We learn about the creation of the unique penny auction site which prioritizes customer service and addresses the most common complaints about penny auctions.

They also discuss branded leads, their website SimpleQuote.org, which services consumers in need of answers to their financial questions and to connect them with trusted individuals who are able to help.

They also tell us how they came up with the name of their Performance Lead Generation Agency.

Their services include Track Phone Calls From Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns, Delivery Automated Outbound Phone Calls, Distribute Leads & Route Calls Using Virtual Call Center, and more. Company CEO Irv Shapiro fills us in

He fills us in on his AdTech Chicago 2009 presentation on Search Tactics and Techniques for Emerging Platforms.

Medland: Hi, my name is Meredith Medland and I’m here with Pete Prestipino. He’s the editor of Website Services Magazine, which you’ve seen in the racks here at ad:tech in Chicago, as well as you can certainly find online. Pete, this issue this month is about E-Commerce and next month is affiliate marketing. Tell us more about this magazine.

Pete

Prestipino: We launched our magazine back in November of 2005. We’ve been on the tradeshow circuit. We’ve been going to ad:tech, coasting con Affiliate Summit just last week and we’re just really excited to be in the industry and publishing a magazine that we think is helpful for what we call the Long Tail. That’s the 90% of the web consumers that are driving the money on the web. We’re just excited to provide very practical information.

Meredith: You have a booth here at ad:tech?

Pete: We do. We’re over there on the corner, but we’re signing up a lot of people today. I think we have about 300 today so far. Ad:tech has been really good to us.

Meredith: Fantastic. What’s unique about your magazine compared to the other industry trades?

Pete: We’re focused on very practical information. For example, next issue we have an article about do-it-yourself affiliate programs, how to use those practically. We tend to shy away from case studies and focus more on the tools and tactics that successful web companies use to get the attention and notoriety that people aspired to. Again, it’s good information and it’s practical information. We’ve people from all over the US and Canada calling us everyday saying, “Thank you for sending it to us.” It’s just generally good information that anybody can read an article quickly and implement our suggestions or expert suggestions. We have a lot of great writers, on-staff and great contributors providing just helpful information.

Medland: You’re listening to WebmasterRadio.FM. My name is Meredith Medland. Sitting right across from me on the show floor of Chicago ad:tech is David Hutchinson. He’s the SVP of Business Development over at Program Partners. He’s much more than that, you’re on the board of directors for ad:tech, you’d been around for a long time. You’re a veteran in the industry. You’ve done a great favor to all of us at this conference and that’s hooking us up with Hunter Hastings. We just gone done talking to him. He’s the CEO of the EMM group and provided some amazing information on the state of marketing, where it’s going and what’s going on.

David, I’d love for you to break it down for us today. We just talked to him a little bit. But take some of that high level stuff and reiterate the key concepts that you heard.

David

Hutchinson: Yes. Well, it’s interesting. God bless, Hunter for you know, (a) coming to sort of give the presentation that he did and to condense it the way he did in fairly succinct terms. I mean, what he is talking about is nothing less than this sort of operational organizational transformation of this sort of the 20th century industrial corporation with their department and silo’s sort of product centric, business disciplines. Literally, transforming that American corporation that we’ve known for a hundred of years, into a more informational, more relational, more horizontal corporate structure. Going from silo’s to cross-functional teams, which is really kind of the pesky sort of a challenge that you don’t really hear marketers typically talking about. There’s a lot that talk about how the consumer is in control, is in charge and 360 degree marketing or multi-channel marketing or the marketing mix and everybody intellectually gets that. It is critical. We do have to shift from sort of a supply side, sort of economy and mentality to a more of a respect for the demand side.

Medland: You’re listening to WebmasterRadio.FM, my name is Meredith Medland and I’m right here with Peter Fort from SCAinteractive.

Peter, tell us about SCAinteractive.

Peter Fort: SCAinteractive is one of the original online vendors for contests and promotions. We had our start, my start in the online side in 1993, which was when people barely own computers and we do sweepstakes contests, promotions. We’re currently running the largest promotion in North America right now, which is the McDonald’s Pirates of the Caribbean. Very exciting.

Meredith: Tell us a little bit more about that promotion.

Peter: Well, the McDonald’s promotion is huge, absolutely mammoth. In McDonald’s case, every Big Mac, every large shake, every French fry you buy has a unique ten-digit pin number on it. This pin number, you can take and if you enter the pin number, you can find out if you win one of 28 Volvos in 28 days.

The best part is they are doing these pins through three different gateways. In other words, when you get the pin off the side of your Big Mac, you can go to your cellphone and text in the pin number, that’s gateway 1, or you can go to your cellphone and call in the number with your voice, that’s gateway 2, or you can go online and actually see a really sharp flash presentation and enter the number and find out if you won.

Medland: You’re listening to Webmaster Radio. My name is Meredith Medland. Sitting across from me, is Kenneth Kalb from SearchRev.

How are you doing?

Kenneth: Meredith, Hi. How are you? Thanks for having me today, I appreciate it.

Meredith: You’re welcome. Let’s get right into it, give me a case study.

Kenneth: Well, first of all, I’m the CEO of a company called SearchRev and we are the leading provider of paid search optimization for online advertising companies. What we do is, we help those companies who are interested in advertising online, to double, triple, or quadruple the revenue that they’re currently getting from their existing campaigns.

We have lots of examples of some of those customers, they include, Yahoo, Safeway, Zazzle, Shutterfly and MotoSport. In particular, companies like Zazzle for example, we’ve been able to increase their performance by as much as 10% compounded growth rate per month, which we think is quite extraordinary. We’re actually the leader in the field.

Meredith: That’s fantastic. So, if we talk about motosport.com you’ve got a little information for me here, let’s hear about some specifics.

Medland: You’re listening to Webmaster Radio. My name is Meredith Medland, I’m here with Mark Carlson who’s the CEO and Founder of Simple Feed which is an RSS provider. Welcome to our show, Mark.

Mark

Carlson: Thanks, Meredith.

Meredith: RSS, what are the obstacles for companies using RSS right now?

Mark: Well, RSS is gaining a lot of publicity, it’s very exciting. But some of the things that are slinging down right now is that only about 10% of people are actually consuming RSS feeds right now, that’s up from almost nothing a year ago. But one of the really exciting things about RSS is that RSS readers are being built into all future operating systems, most importantly, Windows Vista which ships in January this year. So, that’s part of the reason there’s so much excitement around RSS.

Meredith: So, we can actually count on RSS being a mainstay within the Internet?

Mark: Yes. So, one of the great things about the future RSS readers like Vista is that it makes it really, really easy to subscribe to RSS feeds. Your browser, Outlook and so forth will just give you a little light up. You know, lets you know there’s a feed there, you click it and you’re subscribed. It takes it in the world of geeky technology into a mainstream area.

Medland: My name is Meredith Medland, it’s time to turn on your ears and get excited to listen to some more exciting content brought right from ad:tech Chicago. Sitting in front of me is Sam Landers, who’s the Founder as well as Creative Director at Designitchen here in Chicago, Illinois. Hi Sam.

Sam
Landers: Hi, Meredith. How are you?

Meredith: I’m having a great time. I just talked to Sam a little bit before we recorded this interview. First, Sam I want you to tell everybody what Designkitchen is.

Sam: Designkitchen is an interactive firm. We specialize in branding, brand positioning, identity development and technology solutions for a wide variety of clients. Motorola, United Technologies, NutraSweet company, USG, Life Fitness and third of our work is outside of Chicago. But all of our work is technology related.

Meredith: Fantastic. Well, one of the technologies that you show me that also had phenomenal design elements was your work with Motorola. Tell our listener’s about that?

Sam: Yes. I think companies like Motorola have many audience groups. So, typically, when you go to Motorola.com, you’re going to get consumer information like there latest phones and gadgets. But Motorola has a significant part of their business with the networks on the streets. Their the T-Mobile, Vodafones in Europe. They’re the companies that builds the infrastructure so that your phone works.

Medland: My name is Meredith Medland. You’re listening to WebmasterRadio.FM. I’m sitting right here with the General Sales Manager for YellowPages.com, his name is Freeman Braswell. Freeman, welcome to our show.

Freeman

Braswell: Thank you, Meredith. I’m very happy to be here.

Meredith: Freeman, Id just ask you, if you could have any outcome from this interview, what would it be? I’d like you to share a little bit about what you told me but mainly, it was you wanted to really inspire and educate online advertising agencies.

Freeman: Absolutely. We really want to get the message across to the advertising agency community that YellowPages.com provides resource and information to consumers who are ready to buy. When they’re shopping and they’re looking for a name or address or a phone number, they’re going to YellowPages.com, they’re looking for that information, they’re going and they’re buying once they’ve come to visit our site. We want to make the agencies aware that YellowPages.com can play a very important part in the overall media mix that they create for their clients in terms of television has a role, newspaper has a role, outdoor has a role, YellowPages.com has a very important role in that customer buying cycle. Again, that’s serving up a phone number, an address, a name, so that consumer can go to that store, that location and buy what they’re looking for.

Meredith: Fantastic. Well, good. We want to make sure that we get that message out there. What it’s like doing sales on the show floor at ad:tech?

Medland: You’re listening to Webmaster Radio, my name is Meredith Medland. I’m sitting here on the show floor of ad:tech in some plush, royal blue suede, beautiful, big chairs. I’m right here with Mark Ippolito, he’s the VP of Sales for Zango. So, Zango.com is what you want to pull up on your Web browser. Alright. So, Mark, you’re speaking tomorrow here at ad:tech Chicago and you’re going to be telling us some tips. Tell us about that session.

Mark

Ippolito: Thanks, Meredith. Yes, the session for tomorrow, we’re going to talk a little bit about the content economy that Zango is building. How Web publishers can actually contribute to building out that content economy and ultimately, reap the rewards by making some additional money off the traffic that they have to come in to their websites.

Meredith: Fantastic! So, this is a nice spin the show instead of selling us something, you’re going to tell us how we can make money.

Mark: That’s right. That’s right. Yes, we currently have over 1,200 website publishers in our network today, who both distribute content that they own and hold copyrights to, as well as syndicate content from other publishers with whom Zango has established partner relationships. The benefit to the publishers is that they get to monetize the traffic through the Zango desktop advertising clients that allows them to monetize the traffic coming to their sites. The users actually get the benefit of that free content that is sponsored by advertisers, who then advertised through Zango to reach those consumers. So, it’s a win-win all around.