I know this industry evolves fast, but damn! Just 18 months ago, most media planners and search marketers had not heard of search retargeting, and already we are in what could easily be called version 3.0. With the agency hat back on (for today), we look at whether this tactic is living up to the growing hype. When the principle was first explained to me, I was running an agency display media team at a search agency that was focused on direct response clients; I was therefore interested in tactics that involved precise data points as a way to focus on user intent. Search retargeting seem [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEM | How To: SEM | Search & Display | Search Ads | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | Search Ads: Contextual

Twitter's rumored Promoted Tweets are now official, launching only a day after the very similar TweetUp launched (will that be DOA?). Promoted Tweets has two phases, which might be described as an AdWords phase and an AdSense phase. The AdWords part is what is launching first. Marketers buy keywords (for now on a CPM basis) and their ads show up at the top of Twitter searches as sponsored tweets. It's paid search. And I can see the future SMX Advanced panel now: "Best Practices for Twitter Search Campaigns." Apparently Twitter has "huge" search volume, according to COO Dick Costolo, tho [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Ads: General | Top News | Twitter

VigLink is a new service with venture capital backing from Google that aims to make it easy for publishers to earn through affiliate programs. It promises to turn any outbound link on a web site into an affiliate link after the installation of a small bit of JavaScript code. VigLink is in the news today primarily because the company has announced that it has closed a round of seed investment, for $800,000 in total. From the press release, funding sources include: Google Ventures, and individual investors including LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, longtime Google executive and current LinkedI [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: Business Issues | Google: SEO | Link Building: Paid Links | Search Ads: Contextual | SEO: Spamming | Top News

First to pounce on the SEC 8-K filing by Yahoo was PaidContent, which provides an extensive bulleted list of many of the deal terms not revealed last week during the frenzy of conference calls and articles that followed the official announcement of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal. CNET also writes about selected aspects of the deal contained in the filing, specifically an "escape clause" (termination) for Yahoo (see below). And the AP has a short piece on how the deal terms require Microsoft to hire at least 400 Yahoo employees. Here are some verbatim excerpts from the SEC filing: Negotiat [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees | Microsoft: General | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Top News

Privacy is dead, get used to it. In the effort to rescue display advertising from its historically dismal performance and so-called "banner blindness," behavioral targeting (BT) was born a few years ago with Tacoda. It has both increased in popularity and infamy since that time. Consumers prefer more "relevant" ads but they also dislike being tracked. That's the paradox and the problem with BT. Here's the issue in a nutshell. According to a March 2008 survey by Truste (written up in MediaPost), "nearly three out of four people, or 71%, said they realize that companies track their Web browsin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Legal: Privacy | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | Search Ads: Contextual

If you are like me, when you implement PPC campaigns one of the mental notes you have in your checklist is to go into the Campaign Settings for each campaign and prevent your ads from running on the content network. It turns out that this might be a mistake. At the recent SMX Advanced event in Seattle, I sat in on the Amazing New PPC Tactics panel. It was a good panel overall, but the one thing I wanted to highlight was the presentation by David Szetela of Clix Marketing, as David explained how to do content match marketing effectively. Understanding the problem The problem stems [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Search Ads: Contextual

Yahoo, Adobe team on PDF ads from News.com reports Yahoo and Adobe are working together to put contextual ads in PDF documents. Over at the Adobe Labs, you can find a new product named Ads for Adobe PDF. Yahoo will be powering the ads within PDF documents that are contextually relevant to the content within the PDF. If you produce PDF documents and want to monetize them with relevant ads, this seems to be the product for you. To get ads on your PDF documents, you will first need to be approved for the beta. To sign up for the beta, complete this form. Then you apparently upload your PD [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Search Ads: Contextual | Yahoo: Publisher Network

Facebook has launched a new Facebook Ads program offering three major products for advertisers: Facebook Pages, a way for businesses to build branded pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; Facebook Social Ads, an ad system allowing Facebook users to be targeted by demographic interest, and "friend activities," and Facebook Beacons, allowing activities at sites off Facebook to flow back in. Facebook Pages allow brands to have profile pages on Facebook in the same way that people have them. (see Coca-Cola's screenshot from ZDNet) with marketing messages, games, video, et [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Facebook | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | Search Ads: Contextual

BuzzLogic started out offering analytics to identify the blogs that were having the greatest influence on particular topics or "conversations" online. Now the company is moving into the online advertising space. In a new product extension, BuzzLogic is enabling advertisers to target text or display ads on any blog within the Google AdSense network. Marketers with existing AdWords accounts may create ads within BuzzLogic for the particular sites where the "conversation" about a product, service, or brand is happening. This capability doesn't exist within AdWords/AdSense itself. BuzzLogic has [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Engines: Blog Search Engines

Local search and directory provider Superpages has announced video advertising on a national basis after a several-month test in selected U.S. markets. All the major U.S. yellow pages advertisers are now offering video advertising, though all are in early stages of rolling it out. To my knowledge, Superpages is the only performance-based model where bidding would be involved. Superpages is charging advertisers a one-time $990 production fee and a small monthly recurring fee to have a video icon associated with their listings. For each consumer stream/click, advertisers would also be charged [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Ads: Video | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Video Search Engines

On the heels of yesterday's Google AdSense video announcement, video search engine Blinkx has announced advertising for video using its "AdHoc" contextual ad platform. The difference is that the AdHoc contextual ad widget works with other video players embedded in third-party sites. As explained by the press release: Based on Blinkx’s ground-breaking AdHoc platform, the new widget places unobtrusive, highly-relevant text advertisements against embedded video from popular sharing sites such as YouTube, GoogleVideo, and DailyMotion. Blinkx will share 50 percent of the revenue generated fro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Search Engines: Video Search Engines

Was "Classic" Coke so much better than "New" Coke? It sure was in the real world. Why mess with a good thing? A favorite formulation turned out to be, well, still a favorite in spite of a more modern, "scientific" formulation. Google creates products that are a lot more complex than a soft drink. When all is said and done, I think the latest-generation product development protocols are going to have to lead to significant shifts in how advertisers interact with online ad platforms like AdWords. In the short term, for example, many of us have preferred "classic" Google AdWords Content Tar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search | Search Ads: Contextual

Microsoft, EA sign sports game ad deal from Reuters reports Microsoft signed a video game ad deal with Electronic Arts. Microsoft will feed EA's games, such as Madden, NASCAR, Tiger Woods, NHL and Skate, with advertisements. Cory Van Arsdale, chief executive of Massive, a game ad company Microsoft bought last year, said, "The real issue here is that we're making a network play. If I just had 'Madden,' while great, it would be of limited value to advertisers." EA is the number one independent video game maker. The video game ad market in 2005 was only $50 million but is expected to grow to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Partnerships | Search Ads: Contextual

The major pay per click engines, such as Google and Yahoo, include two different types of distribution: On their own search engine result pages, and on content pages elsewhere on the web. These two types of advertising, while often lumped together under the pay-per-click (PPC) label, are very different. Advertiser's ability to control these networks and consumer's interaction with these networks are completely different. Hence, they should be treated as completely separate types of distribution. It's easy to visualize the search network. Advertisers choose relevant keywords and then bi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search | Search Ads: Contextual

Enterprise search provider FAST Search & Transfer has acquired personalization platform and recommendations engine AgentArts. The technology will be folded into FAST's various enterprise search offerings, which include a range of site search and monetization options for online publishers. The company also has a mobile search partnership with InfoSpace. FAST has positioned itself as a complete platform to help publishers of all stripes essentially compete with Google and avoid dependence on AdSense and other third-party contextual ad networks. [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Engines: Personalized Search Engines | Site & Enterprise Search

InfoSpace has introduced video search on its Dogpile search engine through a partnership with Blinkx. Search results are identical to those found on Blinkx, which is also providing video search for other engines and portals, most notably Ask but also Lycos and ChaCha. It also provides some video search capabilities for Microsoft as well. Video search has moved from the realm of novelty to a much more important and mainstream function on major search engines. In fact it's now "table stakes" one might argue. While most engines maintain a separate tab or link for video search, Google and Ask ha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Engines: Video Search Engines

I just received word that Microsoft adCenter will be opting-in more of their advertisers into the adCenter content network called Content Ads. Advertisers who are selected will be automatically included and be billed for clicks on ads within Microsoft's contextual program. This is set to go live on June 28th. If you do not want this, please use this form to inform Microsoft that you want to opt-out. You have until June 26th to place your request. Otherwise, you have several other options: Hybrid: Run your ads on Live Search and content pages using "hybrid" ad groups. Content-only and sea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Microsoft: Content Ads | Search Ads: Contextual

The major PPC engines offer the ability for advertisers to show their ads on both search and content networks. However, those networks are very different from a consumer engagement process, and they should be treated very differently. To provide a quick recap, with the search network, an advertiser bids on a keyword, and if the search uses that keyword in the query, then an ad will show. This engagement process is based upon someone actively looking for information related to a keyword that the advertiser has chosen to show an ad. Although similar in many respects, the content network [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Ads: General

Ask.com is launching a new sponsored listings contextual product and will go live the week of May 21st. The Ask contextual product will initially launch within IAC's own network of sites including Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch and will then expand to trusted third party publishers. Individual publishers will most likely have to wait until next quarter to gain access to this contextual product. Current Ask Sponsored Listings advertisers will be automatically opted into the contextual network, but will have the option of opting out before the product launches. In addition, [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Sponsored Listings | Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Contextual

Enterprise search firm FAST has launched AdMomentum, a contextual advertising system that let's publishers manage and serve their own advertisements, bypassing Google, Yahoo and other third-party contextual advertising services. FAST calls the platform a "revenue engine," and is targeting small & medium sized enterprises and vertical search sites. "The major ad networks have not been good at developing products and targeting these areas," said Perry Solomon, FAST vice president and general manager media solutions. FAST AdMomentum was developed in close cooperation with leading online publish [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Search Ads: Contextual