Search Engine News

Cup of Joe: Why Ads Are Devastating to the Users You Love

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:13 GMT

A few weeks ago Ken Fisher wrote a popular blog post about how ad blocking software can have devastating effects to the websites that you frequently visit. Mr. Fischer describes how ad blocking software is responsible for showing false page view data to ad networks. As a result each ad is priced at a lower rate because the number of impressions are significantly smaller. The number of page views is an extremely important metric for websites that sell advertising based on a CPM price model. So it's only understandable that Mr. Fischer and other online publishers will hold a grudge against ad blocking software.

While I can understand Mr. Fischer's frustration I cannot sympathize. To be completely honest I use ad blocking software every day. In fact on at least one occasion add blocking software has been responsible for a pretty embarrassing moment. So you're probably asking yourself why does someone who feels so strongly about marketing block advertisements? It's simple really, I hate ads.

What? You hate ads? How can you write for Marketing Pilgrim and hate ads? In my opinion marketing is fundamentally organizing people around information. Interrupting people with abrupt irrelevant commands isn't how you organize people around information. Instead speaking to them on a unique and authentic level is more effective and genuine.

Putting philosophy aside, in my opinion ads are the worst way to monetize content. Generally speaking an increase in on-page advertisements contributes to a degraded user experience. Which can lead to lower user retention levels and decreased page views. Online advertisements are also ripe with fraud and manipulation. Historically click through rates have been at around 2% for most online advertisements. All of these factors and more contribute to the extremely low return on investment.

Online ads add to a decreasing user experience by taking attention away from the site's primary content and placing it on the ads. This is not the actions of rogue spammers, this is the fundamental method to making any substantial revenue from ads. An excellent example of this in action, is taking a look at Google's own recommendations for ad placement in the Adsense program. Here we see Google advises users to place ads on every available white-space on the page. This is a huge contradiction for a company that was so widely praised for starting with such a clean user interface.

Most ad platforms have large potential for fraud and manipulation. This is is an issue that not many professionals in IM discuss publicly because, quite honestly, whether they are participating in the fraud or not they still stand to profit off of ad manipulation. To a great extent Google and some of the other larger ad networks have gone to great lengths to minimize the impact of this type of fraud. However, any potential for fraud creates an uneasy market place where advertisers and publishers are continually left wondering if they are being taken advantage of. Google doesn't help matters by keeping the exact specifics of their pricing model a secret from both advertisers and publishers. What's even more devastating about these fraud schemes is that they can manipulate entire ad markets not just the individual ads they are targeting.

We reported back in January that the average click through rate for Google Adwords is around 2%. This means that 2% of the site visitors are clicking through on the ads. Most businesses off the Internet wouldn't be able to survive with a 2% conversion rate. The only way to make substantial revenue from ads on the Internet is to completely dominate the market and control the flow of information. *cough* Google *cough*.

Wow Joe what do you want me to do? Not make any money? Absolutely not! But I do think that more companies and content producers need to experiment with different business models that aren't reliant on ad dollars. The mainstream media on the internet is already starting to experiment with pay walls and different premium membership options. While I generally agree with the old saying that information should be free, I do think there is substantial room to monetize parts of the web that are currently a free-for-all. For example there are many opportunities to monetize communities and forums that provide quality content and meaningful dialogue to its users. Another potential opportunity is product development. Content developers and publishers should work to create their own products aside from their content that they can offer to their regular subscribers for premium fee.

So next time you see a drop in your ad revenue don't blame the users, blame the ads. They got you into this mess and they aren't going to get you out!

Panoramio for location based images

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:35 GMT

Looking for a site that you can search in order to find images of a particular location? Then Panoramio may fit the bill. Simply pop in your location and up pops a Google map, with overlays of images that people have uploaded. Click on an image to see it full size. No facility for downloading the image, and nothing to state if it's creative commons or not. However, it's a useful site none the less.
It has a third of a million users who have uploaded on average 3 photographs each.

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: March 19, 2010

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:10 GMT

In this week's recap I thank Rhea and the others who helped save the term "SEO" from being trademarked. Matt Cutts was interviewed by Eric Enge and he uncovered a nice amount of information, including PageRank information. A poll we...

Stat Rant: Does Facebook Trumps Google For News & Can’t We Measure Twitter Correctly?

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:29 GMT

Earlier this week, Hitwise put out stats suggesting that Facebook is beating Google and Twitter when it comes to driving traffic to news sites. I dug a little deeper, and I beg to differ. Along the way, some pokes at the need to more digging into stats in general. The Hitwise blog post reported that Twitter [...]

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Search as Synapse: Twitter search API will transform trending topics

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:42 GMT

Mashable reports that Twitter has announced an update of it's search API via the Twitter API announcements group on Google.

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Let the Sunshine in

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:27 GMT

Cross-posted on the Google Public Policy Blog.

Public=Online is the the rallying cry during this year’s Sunshine Week, an annual event to highlight the importance of open government and the freedom of information. The week is sponsored by the American Society of News Editors, and many editorial boards have echoed the thoughts of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“...government information ought to be made available to the public as quickly as possible, with a minimum of rigmarole and in the easiest, most accessible way possible--which these days means via the Internet.”

We agree--and what better way to celebrate Sunshine Week than with leading thinkers on government, media and citizen engagement on all sides of the political spectrum who feel the same? Yesterday at our Google D.C. office, the Sunlight Foundation announced its Public=Online campaign.

It’s exciting to see growing support for transparency and to see the progress that’s been made in the last year alone. Every day, through sites like Data.gov and projects like Open Congress, OMB Watch and our Public Data Explorer, more data is available online.

But there’s still a gap between having access to government data and easily understanding what it means. To help fill this gap, Google has partnered with the Sunlight Foundation in its Design for America contest to make government data more comprehensible to the public.

You can learn more and get started on the contest homepage. There’s room for all kinds of folks to participate, and we can’t think of a more fun way to keep the spirit of Sunshine Week going.

Posted by Ginny Hunt, Head of Google Public Sector Lab

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 19, 2010

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:00 GMT

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

Microsoft Got Hand(s)

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:14 GMT

From my Friday Signal over at FM's blog:

....It’s a very big year for Microsoft, in terms of the initiatives the company is launching, in particular in the consumer space (its business/commercial space is already cranking out tons of products, but the company’s focus on consumer products has hit a tipping point). Natal, Bing (updated version is coming soon), Windows Phone 7, Office 2010, the company’s cloud initiative (which has sigificant consumer angles)…it’s quite a lot.

...Recall three of the major trends that I predicted for 2010: One, that someone will create an open gaming platform; two, that Microsoft will take second place in search share (from Yahoo); and three, that we’ll see a major advance in the user interface of the web.

Here’s how Microsoft might address those opportunities, in order: Xbox, Bing, and Natal (not to mention Pivot and stuff like PhotoSynth). Now, imagine how these all might work together. Xbox is more than a gaming platform, it’s a major portal to social networking and engagement in the living room (there are more than 20 million users of Xbox Live, for example). Combined with Natal, you’ve got a new gestural interface to the digital world. And there is no reason why you can’t use Natal to surf the web on your TV (and, in time, your PC), given the right UI and apps. Were Microsoft to decide to open up a web-savvy API and SDK into the Xbox and let its legions of developers innovate on that interface, imagine what might occur. And, of course, Bing would be the search engine of choice for this living room environment, driving share. Sounds like a stretch? All the pieces are there. It’s now about whether the company can take many hands, and make great work. (more)

Leftovers: 13 Updates to Read While Your Brackets are Being Busted

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:00 GMT

If your NCAA March Madness brackets are as messed up as mine, you'll need a distraction this weekend.

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List of Some Social Events During SES NY

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:19 GMT

Okay this list is not definitive and anyone not here should add a link to their party/gathering in the comments. SES NY is one of the major events of the search year, so I hope many of you are attending. If not there will be people from all over live blogging the sessions.

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Me On Search

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:59 GMT

Over at SEL Gord Hotchkiss has published an interview with me on the future of search. From it:

We’re going through a shift in how folks are understanding what search really means to them. And what it means to them is “I have a need and I need it fulfilled, and I’m going to use the online medium to fulfill it in some way.” We had a very, very basic, well-understood use case for 10 years, which was Google or “like Google”—you put in a couple keywords and you get a response back. And that framework of searching and coming back with the best document to answer a query is morphing. People are asking far more complicated questions now and they’re demanding far more nuanced answers, simply because they know they’re out there....

...Search as an application where your first search isn’t the search itself but rather the search for the right application is a very, very different use case. You have the market influence and dominance of one player splintered into tens of thousands of players. You or I sitting in our office over the weekend could come up with the absolute best structured search application for determining who should be your arborist to cut your trees. And that’s a threat to Google Local Search. If the best application to determine a plumber is the plumbing app on an iPhone—you download it and it automatically pulls all the local results from Yahoo!, Bing, and Google, then pulls all the reviews from Yelp and Angie’s List, then cross-compares that with complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau and Diamond Certified—if that’s the app you use, where’s Google in all of that, right?

Twitter Working On ‘Most Popular Tweets’ Search Project

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:39 GMT

Twitter's search team is working on a project to uncover the most popular tweets for any search query, but it's unclear when or where the project might be implemented. Taylor Singletary, a Developer Advocate at Twitter, announced and described the project today in a post on the Twitter API Announcements group. The Search team is working on [...]

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Social Media Tactics Still Learning to Play Well With Others

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:18 GMT

Social media is on the front of every marketer’s mind (or at least it seems that way) but it still gets the treatment normally reserved for those who don’t quite fit in. In other words, while there is tremendous value in social media it is still a tough road to travel to get social efforts integrated with traditional marketing campaigns. The techniques voted “Most Likely to be Siloed” include third party social networking site, blogs and microblogs. While all the talk centers on these areas there is still considerable concern about how well they play with other elements of marketing campaigns and just how to best help them fit in.

eMarketer tells of a report done by Unica which is a marketing management firm. Here are the numbers from this particular study.

So what’s the hold up? Why is it that many of the most active, important and vastly utilized social media activities are still considered persona non grata when looking at the overall effect of marketing efforts?

My theory is that it I just a matter of TMI. When anyone has too much of anything it becomes difficult to manage. When it comes to data social media activities like Twitter, Facebook and blogs generate so much information that it can bury even the most seasoned marketer.

When asked how all of this data impacts other marketing efforts it becomes extremely difficult to isolate the true cause and effect relationships that C-level marketers want to see. Of course, the general lack of knowledge of these marketing vehicles the further you go up the marketing food chain creates an even greater issue.

In your experience are you seeing the same kind of difficulty in truly integrating your core social media efforts with the rest of your marketing campaigns? What ways have you found to bridge this gap to help social media get out of the silo and in with the rest of the marketing efforts?

Share your experience with us openly. You won’t be giving away any secrets. Besides, it’s Friday and most people will forget what they read by Monday anyway.

On that note, have a great weekend!

Your Story Contest – Win a Free Pass to the S&S Spring Summit

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:16 GMT

If you’re still trying to get a ticket to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit, you must act fast! We’ve had contests going on all this week to give you a chance for a free pass: VIP package, Twitter and Youtube. Here’s another contest for you to enter!

We want to know how you got into Internet Marketing. Was it through a friend? Was it a news article that captured your attention? How about a random opportunity? Make it as interesting as possible. It can be either long or short.

You can check out Dave Snyder’s story here.

Here’s my story:

In 2004, I opened up a Myspace and Facebook account. I pushed FB to the side when it stopped being a “private reunion club” for college students and I went full swing with MS. I was a Myspace nut — pimpin’ out my profile and trying to get 50,000+ comments. I wanted to beat Tila Tequila. I failed. Well, a few years later, MS became loaded with spammers and I went back to FB.

I played around with FB for a while. I was constantly writing on people’s walls, posting up pictures and giving out “presents.” It started to suck when I found out people were not adding me to their top friends list nor did I see myself in some of their photos. My jealousy took the best of me. It was so childish, I know.

So during my last semester at the University of South Florida, Tampa, I ended ties with FB. I didn’t want it to consume my time anymore nor did I want to feel the abandonment. I was saying goodbye to all social media.

I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Gerontology in the Summer of ’07 and ended up landing a finance job in Corporate America with Wells Fargo Financial. How boring!!! I needed something to keep me alive so I tried singing in a MoTown/Classic Rock band. It never took off so I quit. At the same time I took up a fun part-time job with Creative Loafing, Tampa, a local alternative newspaper. I worked in their marketing department on the Street Team. It was a blast! Check out my coverage on Superbowl XLIII.

Since the economy wasn’t doing so well (and it still isn’t!), things didn’t work out with Wells Fargo. With my successful failure at Monster and YahooHotJobs to find a potential employer, I tried my luck with Craigslist. Lo and behold…Search & Social!

I had a meeting with Loren at a nearby Starbucks. I was told that this was just an intern job doing PR. Even though I had debt racking up from not having a full-time job, I wanted to get into PR so I said yes to it. So guess what, I showed my face to FB again. And then I started a marriage with Twitter. I even started a blog for the Tampa girls at Search & Social called SEOtini.

Dave and Loren have taught me a lot about SEO, linkbuilding, social media and online marketing. I was so against it, but social media is a big part of my life now.

That’s my story. Now go make yours! Leave your internet marketing autobiography in the comments section after this post. Comments may not always be posted immediately due to moderation and our spam filters BUT we will approve them once we see them pending. All stories need to be submitted by April 8, 2010.

The winner of this contest will receive an all-access pass for the eight speaker sessions, networking with experts and businesses from across the country, casino night and calypso night, and breakfast, lunch and dinner on both days of the conference.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Your Story Contest – Win a Free Pass to the S&S Spring Summit

The World (of Reviews) According to Yelp

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:31 GMT

Yelp is certainly an interesting phenomenon. Depending on where you live and who you talk to it can be either “all the rage” or it can elicit the “What’s a yelp?” response. Of course, in Internet marketing circles it’s all the rage especially in tech centers like NoCal etc. What is happening quite a bit as of late though, is not that yelp is “all the rage” but instead it is all about rage and, in particular, the rage of the small businesses being reviewed on the site.

The Wall Street Journal reports

As reported by the Journal, the reviews Web site Yelp is under fire. It is facing three lawsuits from businesses that claim it improperly skews reviews in favor of companies that advertise with it and against those that do not.

Yelp denies the allegations, blaming misunderstandings about the way it filters reviews to prevent businesses from inflating their ratings.

So what yelp has done is to create a video that is the equivalent of a yelp filter apologetics course. For those unfamiliar with the term apologetics, it is something that is done in defense of a particular position, activity or worldview. It is most often applied to religions but the way that some people treat the online world that may not be such a far-fetched connection. Take a look at the video that yelp has produced to defend explain its review filtering process.

If you took the time to watch the video it does little if anything to actually explain what happens behind the scenes regarding this mysterious review vetting process. Other than a cute rendering of the machine that reviews are dumped into (should have used a black box maybe?) there is precious little truly explained. The reason for this is told by Jeremy Stoppleman, yelp’s CEO.

Yelp chooses not to explain much about how it decides which reviews to show and which to hide. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says that exposing too much of the site’s secret technology sauce would make it easier for shills to fill the site with puffed up reviews.

“It is similar to the challenge that Google faces in ranking Web sites,” he said. “The more that they share with the world about how they specifically evaluate links on the Web, the more they make it easy for somebody that wants to rank number one to do so.”

Yelp is in a very unique position. We sit on the edge of what may be a mobile explosion that could greatly benefit yelp in the future. It’s past, however, may make some folks suspect of just how reliable the reviews are and if there was any back room dealings to get someone on the top of the review heap.

What is your experience with yelp? Do you trust the reviews on the site? We have no filters here at Marketing Pilgrim so let’s hear it.