Archive for August, 2009

Twitter Landing Pages

August 21, 2009

Several weeks ago while posting here I wondered aloud about the whereabouts of a business model for seemingly non-stop Twitter Tweeters.

One particular Twitter account I follow has posted over 66,452 Tweets.

Seemingly half of his Tweets are quotes while the balance appear to be general interest news stories.

I had clicked through to his Twitter page several times but had never clicked on one of his shortened urls until tonight.

In doing so, I believe I found the source of his passion for posting so many Tweets: A Twitter Landing Page.

Not just a web page with filled with quotes or news but a web page filled with Google Adsense Ad units.

Twitter Landing Pages

Twitter Landing Pages

On the surface, it doesn’t look like much but with 66,000+ optimized Tweets in the wild it may explain why this particular Twitter account holder is so prolific.

Sample Adwords My Client Center User Interface and API Access Request

August 20, 2009

Anytime a Google Adwords Professional or Adwords Management firm begins the Adwords account management process, its highly likely they will initiate either User Interface or API access to manage the account – or both.

Google Adwords API Access and Management

Google Adwords API Access and Management

Once initiated, the Google Adwords account holder will receive a message like the one above in their Adwords account where they can either accept or reject the account management request.

Once the request is accepted, the Adwords account manager will then see the new account in their My Client Center along with all of the other accounts they manage.

Adding an account to the manager’s My Client Center lets an Adwords Professional manage all of their client’s accounts from a single User Interface – their My Client Center.

WhoIs Database Speed

August 19, 2009

I registered a new domain today and was surprised at how fast my registration data propogated across the WhoIs Database and the internet – literally seconds after I had completed the domain registration process.

Who Is Data

Who Is Data

In fact, the domain registration information was available worldwide before the parked domain page from the registrar was activated.

ListeningCampaign.com

ListeningCampaign.com

All information may not yet truly travel across the internet at the speed of light but WhoIs database information appears to.

Twitter Accounts Being Hacked?

August 18, 2009

Today I received a direct message from my personal trainer that was out of character for two reasons.

1. The direct message was about weight loss – which neither of us are in need of.

2. My personal trainer barely knows how to use Twitter let alone direct message me.

Twitter Direct Message

Twitter Direct Message

Ordinarily, I would have chalked up this type of abnormal behavour as just that – abnormal.

However, my personal trainer is a pretty normal guy.

Once I received his direct message this evening I called him and asked him if he had sent it and he said no -what is it?

His response in turn made me question the series of Tweets his account posted yesterday that were also out of character.

His Tweets were about how much money he was making on Google.

Again totally out of character for my personal trainer.

Twitter Hacked

Twitter Hacked

What was even more revealing about his Tweets was they were each posted via API.

API is a term my personal trainer doesn’t know the meaning of – let alone have access to or use.

I decided to search Twitter for the url embedded in his Twitter Direct Message to see if it was being widely Tweeted by other Twitter users.

Twitter Accounts Being Hacked

Twitter Accounts Being Hacked

Yep – appears to be.

Based on the frequency and number of accounts Tweeting with this particular weight loss domain embedded in each Tweet leads me to conclude: Twitter accounts are being hacked en masse.

A search for “direct message” in Twitter search also reveals Twitter account holders asking their followers whether they sent the “weight loss” direct message or not.

The hacked accounts appear to be mostly lower Tweet volume accounts.

Online Advertising Offline Sales Lift Greater Than Television

August 17, 2009

comScore has released a study in conjunction with dunnhumbyUSA showing online advertising to be on par with television advertising in growing retail sales of consumer packaged goods brands.

From the comScore release:

Over the course of twelve weeks, online ad campaigns with an average reach of 40 percent of their target segment successfully grew retail sales of the advertised brands by an average of 9 percent. This compares to an average lift of 8 percent for TV advertising as measured by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) and published in their seminal research paper “How Advertising Works.”

Offline Sales Lift

Offline Sales Lift

comScore Executive Chairman Gian Fulgoni had the following comments about the comScore/dunnhumbyUSA research:

“These early results confirm the ability of online advertising to successfully build retail sales of CPG brands on par with the impact of television advertising. It is likely that the more precise targeting ability of the Internet – especially in terms of accurately reaching the desired demographic segment — is a key reason for its effectiveness. That is meaningful in and of itself, but when you take into account the fact that online advertising is generally less costly than television, these results take on even greater significance.”

Hernan Lopez, COO, Fox International Channels and dot.Fox Networks commented:

“While there is no doubt that advertising can increase sales, measuring that effect is very hard to do. comScore and dunnhumbyUSA’s robust methodology has without question achieved that goal and puts online display in the select club of media that can generate measurable sales in the short-term and build brands in the long term.”

I expect to see more studies like this one from comScore/dunnhumbyUSA comparing the effectiveness of online display advertising to other major media’s display advertising counterpart – particularly television’s – from both Madison Avenue and the Online Advertising Industry over the next several years.

Online display advertising will eventually have its day – when that day will arrive still remains to be seen.

Newspaper Enters Local Business Center Market

August 16, 2009

Today I saw an ad in my local newspaper for a new product they have launched called the Business Resource Center.

Business Resource Center

Business Resource Center

The new service appears similar to Google’s Local Business Center and looks like it provides all of the same features found in the Local Business Center.

The Business Resource Center touts the benefits of having a small business found under local searches and states:

Anything that you’d traditionally look for in the print yellow pages has become a “local search” on the Internet. For these queries, 75 percent of the top 100 keywords are non-branded, indicating that a majority of consumers have not decided on a specific brick and mortar store to do business with.

Local Search Business

Local Search Business

The site claims  “to stay on top of the internet so you don’t have to” and plans to provide the latest in local search, social networking, search engine marketing and social media optimization to its advertisers.

Local Business Resource Center

Local Business Resource Center

The newspaper’s local business resource center will provide advertisers with statistics like Google’s Local Business Center has begun providing in the US.

Local Business Resource Center Statistics

Local Business Resource Center Statistics

Like Google, the paper’s local Business Resource Center also lets advertisers “create and manage coupons and special offers to drive traffic and build customer loyalty”.

Local Business Center Coupons

Local Business Center Coupons

Similar to other directory and listing services, the newspaper’s business resource center alerts advertisers immediately when individuals rate or review their services, and allows them to reply directly to concerns or praise, giving businesses the ability to create stronger relationships with their customers.

Local Business Center Communications

Local Business Center Communications

The Beta version of their User Interface is clean and user friendly.

The site offers what appears to be primarily display advertising under keyword or category searches and claims to provide the largest local search audience reach.

Overall the newspaper’s launch of a Local Business Center is quite an accomplishment for any newspaper in this day and age.

Google Site Search: Half of Search Marketing Communications Indexed

August 15, 2009

Although my site has begun appearing in Google search results again, for some reason only 196 of my 500+ pages @SearchMarketingCommunications.com are getting crawled and indexed.

Site:SearchMarketingCommunications.com

Site:SearchMarketingCommunications.com

Any idea why only a fraction of my site is getting crawled and indexed in Google?

What steps do I need to take to get the 300+ missing pages crawled and indexed?

Google Maps Search Results

August 14, 2009

I have noticed in my Google Local Business Center stats, my primary marketing site MarketngPrinciples.com receives a lot of generic search queries from across the US each month.

After seeing some of the keyword phrases my site is placing for in Google Maps, I decided to to try and replicate the same search results from different parts of the US while on a summer road trip.

I cleared my cookies and ran the searches from a classic Google home page without logging into my Google account.

To verify the authenticity of the Google Maps search results my Local Business Center stats showed my site recieving, I also ran the same keyword search queries from my son’s laptop.

Somewhat surprisingly, my business “Advanced Marketing Consultants” places first for more than a handful of what would otherwise be considered valuable search queries.

Results like the number one result out of 287,034 for “marketing consultants” below also explain why my Google Local Business Center analytics report at least once a month fielding driving direction searches from locations as far away as one hundred miles from my office location.

Google Maps Search

Google Maps Search

Brand Sponsorship Change Costs

August 13, 2009

Today I visited the Sears Tower in Chicago to try out the new Chicago SkyDeck.

Actually, I visited the Willis Tower which was once called the Sears Tower.

A tour guide said the Willis Company bought three floors of the Tower and negotiated naming rights for the tower as part of their purchase.

While touring the observation deck, I also learned the tower will soon be repainted gray to reduce energy consumption and costs.

How would a company go about assigning a value to acquiring sponsorship / naming rights to one of America’s most recognized landmarks?

How could the company for which the tower was named justify allowing their brand sponsorship rights to expire?

These questions aside – today while asking my hotel’s concierge about a tour of the tower, I asked for details about the Sears Tower because I wasn’t able to recall the tower’s new name.

After the concierge answered my tour questions, I then asked for the new name of the tower.

Once he told me Willis Tower, I then asked him how long he thought it would be before the general public would embrace the new towers namesake let alone the locals.

He replied, he thought locals would always refer to the tower as Sears Tower.

The concierge wasn’t able to predict when tourists or the general public would forget the tower’s original name and call it by its new name.

I am not sure how either Willis or Sears justified their brand sponsorship change costs, but I am pretty sure theirs will eventually become a case study for appraising and valuing the costs of changing brand sponsorship.

US Highway Construction Updates on Google Maps

August 12, 2009

If you came here looking for US Highway construction updates on Google Maps, I don’t think that particular mashup has yet been created.

I am traveling from Lake le Homme Dieu, MN to Chicago, IL by car today and searched for an up to date map – ideally on Google Maps – of the construction zones I will encounter along the way.

Lake le Homme Dieu to Chicago Road Map

Lake le Homme Dieu to Chicago Road Map

The US Department of Transportation has a National Traffic and Road Closure site that links to each individual states traffic information sites.

National Traffic and Road Closure Information

National Traffic and Road Closure Information

However, each respective state and local road construction updates data hasn’t yet been mashed up into a real time Google US Highway Construction Updates Map.

There is probably a business model in this idea.