Ad Inventory Increases Across the Web

Below find an article about how ad inventory is increasing across the web and ad networks are beginning to evolve to have greater focus. And the ad copy / content is increasingly important when it comes to banner creative.

Health Related Triggers for Baby Boomers

68 percent of boomers go online after seeing a health-related TV commercial. 80 percent click health-related ads.

Source: Marketing to Baby Boomers

Demographic and Their Differences in Web Behavior

This article Men Want It Fast, Women Want It All by Jason Lee Miller at WebProNews covers ideas as to how e-tailers and all website owners in general can learn to market better to different sexes through slight web design changes.

Marketing to Women Through Design

Check out this article by part of the team at Future Now Inc. about how the new Mint.com through some graphical and interface changes were able to change the behavior of there target demographic and increase sales by 20%

Marketing to Women Through Design

Twitter Used to Create eCommerce Venture

The below article discusses how twitter is being used as a creative tool for helping eCommerce consumers find items when comparison shopping online.



Using Twitter for a Fresh Approach to eCommerce

By Chris Crum - Fri, 05/01/2009 - 13:52

Startup Uses Twitter to Inject a Human Element into Online Shopping

WebProNews looked at some interesting research from Forrester and Shop.org this week, which indicated that while online retail sales have been increasing, those for the majority of web-only businesses have actually remained flat or on the decline.

One startup launching this week thinks injecting a little human touch into eCommerce can be a way to combat this. Naturally, Twitter is the medium the company's using to do this.

The company is called IMshopping, and aims to provide an online version of the salespeople who answer your questions in a brick and mortar store like Best Buy or Foot Locker. Basically the concept is that consumers ask IMshopping questions through Twitter about products they are seeking, and IMshopping points them in the right direction.

"Just send any shopping question as an @IMshopping within Twitter (i.e. @IMshopping Where can I find an authentic Larry Bird jersey for under $100? OR @IMshopping Where can I find a LG stainless steel, bottom-freezer refrigerator for under $1000?)," a spokesperson for IMshopping tells WebProNews.
IMshopping on Twitter

The site is launching with human guides answering questions and over time the company will roll out programs for general consumers to earn value from assisting on searches and getting rated for the quality of their answers. "We can't comment more on this program right now but it will be a game-changer in terms of community incentives," the spokesperson says.

I am reminded of ChaCha, but this is strictly for shopping, and has the potential for gaining a larger following, simply because of the Twitter factor. IMshopping does have a web site that can be used just the same, but with the right marketing, I can see avid Twitter users going this route simply for the convenience factor.

Yes, consumers could simply search for what they're looking for on Google or another search engine, but we've seen examples in the past of businesses using Twitter to help users find what they were looking for, and with this as a primary goal of IMshopping, there could be a place for it.
Prashant Nedungadi - CEO of IMshopping
Prashant Nedungadi - CEO of IMshopping

"We believe human assistance will create a deeper level of e-commerce satisfaction that doesn’t exist on the Internet today," says IMshopping CEO and Founder Prashant Nedungadi. "There is a lot of information out there, but very little help when online shoppers need specific answers that will make or break their purchasing decision. At brick and mortar stores, human experts fill such a void, but on the web, it doesn’t exist. We developed IMshopping to bring the same level of personalized assistance to online shoppers."

"Twitter is the ideal medium for having a conversation; Online shoppers have the option to communicate privately with the expert on Twitter, or publicly so others can benefit from the right choices," he adds.

Is the service going to change the face of the web? Probably not, but it's an interesting look into how Twitter can be implemented directly into a business model. IMshopping has secured a $4.7m round of funding from South Korea Telecom Ventures.

As a business model, IMShopping collects revenue when consumers buy products that are recommended through the site. The spokesperson tells me that he company is staying quiet on future business plans but Prashant's background (he founded Andale, which is now Vendio) seems to suggest there may be bigger B2B plays as well.

Reckitt-Benckiser to Shift $20 Million to Web From TV - Decision Driven by Need for More-Efficient Ad Rates

Find the article below that covers a major shift in marketing budgets from traditional to online.

by Andrew Hampp

Published: March 30, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Reckitt-Benckiser will cap off its fifth straight year of organic sales growth with a new recession-approved media strategy: moving TV dollars to online video.

The company plans to shift an estimated $20 million in TV ad dollars to the web for more than 15 of its brands, including Lysol, Air Wick, Mucinex, Finish and Clearasil. The strategic shift is significant for the company, which has traditionally spent upward of 90% of its $475 million measured-media budget on TV, and less than $1 million in measured spending on the web in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Even though its 2008 internet advertising through the first half was already double its full-year internet spending in 2007, it was still only 1% of media spending.

Planting roots online
The effort goes into effect April 1 and will include partnerships with over a dozen video ad networks such as Glam, Tidal TV, YuMe and BrightRoll.

Marc Fonzetti, Reckitt-Benckiser's media manager and internet specialist, said the company has dabbled in social media and e-mail-based consumer-relationship-management promotions in the past but had yet to plant any major roots in online video until now. "We've seen a fundamental shift in consumer consumption and media habits migrating over to digital video. Obviously YouTube started it, but we want to aligned with professional content," he said. "With broadband getting to the scale that it has, the shift has happened. The integration of traditional and digital media is here now."

Reckitt-Benckiser's spending shift from TV to online has been in the works for more than a year but was accelerated by a need to find more efficiency in the cost to reach 1,000 viewers, or CPM, said Adam Kasper, senior VP-director of digital media for the marketer's digital media agency, Havas' Media Contacts. "The CPM was the driving factor here. We needed to make it compelling from a buying standpoint in terms of how these CPMs related to TV CPMs, and we had to deliver the impressions more efficiently than TV did," he said, by reaching a more targeted audience.

That's why the company opted for ad-serving networks over TV network sites such as Hulu, ABC.com, CBS.com and NBC.com, as the latter often charge significantly higher CPMs than ad networks. Mr. Kasper said Media Contacts and Reckitt-Benckiser pushed hard for CPMs that were "well into the single digits" to get more bang for the marketer's newly digital bucks, and described the results as a first for online video. "To have a big TV advertiser take such a big portion of their TV budget and put it into online video, and to do so with such an aggressive goal from a pricing standpoint, really shook up the industry."

Focus on ROI
It's a still-nascent industry, however. Scott Ferber, CEO of online video ad network Tidal TV, said the main factor that has prevented major consumer-package-goods companies such as Reckitt-Benckiser and others from investing heavily in online video has been the volume of inventory required to buy TV-equivalent audiences. The CPMs took a hit for networks such as Tidal TV, because "when you buy volume, you have to buy cheaply, because volume costs," he said. With the recession also driving pricing down, Mr. Ferber said he expects online CPMs to reach a more stable level in the next three years.

Reckitt-Benckiser's Mr. Fonzetti said the campaign will be measured using a method that combines TV's gross rating points with the web, with additional interactive layers such as online coupons and click-throughs driving traffic to each brand's microsite. Each brand's audience metrics will then be paired with data from Nielsen's Homescan panel, a shopper product that uses ad exposure on TV and the web to determine in-store purchasing behavior.
"Everything is ROI-focused and needs to be accountable," Mr. Fonzetti said. "That's why this program has taken us so long to develop. We want to make sure everybody is comfortable behind this."

Linked In PPC - Sponsored Search Marketing Discussion Reply

In response to a linked in discussions post:


It seems you have two questions 1) forecasting PPC traffic techniques and 2)
Looking into metrics like conversions, CTR, Clicks, CPC and cost per conversions. Can anyone help with formula or formulas??

* Forecasting PPC traffic techniques: I would recommend using various resources which would include WordTracker.com, Compete.com, Google Insights for search, and others you may find useful. Simple ways to use the above would be:

* Wordtracker - type in a generic term you are considering targetting and learn various related terms that may be closely related to your generic term.

* Compete.com - will allow you to type in a competitor's website address (URL) and get a look into the keywords driving traffic to there website.

Google Insights for search - will allow you to see trends of what people are searching base on the month of the year - using this data in correlation with your wordtracker today will give you an idea as to search volumes

You may also want to checkout tools available in Google AdWords.

* Looking into metrics like conversions, CTR, Clicks, CPC and cost per conversions. Can anyone help with formula or formulas??

CTR = Clicks / Impressions

CTR = Click Through Rate
Clicks = number of visitor's clicking on your advertisement
Impressions = number of times your advertisement displays

CPC = cost per click or PPC = Pay Per Click
CPC is calculated based on your bid, quality score, conversion rate, and other bids in the marketplace.

Cost per conversions = total cost of marketing divided by number of conversions from your marketing.

Hope these explanations help - feel free to touch base if you have any questions.

Zach

SEO.cc Sponsored SFIMA Search Event

Tonight we sponsored the SFIMA - South Florida Interactive Marketing Agency - monthly event. It was a great event and brought out many people in the local South Florida business world to learn how to utilize search to increase their business'.

The lineup included speakers from four major companies involved in the search marketing business including:
Jay Berkowitz from 10 Golden Rules
Zach Hoffman from SEO.cc
Lindsey Kammandel from BeyondROI
Kim Presser from SLI Systems.

Jay Berkowitz from 10 Golden Rules covered social marketing through mediums like Twitter.
Zach Hoffman from SEO.cc covered sponsored search strategies including Campaign Day Parting and Search Query Keyword Discovery.
Lindsey Kammandel from BeyondROI covered long tail keywords and ad copy calls to action to turn searchers into buyers.
Kim Presser from SLI Systems spoke about how smart search on your website can increase user participation and results.

It was an awesome event and a lot of people in the community came out. Thank you SFIMA for creating these educational opportunities for the local internet marketing space.

Zach Hoffman

Keyword Match Type Optimization for Google AdWords PPC

Broad, phrase, exact keywords match topics, why?

Sponsored search marketing strategies are constantly evolving with the search engines. The complexity to properly manage and optimize a sponsored search account continues to evolve with the structure of organic search results. From optimizing many sponsored search accounts one key component we continue to see clients and other search marketing companies miss implementing is different match types for keywords. Google has the most complex and widely used sponsored search program called Google AdWords so we will base our analysis of keyword structure setup on their platform.

AdWords allows you to target three keyword match types called broad match, phrase match, and exact match. Each of the three match types have distinctive roles in creating, implementing, and optimizing your sponsored search campaigns. Keywords will receive impressions which are the number of times they show your advertisement. Of the three match types broad match will receive the most impressions, phrase match will incur the second most impressions, and exact match keywords will receive the least number of impressions but the most relevant targeting. As mentioned each type has their distinctive roles.

Broad match keywords - Target the widest array of keywords (search terms) and receive impressions for all keyword searches the AdWords system finds related to a particular keyword. For example if you are targeting “red shoes” on broad match it will hit for many keywords including but not limited to “red shoes”, “red shoe”, “big shoes red”, “clown shoes”, “shoes that are pink”, now you may ask – why did my keyword “red shoes” hit for such a variety of keywords and how do I control this? Well first you can target pink shoes by setting it to exact match using the following keyword structure [pink shoes]. Now with the above set of keywords you hit for the next question is, well how do I optimize red shoes? Well first you want to be measuring conversions on your keywords to make sure consumers are not using keywords you may not think are not relevant to your topic – relevance. For example consumers searching “pink shoes” may actually be purchasing your “red shoes.” So to optimize red shoes you will either want to add keywords discovered using broad match to your Ad Group or add the keyword as negative. I would recommend adding the keywords discovered either as exact match or negative exact match keywords. The main advantage to using broad match type leads to keyword discovery.

Phrase match keywords - Target more focused sets of keywords and receive impressions for all keywords (search terms) the AdWords system finds to be outside of the particular keyword phrase being targeted. For example if you are targeting “red shoes” on phrase match it will hit for keywords including the phrase “red shoes”, which would include the keywords “big red shoes”, “red shoes small”, “clown red shoes”, “red shoes that are big.” Now you may ask, why did my keyword “red shoes” on phrase match hit a variety of keywords and how do I control this? First, you can target big red shoes by setting it to exact match using the following keyword structure [big red shoes]. Now with the above set of keywords you hit for the next question is, how do I optimize phrase match “red shoes”? To optimize “red shoes” phrase match you will want to add keywords discovered using phrase match to your Ad Group or add the keywords as negative. I would recommend adding the keywords discovered as exact match or negative exact match keywords. The main advantage to using phrase match type is to refine your keyword discovery and targeting by narrow-casting the related keywords your target keywords will appear for.

Exact match keywords - Increase precision to your targeting by only hitting the keyword you are targeting and receive impressions for only the exact keyword (search term). For example, if you are targeting “red shoes” on exact match it will hit only for the keyword “red shoes.” Now you may ask, why did my keyword “red shoes” on exact match hit only for the keyword “red shoes”? This is because if you target red shoes by setting it to exact match using the following keyword structure [red shoes] it will only for “red shoes”. Now with the above set of circumstances the next question becomes how do I optimize exact match “red shoes”? To optimize “red shoes” exact match you will want conversion tracking in place and you will want to set your cost per click to allow you the most optimal conversion cost. You will also want to focus on finding the strongest Ad Copy to match up with your exact match targeted keyword. The main advantage to using exact match type is to optimize what you are paying for an actual keyword click (cost per click) and controlling the auction to your optimal precision.

After learning about the different match types we would recommend refining your account further as often as possible using search query reports provided on the reports tab in Google AdWords. You will be surprised at the amount of work this refining process will create, but it will take your account to a whole new level. Good luck and happy bidding!
About SEO.cc

SEO services many industries from vertical niche businesses to global brands. SEO.cc has cultivated a specialty in Sponsored Search Management because our agency believes it is the most effective way to deliver measurable results. As a boutique online marketing agency we focus on offering unparalleled customer service. Our customer service focus drives us to tailor each marketing campaign to fit the unique needs of our individual clients. In addition to a tailor-made campaign you can expect SEO.cc to provide you with up-to-date monthly reports that spell out exactly where your investment is being spent and how your target market is reacting and interacting with your marketing message. At SEO.cc we are committed to making online marketing easily transparent and understandable while insuring every client receives optimal results!

SEO Services – Components of Web Site Behavior

Search Engine Operator offers SEO services for businesses of all size. Our search marketing services increase key visibility for your web site on the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL.com, and other main search engines used by a majority of the searching public. Search engine demographics are very diverse and the audience of potential website visitors varies greatly dependent on many behavioral variables. Visitors to websites also arrive at greatly differentiating rates including based on seasonal behavior, mass media news, and other socially influential factors that can create variances in your website traffic. Visitors could either be new visitors, returning visitors, members to your website, past shoppers, repeat customers, and many other types of visitors’ websites maybe seeking to entice a visit to their website.

The ability to access a website from so many entry points including the computer at your house, a computer in your office, wireless access on your laptop, internet access off of your wireless mobile phone and an ever increasing amount of web accessibility points. Think of the continuous availability of your website across the internet. The main point of entry for a large percentage of a websites visitor’s will originate from a search engine portal. SEO services can take a company from the second or third page of the search engines to the front page for visibility. Front page search engine listings bring a company into prime visibility. Prime visibility would be the area of your website a visitor sees above the fold on the screen of your potential website visitor.

There are two main ways to obtain listings above the fold on the major search engines. You can either aim to list using sponsored search marketing or search engine optimization. Both areas of SEO services have huge advantages. Sponsored search marketing has many methods of delivering visitors to your website and also marketing brand impressions for branding your business. Potential visitors to websites read text they are clicking on before clicking which turns them into a website visitor and viewer of your advertising brand impression.

Website visitors are great to have visit your web page, the question is once they arrive on your website what is the visitor doing. Is the visitor arriving to your site and just leaving – if so the factor being affected is the website bounce rate. A bounce rate is defined as when a website visitor originates there visit on a particular page of your website and exits from that same web page without visiting any other areas of your website.

You can also see the quantity of website pages someone is viewing across your website. The total number of page visits is an important calculation as to how much visitors find your web page to be relevant to a particular topic and how captive of an audience they become. The total number of page views divided by website visitors will tell you the average number of pages a website viewer is actually visiting. Another area to find important information about your website visitors is the website visitor sources. These sources can include search engines, links from blogs into your websites, links from directories, and links from other potentially relevant sources. Understanding who is pointing to your website is important because it can help you learn about website visitors, consumer feedback, consumer mentions and how visitors find your site.

Complete SEO services will help you understand many aspects of your website you may not have understood in the past. Once you begin to understand the many areas that can affect your website performance you can increase your website business using SEO relevant data and market information.