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Seems Microsoft is moving to finalize the renaming of Live Search to Kumo, according to LiveSide.net. The possibility has been discussed at various times this year.

Renaming and branding moves by search engines have not had much luck. Ask.coms removal of Jeeves seemed to hurt them, FindWhat and eSpotting merger and rename to Miva definitely impacted the companies, so there is data for not making the changes.

True GoClick to Overture went okay - but then they had a great product in a growing market - just like BackRub and Google…. but that was really prepublic launch.

If the move goes through will be well worth tracking.

TopRank Online Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association have just announced a partnership to develop and deliver a series of educational workshops on social media marketing entitled, “Social Media Smarts: Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Tactics.”

With marketers facing tighter budgets in the coming months, social media marketing offers new opportunities for companies to engage customers, improve brand awareness and increase sales with budgets that are more recession friendly than many traditional marketing efforts.

Leading the workshop will be Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, who will introduce participants to the marketing opportunities with social media through best and worst practices examples. As you can see from the photo in this post, I’m much taller than Lee.

But, according to George Markham Director, Education Services at Direct Marketing Association, “Lee is a well rounded digital marketer uniquely qualified with over ten years experience as an internet marketing consultant and a background in corporate training.” Markham adds, “As a consultant working on the front lines of social media marketing for companies large and small, Lee brings first-hand knowledge and real-world examples to teach attendees how to develop a successful social media strategy.”

But I’m still taller.

The Social Media Smarts workshop will provide attendees with insight into blogging and blog marketing, social networks, microblogging, social news and bookmarking, video sharing, image and audio sharing, wikis and social media analytics.

Rounding out the workshop is a social media strategy exercise that will empower attendees to create their own social media strategy and develop a framework for building a business case within their organizations.

Lee is quoted in a press release as saying, “As a high demand digital marketing and PR agency, we’re seeing tremendous benefits from educating in-house marketing staff on the finer points of social media marketing.” He adds, “Offering both good and bad social media marketing examples along with strategy, tools, tactics and analytics can really empower companies to succeed.”

Now, I’ve served on panels with Lee. I know Lee. And that’s exactly the way Lee talks.

The first of the Social Media Smarts workshop series will be conducted in New York, December 4th and 5th, at the Microtek training facility in lower Manhattan. If you are in the nieghborhood, drop by and heckle Lee.

And remember: I’m taller. Actually, I was standing on my toes for this photo. Lee’s actually pretty tall, too.

I spoke at PubCon last week — about How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic and Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO.

But, enough about me. Let’s talk about the top trends spotted at last week’s search engine and Internet marketing conference and expo in Vegas, baby!

For the record, I not only spoke at PubCon, I also looked at the 88 articles about it in Google News, the 77 articles in Yahoo! News, the 406 posts in Google Blog Search from the past month, and the 799 posts that IceRocket has found from the past month.

Then, I used a new tool called Twist, which lets you see trends in Twitter, to chart the hundreds of Tweets about PubCon over the past 30 days.

But, I could have just as easily looked at the session agenda grid for PubCon. Why? Because Brett Tabke, PubCon’s organizer, had set most of the agenda for 2009 when he selected the keynote speakers and creating the conference tracks. That’s why.

So, it was dead easy to spot the top trends at the six-track educational conference hosted by SearchEngineWorld and WebmasterWorld. Heck, even the most sleep-deprived attendee would know they were video, blogs and Twitter.

Video is hot — and YouTube video is red hot. This was reflected in the choice of George Wright, the VP Marketing & Sales at Blendtec, as one of the keynote speakers.

Described as the “The best viral marketing campaign ever,” George’s viral marketing campaign, “Will it Blend?,” has changed the face and the future of online marketing. Seen by more than 100 million people on the Internet and reported on by traditional media outlets like the Today Show, the Tonight Show, and the History Channel, Will it Blend? continues to deliver unprecedented corporate awareness through social media channels. This new form of marketing has delivered a 700% increase in sales for Blendtec, a small Utah based blender manufacturer, with an initial investment of $50.

Oh, and in case you didn’t notice that video is hot, Brett added a Video and Multimedia track with five sessions to drive the point home.

Blogs were big, too. This was reflected in three tracks at PubCon: one on Social Media Marketing, another on Social, Brand, and Reputation Management, and a third on Linking as Social Media Networking.

Now, blogs certainly aren’t considered the “newbies” of the social media scene – “granddaddies” is probably a more appropriate name. But that gives them an advantage from a marketing perspective – the medium has matured and moved from early adopter phase to the mainstream. That means more consumers are not only reading blogs; they are being influenced by blog content when it comes to what they decide to buy and who they decide to buy it from.

If you want a second opinion, sign up for tomorrow’s free webinar: “Consumers and the Influence of Blogs: What it Means for Your Marketing Mix.” It starts at 2:00 P.M. EST/11:00 A.M. PST and will be moderated by Kevin Ryan, SES Advisory Board Chair and CEO of Motivity Marketing. It will feature Barry Parr, Analyst, JupiterResearch, and Rob Crumpler, President and CEO, BuzzLogic. They will be discussion a new BuzzLogic-sponsored research study conducted by JupiterResearch, entitled, “Harnessing the Power of Blogs.”

But, you could also see the power of blogs at virtually ever session at PubCon.

In fact, there were tables in the sessions so the dozens of bloggers who were live blogging the event could blog more comfortably. (I think this is a first: I’m not sure that I’ve ever put bloggers, blogging and blog in the same sentence before.)

And what about Twitter? No, none of the keynote speakers was from free social networking and micro-blogging service. And, no, there were no Twitter tracks. And I can’t even find Twitter mentioned in the title of any of the 85 sessions.

But, trust me, you couldn’t miss the Twitter trend if you’d hit every one of the special events — from the exhibitor cocktail reception sponsored by Bruce Clay and Apogee Search, to the SEOmoz WereWolf Event, to the WebmasterRadio Search Bash, sponsored by Microsoft Live Search.

For example, I was sitting in the session entitled, Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What’s The Worst That Can Happen? It was moderated by Ken Jurina, and the speakers included:
• Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC,
• Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing,
• Michael McDonald, Managing Editor, iEntry Inc.,
• Barry Schwartz, President, RustyBrick, Inc.,
• Jane Copland, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOMoz.

When it came time for Q&A, one of the first questions came from a woman in the audience, who said, “I asked my circle of friends on Twitter what I should ask you, and I got eight questions. If I eliminate the seven that are inappropriate, here’s one that the panel can answer….”

That brought down the house.

Oh, PubCon also had lots of tracks and sessions on SEO, SEM and interactive site reviews. But they’ve had those for years. The new news is video, blogs and Twitter. These are the top trends that I spotted at this year’s PubCon.

Drop Ship Directory by Worldwide Brands

links for 2008-11-17

Civil Complaint Brought Against Mark Cuban for Insider Trading Regarding Mamma.com

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TNS has launched the next generation of its online advertising monitoring tools. The TNS Digital Suites combines cookie tracking with the TNS 6th Dimension Panel for what they say is a unique analysis of online ad consumption. TNS says current tools overestimate audience sizes, but that their updated online ad tool provides target audience insight with little interference to the user experience.

Mike Saxon, Senior Vice President, Brand and Communications, TNS, explains the need for new measurement and monitoring systems, “For digital advertising, current tools are not meeting the industry demands because the fundamental relationship between advertising and the media that carries it has changed. TNS Digital Suite surveys our panelists, not site visitors, delivering the same kind of accountability and rigorous analysis for online advertising that our customers expect for traditional advertising.”

TNS is touting the benefits of the new tool as:

• No more unpopular pop-up surveys
• Control for cookie deletion, capturing ad exposure on multiple computers (home/work/school) for each panelist
• Accurate ad effectiveness measures for the target audience, using the 6th Dimension panelists profiles (over 150 panelists characteristics)
• Advanced analysis through longer surveys (up to 30 minutes long against 7-8 minutes)
• Surveys taken at the convenience of the panelists instead of the current proximate surveys which occur immediately after ad exposure
• Analysis available based on frequency and time since last exposure

What do you think? Leave a comment.

Related Reading:
TNS Surrenders to WPP Takeover
Compete Acquired by TNS
Compete Unveils Premium Version of Analytics Product

Many major companies continue to make mistakes with their Web sites that hurt their search engine rankings. They target pages in the wrong way, or don’t craft their pages in a way to prevent searchers from leaving their site after the first page. In today’s enterprise search marketing column, “SEO Dreams are Made of This,” Aaron Shear says it’s time for some SEO dreaming.

» Full story

AOL’s ad network, Platform-A, is going on tour. The 5-city event begins in New York City on November 17th at the American Museum of Natural History. The next stop will be Atlanta on November 20.

The tour will break for the holidays before hitting Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in 2009.

“AOL has one of the largest, most diverse and most engaged audiences on the Web, and combined with Platform-A’s industry-leading technologies, we can offer advertisers a unique combination of scale, integrated branding, and advanced targeting capabilities to enable them to deliver their branding messages in an effective, engaging and highly efficient way,” said Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio. “At a time when companies make sure that every penny spent on advertising counts, AOL delivers quality content and engaged consumers and Platform-A connects marketers to this audience to drive superior results.”

Related Reading:
AOL’s Platform-A Collaborates with T-mobile for 2 Day, Billion Impression Ad Blitz
AOL’s Platform-A Unveils Plans for Self-Service Ad Marketplace Exchange
AOL’s Platform-A Launches iPhone Advertising Solution

In the same way JFK benefitted from the emerging medium of television, Barack Obama was helped into the White House by the increasing popularity of social media. In today’s building brand equity column, “President 2.0,” Erik Qualman explains that his appeal to younger audiences, and need to get exposure in a primary race against an established opponent led Obama to develop his online strategy. Businesses can learn from his campaign.

» Full story

Women are planning to spend less according to two surveys released today.

In a survey by the Marketing to Moms Coalition, moms plan to cut spending on holiday gifts. Offline is expected to be hit the hardest, with an 8% drop over last year. Online will decline by 2%.

• 87% of moms plan to shop at big discount retailers like Wal-mart and Target
• Department stores come in second at 37%.
• Shoe and specialty clothing retailers come in third at 35%.

“Older kids tend to want expensive presents like cell phones, video games, trendy clothes and computer equipment,” says Maria Bailey, a founder of the Marketing to Moms Coalition, and author of the book, Mom 3.0, Marketing with Today’s Mother by Leveraging New Media and Technology. “Moms are telling their older kids that this year, they’re just going to have to wait.”

Another survey from Frank About Women shows that women (not just moms) are planning to cut holiday spending. First on the chopping block? Themselves.

62% of women are asking friends and family to forgo buying them a gift this year due to the economy.

They asked survey participants who would be cut from the gift list that normally would be on.

• 57% of those who normally give gifts to their neighbors plan to forego the gift this year
• 53% will skip their bosses
• 52% will cut employees and service providers (i.e. hairdressers) from their list
• 50% won’t give gifts to co-workers this year

So, who is getting a gift this year?

• 96% said they won’t let a bad economy stand in the way of giving gifts to their kids
• 86% will give gifts to their parents
• 85% will give gifts to their spouse or partner (Stay out of the dog house, guys!)

“Not only are women planning to spend less on others, they are actively encouraging their friends and family to omit them from the gift list this year,” says Nicole Green, senior strategic brand planner at FAW. “This self-sacrificing mindset represents a significant cultural shift as a renewed sense of fiscal responsibility and frugality trump spending and splurging for many women. Marketers who speak to the real meaning of the holidays are more likely to resonate with women this season and benefit from their spending power.”

Related Reading:
Microsoft Study Reveals Online and Digital Behavior of Women
Mom Bloggers Prove Powerful Resource to Marketing and Branding Success
Moms See Search as Task-Oriented; Websites as Entertainment

Incisive Media announced today that Matt McGowan is being promoted to vice president and publisher for its digital marketing businesses, including the ClickZ network, Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies conference series. Matt, who was formerly the global VP of marketing for the group, will oversee all non-editorial functions including sales, marketing and operations. He will report to Kevin Vermeulen, senior vice president.

Matt joined Incisive Media in 2006. Before that, he had served as vice president – sales, marketing and operations for PropertyRoom.com. He began his media career as a marketing manager for Pearson PLC.

McGowan holds a bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and received his MBA from the University of Oxford. He will continue to be based in New York City.

In a press release, Vermeulen said, “We’re pleased that Matt will be leading the expansion of these fast-growing brands that are widely recognized as key resources for interactive marketers.”

Matt is well-known in the search industry. In addition to seeing him at Search Engine Strategies conferences and expos on several continents, he has also started moderating SES Webcasts, including the one last Friday with Bill Tancer of Hitwise.

John Connor Mulligan of SEO-PR interviewed Matt during SES New York 2008 — in Times Square. If you look closely, you’ll see a big shamrock in Matt’s lapel. Hmmmmm. Do you think, maybe, McGowan is a wee bit Irish?

Matt McGowan in Times Square, Day 1 SES NY 2008