Marketing Pilgrim

While you may be aware of WPP in general it may be worth a look to see just how big this media conglomerate is. Last week the company stated that digital will account for 2/3 of its business over the next three to four years. Considering they did about $13 billion in revenue in 2009 this is no small statement.

Those of us on the Internet marketing side of the fence tend to see this kind of announcement and scoff by saying “No kidding! You finally figured it out, huh?” which can be fun for a moment of over time starts to sound childish. The world has moved at breakneck speed to the digital side of the ledger and in the process is undoing how media has been bought and sold for the past 60 years or so. Nothing that big and entrenched changes overnight.

So you want to be a famous SEO?

You want to be a Social Media guru?

Want to rock the socks off of affiliate marketers?

Awesome! Want a little tip on how to start?? Don’t start blogging! So you might be thinking What? Don’t blog? Are you crazy? (I am not sure) But, here’s the truth. Almost every “famous” or well respected person in their industry got to where they are by doing good work, not talking about it.

Nathan Hangen tells us that all you have to do is squelch your fear and step into your role. Sorry, Nathan but honestly there are a lot confident people that give bad information and lack real substance. As a result their confident facade looks fake and untrustworthy. You have to produce a good product and be confident in its delivery.

A year ago, we first covered the extortion rumblings against local review site Yelp. Business owners claimed that Yelp offered to remove negative reviews—for a price. Yelp disputed the allegations, but did add a feature for business owners to respond to negative reviews last April.

But apparently the other practices haven’t ceased, according to two suits recently filed against Yelp. Last week, a class action suit was filed in a Los Angeles federal court, and this week another suit alleging extortion by the site was filed in California as well.

The first suit,Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital Inc. v. Yelp Inc., alleges “the company’s employees call businesses demanding monthly payments in the guise of advertising contracts, in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews.” The second suit, D’Ames Day Spa v. Yelp, makes a similar accusation, stating that Yelp removed 13 of 14 positive reviews because the spa wouldn’t buy advertising on the site.

And it’s time for everyone’s favorite non-Olympic sport: YouTube Valuation Speculating! Come one, come all, this is not a spectator sport. If you’ll recall, last year we had valuations from Credit Suisse and Ramp Rate, working with a $240.7M revenue (CS foresaw a $470M operating loss; RR predicted only $174M).

Now CitiGroup has thrown a hat the ring—with much better news for YouTube. This year, they predict, YouTube will see gross revenue of $945M (net $614M), and next year they’ll bring in $1.1 billion (net $737M). Either way, that’ll be almost enough to break even with even the most pessimistic estimates of operating costs.

However, CitiGroup based their revenue estimate on MySpace’s CPM price. Does that even make sense?

Pretty graphic of the comparisons:

In other news, YouTube is expanding its accessibility. Back in November, Google announced that some select universities and other partners would be receiving automatic closed captioning on their videos. Now YouTube is spreading the love—all videos where the audio is clear and in English will soon have captions.

How would you like to indulge in two days of hands-on, advanced social media marketing training?

Training from experts such as Jason Falls,  John Jantsch,  Giovanni Gallucci, yours truly, and a bunch of other top-notch marketers?

What if I said you could get that training for just $429? When was the last time you went to a 2-day event for less than $500?

What if I made that price even sweeter by providing you with the discount code “andybeal” which drops the price down to a crazy low $304!!!

Up for it?

OK, then head over to register for the Social Media Optimization Summit taking place in Dallas, TX on March 23 & 24.

What will come first, Christmas or Twitter’s 20 billionth tweet?

Well, according to the GigaTweet counter, you can celebrate Twitter hitting the 20 billion mark, a few months before you can put up your Christmas tree.

Twitter has already passed the 10 billion tweet count and is rapidly chasing towards the big two-oh.

Of course, stuff like this only gets reported because a) it’s still novel, and b) it’s a light news day.

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