Saturday, October 30, 2004
Our visit to the Google University
Yesterday Chris and myself popped up to London to attend the Google University, we had the opportunity to sit down with one of the Google Maximisers and go through our Managed Client accounts. It was extremely useful we leaned a few new strategies from the Google team that will only benefit our clients.
So if we have not yet created a search advertising account for you please contact us.
Please have a look at ourSearch Advertising Page
Tom
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Online Advertising turns 10 years old
A milestone in the short life of the internet is upon us.
According to industry sources, this week marks the tenth anniversary of the UK's first ever online advertisement.
Details are hazy, but it appears that in late October 1994, US telecoms firm AT&T became the first company to start promoting its services to the UK's then tiny community of internet users.
At the time, online advertising seemed like a distinctly outlandish notion.
The internet - then known as the 'information super-highway' - was in its infancy, and there was no guarantee that it would ever attract a big enough audience to make it an effective advertising medium.
Faster download speeds and an ever-expanding range of online services have transformed the internet into a mass media phenomenon, with half the UK population now regularly trawling the web.
This has naturally encouraged other companies to follow where AT&T led, opening up lucrative new business opportunities for advertising agencies.
Sales uplift
According to recent figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), online promotions are now the fastest growing segment of the UK advertising industry, with revenues on track to reach £500m in 2004, a 40% increase on last year.
Read the whole article from our source BBC News
Chris
Friday, October 22, 2004
Mobissimo travel search engine puts the red in RED HOT !
Source - Business Week Online
Stanford University has proved itself fertile ground for sprouting successful Internet entrepreneurs. From Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo! (YHOO ) to Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google (GOOG ), these Stanford whiz kids-turned-businessmen have indelibly shaped the Internet as we know it. Following such footprints may be daunting, but many are game to try.
One of the most compelling attempts of late may be coming from 33-year-old Svetlozar Nestorov, a computer-science grad who studied data-mining with the Google founders. Last year, he and a co-founder launched travel search engine Mobissimo. A so-called "meta search" site, Mobissimo takes a visitor's query and scours about 80 other travel sites and search engines, typically returning a wider array of prices, airlines, and options. The fledgling company already handles about 500,000 travel searches a month -- a blip compared to online travel bigwigs, but solid for a newly hatched search site.
Mobissimo and other travel search engines alike are proving more and more the value in online marketing and using search as a marketing medium. Spreading your advertising budget through the main search engines is important but whats even more important is watching the small players. They can provide a cheaper way to advertise with a higher ROI.
Chris
Google University
Its time again for another visit to the Google University, London on 28th October
Search Advertising: Beginners & Advanced Sessions
Search advertising is the most cost effective way to generate leads and build your business online. Whether you are a beginner or have a more advanced knowledge of search advertising, Google has a University at The DM Show tailored to your needs:
Beginners Google University:
28 October, 10.30am
The Google University for beginners in search advertising will:
Show you how to deliver meaningful leads to your business
Explain the key criteria involved in developing a campaign
Show you how to design your search ads to deliver the best results
Show you how to get an effective return from your search investment
Advanced Google University:
28 October, 11.45am
This Google University is for those of you with an intermediate to advanced level of knowledge within search advertising. The Advanced Google University will give you an overview of:
Google AdSense For Search and Google AdSense For Content
Google Smart Pricing
Regional Targeting from Google
Image Ads from Google
Campaigns enhancement tips
Google's conversion tracking
If any of our clients are planning to go, please give us a call, it would be great to meet you there.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
AOL Drops Yahoo's Overture for Google in Europe
A lot of our clients are using Google and Overture together, so it will be interesting to see what kind of impact this really has our online marketing accounts.
source: Reuters
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Google Desktop search Launched
Google Desktop allows users to search e-mail in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, chat threads in AOL Instant Messenger, as well as Web pages viewed in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It also helps users search plain text, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, among other things.
have a peek here
this is a very cool tool
Tom
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Yahoo nets sharp surge in profits
Source - BBC News
Internet portal Yahoo has said surging online advertising helped the group more than triple profits in the three months to the end of September.
Profits jumped to $253.3m for the quarter - a rise of 287% on the $65.3m seen in the same period last year.
The group said sales soared 154.1% to $906.7m - their sixth consecutive record high.
The group said new products and services had helped draw in more users to its services.
"Our engaged audience enables us to deliver an unmatched set of advertising opportunities, providing deeper value to our marketers, and supporting the mantra that great products are the key to a great business," chairman and chief executive Terry Semel said.
Booming business
However, the earnings also included a windfall from the group's sale of part of its stake in rival Google and a tax benefit.
When the $129m from those exceptional items were excluded from the group's earnings, the company's profits came in at just $124m.
As a result of its booming business, revenues for the quarter beat analyst forecasts of $644m , growing to $655m - way ahead of the $357m in revenues seen in the same period last year.
As a result of the rise, the group raised its forecasts for the fourth quarter and the full year.
The group said it expected to generate sales of $730m in the current three months, while revenues for the year are expected to come in at between $710m and $760m.
Chris
Monday, October 11, 2004
Online advertising reaches all time high
According to the latest figures published by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising spend has reached a record high of £468.8m in the last year and enjoys an unprecedented market share of 3.24, a rise of 76%.
We think one of the main reasons is because online advertising and particularly search engine marketing has been proved to be the most flexible, measurable, targeted and effective way to drive traffic
It's now the fastest growing advertising medium in history.
Tom
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Google Page Rank Update!
Its been months coming but finally Google has updated their Page Rank algorithm early this morning. This has been long coming when many web marketers were questioning whether or not the Page Rank algo was becoming dormant.
Chris
Monday, October 04, 2004
Is the next big Google update about to happen?
Nervous anticipation surrounds the webmaster community at the moment as November approaches. If you are a webmaster involved with online marketing you will remember with little fondness early November last year when Google changed its long standing search algorithm that ranked site in its search results. This change sent a tital wave through the online marketing community. Websites that had ranked well for years on Google lost up to 90 percent of their traffic overnight. And if that wasn't enough they lost it just before their busiest time. Christmas time !
The Google index seems to have been dormant (to some degree) over the past couple of months. Much like last year just before their big update. Also, we have noted a marked increase in googlebot visits across all the website we market.
So the big question stands ... is there another update just round the corner?
Chris
Friday, October 01, 2004
A New Slimmed-Down, Toned-Up Jeeves
A lot has changed over the past few years. In 2001, Ask Jeeves acquired and adopted respected search technology from Teoma and began making itself over to better compete with its search engine rivals. In 2003, it abandoned banners in favor of sponsored listings, the search engine ad placement du jour. It still offers a search tool in which shopping-related queries return product results, now largely drawn from comparison-shopping portal PriceGrabber.com. But it continues to upgrade, working to polish its image and site offerings after surviving the crash.
A series of these upgrades was announced just last week, garnering significant media attention. First, the site launched a personal Web space feature à la Amazon.com, offering users the ability to bookmark search results and providing personal storage space.
Second, it's leveraging its partnership with geospecific Citysearch to allow users to conduct local searches in the same vein as Yahoo's and Google's new local search tools.
Finally, Ask Jeeves announced a partnership with news search site Topix.net that will equip the engine with search results for local news. "Our strategy is to be consumer-centric and deliver the most relevant results," said Jacquie Harrison, Ask Jeeves director of marketing, of the changes.
How will these changes affect Ask Jeeves' advertising? To date, Ask Jeeves continues to offer its Branded Response and Premier Listings paid search ads as before, alongside the external listings it picks up from Google. According to Harrison, Ask Jeeves Inc. will also launch a host of new "integrated advertising solutions" in early October.
The solutions will span the property's three networks: Ask Jeeves; the Excite Network (including Excite and iWon); and MaxOnline. Harrison says they will help distinguish Ask Jeeves from other search engines. She notes that along with "the ability to buy beyond Ask.com," offerings will include e-mail, direct marketing, and, of course, search.
As a search engine, Ask Jeeves currently ranks only fifth in terms of use with a 7.0 percent market share, according to a June Nielsen//NetRatings report. Still, there's plenty about it that appeals to advertisers aside from the upcoming advertising opportunities. The engine ranked fourth in a customer satisfaction survey, beating out AOL. It also experienced a 37 percent increase in search queries in Q2 2003 over 2002, when industry growth leveled out at 10 percent overall.
Nostalgia aside, it looks as if in months to come the answer for media buyers could again be, "Ask Jeeves."
Source of this article
Chris
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