- Regional, state, city, town, worldwide ad targeting.

- Set different keywords and prices per city, country, town.

- Complete control over campaigns and budget.

Advtise, the Ohio based online advertising contextual company, presented today its new product portfolio which includes several new features and important upgrades. The internet startup company provides new opportunities to both advertisers and publishers through its state of the art advertising server.

Advertisers can now enjoy quality results paying as low as 0.2 per click, targeting every city and town of the world using different keywords per city with different pricing per keyword per city or per town. This give them the flexibility not paying a standard price per keyword as competition do but to split and reduce costs targeting the exact prospect buyers they want to reach.

The improved user friendly dashboard gives a bird’s eye view of the campaign and click performance, costs, clicks, etc. The upgraded ROI code is providing usefull information for the campaign’s performance for the adveriser in order to change quickly the current text ad. Finally the ADVTISE AdCenter is complete with the advanced Budget control system which allows user to better track and control his budget.

Advtise.com is in the advertising business since 2005 through different online activities and since 2007 has develop innovative anti-fraud solutions for search engines for the pay per click industry. Since March 2008, the company started major restructuring to serve better advertiser’s needs. On August 2008 the company extended its ad serving solutions offering best value for money alternatives.

Source: Press Release

Advertisers are increasingly attracted to advertising on eBay and eBay is increasingly happy to accommodate them, much to the chagrin of some of its sellers.To this end, the auction site is setting up an International Ad Division , headquartered in Bern, Switzerland.

What advertisers want is to run campaigns on a global basis rather than on a country basis, in particular larger players such as Royal Mail and Mercedes-Benz.

“Working with advertisers in local markets, we came across an increasing demand for international campaigns, and campaigns across multiple territories,” said Christian Kunz, head of advertising international at eBay, via ClickZ. “This service will offer a flexible and scalable solution for international advertisers and agencies.”

What attracts advertisers to eBay is the high propensity of the auction site’s users that want to shop. Couple that with the huge amount of transactional data held by eBay Advertising, and the ever-growing collection of highly niche categories, and it’s not hard to see why eBay is an attractive proposition.

Source:BizReport.com

Mobile advertising has been the next big thing for a while now. But although text messaging is popular among young adults, the 160-character format has yet to become a mass influencer. Still, consumers who respond to mobile ads are most likely to engage with text messages, according to a survey of mobile users ages 15 and older in the US by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Seven out of 10 respondents to the DMA’s “Mobile Marketing: Consumer Perspectives” study who had acted on mobile ads said that text messages for a product or service had prompted their actions. That was more than three times as many as responded to a mobile Web offer or coupon.

But even text messaging is not about to replace other marketing mainstays such as e-mail or direct mail. In fact, only 1% of US Internet users surveyed in February 2008 by ExactTarget picked text messaging as their channel of choice for opt-in communications. Instead, the medium is better-suited for targeting specific audiences, and as part of multichannel campaigns.

Text messaging may not dominate mobile advertising as more mobile users with sophisticated phones and data plans come into the fold (think iPhone and its ilk). Yet the simplicity and compatibility of texting is likely to ensure its long-term appeal in the same way text-based e-mail has remained viable.

In the meantime, the bigger issue is when mobile advertising will become a common campaign tactic. For most marketers and advertisers, mobile is still only getting experimental budget at most.

Mobile advertising’s toddler status was reflected in a February 2008 iMedia Connection survey of US online marketers. Although about one-quarter of respondents said they were open-minded enough to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to use mobile ads this year, more than two-thirds said they would do no more than dabble in the channel.

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on Thursday defended Microsoft Corp’s need to make heavy investments in its Internet businesses but said the company was “done,” for now, with pursuing Yahoo Inc . “There’s nothing under discussion between the two of us,” Ballmer told investors of how six months of various talks had reached an impasse earlier in July.

“We had a set of principles, we talked about them, it didn’t work out,” he said. “Fine, we’re done. We can move on.”

The message for Microsoft’s annual meeting with Wall Street analysts, an all-day affair at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, was that it had a post-Yahoo plan to turn around its online services division and a strategy to take advantage of future opportunities, even as its Internet chief departs.

“There is this huge, huge, huge new opportunity around the Internet and online and we have to embrace that opportunity and invest in that opportunity,” Ballmer said.

Shares of Microsoft have fallen 8 percent over the last week since the company forecast an outlook below Wall Street estimates and revealed an additional $500 million investment into its online unit, even as it chalked up further losses.

Charles Di Bona, a software research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said Ballmer’s comments did not give enough details about how that additional investment will be spent and how the company arrived at that decision.

“It’s spending $500 million dollars and then it says we’ll tell you later how we’ll spend it,” said Di Bona, who has an “outperform” rating on Microsoft. “The market’s concern is not about how it is running its core business. It’s about decisions about larger chunks of money that people can’t track.”

Ballmer said Microsoft is willing to endure online division operating losses that amount to between 5 percent to 10 percent of the company’s total operating income, which reached $22.5 billion in fiscal year 2008, until the search and advertising business reaches “scale.

Did we really need more research to tell us that intrusive ads annoy consumers? Well, it seems some marketers missed a meeting in the late 1990’s and need to be taught a lesson in subtlety. To that end, I’ve devised some top tips on how to make sure your visitors don’t stick around.

In 2007, half of Internet users left a favorite website due to “intrusive advertising”. That figure has now risen to three-quarters according to new figures released from HowTo.tv. The message? Consumers will not put up with advertising they deem to be in-their-face and annoying; they will up and leave your website.

Since commerce came to the Internet there have been cries of disdain from Internet users about bad marketing, but over a decade later it continues. So, in an attempt to get the message though, I thought marketers might listen to ways in which to guarantee only a quarter of website visitors stick around.

1. Ensure the consumer has no way to avoid seeing that pop-up ad that greets them to your website. In fact, the harder you make it for them to close the pop-up, the better.

2. What’s a pop-up without sound? Woo them with some clunky musak or keep them amused with a persistent buzzing noise.

3. Your ads will really stand out if you can make them as irrelevant as possible. To maximize this effect, pay no attention whatsoever to your target audience’s needs.

4. Consumers love big, gaudy “whack the mole and win a million” banner ads that obliterate half the screen – the bigger and gaudier the better.

5. Scripts that crash a consumer’s computer are always successful in diverting them away from your website.

6. Take up as much space as possible on each webpage with ads, leaving just enough room for some token content.

7. Make life fun for your site visitors by including ads that float across the screen, blink on and off in various different locations or that trick them into clicking on them.

8. Gambling, porn and horror movie ads are particularly favored ad topics, pepper your website liberally with them for a professional look.

Source: BizReport

A new targeting tool is set for release from ValueClick. The tool is a predictive behavioral targeting tool which provides marketers with anonymous consumer behavior and then predicts future behaviors based on the past information. The Precision BT suite combines Precision Retargeting and Precision Profiles, giving marketers unique insight into consumer behavior.

“What makes Precision Profiles unique is our access to a critical mass of anonymous consumer online experiences and the way our technology dynamically categorizes and transforms them into hundreds of interest segments,” said Matthew Boyd, senior vice president, ValueClick Media. “Combined with the ability for our optimization technology to identify the best possible context in which to serve an ad, we have assembled the most scalable, data-driven audience targeting platform for marketers to achieve their brand and direct response objectives.”

By using predictive algorithms, marketers are given insight into the segments and times that consumers’ visit certain websites, publishers or content sites. This is very valuable information because by knowing when and where consumers will “stop by” they can determine where and how they will advertise, thereby increasing campaign ROI.

The anonymous information provided to marketers includes web browsing, interaction with ads and search and shopping behaviors.

Pay per click search engine advertising has grown tremendously in the past four years, and prospects for continued growth are strong. Information providers and marketers know that Web users seek information on the Web prior to making a major purchase or information decision, and that users rely heavily on commercial search engines for most of their searches.Web search now represents a significant portion of Web activity. Google searches average 350 million searches per day, and the total daily number of Web searches is estimated at well over 600 million.

Searchers believe that search engines are in the search business. They count on free, commercial search tools to help them find the relevant information they want quickly and easily, regardless of type of question, complexity, or language. Search engine companies focus their own marketing initiatives heavily on perpetuating this idea among searchers, asserting that they deliver the most relevant or comprehensive information and ensuring that the searcher returns to conduct additional searches. In reality, commercial search engines are in the advertising business. They earn the vast majority of their revenue by delivering context-sensitive advertising using a variety of means, but principally by leasing search keywords to purchasers. Virtually all commercial search engines and major portals (About.com, Yahoo!) rely on this model for most of their revenue.10 And of those, Google remains the only search engine that still keeps paid results out of its main listings.

The Basics: Keyword Buying

All search engine advertising purchases start with keyword buying. The advertiser purchases-leases, reallyone or more keywords or key phrases that the advertiser believes searchers will use when searching for specific products or services. For example, an online video store may purchase the keyword movie or film or actual film titles such as harry potter, or a combination of any of these. Keyword buying enables the ad buyer to display a URL link when the searcher enters one or more of the leased keywords into the search engine. Some contracts may enable the purchaser to pay only for click-through. Contracts typically stipulate a time period, but they may also stipulate the number of impressions that will be delivered. An impression represents a single display of the advertiser’s URL or banner on a user’s screen.

Paid Search Deliverables

In paid inclusion programs, search engines and their adfeed partners guarantee that their search engine will list pages from the advertiser’s website in its index. However, paid inclusion typically does not guarantee that the advertiser’s pages will rank high. At this writing, search engines offer paid inclusion programs.

Paid placement programs, by contrast, generally guarantee that a link to the advertiser’s URL will be delivered in the search results on a matched keyword or keywords. Location of the delivered link generally governs the fees, so advertisers will pay more to be placed higher up the page in the search results.

Keyword Bidding

Because so many advertisers want to lease the same keywords, a mechanism of keyword bidding has developed. Keyword bidding is the process of bidding on keywords for specific rankings in search engines. The more you bid, the higher your site will rank in the search engine you have selected. Google uses keyword bidding as a partial determinant of the placement of ads in its right sidebar. In a sponsored links list, higher-bidding advertisers get improved position at the top of the list, although the ranking formula also includes a popularity component.

Contextual Search

As the search engine marketing arena becomes more crowded, advertisers are seeking ways to improve relevancy. Contextual search is a process that drives selected paid search results by user behavior and perceived relevance as opposed to strict keyword matching. Google’s AdSense program is an example of contextual search: the program places ads on pages of the websites that sign up for the program, and the ad selection is contextually based on what Google believes the page to be about.

The Quest for Authentic Search Results

Serious searchers need to understand and accept that there is not now and will never be just one starter that will be suitable for finding everything anywhere. Popping a few keywords into Google is easy: research is hard. The increasing commercialization of search will require all serious searchers to have a “search toolbox”-a list of starter sites that they can return to when they don’t already know the best starting points for their information search. There has been considerable interest among searchers in emerging schemes for improving relevance algorithms to enhance the user experience. Unless relevance algorithms are radically altered and the pressure of commercial search somehow removed from the information-searching equation (which is hard to imagine), it is likely that serious searchers will be required to depend more on independently produced, quality-filtered link lists, catalogs, and directories of resources.

That is an enormous step away from our current dependence on commercial search tools and represents a sea change for most searchers. Methodically seeking quality information sources from excellent starter sites will be key in the future. Doing so will mitigate the ever-increasing effects of paid search, help searchers feel confident that they have fully explored the Web, and-perhaps most important-provide a clue as to when to stop searching and move on to other fee- and printbased information tools.

Yes, you can destroy your blog. It’s not difficult just follow all the above hints and soon you will see your site traffic drop and visitors vanished. Of course this article is to show you what NOT to do.

Excessive Ads - Hey, there’s nothing wrong with making some money from your blog (that’s why your reading this blog right?). But, when your advertisements begin to take up more space on your blog than your content, you’ve got a problem. People visit blog to learn and discuss topics that interest them. They want to share their ideas or ask questions. They DON’T want to have to sort through a million ads, to find your content. Think of it this way, you don’t tune in to your favorite TV show to watch the commercials do you? Well neither do your readers.

Lack of Interaction - Many people view blogging as the digital version of giving a sermon. The blogger sits behind his pulpit (keyboard) and preaches to his or her loyal followers. However, if you look at the most successful blogs online, you’ll notice that the interaction is a HUGE part of the blogs success. The ability to leave comments, read other comments, and interact with the content that you’re consuming is what has made blogging what it is. If you don’t make yourself available to your readers, don’t answer any questions and don’t accept any feedback on your content, you’re dooming yourself to the digital equivalent of talking to yourself.

Over Posting - Believe it or not, posting too often can drive away readers as well. If you’re slamming your readers with a high number of posts each and every day, there will be no way for them to keep up. Also, it’s going to be tough to keep up the quality of the posts if you’re cranking them out at such a frantic pace. If you slip into the mistake of posting too often, your “signal to noise” ratio will drop considerably, meaning readers will have to sort through more information to find something worthwhile or valuable to them. That’s a quick recipe for a failed blog.

Fights - Now don’t think for one second that you’re going to agree with everyone all the time. And yes, I still stand by my statement that controversy is good. However, I’ve seen many bloggers allow themselves to get completely side-tracked by their fight with another blogger to the point that it consumes the blog. A good general rule of thumb is that when you get into name calling and personal attacks, it’s time to shut it down. If you allow a fight to go on long enough, you’ll lose readers who simply don’t want to hear the pissing and moaning anymore. Remember, your subscribers read your blog to get your thoughts and opinions on the subject matter. Unless that subject is fighting with other bloggers, chances are your fight will be interesting for a while, but in the end it will lack substance for your readers to survive on.

Playing Follow the Leader - I borrowed that phrase from Max but the premise behind it is 100% true. If you don’t bring anything unique to your blog, whether it’s a distinct style, a special way of covering the information, etc. chances are your blog will die. There are simply too many other options out there for people to read. If you’re not interesting and exceptional in some way, readers will have no reason to return to your site. Find the one thing that makes your blog exceptional, and make that your brand.

In the first quarter of 2008, the growth in spending on Internet display advertising slowed to 8.5 percent from 16.7 percent growth last year, according to estimates put out today by TNS Media Intelligence. Even with the slowdown Internet ad spending still grew faster than that for TV (1.7 percent), magazines (0.8 percent), newspapers (-5.2 percent), radio (-4.5 percent), and outdoor (2.5 percent). The overall growth of all advertising spending that TNS measures was flat at 0.6 percent growth over the first quarter of 2007.

TNS’s Internet numbers do not include search advertising, only display ads. The quarterly total for all Internet advertising is closer to $6 billion. But this data point is evidence that the Web may not be immune to weakness in advertising spending overall. If the industry dives into a full-blown advertising recession, many Web companies could feel the impact.

Most smaller businesses know by now that search engine optimization is an effective way to get their sites noticed by the almighty search engines. But a recent survey indicates that SEO is the best way to generate online leads. Is your site optimized for search? Paul Bruemmer writes on SearchEngineLand about a recent study done in the UK by eConsultancy on online marketing.

The study demonstrates that “natural search is the best tactic for generating online leads, concluding it is greatly underused despite the fact that it outperforms nearly all other types of online marketing.”

The stats:

Natural search (79%) is the most frequently used online marketing tactic for lead generation, followed by email marketing in-house lists (75%) and paid search (71%). Over half (52%) of company respondents said natural search was “very effective.” Just under half (48%) said paid search was very effective.

Bruemmer writes: ” While online lead generation is becoming more important for many businesses, only a little over half of the company respondents in this survey felt their company wasn’t exploiting this type of marketing as effectively as it could be, illustrating that online lead generation delivers results but could be utilized better.”

Bruemmer notes that according to the report, a larger proportion of online lead generation budgets go to paid search advertising even though “natural search is perceived as providing the best value for the money. Companies haven’t invested in natural search over and above other internet marketing tactics because it requires more effort, but don’t make that mistake in your search marketing efforts.”

Bruemmer addresses in-house search marketing managers in his emphasis on “taking advantage of all search marketing tactics,” but for many smaller businesses, their marketing managers are wearing many hats or in some cases don’t exist. SEO is crucial to a Web site’s success and eConsultancy’s survey validates the point but is it worth hiring an SEO consultant for?

In the course of profiling many small and mid size businesses, it is clear that SEO is becoming increasingly recognized as a necessary part of an online strategy. But it seems that there is no universal approach to how to implement an effective SEO strategy: Some smaller businesses are outsourcing to their Web site developers, some to SEO consultants, and some are trying to learn the art of SEO on their own. Which practice is best of course depends upon the nature of the business, it’s size, and the ability of those involved to implement effective SEO strategies.