LookSmart may be one to consider.  They’ve just added enhancements to make it easier for advertisers to target their customers.  Ad Operations Online has the details here.

Vibrant, a leader in contextual advertising solutions, has launched a related content product.  The related content system uses Vibrant’s patented contextual technology to automatically link to related articles, video, images, and audio on the website.  Ad Operations Online has the full story.

AdJuggler (originally covered here) is an ad serving and management system which targets small and medium-sized publishers.  Jonathan Rivers, Executive Vice President, took a few minutes to explain how AdJuggler is different from the big ad serving companies like DoubleClick and what the future holds for the company.

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Our recent discussions on branding (here and here) brought up an important topic - what is a brand? Sometimes business owners think a brand is just a logo or a marketing message, but I think it’s much more:

• Visual - A brand usually has a visual representation in terms of a logo or graphic that is easily recognizable.  Brands can also be identified by a spokesperson or icon (for example, the energizer bunny). Sometimes there are also visual representations that have been created by customers instead of the company.
• Auditory - Many brands have a signature theme song or jingle (think rhapsody in blue for united airlines, or the Intel chimes) which can bring to mind the company when heard outside of advertisements.
• Verbal - Through marketing, sales, and customer service, a company creates verbal impressions of what the company stands for in various situations.
• Emotional - Brands evoke an emotional response in customers (hopefully good emotions), which are influenced by their interactions with the brand (advertising, purchasing, customer service, other customers, etc.).
• Communal - With the ease of communication available on the Internet, customers can easily share opinions, feelings, and experiences about your brand with or without your influence.
• Instinctive - Closely tied with emotional and communal influences, customers have instinctual feelings and opinions about your brand even before they’ve interacted with your company, formed through advertising and information from other customers.
• Evolutionary - Brands are constantly evolving through interaction and shared experiences of customers, non-customers and companies.  A company can try to influence the evolution, but is no longer in complete control of the brand.
• Descriptive -  By combining the various interactions with a brand, an overall impression of what the company stands for is shared among customers and non-customers. A brand is descriptive of what a company, product, and/or service stands for, in terms of all the elements above (visual, auditory, verbal, emotional, etc.).

What else does a brand mean? What does your brand mean to you?  What do other brands mean?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Related Posts:

• How to Get Your Brand Noticed
• Branding is Branding, Offline or Online

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Technorati Tags: brand, branding, online branding, branding strategy, online branding strategy, internet marketing, internet business strategy

The WSJ is reporting on a letter, sent from the Association of National Advertisers to the Department of Justice, cautioning against the proposed deal between Google and Yahoo.  The ANA is citing the usual suspects when objections to mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.  The letter is short, so Ill post the pertinent half.

The letter, authorized by the ANA Board, notes that a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory and states ANA’s concerns that the partnership will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising.

It is the last line that really rings true to the heart of the ANA’s issue with the deal.  The ANA is worried that Google and Yahoo will be able to raise prices on the large percentage of online advertising inventory they control.  It is a serious issue for the association, who represents institutional advertisers and who has a board made up of power brokers

ANA’s board, made up of well-known marketing executives including Brian Perkins, Johnson & Johnson’s vice president of corporate affairs; Stephen Quinn, chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores Inc; and Betsy Lazar, executive director of media and advertising for General Motors Corp., approved the group’s move. ~ WJS

I’m not a large Google or Yahoo advertiser and so I don’t have a good grasp on the merits of this raised objection.  Clearly, when customers of a service speak out against something like this, especially one as well organized and connected as the ANA, the DOJ is likely to listen intently.  In truth, there is the case to be made that Yahoo is threatened by the possibility of going out of business if this deal is not made.  This would surely hurt competition and concentrate control within Google more than a partnership does.  Microsoft has made similar arguments against the deal that the ANA is making.  Those pleas have been largely ignored in the media as the cries of a competitor in the online ad market.

If you offer advertising (or want to) on your business website or blogs, you may have been holding off because of the cost of using online ad management systems.  Sure, there are “free” ad networks, but most of those don’t allow you full control over the ads that show up on your site.  Google’s Ad Manager allows you to sell ads, but also to supplement those ads with ads from Google AdSense and other ad networks.  TechCrunch has more information: Google Will Now Manage Your Website’s Ads, as well as Ad Operations Online: Google Ad Manager out of Beta; All AdSense Publishers Can Use It.

There has been quite a lot of press lately about whether or not you need a PR firm for your business.  At the top of the current buzz is a blog post Jason Calcanis, CEO of Mahaolo, wrote: Jason Calcanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company.  An excerpt:

My philosophy of PR is summed up in six words: be amazing, be everywhere, be real.

You don’t need a PR firm, you don’t need an in-house PR person and you don’t need to spend ANY money to get amazing PR. You don’t need to be connected, and you don’t need to be a “name brand.”  Silicon Alley Insider - Jason Calcanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company

Obviously this post has caused a bit of a storm of PR and marketing folks looking for blood.  But the fact is that most small businesses (tech startups or otherwise) don’t have the budget for an expensive PR firm.  Jason has some great tips that businesses of any size can put to use - whether or not you use a PR firm.  An overview of the ten tips:

1. Be the brand
2. Be everywhere
3. Always pick up the check — always
4. Be a human being
5. How to bond with a journalist
6. How a CEO should e-mail a journalist
7. How a CEO should speak to a journalist
8. Invite people to “swing by” your office
9. Attach your brand to a movement
10. Embrace small media outlets

Do you have your own tips for PR?  Please share in the comments….

PPC or pay per click advertising is an Internet advertising model where advertisers only pay when visitors click on their ads.  These types of ads are typically found in search engine sponsored listings such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter, but can also be found in many advertising networks as well as content networks for the search engines.  Here are some terms and concepts you should be aware of if you’re considering PPC advertising:

• keyword bidding - Many ad networks and search engines use keyword bidding to help decide which ads should be shown for a particular keyword.  Usually you can set a maximum bid for what you are willing to spend.
• CPC (Cost per Click) - How much it will cost per click.  Set either through keyword bidding or a rate card.
• Clicks - How many times your ad has been clicked on.  Visitors clicking on your ad should go to a landing page (see below).
• Impressions - How many times your ad has been viewed.  Impressions also have value since there is some branding effect so make sure you include your company or product name in the ad.
• CTR (Click Through Rate) - The percentage of clicks you are getting related to the number of times your ad is viewed (impressions).
• click fraud - Abusive clicks by competitors or others intended to drive up the cost of the ad in question.  Most PPC ad vendors have sophisticated anti-click fraud systems in place, but this is something you should verify before advertising with any vendor.
• Content targeting or Contextual Ad - PPC ads also show up on websites near content (a content network).  Ads which relate to content being seen are more likely to be clicked upon.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Attempts to increase the visibility of a website on search engines through multiple methods, including search engine optimization (SEO) and paid inclusion (PPC).
• Landing Page - To run an effective PPC campaign, you need to send the traffic from the ad to a landing page which has all the information the visitor needs (make sure you cover what was in the ad), as well as some sort of call to action (this is where you offer them something free in return for their contact information - lead or directly to a sale page).  Your landing page needs to be specifically tailored to the ad in question, don’t just dump people to your homepage - they’ll quickly leave and you’ll be paying for it.

Did we miss anything? Please submit any terms or concepts we missed in the comments.  Thanks!

Technorati Tags: PPC, pay per click, PPC ads, search engine marketing, SEM, internet marketing, internet business strategy

The perils of preroll appear to have been vastly overstated, according to Nate Elliott, research director at Jupiter, who suggests audience loss as a direct result of prerolls could be as little as 5%. - Advertising Age - Fear of Preroll Ad Eases

If you’re considering advertising your business on online video, this study shows that viewers are not likely to leave just because you advertise before the video (a preroll ad).  However, viewers will leave if they feel that the content is not valuable.

Sadly enough, too many advertisers initiate PPC campaigns without knowing what the end goal is. A word of caution: Traffic is not an end goal! …PPC campaign effectiveness is judged by its impact on the company’s bottom line, and the return on investment. Campaign optimization is measured by an increase in CTR and improved quality score. - Ask Enquiro - Key PPC Best Practices (Part 1 of 4)

I’ve had many clients who ask me to increase the traffic to their website by helping them optimize their Google AdWords (PPC) campaign.  Often the client is already getting pretty good traffic to their site through the AdWords, search engines and direct traffic - the problem is that all the traffic isn’t helping them attain their business goals - increased leads and sales.  In these cases taking a look at the landing pages and the usability of the site can often give clues as to why the traffic is not converting to sales/leads (we’ll cover that in more depth in a future post).  Most importantly, think about what the business goals are for your PPC advertising and maintain consistent wording on ads, landing pages and through out the site.  To measure effectiveness of your PPC campaigns, think in terms of business goals - conversions, sales and ROI.  The Ask Enquiro article has good information to help you run effective PPC campaigns.

Technorati Tags: advertising, pay per click, PPC, internet marketing, internet consulting, internet business strategy