Marketing Pilgrim

Google is looking to take the idea of ad customization to the next level based on a patent application filing made public yesterday. The application describes how Google is looking to recommend or determine the right format for a display ad including factors such as size of the ad, colors to be used in the ad and more.

Bnet reports

Systems would analyze how different individuals and groups react to ads of varying formats and contexts, and then deliver the ads to the right places in the right formats. Some of the format attributes that Google mentions include:

• color
• size
• particular layout
• shape
• specific placement on a user interface
• time of ad delivery
• behavioral tendencies of users
• geographic region

The social media space has plenty of information flying around every second of every day. If you don’t have any real work to do just spend your day reading articles recommended by every social media practitioner and their brother. You’ll be busy.

In an effort to ‘cut to the chase’, get through the clutter and offer some different perspectives on social media marketing a new digital offering, Social Media Marketing Magazine is being unveiled today.The online publication is described on their site

Social Media Marketing (SMM) Magazine’s innovative editorial approach features the expertise of a number of marketing leaders from the business, publishing, and academic communities.

With their unique perspectives, SMM Magazine helps you navigate through the social media maze and emerge with a more clear understanding of how to achieve your marketing goals by applying effective strategies, tactics, and best practices.

It’s baaaaaaack!

After a long hiatus, we’re bringing Pilgrim’s Picks out of retirement. Too young to remember Pilgrim’s Picks? Wow, you probably don’t remember life before Twitter either, do you?

Well, Pilgrim’s Picks is designed to ensure you don’t miss any of the days important news. The stuff that we’d love to write about, if only we had the time to do so. So, consider this your place to catch up on the latest internet marketing news, when you can’t be bothered to open up your RSS reader.

• Exclusive: Google Buys Invite Media
• Twitter Testing Users ‘You Both Follow’ Feature
• AT&T warns customer that emailing the CEO will result in a cease and desist letter
• Is SEO Copywriting Just Good Copywriting?

Ever since Google decided to put on its big-boy pants and respond agressively to click fraud, you just don’t read that much about it these days.

Well, thanks to a Seattle locksmith it’s time to party like it’s 199…er, 2006.

That’s the last time we had any kind of click fraud lawsuit with any meat on its bones and now we get to see if 123 Lock & Key can open-up the door that was firmly closed thanks to a class action settlement.

123 Lock says in its court papers that it began advertising with Google last October, at which time it received around 15 clicks a day — a figure that remained stable through March. Between October and March, around 80% of the people who clicked through followed up with a phone call, according to the lawsuit.

I’m a disrupter of internet marketing news.

What does that mean?

It’s a fancy way of saying that I love to stir the pot. And I can think of no better way of doing just that, than by making broad comparisons between Google and Bing. Especially when I get to accuse Google of copying the underdog.

The lastest fodder comes thanks to a new feature launching today that will enable you to add you own image as the background to the Google homepage. Yep, you heard me. Google wants you to turn its homepage into Bing.

Today, we’re introducing a new feature that brings a whole new level of personalization to Google by letting you add a favorite photo or image to the background of the Google homepage. You can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos.

In what can only be described as an uncomfortable viewing experience, Mark Zuckerberg faced the privacy music yesterday in a discussion with All Things Digital’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. From the meandering musings of the Facebook founder to the sweating image of a person clearly under some pressure, this interview is all at once interesting, hard to watch, puzzling and more.

John Paczkowski’s live blog of the talk uses phrases like “Zuckerberg dodges”, “Zuckerberg continues with this theme until Walt jumps in and asks him to answer the original question”, “Another long rambling answer to a simple question” with the kicker being

[My God, Zuckerberg is literally dissolving in a lake of his own sweat. He's flushed, and you can see the beads of sweat rolling down his face. Could this be his Nixon moment?]