The effects of the FCC-Comcast decision will be far-reaching: copyright protection, universal access to broadband, and consumer behavior online may change as a result.
Shelby Bonnie, founder of CNET, wrote a very interesting article for Tech Crunch in September, arguing that the time has come to for both advertisers and publishers to do away with the CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) model. Bonnie offered several reasons as to why the CPM, a pricing model commonly appearing on media plans [...]
Is Rupert Murdoch serious about turning his back on Google? If he’s just negotiating, how does he intend to replace two-thirds of the search audience?
With a smoother web-based experience, consumers are less encumbered by the operational aspects of their purchase behavior, leaving them to focus their energies on spending money.
Consumer purchase of goods and/or services is the goal of marketing, but isn’t there another critically important value exchange occurring before the purchase ever happens? This is the question facing us as marketing and advertising evolves from a challenge of being in the right place in front of the right people, to a challenge of [...]
Is there still a need for SEO copywriting standards? By 2009, search engines have become smart enough to obviate this skill set, and place emphasis where it belongs: on the nature of the content itself.
The Microsoft and Yahoo search agreement makes a lot of sense.
Yahoo will save USD $425 million in operating expenses from resources invested in infrastructure technology while keeping 88% of revenue generated from search advertising. On the other hand Microsoft not only gets a larger user base to further refine Bing, but Microsoft gets a 10 [...]
The profitable pursuit of search visibility lives and dies by the intellectual capital in the site’s most public-facing asset: its content.
There has been much speculation about Google’s next acquisition. Late last week rumors emerged Google was in conversations with Twitter’s Evan Williams about a possible acquisition. In my view Google is not interested in an all out acquisition of Twitter.
Google recognizes five factors when considering its relationship with Twitter:
1. The overlap between Google searchers and [...]
At one point or another Twitter will have to choose between either remaining the Peter Pan of social media or stepping into the world of social media adulthood. The decision is likely to end up killing Twitter.
I recently uncovered an old OMMA Magazine that featured a section entitled the “10 things you need to know about 10 things” which included a great section on consumers. It’s nice and sound-bitey but significant as well. It’s interesting to note how things have changed since the article was written over a year ago. I’ve [...]
Cost per performance advertising applies to any media purchased on the basis of a defined action, including engagement (cost per visitor), click (cost per click), registration (cost per lead) and purchase (cost per sale). Cost per performance advertising shares the investment risk between advertiser, agency and media owner ” payment is only made once the user completes a specific action. While affiliate marketing and Google AdWords are the most recognized cost per performance programs, there are a multitude of programs and publishers that offer payment on performance.
In this post I reveal the nine most significant factors to consider when launching or evaluating an existing cost per performance program that contributes incremental revenue and return on investment.
A recession is here and belts are being tightened! There is no way of ignoring that fact, but that does not mean it is all doom and gloom for everyone. Yes the retail sector is taking a hit as consumers are just not willing to pay for items that are not considered necessities. Yet there [...]
According to The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and the American Advertising Association of American Agencies (AAAA) my biggest worry during this recession should be clients reduced marketing budgets…
While reduced marketing budgets are a symptom of a slow economy, I am more concerned by a disease that flourishes at times of slow economic growth [...]
There is a lot of noise in the social media space.
Seventy-eight percent of marketing professionals polled in Coremetrics’ annual “Face of the New Marketer” survey saw that social media marketing was a way of getting an edge on their competitors. However, just 7.7 percent of their total online marketing spend was allocated to it compared [...]
Back in the dot-com days everybody spoke of convergence. It was nifty word that encapsulated the promise of the digital age; signaling the imminent migration of everything readable, auidble and viewable into digital format. What MTV was to the music industry in the late 80s, video on demand is to the idea of convergence today.
About 16% of [...]
Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a woman approached him. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art. When asked how much he was owed, Picasso asked for five thousand dollars. The woman [...]
To some media integration is a buzzword. To others media integration is the Holy Grail. To me media integration is a poor substitute for collaboration. Let me explain.
Media companies and agency networks tell people the digital space is just another media channel – it isn’t. The digital space is about participation, ecommerce and community. It can’t be sold [...]
The result of Microsoft’s unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! will come down to nothing more than maximizing short-term value for shareholders. Forget about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet or the vision of both companies. Like a newly appointed Prime Minister hoping to define a legacy for his administration, Jerry Yang, founder and [...]
As digital marketers our job is to help clients achieve greater commercial success through the use of digital channels that improve brand health and deliver sales. Generally, efforts that support these goals are persuasive in nature – for example: inspiring, compelling and convincing a consumer to book a Hilton instead of another hotel because of [...]
Ring. Ring. Hello, who is calling? Google. Can I call you back? No, I don’t have a phone yet.
Following months of speculation, Google formally announced it is entering the mobile phone market. While the announcement did not introduce a working operating system or phone, Google’s statement it would start shipping its mobile devices by the end of [...]
Google has recently announced its controversial Best Practice Funding (BPF) scheme in Europe will be removed in 2009. Google’s Best Practice Funding Scheme was launched in 2006; replacing the traditional agency commission model Yahoo and MSN still adhere too.
The Google Best Practice Funding program requires participating agencies to have at least five clients, generate a [...]
The purchase funnel has been around since the very first human commercial transaction but it was only identified once social scientists and marketers began to dissect the behaviors and emotions that lead one to transact and with whom. Ever since, it has been a core tenet of marketing – my own awareness of the purchase [...]
Ask yourself this question.
If your brand was a person, what type of person would it be? How would it act, what it would look like? More importantly would its value be solely determined by how many people knew of it?
These questions are at the heart of branding and the value of branding.
Branding is normally [...]
Digital Marketing has introduced a profusion of new channels to reach prospects with the aim to persuade, drive engagement and relationship; including PPC advertising, affiliate marketing, pay-per performance network buys, display advertising and email marketing. The proliferation and inherent advantages of multi-channel advertising have existed well before the advent of Digital Marketing.
As early as 1989, [...]
Recently Gord Hotchkiss wrote a column titled ‘Doing Search’ Only Counts if You’re Seen for MediaPost’s Search Insider, in which he takes Ontario Tourism, and specifically Nick Pedota, to task for not “…clueing into the power of search” and “managing search campaigns to budgets not objectives”. While I agree with much of what Gord says [...]
If participation is at the heart of the London 2012 brand, why was the brand conceived in such an exclusive way? Why not harness the power of social media to inspire, challenge and share the conception of the London 2012 emblem with the people? Was Wolff Olins, the London branding agency responsible for the design, the only entity capable of providing input into the London 2012 brand?
Wikipedia defines return on investment as 1) as rate of profit, rate of return or return and 2) the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested.
At Web Liquid we believe return on investment is a subset of a larger marketing imperative. That marketing imperative being RETURNS. [...]
At the Travolution Summit in London last month, Lastminute.com chief executive Ian McCaig issued a warning that as the online travel industry matures, product and price differentiation will “tend towards zero.” If Ian McCaig is correct in his assessment, it is important to understand what factors, in addition to price and product, should be the [...]
As online marketing specialists we often contrast ourselves with those in the traditional world, summarizing the differences with notions of a ‘different mindset’ – but what does that mean really? A focus on ROI, accountability, commercial imperatives, interactivity, engagement, experience, etc. are all terms that quickly come to mind but really, at a high level, [...]
Consumer empowerment is an undeniable virtue of the internet. Initially built upon price transparency and the ease of comparison shopping, but now that empowerment is driven by the one-to-many messages, or content, consumers are creating at a blistering rate – be it forums, blogs, videos, audio, or whatever, it’s out there and it’s evolving the [...]
While advertisers are allocating close to a third of their online advertising budgets to search (commercial and organic) very few have a clear and unified measurement methodology for the channel. Before examining the optimal measurement methodology for search, lets review how search works through the use of the “people in the room” metaphor.
Imagine search engines to [...]
While online media planners boast loudly about the flexibility, measurability and accountability of online advertising, their planning and buying approach does the medium little justice. The average online media planner and buyer is satisified following the traditional broadcast media approach ” allocating a lion’s share of media spend to a handful of properties. The McKinsey [...]
Google recently filed a patent application for ranking blog search, ushering a new set of considerations for the optimal ranking of blog content across Google. The patent application for “ranking blog documents” filed the 13th of September 2005 listed high ranking members of Google including Vinod Marur.
Google’s patent application describes two distinct sets of data used [...]
If Google’s $3.1 billion purchase of Doubleclick is approved, it could have significant implications for the online industry. Following a review of past trends and taking a view on the immediate future, the combined Google/Doubleclick group will put in motion three major events.
1. Google’s Ad Sense and Ad Words will become the world’s largest advertising platforms. [...]
With commercial search budgets increasing, advertisers and their respective search agencies are facing pressure over the performance of the channel.
On one end, search agencies are challenged to maintain operating margins given the increased resource required to manage increasingly complex PPC campaigns. On the other hand, advertisers are demanding higher return on investment from their PPC investments.
If you outsource [...]
Taking full advantage of April Fools day, Google yesterday announced the launch of Gmail Paper, a new feature through which users can request a paper copy of any email delivered for free within 24 days. Taking the environmental high ground Google’s Gmail Paper promotional page claimed the Gmail paper was “printed on 96% post-consumer organic soybean [...]
A review of the latest ComScore data for the UK market indicates Advertising.com is now the UK’s largest ad network, reaching 89.8% of the UK online population (26.9 million unique users) . Advertising.com is followed by Media Brokers reaching 73.5% of the active online population (22 million unique users), VC Media 68.4% reach, Blue Lithium [...]
Recently we posted our thoughts on the importance of understanding and differentiating between UGM, CGM, UGC, CGC ” key terms of the Web 2.0 space. The discussion made us ponder on the impact social media and social search engines are having on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practices.
It is important to note we define Search Engine Optimization [...]
These terms are thrown around quite frequently with the rise of web 2.0 and social media but often they’re mistakenly used to describe the same thing when, in fact, the differences are rather important, particularly for marketers. Although these terms are the latest buzzwords to join a long list of industry terminology, it is important [...]
It is official, video advertising is the new darling of the online industry.
The growth of video has been spectacular. In 2005 video advertising accounted for a scant $121 million in spending. In 2006 that figure grew by 82%, to a respectable $410 million. In 2007, that figure is expected to reach $775 million; accounting [...]
Following months of legal battle, Google has lost a copyright lawsuit in Belgium brought on by Copiepresse, a publishing group composed of 17 mostly French-language newspapers. The newspapers complained that Google breached copyrights by publishing headlines and links to news stories without permission. Copiepresse also claimed Google’s cached links allowed searchers to find and read [...]
The UK commercial search accounts today for a staggering 90% of the search marketing spend or £1.26 billion whilst, natural search accounted for £147 million in the UK in 2006 (Travelution, November 2006).
Research from Nielsen/Net Ratings indicates that in 2006, 265m people used a search engine (81% of the internet population) creating 27bn search [...]
The advent of Web 2.0 in which consumers are empowered to promote and shape the persona of a brand will challenge the role of advertising agencies. The same way in which media congolomartes, owners of the airwaves and print press used to be the custodians of public information, advertising agencies used to be archites of [...]
When YouTube, the darling of the social media revolution was acquired by Google, many hailed it as valuable advertising partnership, which would see Google AdWords and Ad Sense programs propagated across the site. This approach was further cemented by the agreement signed between Google and News Corporation which will see the search giant deliver at [...]
Our Consumer Generated Content research and marketing practice has been stirring up quite a bit of interest from savvy marketers recently as CGC garners more attention and recognition as an exceptionally insightful and influential channel. Still, we find that whilst many people understand the concept of word-of-mouth online they struggle to see how it [...]
