Web advertising to come under EU scrutiny | Special Coverage | Reuters

Web advertising to come under EU scrutiny | Special Coverage | Reuters

Targeted online advertising is set to face increased scrutiny from European Union regulators concerned about invasion of privacy, threatening the growth of a potentially big online revenue-booster for media companies.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Firefox 3 Beta 1 Arrives in Fighting Shape

Firefox 3 Beta 1 Arrives in Fighting Shape

Inside AdWords: A change to text ads on the content network

Inside AdWords: A change to text ads on the content network

Google release Webmaster Tools for GoDaddy customers

Go Daddy customers can opt-in to the integration for their hosted sites directly from their control centers. This jump starts account creation, site submission, and the verification process, and customers will then gain access to the tools and statistics available through Webmaster Tools and Go Daddy will automatically submit Sitemaps for those sites.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Inside AdWords: Google content network tips: Part 1 - Recent improvements

Inside AdWords: Google content network tips: Part 1 - Recent improvements

NEW - Google AdWords Offering Targeted Placement

According to the Inside AdWords blog, Google has introduced two new enhancements to site targeting on their content network.

The changes allow for specific placement targeting on sites and the service now offers a CPC (cost per click) pricing model.

Until now, Google advertisers have been restricted to simply selecting the site they want theirs ads to appear on through the site targeting option. The renamed "Placement Targeting" service now allows advertisers to specify areas within a website for their ad placement and which types of AdWords ad to use.

Now, advertisers can target not only websites but also precise subsections of sites, such as the football pages of a news site, the show times section of a movie site, and even a specific ad unit (a block of Google ads) on a particular webpage.

The new Cost per Click (CPC) pricing model will also be a welcome enhancement to the service, with advertisers better able to control their spending on the content network.

Where the content network has often been a great way to target immense amounts of traffic, the new changes will hopefully allow advertisers to get more qualified traffic and better ROI on their online advertising.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Adsense: A Click is No Longer a Click.

This morning it was reported that Google is changing what constitutes a click on an AdSense ad. In the past, a click on the URL, title or background of the ad would trigger a click and earn an AdSense publisher money. In the future, a click on the background of the ad will no longer trigger a click event and an AdSense publisher will not make money.

In short, a click occurs only if a user clicks on the title or URL of the AdSense ad.

Google has implemented this click behavior requirement for their paid search ads on Google.com back April. Google has now decided to use the same criteria for their contextual ads.

The reason Google is implementing this change for their contextual ads are to "reduce accidental clicks and increase value for advertisers."

From Internet Advertising & Marketing and
Online annonsering

IBM Predicts the End of Advertising as We Know It.

Global Business Services unveiled its new report, "The End of Advertising as We Know It," forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50.

Distributors will need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must become brokers of consumer insights and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

From Internet Advertising and Online annonsering

Inside AdWords: Min CPC, Max CPC and Avg CPC clarified

Inside AdWords: Min CPC, Max CPC and Avg CPC clarified

Yahoo's not sitting on the fence

Mobile Moves by Yahoo

Google isnt the only one tearing up the airwaves wireless spectrum. After Google announced its new open source mobile platform, Android, last week, Yahoo is once again in the position of playing catchup. However, as Reuters states, they may still be able to garner millions of advertising customers before Google does.

And that, Yahoo says, is where the real money is:

Unlike Google, which said on Monday it was building a mobile phone operating system, Yahoo is focusing on mobile advertising deals and has no intention of getting into software design of phones like its Silicon Valley rival.

The race is going to be who builds the biggest arsenal of partners and numbers of page views, said -Marco- Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoos Connected Life division. . . .

Google risks being distracted by technology rather than being focused on advertising revenue, the lifeblood of both Internet players, Boerries said.

The first phones based on Googles mobile software, dubbed Android, are not due to appear until the second half of 2008. Google signed 33 initial partners, with Deutsche Telekoms T-Mobile network operator and Taiwanese handset maker High Tech Computer Corp so far the only ones committed to offering some phones next year.

Yahoo already has deals to feature a package of services like search, e-mail and mapping on limited handsets from major phone makers, including Nokia, Motorola, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and HTC " every top name except Sony Ericsson

If Android is truly open source, we can take everything out there, Boerries said of the outside possibility Yahoo might use Google phone software and run Yahoo services over the devices. Nothing prevents me from taking it, he said.

Internet marketing and Internet Annonsering

The Google Red Hat and Linux Platform

In a great move, red hat, Google, and other interested Linux folks have gotten together to develop a mobile phone operating system called Android. While the world is abuzz with this one, the question is with Palm, Apple, Symbian, Blackberry and Microsoft operating systems for phones, do we need another one...

We also are looking at a Google Mono Culture that will have some interesting consequences on what we do next. We have a heavy reliance on Google, and just like our dependence on Microsoft, we will have our rewards and risks by the dominance of one group over technology.

Not pinging on anyone, but the cell phone manufactures will be the ones that drive the adoption of the new OS. Consumers will have their say as well, which is something to think about as well. Moreover, given what we already have in the market, do we really need an open handset group when we have people who rip, fold, and otherwise make what were formerly closed systems into nice open systems as we have seen with just about every cell phone OS to date?

Google says:

It's important to recognize that the Open Handset Alliance and Android have the potential to be major changes from the status quo -- one which will take patience and much investment by the various players before you'll see the first benefits. But we feel the potential gains for mobile customers around the world are worth the effort. If you're a developer and this approach sounds exciting, give us a week or so and we'll have an SDK available. If you're a mobile user, you'll have to wait a little longer, but some of our partners are targeting the second half of 2008 to ship phones based on the Android platform. And if you already have a phone you know and love, check out mobile.google.com and make sure you have Google Maps for mobile, Gmail and our other great applications on your phone. We'll continue to make these services better and add plenty of exciting new features, applications and services, too. Source: Google

Is Google on the same path as Microsoft, probably not yet, but it will not be surprising to see more and more anti-Google press, with calls to break up the monopoly, nor do we think that Google will be laboring under the same kind of restrictions that Microsoft finds itself under.

Internet marketing and Online Annonsering

Inside AdWords: Advertise on more than 1,700 AM/FM radio stations

Inside AdWords: Advertise on more than 1,700 AM/FM radio stations

Inside AdWords: Two updates to site targeting

Inside AdWords: Two updates to site targeting

Now you can tell Google what Georgraphics region to associate with your site.

Google has just introduced a way for webmasters to inform them what country their site should be associated with.

To use this tool, simply follow these instructions:

1) Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account
2) Click on the Tools tab and then choose "set geographic target"
3) Choose your country/region from the drop-down list

Please note: you can only change your domain location association if you aren't using a country specific TLD. For example, if your site is mysite.com.au, the country Google automatically associates it with is Australia and you cannot change that.

Although you can't specify multiple countries for a site, you can specify a different country for each sub-domain or folder.

To do this, simply add each sub-domain or sub-folder to your Webmaster Tools account and specify the location for each one.

This is a great addition to Webmaster Tools and should solve a LOT of the webmaster questions I've seen about how to tell Google about a site's geographic market. It should also have a big impact on the way webmasters structure their sites from now on.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Facebook unveils ad platform.

After Myspace’s new advertising system a week ago, no it’s MS and Facebook on the wagon.

Facebook Inc. today announced plans for its own new advertising system aimed at allowing businesses to target advertising to users of the popular social networking site

More than 60 companies, have already signed up to use the new Facebook advertising system. Facebook ads have three parts, the company announced at an event in New York. The first will allow businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with the consumers they are targeting. The second will include a system that supports the spread of marketing messages virally through Facebook Social Ads. Finally, the system will allow the businesses to gather insights into users' activity on Facebook, according to Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook.

More than 100,000 new Facebook pages will be launched Tuesday by various advertisers, he added. On these pages, businesses will be able to add any content they want, including photos, videos and music. In addition, developers have already created a variety of applications for booking reservations or providing restaurant reviews that can be used on the commercial profile pages.

Facebook users will be able to share information about a business directly with the company by adding reviews or other information to that business' page.

Going beyond just profile matching of advertisements, Facebook allows consumers to self-identify with brands and becoming fans. In turn, brands can use these 'Fan-Sumers' as endorsers to their own trusted networks, resulting in trusted word of mouth.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Small Businesses and individuals will also be able to Advertise at MySpace.

Starting early next year, small businesses and individuals will be able to use templates to put together banner ads and specify the characteristics of the audiences they want to reach, MySpace executives said.

The ad buyers will be charged only for the viewers who click through to be taken to the advertisers' profiles.
The move takes advantage of MySpace's continuing effort to group its users into increasingly specific categories. For the last few months, the company has let dozens of big companies aim ads at users that MySpace has identified as sports fans or movie fans, for example

The announcement comes a day ahead of the planned introduction of a new advertising system by MySpace's chief rival, Facebook Inc. MySpace is larger by most measures, but Facebook is growing faster and lately has attracted more attention from technology companies.
Facebook's plan also is expected to use information from user profiles and may target ads to those users even as they view pages elsewhere on the Web.

MySpace's so-called hyper-targeting takes into account the obvious -- such as hobbies and interests posted by MySpace's 110 million registered users -- but also more subtle clues, such as the pictures they use in the background of their pages and what they blog about.

From Internet Advertising and Online annonsering

Google's Latest Update Causes Websites Lose PageRank Overnight

Google PageRank update has resulted in some popular blogs and news websites suddenly losing their PageRank. The PageRank penalization looks to be a reaction to websites that use link-building strategies that conflict with Google's webmaster guidelines.

Google does not approve of the use of paid links to raise rank, but until the latest release, has yet to punish any websites that use them. Some of the websites that experienced a drop were the Washington Post and Forbes.com who both had a PageRank of 7.5, now both are on 5.

Not all of the websites that experienced a drop were using paid links. Some of the blogs that lost PageRank are a part of blog networks, which have plenty of internal links between sites. This is a legitimate linking technique, but can in the automated eyes of Google look like an inappropriate linking strategy. Google's stance on link building communities is somewhat ambiguous,

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank"

It should be noted that there are a variety of different linking techniques, most of which are accepted by Google. The update looks to be Google vigorously enforcing its webmaster guidelines, which previously the misuse of, only resulted in sporadic punishment for a few websites.

The enforcement of the webmaster guidelines is happening, without any distinction being made between a website that blatantly manipulates the search algorithms, and those that use some paid links and appropriate link building strategies to deliver traffic.

In the case of some blogs losing PageRank, Google looks to have punished those who have used appropriate link building techniques. Controversy still reigns over the use of paid links, the latest response from Google is bound create even more.

From Internet Marketing and Online annonsering

Yahoo! Opens Up Homepage Exposure to External Sites

The sacred space that is the Yahoo! homepage is now providing exposure to websites outside of the Yahoo! network. This provides an invaluable traffic opportunity for websites with feature worthy content.

According to reports, Yahoo! started publishing links to external content in the "featured" section last Thursday. This is a significant move considering they have kept such exposure solely for Yahoo! content in the past.

The move is a part of Yahoo!'s attempts to become the gateway to the "entire" internet (well at least what Yahoo! has indexed) for more online users. This is an important move aimed at encouraging more people to start their online journey at Yahoo! and more than likely boost their search volumes.

"We are the only one of the old portals to do that... We are linking to the best stuff around the Web." said Tapan Bhat (VP of Front Doors at Yahoo!).

Information featured on the homepage will be selected by editors, with content from Forbes, Time, and the Wall Street Journal already receiving prime exposure. Yahoo! suggests that smaller sites will be featured as related links to avoid traffic overload.

Getting exposure on the Yahoo! homepage will be fairly difficult for the "average joe" website, but at least the opportunity now exists for sites that publish important news and content. It will also be a major attempt to draw users back - especially those who have reverted to search engines and other new portals for their browser homepage.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Google to war against link farms.

A major Google page rank update has punished large scale blog link farms and similar sites indulging in heavy cross linking by dramatically cutting their Google page rank scores.

There is some suggestion that the changes may be related to the sale of text link ads, but at this stage this is not backed by evidence, and a range of sites I checked that are selling text link ads were showing no change in page rank.

The only clear change appears to be among large scale blog networks and similar link farms, where each site in the network provides hundreds of outgoing links on each page of the blog to other blogs in the network, in some cases creating tens, even hundred of thousands of cross links. Previously such behavior has been rewarded by Google with high page rank, although it would now appear that this loop hole may now be shut.

The move by Google could well cause many smaller blog networks, including a number with funding, to close given their heavy reliance on text link ads and related sales that depend on strong Google page ranks for each site. Although traffic alone can and does sell ads on bigger sites, a drop from say PR7 to PR4 in one example makes the ad sell that much more difficult, particularly on blogs with little traffic.

From Internet marketing and Online annonsering

Online Seminars For Website Optimizers

Google announced that it will be offering online seminars about their new Website Optimizer program. The first two seminars are scheduled for next week.

The Introduction To Website Optimizer will be given Tuesday October 30 and registration can be done here.

The second on Creating and Launching Experiments will be held Thursday November 1 and can be registered for here.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering