Marketing Pilgrim

There are rumors out there. There are rumors of rumors of how people are using Twitter to drive awareness and new business. What has started to happen though is that the rumors tend to stick with the same names like Dell, who attributes some $3 mil plus in revenue to its Twitter presence and Comcast which has turned its customer service upside down and inside out with great success. What we need is more evidence for those that are still unconvinced that Twitter has any real application beyond sharing the inane like when someone has looked out the window and “Tawt Tay Taw a Puddy – Tat” (hat tip to Tweety Bird from Bugs Bunny, the original Tweet).

It’s somewhat hard to keep up with which state is passing the so called "Amazon Tax," which have vetoed it, and which retailers have pulled the plug on their program–just in anticipation of it.

Let’s start with the good news. Both California and Hawaii look set eject the planned affiliate nexus, with vetoes from their respective governors.

CA’s Arnold Schwarzenegger stated:

"After passing the largest tax increase in California history, it makes absolutely no sense to go back to the taxpayers to solve the current shortfall – that’s why yesterday I vetoed the majority vote tax increase passed by the legislature."

Meanwhile HI’s Governor Linda Lingle says:

It’s a Saturday, so I know you’re not going to work hard today anyway.

For those in the US, I hope you enjoy your hot dogs and fireworks!

After their recent skirmish with the Chinese government over Internet porn, Google China is back online. And they’re already optimistic: apparently they’re poised to announce a Q2 revenue increase in China of 25% over the previous quarter. (And in this economy, that’s not just great; that’s phenomenal!)

Brand Republic reports that Google China will also see operating revenue increases of 45% to 50% over the second quarter of last year. For owning only 30% of the Chinese search market, that seems pretty impressive. And the revenue boost from April, May and June of this year probably wasn’t because of a jump in market share—they’ve only added eight percentage points to their marketshare over the last two years.

The results of a new poll from Harris Interactive indicate that Internet advertising isn’t as effective as search engine marketers would like to think. When asked what medium’s ads were most helpful in making purchase decisions, the 2500+ American respondents indicated that first television, then newspapers, then search engine ads. Internet banner ads fared even worse:

• 37% said television ads were most helpful in purchase decisions
• 18% said newspaper ads
• 14% said search engine ads
• 3% said radio ads
• 1% said Internet banner ads

Perhaps most revealing, however, is the math. Those numbers don’t add up to 100% because another 28% (rounding effects) said that none of those ad media were helpful in purchase decisions.

In addition to some minor changes with the blog search interface, Google has been busy updating both the Google Ad Planner and Adwords interfaces.

The AdWords updates are in response to feedback Google has received since it introduced a new look last month. About the only thing that appears to be truly an "update" is a new search feature for finding your keywords.