Marketing Pilgrim

Here at Marketing Pilgrim we have carved out a very specific niche in the Internet marketing blog space. We are not here to break stories. Why? Because that takes a different skill set than we have and, honestly, it’s a lot of work. Instead we help our readers see some of what we consider to be top stories that are of interest and we put our spin on it. Some things you like some you don’t and that’s what makes it fun.

There was a day when offline and online were two very distinct paths through life. These days, however, that’s not really the case. Watching TV and reading for pleasure used to be strictly offline behaviors but now many people do both online. Why go to the computer to get your email when you can get it on your phone? And thanks to Samsung, I now sit down in front of the TV to catch up on Twitter.

Time Inc. has seen the writing on the wall and that’s why they decided to merge their print and digital sales unit into a new unit they call “Time Inc. Branded Solutions.” It’s a fancy name for a pretty simple idea – positioning your brand next to their brands without worrying about boundaries.

Scribd, the YouTube of print materials, is getting into the ad business with the help of Geoff Hamm formerly of Electronic Arts.

Scribd is an interesting animal that went from online document repository to social networking site with an emphasis on reading. Where it differs from a site like Good Reads, is that Scribd relies on its community members to upload everything from memos to magazines, ebooks and even school work.

According to AdWeek, Scribd has 60 million unique users and several high profile members including The New York Times, Ford and Simon and Schuster.

In the article, the Scribd audience is referred to as “professional, affluent and influential,” though it’s hard to tell if those words are the author’s or Hamm’s. It can be assumed that a site dedicated to reading attracts an intelligent user but affluent and influential, I’m not so sure.

It appears there’s some unrest among Google’s AdWords users–or at least a small, vocal fraction of them.

Google’s little-known “session-based clicks” algorithm is starting to get noticed by advertisers who are seeing their ads displayed alongside seemingly unrelated search queries. Case in point…

…Mr. Dorfman, the New York dentist, said he wanted to show his ads when people searched for things like “cosmetic dentist nyc” or “orthodontist.” But last August, after downloading a comprehensive report of AdWords charges, he saw there were session-based charges for unrelated searches.

For example, Mr. Dorfman said he was charged between $5.36 and $7.26 per click when Google users clicked on his dental ad after searching for “penis enlargement” and “[Chinese characters] in nyc Chinatown,” respectively.

Unless you have been snowed under, out of the country on a deserted island or had your head up your, well you know what I mean, you are more than aware that the iconic iPhone is coming to Verizon. Yippee!

This is big news to the obvious players of AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Google. That’s an easy one. This move finally breaks the logjam that is supposedly keeping the iPhone from taking over the world and shuffles the deck for these large players. If there were ever some marketing departments that will be busy in the next few months these are the ones (except Google of course because they can’t even spell marketing without an algorithm).

There has been a lot of buzz in the past few months about the Internet space. From Google search result moves to Facebook Places and the growing “Groupon Effect”, the innovation and change in the online space is happening at a pace that gives most Internet marketers fits.

Another part of the equation is still what are the other guys like bing and Yahoo up to these days? We know about the union on the search side. We know that bing is ‘innovating’ and has increased search share slightly (once again please nudge me when the combined Yahoo/bing search alliance hits 40 percent share). When it comes to Yahoo, however, the news usually is about layoffs or product funerals.