It’s official! Quick update, Steve Jobs announcing it literally as I am writing this. So Apple plans to make Mobile advertising more interactive and emotional, right now ads on the internet are interactive, on TV are emotional (as an example). Ads will be displayed in an App, where person is getting data, not searching for it (Google). Average user spends 30 minutes a day in an App, they plan to have 100 million devices soon (right now 85 million), and if Ad shows every 3 minutes, it’s 1 BILLION impressions a day, huge market.

Ad serving is demoed in an Entertainment news app, with advertisement of Toy Story 3 movie. You can do interactive things with ad, such as learn about movie characters, watch trailer, even play games! The ad was made by Apple themselves, so it’s a mock-up, just to show opportunity. Steve Jobs asked audience “Have you ever seen an ad like this?” “Anything even close?” and audience is in laughter.

This type of advertising will attract serious advertisers, who have budget to make an interactive ad like that. This is surely a Win for Apple.

He proceeds to demo Nike Shoe Ad, with custom shoe-maker, history, and Store Locator (device can use GPS to find nearest store, and Nike (in this example) can only target people who are actually near their retail stores, and are likely to buy!

This is huge deal in Internet Advertising, and it’s HUGE in advertising in general, I really can’t stress that, this is new level.

I will try to write more on how internet marketers and business owners with lower advertising budget can take advantage of this platform from an early start. But right now I’ll head out for a drink with my friends

There is no official word from Apple as I am writing this, but was sort of rumored by allthingsD and BusinessWeek magazine. But iPhone OS 4 event is taking place April 8, and as will unveil the next generation iPhone, Steve Jobs is also rumored to present their new mobile Ad platform with a weird name iAd, and developer kit AdKit. Let me remind you that recently the iPhone company tried to buy AdMob, the biggest mobile advertising platform to date, but it was snatched by Google for $750 million. Apple went on to purchase second best option, mobile ad company Quattro for $275 million.
It’s worth noting that Google has a problem with FTC on their AdMob acquisition, so Google is more than happy that there will be another major player in mobile advertising playground. While AdMob is certainly has wider audience than Quattro, the company who revolutionized smartphone market with their unbelievable intuitive software and App Store marketplace, is controlling the market from top to bottom (App-wise).

Other thing that is of most importance to us, advertisers, is that Apple can get massive amount of information about a user, such as their location, iTunes data (e.g. what music do they like, what app did they purchase), and more. This could provide some extremely powerful targeted advertising that couldn’t be done before. And for what Apple is famous, that they always this of end user experience, so maybe, just maybe, more people will enjoy seeing the ads and not completely ignore them like it is now. It can be fairy easy to overhaul industry that is just 2 years old, they did it with phone market, which is, you know, much older.

30 Minutes ago I’ve received two emails, one from Yahoo! Search Marketing and one from Microsoft adCenter, both saying the same thing, they just got bigger: “Microsoft® and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union.”

The important thing is that they are so optimistic that they plan to bring Search Alliance to life before the 2010 holiday season to US. Oh wait! While Microsoft says just that, Yahoo is more like “we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective.” Good news is that out of two interfaces, they will be sticking to adCenter’s, and it’s good because I find it more convenient, not as convenient as AdWords’ tho.

This is hands down the best news in internet marketing world this month. Microsoft is finally on their way to make their internet services profitable, and this alliance look like a real threat to Google. Many advertisers, especially affiliates, will resort to Search Alliance after Google spit in their face, and then spit again.

Dreams out loud: Since Microsoft own 1.6% of Facebook, maybe it is possible that someday Search Alliance will merge with Facebook

Left: Before the fade. Right: After the fade.

I love how Google is working to improve user’s feeling about it. Have it ever occurred to you that they are loosing a lot of money by having “I’m Feeling lucky” button on their homepage? If even 1% of users click on that, that means they lose 1% of their revenue from AdWords, and this could be up to 100 million bucks.

P.S. I’m sorry for Apple reference, it just really feels like it.

New Google Search Index Changes

The front page changes are really just to make a new, fancier feel. But if we will look at SERP:

Google's New Search Result Example

When you look at the SERP, you see the change. Real reason (as I see it), is that google thinks that not enough people are aware of their amazing features (Maps, News, Product search etc.) so they moved links to those search services in the hotter place according to heatmap, so that more people will notice and use those services.

How to try the new google search(after the jump):

• Go to google’s homepage, if you have iGoogle then change it to default G’s homepage.
• When you are on the page enter this code in your browser address field (this will stuff cookie with code which will make google think you are the beta tester).

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

• No http:// or else needed, just that line.
• Refresh the page and from now on you will have new google search interface!
• Doesn’t work in Google Chrome (atleast for me, firefox OK)

If you want to get back to they way things were before, then you should remove the cookie, there are basically three ways of doing it:

1. Delete all cookies (easy to execute but not convenient afterwards)
2. Search for google’s cookies and delete just those.
3. Search just for the cookie you stuffed above and you’re good to go.

You can really avoid being slapped by Google in the near future and even make your campaigns more profitable in the long term with this tricky technique.

This works very good on pre-sell landing pages, like review blogs. You simply have to remove all the affiliate links to that product, since google doesn’t like them anymore, and put a small opt-in form, like the aweber one, to grab visitor’s name and email, and after they click “Submit” or whatever, page redirects to the offer- Brilliant. Here is the example form:

Actually a lot of people used that before the slap, since they found it more profitable, and their campaigns were not slapped.

How is this more profitable? First of all, you can offer your prospects who didn’t like the product you were selling, then you can follow up with related products.

When I am promoting the same product with different landing pages, I had to face the fact that position plays a great role of conversion. Sure I’m talking about SERP AdWords Ad position, and diffence of page is not in layout ot presales letter, but in concept.

Surprisingly for me, I found that no matter what page it is, #1 position is never the best-converting one, this ofcourse depends on the niche, but to me tha fact remains. For a simple pitch page the best position is #2, and for the review landing page it’s #4, or sometimes #3. When doing a review landing page, I usually search for the hottest products, review them (usually I rewrite it from someone else ) well you sure get the idea if you didn’t know the obvious already…

So what’s the point in having #1 position if it converts a little worse, and the spot itself is much more expensive, well traffic, it’s all about scaling for the person who is at the top.