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  • Yahoo Bing Network Continues Growth

    The Yahoo Bing Network has been rolling out in seven new markets in Europe and six in Latin America, bringing the total to 22 countries.

    “As we recently reported, search engine marketing continues to grow as a proportion of digital ad budgets, and the Yahoo! Bing Network is outpacing the competition on key metrics like click-through rate,” says the Yahoo advertising team in a blog post. “The most recent comScore numbers are also telling when looking at the Buying Power Index (BPI) — which is a measure of purchase behavior — for all searchers on Yahoo! and Bing.”

    “According to comScore, searchers on the Yahoo! Bing Network are likely to spend 123% more than the average Internet searcher,” the team adds. “The worldwide BPI for Yahoo! and Bing searchers who don’t use Google (that’s 83 million, by the way!) is even more dramatic, with spending levels 317% more than the average Internet searcher. So with the Yahoo! Bing Network, you don’t have to search hard to find the highest quality audience in the world!”

    A report from Kenshoo also showed that Yahoo Bing Networks CTRs and CPCs are consistently higher than Google’s.

    Yahoo shares a map showing the status of Yahoo Bing Network implementation in various countries around the globe:

    Yahoo Bing Network Map

  • Google Changes AdWords Impression Share Reporting

    Google is rolling out changes for AdWords Impression share reporting (the number of impressions received in a campaign or ad group divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive) in AdWords.

    Google is adding new columns to separate search and display impression share, as well as hour of day segmentation. Google is also adding the ability to apply filters, see charts and apply automated rules using impression share metrics, and is improving the accuracy of how the data is calculated.

    The data is only available going back to October 1.

    “Many optimization experts advise a regular review of impression share metrics in well-performing campaigns and ad groups where you want more volume,” says AdWords product manager Dan Friedman. “Use the ‘Search Impression Share’ (or ‘Display Impression Share’ for display campaigns) and look for values below 100%. A lower IS metric means more opportunity for incremental impressions, clicks and conversions.”

    “Once you’ve identified well-performing campaigns or ad groups with good growth potential, you’ll want to determine which changes to make to increase your results,” adds Friedman. “Start by looking at the ‘Lost IS (budget)’ (for either Search or Display). This column tells you what percent of the time your ads didn’t appear because your daily budget was insufficient. To reduce lost impressions due to budget, simply raise your daily budget. In general, you’ll end up acquiring more customers at a similar ROI.”

    “When you’re satisfied with the results you’re seeing by reducing your ‘Lost IS (budget),’ you can then look at your ‘Lost IS (rank),’” he says. “This tells you what percent of impressions you missed out on due to an ad rank that was too low. To address this, you can optimize to improve your Quality Score or increase your bids. If you decide to increase your bids to increase ad impressions, closely watch how your other key performance metrics like cost per acquisition, profit, and return on ad spend are affected.”

    Google is phasing out impression share columns in February. Saved reports will be updated to use the new columns.

  • Facebook: Facebook Exchange Is Doing Better Than Google Exchange

    In June, Facebook announced the Facebook Exchange. In September, it launched out of beta. According to the company, it is already doing better than Google.

    AdWeek ran a “sitdown” with Facebook sales chief Carolyn Everson and GroupM chief digital officer Rob Norman. At one point, the conversation turned to the Facebook Exchange, and Everson claimed that it is doing “better than the Google Exchange.” Here’s the quote:

    So we are very excited about Facebook Exchange. We’re excited about the results that we’ve seen. Our performance so far in the Exchange is doing better than the Google Exchange, and Triggit and others have all spoken up on our behalf. So you should take their data, not mine. There are two things happening on our Exchange product right now, and one is that people are engaged more, they’re actually clicking through. And the second is that the [cost per action] is actually much cheaper on Facebook. So we have more engagement and it’s cheaper cost, and it’s much more efficient.

    The Facebook Exchange enables advertisers and agencies to use cookie-based targeting through demand-side platforms to reach their audiences on Facebook with what the company says are “more timely and relevant messages”.

    “Facebook Exchange allows marketers to use their own real-time consumer insight data to reach an audience on Facebook,” product marketing manager Scott Shapiro recently said. “Facebook represents a large portion of display ad inventory on the web—more than 25% according to a recent ComScore study—so this is a significant opportunity for advertisers using DSPs to extend the same strategies that are working for them on other display exchanges to Facebook. The only ad format available on Facebook Exchange is our Facebook Standard Ad, so you can really think of this as display.”

    In the AdWeek sitdown, Norman said he thinks the Facebook Exchange has probably quadrupled the market in terms of availability of total impressions.

    Jim Edwards at BusinessInsider raises a couple of pretty good points in that quadrupling the supply isn’t the same as quadrupling demand, and that Facebook Exchange was not even mentioned in Facebook’s recent 10-Q report.

  • Google Turns To Slayer To Sell Chromebooks

    In case you missed it (like I did), Google put out this Chromebook ad a few days ago, making use of Slayer’s Raining Blood:

    Image via Geeks Of Doom

  • Bing Ads To Get Landing Pages By Match Type

    Bing announced that it will soon launch unique landing pages by match type for Bing Ads.

    “Want to assign a unique destination URL for each of your bidded keyword match types within the same ad group?” writes Pruitt, on the Bing Ads blog. “What about the ability to pause or resume bidded match types independently even if they are for the same keyword? With Landing Page by Match Type, you’ll be able to do both within Bing Ads Editor and our user interface (UI). You can even assign unique params for each bidded keyword match type.”

    “Under this new functionality content match will only show up if you have a keyword level content match bid or if your ad group is running only on the content network,” she says. “Previously, content match was displayed along with exact, phrase and broad match if you had ad groups running on our search and content network.”

    It can take up to 12 hours for Landing Page by Match Type to actually be enabled for your account, but your ads will continue to serve during that time. The campaigns tab, however, will not be functional.

    To use the feature, you need to be using Bing Ads Editor version 8.3 or higher.

  • Twitter Launches “90% Accurate” Gender Targeting For Advertisers

    Twitter does not have the kinds of targeting capabilities Facebook has when it comes to advertising. Twitter simply does not know as much about its users as Facebook does. It’s not really the way Twitter operates. However, as the company works to improve its monetization strategy, it’s going to need to continue to improve the experience for advertisers.

    And with that, the company has announced gender targeting, which it says human testers have found to be over 90% accurate, despite the fact that Twitter does not know for sure when users are male or female.

    “We’ve frequently heard from marketers that you’d like to be able to target your Promoted Products campaigns by gender,” says Twitter Revnue Product Manager Apri Underwood. “It’s a tough feature for us to pull off since we don’t ask people to share their gender on Twitter, and some people don’t identify themselves by gender anyway. Further, we’re not aware of any ‘male’ or ‘female’ businesses or organizations.”

    “Despite these factors, we believe there’s value to having more contextual signals, including gender, so that messages reach the most relevant audience,” she adds. “Just as marketers don’t want their ads to reach people who aren’t interested in their message, people don’t want to see mistargeted ads.”

    Underwood says Twitter has a variety of public signals it can use to help it understand gender, without changing users’ profiles. Among them are profile names and the accounts a user follows.

    Twitter says it has “strong confidence’ in the approach, and that marketers will find a variety of interesting uses for this kind of targeting, which now accompanies geo targeting, interest targeting and mobile targeting.

  • Here’s Apple’s New Macbook Pro Ad

    Here’s Apple’s New Macbook Pro Ad

    This week, Apple unveiled a bunch of new products. One of them was a new Macbook Pro. The company has released a new ad for the machine, which it has just uploaded to YouTube. Here’s a look:

    Apple’s Phil Schiller presented the machine at the company’s big event, as it claimed that its Mac line has surpassed PC shipments.

    The 13-inch Macbook Pro comes with Retina Display and all flash storage in a new, more compact design.

    “The 13-inch MacBook Pro is our most popular Mac, and today it gets completely reinvented with a new thin and light design, fast flash storage and a gorgeous Retina display,” said Schiller. “With vivid colors, razor sharp text and more pixels than anyone else’s 15 or 17-inch notebooks, the Retina display completely changes what you expect from a notebook.”

    The device is available with a 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, 8GB of memory and 128GB of flash storage starting at $1,699 (US); and with 256GB of flash storage starting at $1,999 (US).

  • DoubleClick Search Gets New Bid Optimization Features

    Google had added some new features to DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite, including ROAS support, weighted conversion support for Target Spend, and a Primary Constraint column.

    “We know that effective bid optimization starts with clearly defined goals,” the company says in a blog post. “Now, we’re bringing you two new ways to express your goals in a rich language to meet your unique business objectives.”

    Those would be the ability to define your goal as a Target ROAS and the ability to select floodlight tags with the Target Spend strategy.

    “We now support Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), to target your return in revenue for every $1.00 of spend,” Google explains. “To reach the ROAS target percentage, DS will raise or lower the bid based on how the actual ROAS compares to the target ROAS. Similar to ERS, you’ll be able to define multiple ROAS target goals over a customizable set of Floodlight activities.”

    Bid strategy

    With the Target Spend strategy, Google syas you can enter your monthly budget, along with the KPI you want to maximize, and set your goals for specific Floodlight activities.

    The Primary Constraint column provides insights into constraints that might be limiting keyword bids. “If the Performance Bidding Suite is unable to apply the ideal bid, the Primary constraint column explains the rationale, and also displays the percentage of affected spend,” Google says. “This Primary constraint data is shown at both bid strategy and keywords levels. For even greater granularity at the keyword level, we also show the Target bid we would have set, if our algorithms weren’t limited by the primary constraint.”

    Google has a whitepaper about bid optimization available here, which you might find useful for getting the most out of DoubleClick Search.

  • AdWords Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC Changes To Roll Out In November

    Google will be rolling out some changes to AdWords Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC next month. These include new ad rotation defaults, a “rotate evenly” change, and eligibility for campaigns to switch to “Optimize For Conversions”.

    In a post on the Inside AdWords blog, Google product manager Wilfred Yeung writes, “Using AdWords Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC can help you get more conversions at lower cost, and reduce the time required to manually optimize your bids. When using either one, changing your ad rotation from ‘Optimize for clicks’ to ‘Optimize for conversions’ increases conversions by an average of 5%. That’s because ‘Optimize for conversions’ shows your higher-converting ads more often.”

    “To help you get better performance with AdWords, we’ll be linking these options more closely together in a series of changes that we plan to roll out during the week of November 12th, 2012,” adds Yeung.

    When you activate Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC in a campaign your ad rotation setting will change to “Optimize For Conversions” by default. Google says you’re most likely to get the most conversions this way, though you can still change it if you want to.

  • Google Adds iOS App Download Tracking To AdWords

    Google announced today that it has launched the ability to track iOS downloads that were driven by in-app display ad campaigns in AdWords. You could already track Android app downloads within AdWords, but this will make for a more complete experience for app marketers.

    “Apps are a powerful way to keep your most loyal users engaged, and can also be a real driver of revenue for marketers big and small,” says Google product manager Morgan Hallmon. “When advertising apps, the key is to know what’s working and what’s not.”

    “To set up iOS conversion tracking, advertisers need to create a single code snippet in their AdWords account and install it in their app,” explains Hallmon. “This snippet is accessible in the AdWords interface in the same place where advertisers have been able to codelessly track Android downloads. With iOS conversion tracking, marketers can better understand which campaigns are most effective at driving app downloads. These enhanced insights help marketers iterate on app promotion strategies to reach their return on investment goals, with the help of features like the Conversion Optimizer for apps.”

    Hallmon also points to the following webinar about understanding app users with Google Analytics, which you may find helpful if you have 45 minutes:

    Unfortunately there’s no transcript of the video available on YouTube, so you’ll need to actually watch it to absorb the content within.

  • Google Launches DoubleClick Bid Manager, Based On Invite Media

    Google just announced the general availability of DoubleClick Bid Manager, which is based on Invite Media, which Google acquired over two years ago. It’s fully integrated into the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform. Have a look:

    “The last few years have been busy, as we’ve worked to take the best of Invite Media, DoubleClick, and Google to build a demand side platform that helps our agency and advertiser partners buy display better,” says Payam Shodjai, Senior Product Manager, DoubleClick Bid Manager.

    The key benefits to Bid Manager, according to the company, are unified, streamlined workflows, powerful targeting, and cross-channel opportunities.

    “Marketers have long known that running cross-channel campaigns can yield the best results, but increasing media fragmentation over the years has made it challenging to act on this seamlessly,” says Shodjai. “Thanks to our unified DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform, DoubleClick Bid Manager can be a seamless part of cross-channel marketing efforts. Display remarketing from search ads is an early proof point of how marketers can take advantage of powerful cross-channel features on our platform.”

    DoubleClick Bid Manager is available globally to international advertisers, and for media buying in over 40 countries.

    More on the offering in this blog post from Google.

  • People Nearly 7x More Likely to Pay Attention to Dentists Than Online Ads

    Online advertising does not receive high marks in a new study from Adobe/Edelman Berland. In fact, over 2/3 of consumers say that online ads are just plain annoying, and more than twice as many think that traditional ads are still the best way to go.

    The online survey of 1,250 adults took place earlier this month. The survey looked at responses from both the general public (consumer) and “marketing decision makers” (marketers). Right off the bat, it’s probably important to tell you that 53% of respondents said that most marketing is a “bunch of bullshit” – so that’s the jump-off point we’re working with here.

    But as far as the general perception of online advertising goes – it’s still pretty negative. Sure, pop-up ads are less common, and some current advertising practices like Facebook Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s promoted tweets can even function within the actual flow of the website – but people are still “annoyed” by online ads. 68%, in fact. Furthermore, 51% described them as “distracting” and 46% said they are “all over the place.” Another 38% called them “invasive” and 16% labeled them as “creepy.”

    Only 10% think online ads are clever and 7% say they’re persuasive.

    In all, 66% of consumers think that TV ads are “more important” than online ads. Only 49% of marketers agree with that sentiment. But when they were asked about their favorite place to look at ads, consumers chose print magazines (45%).

    As far as the type of ads go – consumers by and large say no to banner ads. While only 30% of consumers said that online advertising is ineffective, 54% said that banner as are ineffective.

    One of the more interesting parts of the survey deals with social media advertising and “likes.” 69% of the consumers surveyed said they use social media, and over half (57%) said that they have ‘liked” a brand or product. And as far as the “like” influence (seeing that your online friends “like” a brand) – it’s not too strong. 29% said that seeing a friend’s like would make them check out the product. Only 11% said it would prompt them to visit the company’s social media page, and a measly 2% said it would direct them to purchase the product.

    Like influence for online ads

    The study concludes with a discussion on what consumers want out of their ads and how much they actually pay attention to online ads. Consumers want to be told a story (73%), and say that video ads are much more effective that text ads (67%).

    Still, getting people to pay attention to online ads is like pulling teeth. While 54% said they pay attention to their dentist (sure, I’ll floss!), only 7% said they pay attention to online ads.

    Though online advertising is much more important than it was a decade ago, interent users are obviously still wary of it and prefer traditional advertising. It looks like social media advertising is the place where marketers have to make an impact, since over half of consumers admit to liking brands.

    What do you think about online advertising?

    [via Geekosystem]

  • Big Patent Suit Against Google Over Quality Score Goes To Trial

    Last year, a company called Vringo sued Google over a couple of patents, and last week, the case began trial in Virginia. The patents are directly related to AdWords and AdSense, which are obviously vital to Google’s revenue.

    One patent (6,314,420) is described in the following manner (via Ars Technica):

    A search engine system is provided for a portal site on the internet. The search engine system employs a regular search engine to make one-shot or demand searches for information entities which provide at least threshold matches to user queries. The search engine system also employs a collaborative/content-based filter to make continuing searches for information entities which match existing wire queries and are ranked and stored over time in user-accessible, system wires corresponding to the respective queries. A user feedback system provides collaborative feedback data for integration with content profile data in the operation of the collaborative/content-based filter. A query processor determines whether a demand search or a wire search is made for an input query.

    The patent was granted to Ken Lang years ago, who sold it to Lycos (also years ago), and eventually bought it back. Lang is now with Vringo, and appears to be greatly interested in getting paid. TechCrunch has a long, detailed version of the story from a friend of Lang’s from earlier this year.

    The original complaint, which also goes after AOL, IAC, Gannett and Target, says, “Google has used and continues to use search and search advertising systems that adopt the Lang/Kosak Relevance Filtering Technology. For example, Google adopted the Lang/Kosak Relevance Filtering Technology with its use of “Quality Score.” Google’s search advertising systems filter advertisements by using “Quality Score” which is a combination of an advertisement’s content relevance to a search query (e.g., the relevance of the keyword and the matched advertisement to the search query), and click-through-rates from prior users relative to that advertisement (e.g., the historical click-through rate of the keyword and matched advertisement).”

    “Google’s search advertising systems incorporating “Quality Score” – including products such as AdWords and AdSense for Search – generate advertisements and associated links when end users search from Google’s websites including, for example, its main webpage. Google additionally allows third party publishers – via AdSense for Search – to display advertising search results in response to search queries made on the third party publishers’ websites. After adopting the Lang/Kosak Relevance Filtering Technology, Google’s market share significantly grew and its profits from search advertising considerably outpaced those of other PPC advertising providers. The Lang/Kosak Relevance Filtering Technology proved to be extremely valuable to Google, allowing Google to generate greater profits and to expand its operations into many other technology areas.”

    The complaint also maintains that Google had knowledge of the patented technology, citing Google’s settlement with Overture in the past.

    Obviously, the outcome of this case has pretty big implications for the search industry, and just adds to Google’s stack of legal issues it has to contend with.

    As you can see from the lead image, Vringo is also suing ZTE.

  • Bing Ads Get Keyword Destination URLs

    Microsoft announced today that it has added keyword destination URLs in Bing Ads for all markets. Bing Ads now support a dedicated field to manage them, and it lets advertisers set specific landing pages for each keyword and match type combination.

    The feature, Microsoft says, has been one of the top requested features from its customers. The company’s Ravi Modalavalasa writes on the Bing Ads blog:

    Bing Ads has been supporting {param1} as an interim solution to store keyword specific destination URLs in addition to supporting {param1} as param replacement (similar to param2 and param3) in other parts of ad creative. The use of {param1} for keyword URLs requires {param1} to be referred to in the Ad Destination URL field, which is considered an additional task for users (and was often prone to human errors). The use of the Keyword Destination URL feature, however, does NOT require any reference in ad destination URL, as keyword destination URL by default overrides ad destination URL by default.

    bing destination urls

    The feature is available in Bing Ads and Bing Ads Editor.

    A report released by Kenshoo last week found that Yahoo Bing Network CTRs and CPCs are consistently higher than Google.

  • Google Shopping Gives Retailers New Promotions

    Google Shopping Gives Retailers New Promotions

    Google announced today that it’s rolling out the ability for retailers in Google Shopping to add promotion to their product listings. This, Google says, will make the listings stand out more.

    As you may know, Google Shopping now consists of all paid inclusion results. In other words, you have to be an advertiser using Google’s Product Listing Ads to be listed. Wednesday was the official day that this transition was to be complete in the U.S.

    Advertisers using these new promotions can distribute them on other Google properties, such as Google Maps for Android, or the Google Offers App.

    “In a few simple steps retailers can create a promotions list, map it to the right products in Google Shopping and upload to Google Merchant Center,” Google says in a post on its Commerce Blog. “Our system supports user specific redemption codes and associated reporting, enabling retailers to measure the performance of each promotion.”

    “This is one of the many steps we’re taking to provide traffic, technology and tools to help retailers grow their business,” the company adds.

    Google says it will expand the program to include more retailers in the coming months. So far, over 25 big name retailers are using the promotions.

  • Only 6% of Your Facebook Fans Actually Care Enough to Engage with Your Page

    If you run a Facebook page and you’re main focus involves increasing your total number of “likes,” you’re doing it wrong.

    That’s the takeaway from a new study from Napkin Labs. According to their findings, a large majority of your “fans” aren’t really interacting with your content at all.

    Napkin Labs looked at 52 different Facebook pages that sport between 200,000 and 1 million likes, for a total of over 31 million fans. What they found is pretty staggering: only 6% of Facebook fans actually engage with a page’s content (liking, commenting, sharing, etc.). They also found that the more likes you have, the less engagement you probably have from them. For example, a brand page with 500K-600K likes has 60% more fan engagement, on average, than those pages with 900K-1 million likes.

    According to these results, your 1 million fans don’t really add up to much – it’s those 60,000 that you really need to be focused on.

    But Napkin Labs says that page owners need to narrow down their focus even more.

    Apparently, “Superfans” are the real target. Defined as the top 20 most engaged fans on any Facebook page, Superfans are 75x more engaged than the average fan. And they can also spur others to engage, as they receive 2.3x more likes and 1.8x more comments on any content they post on your page.

    “Superfans are vitally important to telling a brand’s story,” said Riley Gibson, co-founder CEO of Napkin Labs. “These numbers show that brand marketers need to focus less on the volume of fans and more on engaging the fans that they have. Involving engaged fans in richer experiences rather than just pushing messages is one key way to keep communities active and interested.”

    Translation: don’t just post stuff and walk away, expecting your fans to share it. “Superficial interactions,” are the death of any page that wants to be successful, they say.

    Having a ton of likes is never a bad thing. If a Facebook user is on the fence about liking your page, interacting with, or even choosing you for a service or product outside of Facebook, having hundreds or thousands of likes can’t hurt. It serves as a mass advertisement – “Hey, 1 million people can’t be wrong, right?”

    But the content that a page puts out has to be focused and engaging. Knowing that only 6% of your likes really care about what your posting should probably make you want to produce better content – or at least not worry so much about having just a few more fans than your nearest competitor.

    And I guess we have to talk about Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts too. If only 6% of your fans are going to engage with content, you might have to consider making your content a little more prevalent on the site. A recent survey showed that 88% of marketers would forgo advertising on Facebook and simply “implement Facebook content” – or in other words, just maintain a page and push updates. Sure, it’s free promotion. But with this little interest and engagement, is simply having a page for your brand going to be enough?

  • DoubleClick Search Gets Labeling For Campaigns, Ad Groups And Ads

    Google announced today that it has added the ability to apply labels to campaigns, ad groups and ads, in addition to keywords, in DoubleClick Search.

    “You’re no longer restricted by these object’s locations; you can apply labels to any campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords within an advertiser,” the company says in a blog post. “Also, as with labels applied to keywords, you can add multiple labels to one object for even more reporting flexibility.”

    Labels are created the same way, by going to “Create Labels,” and once you’ve created them, apply them applicably by finding the page that contains the campaigns, ad groups, ads or keywords you want to add. In the reporting table, select the check boxes next to what you want the label to be applied to, and in the toolbar, click “Labels”. Select the label you want to apply, and click “Apply”.

    You can find a summary of reporting stats for labels, as well as stat breakdowns for all objects in the label by object type. You can also filter by labels.

    “Labels support multi-level inheritance,” Google notes. “For example, when you apply a label to a campaign, DS will also apply the label to the ad groups in the campaign, as well as to the keywords and ads in the ad groups. DS will also automatically add new keywords, ads, and ad groups in the campaign to the label, and they will appear in all reports and filters that use the label.”

    You can see only the labels you’ve applied to objects from the existing Labels column, but there is a new All Labels column as well.

  • Online Ad Revenues Reach Historic High

    The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released a report on Internet ad revenues, which the organization says climbed to an all-time high of $17 billion in the first half of 2012. This is, in fact, a 14% year-over-year increase (compared to the previous high of $14.9 billion in the first half of 2011).

    The second quarter alone also saw a 14% year-over-year increase, hitting $8.7 billion (up from $7.7 billion during the same period last year).

    Here’s a look at the yearly increases for the first half of the year since 1996:

    First Half ad revenues

    “This report establishes that marketers increasingly embrace mobile and digital video, as well as the entire panoply of interactive platforms, to reach consumers in innovative and creative ways,” said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. “These half-year figures come on the heels of a study from Harvard Business School researchers that points to the ad-supported internet ecosystem as a critical driver of the U.S. economy. Clearly, the digital marketing industry is on a positive trajectory that will propel the entire American business landscape forward.”

    IAB SVP, Research, Analytics and Measurement, Sherrill Mane, added, “Solid double-digit growth in a stagnating economy is a significant accomplishment. There is evidence that CPMs are maintaining, and even increasing, further substantiating the vitality of the internet ad market.”

    Mobile nearly doubled year-over-year for the first half of the year, rising 95% to $1.2 billion, compared to $636 million from the same period last year. Digital video increased 18% year-over-year, reaching over $1 billion in revenue (up from $900 million from the same period last year).

    “The tremendous growth of mobile advertising revenue over the past year is an indication of the importance of location to advertisers and mobility to consumers,” said David Silverman, a partner at PwC US, which prepared the report for the IAB. “Bringing the power of the internet to mobile devices has opened up a world of possibilities to both consumers and marketers.”

    Search revenues totaled $8.1 billion, up 19% from $6.8 billion. Display revenues hit $5.6 billion, up 4% from $5.3 billion in the same period last year, and accounting for 33% of the first half of the year’s ad revenues.

    You can find the full report here.

  • Here Are Some Great Discussions From LinkedIn’s BrandConnect 12 Event

    Here Are Some Great Discussions From LinkedIn’s BrandConnect 12 Event

    LinkedIn held its BrandConnect12 event in New York last week, which included a number of interesting marketing discussions with numerous professionals. LinkedIn has now made video of many of these available via its YouTube channel.

    So, if you wanted to go to the event, but did not have the opportunity, or if you didn’t even know about it, you won’t totally miss out. Here you go:

    Clay Shirky presents “The End of the Audience

    Brand Connect with David Hahn

    The Mindset Divine

    Transforming Your Organization For The Social Era

    Redefining Relevance: Content Marketing In A Social Context

    Measuring Success In Social Media Marketing

    LinkedIn Products For Marketers

    The Time Tested Truths of Scientific Marketing

    David Hahn presents Influencers and Content on LinkedIn

    The Time-Tested Truths of Scientific Marketing

    Context is King: Building Meaningful Relationships on LinkedIn

    Amplifying Engagement Using Social Media Management

  • Prepare for More Targeted Ads on Foursquare

    Foursquare is in the process of monetization, albeit early in the process. Back in July, the company launched “Promoted Updates,” which amounted to the first-ever ads on the app. They are pay-per-click ads that pop up as users browse locations in the explore tab. Looking at nearby locations? Why not go to this particular Lowe’s, “because you’ve been to other locations,” says the promoted update.

    But the advertising on Foursquare must move above and beyond these basic promoted search results, and on to a place that tackles the real heart of what Foursquare wants to do. The focus of Foursquare’s app has been moving toward discovery recently, and although promoted updates work within that narrative, targeted discounts are a way to provide something for the advertiser, the user, and for Foursquare’s bottom line.

    And that’s the direction they’re moving. To be fair, many of the promoted results that Foursquare is currently testing with certain retailers do contain deals within them. But the targeting has to be super precise, with discounts finding the exact right user at the right time. According to PandoDaily, Foursquare CEO dennis Crowley said so much at an event in New York this week. Foursquare is looking to market “specific discounts for specific customers.”

    And he says Foursquare is ready:

    “There was no reason to do it in 2009. We had nothing to sell… Now is the appropriate time to do it, because the product’s ready.”

    He also commented on their individual user strategy, and making the most out of a smaller number of users:

    “You can build a big business making a lot of money off each user, not just amassing more users and showing dumb banner ads,” he said.

    Although Foursquare’s ad product is currently in its infancy, the company wants to be able to allows businesses to target specific groups of users with discounts up to 20%, according to PandoDaily.

    Foursquare has been moving “beyond the check-in” for some time now, by unveiling their explore tab and focusing on serving as a local search engine for locations. In my mind, Foursquare’s biggest potential always sat as some sort of hybrid between check-ins, local search, gamification, and yes, daily-deals type discounts.

    What do you think?

  • Yahoo Bing Network CTRs, CPCs Consistently Higher Than Google [Report]

    Kenshoo has released a new report looking at global search advertising trends. While paid search budgets have been significantly higher year-over-year for all three of the year’s first quarters, the firm says there was not a lot of fluctuation in ad spend quarter-over-quarter (which is pretty much how it went in 2011).

    “Last year, there was a large ramp-up in Q3 but this year, advertisers increased their budgets early and consistently throughout the year,” Kenshoo says.

    Quarterly search ad spend

    According to the report, global paid search average CPCs rose in both Q2 and Q3, following four consecutive quarters of falling rates. They’ve risen to $0.46 after bottoming out at $0.40 in Q1. They were at $0.47 during Q3 of 2011.

    Total search ad impression volume fell for its second consecutive quarter in Q3 2012, Kenshoo says. It’s down 23% overall since Q1.

    In the U.S., the Yahoo Bing Network average CTR and CPC is consistently higher than Google, according to the report. Kenshoo says:

    Over the past 6 quarters, the Yahoo! Bing Network (YBN) has delivered sequential increases in search ad CTR in every quarter except Q1 2012, in which CTR was flat QoQ. Meanwhile, Google AdWords CTR has oscillated, hovering near 1% with a significant uptick to 1.25% in Q3 2012. 6 quarters ago, the gap between YBN and Google CTR was miniscule. Today YBN CTR is 29% higher than Google. Similarly, the 2 engines were very close in CPC back in Q2 of 2011 but now there is a considerable gap with YBN CPC 46% higher than Google. During that time, YBN CPC increased significantly from Q2 to Q3 2011 and then remained relatively flat, while Google CPC has come down from an 18-month high of $0.61 to $0.45 in Q3 2012.

    Yahoo Bing Network performance

    According to the firm, paid search budgets are growing faster for Yahoo/Bing than for Google. In Q3, Yahoo Bing Network ad spend was up 10% quarter-over-quarter and 35% year-over-year. Google was up 75% quarter-over-quarter and 28% year-over-year. As far as clicks, Yahoo Bing Network grew faster quarter-over-quarter but Google grew faster year-over-year.

    The full report is available here.