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  • Tumblr Launches More Ads (Desktop Dashboard)

    Tumblr announced today that it will start to bring sponsored posts to users’ dashboards on the web.

    “Just like in our mobile apps, these posts will simply blend in with the posts from the blogs you follow,” the company says in a short blog post.

    Sponsored posts were launched for the mobile dashboard last month. Launch partners included Ford, Universal, Viacom, Denny’s, Purina, Capital One and AT&T.

    “Since we launched our first sponsored post on Tumblr Radar one year ago, we’ve been proud to see our partners bring their most creative work to Tumblr,” the company says. “Their posts have already earned more than 10 million likes and reblogs”.

    The dollar sign (pictured) is an indication that a post is an ad, and matches those used on the Radar ads.

    As TechCrunch points out, people (teenagers) are “freaking out” about the ads, which is to be expected. The initial freak-out period will no doubt die down, as people realize the ads are pretty much like everything else you see on Tumblr anyway. The format hasn’t done much to alienate users from Facebook or Twitter either.

    Yahoo, of course, announced that an agreement to acquire Tumblr earlier this month, along with plans to put more ads on it.

  • Google Warns: You Better Adequately Disclose Paid Content

    Google has been enforcing its policies on paid links for years, but the search engine is really cracking down on advertorials and native advertising these days. Google’s Matt Cutts has been talking about the subject a lot lately, so if your site offers any advertorial content, you better make sure you’re doing it the right way, under Google’s guidance, or you just might find yourself slapped with a harsh penalty independent of any black and white animal-named algorithms.

    Native advertising is rising in popularity on the web. Do you think Google can enforce its guidelines on this well? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Earlier this month, Cutts put out a video talking about a bunch of big SEO-related changes Google is working on, and that webmasters could expect to see over the coming months. The video discussed the most recent Penguin update, which we’ve already seen take effect. One of the other things Cutts mentioned was the use of advertorials and native advertising. He said Google would be “looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement” on that stuff.

    Now, Cutts has a new video talking for five minutes specifically about Google’s policies on advertorials and native advertising. Yes, they’re taking this seriously, so you should too, if you’re at all concerned about your Google rankings.

    “Well, it’s advertising, but it’s often the sort of advertising that looks a little closer to editorial, but it basically means that someone gave you some money, rather than you writing about this naturally because you thought it was interesting or because you wanted to,” says Cutts. “So why do I care about this? Why are we making a video about this at all? Well, the reason is, certainly within the webspam team, we’ve seen a little bit of problems where there’s been advertorial or native advertising content or paid content, that hasn’t really been disclosed adequately, so that people realize that what they’re looking at was paid. So that’s a problem. We’ve had longstanding guidance since at least 2005 I think that says, ‘Look, if you pay for links, those links should not pass PageRank,’ and the reason is that Google, for a very long time, in fact, everywhere on the web, people have mostly treated links as editorial votes.”

    The video links to a Webmaster Central blog post from 2007, written by Cutts and Maile Ohye.

    “Such links can hurt relevance by causing inaccuracies (false popularity and links that are not fundamentally based on merit, relevance, or authority and inequities (unfair advantage in our organic search results to websites with the biggest pocketbooks.”

    “In order to stay within Google’s quality guidelines, paid links should be disclosed through a rel=’nofollow’ or other techniques such as doing a redirect through a page which is robots.txt’ed out,” they wrote.

    “Other techniques” in that sentence linked to Google’s page about Link Schemes.

    “Well, there’s two-fold things that you should think about,” says Cutts in the video. “The first is on the search engine side of things, and search engine wise, you should make sure that if links are paid – that is if money changed hands in order for a link to be placed on a website – that it should not flow PageRank. In essence, it shouldn’t affect search engines’ rankings. That’s no different than the guidance we’ve had for years, and years, and years.”

    The video, again, suggests using rel=”nofollow”.

    “Likewise, if you are doing disclosure, you need to make sure that it’s clear to people,” he adds. “A good rule of thumb is that there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure. It shouldn’t be the case that people have to dig around, buried in small print or have to click and look around a long time to find out, ‘Oh, this content that I’m reading was actually paid.’”

    The video suggests using text like “Advertisement” or “Sponsored” to make advertorial content clear to users. In other words, it’s not enough to just slap a rel=”nofollow” on the links. You need to make sure it’s clear to users who aren’t necessarily (and most likely aren’t) looking for that.

    “So why are we talking about this now?” Cutts continues. “This isn’t a change in our search engine policy. Certainly not in the webspam team. Well, the reason is that we’ve seen some people who have not been doing it correctly. So we’ve seen, for example, in the United Kingdom, a few sites that have been taking money, and writing articles that were paid, and including keyword-rich anchor text in those articles that flowed PageRank, and then not telling anybody that those were paid articles. And that’s the sort of thing where if a regular user happened to be reading your website, and didn’t know that it was paid, they’d really be pretty frustrated and pretty angry when they found out that it was paid.”

    Back in February Google slapped a major UK flower site, Interflora, for the issue at hand. While Google itself didn’t specifically call out the company by name, right after reports about it came out, Cutts put out a “reminder” about selling links on the Webmaster Central blog.

    “Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or ‘advertorial’ pages on your site that pass PageRank,” he wrote. “Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations. The consequences for a linkselling site start with losing trust in Google’s search results, as well as reduction of the site’s visible PageRank in the Google Toolbar. The consequences can also include lower rankings for that site in Google’s search results.”

    “So, we’ve taken action on this sort of thing for years and years, and we’re going to keep taking strong action,” says Cutts in the video. “We do think it’s important to be able to figure out whether something is paid or not on the web, and it’s not just the webspam team. It’s not just search quality and web search results. The Google News team recently published on their blog, and said that if you don’t provide adequate disclosure of paid content – whether it be native advertising, advertorials – whenever there’s money changing hand, if users don’t realize that sufficiently because there’s not adequate disclosure, the Google News team mentioned that they might not only remove the paid content, but we’re willing to go up to and including removing the publication from Google News.”

    We covered what the Google News team had to say about it here.

    “Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site,” wrote Google Sr. Director of News and Social Products, Richard Gingras. “It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article. Google News is not a marketing service, and we consider articles that employ these types of promotional tactics to be in violation of our quality guidelines.”

    “Please remember that like Google search, Google News takes action against sites that violate our quality guidelines,” he added. “Engagement in deceptive or promotional tactics such as those described above may result in the removal of articles, or even the entire publication, from Google News.”

    Interestingly, despite Google’s long-standing policy, native advertising spend is on the rise. It’s expected to reach $4.57 billion in 2017, compared to $1.63 billion last year and a projected $2.36 billion this year.

    Cutts did say in the earlier video, “There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial.”

    In case you’re still not convinced that Google is cracking down on this stuff, a couple weeks ago, Cutts tweeted that Google had just took action on thousands of linksellers.

    Be warned.

    Do you think native advertising is a good direction for online ads to be trending in? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • Google Adds Bulk Uploads For Ads, Ad Groups In AdWords

    Google announced bulk uploads for ads and ad groups in AdWords today.

    “Imagine you download a report from the Ads tab and want to test different creatives in ad groups that are underperforming,” writes AdWords Product Manager Prashant Baheti. “You might also want to turn off certain ad groups, or change the budget for others. Instead of toggling back and forth between AdWords and your spreadsheets, you can now download reports from the Ads and Ad Groups tabs, make changes directly in your spreadsheet, and upload them directly to your account.”

    “Uploading changes to your ads and ad groups is simple,” adds Baheti. “Just like with keywords, when you download a report you will be prompted to make the report ‘editable.’”

    Editable

    After making changes, you can save in CSV, TSV and Excel formats. To upload ,click Reports and Uploads on the left side, and then select Uploads. From there, you will see the Upload Type column. You can only upload one report type at a time. If you want to make bulk changes to both keywords and ad creatives, this must be done separately.

    Once you bulk upload, there’s no way to cancel the automatically reverse the changes. Something to keep in mind.

  • Google Could Be In For Another FTC Antitrust Probe

    The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is considering opening up a new antitrust probe into Google’s businesses practices once again, according to reports. This one would not be into Google’s search business, but its display advertising business.

    Bloomberg cites sources who wished not to be named, as saying the FTC is in the “preliminary stages” of a probe into whether the company “is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition,” but that it “may not expand into a larger probe.” Bloomberg’s Brian Womack and Sara Forden report:

    FTC investigators are examining whether Google is using its position in U.S. display ads — a $17.7 billion industry that includes the sale of banner ads on websites — to push companies to use more of its other services, a practice that can be illegal under antitrust laws, the people said.

    A similar report has come out from Reuters, who says its source said, “it was unlikely that the Federal Trade Commission had sent out civil investigative demands in relation to the probe, which would be the sign of a formal and more serious investigation.” Reuters reports:

    The new line of inquiry focuses on tools acquired when Google bought display ad company DoubleClick in 2007; other firms which specialize in helping Web publishers sell ads to put on their websites are complaining to the FTC, the source said.

    The firms have accused Google of leveraging some of its most popular DoubleClick products, such as the ad managing system which has an estimated 80 percent of the market, to push websites to use other products, including Ad Exchange where websites swap ads, the source said.

    Google, which is not commenting on the prospect of a new investigation has apparently not been contacted about one.

    Google continues to face various antitrust probes around the world, including in Europe, Canada, Argentina and South Korea.

  • Twitter Has Marketers And Advertisers In Mind This Week

    Twitter is letting loose a lot of new advertising and marketing offerings. Earlier this week, Twitter launched a new Lead Generation card for mareters.

    Today, the company announced the availability of TV ad targeting, which has been developed through its acquisition of Bluefin Labs. Twitter says it’s designed to make it easier to extend and enhance TV ad campaigns. The offering is now available for Promoted Tweets in limited beta to select partners running national TV commercials in the U.S.

    “TV ad targeting enables marketers to engage directly with people on Twitter who have been exposed to their ads on TV,” says Twitter Revenue Product Manager Michael Fleischman. “Synchronized Twitter and TV ad campaigns make brand messages more engaging, interactive and measurable, while making it easy for marketers to run always-on Twitter campaigns that complement and amplify their TV creative.”

    Twitter is giving advertisers a new TV ads dashboard, which shows when a brand’s TV ads have aired.

    TV Ads Dashboard

    “This will help digital teams align not only with what’s shown on TV and when, but give insight into how Promoted Tweets can be crafted in the most effective ways to build upon broader marketing themes,” says Fleischman. “TV ad targeting works by using video fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV, without requiring that advertiser to do any manual tracking or upload media plan details. Whenever a commercial airs during a TV show, Twitter not only determines where and when it ran, but can identify users on Twitter who tweeted about the program where the ad aired during that program. We believe a user engaged enough with a TV show to tweet about it very likely saw the commercials as well.”

    Twitter also announced a new wave of multi-screen partners today, and named the partnership program Twitter Amplify. New partners (which join BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel) include: A&E, theAudience, Bloomberg TV, Clear Channel, Conde Nast, Discovery, MLB.com, National Cinemedia, New York Magazine, PGA Tour, PMC, Time Inc., VEVO, Warner Music, WWE and VICE.

    According to Bloomberg, Twitter plans to release a tool similar to Facebook’s custom-audience feature as well.

  • Kmart’s ‘Big Gas Savings’ Ad May Make You Ship Your Pants

    Kmart is killing it with the ads as of late. Last month, the retailer came out of left field and dropped a contender for funniest ad of year with “Ship My Pants.”

    Like that ad, Kmart’s new ad “Big Gas Saving” makes use of a language trick to make the innocent sound a bit salty. Man, those sure are some big gas savings.

    The “Ship My Pants” ad currently boasts over 17.3 million views on YouTube. I think you can call that a massive success for any ad. With the new spot, Kmart has created another winner.

    Check it out:

    With “Ship My Pants,” Kmart saw a lot of social media support, mostly thanks a well-advertised Twitter hashtag. This time, people are continuing the trend of hashtagging their delight with the ad:

  • Twitter Launches Lead Generation Card For Marketers

    Twitter announced the launch of a new card for marketers today – the Lead Generation Card.

    Twitter cards, in general, let you attach media experiences to tweets, which link to your content. You can add a few lines of HTML to your pages, and those who tweet your content will have a “card” added to the tweet.

    “The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form,” explains Twitter Revenue Product Manager Mitali Pattnaik. “When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.”

    Lead Generation

    The company has been testing the Lead Generation Card with brands like New Relic, Full Sail and Priceline. According to Twitter, feedback has been positive, and beta participants found the cards to be low cost-per-lead compared to other services.

    The cards will only be available for Twitter’s managed clients at this point, but will launch globally and to small and medium sized businesses in the near future.

  • Can Yahoo Keep Its Promise Of Not ‘Screwing Up’ Tumblr?

    On Monday, Yahoo announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the massively popular social blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Like most major Internet acquisitions, the move has proven controversial.

    Is this acquisition going to be good or bad for Tumblr users? Good or bad for Yahoo? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    Even before the acquisition was announced formally, a lot of users who got wind of the deal started jumping ship to alternative platforms. WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg wrote a blog post on Sunday night about a huge spike in imports from Tumblr.

    “Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000,” he wrote.

    He later updated the post to say that some people are reading too much into those numbers, adding, “I don’t think there will be an exodus from Tumblr.”

    In the comments section, he said, “I don’t think there will be any sort of exodus from Tumblr. For most folks habits overcome internet-outrage. Even if a million people left, that’s just about a week’s worth of signups.”

    We haven’t seen an update on the number of imports now that the deal has been officially public for a day, but my guess is that it has increased significantly.

    A petition to “Stop Yahoo! from Buying Tumblr” quickly racked up nearly 169,000 signatures. Of course there is no way that this will actually keep the deal from happening, but it does show that there is a great deal of discontent among users (and you have to think there are many more with a similar attitude who did not bother to sign, or even see the petition).

    User concerns have ranged from “Yahoo is going to make Tumblr uncool” to “Yahoo is going to clutter up Tumblr with ads” to “Yahoo is going to eliminate porn on Tumblr” among other things.

    Yahoo and Tumblr have both indicated from the start that they “promise not to screw it up”. Here’s a line straight out of the press release:

    Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. David Karp will remain CEO. The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.

    Yahoo says Tumblr will deploy Yahoo’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to “help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love”. This could actually be a good thing for Tumblr, as its current content discovery features could use a great deal of improvement.

    “Tumblr is redefining creative expression online,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. “On many levels, Tumblr and Yahoo! couldn’t be more different, but, at the same time, they couldn’t be more complementary. Yahoo is the Internet’s original media network. Tumblr is the Internet’s fastest-growing media frenzy. Both companies are homes for brands – established and emerging. And, fundamentally, Tumblr and Yahoo! are both all about users, design, and finding surprise and inspiration amidst the everyday.”

    “Our team isn’t changing,” said Tumblr CEO David Karp. “Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission — to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve — certainly isn’t changing. But we’re elated to have the support of Yahoo! and their team who share our dream to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from.”

    His statements in a blog post were a little more colorful.

    So, let’s address some of those concerns users have.

    1. Will Yahoo make Tumblr uncool?

    Well, this is obviously subjective. To some, simply being part of a major corporation makes you uncool. It certainly didn’t help Myspace. Yahoo itself hasn’t exactly been considered “cool” by portions of the Internet in recent years either, however, the company is making a lot of moves (particularly since Mayer took over as CEO) to change things. That includes some big acquisitions and some new apps.

    In fact, even since the Tumblr announcement, Yahoo announced a major revamp of its popular photography service, Flickr. This is a property that has historically had a massive following, and has remained one of Yahoo’s bright spots throughout the dark times, but through the revolving door of CEOs in recent years, many think Flickr has been neglected. Well, no more. You can read about the new experience here.

    Other recent Yahoo acquisitions include: Loki Studios (mobile gaming), MileWise (travel search), GoPollGo (real-time surveys), Astrid (productivity), Summly (news aggregation/summarization), Jybe (social recommendation), Alike (social recommendation), Snip.it (social), OnTheAir (video chat) and Stamped (recommendation). These are all under Mayer. Tumblr makes 11 acquisitions (or at least announcements) since October. The company made only that many from February 2008 all the way up to this past October, with the last one before October coming in November, 2011.

    So while it remains to be seen if Yahoo can truly become cool again, it is at least trying its damnedest, and spending a lot of money to do so. Whether that translates into making Tumblr uncool, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

    Hunter Walk, the director of Product Management at Google, who focuses on YouTube, wrote an interesting blog post called, “Don’t Mess Up Tumblr: Five Lessons Learned From YouTube”. In a nutshell, his lessons are: protect Tumblr from “helpful” Yahoos, avoid locality bias in product development, stop short term monetization that won’t scale, infrastructure (tech, process) on Tumblr terms, and separate identity/separate space.

    “When Google purchased YouTube there was lots of skepticism and outright derision,” Walk recalls. “Today analysts estimate its enterprise value is approaching $20 billion. So I guess it all worked out, eh? Being one of the first Googlers to join YouTube after the acquisition taught me a lot about what works, and doesn’t work, when you bring a fast growing community property into a larger entity. There are clearly parallels between our situation in 2007 and what Tumblr will experience with Yahoo. Marissa is a friend from our time together at Google and I’m impressed, but not surprised, by her decisiveness and vision. I don’t know David Karp but we share a number of mutual friends and at a 2012 group dinner he passed me the salt, so we’ve got that.”

    He goes on to elaborate on each of the lessons.

    2. Is Yahoo going to clutter up Tumblr with ads?

    I guess it depends on your definition of clutter, but it does look like Tumblr will be getting some new ads. At least one report indicates that they could come as soon as today.

    Mayer said flat out in the announcement that the two companies will be working together to create advertising opportunities that are “seamless and enhance user experience”.

    Business Insider has some more from the conference call about deal:

    Mayer says that Yahoo released “Yahoo Stream Ads” in May, which take text ads and put them in the news stream on Yahoo.com. She says you can expect more of that on Tumblr. On Tumblr, there is the dashboard, which is like Facebook’s News Feed or inbox. Today, Tumblr does some advertising there. Yahoo would like to “introduce a very light ad load” there. Yahoo also might work with some bloggers who want ads on their blogs. That would only be done with permission. Mayer says the ad units will be native and follow the form and function of Tumblr. She says that you can tell interests of users.

    In fact, Business Insider also managed to obtain Tumblr’s ad sales pitch deck describing the ad experience to potential clients.

    “With Tumblr’s newest ad product, brands finally are front and center, with the world’s greatest creators,” one of the slides says. “Welcome to the richest content stream in the world.”

    According to the pitch deck, the ads will be delivered directly in the native dashboard streams of millions of users. The “Web In-Stream” product is in beta, and Tumblr is offering an exclusive launch partnership opportunity to a handful of select brands for the ad unit’s debut, according to the slides, which say that all Tumblr post types are supported. Partners are apparently being offered category-exclusivity.

    For $200K, according to the slides, partners can get ten desktop Radar posts within a 30-day span (between May 21 and July 21), 24 hours each for 5% of all Dashboard page views, support from the Tumblr team, U.S. guaranteed impression serving only, over 25 million dashboard impressions ($8.00CPM on Radar impressions), and multi-week exposure as premier sponsor in Spotlight. They also get ninety-day access to Tumblr Analytics and three weeks as an exclusive beta in-stream launch sponsor partner with ten in-stream posts within a 21 day span (June 1 and June 21).

    Regardless of what users think of the ads, businesses will certainly have new opportunities with Tumblr’s massive audience.

    3. Is Yahoo going to eliminate porn on Tumblr?

    Regardless of whether or not you consider porn to be a taboo subject, it makes a big difference in Tumblr’s stats. Tumblr is full of it. If Tumblr gets rid of it, it’s going to drive away some percentage of users, not to mention become less cool to some percentage of users.

    Mayer was asked about it at the Flickr event on Monday evening. She said they will not censor content. “No, we won’t,” she is quoted as saying. “It’s the nature of user-generated content.”

    It doesn’t stop YouTube, but, Mayer probably earned some “cool” points with that one.

    Tumblr currently has over 300 million monthly unique visitors, and gets 120,000 signups every day. It sees 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes are spent on the site each month. Over half of its users are using the mobile app, and on average, participate in seven sessions per day. Yahoo expects the acquisition to grow its audience by fifty percent to over a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by about twenty percent.

    The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the second half of the year.

    Was this a good acquisition for Yahoo? Will this hurt or benefit Tumblr users? Can Yahoo become cool again? Is Yahoo already cool again? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    Image: NMA (YouTube)

  • Tumblr is Getting New Ads Even Sooner Than You Thought

    You no doubt know by now that Yahoo announced that it has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Right from the start, CEO Marissa Mayer has said that the company will be looking into putting more ads into the Tumblr experience.

    “In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love,” she said in the announcementl. “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”

    On a conference call Monday, she said we could expect more ads like Yahoo’s “Yahoo Stream” ads on Tumblr, and that they would introduce a “very light ad load” on the dashboard, and might work with bloggers who want ads on their blogs. Ad units would be native.

    Well, we might be seeing some new ads sooner rather than later. Tumblr will be launching a test of in-stream ads on desktop users’ dashboards as soon as Tuesday, according to Business Insider, who has obtained Tumblr’s ad sales pitch deck. Here’s the first of a handful of a slides, BI shared:

    Tumblr ads

    “With Tumblr’s newest ad product, brands finally are front and center, with the world’s greatest creators,” one of the slides says. “Welcome to the richest content stream in the world.”

    According to the pitch deck, the ads will be delivered directly in the native dashboard streams of millions of users. The “Web In-Stream” product is in beta, and Tumblr is offering an exclusive launch partnership opportunity to a handful of select brands for the ad unit’s debut, according to the slides, which say that all Tumblr post types are supported. Partners are apparently being offered category-exclusivity.

    For $200K, according to the slides, partners can get ten desktop Radar posts within a 30-day span (between May 21 and July 21), 24 hours each for 5% of all Dashboard page views, support from the Tumblr team, U.S. guaranteed impression serving only, over 25 million dashboard impressions ($8.00CPM on Radar impressions), and multi-week exposure as premier sponsor in Spotlight. They also get ninety-day access to Tumblr Analytics and three weeks as an exclusive beta in-stream launch sponsor partner with ten in-stream posts within a 21 day span (June 1 and June 21).

    A lot of Tumblr users are already freaking out.

  • Google Combines Keyword Tool, Traffic Estimator Into Keyword Planner

    Google Combines Keyword Tool, Traffic Estimator Into Keyword Planner

    Google has combined the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator into one tool called the Keyword Planner.

    “Behind every successful AdWords campaign are well planned out keywords and ad groups,” says AdWords product manager Deepti Bhatnagar. “In the past, you may have relied on tools like the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to identify new keywords and ad groups, get traffic estimates, and choose competitive bids and budgets. Over time however, we’ve heard from you that having two tools for search campaign building was cumbersome.”

    “We’re constantly working to simplify the process of building campaigns, and today we’re happy to announce the launch of a new tool, Keyword Planner, which combines the functionality of the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator into a smooth, integrated workflow,” says Bhatnagar. “You can use Keyword Planner to find new keyword and ad group ideas, get performance estimates for them to find the bid and budget that are right for you, and then add them to your campaigns.”

    The tool also comes with some new features, including the ability to find new keyword and ad group ideas by “multiplying” keywords (combining two or more lists to generate new keywords. It will now let you target individual cities and regions within a country.

    It also lets you add keyword and group ideas to a “plan,” which Google describes as a shopping cart of ideas that you can add to a current or new campaign.

    For more on plans and on the tool in general, read this.

    The Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator will be sunsetting in about sixty days.

  • Yahoo Is Going To Put Ads Into Your Tumblr Feed

    As you probably know by now, Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr. Why would they buy it if they weren’t going to monetize it?

    Tumblr users can expect some ads to be hitting their streams.

    “In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in her announcement of the deal. “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”

    Business Insider has more from the conference call about the acquisition:

    Mayer says that Yahoo released “Yahoo Stream Ads” in May, which take text ads and put them in the news stream on Yahoo.com. She says you can expect more of that on Tumblr. On Tumblr, there is the dashboard, which is like Facebook’s News Feed or inbox. Today, Tumblr does some advertising there. Yahoo would like to “introduce a very light ad load” there. Yahoo also might work with some bloggers who want ads on their blogs. That would only be done with permission. Mayer says the ad units will be native and follow the form and function of Tumblr. She says that you can tell interests of users.

    As the animated GIF in Yahoo’s announcement says, “Don’t panic.”

    Still, many are panicking. It doesn’t take long to see an overwhelming amount of negative reactions about the deal with a quick “Yahoo” search on Tumblr.com.

    And of course, someone has already set up a “Yahoo Staff” parody account under the “Yahoo-Overlords” handle, with the initial post:

    hello friends we are excited to ruin your website have a nice day

  • Native Advertising Trend Has Some (Including Google) Concerned

    Native advertising spend is on the rise, and is expected to reach $4.57 billion in 2017. For comparison, last year it was at $1.63 billion, and is projected to hit $2.36 billion this year.

    When we talk about native advertising, we’re talking about the kind of ads that take the form of content that users might expect to see on the site anyway. This can come in the form of videos, images, articles, tweets, status updates or other media, but all in all, it’s a trend that is rising quickly. Even as the trend is clearly pointing upward, some are concerned about what this means for the future of content and paid messaging, as a new eMarketer report indicates.

    Do you think native advertising is a good direction for online ads to be trending in? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    For a better understanding of native advertising, take a look at this infographic Solve Media put out a few months ago (via Mashable), attempting to explain it:

    Native Advertising

    Despite those trying to draw lines between adverotirals and native advertising, Google pretty much sees them as going hand in hand. This makes sense, because either way, it’s a message that is being paid for, and if it’s being paid for, and it’s passing PageRank, that is a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and will get you penalized.

    In fact, while this is already something Google has frowned upon, the company has recently indicated that it will be cracking down on this more, so beware of that.

    We recently looked at a video from Google’s Matt Cutts in which he ran down a lot of the changes Google is planning on making in the coming months, and he specifically talked about advertorials and native advertising during part of it. Here’s the video again, in case you missed it:

    “We’ve also been looking at advertorials,” he said. “That is sort of native advertising – and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines. So, again, if someone pays for coverage, or pays for an ad or something like that, those ads should not flow PageRank. We’ve seen a few sites in the U.S. and around the world that take money and do link to websites, and pass PageRank, so we’ll be looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement as advertorials that violate our quality guidelines.”

    “There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial,” he added.

    So, even as we see more and more of this kind of advertising saturating the web, webmasters better make sure they’re not also saturating Google’s index, because the search giant will not be shy about holding your site accountable, and that could have the opposite effect from the one you intended with the advertorial in the first place. Good luck finding advertisers when your site can’t be found in Google.

    Beyond Google, as mentioned, others are also concerned about the native advertising trend.

    “Although business prospects for native advertising are positive, the medium has its detractors,” says eMarketer. “Some media executives and marketers are wary of the blurring of lines between content and advertising that occurs with native ads, particularly in the context of news sites. Others question the return on investment of these ads, arguing that native ads cannot scale for multiple placements.”

    They point to recent research from MediaBrix, which found that a high percentage of U.S. Internet users find ads that appear as content misleading:

    Misleading ads

    “Despite the potential backlash against misunderstood native ads, media sites under monetization pressure are turning to native advertising to drive digital revenue,” says eMarketer. “Notable examples include Forbes, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Others such as CNN and Hearst have said they are considering it.”

    You can find eMarketer’s report here.

    Are you concerned about native ads, or is this the future of online marketing? Let us know in the comments.

  • Watch The Latest Webinars On Google’s Enhanced Campaigns

    Google has released a couple of recent webinars regarding AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. As advertisers continue to adjust to the changes ahead of the complete transition, there is plenty to learn.

    These particular webinars deal with Google+ and Enhanced Campaigns and campaign management and strategies for upgrading. They combine for about 90 minutes of information.

    Earlier this week, Google revealed that about two million AdWords campaigns have been set to enhanced, up from 1.5 last month, when Google held its Q1 earnings call.

    If you haven’t made the transition yet, you might want to check out this tutorial on the Enhanced Campaigns Upgrade Center.

    All campaigns will be upgraded automatically on July 22nd.

  • Mozilla Has Decided Not To Block Cookies In Firefox Just Yet

    Online advertisers have been nervous the past few weeks as Mozilla moved forward with its plans to block third-party cookies by default in its Firefox browser. Some advertiser groups have even claimed that Mozilla’s policy will “undermine American small businesses.” It seems that Mozilla listened as it has decided to postpone the implementation of its policy.

    In a blog post from Thursday, Mozilla’s Brendan Eich said that Mozilla has delayed the implementation of its new anti-cookie patch in Firefox so that it can test for false positives and false negatives. As you may know, the new anti-cookie policy is meant to block third party cookies from sites you haven’t visited while leaving cookies from previously visited sites intact. Eich says that fales positives and false negatives may get in the way of how this policy is meant to work:

    False positives. For example, say you visit a site named foo.com, which embeds cookie-setting content from a site named foocdn.com. With the patch, Firefox sets cookies from foo.com because you visited it, yet blocks cookies from foocdn.com because you never visited foocdn.com directly, even though there is actually just one company behind both sites.

    False negatives. Meanwhile, in the other direction, just because you visit a site once does not mean you are ok with it tracking you all over the Internet on unrelated sites, forever more. Suppose you click on an ad by accident, for example. Or a site you trust directly starts setting third-party cookies you do not want.

    The anti-cookie patch will be turned off by default in the Firefox 22 beta will Mozilla works on these issues. Users on the beta will be able to turn on the patch, however, and mess around with the settings. Mozilla, of course, encourages feedback as it works on it. Those who are using the Aurora release will find that the anti-cookie patch is turned on by default however.

    In the end, Eich says that Mozilla’s work on the patch doesn’t represent any change to its previous anti-cookie philosophy:

    We have heard important feedback from concerned site owners. We are always committed to user privacy, and remain committed to shipping a version of the patch that is “on” by default. We are mindful that this is an important change; we always knew it would take a little longer than most patches as we put it through its paces.

    For those who read this as Mozilla softening our stance on protecting privacy and putting users first, in a word: no. False positives break sites that users intentionally visit. (Fortunately, we haven’t seen too many such problems, but greater testing scale is needed.) False negatives enable tracking where it is not wanted. The patch as-is needs more work.

    [h/t: PC World]

  • Google Announces A New AdMob Revamp

    Google Announces A New AdMob Revamp

    At Google I/O, Google announced today that it has rebuilt its AdMob mobile ad network technology. It incorporates tech from other Google platforms like AdSense, and adds some additional features.

    The new AdMob includes smarter app promotion features. “Conversion Optimizer helps many AdWords advertisers increase conversions while decreasing cost per acquisition,” explains AdMob product manager Vishay Nihalani. “We’re now bringing Conversion Optimizer to app developers using AdMob to promote their apps, so they can get the best possible number of installs for their budget. Choose a target cost per acquisition for each download, and Conversion Optimizer will show ads when they are most likely to lead to an install.”

    “Ensuring that your app is showing quality, relevant ads is important for app developers,” says Nihalani. “Now, developers will have more control over which ads appear in their apps, by blocking sensitive categories, so they can increase relevancy and protect their brand.”

    Additionally, AdMob Mediation has a new simplified setup, and there’s new local currency payments.

    Finally, there’s a new reporting interface that lets developers slice data in a variety of ways, and has multi-dimensional reports, which can be broken down over time by app, ad unit, platform, country, bid type, etc.

    The new AdMob is rolling out to developers starting today. It will be available to all developers globally within the coming months.

  • Google Sends Microsoft Cease And Desist Letter

    Google has sent a cease and disist letter to Microsoft for building a native YouTube app for Windows Phone 8, and violating its terms of service in three areas.

    In the letter, Google explains, “It appears that the application: (1) allows users to download videos from YouTube; (2) prevents the display of advertisements in YouTube video playbacks; and (3) plays videos that our partners have restricted from playback on certain platforms (e.g. mobile devices with limited feature sets). These features directly harm our content creators and clearly violate our Terms of Service.”

    Here’s the letter in its entirety (via The Verge):

    Google letter to Microsoft

    Microsoft has responded to the situation. The Verge quotes a spokesperson as saying: “We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.”

    You can hear Page’s comments near the end of the Google I/O keynote here.

    Google has so far given Microsoft until May 22nd to remove the app. It launched last week.

  • Google Launches New Reporting Features For AdSense

    Google has been full of announcements today as its developers conference, Google I/O, takes place. Not everything the company announced today came from I/O, however.

    For one, the company announced on its Inside AdSense blog that it has added dome new features to AdSense to provide users with more detailed segmentation of traffic in their reports.

    “The Countries report shows your performance broken down by the country of users who engaged with the ads on your pages,” says AdSense product manager Matt Goodridge. “In addition to viewing a country breakdown for reports by ad type, bid type, and targeting type, you’ll now also be able to see a Countries report when viewing the reporting dimensions URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit. This will allow you to segment your traffic further and get a better understanding of your account performance in different locations.”

    “In order to help you get more granular insights into your performance on a site level, we’re introducing a new reporting type for Owned sites,” says Goodridge. “‘Owned’ sites are all sites specified as owned in the site management feature, and the new reporting dimension for Owned sites will be a subset of the Sites report. In contrast to the Sites report, however, you’ll be able to combine the Owned sites report with the Countries report. This will allow you to segment your traffic in more detail and understand the performance of your sites across different countries.”

    Country breakdown of reports by URL channel, custom channel and ad unit will only be available for reports with date ranges starting March 9th and later. Historical data in Owned sites reports will be available from the date that a site was added or claimed as “owned”. Users will only be able to view country data breakdowns for Owned sites for reports with date ranges starting March 22 or later.

  • Creative, Slightly Disgusting Bug Spray Ad Glues Pests to a Billboard

    How do you get people talking about your new brand of bug spray? For Orphea and their ad agency, all it took was a little creative thinking, a large billboard, and a sticky surface.

    All they had to do was apply transparent glue to a designated section of the billboard, so that any bugs caught on it would appear to be trapped in the bug spray’s path. After a few days, nearly 230,000 insects gave their lives for the sake of advertising. Or, as Publicis Italy calls it, preventing 230,000 insects from bothering anyone else.

    Cool? Imaginative? Disgusting? Yes, yes, and yes.

    [h/t PSFK]

  • JC Penney’s New Ad: You Came Back To Us, Thank You

    A couple weeks ago, JC Penney put out an ad essentially begging customers to come back after alienating a third of them, and dropping holiday sales by 32%.

    The ad, which has since been set to private on YouTube, said, “It’s no secret, recently JCPenney changed. Some changes you liked and some you didn’t, but what matters with mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we’d love to see you.”

    Now, they’re out with a new ad. Instead of “I’m Sorry,” the message this time is, “Thank you.” In fact, the title of the video is simply, “Thank You”.

    “At JC Penney, we never stop being amazed by you,” the ad says. “How you work so hard without looking like you do, how you make every dollar stretch so far, and keep your family so close, so we brought back the things you liked about JC Penney, gave you new things to explore, and now, we’re happy to say, you’ve come back to us. We’re speechless, except for two little words.”

    They’re still promoting the hashtag #jcpListens. You can see how they’ve been working social media here.

  • Tony Siragusa Talking About Depends Makes Local Weather Guy Lose It

    Funny videos of news anchors and weathermen losing their cool on television are nothing new on the Internet. Some might even say that they’re what makes the Internet worth using. No? Either way, they’re usually pretty funny.

    Reddit has unearthed a new one where the weather segment begins after a Depends commercial featuring former NFL defensive tackle Tony Siragusa talking about “guarding your manhood”. Needless to say, the weather guy found the commercial amusing:

    [via reddit]

  • Mozilla’s Cookie Policy Writer Slams Advertisers, Says They Refuse To Negotiate

    It was revealed in March that Mozilla would start to disable third-party cookies by default in its Firefox browser. The non-profit says it’s only doing it to protect consumer privacy, but advertisers have hit back hard saying the policy will only hurt small businesses. Does the man behind Mozilla’s anti-cookie policy care though? Nope.

    In an interview with AdExchanger, Jonathan Mayer, privacy advocate and Mozilla’s cookie policy maestro, says that the current Do Not Track negotiations forced his hand in writing the anti-cookie policy. Those negotiations, which were previously reported as being in danger of breaking down, see both sides not being able to agree on what Do Not Track means. Mayer indicates that it’s worse than that as both sides are refusing to negotiate:

    The advertising side would be expected to reevaluate their hardline “We’re not going to negotiate” stance and rethink their strategy. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. So I’m not too optimistic on negotiated terms for Do Not Track, but I’m increasingly optimistic that by virtue of the browsers’ efforts, consumers will get the choices they want. It looks like consumers will get some pretty good privacy in the near term. If the W3C’s process is unsuccessful in developing a consensus on what the standards are, companies could be in a difficult spot, but consumers may be okay because of the technical countermeasures that are starting to be drawn over browsers.

    In other words, Mayer is saying that it’s up to the browsers to give consumers the choice that privacy advocates are fighting for in the “Do Not Track” negotiations. Of course, that choice comes in the form of either “Do Not Track” being turned on by default in Internet Explorer 10, or Firefox outright blocking all third-party cookies. Advertisers don’t take well to either of those scenarios, but are apparently unwilling to negotiate for more favorable terms.

    What would happen if the advertisers were to give in then? What system would Mayer want put into place? He’s still all for third-party cookies being blocked as the default option, but he also calls upon advertisers to prove to consumers that they’re trustworthy:

    Consumers don’t have a great handle on what’s going on in terms of how their data is being collected and what it is being used for. Therefore it makes sense to shift the burden of explaining to the user what is going on to those who are in the best position to do it. Advertising companies have an incentive to convince users that they’re trustworthy and that users should allow them to collect data.

    By setting those default settings to Do Not Track, we give interested parties the incentive to educate consumers about the impacts of those choices. We allocate to them [those parties] the responsibility of getting consumers to give them access.

    It’s unlikely that the advertising lobby will give in though. Some even fear that Web sites will begin blocking browsers that block cookies. Some sites already block browsers with AdBlock software installed so it’s not much of a stretch to see some advertisers going the extra mile.

    It would be truly unfortunate if it were to reach that point. As always, advertisers have a right to the Internet just as much as anybody else does, but they should be held to a consumer friendly standard. Maybe it’s time they started paying more attention to the “acceptable ad” idea.

    [h/t: Business Insider]