How you interpret your so-called reality determines how you react to it. And those reactions are what actually matter. Here’s why. Humans can’t discern ‘reality,’ only their senses channeled through their minds which gives those things meanings. So, our experience of reality is actually an experience of our interpretation of reality. The world around us consists of things we can control and things we can’t. The actions we take are in fact the only thing we can control.

Defining the future is about the meaning we give to the events and their significance – an interpretation of reality. Pessimism drives us to make decisions out of fear, take less risks, miss opportunities, as well as impoverishing life though the experience of fear and dread. Optimism means risk-taking, trying new things, being alive to what might happen. And on a daily basis it enriches your experience with excitement and anticipation.

So, the question is, what realism are you creating for yourself?

Source: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/be-more-optimistic-heres-why.html

The internet has provided markets with an opportunity to develop leads early in a consumer’s purchase process. And marketers are looking to measure the success of their efforts. A survey carried out by research company Marketing Sherpa in January 2012 found that 52% of markets said their top lead gen strategy for the next year was to meet or exceed quantifiable return on investment goals. Other figures included optimizing the marketing/sales funnel (51%), gleaning more audience insight (51%) and maximizing the lifetime value of customers (47%).

More than half of those surveyed said their organizations invested $50 or less per lead, with the largest group (36%) saying they spent less than $20. This indicates that at the present time marketers are valuing quantity over quality in terms of lead gen, although this could change as ROI measurements improve. Increases in lead generation budgets over the next year are expected to focus on web optimization, social media and search engine optimization.

The co-founder of the business that became Google Maps now leads a team of engineers at Facebook. Their mission is to improve search, and to achieve this by leveraging Facebook’s huge reserves of data from its 800 million active users. Danish-born Lars Rasmussen has to keep the content confidential, but he says it isn’t a ‘go-after-Google’ product. “I can’t predict what will happen in the future but I don’t think it will make sense for us at this stage to even begin to think about doing web search. Google does that so well.” Rasmussen joined Facebook after co-founder Mark Zuckerberg invited him to “come hang out with us for a while and we’ll see what happens.”

He sees the industry trends going in decades, citing IBM, then PC and Microsoft, the Google and the Web. Rasmussen says “The current decade, I think it’s a little bit unusual as there are two important trends: one is social and one is mobile. And there are two big companies setting the trends and its obviously Facebook in social and Apple in mobile.”

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/search-is-on-for-facebooks-next-big-thing-20120725-22px4.html

Integrating banners with social, search and email is critical to success. A 2012 survey of companies worldwide found that three out of the top four trends most significant to the future of display advertising were related to integration. At the top of the list was increased integration with social media, and next was integration with search. The spring survey was conducted by Econsultancy and Responsys.

eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman noted, “The insights derived from search intent modeling, along with the paid search and SEO pieces of larger marketing activities, all help support other brand advertising, both online and offline.”

Companies were most likely to say that integrating search and display had the most positive impact on their display advertising. Agencies cited personalized ads as more important to the future of display than search integration. However, two-thirds agree with their marketer clients that search integration boosted display performance.

The technology that allows customers to tap their smartphone to pay rather than using cash or cards is taking a while to get off the ground. There are two problems to overcome: hardware and customer awareness. In terms of hardware, it depends on retailers being willing to upgrade their point-of-sale terminals. Customer awareness include instilling the confidence that paying in this way is as secure – if not more secure – than using a credit card.

The UK is ahead of the US in terms of the percentage of terminals that can already accept mobile payments, although in the US in the last nine months the number has grown from 120,000 to 400,000. The London Olympics is being seen as an international showcase for mobile payments, and Visa (one of the bigger companies promoting the idea of mobile payments) has provided 140,000 terminals in London, including 5,000 taxis and 3,000 point-of-sale venues at the Olympics.

Source: https://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57478991-94/visa-mobile-payments-will-hit-mainstream-in-2-to-3-years/

Are PPC (pay-per-click) ads effective? It seems they are. For some types of keywords, PPC ads have higher click-through rates than organic search results, a recent study has found. WordStream’s research includes points such as sponsored results accounting for 64.6% of clicks for keywords that imply high commercial content. And total click-through rates for Google ads on high-commercial-intent queries being up to 600 times higher than the click-through rate for Facebook ads. If advertisers buy ads for keywords for which they already rank well organically, 89% of traffic generated is new, outside of organic reach. And 45.5% of people couldn’t identify paid ads on SERPs if those results weren’t listed separately, down the right side of the page.

The survey was limited to US advertisers and Google Search only. In WordStream’s definition, high commercial intent keywords are those searches on Google that have significant advertiser competition, triggering a Google Shopping or Google Product Listing ad. For the research, they used recent average click-through rate date collected through WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader across over 1000 AdWord accounts in 60 days.

Source: https://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2012/8504/paid-vs-organic-search-are-ppc-ads-winning-the-google-click-wars-infographic

Yahoo is earning so little under its search deal with Microsoft that Microsoft is having to make up the difference due to a revenue guarantee. This may lead to Yahoo needing a new partner, such as Google. Yahoo chief financial officer, Tim Morse, said ‘Both companies continue to work hard to materially improve the performance, and we plan to provide an update on our joint efforts at our next earnings call.‘

Microsoft is duty bound to pay a guaranteed minimum in an agreement that was due to expire on March 31 this year. But in October 2011 Yahoo announced Microsoft had agreed to continue paying through March 31 next year. Mark Mahaney, MD and internet analyst for Citi Research guesses that the gap on ‘revenue per search’ (RPS) is likely to be around 50%, but Yahoo aren’t saying the actual figure.

Yahoo can’t walk away without finding a new partner, and the choices are limited. Google seems like the only contender.

Source: https://searchengineland.com/yahoo-microsoft-search-alliance-google-127843