Google announced that mobile advertisers can now use multiple addresses in local extensions This way, customers can get the right address for businesses with multiple locations.
The feature is available on Google Maps for Mobile versions 4.4 and above on Android devices.
"Featuring your business location alongside your mobile ad is a powerful method to drive foot traffic and in store sales," says Google Mobile Ads Product Manager Surojit Chatterjee. "For instance, if a potential customer is looking for a wireless communications store like Sprint, an ad within GMM can display all Sprint locations near them. This not only delivers a relevant search experience, but also enables customers to visit the closest and most convenient Sprint store location.
AdWords will display a clickable banner to users with the option to show all locations for the business. This is based on the user's search and location signals. When they click "show all", the map will display just the locations of the business. Some businesses will be able to use their logo as their icon.
When a user clicks a location, they'll get more details about the business, like ad text, directions, click to call, and a link to the site.
As an advertiser, to use the feature, you must be a primary business owner and enable location extensions in Google Places. Campaigns must target iPhone and other "high-end" mobile devices with full mobile browsers. You'll be charged when users click on the website URL or the phone icon.
AOL said today it has signed a five-year search advertising deal with Google renewing its partnership with the search company that dates back to 2002.
Under the terms of the deal Google will provide search services to AOL’s content network and properties, in exchange for a revenue-sharing arrangement between the two companies which will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube.
“Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
“AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world – Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”
Key highlights of the partnership include:
*As AOL renews its focus on mobile apps and content, the companies will work together to expand the alliance to cover mobile search.
*AOL and YouTube have agreed to a content partnership that will bring AOL’s video content to YouTube.
*The alliance is international in scope and will provide improved experiences to AOL’s worldwide audience.
Google announced a new feature for businesses in Google Maps in the U.S. today. The feature lets businesses include sponsored map icons that appear on the maps themselves. The feature actually began in a pilot program earlier this year in Australia.
"Now, when you zoom in to areas of interest on Google Maps, you'll more easily be able to spot the locations of companies and brands that are already familiar to you," says product manager Matthew Leske. "That's because we're working with business owners to enable them to replace the standard icons that appear on the map at their business locations with their well-known company logos. These logos appear directly on the map when you zoom in to see a close-up view of an area. Just like the existing default business icons that appear in grey, these colored logos are clickable and open the Place page for that business. Both large and small businesses can claim their Place pages and enhance them with information including hours of operation, product inventory, photos and videos."
"By helping users identify popular businesses, we're making it easier to browse the map and navigate the real world," adds Leske. "That might mean fortunately stumbling upon a nearby ATM when you're looking up the address of the new restaurant where you're dining tonight, or exploring the neighborhood you just moved into by figuring out where the grocery store is relative to your new apartment."
Google says the icons will become visible on mobile phones in the coming weeks.
Advertisers pay to have their logos appear on the map. The feature is only being offered in limited beta to companies in the U.S. that have multiple locations and "a well-known brand." That's unfortunate for small businesses, but the feature could expand in the future.
It is hard not to enjoy beer marketing. Even if you are not a marketer, this industry always offers creative advertising (particularly on TV) that is fun to watch and spends lots of money doing it. Every year at the Super Bowl, a good number of the Top 10 ads come from beer companies. In other venues beyond sports, beer advertising often promises good times, great parties and generally being able to escape from your daily life into a world of fun, travel and festivities.
When it comes to marketing strategy, however, it often seems like beer companies focus on being entertaining at the expense of being strategic. With campaigns that seem to change almost monthly and taglines that rarely last for more than a football season, it is easy to dismiss beer marketing as irresponsible spending to promote a high margin product. Is there more to beer advertising than 30 second eye candy and girls in bikinis? Here are a few popular marketing campaigns for beer - along with their corresponding marketing strategy that may yield some surprising lessons ...
1. Be Unique (Red Stripe Beer)
If you have ever had a Red Stripe beer from Jamaica, you know that it has a very unique bottle shape, shorter and stubbier than most others. The bottle sets the beer apart more than anything else, and this fact is brilliantly parodied in this ad featuring their central spokesperson - the Jamaican guy who loves nothing more than celebrating what beer can do with his trademark expression of Jamaican joy: "Hooray Beer!"
2. Demonstrate Loyalty (Bud Light)
The ad for Bud Light below follows the model this beer company has focused on for nearly every Super Bowl and football season - forget about your product features and focus on the simple message that guys will do almost anything for your beer. The strategy which seems buried in most of their ads is the unwavering loyalty that the guys in their ads have for Bud Light. They will build houses out of it, jump out of planes, and even walk around naked for a day just to get more of it. It is easy to argue that the name of the beer involved is entirely forgettable, but the ads stand out for being entertaining.
3. Create Associations (Estrella Damm)
A popular ad for European beer Estrella Damm - this campaign features a few ads which tell the story where the beer plays a supporting role and one of the tagline reads "Good times never end when you have something to remind you of them." Another ad features a growing relationship between two fellow travellers. While the taglines don't exactly roll off the tongue, the entire campaign creates stories that associate the beer with the common memory of moments like a short term romance on a backpacking trip through Europe that many of their target audience will remember nostalgically, and one that many people won't be able to help sharing.
4. Foster Aspirations (Dos Equis)
Probably the most popular campaign of the list, this inspired marketing from Dos Equis creates a persona for the Most Interesting Man In The World who, by his own admission, "doesn't always drink beer, but when he does he prefers Dos Equis." The image of this man is who every guy wants to grow up to be, and works because it places Dos Equis in a typically uncontested space as the choice for a more mature and refined guy versus an infantile male trying to relive lost days of keg stands and beer pong from college. That and irresistible lines like "he lives vicariously through himself" help position Dos Equis as the more aspirational choice in beers.
5. Reinforce Perceptions (Heineken)
The thing that European beers have always used to promote themselves against other brands is the sense that they are a more upscale and respectable choice when you go to a bar or similarly public place. Heineken's recent campaign takes this message and replays it with the powerful tagline - "give yourself a good name." The ads feature guys making bold decisions (like drinking with the scary bosses' daughter) and congratulating them on their choice. It helps reinforce the message that what beer you choose says something important about who you are, so choose well.
Google has an interesting post up today on its official blog, outlining its efforts in growing display advertising. Within this outline are five what Google calls "key principles guiding our future product innovations in this area."
In short, these principles are: making life more efficient, total revenue management, more insight and control, betting on openness, everything is going to be "display".
To me, there are two particularly interesting nuggets within this post - "immediate ads" and a server dedicated to automatically learn where and when a given ad will get the best response. Following are a couple quotes from the piece.
"Things like new standards for video ad serving and systems that connect buyers and sellers are helping publishers support the most engaging and creative ads across their sites. But there are quantum leaps to come in this area, for small and large publishers," says Google Director of Product Management Jonathan Bellack. "Think of a political candidate who is seeking donations on his or her website—the candidate can receive money in seconds. Imagine if publishers—even the smallest website—had tools that enabled advertisers to click a button on their site to upload an ad, let them pay for it with a credit card, and then deliver this ad—through the publisher’s ad server—within minutes. This sort of 'immediate ad' will become possible as ad serving technology continues to simplify the process of buying and selling ad space."
"There's no question that delivering the right ad to the right user at the right time delivers better results," says Bellack. "We have years of experience in doing this with search and text ads; we’re now bringing that experience to the world of display. This means investing in a smarter ad server that can automatically learn where and when a given ad will get the best response, as well as manage delivery to deliver those improved results for publishers. This new ad server can even anticipate a publisher’s future events and adjust delivery accordingly—for example, if traffic drops off every weekend, the ad server can automatically speed up during the week to keep everything moving smoothly."
Other topics mentioned are Google's variety of tools designed to provide data, reports, and controls, etc. It also talks about open APIs enabling the building of apps that cater to "advertising apps".
Give the post a read if you're interested in the strategies Google is focusing on with regards to display advertising.
Yahoo announced today that it has expanded its partnership with Dex One to allow listings on Yahoo Local. "This broadens the reach of Dex One's local advertiser network, providing their clients with greater exposure in local communities and more consumers with detailed information on local businesses," a spokesperson for Yahoo tells WebProNews.
All businesses who advertise on Dex One's DexKnows site will be able to show up in Yahoo Local search results. The expanded partnership doubles the geographic area covered by the original partnership, which started in 2007.
The original agreement covered the 14-state region where Dex One is the official print directory publisher for Qwest.
"Yahoo! is committed to helping local businesses unlock the potential of digital advertising," says Regan Senkarik, VP of Channel Sales at Yahoo. "Expanding our agreement with Dex One will provide their clients with greater exposure in local communities and more consumers with detailed information on local businesses."
"This strengthens a great strategic relationship with Yahoo! and broadens the reach of our local advertiser network," said Sean Greene, SVP of interactive at Dex One. "Through the network our clients' online business information appears not only on DexKnows but also in prime locations on many of the Web's most popular search sites, including Yahoo! Local."
On a somewhat related note, Yahoo today announced that its Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers can now begin their transition to Microsoft adCenter - a product of the Search Alliance between those two companies.
It looks like MySpace's dealings with Google aren't over - or conclusively continued - just yet. Even though a search and advertising deal is set to expire today, a report's indicated that the companies' existing contract has been extended a short time while negotiations continue.
Sarah Rabil and Andy Fixmer wrote earlier this morning, "MySpace.com extended a search advertising contract with Google Inc. by one month as the News Corp.-owned social-networking website tries to secure a new agreement, according to two people with knowledge of the talks."
That may be a sign things are going well between the two organizations; it's a little hard to imagine Google being so cooperative if Bing or Yahoo seemed to be MySpace's first choice.
Or perhaps Google's just trying to stay friendly with MySpace as it prepares its own social offering - the better to attract users and/or gang up on Facebook.
Regardless, Rabil and Fixmer noted, "News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said on Aug. 4 that MySpace was 'actively engaged' in reaching a new search ad deal, which will likely be worth less than the expiring Google contract. The new agreement will be performance based, Carey said."
It should be interesting to see if something gets hammered out before the end of September.
Today is not getting off to a good start for Yahoo. NHN - which owns both the South Korean equivalent of Google and the country's largest gaming portal - has decided to stop using the American company's advertising tech, and its chief didn't exactly have nice things to say when parting ways.
Indeed, NHN CEO Kim Sang Hun stated according to Jun Yang, "We desperately need an advertising platform that's more flexible and effective, with closer ties to the local market to respond to advertisers' expectations promptly."
That's pretty harsh (though in a businesslike and impersonal way). And making the matter worse for Yahoo is the fact that some investors seem to agree, sending NHN's stock up following the announcement.
Now, whether other companies come around to that point of view or simply fall in line as a matter of following the leader, it's not hard to imagine those comments could cause a sort of domino effect to take place.
Jun Yang even wrote, "[Yahoo's] Overture may lose all its business in South Korea's 1 trillion won ($836 million) online advertising market as it is replaced with local technologies, said Choi Chan Seok, a Seoul-based analyst at KTB Securities."
Anyway, Yahoo's contract with NHN is set to expire later this year.
Many businesses have probably been wondering just how much Twitter's Promoted Tweets could help them if they were given the chance to participate. Promoted Tweets is still in beta, and is still limited to a set of partners. One of those partners, Zecco, has been talking about the success it has had with the program.
Zecco CEO Michael Raneri reached out to WebProNews to tell us about his company's experience with this advertising channel. "Over the past two months, Zecco has seen an average increase of 50 percent engagement with promoted tweets versus our standard tweets," says Raneri. "In some cases, this increase has been as much as 200 to 300 percent. We're really excited to have been chosen as the only financial services company to participate in the Promoted Tweets beta and to work with Twitter and amazing brands like Coca Cola, Disney Pixar and JetBlue on helping shape this key marketing platform."
"Promoted Tweets are a way of getting interesting and contextually-relevant information to an ever wider audience on Twitter and making investors aware of the unique insights of online financial communities like our own ZeccoShare with 300,000+ members," he says. "The majority of our tweets focus on financial market commentary, and we also give our audience information on things like new posts on the ZeccoPulse blog, 'Most Traded' indicators from the ZeccoShare community and free trade promotions."
The company plans on continuing to offer contextually-relevant information, insights and tips on its offerings that it thinks investors and active traders will find valuable.
"While we have one of the largest Twitter follower bases in the brokerage industry today, we also hope to use the Promoted Tweets program to further extend our reach and grow our followers," says Raneri.
"Online communities and social media are all about connecting people and sharing ideas," he says. "This is especially valuable in the fast-paced investing world, where having quick and easy access to a community of people interested in the same topics is invaluable to any investor, whether they’re just starting out or a seasoned trader."
Clearly Zecco has a particular niche in the investing world, but it's easy to see parallels for other industries in how Promoted Tweets will be useful.
Twitter unveiled Promoted Tweets in April, beginning with them appearing in Twitter search results. The ads are based on a "resonance" algorithm. If a promoted tweet doesn't resonate with users, Twitter will stop showing it.
YouTube has announced new video and channel exclusions for advertisers, so they can pick specific videos and channel URLs that they don't want their ads to appear with.
"Here's an example: let's say you run a vegan bakery," explains Baljeet Singh. "You want to strike a balance between good exposure for your baked goods online, while staying true to your company values in offering items free of animal or dairy-products. Now you can indicate which videos are not the best fit for your audience. Since your customers are probably not watching ‘Homewrecker Hot Dog’, you can provide this video exclusion under the "Networks" tab."
"Similarly, you might run a keyword-targeted campaign on bakery-related keywords, and exclude whole channels that you don’t feel suit your audience," adds Singh. "So if FoodNetworkTV has videos centered mostly around cooking meat dishes, you have the controls to prevent ads from showing on that channel."
YouTube also suggests using the feature to keep ads from appearing on videos they deem inappropriate for the audience or ones that aren't performing in terms of click-through rate or conversions.
This is only the latest of some advertising features YouTube has been rolling out recently. Last week, the company announced a new feature that lets advertisers age-restrict videos.
TweetUp, a search engine/ad network that has been based on Twitter, is now changing its name to PostUp, and is adding support for both Facebook and LinkedIn. The search engine will expand to include both bios and updates posted to Facebook and LinkedIn.
"Our early experience in working with members, partners, advertisers and users has led us to see the importance of expanding what we display in search results," says PostUp CEO Bill Gross. "Many of the most prominent and respected authorities on subjects of interest to Internet users have strong preferences for one network over another and often post their comments on multiple networks. Expanding our results to include members of LinkedIn and Facebook will enable those who maintain pages on those services, either alone or in addition to Twitter, to increase the number of targeted fans or followers through one, common search engine."
PostUp says its core search algorithms and marketplace address the needs of both users and authors in a single search mechanism. "In addition to algorithms that combine a variety of factors to determine relevance, authors will soon be able to bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines," PostUp says. "This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the most relevant authors to the top of the results of users' searches, and it enables serious members of social networks to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively."
"Market response to the PostUp concept has been extremely gratifying," says Gross. "Over 12,000 tweeters have registered over 200,000 keywords to date, and the number of impressions we are serving across our distribution network has been growing at over 100% per month. To date, we’ve served over 700 million impressions in just three months, a testament to the reach of our distribution partners."
TweetUp users are automatically included in PostUp. PostUp's site appears to currently be down. TweetUp is still up.
PostUp says over 700 Million impressions have been served in search results on leading web sites and Twitter clients in just the three months since it launched.
The feature was initially only available to a small number of advertisers using the English language AdWords interface. Today, Google announced that it is expanding. Now the feature is available for all English language accounts.
The feature examines the account's activity over two weeks, and lists categories that represent the products/services you're advertising. These are based on search terms and are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with the account, users will see a bar graph highlighting individual performance compared to the performance of other advertisers in the category.
Google's Jason Shafton explains, "In addition to the feature’s core functionality, you can now also see the Google search terms that triggered your ad for each of the most specific sub-categories in your account. Click a category name to see more specific sub-categories. When the category name is no longer a link, you’ll know you’re at the most specific sub-category -- this is where you’ll see a "See search terms" link. Seeing the search terms that triggered your ad can serve as inspiration for new keyword ideas or help you understand if your keywords have been miscategorized by our system. If you see that the search terms listed for a given category are not related to the keywords in your ad groups, you may consider making keywords more specific or adding new negative keywords."
Google says it intends to bring more features to Analyze Competition in the future.
A public relations firm hired by video game developers will settle Federal Trade Commission charges it engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees post favorable reviews on iTunes on behalf of the developers and not revealing the reviews came form paid employees.
“Companies, including public relations firms involved in online marketing need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising,” said Mary Engle, Director of the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices.
“Advertisers should not pass themselves off as ordinary consumers touting a product, and endorsers should make it clear when they have financial connections to sellers.”
Under the proposed settlement order, Reverb Communications, Inc. and its owner, Tracie Snitker, are required to remove any previously posted endorsements that misrepresent the authors as independent users or ordinary consumers, and that fail to disclose a connection between Reverb and Snitker and the seller of a product or service.
The agreement also bars Reverb and Snitker from misrepresenting that the user or endorser is an independent, ordinary consumer, and from making endorsement or user claims about a product or service unless they disclose any relevant connections that they have with the seller of the product or service.
Between November 2008 and May 2009, Reverb and Snitker posted reviews about their clients’ games at the iTunes store using account names that gave readers the impression the reviews were written by disinterested consumers, according to the FTC complaint. Reverb and Snitker did not disclose that they were hired to promote the games and that they often received a percentage of the sales.
Online ad spending is set to grow almost 14 percent, from $45.6 billion, in 2010, to $51.9 billion, in 2011, according to a new forecast from Borrell Associates.
By next year, local online advertising should grow by almost 18%, from $13.7 billion, in 2010, to $16.1 billion, in 2011.
Targeted display advertising is forecast to grow almost 60 percent in 2011, reaching $10.9 billion for national and local combined. While national advertisers will increase their use of targeted display by nearly 50 percent, local advertisers will out perform that. Use of targeted display by advertisers local to the markets where their ads run will more than double, reaching more than $2.3 billion next year.
Borrell expects national paid search ad format will see a double-digit spending decline next year, moving down 11.3 percent. The drop will be caused by lower pricing and churn, but will be lessened by a local advertiser increase of more than 10 percent.
Email advertising will see moderately strong growth in 2011, up 9% to $16.0 billion for national and local. Growth in this format is almost all from national advertisers; only 3% is local.
The streaming video format is forecast to continue to its strong growth, increasing more than 60 percent to $5.6 billion next year. Two out of every five streaming video ad dollars will come from local advertisers next year.
Online promotions will top $24 billion next year, up 10% from this year's totals. Much of this increase will be due to the rising use of online couponing, forecast to grow almost 14%, to $9.1 billion, in 2011.
Mobile marketing continues to grow, driven by apps, user-friendly browsers and 3G/4G speeds.
News Corp. is integrating its Fox Audience Network (FAN) business directly with MySpace. The company says this will allow MySpace to leverage the FAN team and technology platform. This comes as FAN President Adam Bain leaves the company for Twitter.
"FAN and MySpace have worked together closely over the past several years and this integration will further align these two properties," said Jon Miller, Chairman and CEO of Digital Media for News Corp. "Adam has been an invaluable asset to News Corp, having led FAN’s growth from the ground up into one of the Web’s largest ad platforms, and we wish him well in the future."
"By fully integrating FAN’s platform and team, we are in a great position to further leverage FAN’s technology, which allows advertisers to serve the right ad to the right person and apply that to content across MySpace to provide a more relevant experience for our users,” said Mike Jones, President of MySpace. "The FAN team is incredibly talented and we’re excited to welcome them to the MySpace family."
Created in 2007, Fox Audience Network reaches over 150 million Internet users, according to the company. It supports monetization efforts across the News Corp.'s online content portfolio, as well third-party publisher sites.
Bain has been named Twitter's President of Revenue. More on this here.
Microsoft announced today that it is making some ad relevance improvements, namely, a temporary increase in Bing crawl rates. The adCenter team writes:
Along with our consistent efforts to increase relevance for your adCenter campaigns, we will be temporarily increasing the rate at which your sites will be crawled to 20 to 30qps. This is within the accepted standards for crawl rates, and is vital to continuing to provide the most relevant advertising experience possible.
The team adds that if you have any concerns with the increased rate, you should contact your account management team as soon as possible. Microsoft's Tina Kelleher adds that you can also leave comments on this blog post.
Keep in mind that Bing results have overtaken Yahoo results now in the U.S. and Canada, and the companies have begun testing the adCenter transition for pad results.
Last week, Microsoft announced that it has expanded negative keyword limits for adCenter, so advertisers can now add thousands of negative keywords.
Google announced it has expanded its sensitive category blocking feature for AdSense to Japanese, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese. The goal is to expand it worldwide eventually.
The feature is already available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Arabic (with testing being done for Russian).
With the feature, users can prevent ads from up to 11 categories from appearing on their pages. "Ads in these categories will be blocked if they're in any of the supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages," says Google's Katrina Kurnit.
Setting category blocking can be done from the Ad Review Center in your AdSense account. This can be found in the AdSense Setup tab.
"Once you click 'change,' you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can block," says Kurnit. "In addition, to help you understand the impact of applying these filters, we'll show you the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days."
Categories that can be blocked include: cosmetic procedures and surgeries, dating, drugs and supplements, get rich quick, politics, religion, ringtones and downloadables, sexual and reproductive health, sexually suggestive, video games (casual or online), and weight loss.
Federated Media announced today that it has acquired a technology suite and platform for semantic and linguistic profiling of web-based content from San Jose startup TextDigger.
FM says TextDigger's technology complements its own platform with semantic solutions for content tagging, filtering and clustering, that can help the company enhance the user experience, ad targeting, and semantic SEO for a site or network of sites.
"We're proud to place TextDigger's semantic profiling technology in FM's hands," said Tim Musgrove, founder and CEO of TextDigger. "I've followed FM's growth over the last few years and admire the company's work. They have amassed a great team and a solid technology platform. I’m happy that our IP and our people will be integrated into such a wonderful company. This is a great strategic fit for all sides involved."
"FM's home-grown technology platform is largely an untold story," said John Battelle, founder, chairman and CEO of Federated Media. "Over the past five years, our technology team has built an extraordinary platform that drives our business and keeps us on the edge of innovation in media. TextDigger provides us with a complementary technology that will build upon the work our team began back in 2005. Expect to hear more from FM with regard to media and marketing technology solutions."
Four "key" people from TextDigger including Musgrove, VP Engineering Robin Hiroko Walsh, Sr. Director of Product Management Peter Ridge, and Lead Software Engineer Jim Hull, are also joining the Federated Media team.
TextDigger will continue its own search business. Current Chief Business Development Officer will take over as CEO. TextDigger customers will continue to be supported by either FM or TextDigger, depending on their type of project or service. Financial terms of the acquisition have not been revealed.
Google announced that it will roll out some new tools for DoubleClick Ad Exchange buyers. These features, the company says, will help buyers buy quality inventory and check their campaigns.
The DoubleClick Ad Exchange was launched in September as a real-time marketplace where online publishers and ad networks/agencies can buy and sell ad space for prices set in a real-time auction.
One new feature is called "Site Packs" which the company describes as "manually crafted collections of like sites based on DoubleClick Ad Planner and internal classifications, vetted for quality."
Google is also making changes to its Real-time Bidder. "The biggest change here is for Ad Exchange clients who work with DSPs," says DoubleClick Ad Exchange Product Manager, Scott Spencer in an interview with AdExchanger.com (reposted to Google's DoubleClick Advertiser Blog). "Historically, Ad Exchange buyers were hidden from publishers behind their DSP. By introducing a way to segment out each individual client's ad calls, inventory can be sent exclusively to an Ad Exchange buyer even when that buyer uses a DSP. It increases transparency for publishers and potentially give buyers more access to the highest quality inventory, like 'exclusive ad slots' – high quality inventory offered to only a few, select buyers as determined by the publisher."
Google will also roll out a beta of a feature called "Data Transfer", which is a report of all transactions bought/sold by clients on the Ad Exchange.
Apple's VP of iAd (formerly Quattro's CEO) Andy Miller sent Apple employees a memo saying that the Quattro Wireless Network will be shut down at the end of September. Apple bought Quattro, which would lead to iAd, last year for $275. Silicon Alley Insider has a look at the memo.
Meanwhile, RIM is shopping for an ad network, according to the Wall Street Journal. The publication cites the popular "people familiar with the matter".
Here's a fun one. Have you heard/read about the movie the Last Exorcism? There's a viral campaign utilizing ChatRoulette (it can be used for marketing!):
Google reportedly wants Motorola to create an Android tablet for Verizon. On a related note, the next version of Android (after Gingerbread) will reportedly be called Honeycomb.
ZDNet reports that Windows 7 is a hit, while XP is officially in decline.
Experian Hitwise announced the launch of two major search products: SERP position data for all major search engines and search term sequencing for common sequential trends in search behavior.
Perhaps the biggest story in tech today is that Intel is buying McAfee for $7.68 billion. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this has on the security industry.
Microsoft announced that it has expanded negative keyword limits in adCenter. This should be of particular interest now that Yahoo and adCenter are coming together.
If you're not familiar with negative keywords, advertisers can prevent their ads from appearing in response to certain search queries using negative keywords (specific words or phrases that help prevent ads from being displayed to customers who are unlikely to click).
Advertisers can now add thousands of negative keywords t both the campaign and ad group levels. The company notes that you'll need to delete negative keywords at the keyword level, because the list limit hasn't been expanded there yet.
"Doing so will also keep your keyword-level negatives from overriding your newly expanded lists at the higher levels," says Microsoft's Tina Kelleher.
Advertisers need to upload their expanded lists of negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level with the negative keywords migration wizard in the Desktop, then remove keyword-level negatives, the company says.
"Unless, of course, you're perfectly happy with your campaigns as they are now and don't need the increased capacity for negatives at the higher levels, then there's no action you need to take at all," Kelleher adds.
Google has launched a section in the AdWords Help Center aimed at helping small businesses improve their campaigns. It's called Small Business Corner.
"The Small Business Corner is designed to give those of you who are running your own AdWords accounts the opportunity to share best practices in discussions with your peers so that you can make sure your AdWords account is doing all it can to support your business goals," says Google's Miles Johnson. "This new category is not about troubleshooting specific account issues, but rather about sharing and learning from the experiences of others."
Johnson throws out: choosing the right tools to measure results, how to write great ads, and finding the right frequency to sign in to AdWords as topics of discussion.
There are already more topics to discuss in there, and given that AdWords are a pretty popular small business marketing tool, I'd expect this forum to get a great deal of discussion going, which should make for a very useful resource.
To some degree, age restrictions are often thrown out the window. Lots of parents let their kids see R-rated movies, for example, and young teenagers are sometimes treated to parking lot driving lessons. But corporations that are in the public eye can't cut corners, and YouTube addressed this issue today by introducing a new age-related feature for advertisers.
Alice Wu, Head of Ads Policy, explained on the YouTube Blog, "[W]e're pleased to offer a new feature that allows select advertisers to voluntarily age-restrict watch pages for their videos. This is a long-requested feature by many advertisers interested in promoting their products, but who want to be sure that they comply with their own industry guidelines regulations."
Wu then noted (in case the option sounds familiar), "Advertisers have always been able to age-restrict their channels generally, but to date only users could flag specific videos that they thought should be age-restricted under our Community Guidelines. Now, advertisers can do so proactively, and can choose different ages depending on their needs."
This is a smart move on YouTube's part since it'll allow many more companies to feel comfortable working with the site. And the industries that will be affected have long been known to have big advertising budgets (think about the alcohol business, for example).
The move's also smart because it could help impress parents who want to keep their children sheltered. Or at least limit the opportunity for the parents to complain.
Look for the feature to be taken advantage of more and more over the next few months as advertisers get in touch with their account representatives and prepare new material.
Mobile ad network Millennial Media released its latest Mobile Mix report this morning. Android is now officially the number 2 OS on Millennial's network. The Android OS grew another 47% month-over-month. Since January, Android has grown 690%. Android surpassed RIM as the number 2 OS on the network.
Apple ad requests increased 24% month-over-month, but are actually down 15% since January. iPad ad requests grew 327% month-over-month, however.
Here are the top manufacturers and devices:
There was a significant increase in app developers programming for RIM's platform. RIM apps represented 11% of the US Developer Platform Usage Mix. This was a increase of 9%, and represents the increased importance app developers are placing on the RIM platform, the firm says.
Shopping and retail apps entered into the top 10 Mobile App Channels, perhaps reflecting a potential back-to-school trend, Millennial notes.
Smartphones and connected devices increased their impression share 7%, and now represent 68% of the total impression share. Millennial says this is an example of the continued demand consumers have for a rich media experience they cannot get on a feature phone.
Google has introduced some mobile ad serving features in DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA), which lets advertisers and agencies traffic mobile ad campaigns alongside the rest of their online advertising campaigns.
Advertisers can serve mobile ads in DFA and a variety of mobile platforms. "Trafficking mobile ads in DFA is easy," says Product Manager Alex Gawley. "You use the same process as you would for any campaign in DFA. Mobile is just another ad type and placement type that you would select within the DFA trafficking interface. You don’t even need to create a separate campaign for your mobile ads in DFA, you can include them in any existing campaign alongside the rest of your online creatives assets."
"DFA mobile ads are designed to be trafficked on inventory that is optimized for mobile browsers or within a mobile application,' says Gawley. "Tailor your message to each of the major mobile platforms and automatically serve the appropriate Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) creative size to a broad array of mobile devices. You also have many of the existing DFA targeting features at your disposal such as day-parting, keywords and geo-targeting."
Advertisers have access to mobile impression and click data in the same place as the standard DFA reports, and there is a mobile-specific report focused on stats on mobile placement by wireless carrier, mobile platform and country. There are also mobile-optimized tags that run on a variety of mobile devices.
Finally, Google is releasing mobile browser targeting for standard ads. "As many mobile phones come with full Internet browsers, you'll often find that your standard ads are being viewed on mobile devices too," notes Gawley.
Google promises more new features for mobile in DFA in the coming months. More on these features here.
AOL said today it has launched 100 Patch local news sites and has plans to grow that number to 500 by the end of the year.
AOL plans to hire 500 journalists to support its Patch expansion and it will likely be the largest hirer of full-time journalists in the U.S. this year.
"Today's launch of our 100th site is a significant milestone for us. We began with just three Patch communities in February 2009, and have since made incredible progress toward fulfilling our core mission of providing comprehensive information and trusted, professional news coverage to towns and communities," said Warren Webster, President, Patch Media.
AOL hopes its Patch network will be positioned to tap an estimated $20 billion in local online advertising dollars. Each Patch site is managed by one professional local editor, along with freelancers focused on covering news in a specific community.
Patch sites have launched in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia. The 2010 expansion includes plans to extend Patch's reach into more than a dozen new states including Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
"All news is essentially local, and the pace at which Patch has grown shows that the demand for meaningful community news and information is alive and well," said Phil Meyer, Professor Emeritus in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a member of the Patch Editorial Advisory Board.
Google has announced the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature in AdWords, aimed at helping users improve ROI on campaigns with manual bidding. It uses the campaign's historical conversion tracking data to automatically adjust the Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that the ad will convert.
Google says this should lead to more conversions while reducing the overall CPA. Take a look at this video:
Google points to the following as examples of what Enhanced CPC can do:
Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past
Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. 'model airplane kits for children')
Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting
Conversion tracking must be enabled on you campaigns if you want to use Enhanced CPC. The feature can be found in the "Bidding and Budgeting" section of the settings tab.
For more examples and information on Enhanced CPC, check out this post.
comScore released its Video Metrix data for July today. According to this, 178 million people in the U.S. watched online video content during the month, watching an average of 14.7 hours per user.
During the month, Facebook moved up from the fourth position to the third position behind Yahoo properties, and of course Google properties at number 1. Facebook accounted for 46.6 million viewers.
Hulu generated the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million in July. Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in all. NewTeeVee notes that four out of five Hulu videos are ads.
84.9% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video during the month. The average video duration was 4.8 minutes. The average duration of online video ads was 0.4 minutes.
Video ads accounted for 9.8% of all videos viewed and 0.9% of all minutes spent viewing video online.
An organization that bears Yahoo's name - even though Yahoo just holds a 35 percent stake in it - has acquired another company. Cirius Technologies, which deals in location-based advertising tech, is now part of Yahoo Japan.
Cirius's primary business is a service called AdLocal. It acts as a location-based mobile advertising network, allowing marketers to pick where and when consumers will see an appeal to buy something, along with who (in terms of demographics) the consumers will be.
What's more, Cirius operates in the U.S. in addition to Asia, signaling that although it only has around 30 employees, it's not too small or unsuccessful a venture.
Serkan Toto reported, however, "Following the acquisition, Cirius will close the office in the US and move its HQ to that of Yahoo Japan's," so it doesn't look like Yahoo Japan is trying to expand its reach right now.
Otherwise, details are scarce. Yahoo Japan and Cirius haven't disclosed the purchase price or how to the AdLocal tech might be integrated into other properties, for example.
SoftBank, which is a Japanese telecommunications giant, owns a 40 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, by the way.
U.S. advertisers will spend $1.68 billion on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in 2010, according to a new report from eMarketer.
The $1.68 billion figure represents a 20 percent increase over 2009 on social network advertising spending and is set to climb to more than $2 billion in 2011.
In December 2009, eMarketer estimated $1.3 billion in social network ad spending in 2010. Healthy online ad spending in general, and Facebook in particular, has resulted in the increased forecast.
Facebook will pull in half of all social network ad spending in the U.S. while "MySpace continues to diminish in importance." Spending on Twitter will be low in 2010 but the "potential for 2011 and beyond could be dramatic."
Spending on social network advertising will grow even more quickly globally. eMarketer forecasts just over half of social network ad spending globally will come from the U.S., but 2011 will see a reversal.
Social gaming companies such as Zynga and Playdom are expected to attract $293 million in spending worldwide in 2011, up from $220 million in 2010.
AMA -
American Marketing Association
Yahoo - Technology
Under the terms of the deal Google will provide search services to AOL’s content network and properties, in exchange for a revenue-sharing arrangement between the two companies which will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube. 
Regardless, Rabil and Fixmer noted, "News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said on Aug. 4 that MySpace was 'actively engaged' in reaching a new search ad deal, which will likely be worth less than the expiring Google contract. The new agreement will be performance based, Carey said."
"Promoted Tweets are a way of getting interesting and contextually-relevant information to an ever wider audience on Twitter and making investors aware of the unique insights of online financial communities like our own ZeccoShare with 300,000+ members," he says. "The majority of our tweets focus on financial market commentary, and we also give our audience information on things like new posts on the ZeccoPulse blog, 'Most Traded' indicators from the ZeccoShare community and free trade promotions."
“Companies, including public relations firms involved in online marketing need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising,” said Mary Engle, Director of the 
Setting category blocking can be done from the Ad Review Center in your AdSense account. This can be found in the AdSense Setup tab. 
"FM's home-grown technology platform is largely an untold story," said John Battelle, founder, chairman and CEO of Federated Media. "Over the past five years, our technology team has built an extraordinary platform that drives our business and keeps us on the edge of innovation in media. TextDigger provides us with a complementary technology that will build upon the work our team began back in 2005. Expect to hear more from FM with regard to media and marketing technology solutions."
