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AOL’s ADTECH to Provide Ad-Serving Capabilities for React2Media

AOL has announced that ADTECH will provide ad-serving capabilites for React2Media. R2M is a full service online advertising network. ADTECH’s ads will be served up on R2M’s network of 150 sites, including search portal QuikZilla as well as CookingTown.com.

“With the future of digital advertising unfolding, and TV and the Internet increasingly becoming indistinguishable, React2Media has been able to identify and surpass some of the greatest hurdles in the industry,” said Dirk Freytag, CEO of ADTECH. “Our goal in bringing ADTECH’s robust, scalable technology to React2Media is to help them further this impressive progress in the current advertising climate, as well as into the future.”

Is The AOL Brand Associated With Old School Web?

Seems the folks over at Time Warner have finally realized that the AOL brand does not have any impact in the niched content space. But is AOL mired in the thoughts of web users as that “old internet dialup service” as some of the Time Warner staff believe?

According to the Associated Press, AOL parent Time Warner was more blunt in a regulatory filing:

“If AOL cannot effectively build a portfolio of alternate brands that are appealing to Internet consumers, AOL may have difficulty in increasing the engagement of Internet consumers on its Web products and services. AOL believes that the `AOL’ brand is associated in the minds of consumers with its dial-up Internet access service.”

To overcome this hurdle AOL has started creating separate niched communities - though they may want to hire someone else to name them. Asylum for the young men’s site, Spinner, the indie music site, WalletPop, the personal finance site, StyleList for fashion and AOL Body (which kept the association after tests showed it works) for women’s health.

Should be interesting to see how that works for them. I had not heard of any of them prior to reading the AP report so the new branding has not made much of an impact yet. Though why, as AP stated, have they decided to roll the new sites out quietly?

Branding requires people knowing about the name. Forget replacing the Yahoo board, AOL needs some new minds at the helm - maybe some that are not still thinking like last century.

ValleyWag has had some interesting things to say about Bill Wilson, the head of the AOL rebranding effort.

Bill Wilson: Forget about his mother, will he frag AOL?

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-11

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The Hurdles of Back Pain Posted By : Mike Strom: First of all, a diet that has [...]

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-11

Microsoft To Use Domain Age in SEO Ranking

Our industry’s leading authority on search patents Bill Slawski found another interesting patent submission. Apparently Microsoft is looking at, if not using, domain age as an algorithm factor.

This has been discussed in conversations in many forums and no doubt this new information will start them up again.

The idea that new domains will have to overcome this hurdle is a factor that marketers will have to consider when developing sites. Also the impact of inbound links based on age of referring sites will also come into play.

Is Google’s Price Drop A Reflection Of Recent Media Coverage

The value of Google’s stock has taken a bit of a beating recently from their high of $747 last year to yesterday’s close at $438. After doing my weekly news review, I saw a lot of articles questioning many actions Google has been doing lately.

Is this pervasive critiquing of Google having an impact of investors’ confidence?

The articles I read this week came from a wide range of sources - not just limited to the search industry specific ones we all know within the industry. (I was at a offline/online media event on Thursday where the majority had not heard of SEW, AussieWebmaster or for that matter Danny Sullivan!)

The firing of people from DoubleClick supposedly slated for April 1, according to ValleyWag, should show investors that they are lowering expenses and thus increasing profits for them. But the general public usually sees the company laying people off after an acquisition as Gordon Gekkoish. The eventual impact should be seen in the coming week as this actually happens.

I was having dinner one night during SES NYC last week, I noticed a friend there who does angel investing and asked him what Google closed at that day to determine who in my party was paying. He knew to the penny as he told me he was shorting Google (now I know where he gets his seed capital).

Then I see an article this morning from the UK Guardian stating Google’s PPC numbers were slowing. Given January had shown zero growth and February’s growth was low single digits compared to previous growth being as high as 30-40%, this spending and growth wall could be a major hurdle for the company’s valuation.

“Google maintains that the deceleration is a consequence of its strategy of focusing on quality. The Silicon Valley firm has been trying to eliminate accidental clicks and has been working with advertisers to make sure that links relate closely to users’ search queries.

But the slowdown has contributed to a 36% slump in Google’s shares since the beginning of the year and analysts are divided on whether the company’s confidence is justified,” the Guardian stated.

This is also challenged a little by recent complaints by advertisers over some of these methods of improving the quality. The $10 Minimum Bid push has lost Google advertisers. The arbitragers squeezing a few pennies from a click have had to drop away (leaving the really good ones at it a cheaper range), but so have the companies that provide legitimate inexpensive products or services very relevant to the people searching from that perspective.

The impact Google is having on other online industries may also be impacting their brand and through that their value. The analytics industry was impacted by Google’s purchase of Urchin and the development of the free services of Google Analytics - so even a popular free service gets flak, and their mistakes are made public quickly as was the case with GA information being displayed in the Google organic results..

There will be an additional backlash from the DoubleClick acquisition. It is going to be hard for the soon to be unemployed to find jobs in the industry as Google launched Ad Manager which offers ad serving for free and thus will hurt the job market in the industry as the competitors lose market share.

The words of Larry Page’s recent Annual Report letter reflect the perspective the founder sees his realm of “users, customers, Googlers (our employees), and investors who help bring everything that is Google to life”.

Part of Google’s success has been in its ability to maintain the “church and state” separation of organic listings and paid search ads. While that is to be commended, isolating customers from the users pool is a little naive - people advertise on Google because they have used Google and want to advertise to similar users.

Google would not still be in business if they had not been able to monetize the popular search engine. When they first started the company was nearly sold to Excite.com for a million dollars, because they could not monetize what they were doing.

With revenues of more than $10 billion last year - 90% of which came from paid search advertising - you would think the customers would take top billing, but the behemoth of search still sees search through the eyes of its users.

” We continue our effort to extract more and more real meaning from the web in order to help people find the right answers. We recently improved universal search, integrating different types of relevant information, such as video, maps, news, books, images, and more, right into your search results.

Sometimes you don’t get a good answer to a search because the information simply isn’t available on the web. So we are working hard to encourage ecosystems that can generate more content from more authors and creators. For example, we recently announced an early version of a tool called “knol” to help people generate and organize more high-quality authored content.”

Watch out Wikipedia your space is soon to be seriously invaded.

And one has to wonder if Google is getting into the conference and hotel business next. Their proposal to develop a parcel of land in the Mountain View industrial park for office space, conference center and a hotel is lodged with the local council.

Wonder if they plan on starting their own search conferences, with attendees staying at the nearby hotel? Are we to see a conference advertising tab soon in our AdWords accounts?

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Search Headlines & Links: February 22, 2008

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Yahoo Says, “You Like Me, Right Now, You Really Like Me”
Like Sally Field, Yahoo recently felt the love and respect of “the academy” — Keynote Academy. They earned #1 Keynote rankings for “Search Assistance and Suggestions” and “Homepage Appeal.”
The Tao of Crafting Strategic SEM Partnerships
Every professional needs someone. This timeless axiom is especially relevant to both those who consume and those who provide search marketing services.
Google’s Brin Calls a Microsoft-Yahoo Tie-up “Unnerving”
Yesterday Google co-founder Sergey Brin described the Internet doomsday scenario if Microsoft wins its Yahoo takeover bid.
SEW Experts: The Ginsu Guide to Search Analytics
The ability to track online (and in many cases offline) advertising to offline conversions has been the biggest hurdle in measuring ROI for many Web-based or Web-involved businesses.
SEW Experts: How to Market Your Search Engine Agency - Part 2
Although we’re in the business of marketing, there are many different things to consider when writing your own marketing plan.
SEW Experts: How Search Marketing Slays Seasonality in Travel
The most sophisticated advertisers in online travel rely on years, even decades of data collection and analysis to formulate their marketing plans.

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Search Headlines & Links: January 28, 2008

From the SEW Blog:

Property of Google? No! The Google of Property
Just when you thought the days of aspiring Googles had ended, vertical search took on a life of its own.
Facebook Ads & Applications: Critical SEM Learning Curve
If your business or agency’s search marketing department has dismissed Facebook applications & paid ads, as outside of your product’s demographic, think again.
SEW Experts: Inside AdWords and Contextual Advertising: The Tipping Point
Once the ugly stepchild of online ads, contextual advertising has shed its “remnant inventory” reputation.
Facebook Drops Another Hurdle
Still looking for some attention from the social networks? Facebook delivered a new client library on Friday afternoon, which makes your widgets easier to launch in their ecosystem.
Google Enigma: Code Cracked by Carr
Nick Carr asks the question every forward-thinking executive has top of mind: Should innovation-minded managers view Google as an exemplar – or a freak?

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Facebook Drops Another Hurdle

Still looking for some attention from the social networks? Facebook delivered a new client library on Friday afternoon, which makes your widgets easier to launch in their ecosystem. While this library isn’t exactly the second coming, it’s welcome news.
According to Facebook developer Wei Zu, “This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook [...]

Facebook Drops Another Hurdle

According to Facebook developer Wei Zu, “This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML.”

Facebook also encourages developers to install applications outside its domain, which I understand was possible (if more difficult) before this release anyway. Blogger Nick O’Neill is ebullient about the social connections to be made across the web, if you place these applications on your site.

My reaction is just more measured, that’s all. When someone arrives on your site, they can connect with others only if they are signed into Facebook. Will you attract people or turn them off? This entirely depends on your business and whether joining up is an important attribute right now.

Here’s a gameplan for your Facebook interactions. Since the widget hurdle has been virtually dropped, it’s worth thinking about what kind of traffic (or links) you might get from Facebook overall. Like any social network, it’s not under your control — but you should try to become more available and present there. Consider the following approaches for engagement.

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