Are you a business owner, or indirectly responsible for your online advertising conversion funnel? Have you ever wondered why your business might be getting decent traffic through online channels and programs such as Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing, but it doesn’t make an impact on your bottom line? Position might be great, clicks coming through steadily each week and month, success events are pouring in but revenues are stagnant. You might be turning your online ads into Amish Furniture… no finish! Read more…
It seems that Yahoo is no longer resting on their second place laurels, as recent guerrilla marketing campaigns have seen the search engine take their word to the street. Recently while out and about in Toronto, I happened across a handful of bright purple Mini Cooper’s, wrapped in Yahoo logos and surrounded by booth dudes and booth babes. With my interest piqued, I stopped to take a look and try to discover what Yahoo was up to with this feet on the street move. Read more…
Admittedly, Omniture had a rocky start to the new year with the release of both Site Catalyst 14 and Search Center 3 back in March, with several hot fixes going into effect shortly after both releases. My post outlining these issues is still my most popular article of the year, so I’m guessing I hit a nerve. Despite the problems, Omniture Suite is actually much improved over older versions, but several smaller bugs were still in the pipeline since March. Here’s hoping that the Search Center 3.1 release this week addresses those quirks. Read more…
Playing on the content network is usually just that, a big unorganized and chaotic game. It pits advertiser against publisher, in a constant battle for cheap traffic, domain monetization, campaign optimization, and even fraudulent clicks. Marketers have a heck of a time keeping up with the onslaught of poorly converting clicks originating from hundreds and even thousands of unique domains on the content network. Enter Adsspy.com, a new tool by the creators of the hugely popular FireFox plugin SEO Quake. Read more…
With substantiated claims that Yahoo automatically inserts keywords, bids, and new ads into existing campaigns, analysts are having a hard time learning the true impact those changes have on their bottom line. Yesterday’s news about Yahoo automatically ‘optimizing’ advertiser campaigns comes at a pretty labor-intensive cost for users of Omniture Search Center. Thankfully there is a solution, but you may not like it. Read more…
Although I had observed something similar happen to a few select Yahoo accounts I manage, Joe over at PPC Hero dropped me a line and confirmed that it is not an isolated incident. Apparently, Yahoo is optimizing campaigns automatically, which could spell disaster for your analytics and conversion spending. What’s surprising is that they have it written into their terms of service, I’m sure everyone’s read that, right? Read more…
Not long ago I posted a rant on what I thought were major problems with Omniture’s newest releases, SiteCatalyst 14 and SearchCenter 3. I’ll be honest, it got a lot of attention for my relatively small blog and I thought we were making progress. It seems a lot of clients are frustrated, and for whatever reason aren’t inclined to make a big switch to other brands like Webtrends. However, with Yahoo announcing their takeover of IndexTools, an analytics package capable of offering “up 80% of Omniture’s features for FREE”, clients may begin to wonder and possibly wander. Read more…
The only reason I endorsed the Microsoft takeover of Yahoo was because after thinking about the deal from an online advertising perspective, it would setup a nice healthy rivalry between two technology giants. With recent Hitwise numbers indicating Google dominating over two thirds of the US search share, it is somewhat disheartening that rumors are flying around about Yahoo in testing phases with outsourcing pay-per-click to Google Adwords. Now, I like Google a lot, but I also like fair competition and I think the markets do too. Read more…
The concept of using customer personas isn’t new in marketing, but it can be a valuable exercise in finding the right ad text that either compels or pre-qualifies search users to click. Depending on your advertising goals, you may want to consider several unique personas prior to even committing ad texts to a real time test. Read more…
Search Engine Strategies New York is quite possibly the most attended online marketing event in North America. The best and brightest in our industry join in various cities throughout the year on the SES tour, but seldom is the turnout as high as in New York City. I had the privilege of attending this year, and on Day 1 of the conference, I’d have to say the session on Auditing Click Fraud was the best. Read more…
