While the Google Content Network can certainly provide an advertiser with huge click volume, if not managed correctly, content ads can quickly drain your budget with minimal results.  Below are a few best practices for managing Adwords campaigns within the Google Content Network:

Replicate Campaigns for Content Only:

From a campaign hierarchy perspective, I would recommend replicating your Search Network campaigns to Content Only campaigns and labeling them accordingly.  For example,  if you have a search campaign called “Golf Putters,” call the replicated Content Only campaign “Golf Putters: CONTENT.”

Use Data from Google Search Network:

Because the Google Content Network only gives you visibility down to the Adgroup level, its best to initially launch a Content Campaign with only your best performing Adgroups from the Search Network.  Next, I would pause all under performing keywords and ads from the Search Network Adgroups to ensure you’re transfering only the best performers to the Content Network. Finally, I would start by setting your bids at 50% lower than your Search Network campaigns, as conversion rates within the Content Network are typically much lower.

Negative Match Ad Placements:

At one point or another, we’ve all landed on a web page full of Adsense ads with little or no relative content.  Obviously, the likelihood of generating quality conversions from a domain park is low, so refining your ad placements is a key driver to Content Network success.  Similar to finding Negative Keywords, by running an Adwords Placement Report, you can start to negative match any non-converting content websites.

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This post is brought to you by Gen Y marketer and social media extraordinaire Kristin Dziadul of KDmedianow, follow her on twitter  @KristinEDziadul for insightful digital media marketing tid-bits.

Persistence. Integrity. Devotion. Passion. Hard-work. Risks. Vision. What do these words collectively mean? They are the ingrained attributes of a successful entrepreneur.

The video below demonstrates how an entrepreneur’s vision must be more important than anything else in their world, and they must be willing to lose it all in order to achieve their dream. These pioneers are the backbone of our economy who never give up or give in.

You must begin with an entrepreneurial fight that will allow you to do anything in your power to achieve your dreams and goals. A great way to begin your entrepreneurial venture is to create your own brand online using Web 2.0 tools. Build up your social networks, meet others who can help you attain your objectives, be seen as a thought leader by writing blogs and commenting on others, as well as create videos and other portfolio items that can be easily viewable online.

Each day is a new opportunity to further enhance your brand and be recognized as that specific brand personality by others. If you Google your own name, what types of items come up? If they are related to your interests, you are going in the right direction.

Being an entrepreneur can be as exciting as it is scary. You realize you are in control of your destiny, you will reap as many benefits as you are willing to work for, and you must connect with the right people and engage in meaningful conversations. Keep your goal in mind each and every day, with every action you do. Leave your mark everywhere you go, whether it is a blog site, a networking event, or a consultation meeting.

Additionally, make sure you have persistence! Think of past entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Larry Page of Google, and even Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan from our local Hubspot. They did not get their success simply by teetering away day after day hoping they would achieve their objectives. They had a vision, carried it out with specific tasks, met the right people, conveyed their mission and image, and succeeded.

I have seen companies succeed and fail, ideas triumph and flop, people become millionaires, and those that end up bankrupt. Although being an entrepreneur means a great amount of freedom, it comes with a significant risk of failure. However, if you have that entrepreneurial fire inside you that makes you want to do something to help others, if you want to turn your ideas into reality, and do something different, then get out there on your own and create your very own ‘American Dream.’

For more ideas on how important developing a brand personality online is, visit me here!

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Is Foursquare at the tipping point?  Certainly within the blogger world they’ve received an insane amount of press over the past year.  Thanks to the publicity,  they’re now rumored to reach around 450,000 users and are gaining mainstream support.  But, will mainstream users get enough value from “check-ins” to outweigh the inherent risks of making themselves susceptible to privacy invasion and over-sharing of personal information?  While the highly advanced social users are more open to sharing almost everything that happens in their daily lives, mainstream social user’s may have a ways to go.  One of the reasons Foursqaure has the best shot in the cluttered location based market is the clear vision of their CEO:

The game mechanics are the secret sauce. They keep people engaged long enough to see the interesting things that happen when they participate frequently. It’s kind of like with Twitter. If you drop someone in Twitter and don’t give them a reason to participate, they get bored of it really quickly. But, if you spend 10 days with Twitter, you fall in love with it. Foursquare is similar. Spend an afternoon with it, you’ll say: “This is awful. I get nothing out of it.” But as you start to get friends on it and as you check-in at different places, you realize complexities emerge. You see how people are using it and the content they’ve added. The game mechanics hold peoples’ hands through the first 10 to 20 days of the service.

People will say we’re the next Twitter. Which I don’t agree with. I think we’re complementary to Twitter. Or, we’re the next Facebook. But we’re more of a feature set to Facebook. Or, we compete with Google Latitude. Well, kind of. But Foursquare’s not just about the maps. It’s about what happens nearby. And then people will say Yelp is a competitor because of the interest in local businesses and the ability to leave mini-reviews behind. I feel we’re right in the middle of all of these folks.

- Dennis Crowley interviewed by Mac Slocum on O’Reilly Radar

It’s no secret, Twitter seized the power of celebrity and mainstream media adoption to catapult them past the tipping point.  Expectedly, celebrities will probably shy away from Foursquare due to privacy concerns, however, I was blown away over the weekend when I saw a Foursquare commercial from Bravo.  While obviously its the first commercial, I think they’ll need to refine the messaging quite a bit for the mainstream social user… What do you think?

Perhaps there is a chance for location-based media adoption will reach the tipping point sooner rather than later.  But for “eventcasting,” the privacy issue is the central barrier to widespread user adoption.  It will be interesting to see just how far they can push the limits in 2010, maybe this is the one network that should just be about sharing with your “real” friends.

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By using landing page best practices, you will have a nice head start in creating an effective landing page, however landing page optimization is an ongoing process of continuous tweaking and testing.  Heatmapping tools help streamline this process, by taking the guess work out of what people are likely doing on your landing pages.  Combining metrics from heatmapping, traditional analytics, and your CRM will give you a true 360 degree view of a conversion, from click to customer.

There are two main types of heatmapping solutions, 1.) eyetracking heatmaps 2.) Onpage Heatmaps.  Eyetracking Heatmaps take a sample size of real people and track their eye movement while on your website.  While it may be accurate, I think its a little overkill for most websites, especially due to the high cost.  Onpage heatmaps for the most part, track clicks and /or mouse movement on a particular page… ie how many people click on the home button, and how did the mouse move across the page.  There are dozens decent of click tracking providers (many have plans for less than $30 mo) for smaller sites and the setup is typically straightforward.

Generally speaking, I’ve noticed common themes from analyzing customer landing pages:

• Users like clicking the logos of landing pages to get to the main site
• Users scan over the first 2-3 bullets (so make them good)
• Never put your sign up form below the fold
• Users typically like to scan over pics of real people vs graphics

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This year’s Ted conference was another smashing success, again offering us insight into some of the farthest reaching studies across the globe.  This demo by Blaise Aguera y Arcas of new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft floored the crowd.

Augmented-reality mapping technology by Bing could redefine the way we interact with maps.  When you listen to some of the integration points (flickr, world wide telescopes, photosynth processes), the layers and details of information is just mind-bending… never-mind imagining this technology in the palm of your hand someday via your Smartphone.

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Google comes out swinging against popular shopping apps such as, Shopsavvy and Amazon with Google Shopper.  Many of you have probably already noticed Google Maps 2D barcodes on local store fronts in your neighborhood (at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the US).  Most people have no clue what these little tags are for, but with the release of Google Shopper on Android, that will likely change.   Google Shopper combines Google’s in house image and voice recognition technologies and applies it to product search to make it easier to find price comparisons and customer reviews while on the go. Apparently, Google didn’t want to make just another mobile shopping app, they wanted to make a better one.  The app allows Android users to search for products via image recognition (CD, DVD, Video Games, Books), barcode recognition, or speaking the product name through voice recognition tying the results back to their famed search and product reviews.

What’s the potential?  Instant access to local and product search information without typing a single letter into your Smartphone.  Google’s massive reach allows for free and open distribution of barcodes providing a virtual connection to anything from store fronts to products to street signs to buildings.  While it could take some time to saturate the world with Barcodes, we think the growing Android market share could help catapult Google Shopper to the main stream.  As the mobile web becomes inherently “social” Google will continue to blur the lines of search and social shopping.

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Our guest blogger and rising star, Kristin Dziadul from KD Media provides her take on what the future of location based apps may bring to everyday consumers.

What if companies instantly rewarded you based on the amount of your check-ins per month at a particular venue? Foursquare and other location-based applications are transforming the way people shop, travel, and interact with friends online.

There are many advantages to location-based applications already, and a reward system is next in line. Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable reported that these mobile applications are making, “connecting the dots between what you’re doing and where you’re doing it easier than ever.” The article continues to explain that Facebook is now taking advantage of this new technology by allowing updates to be more public and searchable. This is a great opportunity for people to share their activities with friends so they can meet you at a particular place, and businesses can reap benefits by word-of-mouth sharing of their location. Google is also suspected to soon take advantage of this by possibly acquiring Yelp. Twitter is expected to jump on board as well by developing their own location-based application. They already have an opt-in location setting on Twittelator so that tweets can be location tagged, something I use quite often.

Alerts and geo-located tweets are the next layer of this application technology. Grove explains that people can see location-based tweets just by typing in an area to see where people are, what they are doing, and how they like it. There is also the capability for users to set up alerts to let them know when friends are nearby, there are sales at local stores, and where the nearest ATM location is. Amazing technology, right? Yes, but Grove also points out that, “the value of shared location data will only be as strong as the quantity of people sharing location-aware updates.”

The third layer of this technology, which may acquire more users, would be a reward system based on the number of check-ins consumers make at places. Services such as Foursquare, Twitter, Loopt, Gowalla, Google, and Facebook should make their location-based apps almost like a game where companies can opt-in to participate and reward their most frequented customers at the end of a certain period. This technology would essentially replace traditional keychain swipe cards or punch cards since it will be completely virtual-based. This will allow for a deeper connection between the place and its consumers. In another blog post, Grove explains that, “the model of the location-based game is such that any venue willing to make an extra effort can get to know their socially active customers on a more personal level, and even encourage meet-ups in their space.” Major brands can begin offering incentives to loyal customers to continue visiting via mobile advertisements, groupons, text messages, etc. I have just began to utilizing Foursquare, and am excited to see its advancements and efforts to engage much of the population via their mobile apps.

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Here is something interesting… we came across this cool video showing a Moment Factory wall in Montreal.  For all of us that have been in Time Square or Las Vegas, this might just look like your basic LED billboard, but what’s interesting, is how the billboard is engaging with the passersby in a game like fashion.  While a traditional LED might generate some eyeballs, Moment Factory hit a home run with real consumer engagement using digital out of home.

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Through our experience of managing countless Facebook and Google advertising campaigns, we’re in a unique position to truly understand the revenue generating engines of these two web giants.  With the recent “search focused” changes to the Facebook user experience, there is little doubt that Facebook has its eye on becoming an all encompassing social search engine. However, from both a revenue and relevancy perspective, we believe the current Facebook advertising platform barely scratches the surface of what this platform can provide to advertisers.

As you’ve noticed, Facebook PPC ads are typically “socially” focused such as, “Fan XYZ Page” or “Download My App.”  While these advertising campaigns can be successful (and we’ve manage many), we still think Facebook is missing the mark, big time.  Google Adwords has such a high success rate and click through rate (when managed correctly) because users are in the mode of “searching,” while Facebook users are in the mode of “socializing.”  Sure, Facebook has made some strides with trying to make search a central function of the UI, but it still doesn’t provide advertisers with the tools to tap into true “social search.”

How could this change?  Well, reading through the stats from Compete’s report on Facebook referral traffic, its easy to realize the true power of Facebook is not the number of users, but the trust users have in their own social graph.  Just like in your real life, you ask your friends where to go for dinner, what movie to see or what hotel to stay at, these tendencies are mirrored within your Facebook social graph.

For example, I post a status update on Facebook saying,”Going to Chicago in March anyone have suggestions for hotels?”  A few minutes later, your friend responds with,”Dude, try the Lakeshore W…check it out!”  This is a classic example of a social referral and it happens millions of times per day within Facebook.

Now what would happen if Facebook were to include “recommended links” under your friend’s response, containing relevant ads for Chicago hotels from Facebook advertisers? Would you click through?  From a search marketing perspective, we are constantly looking to make our clients’ ads more relevant to the users, and I feel like this could be one of the better ways for Facebook to provide advertisers the opportunity to tap into “social search.”

What do you think?

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For us, @KevinRose the creator of Digg, is one of the brightest stars in the tech space.  With all the nay-sayers hating on Buzz and wondering if this was a failed attempt/launch by Google, it was interesting to hear him go on a rant about why Buzz is paramount to Google’s future and why they quickly decided to push it front and center (no labs).  He believes, releasing it post labs, means they consider real-time data dissection core to their future.

He quickly elaborates on the seismic shift taking place, as we evolve towards indexing real-time information.  His point about Twitter scaring the hell out them is true (huge space carved on 1st page was unheard of), but as he says Twitter is not for sale.  So this means Google needs to create their own answer and get it right.  Once the application is refined and subsequently embedded everywhere across the web, Buzz could give them the access to this real-time information at a quicker access point vs Twitter.

We’re a bit more optimistic about Google’s chances and totally understand their motives.  However, Dave Winer sums up my thoughts perfectly is his post about the one thing I’m still unhappy about.  “When Google rolled out Buzz last week they activated an unknown number of users and chose people for them to follow automatically based on who they email most frequently with. Presumably these people had to also be on Gmail. And the list of people you follow is public.” They knew going into this it was the wrong way to approach for user privacy.  This point brings in the age old question about how vulnerable our private lives are inside of Google.

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