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It Pays To Know People in High Facebook Places

posted on June 28, 2010

Elevation Partners is most known for one of its investors, U2’s Bono, and it’s big time play with Palm. Now, the first one is good for the headlines but the second one, not so much. It appears as if Elevation is getting beyond its recent history as it invests $120 million in Facebook in the secondary market. This signals a change in the company and also could be a sign of the much vaunted Facebook IPO being a thing of the more distant future than many would like. TechCrunch reports

Elevation’s premature obituary is a popular story these days. Things haven’t worked out as planned for the firm—at all— but that’s not unique in the venture market these days, and the tide is turning for Elevation. The Palm-albatross is gone, and the firm didn’t lose money on the deal—not a trivial milestone considering it was 20% of the fund.

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Google Testing “Evil Ads” that Appear to Violate Trademarks

posted on June 28, 2010

It’s been over a year since Google decided to open up a can of worms, with a change to its stance on trademark use on AdWords.

Well, it appears the search engine is not only willing to open the can of worms, but it’s also willing to throw them about the place and see what kind of a stink it can create.

Exhibit A? Google is actively testing a new AdWords experiment that shows related AdWords ads, even if the ad is a direct trademarked competitor.

Take a look at this screenshot from Search Engine Rountable:

OK, hands up if your first reaction was WTF? That’s “what the fudge?” around here! ;-)

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Foursquare Locates More Funding?

posted on June 28, 2010

It appears as if foursquare is truly hitting the big time as the rumor mill chugs along about investment of capital by major players in the VC world. The firm in this case is Andreessen Horowitz and while this has not been ‘officially’ announced the reports are out and about including one in the Wall Street Journal.

The funding deal, led by Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is likely to be announced as early as this week.

The company had held serious acquisition talks with Facebook Inc. and with Yahoo Inc., said people familiar with those discussions. Yahoo and Facebook declined to comment.

“Foursquare is an outstanding startup, and we have a lot of respect for [Chief Executive] Dennis [Crowley] and his team,” said Andreessen Horowitz spokeswoman Margit Wennmachers.

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Make ‘Content Anticipation’ Your Goal

posted on June 27, 2010

When discussing content and the web, most of the talk is around generating content for consumption by consumers, prospects and anyone else who might buy an offering whether it is a B to C or a B to B play. That’s all well and good but the “content generation” concept is really just another old school marketing tactic wrapped up in a pretty Internet bow.

What does this mean? Well, in the content generation environment we currently exist in, it really is not much different than traditional marketing and advertising in its mindset. The idea is to generate content that will be put in front of someone at the right time by the right people in the right manner. We just think we are doing something different because now content can be spread through so many different avenues while an ad is “static” in that it resides where it was purchased and that’s it.

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Cup of Joe: Those Who Can’t Blog, Make Infographics!

posted on June 26, 2010

So, all week long I have been thinking about a really fun post idea where I make fun of Andy’s iPhone 4 obsession anticipation. But, unfortunately for you, (and fortunately for Andy), I haven’t had any time to write that gem of a post. Instead I have been baby sitting nieces and nephews all week while balancing client work! So like I always say, those who can’t blog make infographics! (or link to them!)

Below are a handful of my favorite infographics. I think all of them illustrate how art, information, and marketing can come together. Enjoy them all and add a few of your favorites in the comments section. Get ready for a regularly action packed full post next week! Same bat channel! Same bat time!

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Here a Link, There a Link, Everywhere a Google Ad Sitelink

posted on June 25, 2010

Back in March, we told you that Google’s Ad Sitelinks were a huge success for…Google.

OK, maybe advertisers liked them as well, but if you weren’t careful, you could find your ads see a 30% increase in click-throughs. That all sounds great, as long as you were prepared to cover the cost of those increased clicks.

Anyway, Google would like more of your paid search spend and is rolling out Ad Sitelinks to all advertisers and throwing in a new one-line format to boot!

When a user’s query matches a keyword in your Ad Sitelinks-enabled campaign, Google will automatically determine if your ad qualifies to show Ad Sitelinks and whether to show the two-line or the one-line format based on the quality of that ad. Ads that currently qualify for the two-line format will not be affected by the addition of the new one-line format.

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With Facebook Open Graph Search, Is Facebook SEO Next?

posted on June 25, 2010

It seems to be clearer than ever that Facebook is really making a run at Google around search. The announcement that “all Open Graph enabled web pages will show up in search when a user likes them” this new area for search abuse optimization is now becoming a reality.

All Facebook reports

Earlier this week we published about the new Facebook SEO that’s possible via the Open Graph, but now it’s clear that this is the beginning of Facebook’s internet search strategy. The race is now on for publishers to optimize their sites for Facebook’s search engine.