Marketing Pilgrim

Google has announced enhanced features for custom search engines: the integration of sitemaps and AdSense for Search.

The new features will improve search results in a Google custom search engine for your site if you utilize sitemaps:

Custom Search is built on top of the Google index. This means that all pages that are available on Google.com are also available to your search engine. We’re now maintaining a CSE-specific index in addition to the Google.com index for enhancing the performance of search on your site. If you submit a Sitemap, it’s likely that we will crawl those pages and include them in the additional index we build.

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Have you ever wondered what information advertisers are collecting about you? More often than not the individual advertising that you are seeing when you visit your favorite website is based on an advertising profile that has been built up over time based on your individual online behaviors.

CNET is reporting that Jeff Weiner, Executive Vice President of Yahoo’s Network Division, can already imagine a day in the not too distant future where when you see an advertisement on Yahoo, there would be an icon that would allow you to view your ad profile so you can understand why that particular advertisement was delivered to you.

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Is the future of advertising networks in the hands of those that decide to build their own? Cox Enterprises must think so as it has shelled out a rumored $300+ million for Adify, a self-service ad network that enables publishers to build their own ad network.

According to paidContent, Adify had been on the scout for investment funding but instead found a buy-out deal even more tempting.

Cox, long an advocate of targeted advertising, the company can well afford an acquisition like this—particularly if it can find a way to blend the niche ad net power with its digital cable products while it continues to make money from third party

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It appears that US courts are getting more and more savvy about Internet marketing (or US attorneys are getting more and more savvy about their “expert” witnesses in these cases!). Last week, the 11th circuit court ruled that meta keywords aren’t effective for SEO (so trademark infringement in them didn’t really matter anyway), and the US District Court in the middle district of Florida ruled that a trademark infringing AdWords advertiser would have to use negative keyword matches in future searches.

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As Andy mentioned in today’s Pilgrim’s Picks, Reuters reports that Google’s confident about the proposed ad deal with Yahoo receiving the OK from the FTC.

If you don’t remember, almost three weeks ago, Yahoo announced that they would conduct a two week test of Google’s AdSense for Search program. A scant eight days later, Yahoo was reportedly very happy with the deal—and talking about making the arrangement permanent.

Reports surfaced late last week that the US Department of Justice was investigating the deal, which could possibly be a prelude to an FTC investigation.

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Google AdWords advertisers who want to show ads on mobile phones had just one choice - text ads. Now they can also run banner ads - or as Google calls them “mobile image ads.” They are like regular banner ads but smaller.

All of the mobile image ads are keyword-targeted. You pay only when someone clicks on the ad (unlike many others that charge per impression or how many times your ad is viewed). There are four sizes of banners to choose from: (305 x 64), (215 x 34), (192 x 53), (167 x 30). The ads display the URL that they go to and the links must go to a mobile web page.

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Yodle, a company that focuses on local internet advertising, has been accepted as an authorized reseller of Google AdWords(tm). The program is to help companies focus on paid search for small businesses.

According to a Nielsen survey, 74% of people said they use search engines to find local business. Yet, only 3% of local marketing budgets are spent online. When it comes to paid search, it’s somewhat easy to start, but difficult to manage. If you don’t manage it well, your turning on the faucet and letting money run out.

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It’s 2008, and the media seem to have moved on from one social network obsession to the next—but today MySpace refuses to become irrelevant. MySpace announced new metrics and branding platform, called the Community Branding advertising platform, to appeal to advertisers. The platform is currently in beta testing.

What makes the new Community Branding platform different? As MySpace says in their release:

“Community Builder is the next evolution of the MySpace brand profile — a more flexible solution that puts creative freedom and control into the hands of advertisers to ensure that a community stays dynamic and interesting in between major campaigns and projects,” said Bryce Emo, Senior Vice President of Sales, MySpace.

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Blog software company Six Apart acquired creative agency Apperceptive, a company that built blogs for sites such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, and iVillage. Now they’re launching an advertising network for blogs. They are also venturing into design, programming, and blog marketing services.

As an ad network, Six Apart is competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, Blogads, and others. Here’s how it will work - they will get advertisers, bloggers put the ads up, and the two share revenue (not sure what the payouts are like, but I believe it’s typical to get 20-30%). Six Apart is working with Adify to provide back end support so bloggers can see their payouts and manage their account.

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Blockbuster is being sued over their Facebook advertising campaign. Texas resident Cathryn Elaine Harris says Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act. The company used the Facebook Beacon that told what movies she rents.

Harris says Facebook didn’t get her written consent to share the information. She filed a class-action suit, and is asking for at least $2,500 for each violation of the statute. The law was passed in 1988 after a newspaper obtained the video rental records of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

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Crazy, but true: there’s actually good news for AOL again today. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s news that AOL’s advertising arm, Platform-A, signed a deal with Verizon comes comScore’s report today that Platform-A and AOL were the top ad network in the US last month.

comScore’s report include this encouraging stat:

Platform-A, the AOL ad network that combines Advertising.com, Quigo and Tacoda, served ads to 170 million U.S. Internet users in March, representing 91 percent of the total U.S. online population, to rank as the top ad network. On a stand-alone basis, Advertising.com would rank as the top ad network with a reach of more than 167 million Internet users.

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Last week they were suing each other, this week they’re signing a big advertising deal. Time Warner owned AOL has signed an exclusive online advertising deal with Verizon.

AOL will manage the account through their advertising subsidiary, Platform-A Advertising. Verizon will use Platform-A’s sales force and for the bulk of their online and mobile phone advertising.

The deal includes managing Verizon’s display and mobile advertising network. The two companies are involved in a recent lawsuit. On Monday, Verizon sued Time Warner Cable (which owns AOL) over false advertising for their FiOS high-speed Internet service.

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