 25% are still very good at over-rewarding weak publishers with wildly overpriced clicks.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:54 PM | Permalink

July 29, 2005

Google Seeks Patent On RSS Ads: Filed In Dec. 2003

Google's Advertisements in RSS Patent App in our SEW Forums covers how Google has applied for a patent on putting ads into RSS and feeds. You can discuss in that forum thread, plus Threadwatch has some talk.

Postscript (from Gary): It's important to realize that this patent app was filed with the US Patent and Trademark office in December 2003. In other words Google has been thinking about and developing methods to place paid advertising into RSS feeds for at least 18 months but likely much longer. However, it has only been in the past few months that Google started to test this type of service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:14 AM | Permalink

July 21, 2005

Do Or Die Domain Name Registration Soars

Kevin Murphy's Computer Business Review article Pay-per-click speculation market soaring takes a look at numbers from VeriSign that show hundreds of thousands of domain names are being registered each week, "purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google Inc and Yahoo."

There are close to a quarter of a million domain names a week being registered for just a few days, while people "test" the traffic potential of those names before discarding them, chief executive Stratton Sclavos told analysts yesterday... "Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers," Sclavos said. "The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones are returned within the five day grace period." These speculators basically put up collections of Google Adsense or Yahoo Overture text advertising links that are more or less relevant to the topic indicated by the URL. Whenever someone comes across the site and clicks a link, the owner gets paid.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:44 PM | Permalink

June 22, 2005

WebmasterWorld Search & Marketing Conference Recap: Day 1

The first day of the WebmasterWorld Search & Marketing Conference 2005 in New Orleans happened yesterday, and Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable and Aaron Wall from SEO Book have logged reports. A recap of search-related sessions:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:32 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2005

Fastclick Unveils Contextual Search Ad Program

The Media Post article, Fastclick Takes On Google With Contextual Ads, offers a look at the new FastClick program that launched yesterday.

As expected, online ad network Fastclick Monday began offering contextually relevant text ads--similar to Google's AdSense--to its publishing and advertising clients...Fastclick's entry into contextual search advertising and its initial public offering announced last month are directly related, analysts speculated. "Investors are now going to look to Fastclick to make sure they have a full quiver of arrows," said Gary Stein, a Jupiter Research analyst. "It's important that any company can round out all of their capabilities."

Posted by Gary Price at 10:29 AM | Permalink

March 10, 2005

Contextual Ads As Search Alternative

Contextual ads aren't search, but being sold alongside search means that search marketers may tap into them as a way to gain more traffic. Marketers Split on Contextual Ad Effectiveness from ClickZ takes a brief look. Don't expect search-like conversion, but also remember that if they convert higher than your cost, contextual ads can still be great.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 18, 2005

Yahoo Doesn't Need Six Apart Or Blog Ownership For Ad Purposes

It's kind of obvious that Yahoo will gain some type of blogging solution in the future. It's the only major portal not to offer this, as I've written before: MSN's Third Portal To Gain Blogs; Where's The Blog Search?

David Jackson has a write-up in Yahoo to acquire Six Apart? on why he thinks Yahoo will gain blogging capabilities by acquiring the makers of the popular Movable Type platform.

MovableType's great -- we use it ourselves -- and so would be of interest to anyone who wants to own blogging technology. But the idea Jackson has that Yahoo needs blogs to fuel its pay-per-click growth? Nah.

Google bought Blogger because it was cheap and it figured it could make money but putting its contextual ads out on many of the Blogger sites. But Google later pulled those ads and make them optional. That's wise, because you aren't going to make friends by forcing anyone to carry your ads. So much for needing to own the platform to build ad revenue.

In addition, blogs can be hard to target with ads, given that they often have different types of content mixed onto the same page. MediaPost just had an article looking at this: Blog Ads Hit Rough Patches.

Google's real success with AdSense hasn't been in owning the blogging platform. First, it has signed partnerships with major publishers. Second, it offers an easy-to-use self-serve system that anyone can tap into. Google rolled that out last year, and now you all but stumble over its AdSense placements.

If Yahoo really wanted to turn the web into its billboards, in the way Google does, it would make more sense to have a similar type of paid listings program that any publisher could use.

The downside is that in doing so, advertisers have less control over the targeting of their ads. Kraft wasn't happy to find itself showing up on a pro-white web site recently: Kraft Supports Pro-White Groups? Lack Of Search Ad Targeting Makes It So. Open the flood-gates of self-serve, and problems like this for Google could hit Yahoo as well.

Cory Kleinschmidt over at Traffick takes another swing at the targeting problem in his recent AdSense Faces Extinction -- Unless Google Shakes Things Up post. In it, he points out how uneven targeting is an issue that threatens AdSense. He also notes there are other programs out there to tempt bloggers and other publishers -- which means again, owning the platform doesn't guarantee you the billboard space.

There are good reasons for Yahoo to own a blogging platform, and maybe it will be Six Apart. But the assumption that paid ad placement as a key reason to do so isn't a major factor, from where I sit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 13, 2005

Shopping Search, Contextual Ads & General Search Blogs Offered

I met up with Sean O'Rourke at our SES Chicago show who's heavily into shopping search and threatened to launch a blog on the topic. Now he's done it. The Organized Shopping Blog looks promising, so if you're a retailer interested in the important area of shopping search, you may want to tune in.

I've also been meaning to mention JenSense. That's a blog launched several weeks ago by Jennifer Slegg, more commonly known to many as Jenstar, moderator of WebmasterWorld's Google AdSense forum. Aside from being one of the nicest people you could meet, those I know into generating money from AdSense tell me she's one of the sharpest people you can talk to.

We don't cover much about contextual here, because as I've written before, it's not search. But it IS important to online advertisers and publishers, so check out Jen's blog.

To close things out, search marketing firm Reprise Media's just started its new blog SearchViews that's taking a look at search as a whole.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 4, 2005

1500 Advertisers Now Part of ThomasB2B Network

Word in Media Post: Thomas to Send PRWeb Sponsored Ads, that the ThomasB2B PPC ad network that debuted in September will soon begin placing ads on the PRWeb news release site.

The ads will appear on results pages when users type search terms into PRWeb's query box--possibly in a column next to the organic results...ThomasB2B, a joint venture of search engine FindWhat.com and online directory company Thomas Global Register, has so far signed up about 1,500 advertisers--with a heavy concentration of manufacturers of conveyors, pumps, capacitors, and other industrial electronics.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:21 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

December 16, 2004

Monetization of RSS

Internetnews.com's Susan Kuchinskas article: Paying for the Publishing Revolution, reports on the "Web Feeds, Blogs & Search" session at SES in Chicago.

"We'll see the monetization of paid feeds with advertising, as RSS-focused metrics and analytics tools emerge," said Chris Sherman, associate editor of Search Engine Watch.

Comments from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny, Ask.com's Micheal Palka, and MSN's Justin Osmer are included in the article.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:44 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

December 3, 2004

Forbes.com Ends Embedded Ads

Remember all of the attention Forbes.com received a few months back when they decided to embed advertising hyperlinks into editorial content?

Ad Week reports that Forbes has decided to end the "experiment" and stop offering the embedded ad links.

"Forbes.com recently made a decision about the embedded ad initiative, which we experimented with this summer and into early fall," said Forbes.com president and chief executive Jim Spanfeller in a statement to Adweek. "While the general feedback was more positive than negative, our editorial staff was uncomfortable with the concept, and we therefore decided not to continue placing these ads in any staff-generated content at this point in time."

Posted by Gary Price at 8:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

October 5, 2004

Kanoodle Gets Self-Serve Contextual Ads, Too

I try to keep coverage of contextual ads to a bare minimum, because they aren't search. But earlier, we did mention that FindWhat had launched a self-serve contextual ad program similar to Google AdSense. Now Kanoodle's doing the same. See the press release here for details: Kanoodle Launches BrightAds Automated Content-Targeted Sponsored Links Solution.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 1, 2004

FindWhat Opens AdRevenue Xpress Contextual Ads Program

FindWhat joins Google in offering self-serve contextual ads for publishers. The system also allows publishers to add sponsored search listings to their site, similar to the Google AdSense for search program (formerly Google WebSearch). At the moment, the program is only open to those also advertising with FindWhat. Details from ClickZ: FindWhat Unveils Answer to AdSense.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 29, 2004

More On Mixing Contextual & Search Spending

Niki Scevak saw my Google's Revenue Is Not All Search-Derived post yesterday decrying the mixture of contextual and search revenues and points out that Jupiter Research's own paid search estimates appropriately don't mix the two: The Myths of Contextual Advertising.

He goes on to discuss how AdSense doesn't just mean contextual at Google any more. Instead, it's an umbrella term they now use to represent both "AdSense for search" and AdSense for content."

This came up on our forums earlier this month: AdSense for search? As I explained there, Google shifted to using the umbrella term internally a few months ago. You really saw it make its public debut in the Google IPO filing, when AdSense was used throughout those documents to represent any type of ads placed outside of Google.

Advertisers, of course, tend to think of two different things: AdWords (meaning ads that show up in response to keyword searches) and AdSense (meaning to advertisers the ads that show up contextually placed and which are considered by many of them as an option they can choose for their AdWords campaigns).

From Google's point of view, AdWords is simply the program that lets advertisers place ads into the AdSense program -- which means both AdSense for search and AdSense for content.

Niki goes on to outline that contextual ads are in his view a dismal earner for Google but one it can afford because they represent incremental income for the service, rather than its bread-and-butter. Don't forget, the deals also have the impact of denying Google competitors from gaining partnerships, denying them cash). He also notes Google is stepping back from some "vanity" deals which may have even cost it money.

Meanwhile, Kevin Ryan takes another look at those IAB search projection figures I blogged about earlier, the ones where contextual doesn't appear to be broken out. In his Why Search is Slowing, Ryan gathers a few comments about the fears of a slowdown in search, despite still incredible rises. In short, some leveling off was in order.

He also notes that keyword search emerged as an ad format in 2002. To be correct, the ad format was there well before this. It was just that no one bothered to track it.

Spending on paid search ads began with Overture back in 1998. It happened even earlier than that, if you want to count keyword-linked banners. Google started carrying paid ads at the end of 1999.

All this spending could have been tracked back then. It wasn't. It took the rosy public financials of Overture to wake up Wall Street, research firms and even advertising organizations to something advertisers were already doing: spending on search in droves. My Search Engine Marketing Finally Getting Respect article from 2001 looks at this more.

Meanwhile, tracking of spending on "free" or "organic" or "natural" search seems non-existent. That's something that research by SEMPO may help correct. It's long overdue. Not having these figures is like trying to predict the state of any type of marketing solely on ad buys but not public relations efforts.

Postscript: The IAB figures do apparently track spending on search engine optimization as well as advertising.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2004

Targeted ads are the new kid on the Net block

Targeted ads are the new kid on the Net block Source: Canadian IT A look at behavioral targeting. Tacoda Systems Inc., Revenue Science Inc., and Burst Media are mentioned.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)