DISQUS

I was just there for the first time the other night with Bruce. Great place.

Not surprising. IMO – Online advertising is all about inertia and momentum.

Inertia is the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body moving in straight line to stay moving in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.

Momentum is where the faster an object is moving, the harder it is to stop.

For example… If someone is busy socializing with friends and not researching products or ready to buy anything, you will be wasting your money on direct response ads.

In that situation, the consumer’s inertia & momentum are working against you. Getting the consumer to stop what they are doing or abruptly change direction is very difficult.

If you can match your ads with the speed and direction of the consumer, you win.

More information can be found on the "Mobile Marketing Association" website
(Click on signature link)

I saw this today as well.

Mobile Hotel Bookings Show ROI in Recession
(Click on signature link)

Chrome... What a joke! - Let me know when they can put their own toolbar on it.

Still no themes for me... My Wife has that same one... I'm jealous.

Strange but true... The web's Best Hawaii Vacation blog is actualy written by Andy Beal's wife Sheila.

Who would have thought that someone from North Carolina would be the author of Hawaii's best vacation blog but it's true. (Her blog is simply better than all the local blogs I read)

Sorry Andy but I'm going to call BS on this one until I read the testing methodology.

Please point a link to the methodology if you can find one. ;^) It sounds like a bunch of smoke & mirrors to me.

I've seen a lot of studies make this type of claim but I have yet to see a study like this that I could not rip apart.

I can’t use Chrome at work because of the info that appears in the new tabs. Even though the frequently visited websites are visited before I start work, during lunch and after I clock out, there they are for all to see. It would create a potentially embarrassing situation if ALL of the most visited sites were not work related.

Even worse… Most of my most frequently visited websites revolve around politics and religion. I have extreme views on both subjects and I try my best to keep that sort of thing private.

I know that I can open a new “incognito” window but then all the cookies get erased and it’s a pain to log into everything, every time, etc…

The personal info display makes Chrome more of a professional hazard than anything.

@Jonathan - Thanks for clearing that up. All this time, I had assumed you were a Buddhist like myself. ;)

Do you have a link to the iGoogle Widgets?

Thanks,
Dave.

Tamar who???

JK! Congratulations!

You have a point… Google didn’t need to say that. (Everyone else in the world would have said that sooner or later anyway)

So… Microsoft recently purchased the online advertising/ad-serving giant aQuantitive which was partly in response to Google purchasing Double Click, etc, etc… It’s turning into a two sided arms race.

Watch for Microsoft to purchase a web analytics package Omniture and then make it free and then Commission junction in an effort to go tit-for-tat with Google Analytics & Performics. (And on and on…) It’s only a matter of time before they start purchasing companies like Axiom Data Corporation and then the major web hosting facilities.

Anyway… The part that makes me nervous is the consolidation of power into only two companies. I don’t want to post a long-winded rant about this so I’ll just stop right here.

Mahoo! ;^)

Mashable just posted that Online Video ads convert?
http://mashable.com/2008/01/22/online-video-sta...

Done - Please send an email when you get back on track.

Aloha,
Dave.

Here you go. Someone drew some extra lined on it to help with the depth perception. You can watch it go both ways at the same time.
http://gallery.krunk4ever.com/d/15705-1/all-spi...

Pick Me!

Awesome! - I like the primary colors. I love anything that says Google.

Hi Vlad,

I use dofollow on my blog as well. However... I'm starting to look like a comment smammer because my signature looks like anchor text. The problem is, I've been using this name as a signature since 2003. This is how people know me.

When I came up with this name, I thought it would be good for personal branding. (I live in Hawaii & do SEO) Everyone loves Hawaii & SEO and my hope was that those positive feelings would transfer to me in some way. (So far so good)

It was never a problem until people recently started implementing dofollow on thier blogs and second guessing every comment and signature.

I like the name I've been using and I don't feel like changing it.

Aloha,
Dave.

Hi Vlad,

I use dofollow on my blog as well. However... I'm starting to look like a comment smammer because my signature looks like anchor text. The problem is, I've been using this name as a signature since 2003. This is how people know me.

When I came up with this name, I thought it would be good for personal branding. (I live in Hawaii & do SEO) Everyone loves Hawaii & SEO and my hope was that those positive feelings would transfer to me in some way. (So far so good)

It was never a problem until people recently started implementing dofollow on thier blogs and second guessing every comment and signature.

I like the name I've been using and I don't feel like changing it.

Aloha,
Dave.

They usually count “View Conversions” in those studies. (A person viewed the banner and then made a purchase - Without clicking an ad.)

They do A/B studies where one group of people sees banner ads everywhere and the other group never sees only see public service banner ads. Then they measure the difference between the two groups to help figure out what % of the “View Conversions” should be attributed to sales.

You can do something like this on your own if you know what your average conversion rate per ad group.

Advertising.com has a self serve program where people who visit your website will receive a cookie and start to see banner ads after they leave your website.

You can apply the service to only one or two ad groups and landing pages.

If your conversion rate goes up for those ad groups and the others stay about the same, you should have a good idea of how the banners influenced the purchase, even though it’s doubtful that very many people will have actually click on them.

It looks like the Personalized PPC results story just broke.

Search for:weather forecast
Then search for: Hawaii Vacation
Then search again for: weather forecast

See any difference when you repeat the first query?

I believe they are working very hard to get this right. As soon as they do, you can believe the next thing they release will be Personalized PPC results. This will likely help Google profit by zeroing-in on people who already prefer "Brand X" with an ad thus increasing the click-through rate. If you clicked the ad before, why not improve the position to help increase the chance of you clicking it again? It might already be happening as part of the new quality score, I haven't tested it but I'm keeping an eye on it.

Thanks Andy,

“AC encourages its writers to include lots of keywords.”

So does the New York Times… Just search for “New York Times SEO”

For example, when the Pope died, Times reporters headlined stories with titles like "Papacy Change" or "Pilgrims converge on the Vatican." They have now trained many editors and producers to write content friendly to both users and searchers. "We encouraged them to use "Pope John Paul dies"

I just browsed several Legal & Law articles on AC… Nothing unusual there.
The articles about credit had some keywords bold and it looks like the author wanted to earn some extra money via the revenue share but it was only something that a person like me would notice. It wasn’t that bad.

Other articles link the relevant keywords in the article text, back to the main category in a similar way that Wikipedia does it. Again… Nothing too distracting for the reader.

They use the technique on an article about the new iPhone… Every time the word iPhone is mentioned, it links to the main category page. (Maybe they’re trying to rank highly for that phrase)

But… they also use the same technique with the word “Sand” (How much is ranking well for “Sand” worth?)
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/21580/...

Most of the ads I saw were not from Google. I saw banner ads from the Tacoda, Tribal Fusion & BlueLithium ad networks. I also saw ads that were served by AdRevolver so I assume those were direct ad sales. (It might be a different story if it were All Google, All the time.

Maybe I just have low standards for what sort of optimization & monetization techniques are acceptable but I don’t see anything tricky, improper or evil about AC.