Archive for February, 2008

An expert has claimed that advertising outlets on social networking sites should be handled with the utmost care.

Tim Gibbon, co-founder and editor of Social Media Portal, said that when Facebook brought out its targeted advertising system, Beacon, there was a user outcry and a sense of intrusion into a social space.

Nielsen Online recently reported that after Facebook had suffered its first ever drop in user numbers between December 2007 and January 2008, prompting concerns that marketing campaigns were damaging the site’s appeal.

Mr Gibbon said: "They are going to have to be a little more sensitive to the way that adverts are targeted at people and how they interact with them.

"They can send advertising that’s more targeted to them but advertising’s still advertising. If it’s too much, if it is not communicated in the right way, if the people are getting plagued with it then they are going to switch off."

He tipped Facebook to scale down its applications and tone down its advertising, should the network conclude that it was losing users as a result of intrusive marketing.

Social networking is one of the foremost marketing channels available to companies, experts have claimed.

Rachel Hawkes, co-founder and editor of social network mapping site Social Media Portal, said that the high viral marketing potential of social networking is converging with a more negative outlook for other channels.

Television on demand products like Sky Plus are allowing people to fast forward through television adverts and are said to be driving advertisers to work through online channels such as affiliate marketing and social media.

Ms Hawkes said: "From a simplistic viewpoint, people (particularly the under 24’s) spend the majority of their time online on social networking sites – and this alone makes social networks a good vehicle for advertisers.

"Advertising on social networks and using the technology brings new opportunities for brands as they have more creative and interactive means to reach audiences. More connective behavioural and profiling technologies can be used."

She explained that in 2004 and 2005 when web 2.0 started to take off, the online industry soared to a value of GBP835 million and then GBP1.367 billion, signalling the importance of social media.

Investing in a top quality generic domain name is a "marketing spend" and is an immensely worthwhile one, domain name specialists have claimed.

Domain registration services provider Domainmonster.com claimed that a catchy web address could help firms to cut down on other search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) spend.

The group cited the sale of Cruises.co.uk for a million dollars only weeks ago, insisting that companies were willing to pay top dollar in order to secure a memorable moniker.

Matt Mansell, managing director of Domainmonster.com, said: "One of the reasons why they are achieving those prices is because the brands want the people who drive past some above the line advertising… to remember what they see, and follow it up.

"It’s a call to action. You can publicise a ten digit telephone number, but ultimately, a web address is something everybody remembers, especially if it’s relevant. It’s money well spent."

While Cruises.co.uk became the highest priced UK domain name sale to date, fellow generic domain names Recycle.co.uk and Ink.co.uk have also sold for over GBP100,000.

Pay per click (PPC) revenues on Google-placed advertising have shown a decline this month, prompting concerns over the profitability of the channel.

Amid claims that advertisers are now more sophisticated and not as reliant on PPC revenues, ComScore revealed that web users clicking through this January were seven per cent lower than the previous month.

PPC advertising revenue is Google’s major source of income – and the drop-off in user response to its placed advertising led to a four per cent drop in Google share value.

Jay Hallberg, vice president of marketing at network management service Spiceworks, told Information Week: "We’re seeing the resurgence of CPM and display-based advertising. In all of the deals we’re doing, we actually aren’t pricing any of them on cost-per-click."

One factor leading companies away from PPC advertising and back to traditional display advertising could be reports of ‘click fraud’, a trend where companies bombard their rivals’ ads with clicks in order to raise their advertising bills and deny them conversions.

Google refused to comment on ComScore’s findings, but the group has recently shown an interest in potentially moving away from PPC and toward a pay-per-action advertising format.

Google has unveiled a website creation application, providing a series of simple, intuitive tools.

Requiring no hardware or software to buy or install, Google Sites is based on wiki technology developed by JotSpot, an acquisition of Google’s in 2006.

The company said: "With Google Sites, people can quickly gather a variety of information in one place — including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text — and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their entire organization, or the world."

And according to Information Week, Matthew Glotzback, product management director of Google’s enterprise group, added: "We see Google Sites as bigger than a wiki.

"It’s as easy to edit as a wiki, but looks as good as a Web site."

The application looks to enable teams within an organization to build websites in order to collaborate on projects – with little HTML or web design experience needed in order to do so.

Yahoo! has recently claimed that interest from Microsoft had helped the group to take stock of its value, but the unsolicited bid from the software now looks to be causing more trouble than it is worth.

The search engine has claimed that it is facing seven shareholder lawsuits over its rejection of Microsoft’s takeover bid, while also blaming the approach for an unwanted distraction to its management team.

Yahoo! rejected the Microsoft bid on the grounds that it undervalued the search engine’s stock, but disgruntled shareholders are now claiming that not enough was done to seek better terms and move the takeover forward.

Also emerging are reports that Microsoft hired a specialist company to oust hostile personnel from the Yahoo! board, once it appeared that a bid would be rejected.

Yahoo! said: "The review and consideration of the Microsoft proposal (and any alternate proposals…) have been, and may continue to be, a significant distraction for our management and employees.

"As a result of Microsoft’s unsolicited acquisition proposal, and speculation concerning a potential acquisition, the future trading of our common stock is likely to be volatile."

Facebook is the throes of a wholesale revamp as it looks to reverse ailing user figures and return to the simplicity that first made it a success.

The site has unveiled new music and movie channels, in a move that draws on the recipe for success of rival network MySpace.

But equally important will be a revamp of its user profile page, with the site launching a Facebook Profiles Preview page to encourage user feedback in a bid to avoid a rebellion over changes to the site’s layout.

Facebook announced: "As more and more information is available on Facebook - more photo albums, more applications, and more history, we’ve realised that profiles have become cluttered and harder to navigate as a result."

While integrating music brings Facebook into MySpace’s domain, the site will also bid for a simpler and more structured approach than its counterpart on this front.

MySpace allows its music contributors to design their own music profiles with considerable freedom, risking a cluttered presentation, while Facebook will here seek to keep its features to a minimum.

Encyclopaedia Britannica has decided to outsource its affiliate marketing programmes in a bid to increase the profitability of its advertising campaigns and ramp up its subscription rates.

The online research and education resource has chosen NETexponent, a leading, performance based online marketing agency, to build on the success of its current affiliate program using the Performics technology platform

NETExponent will attempt to increase the amount of online subscriptions and affiliate optimization for educational subscription site, Britannica.com, as well as e-commerce site Store.Britannica.com.

Affiliates will be offered commission rates starting at ten per cent for either subscription leads or store purchases.

Ken Polson, Britannica’s director of consumer acquisition marketing, said: "We’ve seen a lot of success in our affiliate program, but realise there’s also a huge opportunity to expand."

"We believe NETexponent has the proven expertise, people, and affiliate management tools to take our program to the next level."

Affiliate marketing is an increasingly important channel for companies to build up their online presence, benefiting from increased traffic through ads on partner websites.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a viable means of maximising company revenue online, but needs a new regulatory frame work to prevent its reputation being tarnished, experts have claimed.

Paul J Bruemmer, SEO expert and director of search marketing at Red Door Interactive, posted comments on the Search Engine Land online resource that called for greater regulation in order to allow the discipline to grow.

He explained that while 75 per cent of marketers acknowledged using SEO, they still allocated greater resources to pay per click (PPC) advertising and could only refer to a methodology statement from their search agency in order to understand SEO limits.

"Search has grown and become mainstream, but the industry needs to increase its value, authenticity, and integrity by identifying a set of standards to help replace devious SEO techniques that still tarnish our industry," he said.

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) was said to have taken recent strides to co-opt companies into accepting certain practices, but did not grant the organisation a policing role.

Official standards, Mr Bruemmer argued, would help eliminate spammers and opportunistic SEO muddling techniques, but he acknowledged that the breadth of the sector made it difficult to establish an all-encompassing set of rules.

While search engine optimisation (SEO) is often the preferred strategy for reaching web customers, experts have claimed that the attraction of holding a strong domain name never wear off.

Domain name seller Discount Domains said that quality monikers helped to associate a company with a strong and memorable brand image.

The group claimed that many of the best and most generic domain names had already gone, but insisted that company’s would always benefit from a distinctive moniker that set the firm aside from competitors ranking alongside them on search engines.

Adrian Lawrence, managing director of Discount Domains, said: "It gives them an online presence associated with whatever name they choose – you can have the brand connected to the name.

"If you choose a name for your business, that might be unique for the UK but it could be taken by an American business. In this case, it’s more about what names are available depending on what your business identity is."

Domaininformer.com recently claimed that new Asia Pacific domain name administrator DotAsia, received some 266,663 applications within the first 24 hours that it offered domain names with the .asia suffix.