Applying Skills to A New Industry

A friend of mine is getting into dog breeding and asked me to set up her website this week. As you know, my background is automotive advertising. Not German Shepherd advertising. But, hey, the same skills apply. Don't they?

Actually, they do. And I'm having fun learning about a new industry. The first obstacle was spelling Shepherd correctly. After checking the Google keyword tool, "german shepard" is searched a lot. And so is "german sheperd." Too bad neither of those is accurate.

As usually, the third time was the charm and I was able to secure Michigan German Shepherd dot com for her.

I just set up the site and am working on adding more pages. I should have an SEM campaign in place shortly.

My friend has promised to blog weekly updates and I'm excited about adding testimonials once her (the dog's) first litter is sold. Then we'll work on a Facebook page.

Of course, I'll continue to work on SEO with directory listings and backlinks. This is going to be a fun project in a new industry.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Actually, I'm not old, but I couldn't resist the pun.

Caveat Emptor

While working on a freelance project last week, I discovered a local source reselling Yahoo! Behavioral Targeting at a higher cost than going directly through Yahoo! The advantages of using the local source include “free” services for creative and placement. That’s it. Yahoo! Provides templates or you can use your own creative. If your budget is over $2,500 per month, Yahoo! also provides telephone support.

A friend of mine (JS – you know who you are) had mentioned this was happening across the country, so I asked the sale team I met with about the rate difference. The sales manager admitted it was less expensive to go direct. I actually found this refreshing, as most managers would have danced around the question.

What this means for you is “let the buyer beware.” Before trying a new product, investigate. Especially if it’s through a reseller. Don’t assume they pay a cheaper rate for their inventory and are selling it to you at a savings.

ClickZ Poll: 63% Won't Increase Spend on Yahoo/Microsoft

In an informal poll, ClickZ reports that advertisers won't increase their spending once Yahoo search is powered by Bing. Out of 267 respondents, 169 responded no to the question if they'd increase their spend.

What I find fascinating about this is how can you possibly know? Ten years ago, Yahoo was the rage. Things change quickly and you really don't know what the future holds. I would certainly not automatically assume a bigger budget/share for a new entity, but there are too many unknows involved to make those decisions now.

Isn't that what makes advertising fun?

Online Advertising Needs to Be Interactive

I don't use the "interactive" term often anymore. It seems so 1997. Yet consumers strongly prefer their marketing message on demand online.

New research shows viewers don't like pop-up ads, ads that expand when moused over or not. From Adweek.com.

Advertisers are realizing this because the growth budget areas are in search engine marketing and social media. From emarketer.com. The consumer is interacting with the search engine or choosing to join a company's social network.

The concern now for print media is keeping revenues while their readers consume their product online. Consumers still want news and information, they just don't want banner ads covering the content. If only the sites could ask the reader what they were interested in and then send behavior/interest related ad content with it. The Google content network attempts this, but there needs to be a better way for the newspaper sites.

It will need to happen for the industry to survive and thrive.

SEM Showing Signs of Recovery

After declining for several quarters, spending has stabilized through 2nd quarter, 2009. From MediaPost.com.

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, improved their share. Yahoo's share was up, but Google's was down, due to increased efficiencies.

What's interesting is automotive, retail, travel and finance spending was up. These categories have been hit hard by the recession and it's good to see consumer interest in these products is changing.

If the legislation to require opt-ins for behavioral targeting passes, SEM should see growth.

Online Privacy Bill

A new online privacy bill could change the way advertisers use behavior targeting. (http://tinyurl.com/km39pz)

Basically, advertisers can buy ad space to target you based on other sites you've visited. The "cookies" in your browser provide this information. For example, if you look up information about a car at kbb.com, car ads might start showing up as you browse online. This bill will require you to "opt-in" as you browse.

The obvious benefit to advertisers is better targeted ads reaching the right consumers.

This will then shift the focus of online advertising to paid search. The consumer controls the topic, so no "cookies" are involved.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.