The Roar of The Crowd As appeared in bizAZ Magazine July/Aug 2008 edition Unless you’re selling specialized rivets to the military industrial complex via no bid contracts, chances are your customers are talking about you online. And not just via email, in a “hey mom, I think your accountant totally messed up your taxes” way, [...]
Google to Show Search Volume – Another Blow to Agencies
In a LOOOOONG overdue move that provides some much-needed transparency to the PPC business, Google has added search volume data to their keyword research tool. This means that when you use Google to research potential search terms for your clients’ pay-per-click campaign, Google will actually give you an idea of how many people actually search [...]
Is Digital Marketing Killing Magazine Ads?
A report last week by the Publishers Information Bureau found that advertising pages in the nation’s magazines declined by 7.4% compared to the first half of 2007. With the stock market down by about 20%, and house prices down at least that much in some parts of the country, a 7% dip in magazine ads [...]
A New Weapon for Agencies in the Fight Against Digital Marketing Specialists
Convince & Convert launches consultancy to help agencies figure out a digital marketing game plan (July 8, 2008 — Flagstaff, Ariz.) Thousands of advertising and public relations firms find themselves under siege as new tactics and digital specialty agencies chip away at their client base. What’s an agency to do? Outsource digital marketing? Hire an [...]
Media Buyers Say Internet Advertising Will Grow in Next 6 Months
Market Research firm Advertising Perceptions released a new survey of 1,811 media buyers showing that a whopping 72% of them believe Internet advertising spend will increase in the second half of 2008. This is a shocking finding, considering that no other medium (other than mobile) was expected to grow by more than 28% of the [...]
Flash Now Readable by Search – Usability Experts Panic
After a LONG waite, Adobe announced this week that Flash files are soon to be readable by search engines. This removes a major impediment to using Flash for Web sites, as previously all files created in Flash were essentially invisible to Google, Yahoo! and the rest. So, we now have the classic good news/bad news [...]
91% of Top Digital Agencies Not Buying Their Own Brands on PPC
In a shocking (and embarassing) revelation today, AdWeek uncovered that of the 56 world-class digital marketing agencies featured in their Annual Report Card, just 5 are purchasing their own brand names in PPC. In fairness to the firms, most of them appear at or near the top of organic search results for their own brand [...]
Google’s Popularity is Costing You Money
Paid search management vendor Covario said today that PPC spending was up 52% in Q1 2008 versus 2007. 52% is a big leap for an already red-hot digital marketing tactic. But perhaps more interesting was the finding that Google took in 85% of the paid search spend in the first quarter. (No wonder Yahoo! rushed [...]
What’s Your Word Worth? Measuring Word of Mouth Online
Fascinating article in BrandWeek today about putting a value on word of mouth marketing. BzzAgent, a word of mouth marketing agency (how’s that for a good gig if you can get it), says they figure an online conversation about a brand is worth 50 cents. It’s admirable that somebody is trying to put a value [...]
Google’s Ad Planner Will Demystify Internet Media Buying
Lots of hand wringing this week as Google launched their new Ad Planner, an online site comparison tool that utilizes data from Google members (pretty much the whole world) to categorize and evaluate Web sites. This comes on the heels of Quantcast’s unveiling of their free Media Planner tool, which offers similar functionality. Until now, [...]
