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  • Google’s Drug Money About To Get Divided Up Among Law Enforcement

    Last August, the United States Department of Justice announced that Google would forfeit $500 million for allowing Canadian pharmacies to place ads through AdWords, targeting consumers in the U.S. This was deemed “unlawful importation of controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs into the U.S.”

    DoJ attorney Peter Neronha (pictured) will hold a press conference in Providence today to announce how the $500 million will be distributed among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, reports Providence Journal (via 9to5Google).

    “The result of this investigation has been a fundamental transformation of Internet pharmacy advertising practices, significantly limiting promotion to US consumers by rogue online pharmacies,” said Martin-Weis, acting director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, in the initial DoJ announcement. “This accomplishment could not have been possible without the resourceful commitment of the Rhode Island United States Attorney’s Office, as well as the tireless efforts of our law enforcement partners detailed to the OCI Rhode Island Task Force.”

    The announcement said the investigation of Google had origins in a separate, multimillion dollar financial fraud investigation unrelated to Google. The main target of that investigation had fled to Mexico.

    “While a fugitive, he began to advertise the unlawful sale of drugs through Google’s AdWords program,” the announcement said. “After being apprehended in Mexico and returned to the United States by the U.S. Secret Service, he began cooperating with law enforcement and provided information about his use of the AdWords program. During the ensuing investigation of Google, the government established a number of undercover websites for the purpose of advertising the unlawful sale of controlled and non-controlled substances through Google’s AdWords program.”

    This is all sure to be considered with regards to any announcement about the division of the money.

    Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew J. Reich and Richard B. Myrus of the District of Rhode Island, and FDA/OCI Special Agent Jason Simonian led the investigation. As the DoJ discussed in the announcement, the FDA/OCI Rhode Island Task Force is comprised of law enforcement agents and officers from FDA/OCI, the IRS, Immigration and Customs, the Postal Inspection Service, the Rhode Island State Police, the Rhode Island National Guard, the Rhode Island Department of the Attorney General;, the East Providence Police, and the North Providence Police.

    There was also assistance from Corbin A. Weiss, Senior Counsel with the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section, and Sarah Hawkins, FDA Senior Counsel.

    In other words, a lot of people and agencies were involved. Will $500 million of the search giant’s former money be enough to go around?

  • Do Not Track Supported By Yahoo Web Analytics

    Last week, Yahoo announced that it would be implementing a Do Not Track mechanism across its global network by early summertime. The company has also now made a special point of saying that Yahoo Web Analytics will support this as well.

    Yahoo VP, Data and Privacy, Shane Wiley writes:

    Yahoo! is excited to be one of the first large online companies to announce live, global support for Do Not Track (DNT)! This commitment continues our leadership in user privacy where Yahoo! was among the first to launch an Ad Interest Manager (3 years ago) and followed this up by being the first to support the AdChoices Icon program (2 years ago).

    Yahoo’s DNT solution has been in development since last year and is implemented in-line with Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) principles which provide guidelines for the appropriate use of online behavioral advertising (also called “interest-based” advertising) and multi-site data – AND – our proposal to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international standards body that manages many of the technical elements of the Internet. Of course, we will continue to follow further DNT-related developments in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere very closely.

    Also last week, the Federal Trade Commission issued its final report for how companies should handle consumer privacy, which includes the aforementioned Do Not Track feature. This had previously been mentioned in the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights intorduc

    Google has also indicated it will include a “Do Not Track” button for Chrome. Google did already start defaulting searches by signed-in users to SSL (Google recently announced the worldwide expansion of this), which does have an anonymized impact on sites using Google Analytics. Queries from such searches appear as “not provided” in Google Analytics, much to the chagrin of SEOs and marketers.

    In fact, Google referrals may be getting even more mysterious, because Mozilla is reportedly working on adding encrypted search to its own Google search box.

  • YouTube’s New Ad Model: Channel Sponsorships

    YouTube is rolling out a new ad model option for 96 YouTube Channels. Rather than selling television style ads to certain demographics, they will now sell full sponsorship for certain YouTube channels. The ads include display, overlay and pre-roll; so basically they will cover the entire page with an ad preceding the video. The annual price tag for sponsorship is around $4 to $10 million.

    YouTube will cover cost of production for certain channel producers, and the producers themselves will share equally in advertising revenue, once YouTube recoups the original investment. Production costs range from a few hundred thousand to a few million for most channels.

    YouTube has struck deals on the new advertising scheme with brands like Toyota, GM, AT&T, and Lowes. As part of the deal, buyers will also be investing in other videos, with their ads appearing in non-channel videos as well. The channel sponsor ads comprise just 20% of the total ad campaign revenue for investors, with the other content being run on the rest of YouTube’s videos.

    Unilever will be sponsoring Young Hollywood Network channel for a reported $10 million. Toyota is to sponsor Cafe Mom, Kin Community and Mom’s View for $10 million, and GM will sponsor a package of automotive channels including Red Bull’s action sports channel for $5 million. Chrysler, AT&T, and Lowes also have agreements, but details on those deals have not been released.

    YouTube is asking brands to get on board for sponsorship of groups of channels as part of a package deal. According to AdAge, a one year exclusive contract in the music and pop culture categories would cost as much as $62 million a package. Sports would cost $40 million, and automotive would run you about $16 million.

    This new advertising model comes after a recent redesign of the channels look for YouTube. As more attention is being shifted from television to online video entertainment, YouTube is trying to stay ahead of the game with improvements to their channels offering, giving a more professional feel to original content and offering new ad opportunities to investors.

  • Grooveshark’s New Ad Engagement Not All That Bad

    If you’re a regular Grooveshark user, you might have noticed this week a fairly significant change to the way ads are presented on the website. In fact, if you’re a free user, you’re not going to be able to get any of the jams you’ve saved in the ‘My Music’ tab unless you sit through an entire albeit brief ad now.

    I know. Take a breath, exhale, and keep reading. It’s really not as bad as it sounds. Really.

    When you log in to your account and select some music to listen to, you’re likely to encounter a window titled “Keep the music going.” Basically, this window offers a selection of membership options that will determine how you pay for the service: via ad exposure or by signing up for a small monthly fee.

    Users have five options with this window: sign up for a paid membership in the amount of $2, $4, $6, or $9 per month in order to have unlimited access to your music; or continue on without becoming a paid member. If you choose the latter option, you’ll be required to watch one short advertisement per every four hours of music you listen to.

    Should you choose to continue without paying anything, you’ll be prompted to sit through the aforementioned video which could either be a music video from a featured artist or a video from one of Grooveshark’s ad partners. Whichever you get, it’s imperative that you sit through it – if you try to skip through the video, you’ll see the following message:

    After you make it through the video, though, you’re free and clear for the next four hours to listen to your heart’s content. Got that? Four hours for no more than 60 seconds of your time. You probably spend more time exposed to billboards on your commute to work than it takes for you to get through this ad.

    The amount of ads encountered on Grooveshark up to this point has been rather unobtrusive, or at least as unobtrusive as possible. This current pop-up, which usually only displays an ad for 15 to 60 seconds, is hardly an obstruction. Every other online service uses ads like this and many YouTube videos are prompted by an ad at the beginning. People obviously don’t mind all that much or else they wouldn’t continue to push Google/YouTube to the top of comScore’s most popular online video sites. Besides, if you watched YouTube videos for a solid four hours, you’d end up watching loads more advertisements on the site than the one-per-four hours you watch on Grooveshark. Hell, you’d see more ads in about 20 minutes of watching television.

    Anyways.

    The videos currently only show up based on an algorithm that distinguishes the “power users” of Grooveshark and, as mentioned, some of these videos might just be music videos from other musicians. “By involving our most engaged users, these videos become a unique and powerful promotional tool for artists, labels, producers, brands, everyone involved,” said Alex Hoffman, Grooveshark’s Director of Artist Services. He added that, over time, Grooveshark will be implementing more ways to make the website “as personal, relevant, and enjoyable as possible.”

    I know, it’s the costume de rigueur for internet users to dress themselves up into fits of puerile impatience whenever a free online service makes a change to its site, but… really? It wouldn’t kill you to give credit for a service you enjoy. And even if you don’t, it’s still not costing you anything.

  • Microsoft adCenter About To Have 10,000 Less Cities To Target

    Microsoft announced some new location targeting changes that it’s getting ready to implement in adCenter, which provides the ads on not only Bing, but Yahoo in an increasing number of countries.

    The changes are only coming to the U.S. and Canada for now, however. Microsoft is removing about 10,000 cities from adCenter targeting, starting in mid to late May.

    “Because these cities have seen no measurable traffic, this change will have no negative impact on the performance of your campaigns,” says Microsoft’s Peter Yang. “If you are targeting a city that will be removed, we recommend that you update your settings to target a city supported by adCenter to gain more traffic.”

    Microsoft provides a downloadable spreadsheet, where you can see all of the locations that are going away, and their corresponding locations that you should be targeting. Find the ones you need to be targeting, then simply go into adCenter and replace the non-supported ones with the corresponding supported ones.

    Microsoft will pause any campaigns or ad groups that only target cities that are being removed. The default target will be set to worldwide. In other words, this probably isn’t something you want to ignore. If some supported cities are sprinkled in, those cities will still be targeted. If you’re using the API to call non-supported cities, an error message will appear.

    If you think that losing some of these cities will hurt your campaign, Microsoft aims to convince you otherwise. The company says you are likely to see an increase in impressions (though you probably know your campaign better than anyone, and it might depend on your reasons for targeting select cities).

  • Google On Managing Mobile Search Campaigns

    Google posted what it considers to be best practices for managing mobile campaigns, and some specific instructions for using DoubleClick Search to do so, on its DoubleClick Advertiser blog.

    Google says to create separate campaigns for each platform you’re targeting, write specific ad texts for different device operating systems, bid differently (sometimes you may need to target higher positions to get traffic because of fewer ad slots per page), direct users to a mobile-optimized landing page, tailor your keyword list to the mobile searcher, and bridge online and offline.

    “Mobile click-to-call campaigns can be powerful lead generators,” the DoubleClick Search team says to that last point. “When setting up a click-to-call campaign, consult with your DoubleClick Search Technical Account Manager to learn how DS3 can import data from your advertisers’ call tracking solution to allow optimization on both online and offline conversions.”

    Some of the points are more obvious than others. Having a mobile-optimized landing page is perhaps the most important of them all, and is a big reason why Google has been pushing that GoMo campaign, encouraging sites to be optimized for the mobile experience. Do you expect many conversions if someone clicks your ad and it looks like crap?

    Target mobile keywords

    Google makes a good point about targeting keywords to mobile searchers.

    “It’s still a good idea to copy the keywords from your desktop campaigns as a starting point,” the team says. “However, mobile searches still tend to contain fewer terms than desktop, so it’s likely long-tail keywords that receive traffic on the desktop will be less effective in smartphone campaigns and may even bring down your quality score. Also, many mobile searches (over 20%) contain geomodifiers; be sure you’re including those city and region names in your keywords for stronger matches.”

    Emphasis added.

  • Political Ad Transparency: Should There Be More?

    Political Ad Transparency: Should There Be More?

    With political ads in full swing during this election year, a debate is heating up in Washington over a proposal from the FCC that would impose regulation on TV stations. The Commission wants TV stations to put the “public inspection files,” which include the names, costs, and running dates of every political ad in recent years on a website that it would oversee.

    Although this information is already available to anyone who wants to physically go to a television station and access the files, the FCC has said the move is part of its bigger effort to transition from paper to digital across the board. It also believes that more transparency is necessary in political advertising.

    Would you like to see more transparency in political ads? If so, what are the benefits? Please share.

    Political ad campaigns have become particularly controversial of late as financial issues continue to plague the country.

    Mark Fratrik, Vice President and Chief Economist at BIA/Kelsey “With the tremendous amount of political advertising that’s being spent already in the Presidential campaign and many other local campaigns, there’s a concern about who’s paying for it all and whether or not there are some interests that are spending an excessive amount of money,” Mark Fratrik, the Vice President and Chief Economist at BIA/Kelsey, told WebProNews.

    In spite of these financial concerns, television stations are against the regulation due to concerns of their own. As Fratrik explained to us, they are not opposed to the digital database specifically, but they are instead worried about the additional burden on them.

    “[TV stations] are a little concerned about the logistics of it, [and] the amount of additional man-hours that each station would have to incur to respond to these proposed regulations,” he said.

    TV broadcasters are also speaking out against the proposal since radio stations were not included. But, according to Fratrik, the vast majority of revenue from political advertising campaigns goes to TV stations. In fact, campaign spending on local TV stations is expected to reach near $3 billion this year. Although radio stations bring in some revenue through political campaigns, Fratrik said it pales in comparison to the amount that TV stations produce. Therefore, the FCC didn’t feel it was necessary to include radio stations in the proposal.

    Another concern that TV broadcasters have is the impact the regulation would have on pricing. They fear that once the prices are made readily available, the competitive marketplace will decrease. This fear is magnified since political campaigns have the privilege of receiving the lowest costs possible for spots.

    “They’re concerned about the lowest prices being out there and that other advertisers will start demanding them,” said Fratrik.

    Various broadcasters have voiced their opposition on this aspect, especially since practices may vary from station to station. In a complaint filed from Allbritton Communications, which owns ABC-affiliated stations in 6 markets, Jerald Fritz, the Senior Vice President, said that the online database would “ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.”

    Furthermore, many of those in opposition have questioned the FCC’s authority in this matter, since campaign finance does not fall into the realm of its governance. However, some have suggested that the Commission is being forced to step in by way of the media since the Federal Election Commission has fallen short.

    Commissioner Robert McDowell, who is the sole Republican at the FCC, sides with the TV stations in this debate and has called the proposal a “jobs destroyer.” Last week, at a House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting over the matter, he pointed out the harmful impact the regulation could have.

    “While the original goal of such disclosure may have been to create more transparency in the political spending process, the unintended consequence could be to encourage price signaling and other anti-competitive conduct by broadcasters that could produce harmful market distortions,” McDowell said.

    Since neither side appears to be backing down from its stance, Fratrik told us it was not likely that the mandate would be approved this year. What’s more, if the administration changes after the election in November, he believes it could impact everything.

    Which side of this debate do you take: the FCC or TV stations? Let us know.

  • New Google Study Looks At Organic Ranking’s Impact On Ad Clicks

    Google Research has released a new study looking at how often ad impressions are accompanied by associated organic results and how the incrementality of ad clicks vary with the rank of those results.

    Google posts the following highlights on its Inside AdWords blog:

    • 81% of ad impressions and 66% of ad clicks occur in the absence of an associated organic result on the first page of search results. All ad clicks in these situations are incremental.
    • On average, for advertisers who appear in the top rank organic slot, 50% of ad clicks are incremental. This means that half of all ad clicks are not replaced by organic clicks when search ads are paused.
    • For advertisers whose organic search results are in the 2nd to 4th position, 81% of ad clicks are incremental. For advertisers appearing in organic position of 5 or lower, 96% of ad clicks are incremental.

    On the Google Research blog, they posted the following infographic looking at the findings:

    Google Ad Click Incrementality

    Google is careful to note in the study’s concluding remarks that results will vary for individual advertisers, and that advertisers with similar IAC (Incremental Ad Clicks) estimates may have very different organic rank for the terms in their ad campaign. Advertisers with similar organic rank may have very different IAC estimates.

    Here’s the study in its entirety (pdf).

  • Google’s New Ad Technology Perfect For Those HUD Glasses We Heard About

    Google has been awarded a new patent that seems to suggest that the company will be rolling out a new advertising strategy wherein the ads that are delivered to you are based on your immediate surroundings. And no, that’s not with respect to your online surroundings, like sites you visit – this would use your literal, physical environs.

    The patent, according to the language in the document, includes technology that will be able to detect elements about your environment, such as background noise or even light sources. As you can imagine, speculation has begun as to why Google would want this or what they would possibly use it for. An example cited by Google in the patent document supposes one example in which “advertisements for air conditioners can be sent to users located at regions having temperatures above a first threshold, while advertisements for winter overcoats can be sent to users located at regions having temperatures below a second threshold.”

    Another example cited in the document suggests that the technology would give advertisers an immense amount of control over who their ads are sent to. For example, “a seller of noise-canceling headphones may specify that an ad for noise-canceling headphones be served to a user located in an environment where the ambient noise is above a preset level (e.g., 70 dB). The advertiser may specify that the ambient noise level be above the preset level for more than a preset period of time (e.g., noisy levels detected for at least one hour per day for at least two consecutive days).”

    As you would expect, people are already decrying the new technology as creepy and Orwellian. You may not know this, but Google has a loosely agreed-upon deal (and by “loosely agreed-upon” I mean “completely made up by me just now”) with the general public that whenever they announce some kind of new technology, it’s the duty of the public to sling words like “creepy” and “Orwellian” at Google. Good job, everybody.

    I digress. Unless Android-supported devices are currently hiding some sophisticated, dormant features that Google included in the devices in anticipation that they’d only later have the technology to use said hidden features, these fears seem a little knee-jerky. Given that the main function (and, seemingly, success) of the environment-based ad deployment would rely upon the need to detect details about your environment, this is assuredly meant for something they’ve got in the oven or plan to mix up sometime in the future.

    Hmm. Has Google recently been developing something that uses a person’s immediate environment in order to Google-ize their surroundings? Something that might even be capable of scanning an environment, listening for cues, or even having an accelerometer that can detect speed of motion?

    Oh yeah! Those neatorific Google HUD glasses that were heavily floating around in semi-rumor form last month.

    This environmentally-cued ad technology sounds extremely well-suited for something like the company’s head-up display glasses, much more than for a smartphone or tablet since the ad technology would require input from a device (such as temperature, humidity, sound, light, air composition, location, and speed of movement) that’s already attuned to the surroundings. You would probably need new hardware on the devices for some of that data collection to happen – the type of hardware that may be included in Google’s HUD glasses.

    The HUD glasses will presumably be constantly assessing and relaying information about the surroundings – that’s kind of the point, right, to augment your reality via the display? – and would seem much more ideal for displaying environmentally-associated advertisements like a digital billboard or digital kiosk.

    Search Engine Watch had previously speculated on how advertisements might be deployed via Google’s HUD glasses, suggesting that the device would enable advertisers to “pay an additional bid amount for customers in, say, a three block radius” or even include some kind of real-time bidding. Equipping the HUD glasses with sensors capable of assembling a profile about a user based on the cues of their environment would certainly lend itself to such an advertising strategy as this.

    In the end, though, all of this speculation could fall apart more easily than a bamboo house during monsoon season and Google may have completely different agendas for the technology, if they even decide to use it at all. Who knows what pots are being stirred down in the Google X labs. Anybody else got any other scenarios they’d like to share? Then share’em in the comments.

  • Twitter Launches Advertising Platform For Small Business

    As you might remember, Twitter partnered with American Express last month to offer advertising space to select merchants. Now the partnership has released a promotional video on how to advertise on their platform and the ways it is going to benefit you.

    They promise it’s easy to use, and that your messages will reach the right people via their management systems. It will only offered to a handful of merchants at first, but as they work to get things up and running, they’ll add new accounts.

    Here’s their promotional video for the new platform:

    Here’s the highlights as listed on Twitter’s advertising blog:

    * Get started in minutes: we provide ongoing management of your advertising.

    * No previous advertising experience is required. If you can tweet, you can advertise on Twitter.

    * Gain new followers: Promoted Accounts helps your small business connect with new people who want to hear from you and can spread the word about your business to others.

    * Amplify your Tweets: Promoted Tweets helps your small business get your messages in front of more of the right people. Twitter will take out the guesswork by automatically identifying and promoting your most engaging Tweets.

    * Pay per follower for Promoted Accounts and per engagement (click, retweet, reply, and favorite) for Promoted Tweets.

    * Target the whole world, specific countries, or limit your reach to specific U.S. metropolitan areas.

    So if you’re already on Twitter, or you’re an American Express small business cardholder, here’s a unique opportunity for you promote and distinguish your products/services. Twitter now handles advertising, and you could be one of the first to take advantage of their unique platform. Look into it.

  • In-Depth Study of Online Ad Delivery

    In the cVE Charter Study from ComScore, involving online advertising campaigns for 12 national advertisers, we are seeing that a large number of ad campaigns are not going to plan and the quality of ad delivery is varying greatly. The study evaluated the effectiveness of ad delivery based how and where the ads were placed including whether or not the ads were in-view, to the target audience, in a brand friendly environment, and free from fraud.

    Findings:

    • Ad Placement: 31 percent of ads were not in-view, meaning they were never being seen by the audience.
    • Targeting audience based on interest over simple demographics (sex, income) has proven effective. 37% of ads delivered reached audiences with known interests relative to their brand.
    • Advertisers must keep a watchful eye on the type of content their brand is being associated with. 72 percent of the campaigns felt their ads were being delivery alongside objectionable content.
    • Fraud is still a concern. .16% of ads were delivery to non-human targets from the IAB spiders and bots list. Though this number is low, unknown bots and more sophisticated fraud methods were not considered, making this kind of threat difficult to quantify.
    • The findings showed that neither ad visibility nor the quality of the audience reached is reflected in the price of digital advertising. Advertisers need to do their own research in finding the best ad buy for their dollar.

    These findings outline the necessity of in-depth campaign management throughout the entire length of an ad campaign.

    It also demonstrates the need for a “viewable impressions” measurement when calculating the cost for advertising. Too much money is going out the window on ads that are not even being seen by customers.

    “With 31% of vCE Charter Study impressions not being viewable, it is now abundantly clear just how important in-view measurement is to online campaign validation,” said Linda Abraham, comScore CMO. “In order for any digital GRP metric to be relevant in the online space and to be cross-media comparable, it must include validated ‘viewable impressions’ in its calculation. While audience and geographic validation are crucial – and should not be ignored – if a digital campaign rating does not also take into account whether or not the ad had the opportunity to be seen, then the metric fails to deliver a true apples-to-apples comparison to all other media.”

  • Facebook Premium Ads Demo Tool Now Available For You To Play With

    All Facebook noticed today that Facebook, in an effort to lure brands to sign on with the company’s Premium service, launched a demo tool to preview the layouts available with the Premium account. Essentially, after dressing up your sponsored stories and premium ads, you get to verify what it looks like to your audience.

    On the content composer, you see the familiar Timeline page where all of the content goes (name, cover photo, Page post, etc.) although the demo states that other types of Page posts will be arriving soon. At the bottom, you’ll notice the function that allows you to select a friend to appear in a sponsored story (for some reason, my demo used somebody named Nathan Price – I didn’t even know I knew someone with that name). I uploaded some generic pics to this page so you can see how it will look in the finished demo. (And yes, I have a Peter Schilling song stuck in my head right now, hence the name of my Page.)

    After you selected the person you want to include in your post, the next page will show you the story appearing as a sponsored story on the right-hand side of the Facebook page to someone who likes your page.

    For those that don’t like Like your page, they’ll see the premium ad layout.

    Additionally, if you should choose to publish this story as a sponsored story, you can also see how it will appear in the mobile app form.

    If you want to play around with multiple demos or go back and edit some you already created, Facebook saves them to your page so you can share them, delete them, or just go back and look and marvel at your beautiful handiwork. The tool is currently available….. here!

  • Advertising On Twitter: Become A Marketing Shogun

    Advertising On Twitter: Become A Marketing Shogun

    Have you and your business been quietly swelling with greed when you see promoted tweets on Twitter, imagining all of the revenue those advertisements must be earning for someone out there that isn’t you? You probably should get in on that take. Lucky for you, Alchemy Social, they of keen skills for all things social media advertising, have put together an easy-to-understand inforgraphic to brief you on the winning ways of advertising on Twitter.

    The microblogging giant just celebrated its sixth birthday two days ago, announcing that the site is now home to 140 million active users who post roughly 340 million tweets a day. Those are millions and millions of possible consumers that you are missing out on, dear businessperson. So have a look-see at the infographic to get a grasp on what’s going on with the world of advertising on the Twitterscape, covering basics like how to embed multiple keyword groups in your ads and what kind of offers really entice people to follow brands on Twitter.

    Before too long, you’ll look just like Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal, rolling around in your lush bed of lots of money.

  • Microsoft adCenter: New Changes Live, More In Testing

    Microsoft is discussing some changes it has rolled out to adCenter over the past few weeks. They should be improvements to the platform, as the company says they’re all based almost exclusively on customer feedback.The company runs down the list of changes in a blog post.

    Changes include:

    • Ease of navigation in Web UI and Desktop: Menu redesign to allow for easy discovery of features
    • Browser Compatibility: adCenter support for Chrome and Safari
    • Improving Desktop Performance: Faster and more reliable experience in managing bulk tasks
    • Historical and Aggregated Quality Score: Improves campaign performance by having greater visibility into quality scores

    In addition to these, they have several features currently in testing with select advertisers:

    • URL by Match Type: Beginning this week, we are introducing new functionality that will provide more precise control over advertiser campaigns. In addition to the ability to assign unique destination URLs for each keyword match type within the same ad group, advertisers may also assign unique parameters. The team is releasing this feature in waves beginning this week continuing through the end of October. Advertisers will receive a notification email at least one week before this feature is enabled for their account.
    • Improved Location Targeting: Advertisers may now reach more relevant users in targeted locations with fewer steps. Also, advertisers can now leverage new advanced location options to target users by physical location or by their physical location and intent.
    • Broad Match Modifier: A targeting feature that lets advertisers create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match, and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords help advertisers get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if they mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.

    • According to the company, advertisers should expect these features to be generally available soon. On top of all of this, the company is working to launch more interactive ad formats for mobile.

    Last week, Microsoft announced an update to how it handles negative keywords.

    adCenter, of course provides the paid search ads behind not only Bing, but Yahoo. Tthe adCenter portion of the companies’ search alliance is still rolling out to more countries. Last month, Microsoft announced the migration of Yahoo Search Marketing accounts in the UK, Ireland and France. IT has already been complete in the U.S. and Canada (though the organic search part is already worldwide).

    In a recent announcement, Yahoo declared that Yahoo/Bing clicks are 14% more valuable than Google clicks, while also having 9% more ROI. This was based on data from Efficient Frontier (Global Q4 2011 Digital Marketing Performance Report).

  • AdWords Contextual Engine Gets Biggest Upgrade Ever

    Google announced changes to AdWords, which the company says will simplify the way advertisers buy and run display ads through AdWords.

    “For nine years, AdWords customers have been buying display campaigns through an interface designed for search,” says Google’s AdWords team in a blog post. “This is like trying to run in glass slippers — it might work, but it’d be a lot more effective with the right running shoes. So we’re giving display its own tab within AdWords.”

    Display Network Tab in AdWords

    The tab will roll out over the next few weeks.

    In addition to the tab, Google announced a new contextual engine (the system that matches ads to pages based on keywords) update for AdWords, which the company calls the “biggest enhancement ever”. The company uploaded the following video of Director of Product Management for Display, Brad Bender, talking about both the tab and the updated engine:

    Google says the update give the engine the ability to combine the reach of display with the “precision” of search using “next-gen” keyword targeting.

    Some might say, however, that precision and search aren’t quite as synonymous as they oncer were in the online advertising world. There’s no question that Facebook is able to get much more precise when it comes to targeting based on demographic and interest. Google will no doubt try to improve on this with Google+ and its revamped privacy policy, but it just doesn’t have the data about web users that Facebook does.

    That said, the advantage and precision of search, in comparison, comes with the fact that search ads deliver on timing when the user is actually looking for something in particular. Imagine if Google is able to get the Facebook-type data and have the best of both worlds.

    On the update engine, Google says, “For example, let’s say you’re running display campaigns for a Travel Agency who offers a vacation packages in several Caribbean islands. In the past, you would have created themed ad groups targeting vacations to Turks and Caicos and the Caribbean. Now, with this new keyword level transparency you might realize that the keyword ‘Turks and Caicos vacations’ is 4 times more profitable than the keyword ‘caribbean vacations’. You can optimize your campaigns to aggressively target these high performing keywords, and be more conservative on ‘caribbean vacations’.”

    Along with all of this, Google is launching a “targeting diagram” feature, to help advertisers better visualize the reach of campaigns, and see how they’re impacted by combining various targeting types.

  • comScore Ranks Top 50 Web Properties for February 2012

    comScore has released a report raking the top 50 web properties in the United States for February 2012. The data, gathered from the comScore Media Metrix service, shows some of the trends in web traffic during February.

    Not surprisingly, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! retained the top three spots. Google has 186.6 million visitors to its various sites in February, while Microsoft had 174.4 million, and Yahoo! sat in a close third with 173.5 million. Facebook was in fourth place with 158.7 million. Twitter was squarely in the middle of the pack, ranking 25th with 38.4 million. With tax time approaching, the IRS’s website made the list for February at 43rd place with 25 million. Check out the full list below:

    Top 50 US Web Properties for February 2012

    February also saw surges in certain kinds of traffic. Traffic to the IRS’s website grew by 54% from January to February. During the same time frame, overall traffic to tax-related websites grew by 48%, a trend that is likely to continue until April. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day drove traffic surges as well. Traffic to flower and gift sites grew by 28%, while e-card services saw a jump of 13%. The Super Bowl was especially kind to auto makers, who saw a spike in traffic of 17% thanks to their numerous Super Bowl ads.

    The full study can be downloaded from comScore.

  • Social Ads Will Rule The 2012 Campaign [INFOGRAPHIC]

    Back in 2008, a year where social media played a bigger role in the election than ever before, Barack Obama and John McCain only spent $500,000 combined on social advertising – and that was all Obama. In the 2012 election, the candidates are expected to up that figure in a huge way.

    TV ads are dying, according to social advertising company 140 Proof. They say that the decrease in viewers watching live TV and instead skipping all the commercials with their DVRs will result in $992 million of wasted political TV ads. So, where should that nearly billion dollars of advertising clout go?

    The social sphere. They are quicker and easier to distribute than TV ads and according to 140 Proof, will be seen by 162 million voters. That’s a lot of the electorate.

    Last election, only 9.5 million was spent on online political advertising – with a tiny fraction devoted to social sites like Facebook and Twitter. This year, that number is expected to skyrocket to 142 million in total online spending – with a larger percentage going to social ads (15x the 2008 figures).

    What do you think? Will Obama and (whoever wins the GOP primary) truly embrace social advertising? Are you more likely to pay attention to an ad on Facebook, let’s say, as opposed to one on the tube? Or is it more annoying to have politicians invade your social sphere? Let us know in the comments, after you check out the infographic below:

  • Facebook’s Aggregated Topic Tags Linking To External Sites

    A little while ago, Facebook started grouping posts in your news feed by topic. Any Facebook user probably sees many of these “aggregated tag” stories on their feeds in any given day. When multiple friends (or pages you follow) post about a certain hot topic, let’s say March Madness, Facebook groups those stories into a collapsable story. It will say something like “Jack Jones and 4 other people posted about March Madness.” If you’re a fan of these aggregated tags, it’s because it allows your news feed to be free of the clutter of dozens of people talking about the same topic. If you’re not a fan of the feature, it’s probably because posts tend to get swallowed up inside the grouping.

    Here’s what Facebook said back when they rolled out this change:

    You may notice some of your News Feed stories are now grouped together by topic. We want to show you the most relevant and interesting information, and this test is designed to show you trends among what your friends are saying.

    One of the obvious observations about the aggregated tag stories was that ti could be great for brands. for instance, even if a user didn’t mention tag Starbucks himself in his post about Starbucks, this feature would put his status in a group that does tag Starbucks. Users are then directed to the Starbucks Facebook page if they click the tag.

    And that’s where that link has always gone – to a brand, public figure, band, etc.’s Facebook page – not their personal site or another web resource on the topic. Now, it appears that Facebook is testing linking to external sites from those aggregated tags.

    First spotted at Maypalo, Facebook used the aggregated tag of Indian Cricket player Sachin Tendulkar to link to an ESPN page on him, not his official Facebook page.

    Check it out (click for larger image):

    A Facebook spokesperson told All Facebook that ““We’re always testing new features. We have nothing to announce at this time.”

    Aggregated tags have always been a way to “advertise” topics on Facebook – as they send traffic to brands’ official pages. But linking out to external sites could make these aggregated tags even more of an advertising factor. Have you seen anything like this? Let us know in the comments.

  • Groupon’s “Commitment To Customers” Is UK-Only

    In a recent article, we asked if Groupon will be better now, following regulation from the UK’s Office of Fair Trading (essentially, the UK’s version of the FTC).

    In a blog post called “Groupon’s Commitment to Customers,” the company responded to the OFT’s regulation, talking about all of the improvements it has been making, and will be making. Apparently, however, that only applies to the UK.

    That’s not to say the company hasn’t made or isn’t making improvements elsewhere, but the outline for the UK isn’t necessarily the same as it is everywhere else.

    While the post was posted on the company’s UK blog, and discussed the OFT situation, one might expect the “how we’re making it right” elements to apply to the broader Groupon business, around the world. That it apparently not the case, necessarily. A Groupon spokesperson tells WebProNews, “The blog refers to specific actions we’re taking in the UK to address issues the OFT identified; some were designed in response to the OFT’s findings and others were already underway. It is aligned with our corporate mission and values carried out in the rest of Groupon’s 48 countries, but again, should be read as a plan we’re executing in the UK.” Emphasis added.

    There is “zero relationship” between Groupon’s launch today of Groupon Scheduler across the US and Canada, according to the spokesperson, even though it’s in beta, and was only available in a handful of cities until today, which seems interesting, considering one of the “how we’re making it right” bullet points in the UK post was:

    “We will provide merchants with a free online scheduling system allowing customers to book appointments at the time of purchase.”

    That’s exactly what Groupon Scheduler is.

    “Groupon Scheduler originally soft-launched last year and the product is part of a larger timeline of merchant product development – an evolution of tools provided to small business owners to help them run operations more efficiently,” said the spokesperson. “The OFT only reviews UK operations; Scheduler is currently open to North American businesses only. They’re unrelated.”

    “For merchants, this is an easier way to efficiently manage appointments and employee workload, while catering to customers’ requests at any time of day,” she said. “Scheduling systems, especially the good ones, are often too expensive for the average small business owner. Groupon Scheduler is free and has already alleviated this point of stress for many of our salon and appointment-based merchants.”

  • Yandex Now Part Of NASDAQ Internet Index, Launches Real-Time Bidding Ad Model

    Russian search giant Yandex has been added to the NASDAQ Internet Index (Nasdaq:QNET), effective today.

    The NASDAQ Internet Index includes companies in online software, Internet service providers, search engines,
    web hosting, web design, and e-commerce. As of the time of this writing, the index is at 238.18 +3.03‎ (1.29%‎).

    “As the largest Russian internet business, we are pleased that Yandex will now be included in the NASDAQ Internet Index alongside some of the most innovative and influential internet companies in the world. The addition of Yandex to the index is a recognition of our company’s growth and leadership, coupled with the strength of our technology and quality of our employees,” said CEO Arkady Volozh.

    Today, Yandex also announced the release of a new ad model with real-time bidding for public testing.

    “Real-Time Bidding provides us with an entirely new business model that boosts both return on investment for advertisers and advertising revenues for websites,” says Nikolay Danilov, who leads the project. “Advertisers now have an opportunity to target their display ads exclusively to specific audiences while paying exactly what they like. Website owners, on the other hand, can benefit from the auction-based sales that considerably improve their chances to increase revenue from advertising,”

    The company explains the model as advertising systems fighting for the right to serve ads from their advertisers, as opposed to advertisers directly bidding for impressions.

    Last month, Yandex scored a deal with Twitter, and launched new social features.

    When a user visits a page, the system offers the ad systems the opportunity to buy an impression on the page the user is about to view. The systems, the company says, automatically choose the best ad for a particular offer, and make a bid. The system chooses the best bidder, and the user sees the ad that has won the auction.

    The model has been implemented on sites in the Yandex Advertising Network, to serve both search and display ads.

  • What If Facebook Looked Like Your Email Spam Folder? [INFOGRAPHIC]

    Spam (the most often unwanted email correspondences, not the guilty pleasure meat product) it usually flagged by your email filter, and if it somehow gets by, it doesn’t take the most astute observer to recognize a claim that’s probably not going to hold water.

    But what if all of this spam started to overwhelm you on your social networks like Facebook and Twitter? Neolane has addressed this with an infographic that asks the question What If Spam Were True? Basically, the hypothetical situation explored is one where all of those messages you see – “I won 4 free iPads” and “I make 500 dollars a day sitting at home for 1 hour of work” – are actually coming from your friends on Facebook. What if the brands and people on Facebook that you trust were spamming the hell out of your news feed?

    What if you missed the important updates, the real life events of your friends and family, or even the important promotions and actions of the organizations you actually wanted to see, because “Cousin Ed” took only “six weeks to get that diploma” or every other update was about the “free iPad” you could win when filling out that survey.

    They warn that companies have to be careful with the social media advertising, as to not drown out the stuff people really come to Facebook to see. As more brands begin to utilize Facebook’s sponsored stories (and the wide world of the open graph with sponsored action stories), we’ll see if our news feeds end up looking like the spam folder in your email.

    What If Spam Were True? [Infographic]
    Via: Neolane