Marketing Pilgrim

While Yahoo is busy slurping, Google keeps sucking market share like an out of control turbine powered Hoover vacuum cleaner. Sucking the ad dollars right out of Yahoo’s pockets, that is. Great news for MSN though! In Q2 2008 versus Q2 2007, Microsoft Live Search only lost $0.01 on every search dollar spent while Yahoo lost $0.09! Guess who picked up that additional $.10? Why, it was GoogleVac! This according to Mountain View, California based Efficient Frontier.

Google accounted for 77.4 percent of total search engine spending in Q2 2008, an increase of 2 percentage points over the previous year. Yahoo! lost nearly 2 percentage points of search engine share in that period, accounting for 17.8 percent of total spend, and Microsoft Live Search’s share remained relatively stable at 4.8 percent of search engine spending.

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They may not allow domain tasting, however Internet regulator ICANN has voted unanimously to expand the number of top level domain names, as the BBC reports.

The decision provides companies the opportunity to turn their brands into web addresses, while individuals could potentially use their names. A second proposal, that would introduce domain names written in scripts such as Asian and Arabic, was also approved.

“We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,”

said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Another Domain Gold Rush!

ICANN has been working on the move for nearly six years.

Some companies have used the current system to suit their own needs with country domains, such as .tv , which was originally created to designate the Polynesian island of Tuvalu, but ended up being adopted by many companies in the television industry. Others have been even more creative – Can you say “del.icio.us?”

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Two weeks ago, Andy brought you the B2B Lead Generation handbook. Without further ado, we now bring you B2C.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Email marketing are the two best bets for your marketing dollar, according to a new report from UK Based eConsultancy in conjunction with Clash-Media. “Viral marketing” landed on the other end of the spectrum based on the feedback of 600 companies.

Some of the highlights from company respondents:

• A greater proportion of lead generation budget is being spent on online (on average, 53%) than offline (44%).
• Compared to 2007, PPC is getting a bigger proportion of online lead generation budgets even though natural search is perceived to be better value for the money.
• PPC now gets a third of this budget (33%) compared to 28% in 2007. Meanwhile, SEO now only gets 15% of the budget compared to 18% last year.

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Remember when I wrote about little known search engine, Searchme, earlier this month? They had just announced another round of funding and in my post I waxed a bit poetic about the “The Beauty of the UI”. Some of the naysayers commented – “Nice, but not practical”.

Two things you should know about investors. First – they typically don’t throw a boatload of cash at zippo. Second – they play to win. So, it was a safe bet that the high profile group of investors must have seen some features they liked prior to anteing up another $12M. Two of those features were revealed today.

Searchme Stacks

Searchme Stacks extend visual search into the bookmark space and across the Web, allowing users to assemble and share collections of their favorite web pages in one.

Searchme Media Search

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…and the PPC and banner ad crowd goes wild! The IAB has announced that Internet Advertising Revenues are up over 18% year over year, or $5.8 Billion smackaroos for the first quarter of 2008. That’s just off the pace of the $5.9 Billion record set in Q4 ’07.

Source: (excluding Borat) PwC/IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report (www.iab.net)

The really good news for internet marketers? Growth is expected to continue. Just listen to what Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB and Daniel Silverman, partner, Assurance, PricewaterhouseCoopers have to say, respectively:

“We continue to experience significant growth and vitality in interactive marketing, media and advertising. We expect growth to continue, as consumers spend more and more time online, and marketers find more – and more innovative – ways to reach them through digital media.”

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November 4th Update: We’ve added a widget so you can track the results as they come in:

The 2008 US Presidential Election truly represents the first time the Internet will push a specific candidate “over the top” and on to the glory of being endlessly criticized by the public, roasted on SNL and all of the other wonderful benefits that come with the office.

So, why am I predicting guaranteeing that Barack Obama will reign supreme (thanks to you no less)? Because you represent one of the record-breaking 46% of Americans that have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaigns, share your views and mobilize others. Guess which candidate is the most savvy in online politics? Can you say Barack Obama?

Consider these political race related internet statistics:

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Check ‘em out, y’all! Lunar shuttle tickets. I got smokin’, non-smokin’, first class, coach, by the window, by the aisle. Lunar shuttte tickets.

Anticipating its pursuit of world domination will be complete sometime during the second quarter of 2010, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has booked a round trip ticket to outer space, with a launch date set for  2011.

Bucking that crazy trend set by NASA in the early 60’s whereby actual qualified astronauts were sent to outer space, Brin, the 34-year-old president of technology for the search-engine company, shelled out a $5 million deposit for a seat aboard a Russian spacecraft, according to tourism company Space Adventures. Brin is scheduled to carry out missions that may include pharmaceutical testing and experiments on computer circuit boards. No word on the specific “pharmaceutical” Brin might be testing.

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Andy’s Update: AdWords TV Ads is not the announcement, as a Google spokesperson clarifies to us: “What we announced last week was an integration between Google Analytics and Google TV Ads (an offering within Google AdWords). Google Analytics has added a TV Ads report for AdWords advertisers who use both TV Ads and Google Analytics.”

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Surely you didn’t think Google would stop at YouTube when it comes to organizing for world domination the world’s information?

Last week, Google Analytics announced “AdWords TV Ads,” an all-digital system that distributes advertisers’ TV ads to participating channels nationwide.

The service allows you to upload your TV ad as a video file to your AdWords account and, with a few clicks, start a campaign by choosing from more than 90 nationwide TV stations to air the ad.

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The folks over at Plurk must have some really good Karma. How else can you explain the incredible luck associated with rolling out your new micro-messaging (I can’t bring myself to call it blogging) platform, at the same time your chief competitor (Twitter), has hit the application scaling wall and is experiencing severe service outages?

Any others getting tired of seeing a bunch of tweety birds lifting a whale? It was cute the first couple of times. Now? Not so much. Next time I see that thing, there’s gonna be a harpoon flying through my display!

Adding insult to injury, when Twitter is up and running (yes, it still happens occasionally), it is being consistently used to pimp broadcast and promote Plurk. The irony is striking.

Such are the problems when a company unexpectedly finds itself realizing too much success, too rapidly – as Twitter did. In response to a question on the Twitter blog, developer Alex Payne had this to say,

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No surprise here. Google continued its dominance in the number one position of the top 10 search sites in the UK, with just over 74% share, according to comScore. eBay ranked second with 6 percent, followed by Yahoo! Sites (4.3 percent) and Microsoft Sites (3.4 percent). Rounding out the top 10, U.K. properties, Rightmove Sites and Bebo.com claimed .8 and .7 percent respectively.

Month over month, there was nominal movement in the stats. The only notable is the presence of Social Media sites in the top 10. Facebook.com, claimed a 1.8-percent market share in April. We’ll watch how that develops over the next few quarters.

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Google is to the PC (utilitarian) as searchme is to the MAC (elegant).

At least, that’s what an impressive group of VC’s that just plunked down another $12.6 Million on searchme are hoping you’ll think.

Including previous investment, this brings the total capital they have netted to date, to $43.6 Million (or about $28.25 Million Euros *sigh*). Investors include Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Deepfork Capital and Lehvan Brothers Venture Capital.

So, who are these cats anyway? You may remember the now defunct WikiSeek, who focused on providing results based solely on content referred to within the pages of Wikipedia. Without going into details, let’s just say – they sucked at it. Fortunately for the dev team, CEO Randy Adams remembered that old nursery rhyme – “If at first you don’t succeed….”, which brings us to searchme.

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Several major Google advertisers seem to have adopted a common war cry – “Get these pigs off of our backs!”

The tactic is called “piggybacking” and major corporations are tired of Google pimping out their valuable trademarks to smaller companies.

With piggybacking, smaller and lesser known advertisers use a large corporation’s well branded and recognized trademarks in an effort to enhance their ability to draw more qualified traffic from Google Adsense listings. The problem is not a new one. In fact, it has been occurring for several years despite Google’s written policy against the practice.

The question is “If Google has a policy against the practice, why does it continue to occur with such frequency?” Can you say – Moolah? Yes, the “do no evilers” at Google seem to be turning a blind eye, lest they disrupt that free flowing revenue stream called Adsense.

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