NHL Misses Net in New Campaign – Where’s Social Media?

  • October 1st, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 5 Comments

The National Hockey League has rolled out a series of compelling TV spots featuring some of the game’s biggest stars.
And while the new commercials – with a theme of “Is This The Year?” will run nationally on Canadian broadcast and U.S. cable television, like so many campaigns, it’s being forced to go it alone.

How About Some [...]

5 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Will Thrive in the Recession

  • September 30th, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 13 Comments

From Dot Bomb to Dot Boom
Let’s face it. The economy is taking on the distinctive, sickly pallor of a post Mardi Gras Keith Richards.
Generally, recessions hit the advertising business with the ferocity of a rabid wolverine, and the last one trimmed overall ad spending by 9% according to market researchers Veronis Suhler Stevenson. The wolverine [...]

5 Memorable Lessons from my Sarah Palin PPC Campaign

  • September 8th, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 7 Comments

Thanks to everyone for participating in my “Are you man enough to write a PPC ad about a woman VP” contest. Many excellent entries (see original post). Here are the results:

McCain is 72 years old 
Avg US life expectancy is 78 years 
Is Palin qualified? Read This 
DailyKos.com   1.31% Click-through rate      
 
Sarah Palin’s Secrets 
What the GOP doesn’t want you to 
know about [...]

7 Critical Questions When Outsourcing SEO

  • August 11th, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 7 Comments

Many agencies without full service digital marketing departments choose to outsource any SEO work to a specialist. While I believe that the present focus on good content makes SEO easier, not harder for traditional agencies (especially PR) to handle in-house, many will continue outsourcing this critical service (or at least until I launch a “How [...]

The Truth About Publicis Buying Performics

  • August 6th, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 5 Comments

In a sign that major advertising agencies are continuing to recognize the long-term profitability of search marketing, Publicis Groupe bought Performics from Google today.
One of the largest search marketing agencies, Performics will join Digitas and other Publicis entities as part of VivaKi Nerve Center (no, I am not making this up) the new strategic collective [...]

Agency Advantage Tools #1 – Website Grader

  • July 23rd, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 1 Comment

Welcome to Agency Advantage Tools, a regular blog series at Convince & Convert that spotlights inexpensive or free digital marketing tools.
There are literally thousands of different Web sites, applications, plug-ins, widgets and more devoted to helping digital marketers do their jobs better or faster. Most advertising agencies and PR firms are too busy doing actual [...]

Agencies Need to be Testing Landing Pages

  • July 21st, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 2 Comments

Average length of stay on a Web site is approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds overall. Approximate length of stay by visitors coming from search is about 10 seconds. Why the difference? Search users are less likely to know your company and its attributes in advance, and they know there are several other options available [...]

Google to Show Search Volume – Another Blow to Agencies

  • July 15th, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 4 Comments

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 for [...]

Media Buyers Say Internet Advertising Will Grow in Next 6 Months

  • July 7th, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | 1 Comment

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 respondents.
The [...]

91% of Top Digital Agencies Not Buying Their Own Brands on PPC

  • July 1st, 2008 | Written By: Jason Baer
  • | No Comments

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 [...]