Web marketing blog

Web marketing newsletter published for July

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:23:00 +0000

The new July issue of the monthly Web Marketing newsletter has been published, covering some of the recent stories on web search and online marketing trends.

This month's edition looks at Microsoft's launch of Bing, its new a 'decision engine', which is designed to "empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web". It also reviews the release of Google's Wave, the new collaborative communications platform which has the potential to create massive workplace and communication efficiencies. Finally, this edition covers tips on how to use email-marketing campaigns as a powerful online marketing tool.

If you want to sign up for future issues of this newsletter, please do so by using the form at the bottom of this page. To view back issues of this newsletter you can see the archive by date or by subject.

Google reveals Michael Jackson search queries

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:40:00 +0000

The Official Google Blog has revealed the huge volumes of search traffic generated through the search engine worldwide as the rumours of Michael Jackson's death circulated on Thursday afternoon, US time. There was a high initial peak as news started to break, followed by a steady volume of traffic over the following hours, with mobile phone searches also showing a high level of activity.

Google News initially thought they were suffering an automated spam attack due to the sudden increase in search activity, which resulted in the service being taken offline for about 25 minutes.

Google rolls out new AdWords interface

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:43:00 +0000

Google is currently rolling out the new management interface for AdWords advertisers, with some accounts still going through a transition stage, where both the old and new versions can be used, and others now fully converted to the new layout and functionality. There are some clear advantages with the new interface in terms of managing an AdWords campaign, but there are also still teething problems, not least of which is the comparatively slow load times.

Google has been doing a lot to educate and train AdWords advertisers on the new system, with a series of webinars, videos and blog postings, including this latest one as part of their 'New Interface Thursday' series of articles. It will take some time for advertisers to get fully conversant with some of the changes but in the long term, this move will be seen as a good benefit for users to understand and improve their campaign performance.

Yahoo! launches self-serve tool for display advertisers

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:05:00 +0000

Advertising Age reports on the new self-serve advertising product launched by Yahoo!. Called 'My Display Ads', this tool is intended to make it easier for local advertisers and existing search advertisers to try more display advertising on the web. This sort of tool is already provided by Google and Facebook, but Yahoo! has the advantage of a large display advertising inventory which it now wants to develop, including linking search advertisers with the benefits of running display ads at the same time to improve conversions.

Advertisers can choose pre-designed creative layouts from more than 800 display ad templates, or they can make their own by using the simple management tool or by uploading new designs. Ads can then be purchased on a cost-per-thousand impression basis or as part of a cost-per-click auction.

Bing shows early promise

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:59:00 +0000

Bloomberg reports that the search share of Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, rose to 11.1% in the first week of June. According to ComScore figures, this increase in the first week in operation was up from the 9.1% share in the US during the previous week. This is probably to be expected with the luanch publicity and advertising campaign as people try it out - no doubt promising news for Microsoft execs, but the real figures will need to be seen over a longer period of time to show that search habits can be changed.

Tips for Online Reputation Management

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:42:00 +0000

A timely article by Channel Insider considers the increasing important subject of online reputation management by companies who are facing an ever-increasing array of social media sites where bad reviews or comments can quickly damage a brand's reputation. Resources such as Twitter and Facebook are being used as marketing channels by companies wishing to take advantage of the potentially huge market these services reach, but at the same time they need to be aware of what people are saying about them.

As the author says, it’s important for companies to either have an employee who monitors and manages online reputation issues across all social channels, or that this work is outsourced to a specialist company to regularly monitor for negative commentary. Then, if any is found, action needs to be taken to combat it by researching the situation, deciding what action - if any - is required, and then to tackle the problem in the most effective manner.

In many cases, this can mean dealing with the problem head on and ideally to turn it around to be seen in a positive light. Some key areas to consider when dealing with your online reputation management are outlined, such as not to get defensive, and preferably to pre-empt any potential issues by developing a proactive customer service approach and to promote and share good news stories. This area is becoming more specialised and important for many companies now to help them tackle the social media marketplace.

New research shows importance of conversions

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:27:00 +0000

New research published in the US has been reported in AdWeek and demonstrates how the Internet is still seen as a powerful direct marketing tool where conversions are far more important than brand building. The survey of top marketers was carried out by Forbes.com and, when asked what measures they used to gauge success, just 31% of respondents said brand building topped the list, and 14% said reach. However, direct marketing metrics scored highly, with around 82% identifying conversions as the leading gauge, 55% said registrations and 51% said clicks.

These attitudes reflected well for search and e-mail marketing compared to display ads and video as the research shows that SEO, pay-per-click ads and e-mail were identified as the most effective means of generating conversions, whereas video and display ads were at the bottom. The article says that the whole area of metrics - which the Internet excels in - should still embrace more traditional brand-based advertising by including more brand-health measures and embracing frequency online, which can drive up perceived costs in a cost-per-impression model.

The research showed that the most common digital marketing approaches were the more 'traditional' e-mail and search optimisation campaigns - used by 74% of respondents - in contrast to the 38% that were using cost per thousand (CPM) campaigns such as display advertising, or the 28% saying they used video ads.

85% of respondents said they were satisfied with their search engine optimisation efforts and 78% were positive about the results from search advertising. Impression-based advertising scored lower, with a 63% satisfaction level and just over 50% were pleased with ad networks, which scored lowest. In terms of future plans, viral marketing, SEO and behavioral targeting were the tactics most frequently identified for budget increases in the next six months.

Microsoft launches new 'Bing' search engine

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:08:00 +0000

After some weeks of speculation about the launch date - and name - for Microsoft's new search engine, the new tool, called Bing, has now appeared as the replacement for Live Search. This is undoubtedly a big event for Microsoft and touted as their last chance to really make an impact on Google's search dominance. It's supported by a US$100m advertising campaign that positions the search engine as a 'results' tool and hopes to get Google users to try it out and be impressed.

We will be looking in more detail at Bing in our next newsletter (July 09), but some early reviews from Search Engine Land provide a good background on this new search engine and how it compares to Google's results.

Web marketing newsletter published for June

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:26:00 +0000

The new June issue of the monthly Web Marketing newsletter has been published, covering some of the recent stories on web search and online marketing trends.

This month's edition looks at latest quarterly Internet advertising figures published by IAB Australia, which show continued strong growth in the sector, despite the growing economic pressures on business. It also reviews the new Search Options Panel which has just been introduced by Google to add new filters to their search results. Finally this issue covers the launch of the new Wolfram Alpha search tool and why it isn't trying to be a direct competitor to Google, yet still provides an impressive search service.

If you want to sign up for future issues of this newsletter, please do so by using the form at the bottom of this page. To view back issues of this newsletter you can see the archive by date or by subject.

Twitter not for sale, yet

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:53:00 +0000

As reported by The New York Times, Twitter's co-founders - Evan Williams and Biz Stone - have said they are totally behind the business and have no intention of selling, despite the recent rumours of Google, Microsoft and others showing interest in the company.

Of more interest were their possible ideas to monetise the service, although a firm business model is not yet developed. Possible options are to give companies and heavy users enhanced features for a fee, such as getting introductions to new followers or trying to authenticate a company or person’s identity which is becoming a key issue for users. Search is becoming another key issue as the business develops its real time search engine, using the technology acquired last year so that third-party Twitter services can also use it.

Is there any mystery over Google's missing millions?

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:00:00 +0000

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a story about the apparently low revenues reported from Google's Australia business, despite the high estimated revenues being received from search advertising.

The article says that Google Australia booked just under $90 million for the year ending December 31 2008, according to documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. However, Google is estimated to have received $800 million in revenue from AdWords advertisers across the country, based on IAB figures.

Not surprisingly, Google has refused to comment about the article and continues to keep the details of its revenue sources secret.However, as most AdWords advertisers in Australia know, the billings for their campaigns are channelled through the Google office in Eire, where the revenues are going to be lost amongst the wider European income streams and, as far as Google is concerned, protected from the prying eyes of journalists and, more importantly, competitors.

Social networking privacy at work

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:06:00 +0000

The Wall Street Journal blog includes an article about the use of social networks in the workplace and how this growing issue needs to be addressed by companies in a clear manner. According to a recent survey in the US by Deloitte, a majority of business executives believe that they have a right to know what their employees are doing on social-networking sites. However, most workers - not surprisingly - say it’s none of their bosses’ business!

However, the margin was quite low, as only 53% of employee respondents said their social networking profiles are none of their employers’ business, which probably reflects the awareness of many that whatever they might think, these details are in the public domain and are likely to be viewed at some time. Regardless, 61% of employees said that they wouldn’t change what they were doing online even if their boss was monitoring their activities.

About a quarter of employees said they knew of specific guidelines as to what they could and couldn’t post on social networking sites and a similar proportion also said that their company didn’t have a policy, or that they didn’t know if their company had a policy.

Twitter for local business marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:48:00 +0000

An article by Advertising Age focuses on the potential use of Twitter as a local marketing tool. It uses several examples of companies in the US that have been using this 'micro-blogging' tool successfully to target their local market and to drive new business through specific promotions.

Twitter's real-time messaging service can be used to attract local 'followers' for a business and then to harness that potential customer base with short term promotions or announcements. The other key advantage is the low barrier to entry, as Twitter is free and quick to set up. It just needs the right stratgey and application to make the time spent on developing the tool worthwhile.

The article concludes with 5 tips for local businesses using Twitter - namely, track every sale; recognise the difference between the immediacy of Twitter and the use of other social networking tools, such as Facebook; create a conversation and avoid too much heavy promotion; use it tactically for short term promotions; and alert followers to any special events or activities.

Google announces new search features

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:55:00 +0000

Google has announced a number of new search features in its Official Blog. The most notable is Search Options, which is a new panel that can be accessed from a link at the top of the search results and provides a collection of tools that let searchers 'slice and dice' their results to generate different views of the search listings. We will cover this in more detail in our June 2009 newsletter.

The second new development is "rich snippets" which are additional pieces of information that appear within a search result listing for a website to try to provide more details to aid the searcher in selecting the content they want. For example, for a restaurant search, these new "rich snippets" extract and show more useful information from web listings than the usual preview text and could include items like the number of reviews or the restaurant's price range.

However, these snippets can only be displayed if website publishers adopt microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML to allow this structured data to be used. This can help people better understand the information contained within the web pages and will help improve clickthrough rates from Google's results. More information about using rich snippets can be found here.

The final new development is a tool called Google Squared, which is currently in beta. Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about a subject but automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet - which would appear to be competing with the new Wolfram Alpha search tool which is due to launch shortly. Access to this new Google tool will be made available for review through Google Labs soon.

IAB publish click fraud guidelines

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:18:00 +0000

The PCWorld website reports on the new guidelines published in the US by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to help define what 'click fraud' is within pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and to lay down basic procedures for determining when an advertiser should or should not pay for a click. Promisingly, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all collaborated with the IAB on the production of these guidelines.

Click fraud remains a controversial area of PPC advertising, with different % levels claimed by various interested parties. The search engines say they have this issue largely under control but advertisers are often concerned about how effective these controls might be. The new guidelines - which can be downloaded here - now provide "the detailed definition of a 'click' and the standard by which clicks should be measured and counted, including the identification of invalid and/or fraudulent clicks".

This is a good move by the IAB and participants who created these guidelines and they should start to help the debate about, and the tackling of, the problem so that the PPC advertising market can move forward on a clearer understanding of the issue.

Internet advertising in Australia continues to grow

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:57:00 +0000

The latest quarterly report from IAB Australia shows that the national online advertising market continues to show a good rate of growth, with a year-on-year increase of 14%. Using data compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the online advertising expenditure in Australia for the first quarter of 2009 came to $439.5 million, the largest first quarter figure recorded so far.

The online advertising industry is expected to be impacted by the effects of the global financial crisis and the lowering of consumer and business confidence. The first quarter figures for 2009 were down 5% against the last quarter of 2008, yet this was anticipated due to the decline in activity that's usually seen after the pre-Christmas period. Despite this, the online advertising sector continues to maintain a strong year-on-year growth each quarter, unlike most other advertising media that are reporting negative year-on-year revenues.

The continued growth in this sector has been largely driven by the Search and Directories sector where the further migration of revenues into this sector saw it push past 50% of the total online advertising revenue for the first quarter. General Display advertising accounted for 24.9% of the total advertising expenditure for the first quarter, with a small decrease from the previous quarter as expected due to the trend of previous years. The Classifieds sector comprised 23.9% of the overall market with the impact of the economic slowdown having the greatest impact here, as the sector showed the first decrease in year-on-year expenditure since record keeping commenced in 2002.

B2B advertisers move spend online

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:25:00 +0000

New research published in the US and reported by MediaPost indicates that business-to-business (B2B) media is seeing a rapid shift of advertising revenue from the traditional print channels to online platforms. The research was conducted by Outsell Inc. also shows that overall B2B revenues have decreased since 2005.

The findings show that the print share of total B2B revenue fell from 58.3% to 40% between 2003 and 2008, as online revenues jumped from 18% to 33.9%. The remaining share came from events, which stayed around a quarter of total revenues. The main period of change happened between 2005 and 2007, when print revenue declined from 53.1% to 44.1%, while online increased from 22.1% to 30.2%.

The report says that a good part of the percentage shift from print to online simply reflects diminishing print revenues and although there is a changing pattern, there is no question that the future of B2B media lies online. Infact the article says that "B2B has been confronted with the same dilemma faced by other print media, including consumer magazines and newspapers -- online, while a promising area for new revenue growth in its own right, has so far failed to offset much larger losses on the print side".

Google opens up trademark bidding

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:17:00 +0000

An article on Search Engine Land indicates that Google is to relax its trademark restrictions for AdWords advertisers across more countries. A Google representative is stated as saying that "As of June 4th, Google will no longer investigate complaints relating to the use of trademarks as keywords by AdWords advertisers. This means that in the affected regions, a company advertising on Google will be able to select trademarked terms as keywords, and a user searching with a trademarked keyword may see a greater number of relevant ads in the sponsored links section, giving them greater choice."

Google was already allowing this use of trademark bidding in North America and had also relaxed the rules for the UK and Ireland last year. This new move will mean that advertisers will now be able to bid against trademarked terms as a keyword, if desired. Google says that their aim is "to provide our users with the most relevant information, from both search results and advertising. We are making this change because we want to give users greater choice and to help them make informed decisions."

There will clearly be implications with this change, both for advertisers wishing to bid against trademarked terms as well as those companies wishing to protect their trademarks within the Google search results.

Google's whitepaper on Content Network performance

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:24:00 +0000

Google recently published a whitepaper on the performance of their Content Network - where AdWords advertisers can extend their advertising reach to third-party websites, based on the related page content matching the targeted keywords.

Google says that the Content Network is the "world's #1 ad network" since it reaches more than 80% of global Internet users. Six billion ad impressions are served each day across hundreds of thousands of these Content Network websites and so Google has analyzed conversions, cost, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on the Content Network compared to the main Search Network, across thousands of accounts and many geographic regions.

The results from the analysis indicated that adverts on Google's Content Network can be an effective way to gain additional conversions beyond the main search coverage, with the median advertiser seeing a content CPA within about 2% of their Search CPA. Also the survey found that the Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser, plus conversion rates were higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

Certainly Google's Content Network has improved its performance significantly over the past 2-3 years since Google started to provide more performance data and management tools for this channel. In a recent post on the Google AdWords blog, more information has been provided by Google as to why the recent findings reported such a similar cost-per-acquisition on the content and search networks, which is primarily due to the use of the smart pricing system - a feature that automatically reduces the price advertisers pay for clicks if Google's data shows that a click from a Content Network page is less likely to result in a conversion.

These findings have to be viewed with some care as Google clearly has a clear motive to promote greater use of the Content Network and their automated bid pricing system. Their tips and recommendations direct advertisers down this route and while the Content Network should be tested with tracking mechanisms in place, the results will clearly vary for different advertisers and markets, plus some good initial campaign management is required to get the best results possible.

Web marketing newsletter published for May

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:49:00 +0000

The new May issue of the monthly Web Marketing newsletter has been published, covering some of the recent stories on web search and online marketing trends.

This month's edition looks at the three types of keyword matching in Google Adwords and the best practice on using them to save money in an online advertising campaign. It also reviews how Google has made changes to its search results in the past month, so that they now include 'sitelinks' for results below first position and also additional listings based on search locality, driven by a searcher's IP address. Finally, the newsletter considers how Google Analytics' Motion Charts can be used to give a graphical comparison between keywords, on up to three parameters, to analyse which are performing best over a specified time period.

If you want to sign up for future issues of this newsletter, please do so by using the form at the bottom of this page. To view back issues of this newsletter you can see the archive by date or by subject.

Tips for using Google AdWords and Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:28:00 +0000

Google's 'Inside AdWords' blog has just completed a series of short posts about how AdWords and Analytics can best be used together. More and more search engine advertising campaigns through Google AdWords are linking in the Google Analytics data as well to get a better insight into how keywords are performing once searchers visit a site. These 4 posts by Google cover tips and advice about using these 2 tools together and include links to additional resources.

The first article introduces the series of articles and provides links to a series of short videos on how to use Google Analytics. The second post looks at linking the AdWords and Analytics accounts and then how to track revenue generated by the PPC adverts.

The third blog article explains how to identify the keywords that lose money and how to calculate the ROI of a campaign. The final article covers ways to find the best keywords and ad positions that drive revenue.

Microsoft publish their quarterly financial results

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Closely following the publication of Google's and Yahoo!'s financial results for the last quarter comes Microsoft. Widely reported in the press, including by The Wall Street Journal, the software giant posted a 32% drop in profit and the first decline in quarterly revenue in its 23-year history as a public company, due to the global recession having an impact on nearly every segment of their business.

Microsoft has blamed the 16% drop in sales for their Windows software on the reduction in the PC market within the consumer and business sectors, although there may also be an element of customers now waiting for the new improved version of Vista to appear before the year end.

More notably for Microsoft's Internet-focused business was the more than doubling of operating losses from the online services division, to US$575 million. Microsoft is still desperate to improve its competitive position in Internet search and advertising against Google, but has made little progress by the most important measures. The company has continued to hire within its Internet group, even as it has made staff cutbacks elsewhere in the company, and clearly hopes to see a turnaround in this sector soon, but continues to suffer from a low, and declining, share of the search market.

Google and Yahoo! publish financial results

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:44:00 +0000

Both Google and Yahoo! have recently published their quarterly financial results, with some contrasting fortunes as the economy starts to have an impact on the search business.

Google released their results last week which were widely reported in the media - including by Information Week - and they were slightly better than analysts expected. Revenue for the first-quarter of 2009 was US$5.51 billion, up 6% year-on-year but 3% down on the last quarter of 2008. Their earnings-per-share figure was also better than anticipated ($4.93) which indicated that cost controls are working and the company is coping with the downturn so far.

Yahoo!'s quarterly results met the expectations of the market and the company said that economic conditions remained challenging, as revenue from advertising on Yahoo! websites and its partner websites declined during the first quarter of 2009. In the first quarter of 2009, Yahoo! generated revenue of US$1.58 billion, down 13% from the same period in 2008, with a net profit of US$118 million, down from US$537 million a year earlier. As reported by Reuters, Yahoo! also said it would cut 5% of its global workforce, following the earlier cuts announced in 2008.

New product developments at Google

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Google Labs is a fascinating part of Google's website, showcasing projects that are under development to improve the search experience as well as many of the other services now offered by Google. The BBC reports on several new services that are being tested - Similar Images and Timeline Search, plus Google has also announced the new Profiles service.

Similar Images allows users to sort through the results of an image search more easily by clicking on a link so that in cases where a variety of images may initially be displayed for a search, the query is expressed visually as an image and not text to focus the results. Google has been spending a lot of development time on improving the image search engine and recently introduced a colour-match function within the Image Search tool to enable users to find similar colour-themed results.

The Google News Timeline tool allows searchers to view a history of articles, photographs and videos for their chosen search, arranged by date, week, month or year. Users can also refine the search to specific magazines, newspapers or blogs as well as results from Wikipedia, movies, music or even video games.

Finally, the Google Profile is a new option of Google account holders to control how they present their details on Google products to other Google users. Users control how their details appear and they can add more information about themselves, along the lines of a very basic social networking site. In this way, users with a Google profile can share web content in one central location, such as links to a blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

How will the economy affect online advertising?

noreply@blogger.com (Web Marketing Workshop) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:22:00 +0000

An online survey conducted by AdWeek with users of the social networking site LinkedIn assessed how the current economic situation may impact the role of online marketing. Over 4,300 respondents too part in the survey at the end of March and when asked "How will the economic downturn most affect advertising?", 22% said 'there will be less advertising'. Another 8% said 'advertisers will play it safe' but the majority responded to say that the main effect would be a form of evolution that makes advertising more adaptive to changing conditions.

Within this group, 30% of respondents considered that the economy would lead to "better targeted ads to improve ROI," 23% anticipated that the "shift to online would accelerate" and 15% think "ads will follow traffic to social media." When the responses are broken down by job function, there was a notable gap between people in "marketing" and those in "sales": with the latter being much more likely than the former to choose "better targeted ads to improve ROI" (36% vs. 23%) as the recession's pre-eminent effect on advertising.

A full report on the survey and the breakdown of the results by different categories can be seen on LinkedIn (requires user login).