During a recent trip to adCenter headquarters, Eric Enge was able to get some insight into these new features, and what we can expect from adCenter in the near future, which he shared in his recent post Can Bing & adCenter Bring More To The Table For Large Advertisers?.

Here is a quick synopsis of the new features:

• Browser Compatibility with Safari and Chrome, and mobile devices
• Mobile Device Targeting
• Ad Description Lengths Increased

Browser Compatibility With Safari & Chrome

Status: Live

AdCenter silently released browser compatibility with Safari and Chrome this week, including mobile device support for iPad and other devices. Compatibility with Mozilla Firefox was also improved.

From our sources and anecdotal testing, the support appears complete and fully functional. This release supports adCenter’s efforts to increase the ease of access of the online marketing platform by enabling Advertisers to access the site from a wider variety of browsers and devices.

My Take: Manage adCenter from your iPad!

Manage adCenter from whichever browser or device you prefer. While this feature doesn’t seem at first like core functionality (like a change to Negatives or Device Targeting would be), it is one of the top-requested features on adCenter’s Feature Suggestion Forum for good reason; as Advertisers we want to maximize our time efficiency.

Advertisers want to work where we are comfortable, and this helps us do that. Many of us have come to expect ubiquitous access from a premier online business as a matter of course, but those of us who use Chrome / Safari, or who have ever wanted to check on a client off-hours from the nearest mobile device that is handy, will probably appreciate this release the most.

I also see this release as more evidence that adCenter is really listening and taking steps to actively improve the adCenter experience.

Device Targeting

Status: Live

AdCenter silently released support for device targeting recently. Device targeting enables Advertisers to choose which Devices their Ads will, or will not, appear on.

By offering this functionality, adCenter empowers Advertisers to create separate Campaigns to bid on devices with different Bids, Keywords, and Ads optimized for each Device.

Device targeting support now includes:

• Smartphones
• Android
• BlackBerry
• iOS
• Windows
• Other
• Tablets
• Android
• BlackBerry
• iOS
• Other

Barry Schwartz previously reported on this release: Microsoft adCenter Increases Ad Description, Adds Budget Widget & More Mobile Targeting Options

My Take: Include this in your 2012 plans

Mobile search is growing rapidly, there is no denying that. I tend to take future predictions with a grain of salt though, as the atmospheric trend lines tend to imply there will be more mobile searches than grains of sand on the planet Earth sometime during the next President’s term of office.

What I do know is that amongst my clients, mobile devices account for roughly 10-15% of our searches happening today, and that number is growing.

Mobile device traffic can have a wildly different Cost Per Acquisition, and may represent a prime candidate for optimizing your bids accordingly. You could also try different Keywords, Ads, etc., and you might be in a unique situation where you actually only want to target one Device vs. another.

For the majority of Advertisers considering carving out separate Mobile Campaigns and weighing that against the cost of implementation and long-term manageability, I’d recommend something like the following equation:

Potential = ((% of total Account Value) * (% increase in Value for new Campaigns)) – Cost of Implementation and Management

Of course, you will have to define what value means for your business. You might start with PPC Profit, Conversions, etc.

Ad Description Length Increased To 71 Characters

Status: Live

AdCenter silently increased the Text Ad Description character limits to 71 recently. This feature makes importing Ads from AdWords easier by accounting for the extra punctuation often required to import Ads from AdWords to adCenter.

My Take: The Little Things Really Do Matter!

Many Advertisers develop on AdWords first then copy to adCenter. Working with AdWords first is a simple matter of prioritizing time and focusing on what will deliver the biggest bang for the buck. This feature fixes a problem you have most likely come across if you have ever imported Ads from AdWords to adCenter.

When you import a Description Line 1 and 2 from AdWords, adCenter adds a space between them to form the single Description used in adCenter. This space accounts for the fact that usually AdWords Ads are crafted to work with a line-break in between them.

However, if you have two Descriptions from AdWords totaling 35 characters each, the extra space brings the total to 71 characters, and ultimately causes the Ad to be rejected in adCenter.

For a process that was supposed to be easy (importing from AdWords to adCenter), this was quite interruptive. Many Advertisers found that it necessitated maintaining different sets of Ads for the two platforms, or adjusting the Ads on AdWords to make room, etc. Going forward, this problem goes away.

In my opinion, this is more strong evidence that the adCenter team is making progress towards making our lives easier and increasing Advertiser time efficiency.

Resources:

• Can Bing & adCenter Bring More To The Table For Large Advertisers?
• adCenter Blog
• Microsoft adCenter Increases Ad Description, Adds Budget Widget & More Mobile Targeting Options

On Wednesday, Feb 1, 2012, we published an article discussing some changes StumbleUpon made during their recent redesign which removed source links from their content pages and forced all users to view content from the site through an iframed toolbar, which they could not close if they were logged in.

One of the things I have always really loved about StumbleUpon is that unlike many social communities, they listen to their users and always try to move the site forward based on user feedback and testing.

After publishing the story, StumbleUpon reached out to me in an effort to explain the changes and to show that they were not just casual decisions they implemented without thought.

I was joined by Mike Mayzel (Director of Communications), Marc Leibowitz (VP of Business Development and Marketing), and Xian Ke (Senior Product Manager), who took the time to understand where I was coming from, listen to suggestions, and give detailed explanations on why the changes where made.

Why Remove Source Links From Info Pages?

Interestingly, only about 1/3 of all StumbleUpon users have the toolbar or some sort of addon installed, while the majority of users have neither and depend on the StumbleBar to keep showing them fresh content.

During testing and user feedback sessions, many users expressed concern that when they clicked on the links from StumbleUpon Info Pages, they were not getting the experience they expected from the site.

They wanted to have the StumbleUpon toolbar and options, so that they could rate the content, comment, and continue viewing other pages in the system. When they found themselves on the source’s site, they were forced to back into StumbleUpon to continue the experience.

“The current implementation was designed to mitigate user confusion about clicking to third party links from StumbleUpon.com (i.e. will they or won’t they be able to continue Stumbling from the pages they clicked on via the web StumbleBar).” 

During the conversation, we discussed some potential solutions and the importance of having source links. The team indicated that they will be “working on adding in direct links that refer back to the source content in a way that minimizes user confusion.”

iFraming Source Content Without An Easy Way To Close The StumbleBar

Again, with the clear number of people who use the iframed toolbar on StumbleUpon (based on StumbleUpons figures), it seems a valid point that they need some way to allow the majority of their users the ability to participate in the site and iframing the content with their toolbar seems like the only option outside of requiring the toolbar be installed in their browser.

As for not allowing people to exit the StumbleBar use, they seem to have a pretty good reason for that as well.

“Under the prior implementation, signed in users accidentally clicked on the X after which there is no way to return back to StumbleUpon.com and resume Stumbling. As a result, we updated the StumbleBar to minimize accidental closures by signed in users. Users can still sign out via the gears menu. As has always been the case, non signed in users can exit the web StumbleBar by clicking the X.”

Some interesting options were discussed, including an option to potentially hide the StumbleBar and also “providing the source link (underlying url) in one of the second level menus (e.g. share, comments or gears).”

The team at StumbleUpon made it very clear in the conversation that they had spent a considerable amount of time listening to user feedback before making the changes. They were also very clear that this is the first version of the changes, and that they would continue to review user feedback, test, and make tweaks as needed.

Do you have an opinion on the changes or thoughts on how they could improve on the current implementation? Please add your comments below, as StumbleUpon definitely reads them and takes them into consideration.

Story Update: February 3, 2012 - StumbleUpon Responds To Concerns About Links & Iframing

StumbleUpon, who happens to be one of the more popular and successful social media sites with over 20 million users (doubling from 10 million in about a year and a half), recently launched one of the biggest redesigns I can remember… basically changing everything about the site as a whole.

Having recently removed blogs, themes, and groups off the site, the new changes continue to move away from any focus on the site and more towards getting users back into the toolbar, whether iframed or installed.

Here is a video StumbleUpon released about the new changes:

One particular change that really surprised me was the removal of all direct links pointing back to the content sources from within StumbleUpon.

Instead on all content pages within StumbleUpon, you have a single button saying ‘Stumble This’, which when clicked takes you to an iframed version of the content.

Not only are they now iframing all content from the site, but if your logged into StumbleUpon, they are not even offering a way to remove the iframed toolbar, leaving you in stuck in the iframed version of the site. If you are not logged in, then there is an option to click X in the right side of the toolbar to remove it.

What is even more surprising is the lack of uprise from the tech industry and marketers on this recent change. When Digg did the same thing by launching their DiggBar, the tech industry was up in arms and the DiggBar even had an option to close, which StumbleUpon’s version does not.

Additionally not a week or two before the change, a StumbleUpon employee discussed with me how happy they were that StumbleUpon pages had so much SEO value for the content owners… well not anymore.

Maybe the iframe concerns people had a few years ago are just a thing of the past, as even Digg re-launched their DiggBar once they saw StumbleUpon get away with it. I for one find it annoying and unnecessary, especially without the ability to remove the toolbar.

Mobile Commerce Is Maturing

Bon Mercado, a mobile product specialist at Google, said that the wide adoption of smart phones in the US (up to 50% have them in 2011) is paving the way for increased search queries, commercial transactions, and unique ad formats. Consumers are now much more comfortable conducting transactions via their device. Bon cited a Priceline statistic that 82% of mobile transactions came on the first visit to the site vs. only 45% on the desktop.

To further drive the point home, he quoted an incredible stat from EBay Motors that 1 in 3 Ferraris purchased on their site came via a mobile device. As consumers continue to buy via their devices, it paves the way for advertising dollars to flow to mobile and creates a more direct connection between online behavior and offline purchasing.

Local Advertising Is Scalable

One area that is starting to see mobile ad growth take off is in the local space. Corey McMahon from AT&T Interactive said that the company’s 1mm local advertisers are starting to take notice of mobile as a scalable and effective channel. He said that while your local pizza parlor may look out of place advertising on a traditional website, within a mobile experience it makes perfect sense, due to the device’s knowledge of your location.

As such, mobile ad networks are starting to be able to monetize their inventory much better through local advertisers than more price sensitive lead gen (or ringtone) folks.

Need For Mobile SEO Growing

As mobile adoption explodes, so will the sheer size and complexity of the mobile web. To that end, two of the panelists (Gideon Rubin from Lenco Mobile and John Cole from AT&T Interactive) cited a growing need for mobile SEO. Cole said that making mobile sites crawlable is essential and developers need to make sure they aren’t just applying desktop techniques, such as using session IDs, to their mobile websites.

Rubin, whose company enables live broadcasts to be consumed on mobile devices, said that it is particularly difficult to do SEO for mobile apps, since these are distributed through a small number of closed marketplaces. He believes that app developers have to lean on social techniques to create buzz about their products and drive distribution, but at the end of the day, a killer product will be the biggest driver of interest and adoption.

New Mobile Formats & Channels Emerging

Finally, Stephanie Schipper, technology and digital strategist at TakePart/Participant Media, wowed the audience with some very impressive statistics around her organization’s ability to drive awareness for a cause and get people to take action. She said that a text campaign around her studio’s Waiting For Superman drove a 50% response rate, since the first thing that people typically do when a movie ends is turn on their cell phones.

Schipper’s example highlights one of the most exciting things about the recent boom in mobile – the most effective ad formats can and should be very different than what we’ve seen to date.

This is a search marketer’s dream, as there is a huge palette of formats and channels to test, as well as a direct and measurable link between a consumer engaging with an ad and taking action in a storefront. It will not be surprising to see the search stars of today become the mobile stars of tomorrow…just look at Sergey Brin.

For mobile search, these changes are launching immediately for Android (version 2.2+) and iOS (version 4.0+) in 40 languages worldwide, including:

• Local icons on mobile interface – Restaurants, Bars, Coffee Shops & More
• Query building
• Interactive results for financial searches
• Goggles now translates into Russian

Local Shortcut Icons On Mobile Homepage

The local icons at the bottom of the mobile search homepage are one of the biggest changes, offering users a way to quickly do location-based searches for some of the most common topics when they’re out and about with their smartphones.

The biggest change on the following mobile search results page is the static map in relation to the list of results which you can scroll through to view details as you view each result in comparison to your current location on the map.  (The map doesn’t move, only the pinpoints.)

For mobile travel searches, or people unfamiliar with a new area, this is definitely a handy feature to have as you explore what’s nearby, particularly if you have a long list of options.

Faster Mobile Searches, Build Better Queries Quicker

The “plus” sign feature was already available in Google Search apps for Android and iOS devices, but now this change is rolling out to standard mobile browsers. You can now build complicated searches more quickly using autocomplete and by tapping suggested words into the search box.

Interactive Financial Queries on Mobile

• Go to google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device (2.1 or later) and search for your favorite stock symbol. You’ll see an interactive graph shown on a card; you can switch views to different date ranges by tapping on the buttons below the graph.

Further details are available on the Google Mobile blog.

But now, with the addition of Site Speed to Google Analytics*, we will be able to understand how load times affect not only search ranking (or ppc quality score), but also how it affects user experience and ultimately, the conversion rates of specific pages and the site as a whole.

The big value of these new metrics is that it enables us to correlate page success and load times.

This is especially important when it comes to landing page optimization, but also when optimizing pages with and without rich media, pages that query a database before loading, and others.

According to this article* in the Google Analytics help section:

The Site Speed report measures the page load time (latency) for a sample of pageviews on your website pages. It appears in the Content section of the Analytics reports. With this report, you can see which pages load the fastest and which ones are slower. You can also analyze your overall site speed along other important dimensions in order to learn how your site speed relates to a variety of factors. For example, you can view your site speed across the following categories:

• Content—which landing pages are slowest?
• Traffic sources—which campaigns correspond to faster page loads overall?
• Visitor—how does latency compare by visitor type or geographic region?
• Technology—does browser, operating system or screen resolution impact latency metrics?

Finally —and most importantly— you can take action to improve page load speed for slower pages and then track latency along these other dimensions to see if your actions resulted in desired improvements.

This release follows two very important launches last month: Google Analytics v5 and the Multi-Channel Funnels. It shows that with the new and improved version of Google Analytics, the development team there has opened new horizons when it comes to adding new features at a very fast pace.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*Note: In order to view Site Speed Reports, your Google Analytics tracking code will need a slight modification; the Google Analytics Help article (referenced above) provides instructions on adding this tracking to your website.

GetGlue makes it easy to share their sports related check-ins via Foursquare and Twitter and more check-ins will lead to sports-related stickers, Fan and SuperFan status, and even Guru designation.

More Sports Partnerships

Besides Foursquare integration, GetGlue announced partnerships with the NHL, Showtime Sports, FOX Sports, the NFL Network, Speed, Fuel TV, Speed, the San Antonio Spurs, and Turner Sports, who handles the NCAA tournaments.

This partnership and major overall update allows users to integrate their Foursquare and GetGlue check-ins, so users can now post updates that include what they are doing, where they are doing it.

This goes beyond sports events, especially because GetGlue allows users to check into not only televised events, but also movies, books, and music.

Examples include:

• “I am watching “The King’s Speech” (GetGlue) @ AMC Theatre (FourSquare)”
• “I am reading “The Hunger Games” @ “New York Public Library”

More Initiatives & Rewards

The GetGlue iPhone and website update also showcases several new features that promote user activity.

According to GetGlue, the update includes:

• Check-ins: New check-in flow including Recent Check-ins, Featured Stickers and Fan Club.
• Rewards: Tiered rewards and specials for all GetGlue fans of shows, teams, movies, etc.
• Suggestions: New Suggestions screen featuring fresh weekly picks based on user’s tastes.
• Trends: Trending shows, movies, music, books, etc. refreshed every 10 minutes based on activity on GetGlue.

Impacting The Social Web

As I mentioned in my previous column, Engaging in Entertainment Social Networks, which was about the growth of these types of check-in services, GetGlue’s integration with Foursquare gives them a major leap forward when it comes to combining all social networks.

Their “Trending” feature is similar to Twitter’s Trending Topics, and ‘Suggestions’ is reminiscent to Facebook’s Suggested Friends feature.

Badges and Rewards provide the initiative that has made FourSquare and Gowalla so successful.

GetGlue’s interpretation of what works for other social networks and making it work for the entertainment social network vertical allows them to enjoy all the collaboration tools of Twitter or Facebook while remaining a valuable and popular social networking tool.

I’m still trying to figure that out myself, despite having attended the event.

Overall, it was fairly interesting, the crowd seemed to enjoy it, but many were there for the “Social Network” guy, thinking he was just like the character in the movie – those people, I believe, were surprised by his cheerful demeanor. I was there to see what Zuck said about privacy, technology.

Senator Hatch, who apparently acts as chair of the U.S. Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, invited the typically shy Zuckerberg to speak to a crowd of nearly 10,000 in the university’s Marriott Event Center to talk about technology and policy.

Mark Zuckerberg Speaks to Crowd of 10,000 at Brigham Young University in Utah

For his first time speaking to such a large crowd, and first time ever speaking at a college or university event, he admitted he was a little nervous, but settled in quickly and seemed pretty comfortable for most of the interview, not withstanding a few awkward moments.

Senator & Social Network Founder Talk Shop?

When this event was announced two weeks ago, BYU requested questions to be submitted via their official Facebook page (of course!), resulting in about 450 possible questions.

Senator Hatch probably asked Zuckerberg less than 10 questions in the 45 minute discussion, but by the second question, Mark turned the tables on him — “Do I get to ask you questions, too?”

The first question Zuckerberg asked the Senator revolved around government’s role in business, particularly with respect to regulation. Mark asked Hatch, “How does the government see the evolution of the Internet and technology – what do you think the government can do to encourage startups?”

Senator Hatch quickly responded with, “probably the best thing would be for us to stay out of the way”, and that he “personally prefers keeping innovation alive,” as opposed to overly regulating. He was quick to say that in some cases, regulation is necessary of course, but in most, it’s better to stay out of the way.

Mark Zuckerberg & Senator Orrin Hatch BYU Tech Facebook Forum

Overall,  most of the conversation was light-hearted, and a couple other attempts by Zuckerberg to pump the the Senator for answers were quickly deflected by Hatch: “I’m sure they (the audience) are much more interested in what you have to say”.

Privacy, Policy, Innovation & Social Networking’s Future

A couple points in the discussion more interesting to the business attendees than the students, might include Zuckerberg’s suggestion that many startups could come challenge the social network and similar technologies at any time, by simply being focused on building something better in an open environment:

“We believe there will be much better services for all the people who use Facebook if millions of people around the world can develop those services. A good independent entrepreneur should always be able to do something better than a division of a company.”

On the topic of privacy and safety issues, Zuckerberg was very firm in all his responses, starting with “If you go back 10 years, people were very afraid of sharing anything on the Internet,” boldly stating that people became more comfortable with Facebook because “we have extremely robust privacy controls…. We are really focused on safety, especially on children’s safety.”

When Hatch asked him what the key role of social media technology was with respect to dealing with some of our most important issues, Zuckerberg probably missed the mark slightly by not talking about the way social media can raise instant awareness for key topics (someone behind me shouted out “Egypt”) or money for natural disaster relief, but he did speak vaguely about “grassroots connectivity”, and that “information about businesses or governance issues can be spread through society much more easily”.

He pointed out that one developer at Facebook created Peace.Facebook.com, where the site tracks and measures friendships being formed around the world, and that is interesting to him because of the relationships developing between people in countries historically divided by politics or wars.

“Empathy is develooping in the world who otherwise may not have had an ability to connect, we ARE all connected, we just don’t fully understand it yet.”  - Mark Zuckerberg

On the topic of Facebook advertising, Senator Hatch tried to appeal to the young crowd – “Are you worried that Ads will take away from Facebook’s coolness?”

Mark: I think everyone likes the service being free. (wild applause and cheers)

He continued, “that’s the bare minimum of how you need to think about ads; that’s the way you can use the service without paying for it. We don’t sell your information, people trust us, so that’s important for us.”

He really spent a fair amount of time talking about the “misconception” that advertisers can access your personal information, but rather, that Facebook does the targeting based on advertiser selection.

(Admittedly, that’s a raw, very broad view of FB advertising – but remember who the audience is.)

Also of particular interest to online marketers might be this video clip from the BYU appearance in which  Mark Zuckerberg speaks about how businesses are now using the Internet to interact with consumers instead of hide, and suggests that the dynamic between the two will become even more open:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can see more photos from the event on the official BYU Facebook page here. There’s also a quick write up with some other key quotes on the BYU news page here.

Notable Notes

We learned that Zuckerberg is going to be a dad! (Or so we thought we heard him say at one point, that his long-time girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, is pregnant – she’s not, we learned when trying to confirm whether he said that, or that she’s ‘preparing to be a pediatrician’ – she’s also in medical school in the Bay Area.)

He did say their dinner conversation of late has been regarding the future of education, particularly with regards to Math, Sciences and Technology disciplines.

This prompted an interesting bit of back and forth on government’s role in improving national education.

Live tweets contained some other interesting sound bites, but they weren’t really well organized under a single hashtag, although not surprising that they didn’t ask everyone to use the same one – but some of the more popular ones are: #Zuckerberg, #ZuckUT , #FBforum & #BYU.

Attendance was free, so many members of the Utah technology crowd attended — including employees and executives from Adobe/Omniture and several recognizable SEO agencies (SEO.com, BlueGlass.com co-founder & SEL Contributor Jordan Kasteler) as well as other e-commerce and social media players, bloggers, marketing firms and Internet entrepreneurs based here in Utah, or as we like to say, the “Silicon Slopes”. Look for all their tweets from the event in the above hashtags.

Passion = Success

Since the audience was mainly college students, a lot of the discussion centered around how Facebook and Zuckerberg became so successful, and Hatch asked what could the students learn from his experience – prompting a wild applause when Mark started with, “So, I wasn’t in school for that long…” before he talked about what he did learn as both a Computer Science and Psychology Major taking highly theoretical and practical tech courses.

Mark’s advice to budding entrepreneurs: “you really have to love and believe in what you’re doing, that’s the most important thing…if you don’t, it becomes an irrational thing you’re doing”.

Hatch: “You didn’t even graduate from Harvard and yet, you’re running one of the most important agencies in the world…you’re brilliant and your passion drives you”.

Zuckerberg also brought along three BYU alumni who currently work at Facebook, and Hatch later asked what they look for in potential employees.

Zuckerberg said they mainly “look for people who are passion about something – in a way, it doesn’t matter what you are passion about, we cover a lot of different things, make a lot of products. We look at what you took the initiative to build or take on on your own”.

“We don’t want people to work at Facebook because of what it already is, but because they want Facebook to become something else / what they think it should be.”

In the next few weeks (no specific timeline has been shared yet), Kayak will begin serving flight search results to Bing to give customers additional results for flights in the “U.S. from multiple cities, airports and airlines, giving customers access to a larger set of flight itineraries.”

The Kayak flight search data will supplement existing Bing Travel tools including Price Predictor, Flights Answers and more.

Bing Travel also made a point to include in the blog post the following statement:

[Bing Travel Supports Competition and Innovation – www.Fairsearch.org]

The report mainly covers key issues in scaling automation across larger enterprises, integration of IT services and in-house marketing, and improving measurement of SEO impact beyond just search result rankings. There’s a features comparison chart which includes technology integrations available with each tool, including web analytics packages and lead tracking through Salesforce.

Key Report Findings

• 85% of enterprise marketers plan on employing organic SEO strategies in the coming year.
• Automation tools work best for those with dedicated in-house resources, able to make strategic decisions using the data.
• Using standalone technology (opposed to agency tools) offers cost efficiencies to some organizations.
• Agency and Consultant partnerships with automation technology vendors may grow to offload tactical work.

While there’s nothing necessarily earth-shattering in the report, it is nice to see some information supporting SEO collaboration with IT departments and raise the value of SEO within larger organizations, so it’s worth a quick read.

Conductor, one of the vendors named in the report, purchased distribution rights to the report, and is offering a free download of the PDF to share with industry followers.

Additionally, the report also references The Search Marketing Vendor Landscape, 2010 also released today by Forrester, and available for $499. That report notes 47% of marketers total search budget is spent on agencies and technology. On average, 19% of the budgets go toward purchased technologies.