TECHNOLOGY Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key By BRAD STONE Published: March 4, 2010 From mainstream companies to others that are more off-putting, advertisers on Facebook are a motley bunch.
There is a lot of crap on Facebook - they should definitely be paying more attention to this kind of stuff.
We are participating in Lonely Planet's BlogSherpa with one of our blogs, Florence Journal. I applaud LP for their efforts to reach out to bloggers and for making the relationship beneficial to us. The LP site has a lot of Google juice, a lot of traffic, and they let you show ads on pages they host with your content using your AdSense account. It is a very fair deal and we are happy to have been accepted in the program.
That being said, it is new and they are trying to keep up. There have been a lot of questions on their list from people struggling to grasp how to integrate AdSense into their BlogSherpa accounts. I wrote the below to help out any people having trouble with the set up:
Log into your AdSense account - you'll see your publisher ID in the upper right hand corner - make sure LP has this number.
Click the "AdSense Setup" tab, and then click "Channels". Under the "AdSense for Content" tab, click "URL channels" and then click "+ Add new URL channels" and enter lonelyplanet.com (this step just sets up your tracking so you can see if people click on your AdSense ads on the LP site).Finally, click on "Allowed Sites" on the right hand side of the main menu tabs - if "Allow any site to show ads for my account " is selected, you are fine. If "Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account" you need to add the LP URL in the field below.
That's it - just make sure LP has your correct Publisher ID. Sometimes you won't see ads from Google in a spot where you expect for a lot of reasons - your geographical location, your time on the site, your browsing history, etc. It doesn't mean other people are not seeing them. That is why setting up the URL channel is good so you can see the stats for your ads on the LP site.
Hope this helps everyone a bit.
There is a good article up on the increasingly relevant WebProNews site about using press releases: How Press Releases Can Be Great For Search
It includes this handy list, which should be indispensable for all web marketers:
- Business Wire
- PR Newswire
- PRWeb
- 24-7 Press Release
- PR Zoom
- PR Leap
- I-Newswire
- Webwire
- ClickPress
- PR.com
- PR Log
- eReleases
- MarketWire
"Do you think you're more likely to look at an online ad if it contains 1) a picture, 2) an animation, or 3) just text?"
I knew the answer - but you should check it out yourself. The story is nominally a review of "Eyetracking Web Usability" by (the somewhat controversial) Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice (I say controversial because some people out there don't buy his "science" of the web and how sites should be constructed, etc.).
It continues:
Then there was the result that most surprised the researchers: Text-only ads received the most looks. Part of that might be b ecause we accidentally think text-only ads are part of the information we're looking for. But as Nielsen explains it, the nature of the Web itself might be coming into play, as well. Unlike television, which is a passive medium, the Web is all about taking action
Read more at: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1936426,00.html
Hat tip to Ruth at St. John Spice for pointing this article out to me.
This recent article from TechCrunch, "How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider's Confession", is really amazing - especially the fact that you have an insider admitting to the massive fraud that is possible for savvy criminals to perpetrate.
I don't think the general public realizes this kind of stuff goes on, and if there are any government or enforcement agencies out there who should be involved they are massively behind the curve.
And the author makes some spot on comments that you most likely will never hear in any mainstream publication, like:
"Here's what ad networks struggle with--to either run what ads make the most money or else be forced out by other ad networks willing to be shadier than them."
It will be interesting to see if the article sparks some debate/action in the online advertising world.
This is the kind of story that people selling on-line ads don't want you to hear - especially Google: Massive Click Fraud Ring Shut Down.
It is a little light on the details, but unless you have your head in the sand you have to realize that this is happening on a massive scale.
And so it begins:
Gourmet magazine, which has celebrated cooking and travel in its lavish pages since 1941, will cease publication with the November issue, its owner, Condé Nast, announced on Monday.
It looks like these executives are starting to get it. These things (the ad revenues they were used to getting) are not predicted to come back any time soon - and so these dinosaur magazines are finally closing.
I don't want to revel in their demise - it can't be easy if you are an employee - but this has to happen. I think things like this will be felt in the job market for years and keep the unemployment rolls higher than most people think for some time to come.
A point I keep coming back to is that they should have been figuring out what to do on the web and taking it more serious since the get go. Now they have dead and dying brands and are playing catch up with bloggers!
Excellent article in Vanity Fair about Rupert Murdoch. The most interesting insight is how he is mostly responsible for driving the price of news down in the first place (through his ruthless business practices with his newspapers) and now he is the last man standing in wanting to charge for news on line (good luck!).
I have no sympathy for Murdoch - he is a dinosaur and a terrible kind of capitalist to me - he would and has done everything for a dime. To see him miss so big with the Internet - and to see him still struggling to make sense of it still is fine with me.
A report that seemed obvious to us:
The majority (92%) of advertisers are using Internet advertising in their media campaigns followed by print advertising at 88 percent, according to a new LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll.
Wanted to post this chart and some more links:
And more stories:
IAB/PwC: Internet Ad Revenues Reach Record-High $23 Billion in '08
IAB Reports Internet Advertising Grew 10 Percent Last Year; Outpacing TV
As mentioned previously, Internet advertising is still growing, even in this economy:
Internet advertising grew to $23.4 billion in 2008, an increase of 10.6 percent from 2007, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group representing online advertisers, as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers.That was the only category of advertising spending that grew in 2008 other than cable television, which rose 7.8 percent, according to Nielsen figures supplied for the report,
Over all, total non-Internet media revenue declined 2.4 percent in 2008 from 2007, according to Nielsen. Spending in network television declined 3.5 percent, in national magazines 7.6 percent and in local newspapers 7.8 percent.
If you ever wanted to know what your online competition is paying for keywords and adwords, check out SpyFu.com.
Here is a quick snapshot of what ebay is paying:
You can also search by keyword to see how much certain words will cost you... pretty cool.
Google is leaving no stone unturned in the monetization of the web. They are soon rolling out "interest" based advertising (more here) and this morning AdSense publishers got an email from the big G with some details outlining privacy policy changes.
The text of the email is below the fold.
This is the title of an article this morning on the BusinessWeek website: "Online Ads: Will Fewer, but Bigger, Be Better?"
Unfortunately to me this is more of the same old same old - someone trying to hawk a "new" ad format - that the author seems to buy hook, line, and sinker ("The only mystery is why the industry hasn't done this sooner" ?!?!). I mean come on - we are fifteen years into web advertising, and it has all been tried before - yet this article seems to think these people are reinventing the wheel with the "new" formats - give me a break already!
And yes - "revenues for pictorial display ads may actually fall" - we are in the midst of what may be the second great depression! I agree that the web "should be getting more branding dollars", but does more dollars mean larger, more obtrusive ads shoved in the user's face? Or better content and richer user experiences that keep growing page views and visitor (and then brand) loyalty?
I also don't understand this sentence at all - "The new formats are a clear shot across the bow of ad networks" - huh? Does the author mean Google AdWords? Or networks like Advertising.com or The Travel Ad Network? In either case, why would these ad formats be a "shot across the bow" to existing ad networks? If the ad formats are accepted by advertisers and publishers, then surely the networks will get the sites they represent to offer the new ad sizes... Come on BusinessWeek - you can do better than this.
Recent Comments