Pieter van Gils

Leaving Ireland in 2 months, looking for a new challenge.

Pieter van Gils — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:26:15 +0000

Press release
For all who didn’t know yet (or don’t speak Dutch) a short summary of the press release that went out last week: Tribal Internet Marketing is changing its international strategy and relocating the German, Irish and Belgium activities to the office in Amsterdam – the Netherlands. Relocating the different offices will reduce overhead costs, creates a more efficient work-flow, improves the quality of work, is easier to manage etc. The old strategy focused on following clients into different countries by opening offices and hiring locals to do the work, a strategy that’s hard to keep up with. You don’t need an office in Spain to hire a Spanish native person, especially in a city like Amsterdam you find people from all over the world.

How do I feel about this?
I fully support the decisions made and see the benefits of one bigger international office against three rather small local offices. Not only should this result in an even better quality of services, but it also creates a great working environment; having people from all over the world in one team. The decision wasn’t easy to make, especially from a personal point of view since I always expected to stay in Ireland for at least 3 years. After discussing everything extensively, I could only conclude that relocating the Irish office is the best way to ensure a healthy growth of Tribal’s international activities. When you look at the bigger picture it means certain investments only have to be made once in stead of three times (e.g. staff, training, office locations) there will be a stronger focus on the international clients with more dedicated team members plus executive management and the communication lines will be shorter. The goal date to have everything transfered to Amsterdam is 31st of March so that still gives me over 2 months in Ireland.

What’s next for me?
This was a really hard decision but I’m leaving Tribal and will not join the Amsterdam office. I’ve always loved working for Tribal but after more then three years I feel it’s time for a change in my career, I want to broaden my work experience and look for a new challenge. I’m also not yet done with my international adventures and would like to move somewhere else in the world, meet new people, different cultures and explore a new country. I’ll write a blog post soon about the type of job I’m looking for, right now I’m still working on my CV and am not even sure where I want to go. All suggestions are welcome off course! I’ll be working with Tribal till the 31st of March, take the month April off (finalize things if needed) and hopefully start a new job at the beginning of May.

Spot me in the new video clip of C-Mon & Kypski – More is Less

Pieter van Gils — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:38:48 +0000

Yes, my 15 minutes of fame, participating in the new video clip of C-Mon & Kypski – More is Less… Don’t believe me? Just check the movie below, somewhere you should be able to spot me.

To be honest it’s the first time I hear the song or read about these artists, but I have to say that the concept works out really great (and the song is not to bad either). If you want to help out check the website http://oneframeoffame.com, it works easy and is fun to do!

Family picture

Pieter van Gils — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:08:15 +0000

I’ve been living in Dublin for more then 1,5 years now and in the past year it only happened a couple of times that I got together with all of my family in one room. When we got together last week for the holidays my uncle took a nice picture… can you see the resemblance?

Tribal’s Birthday party

Pieter van Gils — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:33:10 +0000

Wie jarig is trakteert! from Tribal Internet Group on Vimeo.

Me and My Colleagues

Pieter van Gils — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:54:09 +0000

The special occasion was the celebration of our company being in business for a decade! Read more about 10 years of Tribal on the website (Dutch only).

Affiliate trip to Valencia

Pieter van Gils — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:44:25 +0000

After Iceland (2007) and Malta (2008) I was again invited to join Daisycon on their annual affiliate trip. This time we went to Valencia where we spend 3 beautiful days with excellent food, lot’s of vino and great people.

Thanks to the staff and management of Daisycon for making this happen. I’ll do my best to be there again next year!

We are still number 1 for “search engine marketing” in the Netherlands

Pieter van Gils — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:46:00 +0000

As most people know, I work for Tribal Internet Marketing in Dublin. The focus of our Irish office is Search Engine Marketing, we do a lot off Pay Per Click advertising but also some Search Engine Optimization. I spend most of my time looking at the Irish and UK markets these days, but this afternoon I was checking some of our Dutch competitors to see what has changed for them in the past few months.

One of our competitors launched a new website and I immediately noticed the screenshot from Google on their homepage. The screenshot shows that they are number 1 in the organic results for the keyword “zoekmachine marketing” (dutch for “search engine marketing”). At first I was shocked because we had that position for a long time, it looked like they did a better job then us. The screenshot:

After taking a closer look at the screenshot I realized that there are a few things wrong with it:

There are no Adwords ads showing up, highly suspicious for a popular keyword like this one.
The page title says “search engine marketing” and not the keyword they used “zoekmachine marketing”.
Their brand name shows up bold and Google only does this for the keyword they used in the query.

The only conclusion I can make from these facts is that they used Photoshop (or a similar program) to make it look like they are number one for this important keyword (especially if you are in this business). I think they used a screenshot from a search on their brandname to make sure they would be number 1. Is this misleading for their (potential) clients or not?

A quick search in google confirmes that we still have the number 1 position in the Netherlands for what we do best, search engine marketing!

Paying more for AdWords then ever before

Pieter van Gils — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:18:09 +0000

Google changed their AdWords advertising program about two months ago with a new functionality called “extended broad match”. I was warned by several people that this would give me not-relevant clicks and views. I changed a few of my campaigns by including negatives and changing keywords to phrase and exact match, but I left some running as they where. I’ve been analyzing the data today and see a spending increase of up to 50% for some of the accounts… and guess what, the average conversion ratio dropped. My conclusion is that Google users get less relevant ads. Isn’t this something that contradicts with their policy and philosophy?

I’m now updating all my campaigns by adding negative keywords, changing broad to phrase/exact and changing the bids. If you have the same problem (speak Dutch) and are looking for more possible solutions, read “probleem van extended broad match (en 7 oplossingen)” on the TIM blog.

Twitter background PSD file

Pieter van Gils — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:31:33 +0000

I’ve been playing arround with Twitter today to create a background for my profile. You can see the result on my profile. You can download the PSD file here if you want to make your own design but need some help to get started. Below you see a snapshot of the image.

My most popular picture on Flickr

Pieter van Gils — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:48:08 +0000

I upload most of my pictures to Flickr because it’s a great service to use. This way I have a have a backup of everything and am able to show the pictures to who is interested. I just checked the stats for my Flickr account and there is one picture really popular…. 29,844 views, 15 comments and 31 people count this picture as one of their favorites.

It’s probably because of the tag “ass” that this picture gets so many views. I like the discussion that is going on, in my opinion the tattoo (and picture) are not offensive at all. I’m not religous so I have a different point of view then some of the commenters. Some information: the girl who got this tattoo is part Indian so she understands what the symbol is about. The titel of the picture says “ass” but if you take a look at the picture you can see that the spot is better described as “lower back”. She never wanted to offend anyone and is not showing of her tattoo in public or something…. so my final advice for the commenters who want me to take the picture down; Relax! isn’t it just really cool that a hot girl is interested in your religion?

Now, on to the 30k views for this pic!