Archive for August, 2008
Google to Tweak Ad System
Friday, August 22nd, 2008If you do a lot of buying across search engines and networks like Google and LiveSearch, you’ll want to dig into this announcement from Google. Cnet has a top level overview about some upcoming changes to the way they “score” or “auction” the spots in which you can buy placement.
Cnet quotes the Google AdWords blog, which explains, “We are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad’s quality each time it matches a search query. This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed.”
It seems one other interesting feature is that Google will recommend prices you should expect to pay in order for you to place at a high level, rather than the old way of just recommending a minimum price.
We’ll dig into this a little deeper in some of the forums, and ask the guys from Reach Machines to provide some more insight on how this might affect methodologies and strategies.
The Free Web Application Syndrome
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008This post was originally entitled “Can Twitter Ever Make Money?” But as we wrote it, we realized the issue is bigger than simply wondering how, when and if companies like Twitter will monetize.
The early days of innovation are truly fantastic for early adopters and consumers who are ahead of the market. VC’s and Private Equity firms pour billions of dollars into cool ideas. Those who are “in the know” early are/were able to get M&M’s brought to them on a Friday night (Kozmo.com), groceries delivered free wherever they lived (Webvan), 100 pounds of pet food without a shipping charge (Pets.com), free music to their PC (Napster), free phone calls across the world (Skype) and more.
The problem is, like your economics teacher told you, there is no free lunch. Someone is paying the bill. And eventually, that person paying the bill, the person paying the salaries of all the people doing things for you, well, he wants to get reimbursed for his efforts.
So look today at what we are getting for free. We can stay in touch with every one of our business contacts no matter how many times they switch jobs, thanks to LinkedIn. And we know the personal lives of all of our friends, thanks to Facebook. And if we want, we can get global updates in real time, 140 characters at a time, thanks to Twitter. All of this for free.
Now the business models that the investors saw said something like this. “We are going to be hugely popular. Everyone will love us. We’ll run some ads. And if we get 1% of the people to click on an ad, we’ll make a gajillion dollars.” It’s the model that has worked since Mr. Marconi showed off his first radio nearly 100 years ago.
But 1% of the people aren’t clicking on Facebook ads, or upgrading to premium LinkedIn accounts. And Twitter hasn’t even come up with any ways to make money. Throw in the fact that the economy is struggling, and that even rich people don’t like losing money. Someone has to start generating profits some day.
Well, that’s the story FastCompany is addressing in this article. Their synopsis – everything cool you get today for free will basically become a lead generation tool for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Apple, etc…. For the Social Media Marketer, that means that these are the days to leverage the creativity and free form activity this medium allows. We all remember how Flickr got destroyed when Yahoo turned it into a way to generate YahooMail accounts. Take these great opportunities available to you today, and grab them before they are simply ways to get you to buy other products. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if we all would just click on a few ads 
Stats and Reports from WordPress Conference
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Techcrunch is covering news and announcements from the WordPress conference. The company released some stats that show how they have been extending their lead in the market over the last year.
- Page views grew from 1.5 billion to 6.5 billion/month
- 1/3 of the page views come from companies like CNN
and LOLCats - 120-160 million unique visitors
- Two million new blogs created
- 35 million new blog posts (up from 20 million)
If you are considering launching a simple blog, or improving your current blog effort, WordPress is certainly still one of the leading options for you top consider.
If you want to add some more functionality, you can use the self-hosted function from WordPress.org. CEO Matt Mullenweg also announced that there now 2.6 million active user-installed WordPress blogs, and downloads from WordPress.org went over 11 million this year (up from 2.8 million).
Beyond the Blog – Social Media 101 for Businesses
Friday, August 1st, 2008We’re excited that Larry Asher and the fine folks at the School of Visual Concepts have invited us back for a 3rd session of teaching Beyond the Blog – Social Media 101. We’re going to have a little more info about how large and small companies are effectively using Social Media to expand and enhance their existing marketing programs.
It looks like October 14 is going to be the date, so let us know if you are interested attending, or contact the School of Visual Concepts directly. Hope to see you there.
