Marketing Pilgrim

Every couple of weeks, we like to take time out to thank our advertisers. Without the support of the companies listed below, we would not have the resources to provide the same detailed coverage of internet marketing news.

SEO Copywriters - offering well-researched, interesting and informative content for any business in any industry.

Text Link Brokers - if you looking to buy links - for traffic or SEO - Text Link Brokers has a vast network of link partners and great pricing. They even offer a beginners guide to buying links.

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We’ve already seen an increase in news related to online reputation management in the last few days, and now Wired magazine lists it as one of the top trends for 2007.

Their excellent article “The See-Through CEO” looks at how businesses are becoming more transparent with their communications and how consumers are wielding a lot of influence over your online brand equity.

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Now that we’ve established that you can use the exact same commercial is more effective online than on TV, we should also point out how much more effective video is than static advertising, even online.

A DoubleClick (they’re for sale, folks!) study released this week that states that Internet users itneract more with video ad than they do image ads.

Here are the hard numbers:

Online video ads experience click-through rates ranging from 0.4 percent to 0.74 percent depending on the online video format. By comparison, the click-through rate for plain GIF or JPG image ads ranges between 0.1 and 0.2 percent, based on DoubleClick data.

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iMedia Connection has two useful articles in as many days. I like to read their articles, but I seldom feel prompted to link to them. But these might be helpful. Check them out:

• The Best Website Metrics Are…: If you don’t already know it, your website should be measurable. It should be giving you lots of beautiful data. (I love data. That’s why I love web analytics.) Even if you already have well established web analytics on your site, this article can helps you define which metrics you really need to be watching. And, while it’s very interesting, how many countries your visitors came from doesn’t make the list.
   

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Despite support from some adult sites and anti-porn activists, the ICM Registry’s proposal for a .xxx top-level domain was rejected by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in a 9-5 vote. ICANN states that a .xxx TLD would be difficult to enforce worldwide as well as create “public policy concerns.”

From CNET:

“ICM’s response does not address (the ICANN Government Advisory Committee’s) concern for offensive content and similarly avoids the GAC’s concern for the protection of vulnerable members of the community,” ICANN stated in the meeting. “The board does not believe these public-policy concerns can be credibly resolved with the mechanisms proposed by the applicant.”

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E-consultancy has published a free 12- page briefing on the Paid Search industry in the UK.

The document is packed full of useful information, including:

• An overview of the UK market (including market valuation and trends)
• A write-up of the key points emerging from the discussion
• New statistics
• Useful resources

Topics discussed included:

• Yahoo!’s launch of Panama platform
• Landing page optimization
• Bid management technology
• Quality of traffic on content networks
• Budget allocation and resourcing

Hey, you can’t beat free!*

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We have some news and then a big ‘ole mess to bring to your attention.

First, the news. AOL has announced that it’s Advertising.com unit would manage advertising sold on the new online video site being built by NBC and News Corp.

Ok, now the mess.

1. Google owns 5% of AOL, yet AOL is involved in what might be Google’s biggest video competitor.
2. Will Advertising.com now exclude the management of video campaigns outside of this new venture? I’m sure Lightningcast will still want to work with video sites other than this new venture.

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Over at SEO Refugee, “Skitzzo” posts a bold proclamation that “SEO is Dead” (linkbait anyone?), and I agree, to an extent.

While at Search Summit Australia, I was asked to name the winners and losers for 2007. I chose the title “search engine marketer” as a loser - not for the skills, just the name. You see, search marketers have grown their talents tremendously over the past few years, and to say that we focus just on the “search engines” is a misnomer.

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Remember when video site Joost stormed on to the scene, when it snagged the Viacom distribution deal out from under YouTube?

In case you’re still not sure what Joost is all about, they’ve created their own TV commercial.

Oh the irony of using YouTube to share a Joost commercial.

Via Adverblog.

You may find that tech blogs are running a little late today. You can blame Business Week for their lengthy look at whether Google has become too powerful. The cover page asks “Who’s Afraid of Google” and Rob Hof has an excellent take on whether Google is starting to feel a backlash, or not.

In case you need an abridged version, here are the good parts.

Remember the Googlezon video, predicting Google dominance by the year 2014? Some think it’s already here…

“It’s Google’s world,” shrugs Chris Tolles, vice-president of marketing at Topix Inc., which makes money from running Google ads on its news aggregation site. “We just live in it.”

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It seems like every tradeshow, expo and seminar has to have at least one session on the future of its industry. Generally, the predictions are . . . general. The industry will grow beyond our wildest imaginations, something completely different will come along, things we have no control over will change everything, etc.

But what if we made more concrete predictions for the future of our industry? That’s what Manoj Jasra of Web Analytics World has done. In his post, “Future of SEM: What WILL and WILL NOT Matter,” he outlines five things that will no longer matter and five things that will matter in the future.

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We’ve long been told that to appeal to an online audience, traditional advertisers must change the way that they create their video ads. But studies say . . . no. A study by Millward Brown now indicates that the online video audience receives the same 30 second video ad spot quite similarly to offline viewers—nay, better than their offline counterparts.

eMarketer reports:

Web spots increased the viewer attention rate by 53%, awareness by 52%, consideration by 27% and favorability by 26%. Prompted recall of brand advertising was four times higher for Web viewers.

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