Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Applications, Google Apps, Google Apps Premier, Google Gears, Google Juice, Google PageRank, Measurements, Open Kimono

So Google launched Ad Planner yesterday at an Advertising Research Foundation event in New York City. Ad Planner is an online analytical tool that gives advertisers deep information on which sites their targeted audience is visiting. Designed to make media buying more efficient, it puts Google in direct competition with comScore and Nielsen Online. A key difference here is that Ad Planner is free.

Ad Planner allows users to enter demographics of target audiences along with potential sites on which to advertise into its system.  The system then, presumably through data gleaned from web servers, will then spit out sites that an advertiser should consider for a media plan.  It would seem that it is an easy to use, inexpensive system to use.

Subscription fees from survey based services such as comScore and Nielsen can be exorbitant.  This further democratizes the web.

But free can come with a cost and that’s what others are worried about.

Google, in this capacity, may not be acting as an independently-owned third party delivering unbiased information.  There’s always a chance that the system may be tweaked to produce results that favor Google-owned property.  And, and the launch yesterday, Google product manager told a questioner that Google will get its data from a “fusion” of different data sources.  A follow up question as to whether or not Google will accept external audits was left unanswered.

That’s not a great sign.  But Google is now powerful enough that they can get away with not answering that while it brings in users.  Users like, quite frankly, me.

Thus is the nature of the web.

No Comments » Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Search, Paid Media, SEM, SEM and SEO, SEO, SEO and SEM, SERM, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo!, search

My guess is a tentative, temporary yes.

If you aren’t clued in yet, Yahoo! and Google have come to an agreement that allows Yahoo! to display Google paid search results on keyword queries on Yahoo! Yahoo! can now tap into Adsense and Adwords. The agreement is for 10 years and is not exclusive, meaning that Yahoo can create similar agreements with other parties.

There are pluses and minuses to this agreement. But for now, let’s focus on smaller agenices that serve smaller businesses and smaller businesses themselves.

The upside is that there could be less to learn and more reach for small advertisers. Using paid search can get you results on Yahoo! It may be unnecessary to do anything broad-based. That’s a good thing. It may make it easier to enter the arena of local search.

As AdAge points out:

When Google search ads are mixed in with Yahoo search ads for a particular search query, Google will almost always win the better placement, according to search marketers, because it has a better ad-matching and monetization engine. And if Google consistently wins, marketers may be less inclined to bother using the Yahoo system, instead choosing to put their optimization efforts toward a single system. In other words, less to learn, less to manage.

That’s the good part.

Now the down side. It could get more expensive to place search ads. Google’s system tends to be more expensive - and effective than Yahoo’s! That expensiveness will now be extended into the Yahoo! sphere, likely devaluing Yahoo’s! own paid search results.

My thoughts are that, at least initially, this will bode well for locals who are looking to add paid search to their mix. I’m thinking that because I’m guessing the biggest barrier is lack of knowledge on how start off effectively…as opposed to cost.

But that benefit may not last for long if competition becomes to intense for localized keyword searches. Because this does decrease paid search alternatives.

No Comments » Posted on June 17th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Abraham Harrison LLC, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Election Strategy, Facebook, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Online Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Yahoo!

I’ve blogged about this before.

The internet can be, in my strongly held opinion, a very effective marketing vehicle for persuasive outreach. Most political media consultants don’t believe this or understand this or want to believe or understand this. Many of them get their consulting fees by putting together television and/or radio commercials and buying media time. They view the internet as a fundraising and grassroots organizing medium.

WebGuild has come up with some telling numbers. So far, in 2008:

Barack Obama has spent $1,000,000 on Google ads.
Hillary Clinton has spent $67,000.

Obama spent $99,341 on Yahoo Web Ads.
Clinton has spent $9,186.

Obama spent $58,000 on Yahoo search ads.
Clinton $0.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zippo.

Obama spent $4,900 on Facebook advertising.
Clinton $0.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zippo.Oh, and on Twitter (this one’s on me):

Barack Obama has 24,188 followers. Barack Obama is following 24, 258 people.
Hillary Clinton has 3078 followers. Hillary Clinton is following 0 people.

WebGuild then goes on to point out that the Clinton didn’t pay internet related firms a penny for February ‘08.  Don’t know if that’s because they didn’t have any scheduled payments or they just didn’t fork over any payments period.  IN that same time , the Obama campaign paid internet consultants $93, 162.

But wait!  Her campaign ended up paying her ad consultants $997,000 and her media consultants $2,540,000.

Joe Trippi is right.  Hillary Clinton’s campaign is the last campaign of the 20th century.  Hopefully.

No Comments » Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Advertising, Advertising Networks, DoubleClick, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Applications, Google Search, Google-DoubleClick, Googleverse

Google is one step closer to turning on a virtual network for “CCTVs” the likes of which London has never seen. Instead of cameras, however, Google will merge with DoubleClick to create the most pervasive panopticon on our personal browsing, clicking, and buying habits. Via News.com

European antitrust regulators on Tuesday approved Google’s $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick, paving the way for a blockbuster deal in Internet search and publisher-based advertising tools.

Approval by the European Commission, which came without conditions, had largely been expected to occur this week. The Commission’s announcement comes three weeks before its April 2 deadline, in which it had to determine whether to nix the deal.

Privacy groups and many of Google’s rivals, such as Microsoft, were hoping the Commission, as well as U.S. antitrust regulators, would kill the deal. But the Commission’s passage clears the last large regulatory hurdle Google faced in getting the deal done.

No Comments » Posted on March 11th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Advertising, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Buzz Marketing, Citizen Generated Media, Citizen Journalism, Client Service, Cluetrain Manifesto, Conversation, Conversation Audit, Conversation Marketing, Corporate Blog, Crisis Management, Customer Ratings, Customer Reviews, Customer Service, Customer Supprt, Email Etiquette, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Influential Brand Advocates, Internet Culture, Internet Strategy, Managing Conversation, Market Research, Marketing, Marketing Conversation, Markets are Conversations, Messaging Online, New Marketing, Online Advertising, Online Conversation, Online Engagement, Online Evangelism, Online Influence, Online Intelligence, Online Marketing, Online Outreach, Online PR, Online Participation, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Reviewers, Online Reviews, Online Strategy, Popular Culture, Promotional SEO, Protective SEO, Real Life, SEM, SEM and SEO, SEO, SEO and SEM, SERM, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Engine Strategy, Search Engines, Search Reputation Management, Viral Advertising, Viral Marketing, Viral Media, Viral Propagation, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Ads, Web Advertisers, Web Advertising, Web Metrics, Web Strategy, Website Design, Word-of-Mouth, Word-of-Mouth Marketing, Yelp, search

This morning I read two important posts written by Greg Sterling on his blog Screenwerk. One is Nielsen - WebVisible Data on Local Search. The other is New Findings on SMBs and User Reviews. It left me more and more convinced how local businesses must view the internet as a marketing and business development source, and as a customer relations and reputation management tool.

Read more…

No Comments » Posted on October 11th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

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