Google has put out a new ad for its Chromebooks – the Chrome OS-based computers, which essentially rely on Google’s cloud for all storage purposes.
The ad highlights this point, claiming that you can’t keep anything safe from aliens, including your Chromebook, but that at least your files will be safe, assuming aliens actually do attack, and destroy your Chomebook.
This has actually been one of the main points Google has made about Chrome OS from the beginning. It doesn’t matter how many times you break your Chromebooks, you can always get another one, and it will be as if nothing happened.
Google made a couple AdWords-related announcements advertisers will want to take note of.
For one, they will soon offer ad group level impression share metrics for the search and display networks.
Advertisers will be able to use this data to better identify high performing ad groups that aren’t capturing the majority of available impressions, Google says.
Within the next few weeks, advertisers will start seeing three new columns that can be added to the ad groups tab. These are: Impr. Share, Lost IS (Rank) and Exact Match IS. Impr. Share shows the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Lost IS (Rank) shows the share of impressions lost due to your d Rank. Exact Match IS (for the search network only) shows the percentage of impressions you received for searches that exactly matched your keyword divided by the estimated number of exact match impressions you were eligible to receive.
Additionally, Google is also planning an algorithm update to provide more accurate campaign impression share metrics. Changes will include: refined campaign-level stats and once-a-day updates.
“Since we are improving our algorithms, we will update all campaign-level impression share metrics back to May 2011,” says Katie Miller of Google’s Inside AdWords crew. “As a result, you will no longer be able to see campaign-level historical impression share metrics before May 2011.”
“In order to calculate your impression share metrics with a greater degree of accuracy, we will update all impression share metrics once per day (approximately noon Pacific Time [GTM-8]),” she says. “As a result, the impression share data that you see will not reflect impression share for the current day, and may not include the previous day’s impression share as well (depending on what time of the day you run your report).”
These changes will start rolling out globally on January 30.
In a separate announcement, Google announced that it has rolled out two improvements to Automated Rules in AdWords: an increase to the rule limit to 100 (from 10) and the ability to undo changes made by a rule.
“In the event that a rule doesn’t make the changes that you expect, you can easily undo them by clicking the ‘Undo’ button in the Logs table,” says product marketing manager Andrew Truong. “We hope that undo can help you feel more comfortable experimenting with Automated Rules. You can try out new strategies for a few days and quickly return to the state in which you started if you’re not happy with the performance.”
Microsoft announced the launch of the new Atlas Search desktop tool for Atlas clients.
“You can traffic up to 1mm keywords within 24 hours by simply exporting your keywords from the search engines, and then dragging and dropping the file into the tool,” says Microsoft’s Lori Goode. “Click redirects are created at the click of a button and ready to upload back into the search engine. No really, it’s that simple!”
“OK, so the ASDT will keep traffic time to the barest minimum,” she continues. “But when you’re using the ASDT, you also benefit from deeper connections between search engine data and Atlas data. You’ll be able to pull search engine dimensional and fact data side-by-side with Atlas data in MyReports, giving you the ability to assess campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, and landing page performance.”
Reports, including Keyword Path Analysis and Search And Display Synergy have been updated to be compatible with new, simplified click redirects.
Microsoft also released a new API that will support the launch of a new Search Engine Management channel in the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance.
Google announced a couple of new targeting options for mobile advertisers today: WiFi targeting, and targeting by mobile operating system version.
“To reach users when you know they’ll have a high speed connection, you’ll now be able to target your campaigns to mobile users specifically on a WiFi connection,” says Google Mobile Ads product manager Morgan Hallmon. “If you’re currently targeting users on specific mobile carriers, you can now target users on WiFi connections too, and expand your reach. This is also useful if your campaign or landing page has high bandwidth content, like videos that you’d like mobile users to access.”
“You can already target mobile users by their operating system platform,” adds Hallmon. “For example, you can specify whether you would like to reach Android, iOS or WebOS devices with your ads. We’re now giving you even more granular targeting options if your application or service is only applicable to particular platform versions, such as ‘iOS version 4.0 and above’.”
The new targeting options can be found under Campaign Settings.
If it starts to look like the things you typically see online are starting to spill over into Real Life, you’re not imagining things. For one reason or another, Google has decided to launch an in-print and outdoor ad campaign to promote their Good to Know campaign, a mission to “help people stay safe on the Internet and manage the information they share online.”
According to Ad Age, Google is running print ads for their Good to Know with USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Google’s own Good to Know site states that the advertisements will also appear on public transport and, yes, online. It’s basically Internet Safety 101 to help newbies avoid getting drained by online vampires (not real vampires, for any newbies reading this – there are no vampires on the Internet. Promise).
The campaign is segmented into four areas regarding staying safe on the Internet and successfully keeping one’s personal information secure. The first, perhaps best considered the primer for understanding Internet security, is simply called “Stay safe online” and contains a list of online jargon (e.g., malware, spyware, phishing), ways to look out for yourself, password security, and so on. The main course of Internet safety, if you will. The accompanying video should help newbies catch on:
Following that, other topics include how your data is used online, how Google uses your data, and how to manage your data. Again, Google provides another video via their campaign:
The ads themselves are pretty benign, almost child-like in their aesthetic. It’s pretty disarming if not outright inviting. Some examples of what you can expect to see from these print ads:
That’s a pretty and fun welcome manual to the Internet, yeah?
So now for the question such a marketing campaign begs: Why would Google, the company many people tend to think as synonymous with the Internet, take out ads in newspapers and outdoor billboards? My thinking on it is thus:
People who are regular Internet users likely already have this whole Internet safety/security message down cold. However, there are people who don’t use the Internet regularly and, due to all news being bad news these days, probably only hear mostly bad things coming from this Internet place. Identities stolen, loved ones stalked, bank accounts emptied, dogs and cats living together, etc. This class of advert, methinks, is directed at those people uninitiated in the ways of the Internet and hopes to assuage any of the trepidation and intimidation when they are confronted with Internet.
And the more people that are online, the more Google stands to gain. So why compete with the Facebooks and Twitters with long-time Internet users if you can just create a new pocket of Internet users while painting yourself as the good guy at the same time?
Facebook announced last September at its f8 event that users would be able to start using more “actions” on Facebook as they engage with various apps and sites. That means doing things besides “liking” content, whether that means listened to, watched, cooked, or whatever.
“[We’re] going to make it so you can connect to anything you want in any way you want,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the event. “Last year we added the nouns, this year we added the verbs.”
Well, perhaps he should have said, “next year we’ll add the verbs,” but you get the idea.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the actions would be launching any day now. Today, it is being reported that they will launch on Wednesday.
Facebook is holding a press event, where it is said to be unveiling new apps to take advantage of more actions. We’ll find out soon enough what all apps and actions this will include.
One thing that businesses should note about these apps and actions is that they will open the door to some new advertising opportunities (which combined with some other ad-related efforts on Facebook’s part, should fuel revenue nicely ahead of the company’s IPO).
The actions will no doubt make user timelines more interesting.
It looks like Facebook is really trying to ramp up revenue ahead of its IPO (which is now expected in May).
Apparently the company is cold calling, or cold emailing rather, businesses trying to get them to sign on for some “one to one” phone consultation on Facebook advertising, with a program called “Start to Success”. The Next Web shares such an email that someone from the company reportedly sent to a business. It says:
I am reaching out to you to discuss a new progamme Facebook are implementing for advertisers call Start to Success. This is a free and exclusive programme where we are offering a limited number of businesses a 4 week “one to one” phone consultation with our Marketing Solutions team.
As part of this free offering, our team will work with you to help you better understand the Facebook Platform and how to implement advertising campaigns that drive marketing results.
I would like to set up a call to discuss how Facebook can help you achieve your clients marketing goals through our “Start to Success programme.”
…
Furthermore, Facebook is incentivizing advertisers to stay with Facebook with 45% reduction in CPCs, according to TBG Digital’s Global Facebook Advertising Report Q4. Some other interesting stats from that report include:
– Facebook earns 23% more in ad rates since Q1 2011.
– Ad performance improves by 18% in 2011.
– Finance accounts for over 60% of impressions for offsite campaigns
Update: As the study has generated some confusion, I’m going to repost the author’s explanation (which also appears in the comments) here:
This study, which measures the CTR of different social network users, was conducted using a referrer based methodology.
When we discuss referrer, we mean it in this way:
Let’s say, for example, harold.com is a publisher on the Chitika network (aka a person who runs Chitika ads). If, for example, someone on Google+ posts a link that leads to a particular page on harold.com, the person clicking this link would be said to be referred to harold.com by plus.google.com.
What we are measuring is the CTR on harold.com from plus.google.com referrals, not plus.google.com itself. To simplify, we are measuring the CTR of generated traffic, not of the website.
Obviously this is a small sample, so the study in question measured the CTR of all publisher sites included within our study when the referrer was Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. This is similar to the methodology Chitika used in our first major research study, measuring the CTR of traffic generated from Google, Yahoo, and Bing (link: http://insights.chitika.com/2009/clickthrough-rate-analysis-bing-vs-google-vs-yahoo/ ).
To summarize, the CTR in question is calculated as (# of clicks generated from impression set) / (# of impressions received on a publisher webpage from a link posted on Google+/Facebook/Twitter). Hope this helps.
Original Article: Chitika Insights has a new report indicating that Facebook users click on ads more than twice as often as Google+ users or Twitter users.
“Given the announcements and roll out of new social media advertising programs on platforms including; Google+, Facebook and Twitter, we wanted to investigate where advertisers will have the highest potential to engage with users based on CTR (Click Through Rate),” a representative for Chitika tells WebProNews. “To quantify this study, we analyzed a sample of data from the extensive Chitika ad network, covering hundreds of millions of impressions, to compile a data set which yielded the CTR (Click Through Rate, or likelihood of a user clicking on an ad) of the average user on the three social networks.”
The firm isolated the referrer domain for Google+, Twitter and Facebook, to compile a data set which yielded clickthrough rate of the average user on each social network.
Google+ and Twitter users click on ads with about the same frequency, according to Chitika’s findings.
Facebook measured a .24% CTR, while Google+ and Twitter users ranked at .1 and .09% respectively.
“As always, a cost-benefit analysis is key to identifying which platform (if any) is worthwhile for your product or service,” Chitika says. “One of the biggest factors in deciding which form of social network advertising is the best choice is highly dependent on the type of campaign being run. For instance, in marketing a time sensitive campaign, utilizing an analytical approach with Twitter’s promoted trends could be more effective than pursuing standard Facebook ads. Moreover, it is possible as a marketer to optimize for all segments of traffic, and when making the final decision on an ad campaign, it is essential to keep your target market in mind.”
Of course, simply using Google+ to promote your products or services, may have new benefits to search visibility.
In order to make sure that Americans don’t miss a single political ad this year, Cox Digital Solutions announced today that they are partnering with Yahoo in order to provide exclusive political and advocacy advertising across Yahoo properties. With 2012 being an election year in the U.S., this is a pretty timely agreement between the two companies. The press release goes into the details of the agreement:
The relationship makes Cox Digital Solutions, reaching 157 million unique users and nearly 70% of the total U.S. Internet audience (December 2011 comScore) with their local and national media solutions each month, a unique source of political advertising. Yahoo!’s media properties are No.1 in 10 categories including Sports, News, and Finance, reaching more people each day than any network, newspaper, or cable channel. In the U.S., Yahoo! attracts 175 million unique users, reaching 79% of the total U.S. Internet audience (December 2011 comScore). As a selling agent for political, issue, or advocacy advertising that runs across Yahoo!, Cox Digital Solutions offers political advertisers another scalable option for reaching their target audience.
This partnership falls in line with another recent announcement from Cox Digital about its “enhanced targeting solution that enables advertisers to target online advertising based on congressional district.” Basically, this targeting expands over Cox Digital’s massive net of content and local media sites by “combining IP mapping with proprietary data, to find users in an advertisers’ exact target congressional district.”
Steve Shaw, President of Cox Digital Solutions, celebrated the team-up with Yahoo. “The partnership with Yahoo! and our continued focus on technology are big wins not only for us, but also for the publishers and advertisers that we serve,” Shaw said. “This step shows our continued commitment to supporting political advertisers and agencies who need digital ad solutions that deliver.”
Yahoo’s Vice President of Global Agencies Accounts and Sales, Seth Dallaire, added, “Yahoo! reaches nearly 90 percent of the nation’s online voting-age adults each month, which means Yahoo! users will ultimately help determine the outcome of the U.S. elections.” He also echoed Shaw’s excitement and said, “We are thrilled to partner with a leader like Cox Digital Solutions and leverage its expertise in political selling with our reach to provide advertisers the voice they need to drive votes.”
The new venture will offer political advertisers several “scalable and customizable options to reach their target audiences” in hopes of delivering their political message to “trusted local media and premium contextually relevant sites in key target markets throughout the U.S.”
Hopefully this means that by July we won’t have to see anymore ads from the pharmaceutical industry or ads about McDonald’s resurrecting their Big ‘n Tasty because there will be so many more political ads gluing our eyelids open that there won’t be time or room for anything else until November 7th. Pick your poison, America.
According to Inside Facebook, a spokesperson for the company said the feature is now live, though I’ve been unable to find any sponsored stories in my own feed.
Sponsored stories themselves are nothing new. Basically, they’re regular news feed stories from your friends that have been promoted, after the fact, by an advertiser. “These stories only show up for friends, so you can learn about places to go, apps to use, games to play and organizations your friends like,” explains Facebook.
Here’s a video about the ads:
What is new is the placement in the news feed itself, which will give the ads much more valuable placement. This is generally the part of Facebook users gravitate towards. They’re more likely to get eyeballs and clicks. Our own tests at WebProNews indicate that Facebook click rates declined substantially after recent platform and design changes such as the Facebook Timeline.
If you compare Facebook to a search engine like Google, this kind of ad practice has some similarities and differences. Both feature ads in both the column, and the “body” (the news feed in Facebook’s case, the search results in Google’s case). Both are labled. A couple of key differences are: 1. Google presents the body ads in a colored box to make them stand out and make it more clear that they are ads, while Facebook only presents a small light gray link that could easily go unnoticed (screenshot here). 2. Google doesn’t actually have the ads sprinkled throughout the body, but only at the top and/or bottom. Facebook’s sponsored stories may appear throughout the news feed.
Given the fact that Facebook spam is on the rise, people may want ads to be as clearly marked as possible.
Facebook is launching these news feed ads just after a judge basically gave people free rein to sue Facebook for using their likenesses in ads (granted, that doesn’t mean that such suits will be successful).
Users can hide the stories, just like other types of posts. You can click hide to remove individual stories, limit the volume of stories you see from specific friends to “only important posts” or stop seeing certain kinds of stories altogether (unfriending the person or unliking a page).
Of course, there’s always the possibility that one of your own updates will be sponsored.
“Some of your stories may be featured. But you always determine who can see the stories you share. If a story does get featured, it’s shown to the same people you originally shared it with,” says Facebook.
Just as everybody was likely leaning toward the weekend a little early this past Friday afternoon, Facebook snuck in a pretty significant announcement before the start of the weekend. Around 4PM that day, a post in their developer blog went up about the advent of in-app currency now being offered to Facebook users in exchange for completing offers from advertisers. The post goes on:
Facebook gives users the ability to earn virtual currency by completing advertiser offers. For app developers, these offers can be a valuable additional source of revenue by helping them monetize users that may not otherwise pay for virtual currency. Today we’re launching in-app currency offers, which lets developers award users with their own in-app currency (e.g., Fred Currency in Fred’s game) upon completing an offer.
Previously, developers were able to integrate Credits offers, where users earned Facebook Credits by completing offers. The new in-app currency offers product is in addition to the Credits offers product, and you can utilize either or both in your app.
Honestly, the concept that app developers can “monetize users” sounds a little crazy, as if we’re all being shoved into a transmogrifier in order to be zapped into money that can be used to purchase things, but that’s pretty much the best way to describe it. Just check out the screen grab below to preview your future lived as currency if your name is Fred:
That’s right, Fred: you, too, can now be spent.
The new app product works alongside two previous virtual currency models on Facebook, Offerwall and Dealspot, although it’s not exactly spelled out what exactly Facebook users can spend the in-app currency on. Maybe you can buy more ads to watch from the app developer. If anybody knows out there, comment below to share your experience with trading in or utilizing in-app currency on Facebook apps.
In September, Facebook announced the Timeline, the new open graph, and social actions (verbs, essentially), which would let people go well beyond the “like” when sharing Facebook content.
“[We’re] going to make it so you can connect to anything you want in any way you want,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Last year we added the nouns, this year we added the verbs.”
So far, we’ve only seen a glimpse of these verbs from the early apps – things like “listen” and “watch”.
VentureBeat is reporting that it has heard from a source familiar with the matter that the final stages of testing for the “remaining pieces of Facebook’s new Open Graph” happening, and that the broader actions will be releasing any day now.
So, soon, you should start being able to populate your Timeline with all kinds of things you are doing. And guess what: this is going to benefit advertisers.
As an advertiser, Facebook is about to become an incredible targeting tool, if it wasn’t already. “Advertisers can target users based on these Open Graph Actions. E.g. the app developer above could target users who ‘Drank a Cappuccino’, perhaps to suggest other drinks they may like to try,” Facebook says. “This is achieved by including an action_spec in the targeting of the AdGroup.”
These actions are also going to be a great way to get users more engaged with your content. Hopefully there are some verbs that apply to what you do. “For example, you could create an Open Graph app called ‘my_app’ that contains a ‘drink’ action with a number of associated Open Graph Objects which can be drunk e.g. ‘Latte’, ‘Tea’, ‘cappuccino’, etc.,” says Facebook on its action specs page. “When a user triggers the ‘Drank a tea’ action it is shared to their timeline.”
Facebook ads are already becoming more popular with businesses, and this should push that popularity up even more. Combine that with the mobile ads that are said to be coming, and Facebook should have a hell of revenue machine as a public company. The IPO, is expected this year.
When asked for more on the actions, a Facebook spokesperson told WebProNews, “We’re currently focused on the rollout of Timeline, which already features several apps in the news, music and video categories. In the coming weeks, Timeline apps will launch in more categories, including fitness, sports, food, and travel.”
Unruly is the marketing firm behind Google’s Chrome paid link fiasco – the campaign by which Googlers are saying they are embarrassed.
Still, Unruly announced today that it is has just raised $25 million in funding in a Series A investment from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and The British Growth Fund.
Unruly says it’s the largest ever for a private company in the social video sector.
The company was founded in 2006. It has offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Sydney. It claims to have delivered, tracked and audited 1.34 billion user-intended video views and executed 1,400+ successful social video campaigns for brands like Evian (Roller Babies), T-Mobile (Life’s for sharing) and Old Spice (Man Your Man Could Smell Like).
They’ve also done campaigns for EA, Adidas, Unilever, and of course Google.
“Today represents an important milestone for the company and social video as a whole,” said Unruly founder and CEO Scott Button. “Five years ago, we set out to help brands capture the massive opportunity in social video and we’re delighted that such a distinguished group of investors share our conviction.”
Button’s response to the whole Google ordeal, was (via Peter Kafka):
…we don’t ask bloggers to link to the advertiser’s site. It’s just not part of our business model. We help advertisers distribute video content and that’s what we get paid for. All links from the video player itself are wrapped in Javascript, so although Google can follow them, they don’t influence search engine rankings. Even though we don’t ask bloggers to link, we do advise them to use nofollow if they do link to the advertiser’s site. This is really important and they should do it to protect themselves as much as the advertiser.
As far as I’m aware, there was one link in one post that was not marked nofollow. This was corrected as soon as we became aware of it.
We’re always completely upfront and transparent with bloggers that we are running commercial campaigns and who we’re working for. We always require that bloggers disclose any commercial incentive to post video content. We always require that bloggers disclose even on related tweets that they might do off their own bats.
It’s also a key part of how we operate that we don’t tell bloggers what or how to write. It’s really important that opinions expressed and the tone of voice belong to the author not the advertiser. Occasionally that leads to human error, as here, so we’re always really happy to have these kinds of example flagged and will sort them out as quickly as we possibly can.
This is embarrassing, but a good illustration of two things:
1. Why I like working at Google. The Search Quality Team tries to apply the Webmaster Guidelines fairly – even on other Google products.
2. Why you should pay attention to what any marketing, advertising, or SEO companies might be doing on your behalf.
Either way, I’m sure some of Unruly’s campaigns, such as Old Spice and Evian will be remembered long after the Google ordeal is forgotten.
“Unruly’s proprietary technology platform and aggressive global growth strategy in a fast-growing market is really impressive,” said Richard Anton, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners. “We are delighted to be supporting the company build on its success, bringing our experience of building a number of international marketing and advertising technology companies, including Celltick, ComQi and EPiServer.”
“With global online ad spend set to reach $110 billion by 2014 and online video ad spend predicted to be the fastest growing category, we believe Unruly is strongly positioned to be the winner in the global social video market,” said Martijn Hamann, Partner of Van den Ende & Deitmers.
“In a short space of time, Unruly has played a major role in the explosive growth of social video and this investment gives it additional firepower,” said Marion Bernard, Regional Director of BGF. “We look forward to working with the company and our co-investors to take advantage of the very significant global expansion opportunities. BGF is working in partnership with other investors to expand the pool of investment capital to growing and ambitious UK companies as a key part of developing the entrepreneurial economy”
Torch Partners and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP advised on the funding.
As you may know, Google has strict guidelines against paid links that don’t carry the nofollow link attribute. They have been known to ban sites for the practice, and now it has been discovered that Google has been participating in a bit of this itself, at least indirectly.
Peter Kafka at AllThingsD discovered that it was not actually Google handling the campaign itself, but rather, while the company dominates online advertising, it hired Unruly Media to do so. Either way, it’s still Google’s campaign.
The whole thing was brought to light when SEOBook’s Aaron Wall discovered some paid blog posts showing up in search results. Some posts, he said, are paid and have live links in them to Google Chrome without using nofollow, and talk about SEO in the same post. He notes that all of the posts are “buying YouTube video views”. They feature this video:
The video actually links to the Chrome download page though:
“You can say they didn’t require the links, that the links were incidental, that leaving nofollow off was an accident, etc. … but does Google presume the same level of innocence when torching webmasters?” asks Wall.
Kafka shared a response from Unruly Media after failing to get any direct response from Google itself (he cites the holidays as a reason for this). In the response, Unruly Media CEO Scott Button says:
…we don’t ask bloggers to link to the advertiser’s site. It’s just not part of our business model. We help advertisers distribute video content and that’s what we get paid for. All links from the video player itself are wrapped in Javascript, so although Google can follow them, they don’t influence search engine rankings. Even though we don’t ask bloggers to link, we do advise them to use nofollow if they do link to the advertiser’s site. This is really important and they should do it to protect themselves as much as the advertiser.
As far as I’m aware, there was one link in one post that was not marked nofollow. This was corrected as soon as we became aware of it…
Former Googler Vanessa Fox said, “JavaScript links do in fact pass PageRank, although Google does try to detect when the links are ads and doesn’t pass PageRank when it detects that.”
Google’s Matt Cutts picked a great time to take a “digital break”:
@mattcutts Matt CuttsI’m thinking about doing a “digital break” where I don’t tweet for a week. So if you see me not tweeting, that’s why.3 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google — and other search engines — do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example.
Tom Warren at The Verge reports: “Google says it is now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again,’ but no word on whether the company plans to penalize its own Chrome download page, a process Google follows for guideline violations.
It’s unclear if there really was only a single link that was wasn’t nofollowed, as there are hundreds of pages of results that feature the “articles” in question. But even if that is the case, and Google is not treating these results any differently than it would any other sites, there is a whole other issue.
As Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land points out, many of these posts appear to be the kind of thing Google’s Panda update was designed to eliminate – thin, low quality content. But here we see, not only these results flooding Google’s SERPs (again, there are hundreds of pages of results), but Google actually sponsoring these results.
Look at this page, for example, which ranks right at the top for “chrome small business benefits”. This is the entirety of the text, which is followed by the above video:
Many of you Moms who follow the blog here are not only working work-at-home jobs but also involved in work-at-home businesses or even a traditional brick and mortar small business. I love supporting women in small business because to me the benefits of working from home or running your own business are the same- having a flexible schedule and allowing more time to spend with your family. I know from experience, however, that starting up a business is not an easy feat, especially in today’s economy. Many years ago I started up my side business, Sign & Play, where I offer parent and child sign language classes. I had no idea where to start with getting the word out about my business and wasted a lot of money on advertising that did not work. I know all of my Telecommuting Moms out there are like me in thinking that wasting money is never a good thing. We all love saving money for our families and since the internet arrived, it sure has made that easier. Finding deals, coupons and ways to save is a whole new world now. As a small business owner, you always want to look for ways to save and wasting money can be painful. You have to prioritize spending and ensure that every dollar is spent wisely. These days, having an online presence is an essential step in starting a business, no matter how small it is. Ensuring that potential customers can find your business online is vital and a first step in establishing your web presence. This is where Google Chrome comes in, they offer a way for small businesses to get started easily and get their business name in to the online and social media world without spending a fortune.
Google Chrome helped this small business in Vermont go global. What can Google Chrome do for your future?
I’m guessing that’s not really the best result for finding out about the benefits to small businesses of using Google’s Chrome browser. In fact, I would think Google would have some content of its own, which would be much more helpful.
There is no link in the article at least, other than the YouTube video linking to the download page.
The quality problem is really more concerning than the sponsored link issue, though, if you ask me – in terms of general user experience. I’d rather have sponsored content that is actually useful than content that isn’t helpful at all appearing at the top of my search results.
Email marketers might be very happy to know that Google is testing an AdWords format that will allow Google searchers to subscribe to their emails directly from search results pages.
It’s not set in stone yet. This may or may not become widely available to all advertisers, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t open up to a wider set. Here’s what the ads look like:
Notice the “privacy” link. If you click that, it says, “When you submit this form, your email address will be sent to the advertiser.”
The testing has been going on for a little while, but from the sound of it, it’s expanded a bit. Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch shared the following statement from a Google spokesperson:
“We’re currently running a small experiment of a new ad format that helps users sign up more easily for email subscriptions or other free newsletters. This new ad format contains a box within the ad that displays a user’s Google email address (if logged in). If a user chooses to click ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ then the email address is sent to the advertiser directly, which is clearly disclosed within the ad itself.”
Some email marketing firms like VerticalResponse, Constant Contact and AWeber are already using the ads.
While social networking continues to rise, email and search are still the most popular online activities, and these new ads take advantage of both. Look at this graph Pew put out a few months back. You can see how social media is growing, but look at how search and email are doing.
Social is not killing email, by any means.
But, interestingly enough, there is still a social element to these ads as well – the +1 button. Really, you’re getting the best of all three worlds (OK, maybe not the “best”. it would probably be better if they also had Facebook like buttons, retweet buttons, and StumbleUpon butons alongside the +1, but Google+ is growing like a weed, and the +1 has ramifications for organic search ranking).
These ads could be the best search-driven tool for driving email sign-ups ever available. We’re talking prime real estate on Google SERPs to drive an opt-in path directly to people’s inboxes.
This will no doubt be an incredibly popular ad format for Google, and I can’t imagine them not making it widely available.
Really, it should be a great thing for the entire email marketing industry. It may never even occur to people searching for various topics that there are even email newsletters related to what they’re looking for. They simply may never have thought to look for one. These ads will put them directly in front of users’ faces. This could very well lead to a lot more content being consumed by email at a time when many have suggested that social networks would all but kill the channel (clearly this is not happening).
Think about it. Let’s say you are a huge fan of the Detroit Lions (full disclosure: this applies to me). What if you were searching for Lions-related content on Google, only to discover that there is an amazing newsletter about the team that you had no idea existed. You might want to sign up for that.
Do you use email marketing? Would you purchase these ads on Google? Let us know.
We keep hearing about how huge online shopping has been in the U.S. this year. Earlier, we looked at a report from comScore indicating that online holiday spending is up to $35.billion in the U.S. for this holiday season (up to 12/25), 15% higher than the same period last year.
According to the Kenshoo U.S. retail index, U.S. retailers saw total clicks and online revenue generated by search advertising increase 24% year-over-year.
“These findings focus on the week before Christmas, a critical period for last minute shopping, as well as updated information for the entire holiday season to date,” a representative for Kenshoo tells WebProNews. “The dataset examined by Kenshoo represents more than 25 billion total search advertising impressions, nearly 300 million clicks and over 7 million online sales transactions.”
Online retail search advertising spend increased 39% year-over-year, according to Kenshoo’s findings.
For the holiday season to date, online retail revenue driven by search advertising increased 22% year-over-year. Online retail search advertising spend increased 30% year-over-year and online retail search advertising click-through-rate increased 28%.
“The pace of online shopping in the U.S. continued to surge all the way through Christmas this year,” said Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman. “By and large, retailers anticipated the demand and increased paid search budgets while consumers responded in kind with their clicks and their cash.”
Clearly digital is making a huge impact on multiple sides of the commerce cycle through the holidays. The comScore report found that purchases of digital content (music, movies, TV shows, apps, ebooks) was up significantly on Christmas Day, compared to years past.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, but the top TV ad of the year, according to Nielsen, happens to be the same ad as YouTube’s top ad of the year. That would, of course, be Volkswagen’s The Force, featuring the little kid dressed ad Darth Vader. In fact, that video even made YouTube’s top ten videos period.
1. VW – The Force
2. T-Mobile – Royal Wedding
3. Chrysler – Imported From Detroit
4. DC Shoes – Ken Block’s Gymkhana Four: The Hollywood Megamercial
5. SmartWater – Jennifer Aniston goes viral
6. Team Hot Wheels – The Yellow Driver’s World Record Jump
7. Old Spice – Scent Vacation
8. Apple – Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S
9. Samsung – Unleash Your Fingers
10. Adidas D Rose: adiZero Rose 2 — The Bull
The lesson for advertisers appears to be: use Star Wars for inspiration in your campaigns. Of course, you’ll want to do that without getting sued.
Currently Facebook describes its sponsored stories to Facebook users in the following manner:
Sponsored Stories are regular News Feed stories that have been promoted to the right column of Facebook, where you may be more likely to discover new things that your friends are interested in. These stories only show up for friends, so you can learn about places to go, apps to use, games to play and organizations your friends like.
That’s about to change though, from the sound of it. Rather than just appearing in the right column, they’ll be appearing right in the main news feed. You know – the section of Facebook that everyone pays attention to.
The company is reportedly going to start displaying sponsored stories in the news feed beginning next month, though apparently just one per day per user max, and they’ll be marked as “sponsored”.
I would imagine there will be some backlash to this, but at one a day, how bad can it really be? The ads are still based on friend activity, which is what the News Feed is all about anyway. The difference is that it might benefit the advertiser a bit more.
Based on this screenshot Josh Constine was able to get, it doesn’t look like they’re doing much more to mark the stories as sponsored, beyond a small note that says “sponsored” nex to the timestamp of the posts. Some might prefer they make that stand out a bit more. For example, Google places their ads in a yellow box to make it clear when they are in fact ads, in addition to saying “Ads – Why these ads?” linking to more info about why the ads are being shown. I’m not sure if the word “sponsored” links from Facebook’s stories or not.
The news comes at an interesting time, as a judge just basically gave people free rein to sue Facebook for using their likenesses in ads (though not necessarily indicating that their suits would be successful).
Do you mind Facebook showing sponsored stories in the News Feed? Let us know in the comments.
Nielsen has released a few top ten lists for the top TV ads of the year.
The top most-liked new ad was from Volkswagen, and its Passat ad featuring a little boy dressed as Darth Vader.
Here’s a look at the whole list:
The top most-remembered branded integration with a drama/sitcom was Purell and The Big Bang Theory from October 27, where Sheldon uses hand sanitizer after he puts a live snake into a desk drawer. Here’s that top ten list:
Finally, the top primetime program with product placement activity was American Idol, with 577 occurrences.
If you live in California, and don’t like the way Facebook is using your likeness in ads, you can sue them. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be successful, but according to a report, a judge has dismissed Facebook’s motion to block such a suit, which could open the floodgates for more of them to come through.
Boomberg reports: “U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose rejected Facebook’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit on Dec. 16, ruling the plaintiffs may pursue claims that the company’s sponsored ads violate state law and are fraudulent. Koh granted Facebook’s request to dismiss a claim that it unjustly enriched itself with the sponsored ads.”
One has to wonder if Facebook’s reputation around privacy has anything to do with the judge’s decision.
In a recent piece, we asked if Facebook will make advertising too personal. Clearly, a lot of people think they already do, but Facebook hasn’t even added mobile to the equation yet (with an emphasis on yet), and the timeline feature was just made available to users.
The timeline encourages users to put their whole lives on Facebook. Even if you don’t put everything on there, it provides easier access to your personal history, and will no doubt encourage plenty of users to share a lot more info than they would have otherwise. It’s going to be very interesting to see how it plays into Facebook’s advertising offerings.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that third quarter revenues from online advertising are up 22% year-over-year. Here’s a look at the trend:
Facebook is becoming an increasingly attractive channel for businesses. Part of it has to do with the fact that 800 million people use Facebook. Part of it has to do with the incredible targeting opportunities that come along with those users and all of the information they share. MerchantCircle shared this infographic looking at where local merchants are spending their marketing dollars.
Notice where Facebook is at. And how long do you think it’s going to be behind print – especially once Facebook starts offering mobile ads.
Again, Facebook has some really good targeting capabilities, and this is something they continue to expand on. They recently added topic targeting to the mix, but they let advertisers really drill down into interest and “likes”. If I’m a fan of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” merchandisers can target me with products related to the show. T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.
That’s already pretty powerful. Add mobile to the equation, and then physical location will likely come into play as well. At that point, if you own a brick and mortar store that sells these items, and you’re nearby, you can target me based on that (in theory).
Now, Facebook has launched the Timeline, encouraging users to put their entire lives on Facebook. Keep giving Facebook more and more information about yourself, including your past. Facebook ad targeting is already based on what users put on their profiles. Well, the timeline is the profile, and Facebook’s goal is for you to share more and more. Why stop at what you did today, or what you’re doing now. Share anything you want dating back to your birth. I can’t imagine the advertising potential of something like this.
Perhaps I put a dentist appointment on my timeline. Maybe dentists can advertise to me when I’m due for a teeth cleaning. Let’s say a loved one passes away. Facebook has a feature for this with the Timeline.
Are we going to see ads for funeral homes popping up? Would this be ok? It sounds kind of creepy and disrespectful, but on the other hand, this is indeed when you might require such services.
Here’s what the timeline looks like on mobile devices:
For more on the timeline and where to go to set it up, go here.
Is the combination of the timeline and coming mobile ads from Facebook going to make advertising too personalized, or will it make Facebook ads more useful? Tell us what you think.
