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Only Twelve More Years Until the “Year of the Mobile”

posted on December 16, 2008

If you’re waiting for that elusive “Year of the Mobile” you might want to mark you calendar for the year 2020. According to a new Pew study, that’s when “internet experts” suggest enough of us will have web-enabled cell phones in our pockets to make it a reality.

Another eight twelve years!!!

And, that’s just the optimists! According to the “Future of the Internet III” study the pessimists among us don’t believe that 2020 is a realistic goal. According to MediaPost:

However, not all the experts surveyed by Pew envisioned a boundless future for mobile. Some expressed doubts about open networks, bandwidth and screen size, among other aspects of cell phones.

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Google Search Suggest Gets Sponsored Listings and More

posted on December 16, 2008

by Rene LeMerle

It’s started—Google’s working overtime to ensure that their billions in advertising revenue continue irrespective of global economic conditions. Their strategy: place sponsored listings everywhere.

Last month reports came out that Google was adding sponsored listings to its finance site with plans to include advertising on Google News in the not too distant future.

Well now Google are testing the placement of AdWords ads in its recently launched Search Suggest, which appeared in August this year after years of testing in Google Labs. Google Suggest is “a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.”

Danny Sullivan has collected screen shots of the various Search Suggest Sponsored Listing incarnations that Google are testing which include Title and Link only ads, conventional ads, ads at the top, ads at the bottom and variations in between.

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Twitter Joins Friend Connect

posted on December 15, 2008

Google announced today that users of Google Friend Connect are now able to connect their Twitter accounts to their Google accounts. This means that when you join a ‘Friend Connected’ site, you’ll be able to connect with your other Twitter friends on that site.

I’m not a big fan of Facebook Connect, but I love the idea of being able to connect to other Twitter users on my favorite blogs. This seems like a great way to grow your network and start up conversations with like-minded individuals without sharing all of your personal photos!

One great feature with Twitter on Google Friend Connect is that you can opt to use your Twitter avatar and profile description. To add your Twitter friends, all you need to do is go to your Google Profile on a site that supports Google Friend Connect and click on “Add/Remove”.

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Win Copies of Jim Tobin’s Book “Social Media is a Cocktail Party”

posted on December 15, 2008

Winners: Congrats to the following winners:

The contest is now closed. Thanks for entering!

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How about another great book contest? Whaddya say?

This time around, I’m excited to share a great book by a good friend of mine. Social Media is a Cocktail Party: Why You Already Know the Rules of Social Media Marketing by Jim Tobin distills all of Jim’s expertise into 178 pages of social-media goodness. How much does Jim know about social media marketing? Well, he’s the founder of one of the first ever social media marketing agencies, Ignite Social Media. Nuff said!

As always, we have free copies to give away to 3 lucky Marketing Pilgrim readers.

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Google Drops Out of Most Trusted Companies List

posted on December 15, 2008

Is Google Evil? Jordan talked about this last month. At the time, one of Google fanboys’ top arguments was that Google was rated among the most trusted companies in surveys by the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, they no longer feel the that way.

In their report released today, not only did Google fall out of the top 10 most trusted companies, but it didn’t even crack the top 20. To no one’s surprise, many financial companies took a major hit, as well. 

With privacy concerns higher than ever, surveys like these provide great insight into who consumers trust these days. Only 45% of consumers feel they have control over their personal information.

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21 of the Best WordPress Plugins for New Blogs

posted on December 15, 2008

UPDATE: I’ve updated this list here: 32 Essential WordPress Plugins

I have a confession to make. I’ve been holding out on you.

As someone that preaches being Radically Transparent, I’ve not been very forthcoming with the list of WordPress plugins we use on Marketing Pilgrim. By keeping them a big secret, I shamelessly thought I’d keep an advantage over competing blogs.

Well, no more! Consider this my Christmas present to you all. Enjoy!

Ad Rotator – rotate ads anywhere on your site

This is actually the newest plugin added to Marketing Pilgrim. It allows me to set up simple text files with multiple ads in each. I then reference the text files anywhere in the blog template and the plugin will rotate between the ads found in the text file. Before using this plugin, I could only offer advertisers the option to manually switch out ad creatives every 2-4 weeks.

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New Research Suggests Display Ads Increase Site Clicks by 65%, Just Not Immediately

posted on December 15, 2008

Whenever I’m asked "what type of click-thru-rate do ads on Marketing Pilgrim receive?" my reply often suggests that the inquirer take a look at Google AdWords, if they’re only interested in CTRs. Why? Because, I know that display ads are the perfect platform for increasing brand awareness and trust, but are pretty lousy when it comes to CTR. (Yes, there are some exceptions to this rule)

In case you don’t trust my years of online marketing experience, new research from comScore supports the notion that display ads shouldn’t be measured by their CTR. As avc.com reports, comScore compared 139 display ad campaigns with a control group of ads. The findings?