'Net Features : advertising alternatives

Video Ads Come to LinkedIn

Allison Howen — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:45:00 GMT

There is a whole new way for advertisers to reach their prospects through LinkedIn.

This is because the professional social network has announced that the company’s self-serve platform, LinkedIn Ads, now allows advertisers to use videos to promote their brands. The platform also works with YouTube, which means that brands can leverage videos from their existing YouTube presence to promote their brand on LinkedIn.

According to a LinkedIn blog post, the video ads will appear in 300x250 units across the social network and will compete for impressions in the same way that the site's traditional text and image ad formats do. Furthermore, when a LinkedIn user is engaged with a video ad, the video will take over the entire ad unit and play for 30 seconds. After the video’s completion, users have the ability to click through to the advertiser’s landing page or website.

Call Tracking Solutions at Kenshoo Local

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:35:00 GMT

As the Web evolves, the community of Web professionals move ever closer to true integrated marketing. Those standing at the forefront of this evolution are often the analytics vendors, whose services sit squarely between services and the consumers of those services.

For example, those advertisers bidding on keywords should know which terms and phrases are making the phone ring (and what happened on the call). Analytics vendors providing call tracking to the rescue. The result of knowing this information (courtesy of your analytics vendor) s that by understanding the correlation between a phone call and conversions, it is then possible to say which campaign modification or adjustment resulted in the phone call.

Call tracking and conversion analytics solution provider Mongoose Metrics, and KENSHOO Local, a provider of PPC campaign automation software for local SEM marketers, today announced a partnership wherein Mongoose Metrics will deliver a call tracking reporting and online-to-offline call conversion optimization solution to Kenshoo Local clients. The platform aims to help directories, CMR’s (certified marketing representative), and local marketing service providers to increase call conversions for their clients by identifying and optimizing towards highest converting keywords in search marketing campaigns.

“The combination of KENSHOO Local and Mongoose Metrics, two leaders and innovation powerhouses in their respective fields, provides advertisers with increasingly effective solutions to connect more consumers and advertisers in a way that drives the most value to their businesses– via a phone call, “said Sivan Metzger, General Manager of KENSHOO Local. “We look forward to bringing more such innovations to market with industry leading partners like Mongoose.”

MyLikes: Fully Customizable, CPC Affiliate Marketing

Mike Phillips — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Looking for an alternative to restrictive AdSense for your website? New start-up MyLikes believes they have a solution, and it's aimed squarely at niche publishers and industry influencers.

In short, it works like this: Publishers sign up for an account then choose among participating advertisers to feature on their website, blog or Twitter feed. The publisher can create custom ads, or "Sponsored Likes" - using their own language and text - then publish those ads to their website or blog, or send the ad as a tweet. Every ad runs on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis and all ads are clearly marked as sponsored content. Sponsored Likes can also be included as a blog post. Advertisers have the option to accept or reject the user-generated advertising.

Here's how the Sponsored Likes CPC model works: Publishers are given a starting CPC, first based on Twitter. The more "influence" you have (determined by a number of factors including data from Topsy and Klout), the higher your starting CPC. You do not need a Twitter account, however, and a starting CPC without an audit of your Twitter influence is usually around $.05. From the start of a new campaign, CPC is constantly tweaked, based on click-through rates on your website or Twitter feeds. The click-through rate model - and not total clicks - is used to determine influence and, therefore, relevance to advertisers.

For publishers, the big advantage is increasing clicks and CPC by offering custom advertising. After all, you know your audience best and what will resonate with them the most. In addition, unlike typical affiliate programs the publisher is paid by the click, not a per-acquisition basis. So, the publisher is not relying on the effectiveness of another person's website or sales strategy. Advertisers benefit by getting highly-qualified clicks from an audience with very specific interests. The ability for publishers to customize an advertiser's message is a key component to targeting the ever-expanding long-tail, and preventing unqualified leads. Advertisers can learn more about Sponsored Likes here.

"From the publisher point of view, these ads are far more engaging than a typical AdSense ad," says Bindu Reddy, MyLikes co-founder. "They can customize the ads to talk to their audience. They get complete creative control to maximize monetization.

"From the advertiser perspective, they get a very engaged audience. It's a much more targeted lead, something that is not just randomized language. AdSense doesn't measure the effectiveness of a website."

To start, MyLikes has 12 advertisers on board, such as Moo Cards and Joylent Cloud Computing. But they will be expanding in short order and look to target several industries outside of the tech field such as lifestyle and food. They will be looking for advertisers where the long-tail is the longest - such as fashion and beauty and mommy bloggers, where there is a surplus of sites to target. And to help gain advertisers, MyLikes is offering an early bird promotion - they will pay 50 percent of the advertiser's budget for the first 50 advertisers.

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Minimum Advertised Price Monitor

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Online marketing service provider Where 2 Get It (which focuses on national brands) has added “minimum advertised price” or MAP monitoring to their solutions for manufacturers.

MAP is essentially just a suppliers pricing policy that does not permit its resellers to advertise prices below some specified amount. It can include the resellers' retail price as well.

Selling below MAP can cause many problems for advertisers including the devaluing of the brand, eroding margins, and conflict within the existing established sales channels. Where 2 Get It's MAP Monitor identifies pricing activity associated with advertised products and alerts merchants/sellers of the true market price of merchandise. By monitoring pricing across selected comparison shopping engines including Amazon, Bing, ebay, Google Product Search, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Smarter.com, Yahoo! Shopping and others) gives these big brands a big advantage.

"Today's consumers are more educated than ever before and with the rise of the Internet sales channels and comparison shopping sites this provides the savvy consumer a huge cost savings," said Manish Patel, founder and CEO of Where 2 Get It. "This creates a problem for manufacturers who need to control and protect the bottom line of their entire sales channel. Therefore a MAP policy should be implemented and monitored."

Cost Per Twitter Lead?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:33:00 GMT

It is increasingly clear to many that marketing is becoming solely about engagement.

Pontiflex has a way for advertisers to build and grow lists of Twitter users using Cost-per-Lead (CPL) advertising. In addition to basic user information like name and email, Pontiflex's platform allows advertisers to capture Twitter handles of consumers who have opted-in to being contacted by the brand. Advertisers can then "follow" users on Twitter to better understand their concerns and also ask users to follow their brand to continue building the consumer/brand relationship. I initially thought I wouldn't be a fan, but I have to tell you that this might just have some merit.

Advertisers can currently run ad units through Pontiflex AdLeads on publishers like Boston.com, Monster.com, Orbitz.com and Babycenter.com. Using a form embedded inside the banner and direct response creative, users can choose to enter basic user information like first name, last name and Twitter handle. Users stay on the publisher's site during this process and their information is transmitted to the advertiser in real-time through Pontiflex's back end. Advertisers can then "follow" the user and reach out to them directly. Advertisers pay only for leads that have submitted their information.

"Marketing is moving from a one way monologue to a two way conversation," said Zephrin Lasker, CEO & Co-founder, Pontiflex. "Many advertisers have tried to incorporate Twitter into their marketing efforts but few have done so successfully. This gives brands a very easy starting point for building a group of people who want to engage with them on Twitter. With Pontiflex AdLeads, advertisers can now build a responsive community of users on Twitter, listen to what they are saying and respond in relevant ways."

SEM Call Tracking: Which 800 Number Performs Best?

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:38:00 GMT

Search marketing software company Engine Ready released an interesting study on how toll-free numbers are treated.

Engine Ready used its call tracking software to create a test to determine if the use of various toll-free prefixes produced different conversion rates, measuring the impact of those different prefixes on call-in conversions and online conversions.

The sample included 18,100 visits to one lead generation site. All visits were from paid search ads in Google and resulted in 2,614 combined call-in and online conversions. The visits were split evenly among 4 distinct landing pages, each page displaying a different toll free number. Other than the different phone numbers, the landing pages were identical. All visits were recorded during the 1st quarter of 2009.

Two interesting results from the study include:

- The highest conversion rate corresponded to the 800 prefix (the oldest of the 800s) and the lowest conversion rate corresponded to the 866 prefix (the newest of the 800s). Thus, the age of the prefix appears to directly impact the call-in conversion rate.

- The toll-free prefix that accompanied the page yielding the highest online conversion rate was "888", followed closely by "866". The impact on online conversions was less than conclusive.

Some good insights can be drawn from the study; namely, that these 800 prefixes do matter. As a result, it's important to perform testing to see if there are opportunities to increase conversion rates. A write up of the 800 prefix and SEM study is available at EngineReady.com.

MySpace Local: Social Reviews

MaureenA — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:45:00 GMT

MySpace and Citysearch are teaming up to offer MySpace Local.

The new directory combines Citysearch's functionality of allowing users to search, review and rate businesses. And, it adds MySpace's flavor by allowing users to search friend reviews of businesses and share their favorite businesses with their friends and communities.

The first step of MySpace Local is to use a selected group of users to provide feedback and create reviews. The second step is a launch of it in Beta format next month to all users throughout the U.S. The first phase of MySpace Local will offer three categories: restaurants, bars and nightlife. Users can search for businesses on business pages or through "City Hubs" which is available only in major U.S. cities. City Hubs can be searched by neighborhood, small business categories or cuisine type.

MySpace Local is providing small businesses another opportunity to reach consumers - and this time it's leveraging the power of social media communities.

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Ask-Sendori Direct Navigation Deal

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:52:00 GMT

TechCrunch has reported that Ask Sponsored Listings (a division of Ask) has acquired Sendori, a provider of direct navigation advertising technology.

For those not familiar with direct navigation (read this article on direct navigation published by Website Magazine several years ago) it's a way for advertisers to purchase type-in domain traffic and bypass advertising networks. More importantly though, direct navigation is a way for domainers to monetize on the domains they have in their domain portfolios - and they are the ones that were really winning (something that TechCrunch failed to mention).

The interesting thing about the development is that several second-tier networks privately rebranded the Sendori solution for their advertisers over the past 24 months. The impact on these networks once they learn of the acquisition will be that they will essentially stop using the service. When advertisers leave the network, bid prices will drop, and my guess is that the acquisition won't be nearly as attractive as it once was as a means to drive revenue for IAC.

The traffic for advertisers was nominal in quantity at best, often untargeted for the premium that was being charged by the company, and converted poorly on top of it all.