The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week published a patent application (No. 20060059044) by Google engineers for targeting advertising based, in part, on the location of a wireless access point (WAP) to which a user connects to access the internet, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox). Other factors for serving ads include the behavioral profile of the WAP’s users and the WAP owner’s vertical market.
Online marketplace CafePress has added tag-based targeting capabilities to ads on websites in its affiliate program, allowing webmasters and bloggers to serve TopicAds ads based on the tags on their content, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox). When a visitor arrives at a webpage, an appropriate ad is served based on the relevancy and timeliness of the tags placed there by the affiliate.
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Advertising.com’s third annual survey of interactive publishers has found that publishers expect increased spending for online branding from advertisers; increased support for video, rich media and behavioral targeting; and continued growth for large creative formats, MarketingVox reports. Publishers expect web-based direct-response advertisers to account for the largest share of online ad spend (58.5 percent), but they anticipate more than 32 percent will come from more traditional, brand-focused advertisers, up from 26.5 percent in 2005.
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The helpful butler Jeeves is now officially no more, and Ask.com is officially here - with a new main page, a new logo, a simplified interface (see adjacent pic) and new tools, including enhanced maps and driving directions, encyclopedia search and web-based desktop search - CNET reports (via MarketingVox). Ask.com offers a new customizable “toolbox” with shortcuts to 10 default search tools, including maps, images, weather, dictionary and local search.
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Avenue A/Razorfish forecasts that search marketing’s share of online advertising spend will decrease in 2006 because brand marketers will boost their online budgets - some by 20-30 percent - writes ClickZ (via MarketingVox), citing the agency’s “2006 Digital Media Outlook” report. However, verticals such as travel and technology that tend to focus on direct marketing will likely be increasing offline spend instead, as in the case of Travelocity’s use of TV advertising.
Yahoo Search Marketing has informed advertisers that it has altered its trademark policy and will no longer allow competitor bids for keywords containing trademarks, starting March 1, according to a post by Jeremy Palmer on ReveNews (via MarketingVOX). According to Yahoo’s email to its advertisers, the move is intended “to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks.”
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DoubleClick’s Performics has issued the fourth-quarter results of its Performics 50 index related to paid search advertising, and according to its “Search Trend Report Q4 2005″ report (pdf), four trends marked the end of the year, MarketingVox reports. First, search campaigns are getting larger, with 4Q05 total number of clicks for campaigns tracked by the index increasing 107 percent from 4Q04, and the average number of active keywords kept under management by marketers increasing 58 percent. Second, cost per keyword (CPK) and cost per click (CPC) rose dramatically during the holiday season.
MSN’s adCenter, still in beta, may not be in the running when it comes to search volume, but apparently quality - as a result of the demographic data it uses - is trumping quantity, producing better results for advertisers than Google or Yahoo, according to yet another search expert, writes InternetRetailer (via MarketingVOX). “Were seeing better results on MSN than on Google or Yahoo,” Dave Williams, chief strategist of search engine marketing firm 360i, is quoted as saying.
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All digital advertising segments - display, search, rich media, DVR, in-game and mobile - will grow in the next five years, reaching $23.5 billion in ad spending, according to analyst firm Parks Associates, writes ClickZ (via MarketingVOX). Digital media will account for 10 percent of overall ad spending in 2010, Parks forecasts, saying in 2005 digital media accounted for 5 percent, or $9.45 billion.
The Kelsey Group predicts that the global market for local search, including online Yellow Pages, will grow at an annual rate of 30.5 percent in the next five years, reaching $13 billion in 2010 from the $3.4 billion in 2005, report MediaPost and ClickZ (via MarketingVOX). Interactive classifieds are forecast to grow 7.9 percent per year, reaching $21.1 billion in 2010, from $14.4 billion in 2005. Kelsey also predicted very high annual growth for pay-per-call.
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Most marketers - 71 percent - think Google search ads are effective, compared with 62 percent saying so about Yahoo and 49 percent about MSN, reports MediaPost (via MarketingVox), citing a survey by Outsell. Advertisers who thought Google performed best were the ones with the smallest marketing budgets: Those who said Google ads were “extremely” effective had total budgets averaging $3.7 million, whereas the budgets of those saying Yahoo and MSN were extremely effective averaged $4.6 million. Outsell also predicted that spending on online marketing would grow 19 percent this year, with search increasing 26 percent.
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Scribner is turning to cell phones to promote Stephen King’s new novel, Cell, Mediapost reports. The plan calls for ring tones with King’s voice and text messages that will be sent to 100,000 cell phone users that say “The next call you take may be your last…. Join the Stephen King VIP Club at www.cellthebook.com.” Members will receive an audio message via cell phone from Mr. King on Jan. 24 that will advertise additional content on the site.
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Microsoft announced the launch of its adCenter Incubation Lab (adLab), a joint effort between MSN’s adCenter and Microsoft Research, MarketingVOX reports. It is “a state-of-the-art lab in Beijing with a mission to research and incubate advanced technologies for MSN’s adCenter, designed to provide advertisers with rich targeting capabilities based on audience intelligence information,” Microsoft said in its statement. The company highlighted one of those innovative technologies: video hyperlink ads.
The technology “can detect product items displayed on a television screen during a show or commercial,” Microsoft said. Consumer can then “zoom into products featured on the television screen and click through to detailed product descriptions and information on where the products can be bought,” according to the announcement.
Instead of using incentive programs to sell cars in 2006, General Motors marketing will lean towards the idea of providing “the best product at the best price,” Adweek reports.
“We’re not going to market the deal, but our competitive MSRP advantage segment by segment,” said Mark LaNeve, GM’s vice president of North American sales, service and marketing. “Last year the product story got lost in the corporate story.”
Advertisers in the U.S. and Canada spent $5.75 billion on search engine marketing (SEM) in 2005 - 44 percent more than in 2004 - according to “The State of Search Engine Marketing 2005″ report, released today (Monday) by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), which predicts that SEM spending in North America will reach $11 billion in 2010, MarketingVOX reports. The survey found that 83 percent of SEM spending, or $4.7 billion, was spent in 2005 on paid placement.
Though four out of five advertisers report they engage in organic search engine optimization (SEO), it accounted for only some 11 percent of overall spending.
Paid search, which generated an estimated $10 billion globally in 2005, is expected to grow 41 percent in 2006, or more than $14 billion, with market leader Google increasing its lead - and net revenue by more than 58 percent - during the year, according to research notes by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, reports ClickZ (via MarketingVox). In 2005, Google held 64 percent market share. Rashtchy also raised the one-year price target for Google’s stock from $445 to $600, citing its market dominance and new initiatives such as Google Base.
A technology start-up offers answers to questions from business travelers who have no access to the internet, writes The New York Times. Users can register at AskMeNow and download free software onto a cellphone or BlackBerry. Then, they can call a toll-free number at any time to ask a question, and they receive an answer via text message. The answers carry an advertiser message at the bottom, and marketers can choose recipients of their messages based on a detailed profile of user preferences built from the questions they ask. Marketers can also choose who receives their ads based on keywords the users use.
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Google users may soon begin to see some heretofore rarely seen sights: not merely overhead views of the Kremlin, but ads with actual logos and graphics instead of plain text - a change prompted by Google’s recent negotiations with AOL, according to the New York Times (via MarketingVox), which cites two executives close to those talks. In addition to paying $1 billion to buy a five percent stake in AOL, Google will give $300 million worth of advertising to AOL on Google websites, including graphical ad units, which would also be made available to other advertisers.
AOL will bid on the advertisements in Google’s auction and will be charged out of its $300 million allotment.
Yahoo, in a move aimed at either easing usability for readers or courting advertisers, has announced that it will limit the number of characters allowed in ads, from 190 to just 70, Mediapost reports. Yahoo has said that shorter ads are easier for users to read, but some search marketers point out that, as Google limits ads to 70 characters, Yahoo is courting advertisers by aligning with Google, making it easier for advertisers to run the same campaigns with both search engines. It will also make it easier for advertisers to test one search engine against the other.
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Having officially launched its “Advertise on this site” program last month, a couple of months after rumors of the feature first emerged, Google’s link, which now appears next to all its placements on publishers using AdSense, has begun to rile up some publishers, who have effectively been opted in to the “site targeting” program that lets advertisers target specific sites, MarketingVox writes.
One problem, in the eyes of complaining publishers, is that Google is essentially taking away advertisers from them.
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