Internet Marketing Course BLOG

By Dave Ingalls

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): As of July 2007, Google is now offering a paid (no advertising unless you link search to your Google AdSense account), hosted Web site search service for small/medium sized Web sites. It’s called “Google Custom Search – Business Edition” (Google CSBE) and it has 3 price points for Web sites of varying sizes: 1-5,000 Web pages, $100/yr.; 5,001-50,000 pages, $500/yr.; and over 50,000 pages, contact Google for pricing.

Google CSBE is worth checking out, especially if you haven’t added site search to your Web site as yet.

Here’s a link to the information on Google:

Google Custom Search – Business Edition

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 10, 2007

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): This change by Nielsen/NetRatings in how Web site property popularity is judged is something to keep your eye on. It is more than a simple change in how site popularity is measured – it reflects fundamental changes that are occurring in the way Web content is presented and viewed.

“NEW YORK (AP) — A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.

The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful.

Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor for each site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular.

Currently, sites and advertisers often use page views, a figure that reflects the number of Web pages a visitor pulls from a site.

However, Yahoo Inc. and others are increasingly using a software trick called Ajax to improve the user experience. It allows sites to update data automatically and continually, without users needing to pull up new pages. Page views decline as a result.

Page views also drop as people spend more time watching online video at sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube.”

Read the entire news release at:

Nielsen Scraps Web Page View Rankings

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

By Yahoo! Inc.
July 2, 2007

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): This new Yahoo! display (“banner”) ad serving technology gives us all an insight into where banner advertising on the Web is headed, and the capabilities that it provides to the large consumer companies.

From the July 2nd Yahoo! Press Release:

Innovative, Patent-Pending Ad Delivery Platform Allows Marketers to Present Highly Targeted Online Display Ads in Real Time to Match a User’s Distinctive, Expressed Interests

Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, today announced the launch of Yahoo! SmartAds, a new, innovative advertising platform that allows marketers to deliver powerful, tailored display ads to highly targeted audiences. SmartAds combines Yahoo!’s leading consumer insights and rich media capabilities with new ad serving technology that automatically converts marketers’ creative campaign elements and targeted offerings into highly-customized and relevant display ads.

“Yahoo!’s SmartAds gives marketers what they want from online advertising: the ability to deliver customized marketing messages to consumers, and still engage very large audiences with their brand,” said Todd Teresi, Yahoo!’s senior vice president of display marketplaces. “By enabling marketers to reach consumers on a more tailored basis and helping creative agencies support those customized campaigns, we can provide an even more engaging, relevant online experience to the more than 500 million users of Yahoo! branded products and services.”

Yahoo! SmartAds is powered by Yahoo!’s leading behavioral, demographic and geographic targeting capabilities and aim to connect users with what they are looking for based on their distinctive, expressed interests. For example, if a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo! Autos and has selected San Francisco as their default location in Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo!’s SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time that showcases a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer information and current lease rates. This provides a relevant experience to the user and allows the marketer to reach a user who is likely to become a customer.

In addition, Yahoo!’s patent-pending SmartAds platform allows advertisers and agencies to design a single set of individual creative components, provide Yahoo! with that artwork and a feed to their entire database of offers, then allow Yahoo!’s SmartAds technology to automatically generate the hundreds – if not thousands – of unique ad combinations based on those components. This helps advertisers and agencies scale to take full advantage of all of Yahoo!’s audience targeting capabilities while maintaining control over how their brand is presented.

Read the entire Press Release at:

Yahoo!’s New “SmartAds” Meld Brand and Direct Response Advertising

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing