November 9, 2008

2008 Election: Who Won Online?

Posted by Lisa Raehsler under online marketing, social media, social networking | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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Obama's campaign Facebook page
Obama

We all know who won the election, but both Barack Obama and John McCain relied on online media and social networking more than in any past election.  Who formed the best connections and communities online? Did this really have an impact on the outcome?

Consider the following:

According to Pewinternet.org, a record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the Internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views, and mobilize others.

Democrats are more active online than Republicans and are more likely to participate in online communities. They say they’re more heavily influenced in their voting decisions by information they find online, according to data released by Rubicon Consulting.

Perhaps the most interesting /disturbing of all to me is Google endorses Barack Obama.

Some Fun Numbers from the Internet

Google Searches: Obama-related search terms were used almost twice as much as McCain in the last 30 days, according to data from Google Insights for Search. Google has also has created a special 2008 US Election Trends page.

Website Traffic: According to compete.com, Obama’s website had twice as many visitors in the past year as McCain.

Link Power: Obama’s website has many more external links pointing to it than McCain’s website, according to Yahoo Site Explorer.

YouTube: Both candidates have YouTube Channels, but Obama’s channel has significantly more views:

Facebook: With more than 110 million active users, Obama had more supporters from this community.

  • Obama: 2.2 million supporters
  • McCain: 192,000 supporters

Even with this small snapshot of numbers from around the Internet, it’s clear to see the Web presence of Obama’s campaign has been significant and pivotal in the way it has rallied supporters and formed communities around the now president-elect.

And now, your moment of Zen:

Google hearts Obama

Google hearts Obama

 

July 30, 2008

Make Mine a Double: Google Double Serving in Content Network

Posted by Lisa Raehsler under PPC | Tags: , , , , |
1 Comment 

I recently wrote a post about the great Google content network and the new super campaigns available for advertisers in Adwords. The new features, flexibility, and transparency are expected to make the content network much more efficient for advertisers.

Unfortunately, today I captured a screen shot of Google double serving image ads on the content network. Double serving is “Displaying more than one ad for the same company or person at a time”. Google has a policy against double serving Adwords ads.

How does this happen? I am told it can occur because of contextual targeting and site-targeting in one account. I’m surprised Google’s technology isn’t smart enough to recognize this and prevent it.

But on the other hand, if you wanted to do this yourself, it would be pretty simple to get double exposure? You would just have to set-up two different campaigns. One that is site-targeted, and one with keywords using the new placement feature to target the same sites. Right?

Well, enjoy the technical error folks.

Double dipping? Google serves 2 ads on one page

Double dipping? Google serves 2 ads on one page

 

July 10, 2008

Google Content Network and “Super Campaigns”

Posted by Lisa Raehsler under PPC, online marketing | Tags: , , , , |
1 Comment 

The Online Marketing Mavens love content. There have been a lot of improvements lately on the Google content network. I can tell you from my recent experience, there appears to be some major glitches with Yahoo’s content network (for example, campaigns not even running).

Search engines are different from the content network. In search engines, the keywords we use indicate our intent- what we want to research or buy. In the content network, Google matches ads with the content on web pages. We’re reading the content, not actively searching for anything when we see the ads. This can be accomplished by (1) contextual targeting or (2) placement targeting.

(1) Contextually targeted ads are keyword triggered (it is the default automatic opt-in). Google will show your ads on web pages where the keywords appear on the page. This is not just a straight-up keyword match, but also based on fancy linguistic processing technology. For example, if you sell coffee, Google will match it to websites about drinking coffee and knows not to show it for the Java programming language.

(2) Placement targeting is much easier to grasp because you simply select specific sites you want your ad to run on. I want to run on nytimes.com or something. You can identify placements by domain name, demographics, topics, or categories.

Early in the content network there were several problems. We couldn’t tell what sites we were served on, and had little control. Consider the previous coffee example. Targeting the content network can be a problem if you didn’t want your ad along side an article about getting scalded by coffee. So this can be a problem for the sophisticated marketer.

Recent improvements have made the content network a much more viable option for advertisers. Now, we have more advanced options:

  • placement reports lists the sites where the ads show up
  • pricing options of CPC or CPM
  • controls to exclude sites or categories (ie, exclude user generated content or parked domains).

Just when you thought it was heaven on Google Earth, along comes another new feature currently in testing. My Google rep calls it the “Super Campaign”. Now the worlds of keyword targeting and placement targeting combine. In the Super Campaign, you can target both placements and keywords in the same campaign. In a perfect application, you could target shopping sites and use keywords related to only to coffee. Only showing up for shopping content about coffee.

You can see in the screen shot how this looks within the Adwords interface. Can’t wait for his to be widely available to test on new campaigns!

The Super Campaign could obviously lead to an entirely new approach to content targeting. Think about targeting health sites, but only with keywords for exercise (not healthy foods). Or general news sites and targeting certain type of news with keywords, only content about “gas prices”.

The possibilities are endless…

UPDATE 7-21-08: The new option appears to be available to all advertisers now. It’s accessible by drilling down to the AdGroup level in Google Adwords.

 

July 1, 2008

Flash and Search: Best Friends?

Posted by Lisa Raehsler under PPC, SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[3] Comments 

I love algorithms: “Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.”

Late yesterday Google and Adobe announced a collaboration to make dynamic web content more searchable. Finally, millions of sites that use Flash technology will be searchable without the need for companies to alter them.

Search engines currently index very limited data about Flash sites which has caused major challenges for designers in marrying creative, dynamic content, and searchability.

What will be indexed by Google? Google says all of the text that users can see in the Flash file will be indexed and can be used to match query terms in Google searches. If the Flash site contains only images, they will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. These elements will be invisible to Google. Although they will be able to better crawl links in the site, they won’t be able to read the anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

How will this impact PPC paid search? Will Google use this new algorithm for the Google AdsBot? Since the AdsBot collects only landing page information to apply to quality scores, it makes sense this technology would eventually be used to read Flash landing pages. This would allow advertisers to offer a more customized and dynamic user experience and better meet the needs of searchers. Fer sur.

Yahoo also plans to support searchable SWF. Hurry up, Yahoo…

 

June 6, 2008

My Boss Read My Blog Plus 4 Other Reasons to Care About Your Personal Online Reputation

Posted by Lisa Raehsler under search, social media | Tags: , , |
[7] Comments 

I just recently found out that my boss isn’t as square as I thought. He’s been using the Internet to find things and research people. Maybe he is reading this right now…

There are a million reasons to care about what you say and what is said about you online. Savvy marketers have known this for a long time and have used online sources to establish credibility and pimp their businesses.

Here are a few other thoughts on managing your personal online reputation:Photo from MySpace

1. Potential employers can search for you online. You don’t want them to read your blog rants or see that awesome photo of you on MySpace with a giant beer while playing drinking Jenga.

2. Competitors. There’s only one first place. Personal business or trade secrets posted online can be easily found, leveraged, used against you. So please don’t brag about your new secret product in your “working on” status on Linkedin. Many people Twitter about who they meet with, what they talk about, and how cool it is. It’s easy to monitor the competition when they hand it over to you in your RSS feed.

3. Distant relatives once found my resume on Google and proceeded to send me “hilarious” email forwards. There was no way out. Since I opted-out of their BBQs, I was eventually phased off the list, but don’t let this happen to you!

4. General embarrassments and wacky misunderstandings often occur when you put it all out there. Remember, I can see what you write, we’re “friends”.

With the amazing impact of social media, it’s more important than ever to consider who can find the personal information and photos you post online.

And remember your boss reads your blog. Don’t call him a square.

 

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