This is the latest post in our series on the future of display advertising. Today, director of product management Jonathan Bellack looks at our efforts to help online publishers generate more advertising revenue - Ed. For millions of online publishers—from the smallest blogger to the largest entertainment, news, e-commerce and information sites—online advertising revenue is vital. When publishers can maximize their returns, everyone benefits from more vibrant online content and websites. But the pace of change in the industry can be intimidating—how can a publisher keep up with what’s new, let alone grow their business? We believe that the new technology we’re developing to make display advertising work better will help to grow the display advertising pie for all publishers, by orders of magnitude. We shouldn’t be asking how publishers can eke another 5 or 10 percent out of display advertising in the next few years. We should be looking at how the industry can double or triple in size. We’ve previously described our three core display ad products for publishers: AdSense , which places the most valuable, relevant ads on our partners’ websites, without the publishers having to sell the ad space themselves; DoubleClick for Publishers , our ad serving platform, which maximizes the value of ad space that publishers have directly sold themselves; DoubleClick Ad Exchange , a real-time auction marketplace, which maximizes large publishers’ overall returns, by “dynamically allocating” the highest value ad, whether directly sold, or indirectly sold through an ad network. I wanted to highlight the key principles guiding our future product innovations in this area, as we work to help all publishers maximize their online ad revenues. 1. Making life more efficient For most large publishers, directly sold ads (ads sold by their own sales force) comprise the vast majority of their ad revenues. But today, selling and managing these ads is frustrating, expensive and often involves tedious manual processes. Imagine a TV network that receives TV commercials in 100 different formats, languages, lengths and video dimensions, and then has to manually convert, translate and edit them all, then manually count the number of TV sets on which the ad appeared before sending a bill. Sounds crazy, right? Well, that scenario is far less challenging than what most large online publishers face today with display advertising. Today, across the industry, for every dollar spent on display advertising, 28 cents is eaten up in administrative costs. If we can reduce that proportion, it would mean a lot more money going to publishers. Things like new standards for video ad serving and systems that connect buyers and sellers are helping publishers support the most engaging and creative ads across their sites. But there are quantum leaps to come in this area, for small and large publishers. Think of a political candidate who is seeking donations on his or her website—the candidate can receive money in seconds. Imagine if publishers—even the smallest website—had tools that enabled advertisers to click a button on their site to upload an ad, let them pay for it with a credit card, and then deliver this ad—through the publisher’s ad server—within minutes. This sort of “immediate ad” will become possible as ad serving technology continues to simplify the process of buying and selling ad space. 2. Total revenue management AdSense selects the most valuable ad for publishers from a large number of ad networks, to maximize ad revenues every time a page loads. New ad serving and “dynamic allocation” technology, like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, is emerging that enables ad revenues to be maximized across both directly and indirectly sold ad space, ad impression by ad impression, using real-time prices. Second by second, across millions of ad impressions, this can meaningfully boost major publishers’ revenues. Using this technology, the average price that a publisher receives for ad space sold through the Ad Exchange is more than 130 percent higher than the average price of ad space sold directly to ad networks. In fact, without this type of dynamic allocation across sales channels, a publisher’s revenues can never truly be maximized. In years to come, this true revenue maximization can get even smarter. There’s no question that delivering the right ad to the right user at the right time delivers better results. We have years of experience in doing this with search and text ads; we’re now bringing that experience to the world of display. This means investing in a smarter ad server that can automatically learn where and when a given ad will get the best response, as well as manage delivery to deliver those improved results for publishers. This new ad server can even anticipate a publisher’s future events and adjust delivery accordingly—for example, if traffic drops off every weekend, the ad server can automatically speed up during the week to keep everything moving smoothly. 3. More insight and control Our vision is to provide all publishers the smartest possible advertising system that can give them knowledge and control of everything going on with their ad business. The vision is already becoming a reality: the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers platform offers publishers 4,000 times more data than its predecessor. And in recent years, we’ve been constantly adding new reporting options for our AdSense partners. By putting publishers in firm control and empowering them with more data, reports and controls (for example, over what advertisers and ad networks they allow), they’ll be able to make fully informed decisions about ad space forecasting, segmentation, targeting, allocation and pricing. This helps them to extract the maximum value from their sites and uncover new advertising opportunities—the gold that’s buried under their own sites. 4. Betting on openness An open ecosystem drives meaningful results for publishers. When a wide range of buyers can bid for a publisher’s ad space, through an advertising exchange or network, this creates more competition for that ad space, while giving publishers choice over whose ads they want to appear. On the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, an enormous number of advertisers, belonging to over 50 ad networks, compete for publishers’ ad space. Of course, at the same time, we’re also providing publishers robust technologies and controls that can block any unwanted ads or networks. Similarly, we believe that one of the best ways to encourage innovation is to open code to the web developer community . Look at the incredible mashups that have been created through the Google Maps API, or the range of mobile devices that have been created from our open source Android code. This same approach can generate significant advantages for publishers. When we rolled out the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers, we launched a new public API . This gives publishers and developers the tools to drive innovation and deliver value-adding “advertising apps” for publishers—like inventory analysis, sales workflow tools and more—without having to build an ad server from scratch. This will help drive the next generation of better, more valuable ad innovations. 5. Everything is going to be “display” Display advertising is about much more than ads in web browsers. People are watching video, reading newspapers, magazines, books and listening to digital music at an ever-increasing rate. They’re turning to a plethora of new devices—smartphones, tablets, e-readers and even video game consoles. We’ve designed our platform, and are continuing to invest in it, to give publishers a single base that can deliver ads into this expanding world—including streaming video, mobile ad delivery and more. Looking forward, what we call “display” today will just be “advertising”—a single platform that can coordinate an advertiser’s campaign across streaming audio ads in car stereos, interactive mobile experiences on smartphones, and HD video ads on set-top boxes. Imagine if that single platform could optimize the campaign, automatically delivering the best-performing ads, best returns and best mix, across all those platforms. That’s the future we envisage. An exciting time ahead We’re unapologetically optimistic about the future of display advertising for online publishers. There’s great innovation taking place in this area that will make the current landscape look primitive within a few years. We’ll keep working hard to help all publishers take advantage of these opportunities. Posted by Jonathan Bellack, Director of Product Management

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Online publishers: growing the display advertising pie

Pretty exciting day in search seeing Bing results live on Yahoo! Search results. There were some questions as to what might transfer and what might stay. It seems that generally algorithmically there was roughly a 1 to 1 transfer. Yahoo! is still showing fewer characters in their page titles than Bing does. Site links (listed below some sites) may also use different anchor text. But the core results are the same. The big exceptions to the concept of the 1:1 representation would be vertical search results, left rail navigation customizations & the inline search suggestions Bing does in their search results for popular search queries. The vertical search results & left rail navigation being home grown is no surprise, as many of the features aim to keep you on the parent portal, and that is Yahoo!’s bread and butter. Here is an example of the inline suggestions Bing does (in this example, for “loans”) Instead of inline suggestions like that, you might see the following kinds of navigational cues from Yahoo! There has been some speculation as to if any Yahoo! penalties will get rolled into Bing (or Yahoo!’s version of Bing) & so far it seems like that is generally a no. Of course, that could change over time. There also has been speculation of Yahoo! Site Explorer going away, but it seems it will remain through early 2012 . The Yahoo! Site Explorer team is planning tighter integration between Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center to make the transition as smooth as possible for webmasters. At this stage in the transition, it is important for webmasters to continue using Yahoo! Site Explorer to inform us about your website and its structure so you keep getting high quality traffic from searches originating on Yahoo! and our partner sites – even from markets outside the US and Canada that haven’t yet transitioned to Microsoft systems. To keep things simple, we will share site information you provide on Site Explorer with Microsoft during this transition period. When Microsoft fully powers the Yahoo! Search back-end globally, expected in 2012, it will be important for webmasters to use Bing Webmaster Center as well. The Bing tool will manage site, webpage and feed submissions. Yahoo! Site Explorer will shift to focus on new features for webmasters that provide richer analysis of the organic search traffic you get from the Yahoo! network and our partner sites. Unfortunately some of Yahoo!’s advanced link query operators seem to no longer work (say you wanted to find links to a domain from .gov pages). But you can get such link data (or at least a piece of it) from Majestic SEO or SEOmoz’s Linkscape (also in OSE ’s export feature & eventually their online interface). Some smaller search companies, like Exalead , still offer advanced filters while performing link searches. The ability to search a full web index allows you to do cool stuff you can’t do with just a link graph. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I have heard good things & owe the folks at InfluenceFinder a review soon. When Blekko launches they will have a boatload of free SEO features to share as well. Members of our community have been giving it rave reviews for the past month or so.

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Yahoo! Search Now Powered by Bing

by Mike Fleming Now that you’ve created your keyword-themed ad groups and masterfully rolled out your display ads for those ad groups , your ads are running and collecting impressions, clicks and conversions. The next step is to allow a fair amount of data to collect so that you can then analyze how different sites are performing for you . The most useful tool for this is the Placement Performance Report in your Google AdWords account. It segments your ad serving by domain or individual URL so you can see the performance metrics for them separately . This will allow you to find sites and categories of sites where your ads perform well and where they are struggling. The best, most important metric to analyze when looking at a site’s Display Network performance? Cost Per Conversion . Why? Google uses what they call smart pricing as their method for click charges on the Display Network . Basically, if your ad wins the auction and is placed on a site, Google determines if that page is more or less likely to end in a conversion action for you and they adjust the price of a click accordingly. This makes cost per conversion much more important than conversion rate. Why? Smart pricing will very likely give you a scenario of metrics like the one below when comparing two sites: If this scenario is true its because Google determined website #2 to be less likely to result in a conversion. So, they discounted the cost per click to advertise on website 2 to make up for this. But, as you can see, you are performing relatively well on this site because they’ve discounted your price enough to make your cost per conversion 25% lower than website 1 despite your lower conversion rate. Therefore, website 2 is working better for you despite the lower conversion rate. So, you can see how smart pricing changes the game and make cost per conversion your most important metric . Once you run a Placement Performance Report, you will have data that you can use to make decisions about your ad’s exposure. You will find sites that are both performing well and not performing well for your campaigns. If you want to block your ads from being shown on specific sites, you can use the� Site and Category Exclusion Tool within your AdWords account to block these sites. With the sites that are performing well, you may want to have more control over your bidding and targeting flexibility with them. In this case, you can take that placement and use it in a Placement Targeted Campaign, which we will talk about in my next post. Here are some ways that you can block your ads from being shown to specific web traffic using this tool: 1. Blocking Domains - You can block top-level domains, subdomains and directories. Blocking one doesn’t block the others, so you will need to enter them separately. 2. Undesirable Content - There are six types of content that you can block if you are concerned about brand protection. 3. Video Sites - You can block your ads from being shown as content ads within video. 4. Page Types : a. Error Pages - these are displayed when a page does not exist. If someone attempts to navigate to a domain that does not exist, a page can be shown that has ads based on the mistyped URL instead of a “not found” error page. b. Parked Domains - These domains are owned, but they have never been developed. So, all you see is ads when you navigate to these pages. This traffic comes from users mistyping a URL or using a domain name that does not exist. c. User-generated sites - forums, image-sharing sites, social networks, video-sharing sites In my next post, we’ll take a look at targeting specific sites on the Display Network that you find through your gathered data and/or through a little research to take your online business to new heights… Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Take Your Online Business to New Heights with the Display Network - Part 4

This year we held the third edition of the Google Online Marketing Challenge — a global university competition that gives students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Each team receives the equivalent of $200 to work with a local company and create an online marketing campaign. Teams have three weeks to mastermind a strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors. We’re delighted that 3,034 teams from 60 countries participated in the 2010 Challenge, representing an increase of 39 percent from last year and making the Challenge one of the world’s largest university competitions. The global winners of the Challenge are Lauren Williams, Ganesh Chaudhari, Jeeana Atmarow, Allison Miller, Mohammed Assiri and Hui Min Chua from the University of Western Australia, who promoted the kids’ novel The Adventures of Charlie & Moon . Over the three week campaign, the novel’s website saw a huge jump in visits—nearly 800 percent. The team will visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California and each of the members will receive a laptop for their great performance in the Challenge. We also had three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. Find more details about our winners here . Since we first held it in 2008, the Google Online Marketing Challenge has grown each year, allowing thousands of students globally to learn about online advertising and help small businesses to improve their online presence. The education they’ve already received becomes real in the Challenge: real money, real campaigns, real businesses and real results. And the hands-on experience with online marketing gives them real skills they can use in their careers. If you’re interested in competing in the 2011 Challenge, register now. We’ll open the sign-up period in the fall. Posted by Alex Gibelalde, Product Marketing Manager

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Announcing the winners of the Google Online Marketing Challenge 2010

This year we held the third edition of the Google Online Marketing Challenge — a global university competition that gives students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Each team receives the equivalent of $200 to work with a local company and create an online marketing campaign. Teams have three weeks to mastermind a strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors. We’re delighted that 3,034 teams from 60 countries participated in the 2010 Challenge, representing an increase of 39 percent from last year and making the Challenge one of the world’s largest university competitions. The global winners of the Challenge are Lauren Williams, Ganesh Chaudhari, Jeeana Atmarow, Allison Miller, Mohammed Assiri and Hui Min Chua from the University of Western Australia, who promoted the kids’ novel The Adventures of Charlie & Moon . Over the three week campaign, the novel’s website saw a huge jump in visits—nearly 800 percent. The team will visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California and each of the members will receive a laptop for their great performance in the Challenge. We also had three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. Find more details about our winners here . Since we first held it in 2008, the Google Online Marketing Challenge has grown each year, allowing thousands of students globally to learn about online advertising and help small businesses to improve their online presence. The education they’ve already received becomes real in the Challenge: real money, real campaigns, real businesses and real results. And the hands-on experience with online marketing gives them real skills they can use in their careers. If you’re interested in competing in the 2011 Challenge, register now. We’ll open the sign-up period in the fall. Posted by Alex Gibelalde, Product Marketing Manager

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Announcing the winners of the Google Online Marketing Challenge 2010

by Stoney deGeyter Note: Recently I’ve gotten some ribbing from friends and colleagues about my exceedingly numerous multi-part posts. In order to wean myself off my favorite form of not-having-to-think-about-what-I’m-going-to-write-about-next, I’ve combined all 12 parts of this series into a single post. Enjoy! Part 1: Guilty of Crimes No One Committed A lot of people subscribe to the “Guilt by Association” theory in online marketing. This theory suggests that you are who you associate with. I agree there is some definite truth to this mindset, but, like a lot of things, it can also be taken to a paranoid extreme. This fear leads some people into a paralysis that ultimately hinders their online marketing efforts rather than helping them. “Guilt by Association” extremists work hard to keep themselves squeaky clean. They tread extra carefully with who they associate with in an effort to ensure that they are never found guilty of crimes they haven’t committed. In order to stay “pure”, they avoid having online relationships with some who they believe may have broken some rule at some point that, likely, nobody even cares about. Part 2: Google’s Guidelines Don’t Rule the Web With Google controlling so much market share, many business owners and online marketers are scared of doing anything that might seemingly violate Google’s Guidelines. We know Google looks at both positive and negative attributes, including your associations, when developing your overall trust profile. But we often do ourselves a disservice when we let Google’s Guidelines dictate everything we do on the web - even in areas that don’t have any specific connection to Google. There is nothing wrong with keeping a clean profile and ensuring you don’t do anything that violates the search engine guidelines. There is also nothing wrong with making sure you associate your online profile with people you know will help you and not hurt you. But there comes a point where it borders on paranoia, at best, and counter-productive, at worst. Part 3: You Have No Control Over Who Associates with You One of the problems with worrying too much over your online profile is that you have little to no control over who associates themselves with you. Anybody can link to you, anybody can scrape your content, anybody can share your post with their friends, and anybody can retweet you. If you’re unhappy about who’s doing any of these things, your sole recourse is to contact them, ask them to stop, and then cross your fingers. Google (and the other search engines) know this. They knew it back when they made links a part of their algorithms. They knew it when people started scraping and duplicating your content. And they know it now in an age of RTs, Likes, Mixxes, Stumbles, and whatever else we do with content we like. Google will not hold you responsible if someone promotes you and then goes off and violates Google’s Guidelines. Part 4: You are Responsible for Who You Associate With If there is one constant in the world of online promotion, social media profiles, and search engine rankings, it is that you do have some responsibility for who you choose to associate with. In the real world, it is often said that you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they have. If you’re associating with thieves, liars, spammers, and cheats, you don’t have to be a thief, liar, spammer, or a cheat to get the reputation of one (or as an enabler of one). Either way, your associations affect you. Part 5: You Are Not Responsible for the Entire History of Who You Associate With There is some truth, both in real life and on the web, that you can learn a lot about a person by who they associate with. But it is also true that you cannot not be held accountable for the actions of every person you’ve shaken hands with. In the social sphere of the web, retweeting or liking someone’s single message is not an endorsement of every tweet, post, thought, or blog they ever published. Even the worst offenders do something right! Making note of the positive doesn’t suddenly hang all their negative around your neck as if you’ve endorsed it all. Parts 6-10: yada yada yada Part 11: Everyone’s Got Some (Negative) History No matter how squeaky clean you want to keep your social media profile, the only way to stay squeaky clean is to not associate yourself with anyone . The only person who does not have something negative in their profile is likely the person who has no profile whatsoever. Or you can check the complete historical profile of every person before you RT, Stumble, Like, or whatever. Of course, even with those who pass the test, what guarantees do you have that they won’t do something shady in the future? Not only do you have to check the historical profile before you connect with them, you have to keep checking back to make sure you still want to be connected with them. Part 12: We Are All Violators Sooner or later, whether you like it or not, you’re going to violate some guidelines somewhere, including Google’s. It’s inevitable. Which is why we can’t live and breathe by every guideline that Google puts out. Keep in mind, those who try hard to stay violation-free are often those that violate guidelines the most. They just hide it better. And the search engines likely know this too. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Guilt by Association: Do You Really Know Who You Are Linking To, Parts 1-12

by Stone Reuning Consumers scour the Internet to research products before making a purchase. Today’s shoppers want information before they buy. Those retailers providing the information shoppers seek in a unique manner can enjoy significant advantages over other retailers competing for a shopper’s purchase. And now with Google’s MayDay Update wreaking havoc on long-tail rankings for some ecommerce stores, the time is right for getting your product descriptions ramped up. Here’s why you’ll want to make sure each of your products has unique descriptions. Your product pages can gain organic search engine visibility  There’s much to be said for having your products show up on the first page of Google or Yahoo. Organic search engine listings can bring valuable traffic directly to your product pages without the per-click cost of paid search. You can reach way beyond existing marketing campaigns to a whole new set of consumers who may have never heard of you or thought to shop on your site otherwise. But search engines don’t like duplicate content. They work hard to return useful results to searchers - and that means filtering out all the “me too” web pages containing the same content. This puts you at a severe disadvantage if you’re using the standard supplied copy for product descriptions - the same as every other retailer. Search engines are likely to favor the manufacturer’s web site or a retailer that has added elements to customize its product page, while filtering out all the other sites showing the standard copy. Including yours. Sometimes customizing your product descriptions is all that’s needed to help your product pages show up in searches naturally. Just be aware of important keywords for each product - retain the keywords used in the original content and ensure other possible keywords are also addressed in the new copy. That way your product pages will not only enjoy the likelihood of ranking above those of other retailers for the same keywords in the generic product descriptions, but they can show up for a larger set of search terms, too. Just one thing. Keep in mind that in order for your product descriptions to help with search engine visibility, the architecture of your product pages must support indexing of that content. Be sure to ask an SEO expert for a structural assessment when you’re looking at your product pages. Shoppers who land on your product pages are more likely to buy     Let’s face it. Most manufacturer-supplied product descriptions are pretty bland. Well-written product descriptions can help increase the shopper’s propensity to purchase from you. Studies have shown that consumers are reluctant to buy from sites that don’t include enough information to answer all their questions. Your unique product descriptions can offer more details than competing sites, alleviating any concerns or unanswered questions the shopper would face elsewhere. Even if you offer commodity products that normally compete on price, you can create perceived value with the information you provide. While some consumers may still use your site for research and then shop elsewhere to find the lowest price, you’ll find that others assign a premium value to your web site, appreciating that they can research and buy at the same online store. In addition, creating complete, unique descriptions for each of your products can also go a long way toward boosting credibility. Consumers are more likely to trust a web site that has invested in well-written, thorough product information. Your online store builds more valuable brand equity   You sell products provided by a lot of different manufacturers. Each vendor has its own format for the descriptions it provides, leaving your product pages a patchwork of different copy styles, occasional grammatical mishaps and generally very boring, incomplete information. When you invest in unique descriptions for all the products you sell, you can match the tone to your own store brand. Customers experience a seamless voice from your home page through category landing pages right down to each product. You’ll be more likely to build rapport with customers, which can create a point of differentiation for your store and support greater shopper loyalty. Yes, it does take a significant investment to provide compelling product descriptions. But with the payoff of greater search engine visibility, higher conversions and enhanced brand equity, rewriting manufacturer product descriptions is well worth the investment. The retailers that recognize this are the ones creating a long-term advantage online. Why not make your store the place to research and buy the products you sell, rather than just another choice among hundreds?  Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Product Descriptions - Get Your Ecommerce Store in Shape

by Mike Moran If you are old (like me), then you might be doing certain things the way you always have, without realizing that times have changed. The old ways don’t necessarily continue to work. All this was brought to mind when I read a recent story about how State Farm Insurance followed the old procedures, which didn’t work out for them when they were handling a case of a dog tragically killed by a car. Image via Wikipedia As the story goes, Canadian law holds a pet owner responsible for damage caused by the pet, so State Farm sent the pet owners a bill for $1700 to cover the damage to the car that struck and killed their dog. At a certain level, this makes sense. After all, anytime someone is at fault in an accident, the insurance company needs to make them pay. Failing to do so raises everyone’s insurance rates. But in this situation, the public relations damage of a heartless insurance company going after the dog’s grief-stricken owners seemed right out of central casting. And social media message boards and bloggers soon jumped in, and State Farm is there. But not looking like a good neighbor. If you’re feeling a bit smug as you read this, wipe that look off your face. State Farm has a generally positive image inside and outside social media. Many insurance companies would have done the exact same thing, and many other businesses have policies in place that employees adhere to without considering the extenuating circumstances. Maybe yours does, too. So this isn’t a story about State Farm. It’s a story about you. Do your employees know how to operate in public? It’s likely that the poor claims adjusters whose quick decision started this imbroglio didn’t even consider that they are working in the public eye. I am confident that they didn’t consider what people would think. They were just following procedures and sending a private letter to someone. We all need to remember that everything we do in the age of social media can be publicized without our permission, and that the reaction to what we do forms a new kind of pressure of public opinion that none of us are accustomed to. Some small business owners have told me that they are too small for anyone to make a stink over what they do, but that’s just whistling past the graveyard. True, your public relations mess wouldn’t get picked up by the New York Times, but does that matter? Social media makes it easy for your customers to hear all about it, even if mainstream media never mentions it. No matter how large or small your business, your employees need to understand that everything they do now is in public, whether they want it to be or not. Every seemingly private communication can become public at any moment. Do you want your employees shackled to a set of procedures in those situations, or do you want them deputized to act in the best interests of the company? Or do you at least want them to think about the public relations implications of their actions and ask for advice before blindly acting in accordance with procedure? Your public relations day in hell is coming if you don’t. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Do you know how to operate in public?

Widgets Video content Video games Product comparison Travel eBooks They might prefer to use different labels (so as to minimize fear in the marketplace & slow down regulators), and they might claim that aggregate statistics control the investments & thus they are not really publishers, but they plan on skimming a big piece off of the top of many big markets. AdWords was just the start! Videos, maps & product search…look how Google self-deals in each while managing to call it a value added feature (or some such). If Google collects data, hosts data, sorts data, recommends personalized consumption habits , and then makes small investments in new content from proven past performers (and then give them a bit of stealth promotion on their network)…how is it possible for Google to lose money? (Outside of lawsuits)? How much of the online ecosystem can Google consume before publishers promote other views of the web? One way to fight this sort of strategy is Yahoo!’s sell or outsource everything but the logo strategy . It increases short term margins, but in the longrun it makes one that much more vulnerable. Google can always buy the partner of choice and then ride off the free promotion & validation that the acquisition gained from earlier partnerships. Sure adding more noise to a noisy market can bring in eyeballs, but fleeting ones. Death by a thousand compromises . The other is to work in markets too small for Google to be interested in. Or to define & create a new vertical, like Zynga did. Even with as shady as Zynga’s founder is , longterm that company is in a better position than Yahoo! is.

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Google As Publisher…

by Mike Fleming If you are only using the Search Network of Google AdWords to reach customers for your website, you are limiting your online advertising reach big time. On the Search Network, your ads only show when people are looking for what you offer, which is typically in the later stages of the shopping funnel . But, that’s a very small sample compared to the number of targeted online users that could benefit from your products or services. With the Display Network option in your AdWords account, you can reach a much larger group of internet users who could receive the benefits of doing business with your company, but may not be aware they have a need and/or may have never heard of you. In fact, only 5% of internet page views are on search engines. This leaves a very large space containing targeted users for your company that you may not be taking advantage of. With the Display Network, you can go out and reach this huge pool of users that may not yet recognize their need for what you offer or know that you offer it. Plus, you can take advantage of the added branding benefit of being seen on your industry’s websites. If a user is not quite ready to buy, they may be more likely to click on your ad and purchase from a search engine results page when they ARE ready to buy if they recognize your brand from around the internet. And how can you make sure that your ads only show to targeted users instead of random web surfers? Just like the Search Network gives you the opportunity to target specific keyword markets that are very likely to contain your target audience, the Display Network allows you to target specific website markets and websites that are very likely to contain your target audience. For example, if you sell guitars, wouldn’t it make sense to have an ad with your offer on websites where guitar players hang out? With the Display Network, you could create an ad and place it on a content site like this one where the red outline is… This targeting flexibility gives you control over how your ads are placed on sites around the internet so that you can optimize your marketing efforts. The danger that many amateur AdWords users can run into when encountering the Display Network is that using it is not as easy as turning it on in the campaign settings of your current campaigns in your AdWords account. The reason is that the Display Network operates under totally different rules . Therefore, using it incorrectly can result in disappointing performance for your company. But, using it correctly can take your online business to new heights. In future posts, we’ll be taking a look at how to do just that… Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Take Your Online Business to New Heights with the Display Network - Intro