Marketing Pilgrim

I wanted to put the new rendering of the once iconic brand of America Online (AOL) as the headline just to see how it looks. It looks….weird. Below are some of the pictures from All Things Digital of how this new look will happen for the Aol. once it is officially cast overboard by the Time Warner mother ship. OK, so thrown overboard is bit harsh. How about pushed out the door with a resounding “Don’t let the door hit ya in the a#$ on the way out”?

My thoughts on the logo? I don’t get it. Why do you now go lower case with a period? I suppose it’s to help you see the new AOL (sorry Aol. or do I have to wait for the cord to be cut? I’m confused.) Fortunately, Aol. Ceo.Tim Armstrong will clear it up for us.

One of the things that’s been consistent about Trackur’s social media monitoring since launch, is that it tracks around 90%+ of online media. You know, news, blogs, tweets, images, videos, etc.

But, what about that other 10%?

Well, we think we’ve shored that up, with the new option to submit your own RSS feed to Trackur.

The new Custom Feeds option lets you upload any valid RSS feed and have Trackur keep a watchful eye on it, for mention of any of the keywords you are tracking.

Here are some example uses:

• You want to monitor a message board for any mention of your brand? Simply submit its RSS feed to Trackur.

Can you tell the difference between these two ads?

Look closely:

Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich!

OK, that’s not quite the same example that Google just gave over at the official blog, but it did announce that it plans to acquire Teracent.

What does Teracent do?

Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

A confession.

Sometimes I use Bing.com.

Stop looking at me that way. I said I “use” Bing.com. I didn’t say I enjoy it! In fact, I “use” Bing.com when I’m shopping online and want to get the best price. Bing has a pretty cool shopping engine and I can get up to 10% cashback with its cashback program.

See? I use Bing.com.

The problem is, that use does not result in me using the search engine for any other task. And that is the issue I see with rumors that Bing is willing to pay News Corp and other news organizations to provide their content exclusively to the Microsoft search engine. The FT reports:

The above tweet ended a lively discussion I had with @Ed and a few others about the use of 3rd party ads in Twitter. I’ve said before that I am open to the idea, although I’ve not yet posted any ads to my Twitter feed.

Anyway, as this week is going to be a little quiet–what with Thanksgiving coming up–I thought I’d publish a poll and see what your thoughts are on the subject.

Apparently Google is more than just the world’s most used search engine. It’s also “Super elastic, soft, smooth. Highly absorbent, for you always!”

Via The Huffington Post