28 Sep 2006
Today I’m attending the Search Engine Strategies Local Search conference in Denver. As you probably know, local online advertising, especially that’s tied into search engines or ad delivery programs such as Google Adsense, has been lagging. For instance, you can probably find your local Circuit City online more easily than a local plumber or daycare center. That could — and should — be changing, according to the experts here. However, a big part of the problem is that online advertising isn’t as easy as it should be for small business owners. In the “Local Search Ads” session, Brad Geddes of LocalLaunch noted, “The typical small business owner’s advertising effort usually involves just a few phone calls or conversations a year.” And in the session before that, Jupiter analyst Barry Parr observed that in local advertising, sales and service are a huge part of that business. “Creating an Adwords account and placing an ad on…
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26 Sep 2006
Seth Godin’s recent post on the “The 8 Free Things Every Site Should Do” reminded me once again of one the least expensive (free) and most efficient ways to keep your web site current and the search engines happy – the Syndicating Press Room. In our experience working with companies trying to improve their web site experience, we find that only about 10 percent of their website gets updated on a frequent basis, and a majority of the time those updates are made in the press room area. So one of the first recommendations we make is to get that press room working for them. Crank up the RSS feed and start syndicating. You can’t expect people to remember to periodically come to your website and scan through the pages to see if there’s any new information. And it would be naive if you think your press contacts are habitually combing your…
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25 Sep 2006
On Sept. 19, I wrote this posting for the Poynter Institute’s group weblog E-Media Tidbits (which is read mainly by mainstream media pros) that caused a little stir in the PR field. See, part of what I do is journalism, so consequently a lot of PR folks unthinkingly add me to their press release e-mail lists. I really, really don’t like that. In fact, I routinely flag any unsolicited press release as spam. I strongly prefer to get news by feed, and I subscribe to lots of feeds on the beats I cover. It’s not that I’m closed to new sources. In fact, PR reps for prospective sources can always e-mail me to request permission to send me releases. If I think they’re relevant enough, I’ll first ask for their feed URL. If they don’t offer a feed, then I’ll let them send me e-mail only if I think their content truly is on-topic for…
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25 Sep 2006
Earlier, Ben Castelli wrote in this blog about Google video ads for Adsense. That reminded me that very soon, Google will be launching an audio ad service, too. Back on Jan. 17, Google announced that it had acquired dMarc Broadcasting, which offers an automated platform to serve advertising into the broadcast radio market — a very mature ad market, compared to online advertising. Google said it "plans to integrate dMarc technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers" — which means serving ads to radio. My understanding is that the new service will launch this fall. Still though, I wonder if that kind of platform might be used to serve ads into podcasts? That could make a huge difference to the economics of podcasting, certainly. Although I must admit, the podcast ads I find most effective and least offensive are those which involve the host — like the…
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BrettGreene:
jo_rogel:
peterahall:
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allisonmoore526: