Google has replaced its traditional logo with Neckties and Bow Ties to honor Father’s Day 2010.
Google Father's Day 2010 Doodle
Since it was almost 100 degrees here today and I spent the better part of the day in the lake, my visit to the Google home page was a close as I came to seeing either type of tie.
Google Adwords Editor will no longer support Local Business Ads in future releases.
Instead, Adwords Editor will support Location Extensions.
More about the transition from Google:
AdWords Editor Location Extensions
Why doesn’t online advertising spend alone qualify an individual or company for Adwords certification?
Adwords Certification Status
Businesses as a rule won’t spend money on search advertising that doesn’t produce results.
Individuals and the companies they work for who produce results online through Google’s search advertising products are by definition qualified.
In this video learn about the new features in Google Commerce Search 2.0, including additional merchandising controls for retailers and an improved online search experience for shoppers.
Google Commerce Search, initially launched just seven months ago, is an enterprise-grade website search solution hosted in Google’s cloud and designed for specific retail needs like parametric sorting and fast search result loading.
In this second release of Google Commerce Search 2.0 find:
- More merchant customization: Today we’re launching a full merchandising dashboard, giving merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering – with no custom code so marketers and product merchandisers can do all of this themselves. New intuitive retailer controls like time-based promotions, full left-hand panel facet control and simple product ranking rules mean seasonal optimization on the fly.
- Unparalleled shopper experience: With query autocompletion, retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time, as they type, without any custom coding. Search quality improvements make GCS faster and more relevant than before. Because it’s hosted in the Google cloud, search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. Spelling and stemming dictionaries and new custom synonyms mean that shopping on a retail site can be as easy and accurate as searching on Google.com.
- Better browsing and navigation: Though more and more shoppers are turning directly to the search bar on retail sites when they’re looking to make a purchase, some people will always prefer to navigate through different categories and discover new products. Now, Google Commerce Search allows visitors to shop by browsing around your site as well as searching directly for products.
I saw my first Promoted Tweet tonight in Twitter’s Trending: Worldwide list.
The Promoted Tweet?
Toy Story 3 from DisneyPixar.
Toy Story 3 Promoted Tweet in Trending Worldwide
DisneyPixar’s Promoted Tweet also found its way into Twitter search results for Toy Story 3.
Promoted Tweets In Twitter Search Results
Whether any of this attention on Twitter translates into measurable increased word of mouth for the film or better yet increased box office sales remains to be seen.
Collective – “The Audience Engine” has produced their fourth annual Display Advertising Study.
Colllective The Audience Engine
The following were the key takeaways from the Collective study:
Data and the Growth of Audience-Based Buying
For the past four years, Collective’s “Display Advertising Study” has charted the evolution of the ad network and its role in online display. This year’s report offers a comprehensive analysis of the digital display-advertising ecosystem in its most demanding year, and the trends that impact how brand advertisers and agencies address audience selling and buying.
Among the key findings in this year’s study:
• Advertisers and agencies demanding greater audience insights, analytics and optimization. Agencies and advertiser continue to rely on comScore and Neilson (62 percent and 53 percent respectively) to measure online media. However, 37 percent say they rely on publisher and ad network data to measure online media more than Quantcast (27 percent).
• Stronger performance metrics needed to evaluate campaign success. About two-thirds (64 percent) percent continue to use click-thru rates (CTRs) to evaluate ad network performance. The study finds a disparity between senior- and lower-level agency decision makers, with the latter relying heavily on CTRs and the former leaning on other metrics.
• Video continues to gain market share, with “targeting” by far the most important factor in choosing a video ad network partner. Overall, 57 percent of those surveyed say they were likely or extremely likely to shift dollars from TV to online video in 2010. That percentage surges to 67 percent among large spenders. Targeting is the leading reason for selecting a video ad network, preferred by 65 percent, followed by reach at 51 percent and price at 45 percent.
What I found most interesting was that lower level staffers consider CTR the most valuable metric in measuring an online advertising campaigns success while top level staffers don’t consider the CTR as an important performance benchmark.
All advertising should produce results, yet what constitutes results for both advertisers and their agencies continues to remain unclear.
Download Collective’s Display Advertising Study.
Got a problem with your Twitter account?
Me too…
I once had over 7,500 Tweets in my account and now Twitter shows just over 1,000.
Twitter.com/TimCohn
To report issues with a Twitter account, visit the Twitter Help Center @ http://support.twitter.com/ or
Twitter Help Center
Tweet @support to report your Twitter problem.
Twitter Support
I learned about Twitter’s support department from Dan Gordon via Jessica Merrell over @Blogging4Jobs.
Support Twitter
I contacted Twitter’s support department and received the following email reply which includes the status of my Twitter trouble ticket.
Twiiter Support Response
Based on Twitter’s timely response and knowledge of this particular problem, I suspect my total Tweets count will be corrected soon.
Google Advertisers can use the Analyze Competition feature to compare Google AdWords performance to that of advertisers in similar categories.
With data on the competitive landscape, advertisers can then make more informed decisions about which types of optimization changes are right for their account.
Watch this video to learn more about the Google Adwords Analyze Competition feature.
The Adwords Certification program exam materials have increased in size to incorporate changes to the Adwords program since both the Adwords launch and the advent of the Adwords Certification program.
The Adwords Certification program study materials now cover the following fifteen sections.
Adwords Exam Materials 1-7
Adwords Exam Materials 8-14
Adwords Exam Materials 15
Display Advertising on the Google Content Network and YouTube are two new areas of study devoted to Google’s display advertising products within each of their respective distribution channels.
Google plans to offer an advanced Google Adwords exam on Google Display Advertising at some point in the future.
Its been a long week and I don’t have much left to say other than this is where I will be spending my weekend:
Google Certification Program
Search Marketing Communications 
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