Please join us Feb. 4, 2009 for this informative Sponsored Search webinar
Many of you have both Display and Sponsored Search campaigns. For our Sponsored Search customers, we’re offering a free webinar that explores two important features of Sponsored Search: Network Distribution, which allows you to target marketing campaigns to the entire Yahoo! Network, and Import Campaigns, which lets you import your Google AdWords campaign data into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. For more detail on both these features, visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog. Or, to register, click on the link below.
When: Thursday, Feb. 4, 2009, 11 A.M., Pacific Time Where: The Internet—go here to register. Note that you will need the password you created when you registered for Sponsored Search. Don’t already have a Sponsored Search account? Click here. Why: Because it’s great stuff to know for improving your campaigns and results through Sponsored Search
Ad man Othmer gets mad; selling the Super Bowl; digital ad budgets to increase; TBWA\Chiat\Day’s doggie dentures ad, and more
A trip through “Adland”
Former Young and Rubicam creative James P. Othmer has a new memoir out, “Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet.” In it, he describes his trials and tribulations in the business. In this AdWeek Q&A, he talks about the many ethical dilemmas faced by ad folks today, as well as other hot topics and ripping yarns. Check out Amazon.com’s promo vid for more.
Selling the Super Bowl This Sunday is arguably the biggest sporting event of the year, Super Bowl XLIV. Advertisers, according to AdWeek, have shelled out nearly $3 million each for 30-second spots during the big game. “The game is the only significant TV showcase for commercials left in today’s media-fractured environment, and advertisers are frantically putting the final touches on their plays for the day,” writes Eleftheria Parpi. How are they are building buzz around their creative? Hint: the initials are S.M., and we don’t mean the naughty kind.
We’ve got good news and bad news
Remember those old good news/bad news jokes? (Like, the good news: the captain aboard a Viking ship doubles rations for the guys on the oars. The bad news: he wants to go water skiing.) Well, the good news for digital marketers is that two-thirds of marketing execs in a recent CMO.com/Society of Digital Agencies survey say they’ll up their digital budgets in the face of current economic conditions. The bad news? Those conditions still suck.
Four simple steps to help your campaign keep up with new searches
I can’t possibly be the only person that remembers the line “just set it and forget it”. Those were the good ol’ days—the same days as when you could just set up a search marketing campaign and leave it alone.
Not anymore. Users are more sophisticated in their searches now, and we’ve seen that up to 20% of searches in any given month can be search queries never seen before by a search engine. This means if you leave your campaign untouched, you could be missing 20% more traffic.
So what’s the best way to keep up to speed with the changing search tide while maintaining your sanity? Here are our four simple steps that will help your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign keep pace.
Quantifiable creative; blogging enhances SEO; search surges; kids more plugged in than ever; celebrating Guy Day, and more
Three simple steps to better creative Let’s face it, a lot of agency creatives like to blather on about “inspiration” and the “creative process.” But, says iMedia Connection blogger, Robert Boman, (who is also Javelin’s Interactive Creative Director), “Marketing is a profession, not an art show. Your work’s got to be far more than just eye candy. It needs to be smart. It needs to be trackable.” He offers a handy, three-step process for creating measurable marketing.
Survey says: Blogging enhances SEO Writing on TopRank’s Online Marketing blog, Lee Odden reveals the results of a TopRank survey that asked 326 marketing pros if they thought blogging had a positive effect on their SEO. Most did. In fact, more than 87 percent of respondents said blogging had “successfully increased measurable SEO objectives.” A common reason why some companies don’t blog or quit blogging? Resources.
Search usage jumps 50% in one year
According a new PC World report, Web search jumped a full 50% from 2008 to 2009. In fact, last year there were more than four billion searches each day. “We knew this was going to happen,” says Tribble Ad Agency blogger TheFounder, “and it’s going to get bigger and bigger for quite some time. Search has become the definition of marketing and advertising.” All true, but you heard it here first.
There’s a scene in the first season of “Mad Men” in which advertising anti-hero Don Draper asks his boss, “What do women want?” The answer he gets is flippant to the point of rather ugly sexism. But in the male-dominated world of early-1960s advertising, Draper was on to something. He knew instinctively that to reach America, you had to reach out to America’s new, emerging, liberated woman, a fact later borne out by daytime shows from “Phil Donahue” to “Oprah” and beyond.
Today, the audience to reach is teens, both male and female. Last time, we discussed some salient general facts about teens, their buying power ($125 billion and climbing) and the time they spend online. Today we’ll talk about who these teens are, what they want, and how advertisers like you can reach an audience of nearly 25 million Americans.
In the first of a three-part series on teen trends, we discuss today’s teens and what they’re doing online
Ah, the kids these days. They’ve been pilloried and misunderstood—and striven to be understood—by their elders even before James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo portrayed them with such affection in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
But today’s teens (those aged 12 to 17) not only have tremendous buying power, they also have dramatic influence over what goes on online. In 2008, teens represented nearly 25 million people in the U.S. alone, according to MRI, and, says a report by TRUStudy, pumped some $127 billion into the U.S. economy last year. In fact, according to a recent study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, today’s youths spend about seven-and-a-half hours with electronic media each day.
Put your arithmetic cap on, because we’re going to run a few numbers past you.
TV to Web shift; the top women of social media; Jaron Lanier warns against the wisdom of crowds; helping Haiti, and more
Shift happens
According to the New York Times “Bits” blogger Nick Bilton, the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien late-night slap fight is an indicator of the coming shift from TV to the Web. In fact, Bilton thinks Conan should ditch TV and go straight to the Web. But is the world ready for anytime O’Brien? And can the Web match TV in ad dollars? iMedia Connection’s Mario Sgambelluri wonders. May we politely suggest a smarter mix of both?
Social media: Where the gals are
TopRank’s Lee Odden names the top 25 women in social media. We’re happy to see our old FoY (“Friend of Yahoo!”), Charlene Li make the list. Congrats to all 25. You go, gals!
Jaron Lanier says you are not a gadget
Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier—that dreadlocked brainiac who brought you the cool robotic glove—has a new book out, reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times. “You Are Not a Gadget” questions whether the social media trend is really such a good thing after all. Among other criticism, Lanier says that the so-called “wisdom of crowds” might not actually be so wise, especially when designing new products. Listen up, manufacturers and advertisers. Sometimes going with your gut can work better than design by committee. Just look at the iPod.
Yahoo! rings in 2010 with search advertising enhancements that deliver
Last fall, I answered the question “Does search still matter to Yahoo!” with a definitive YES. But words only go so far, which is why Yahoo! is rolling out new search enhancements for users and advertisers.
All about control Next week, we’ll update our Sponsored Search product with two new features aimed at giving advertisers more transparency into and control over their accounts. Our Network Distribution feature will let you run your ads on Yahoo! search pages, our partners’ sites, or both. If you run your ads on our entire network, you can also set different bids for Yahoo! or its partners.
Personal social media ROI; embeddable live social media counter; Yahoo! social science; “mobilizing” your website, and more
Your personal social media ROI
Twitter and Facebook can be a time-suck. We all know that by now. But there must be a pay-off, right? Maybe, maybe not. AdAge’s Simon Dumenco explains how to gage your personal social media ROI.
7 reasons you don’t need to justify ROI for social media advertising These days, Web advertising is all about the math—click-through rates, open rates, engagement modeling, registrations, etc. But, iMedia Connection’s Clyde DeSousa argues, social media advertising is a different animal, and he offers seven “justifications” for social media advertising that you can use when trying to convince the “suits” in the corner office to go for it.
Social media hall monitor Social media gadfly, Gary Hayes of Personalize Media, has just released a widget that counts social media in real time: stuff like new blog posts, members added to Facebook, the amount of money spent on virtual goods globally, Tweets and more—what’s happening now, for the last day, the last week, the last month and the last year. That’s one impressive widget, according to this, the 330 jillionth blog post this year. You can embed the widget, as we have below.
A trip through “Adland”
Three simple steps to better creative
There’s a scene in the first season of “Mad Men” in which advertising anti-hero Don Draper asks his boss, “What do women want?” The answer he gets is flippant to the point of rather ugly sexism. But in the male-dominated world of early-1960s advertising, Draper was on to something. He knew instinctively that to reach America, you had to reach out to America’s new, emerging, liberated woman, a fact later borne out by daytime shows from “Phil Donahue” to “Oprah” and beyond.
In the first of a three-part series on teen trends, we discuss today’s teens and what they’re doing online
