Yes, Online Marketing costs are increasing (talking CPC).

You can stop and whinge all you want or you can move and learn.

Knowledge trumps rising costs in search. Online Marketers who are devoted to understanding their analytics and have the discipline to keep learning will continue to see positive returns from their search investment, rising more and more their ROI

Find other avenues to delivery more reliable, contextual, and relevant value to your users

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

I saw these guys growing and becoming big.

If you are involved with Digital Marketing online in Australia you should Check the Affiliate Marketing forum, good tips and discussions for Australian online community.

Cheers

Lucio

PS this is Not a paid post

Digital Marketing industry it’s been all talks about the recent Yahoo+Google deal.

I’ve been asked for different people how I see the influence of this deal on the online marketing environment,

My answer is simple - I hated it.

I don’t really care about Microsoft being or not the Evil Empire (as it’s called in Sillicon Valey). What I care is about Google dominating all aspects about Search Marketing.

Yahoo was the only viable option to Adwords (Google) arbitrary game (read “adwords slap”).

You might say, Yahoo is still serving ads from Overture. Bullshit.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington writes ;

“The deal allows Yahoo to put Google ads along side their own, presumably to maximize revenue to Yahoo. Google’s good at the top search terms (probably 80% or so of revenue potential), but Yahoo thinks they do fine in the long tail. The problem, of course, is that they’ll show Google ads for all the good stuff - and advertisers will go to Google to bid for those ads. More advertisers will leave the platform, further degrading Yahoo’s core search economics”.

I had a talk to an Australian Online Marketing Expert (he asked me to not be quoted) on Friday 13/06 and he had an incredible overview about the deal.

He gave me his opinion and how foolish Mr. Jerry was being and how emotional attached he’s with the company.

On the weekend The New York Times published an article about the deal, an article that goes exactly as my friend’s opinion.

“Jerry, you’re a billionaire because people all over the world bought your stock, and trusted you to do right by them. That’s the compact you make when you take a company public: you get to be really rich, but in return, you have an obligation to do everything you can to ensure that shareholders get a healthy return on their investment. It doesn’t matter that you would like Yahoo to remain independent, or that you can’t stand Microsoft. Your feelings aren’t supposed to get in the way of your fiduciary duty.”

Full article here.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

Lists work because people want to know what other people are doing, reading or buying.

Online lists are loved even more than printed lists.

Here it comes the Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs compiled by Julian Cole. He pretty much categorized the websites based on PR, Technorati and Alexa, He also has included a subjective score — the Pioneer score which measures the “blog’s ability to have pioneering thoughts about marketing”.

I like his methodology, but more than this I like his excellent initiative, bringing Australian community together. Well done Chris.

Some websites on the list were a great found for me, but also I’ve missed some other influential websites as:

- Duncan’s Blog

- James Duthie’s Blog

- Darren Rowse’ Blog

The Top 50 Marketing Blogs in Australia can be founded here and will be published on the Marketing Magazine August’s Edition.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

One of the greatest features of Digital Marketing is real time data analysis and modeling.

Using one of the numerous available software’s, Marketing professionals can/should develop customer profiles, determine customer desires and behaviours and merchandise price profitability, identify and build segmented database and conduct other in-depth analyzes.

Tracking and monitoring web site traffic using website analytics is essential for online strategies.

Internet Marketing its not just about reacting but acting with users or customers who come to your web site; understanding who they are, where they are coming from, and what interaction they had. Analytics can compile this information into comprehensive web statistics

Everything seems great unless online marketing professionals start using it!

Stan Rapp used to say that a good product is that easily available when customers don’t even know they need it. The secret is understanding.

It’s alarming that about 82% of the online advertisers DON’T measure online actions in any way!

Worse,

75% of those who use web analytics are failing to adopt a coherent strategy that ties in web analytics data with business objectives according to the Online Measurement and Strategy Report from E-consultancy and Lynchpin. Full report here.

Spend millions of dollars of your budget and not having a clue of what is happening?

Web Analytics data its proven useful for driving decision-making, but still isn’t being used properly, around 60% of web analytics users say that they use around 30% of total potential of data.

Why?

I’d risk to say that it’s not been sold properly internally.

It lacks real understanding of how to sell within a company.

If you are an Internet professional trying to implement online strategies based on behaviour and understanding of your subscribers/clients you need to first learn how to sell it internally.

Let’s define some points first:

1) WHY do you need to sell internally?

2) WHO do you need to sell to?

3) WHAT you’ll be up against?

4) DO you have different arguments for different departments?

Understanding your internal clients and different arguments with them is crucial.

Don’t’ talk to the Decision Maker the same way you talk/explain to the End Users

When you’re selling to Peers you need:

- Build interest and consensus within your organization

- Sell to the end users

- Focus on features, usability, rewards, etc

When you’re selling to the decision-makers

- Write a killer and short business case

- Keep your focus on ROI, costs and benefits in short and long run.

Thinking about the bottom up and top down approach will help you to manage and to implement your web analytics strategy successfully.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

Seth Godin brings today a great Post about beating the system and working the system

I’ve got a theory, people become addicted in beating the system, is a non-end path once they start it. They (whoever it is) will spend more resources, more time to reinvent their scheme and start luring customers again. In the long term wait and they will see their customers betraying them.

It’s funny that doing individually scams they are collectively killing their industry and consequently their businesses, opening space for better suppliers, example Telecomms, porno and all “Congratulation You’ve won” stuff.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

Google sorts billions of bits of information for its users. Here are some little-known bits of information about Google:

* Google’s name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google’s play on the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

* Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively (a combined 47 years old).

* Google receives more than 1,000 online marketing professional resumes a day.

* Google’s index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

* Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

* Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth’s orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.

* Google has a world-class staff of more than 2,668 employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex.

* Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices, and has made it possible to enter a search using only one phone pad keystroke per letter, instead of multiple keystrokes.

* Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world’s largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

* The basis of Google’s search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an “importance” value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that’s not why it’s called PageRank. It’s actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

* Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company’s chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.

From: Fun Facts about Google.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

I’ve been discussing this with some friends. Is SEO as we known coming to an end?

This has been dividing opinions with both sides giving passionate reasons to believe on them.

Personally I say Yes, SEO as we known will be soon dead.

SEO in essence was born to help separate good and bad content or even better, to separate what Google allows or not. Google being the ultimate Search engine sometimes play the dumb due to SEO tricks.

Now we’ve got all that crap websites ranking really well because of SEO tricks and it just makes Google to look stupid (just try search for “viagra” and you’ll see .edu and blogspot selling the magic pill).

And users think, maybe they are not that good in what they are doing, and this is exactly what Google doesn’t want you to think. The moment users start to compare Google and other search engines is the moment The big G it might lose followers.

All the stories about paid links is another concern. Google started long fight against paid links, understandable, but is an egg/chicken situation here. Do you really believe that something like “john Chow” deletion can happen to a big massive company?

I explain, John Chow was/is a well-known link-exchanger and he was banished from Google results because of this. My point here is, If Telstra (example) start buying links and Google finds out what will happen? Will them be banned from results?

If my mother searches for Telstra and do not find on google and she jumps to yahoo and find, who is playing silly?

I mean, SEO is not evil but is not an angel, SEO has helped the big G to become THE big G, but is not longer required.

If you come this far reading this post, allow yourself another 2 minutes and read Shoemoney’ post here.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

Are you one of that users who use the same password for every website you register with? If your answer is Yes you better read Ilia’s post on his Exposed SEO.

Great Post.

Unfortunately cheating is a common practice on the Internet. There are 2 outcomes from this:

1) Bad guys cost us high money

2) Cheating/Bad behaviour damage the experience of good people.

That’s why good SEO, SEM, Online marketing professionals should have as a moral obligation to spread the word about this sort of scam. As Seth Godin said “Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause”.

Cheers

Lucio Dias Ribeiro

Yahoo!7 is seeking to build up a new network of advertising partners in categories such as automotive, travel, technology and lifestyle, and has signed a partnership with online technology company Digital Niche to achieve this.

The network, called the Yahoo!7 Publisher Network, is a global first for Yahoo! its Australian office claimed. Yahoo!7, using Digital Niche technology to optimize its online advertising network, will seek to sign up partners in the vertical markets mentioned above. However, the network will not be a blind network (where advertisers are not told prior where there ad will appear) but will give advertisers full visibility and the choice to use premium publishers in the network.

Yahoo!7 has signed up Land Rover, Rexnet and Oz Honda to its automotive category already, and is looking to build on these sites in the other categories of travel, technology, finance and lifestyle.

Markus Barnikel, head of strategic partnerships at Yahoo!7, said: “Yahoo!7 is committed to building Australia’s largest and most sought after publisher network, and we’re creating a unique form for advertisers to connect with their consumers, through delivery of premium inventory with diverse publisher categories.”

Digital Niche managing director Damian Cook said: “We have created vertical categories for advertisers to choose the most appropriate publishers.”

From: bandt

Cheers
Lucio Dias Ribeiro