Marketing Pilgrim

By Sean Maguire

Jerry Yang must be thinking “surely this is a bad dream”, as he runs around like Captain Ahab (as best he can since he’s also standing on one leg), shouting out commands as the Great White Whale charges the ship.

Yesterday, Yang completed a rare “three-peat” in a letter to his underlings (yings):

One for the money

“I’d ask all of you to stay focused on the business at hand and what we do best — transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace.”

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By Sean Maguire

Standing strong at number 24 on Forbes list of the 400 Richest Americans, with a cool $8.7 Billion to his name, Carl Icahn can haz lots of cheezburgerz! Guess what? He wants more.

Oh, the intrigue; the recent breathtaking game of “Deal or No Deal” between Microsoft and Yahoo. Unless you’ve been rafting down the Bolivian mountains’ Tuichi River for the last three months, you’re well aware of Jerry Yang and Co’s, repeated rejections of Microsoft’s increasingly generous overtures. The last one being a lofty (cough cough) - $33.00/share or $47.5 Billion dollars! This represented a full 70% premium over Yahoo’s closing price of $19.18 on January 31. With Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer playing the role of Howie Mandel, Yang sent two of his yings to politely tell him “No Deal Stevie…No Deal”!

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By Sean Maguire

comScore yesterday released March 2008 data depicting Google’s continued assault on the online video watching market. With 4.3 billion videos viewed during the month, representing a 38% share of all videos, Google gained 2.6-percent over the previous month. Google’s video flagship YouTube accounted for 98% of its total.

U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during the period, a 13-percent gain versus February and a 64-percent gain versus March 2007.

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By Sean Maguire

How do you make an already good product better? You jazz it up and slap it on an iPhone, that’s how. Google did just that in releasing the Beta version of Google Reader for Apple’s iPhone.

Google leverages the functionality of the iPhone to give users a better experience by offering many of the features of the desktop version. Scan, Tap & Read – it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page; Google Reader allows you to power through your reading list at lightning speed.

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By Sean Maguire

Joining an all-star cast of investors that includes Guy Kawasaki, founder of Alltop and Dallas, TX billionaire Mark Cuban, founder of Broadcast.com; SlideShare, Inc., the world’s largest online slide sharing community announced it has secured $3 million in Series A funding, led by Venrock.

The funding enables SlideShare to expand operations, fund continued product development and accelerate its subscription base.

A free service, SlideShare is the “YouTube” of slide show sharing; allowing individuals and organizations to easily upload and share presentations and generate leads. Files can be tagged, downloaded and embedded into blogs, websites and social media platforms.

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By Michelle Greer.

You have broken down creating keywords and negative keywords to a science. You have your clients running a full throttle social media campaign, complete with Facebook group, Twitter followers, blog, et al. They are now enjoying more exposure and tangible results than they ever did before. If you don’t know how to properly sell this value to your clients, you could be losing money and not even know it.

RainToday, a service based marketing firm, surveyed 343 marketing, advertising and PR professionals on their thoughts of pricing.

What was the scariest part of their jobs, according to the survey?

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By Michelle Greer.

It’s official. As much as people want to pile on the social media consulting gravy train to bring in the big theoretical bucks, even Biz Stone at Twitter sends email newsletters. Apparently, the guys at Twitter have cool news they want you to hear that requires more than 140 characters.

How can marketers actually send emails that people want to read, according to a study done by eROI?

• Put out something people can use. Of those who responded to the study, only 29% offer access to preferred content, 24% offer discounts/coupons, and only 22% offer some kind of contest.

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By Michelle Greer.

Apparently, some online advertisers are realizing that having ads on the 60th page of a Google keyword search isn’t exactly fruitful.

According to a study done by the Kelsey Group, the U.S. interactive classified and vertical share of online advertising will grow from 18 percent in 2007 to 24 percent by 2012. Revenues for interactive classifieds and verticals will grow from US$3.9 billion to US$14.7 billion during the same forecast period, representing a 30.5 percent compound annual growth rate.

What are other key points brought out in the Kelsey Group’s Research?

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By Michelle Greer.

As Andy and Alan have both pointed out both here and here, Google squashed the hype behind comScore’s reports of tepid Google click-through rates for Q1 2008. ComScore’s defense? Their report was for domestic click-through rates only. Considering 30-50% of traffic to U.S. based websites is from overseas, this was a lot of fuss over what has become fairly useless data.

The damage was done though. Analysts used comScore’s figures to show that Google was not bulletproof against recession. Some even speculated that Google was dead.

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By Shannon Lilly.

Article Marketing is a practice that no webmaster, blogger or Internet marketer should go without doing. Even if you’ve never written a single thing in your life, you can benefit from article marketing. Read through this mini “how-to” on article writing and if you still think you can’t do it, I’ll give you some options to get your article written. But I have faith that you can do it if you just take the time!

Building links

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By Michelle Greer.

You’ve created a company newsletter because it’s part of the “business plan”. Every month or so, you take a look at the deliverability and click-through rates. You know people actually open them. You also know your email marketing campaign needs work. It’s just not as exhilarating as building your Twitter following or creating that Colbert Fan Club on Ning.

Although email marketing isn’t often associated with Web 2.0, 3.0, or 12.0, people still actively open, read and act upon information from emails. According to a study done by MailerMailer, people open emails just as frequently as they did before the social web, and sometimes more often in certain industries.

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By Michelle Greer.

33% of consumer time is spent online, and yet internet advertising only accounts for 7% of advertising spending. Unfortunately, these users often have the attention span of a three month old golden retriever when it comes to online advertising. Advertisers have to think smarter to capitalize on this untapped market.

How are ad networks making sure that ads actually connect to the products and services they want to buy? Here are just a few highlights from the Rubicon Project’s report “Q1: Ad Network Landscape, Trends and Outlook”:

• Ad networks are shifting to cost-per-action and cost-per-engagement model rather than charging for impressions.

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