Advertising: Contextual
Search News: Google Spreading Tentacles Wider into Ad Exchanges?
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Written By Shivan Durbal | September 17, 2009 | Share This
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Rumor has it that in the near future, possibly within the next two weeks, we may see Google’s invitation only DoubleClick ad exchange marketplace door swung wide open to all buyers and sellers. This is according to ClickZ, but as such it’s still only rumor. As Mia Wallace said in Pulp Fiction “When you little scamps get together, you’re worse than a sewing circle.”
Still, assuming it’s true; Google could bring the worlds of search and display marketing closer together than ever and finally impose tools and measurement on display that we’ve been using for years in the search marketing field.
For those search marketers out there that are unfamiliar with ad exchanges in the display advertising space, in effect they are a support structure for the sale of undervalued, unused or remnant banner advertising inventory.
Search and Social Media: Will Google’s Search Triangle Find its Third Leg on YouTube?
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 16, 2008 | Share This
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This week Google announced that it was using its vaunted search algorithm to add targeted search ads on its YouTube property. This underlines the dual nature of the site as both a social media platform where users upload their own (and other people’s- naughty!) content but as a video search engine with more search traffic than Yahoo.
This also enters another chapter in the ongoing saga of “How Will We Monetize YouTube” in which the good Googlefolk try to figure out if this here YouTube cow they done bought will ever squirt milk (ie money in this labored barnyard analogy).
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to video search and Google. As always the bottom line for the Googleverse is the data. The first step is simply doing what they are now, applying what already works on their own search pages to the YouTube platform. The results are tied to the search query of course and not to the actual results that come up “organically.” In Google this isn’t a big factor because the algorithm is designed (so we are told) for maximum relevance.
Search News: SERP-prise! Google Experiments with Banner Ads on Results Pages
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 1, 2008 | Share This
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Back in college I used to experiment some. Google never grew out of this and does it every day. Just as in college, these experiments sometimes entail stepping out of your comfort zone and trying things that initially might seem contrary to your core beliefs – like snorting ricotta cheese or joining an a capella group. In Google’s case this means cluttering up their relatively clean search results pages (SERPs) with banner ads – in particular their Google Images results.
Weekly Search Roundup: This Week’s Search Stories Slapped on Their Sunburned Shoulders for Your Amusement
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 15, 2008 | Share This
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Olympics fever continued to lay much of the nation low as the dog days of Summer stagger through mid-August. Will tomorrow’s children ask about 9-year old Chinese girls competing in gymnastics, or Russian tanks rolling into Georgia, or that election stuff with that old guy and that celebrity guy when they look back at this week in their history Kindles? I think it’s more likely they’ll want to know where Grandma was when Gmail and Netflix were down. To the ticker!
Ad Planner Favors Google? Gambling in Casablanca? Shocked I tell you…
John Battelle decided to see what would happen when he replaced users regular coffee with Folger’s. Oh I’m sorry, I mean Comscore’s monetized reporting with Google’s Ad Planner free product. The result? Ad Planner had a tendency to favor sites that served Google AdSense. Hard to believe…
Search Engine News: Turn On, Log in, Opt Out - The Politics of Online Targeting
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 11, 2008 | Share This
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With Yahoo’s very public and Google’s characteristically more sly announcements that they are going to an “opt out” model for targeted ads, the continued legislative scrutiny of the search advertising and marketing industry ought to be addressed. During these dog days of summer it’s not surprising to find the political class in Washington DC casting about for an issue or to two to ride on home with and give the appearance of having done some actual work.
Weekly Search Roundup: This Week’s Search News Fully Vetted for Counter Governmental Rhetoric – Now Go Watch The Olympics
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 8, 2008 | Share This
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The glorious Olympics games are here! Everybody enjoy the sweet-smelling fog that has enveloped Beijing – it is all natural and not in any way related to industrial activity. Kindly remove the insulting facemask and enjoy the following news. Or else.
Girls Gone Wild Yahoo Style
Forrest Gump once mused that “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get…” Less nauseating but still chocolate boxey, automated tagging within articles can produce a similar “Surprise! You just bit into coconut!” effect. Automated tagging is when you drag your mouse over a word in an article online and it opens a box (not of chocolates) that directs you to more information on that topic – often sponsored. This is all well and good until the phrase is “underage girls.”
SEM: You Say Tomato, I Say Disaster – Crisis Management and Search
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 11, 2008 | Share This
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Who would have thought that the least healthy thing on McDonald’s menus might end up being the tomatoes? Certainly not Mickey D’s, which ended up on the griddle during this week’s tomato scare.
Check out the peak in search volume on Google Trends for “Tomato Scare” (my new favorite fake band name btw) and “Tomatoes” between June 8th and June 10th:
Best Practices: Online Marketing Voyeurs and the Consumer Exhibitionists Who Want to Be Watched
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 9, 2008 | Share This
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Cast your minds back to the primordial past – you know, ten years ago when the ‘net was poised to deliver the most personalized user experience imaginable with targeted, relevant advertising at every new page. What happened?
I’ll admit the teeth thing was close to home but my lips are actually quite large. Lip plumping is a very low priority for me. As for moving and storage, I’m not going anywhere or planning on storing anything.
(more…)
Traditional Media Companies Lag in Web Tracking
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 10, 2008 | Share This
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A story published in the New York Times today uses comScore data to describe how companies track Internet users for the purposes of online behavioral ad targeting. ComScore noted the online data-collection potential of 15 media companies like Yahoo and Conde Nast - namely, looking at searches, display ads, videos, and page views along with the number of ads each company can display on its network.
According to the Times, Yahoo’s huge network of sites means the company collects 110 billion “data events” (a zip code or a search query, for example) each month, or 811 pieces of information for each user. In contrast, older media companies with a web presence have far less data. Conde Nast’s websites, for instance, only collect 34 data events per user each month, and the New York Times website’s number is 45.
Below is a breakdown of some of the companies comScore looked at. Note that MySpace beats eBay and is neck-and-neck with AOL. The Times/comScore data is here, along with a little more background.
Note, also, that the comScore data leaves out a couple of very important points of potential data collection. From the NYT’s Bits blog:
There are other ways these companies obtain data that comScore was unable to capture. The two largest ways left out here are ad-serving data (from the likes of Microsoft’s Atlas and Google’s desired partner DoubleClick) and user-volunteered data. By the latter, I mean the information that users enter when they register for sites or e-mail accounts as well as all the juicy details they post on social networking pages.
It’s certain this information could significantly change the chart above, particularly when it comes to social networks. But perhaps bigger than the struggle to wrangle all this data is making people feel okay about their private information being used this way. In another piece, the Bits blog shows that AOL finds an emissary for ad targeting in… a cute penguin cartoon character.
Microsoft, WSJ Sign Ad Deal
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 29, 2008 | Share This
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Microsoft and the Wall Street Journal have just announced on a deal that makes Microsoft the sole paid search and contextual advertising provider for the WSJ’s sites, which include the Wall Street Journal, Barrons.com, AllThingsD.com, and MarketWatch.com. From the press release:
“Relevant and targeted digital advertising is important to our business and to the quality of the experience that we deliver to our users,” said Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “Microsoft’s state-of-the-art advertising platform will enable us to dramatically improve our revenues from this key sector, and we look forward to working together.”
“This deal is a significant win for Microsoft for two key reasons. First, it makes the extended Microsoft advertising network the premier destination for advertisers interested in reaching financially minded users, as it complements our offering in this vertical through MSN Money and other syndication partners,” said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft. “Second, this deal is a strong indicator that we’re gaining significant traction with our advertising platform. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one of the largest financial services publishers in a very dynamic vertical segment, and we’re delighted to add it to our portfolio.”
According to the AP, the deal displaces the Journal’s old partners, Pulse 360 and Business.com, which had provided contextual and paid search ads to the WSJ, respectively. DoubleClick, which is waiting for approval from European regulators before it can be fully acquired by Google, will continue to serve display ads. Paid search ads will be new to the rest of the WSJ network, writes AdWeek. The AP also reports that contextual links appear on the bottom of each story, while paid search ads appear above the Journal’s search results pages.
The WSJ has been going through significant changes since it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation last year. Most recently, Murdoch is moving the paper’s offices to News Corp’s Midtown headquarters, launching a lifestyle magazine, and adding a sports section. But there’s one thing he won’t budge about, and that’s refusing to get rid of the paid online subscriptions. In fact, it might get a little more expensive to read some parts of the Wall Street Journal online, Murdoch said.