Organizers of the Ohio Interactive Awards are calling for entries to find Ohio's top digital and interactive talents.
Digital and interactive professionals working in
Ohiocan
visit http://ohiointeractiveawards.com
to submit their entry in one of six categories covering: Advertising, Sectors/Industry, Social Web, Student, Best Integrated Campaign, and Best Use of New Technology. Agencies submitting
three or more entries become eligible to be nominated by judges of the program
for Interactive Agency of the Year. Additionally, nominations are being sought for Interactive Marketer of The Year
The awards ceremony, which will be held at the Arena Grand Theatre in Columbus on Thursday April 29th, will feature a keynote by Tim Schigel, CEO ofShareThisspeaking on the topic "Sharing to Influence: The State of the Social Web".
It happens less often than it used to, but it still happens. I'll be discussing search engine advertising with a prospect, client or someone I've met at an networking event and they'll say something along the lines of "Nobody ever clicks on those Google ads, I never do."
My typical response is a question: "Have you seen Google's revenue numbers lately?"
Thanks to numerous stories in the media over the past four years, most people know Google makes a lot of money but aren't aware of exactly how much they make or how they make it. So I like educating folks on the details and making the case for advertising via Google on search engines and other sites.
Google had revenue of $5.52 billion last quarter. Yeah, that's right: $5.52 BILLION. IN ONE QUARTER! That's over $61 million in revenue PER DAY.
As the Search Engine Land article explains, $3.6 billion or 66% of the revenue came from people clicking those text ads on Google sites with $1.68 billion or 31% of the revenue from clicks on ads on Google network sites (content sites that show Google text ads, banner ads on mobile ads).
Obviously, it takes a lot of clicks on ads to generate this much revenue. So, the next time you hear someone say "Nobody ever clicks on those Google ads" - just smile.
The May meeting of the Cincinnati AMA Interactive SIG (Wednesday May 13th from 11:30 - 1:00 at Web Media Tools on 7th Street in Cincinnati) is going to be a great one as we are lucky to have Bob Gilbreath, Chief Marketing Strategist of Bridge Worldwide discussing his new book "Marketing with Meaning."
To help set the stage, here is a YouTube video of Bob discussing "Marketing with Meaning":
The marketing research organization ZenithOptimedia Group has lowered their forecast for online advertising spending in 2009 but predicts online will be the only advertising medium where any growth is expected this year.
According to the Mediapost article, ZenithOptimedia attributed the Internet's strength compared to other media to "its accountability and innovation in ad formats" as well as the continuing success of search marketing.
Breaking the U.S. predictions down by channel, search advertising is expected to grow 9%, with online classified ad growth at 1.8% and traditional display (AKA "banner" ads) expected to decline 1.8%. Newer formats, such as video and online radio are growing more rapidly but represent a much smaller "piece of the online advertising pie".
I'm glad that both the accountability of online advertising and the continued growth in search marketing continue to get press, particularly with all the attention social media is getting lately. While Twitter is the media darling these days, PPC and SEO search marketing just keep chugging along. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-social media, but being in the trenches each day developing online marketing strategies and managing ad campaigns for both B2C and B2B clients, I know what's working and PPC search, SEO, PPC banner campaigns, and house email campaigns are still the main tools of the trade that produce measurable results.
Late Thursday Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported Google is in talks to acquire Twitter, or at least develop a real-time search engine with Twitter.
This is not a huge surprise given that Google has acquired a lot of companies over the years, including YouTube and the blogging platform Blogger from the co-founders of Twitter, Biz Stone & Evan Williams.
Google has so much cash ($15 billion as of Q4 balance sheet, $7.8 billion operating cash flow) it can easily acquire Twitter without it hampering their business. They could over-pay for Twitter and still not have too much to worry about with respect to weakening their financial footing.
After Google bought YouTube a couple of years ago I was having lunch with a friend who said to me "They paid $1.8 billion! How can they ever recoup that?'' I replied "You act like that's a lot of money, but it's not to Google. They will make that back in a few weeks."
Google's revenue for Q4 was $5.7 billion, so if they paid say $2 billion for Twitter, that's about one month worth of revenue. No big deal to them.
As Arrington points out in his article, Google has done such an incredible job of monetizing search it has enabled them to stockpile loads of cash and buy up whatever new outlets spring up where they can serve even more ads (Blogger, YouTube, and soon Twitter).
While social media gets all the hype these days, it is search that continues to provide the mechanism for publishers to monetize their content and for advertisers (like me and my clients) to drive traffic to websites and gain sales or sales leads efficiently.
You are probably aware that Google AdWords three-line text ads (that look similar to search listings) appear on Google and other search engines above the organic, unpaid listings and along the right hand side of search engine results pages, like this Audubon Birds ad for my client Ship The Web:
But Google AdWords offers many other advertising options besides search engine text ads and I'm running multi-faceted online campaigns for several clients right now. In fact, you can run a pretty broad online advertising program entirely through AdWords.
Here is a quick rundown of some of the additional Google AdWords ad options:
Text ads on Content Sites - You can run the same text ads on thousands of sites in Google's network, which is one of the largest in the industry. The ads would be shown on pages with relevant content to the keywords you select, so for example if someone were to blog about Wild Republic's Audubon Birds the ad above might be displayed next to the post.
Banner ads on Content Sites - If you have banner ads you can run them on content sites in the Google network that accept banner ads and you would pay the same price as with your text ads. Don't have banners? Google's Display Ad Builder will enable you to create simple banner ads yourself.
Text & Banner ads on Placements (Specific Content Sites) - Want to pick specific websites for your ads like The New York Times, MySpace or the Wall Street Journal? No problem! Google's Placement Tool will let you browse sites in their network by category, topic (keyword), URL or demographics and add them to your campaign.
Local Business Ads - These ads are associated with a specific Google Maps business listing and appear in Google Maps with an enhanced location marker as well as on Google and content sites in a text only format. Great for reaching people searching for a business in their area! You can even upload your logo and additional information such as business hours.
Mobile ads - Trying to reach users via their mobile phone? Google offers text and graphic ads and you can choose to direct people to a regular website or a mobile website if you have one.
Click to Play Video Ads - These are ads that allow you to display a static image which folks can click on to play a video right in the space of a regular banner and then click through to your website. The kicker, like all of the other types of ads, you only pay if people click though to visit your site, so if someone watches the video but does not click through it doesn't cost you anything.
So as you can see, there are a lot of options available. There are several advantages to running an online advertising program through AdWords, but the key advantages are the price savings and being able to manage and track your campaigns in one place.
Since you are buying your advertising in AdWords and only paying for clicks (rather than for all the "impressions" or whenever your ad appears on a web page) and you are not having to negotiate a price with a sales rep from the content site directly, you'll more often than not pay much less. In my experience the savings here can be HUGE!
Since you can log in 24/7 and see your all your ad results in one place and AdWords integrates very well with Google Analytics (you can link your accounts and view your site's Analytics data right in AdWords) it is much easier to manage multiple campaigns.
There's a quick snapshot of what you can do right now in Google AdWords. I didn't go into a lot of detail due to this being a blog post, but if you have a question about something I have covered here or are interested in learning more about what might make sense for your business please leave a comment or call me at 937-312-1400 and I'll do my best to help you.
This morning I have been preparing for two upcoming Cincinnati AMA events I am participating in: tomorrow's Non-profit SIG where I'll be on a panel with Brian LeCount and Ken Saunders talking about Search Engine Optimization and Wednesday's Word of Mouth SIG where I will be facilitating a discussion on using Facebook & Twitter to increase WOM for yourself and your business.
The website Mashable.com has been a big help to me today and in the past, so I thought I would mention them and suggest you visit the site if you haven't. Mashable has tons of "how-to" and news articles on many of the various social media topics, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, blogging and many others. If you want to get "up to speed" or keep up with social media, it's a great resource.
There is a bad Internet marketing habit that had died down but seems to have made a comeback lately: companies and organizations flooding with me email I don't want and didn't ask for.
A personal case study: Over the past couple of months I've attended services at a number of churches near my home to find the one I'd like to attend regularly. So I've filled out the handy Information Card at a couple of them and have been getting emails...A LOT of emails.
I went to a church for the first time four weeks ago and filled out the card (including my email address) and marked I was a first time visitor and noted I am looking for a new church home. Since then each week I have received the pastor's weekly newsletter (which I never requested) PLUS about a dozen other emails from the pastor on various topics, one of which had the subject line "Random Thoughts". So I've gotten about 15 emails from this church in a month. Yeah, I did give them my email and thought they would contact me once, but I never requested to be contacted continuously.
Another church I've been to a couple of times has a "Men's group" so I got on their list and the two guys who run it keep sending me all kinds of emails, often they are about one specific topic and are 1-4 paragraphs in length. A couple of days ago they sent me 4 emails IN ONE DAY. Since they aren't using an email sending program like Constant Contact, Silverpop or Exact Target to manage their lists and there isn't an easy to use Unsubscribe feature (one of the requirements of the CAN-SPAM act by the way) I have had to block their addresses manually when I finally got fed up this week.
Other examples: --If you meet someone at a networking event and they give you a business card with their email address, that DOES NOT mean you now have the right to sign them up to your newsletter! If you think they might be interested in receiving emails from you, ASK them for permission to continue to contact them and tell them how doing so may benefit them.
--If on your website you solicit subscriptions to your MONTHLY newsletter, send folks who sign up just that, one monthly newsletter. Not two or three or four. As far as I'm concerned if you contact people more often than you said you would, you're spamming them.
Spam is defined as "unsolicited commercial email". If the recipient hasn't given you permission to send what you're thinking about sending, it's spam.
Now be a good marketer and eat your spam (just don't send it to someone else).
My friend Jane Vandehorst of Vanderhorst Consulting sent me a short article from Marketing Sherpa I found very interesting and want to share. Marketing Sherpa features marketing case studies and data from recent surveys of professional marketers that are often very informative and have more details than you will find elsewhere, so I suggest you check out the site and consider subscribing to some of their free email newsletters.
This week's "Chart of the Week" showcases data from the Video Marketing Survey Marketing Sherpa conducted last month. The chart indicates how the 1,083 respondents rated the effectiveness of various tactics in promoting viral videos. The winner? Paid search!
This doesn't surprise me at all, but I would bet many people who have not promoted a viral video before, if asked "How would you promote a viral video?" probably would answer 'blogs', 'social media sites' or 'traditional PR' but as you can see those don't rate as well in this survey as paid search and paid media. The article makes the point: "The free methods are the most likely ones to be tried, but the least likely ones to succeed."
This is good info to keep in mind the next time someone tells you they want to do a viral campaign but not do any advertising at all to support it.
The article details how the Obama campaign has spent over $5 million on online advertising this year with dollar figures for specific publishers. Where has the campaign chosen to spend the majority of its' money? Most of all, SEARCH!! Over three million dollars (about 60%) has been spent with Google, with Yahoo a distant second followed by Centro (which buys ads on TV station, radio station & newspaper websites), CNN.com, MSN & Facebook.
The fact that the Obama campaign has chosen to spend the most money on search makes a lot of sense as this enables them to reach people who are actively seeking to learn more about or read editorials, blogs or news about candidates & issues AT THAT MOMENT! Talk about reaching your target audience!
Some of the key advantages of Internet advertising are very applicable to political campaigns. Here are just a few examples:
Online advertising tends to be much cheaper and produce a better ROI (Return on Investment) than traditional advertising so campaigns can get more bang for their buck
Online advertising is more effective at directing people to a website (all people have to do is click on an online ad vs. having to go to the web after being exposed to an ad in another medium). Thus, folks are more likely to view a candidate or organization's content, donate online or forward it to a friend.
The geographic targeting can be much more precise online, so that fewer ad dollars are wasted communicating with voters outside of a candidate's district. This is a real problem in Cincinnati, as we border Indiana & Kentucky. Whenever I hear a radio ad or see a TV ad on a Cincinnati station for a Kentucky candidate I feel bad for them as I know a huge percentage of the people who just heard or saw the ad won't be voting in their district.
The demographic and psychographic (values, beliefs, interests, lifestyle) targeting opportunities online are huge, particularly on social profile sites where members have provided that info in their profiles, such as age, marital status, political leanings, favorite candidates, etc.
Better tracking of results. A campaign can track: exactly how many saw the ad, how many people clicked on the ad, what those people did on the website (donated, emailed a friend, etc.) and how much money they donated. So a campaign can compute exact ROI figures and the cost of acquiring a new supporter.
Other campaigns, organizations and businesses can learn from this example. If you'd like to put some of these advantages to work for you, Call me! 937-312-1400.
(I'm Rob Bunting the I-marketing Czar and I approved this message)
Recent Comments