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Cambridge, Massachussets-based JumpTap has announced the expansion of their European mobile search and advertising network. The company is adding offices in Madrid, Spain and Stockholm, Sweden as part of the expansion. JumpTap pointed to recent projections from eMarketer, which see European spending tripling over the next three years, as part of the reason for the expansion.

“We are experiencing stellar renewal rates from our advertisers in Europe which is attributed to highly successful campaign results,” commented Dan Olschwang, president and CEO of JumpTap. “We have established our superior leadership working with the mobile advertising medium across global markets, and our clients are gaining a competitive advantage derived from our expertise and lessons learned.”

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When concerns over data collection and behavioral advertising arise, it seems that the glass half empty people are the loudest. But in a recent response to the FTC’s Self-Regulatory Principles, Google has pointed out the impact that online advertising has had on the economy.

Google highlighted that in 2007, they paid out $4.5 billion to publishers utilizing the Adsense network. These monies either supplements or provides full-time income to many site owners including bloggers. They pointed out that many people have opportunities that just weren’t available 10 years ago.

Additionally, the revenue that Google generates enables them to provide services for free to the general public.

Google wrote that these innovations only occur within a self-regulatory framework:

“To be effective and credible, however, self-regulation must have as its foundation agreed-upon fair information practices and must be informed by ongoing dialog with and input from consumer advocates, the Commission, and other stakeholders. The FTC staff’s draft self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising provides an excellent foundation for developing the most effective consumer protection, while maintaining an online environment in which innovation and competition can thrive.”

But Google is careful to distinguish its advertising from being labeled “behavioral advertising.”

“As currently drafted, the proposed principles would apply to contextual advertising, which we define as advertising that is provided in response to the current activities of a user. For example, our AdWords program allows us to provide ads on Google.com in response to search queries entered by our users. In addition, our AdSense product allows us to provide ads to visitors to the web sites of third-party publisher partners based on the content of pages visited. In essence, then, our contextual advertising allows for the delivery of advertisements based on search queries or our analysis of the content of a web page being viewed. We believe that this type of advertising should not be considered behavioral advertising, even if such analysis takes into consideration previous search queries.”

These comments also come in the wake of news from Europe of a policy adopted by the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which would reduce data collection by search engines to just 6 months. Such a regulation could greatly impact the ability of search engines to provide relevant ads, which could have a ripple effect on the greater revenue streams generated by their ad networks.

Mike Grehan, the Global KDM Officer at Acronym Media and Co-chair of SES London 2008, was one of the hardest working people at the event.

He moderated 11 sessions: the Organic Listings Forum; Search Around the World - Part Two: Europe and the Americas; Landing Page Testing & Tuning; Converting Visitors into Buyers; European Search Marketing Case Studies; Linking Strategies; Meet the Crawlers; Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics; Search Advertising Clinic; My SEM Toolbox; and Web Analytics & Measuring Success Overview.

Oh, and he also spoke on the Orion Panel about Universal, Blended and Vertical Search, as well as at the Keynote Roundtable on The Changing Search World.

Mike is also an expert SEM writer for the ClickZ Network. No wonder his latest column is entitled, How to Avoid a Crash Landing.

I caught up with Mike while he was taking a short break to catch his breath to interview him about the show and the industry for the new Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences & Expos channel on YouTube.

Mike Grehan, Acronym, on SES London 2008

Acronym Media recently announced the appointment of Mike Grehan as Global KDM Officer, as in “keyword-driven marketing.” It’s a newly-created senior executive position with worldwide management responsibilities. Mike will share his time between New York City and the U.K., guiding development of Acronym’s new operations around the globe, with particular focus on Europe and Asia Pacific regions.

Mike was also appointed to Acronym’s five-member executive board and given broad responsibilities to drive the Agency’s global growth and strategy development for key clients, including SAP, Nokia, BMW, HP, and Four Seasons Hotels.

Mike has executive experience with the industry’s leading SEM firms and is recognized as a foremost SEM expert. He is the author of multiple books and white papers on the topic, and his best-selling second edition of Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide received more plaudits from the industry’s leading players than any other book on the subject.

In 2004, Mike was voted one of the U.K.’s Top 100 Influential People in Internet Marketing for the previous decade in a poll of online marketer E-consultancy’s 22,000 U.K. members. He is also a sought-after conference speaker, and his own personal newsletter has attracted over 17,000 subscribers.

He will be moderating three sessions at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York: The Organic Listings Forum; The Orion Panel on Universal Search; and Meet the Crawlers. In addition, Acronym Media will be an exhibitor at SES New York 2008 at Booth #134, located in the Rhinelander Gallery.

I interviewed Andy Atkins-Krüger, managing director of Web Certain Europe Ltd, at the Search Engine Strategies conference and expo in London last month.

Yes, yes, we talked about serious issues, like the challenges of optimizing pages or running paid search campaigns for multiple languages across Europe. But Krueger topped anything that I could have asked him with a tale about the Tongue Twisters Multilingual team at WebCertain.

To prove his team is ready for multilingual tongue twisters in German, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Czech and other languages, Andy introduced Kia from his PR team, who provided a flamboyant Finnish flourish as a finale. (Go ahead, try saying that quickly three times.)

Click to read the rest of this post…

I interviewed Edward “Teddie” Cowell of Neutralize (*\*) at the Search Engine Strategies London conference in February.

Cowell recaps his comments during the organic listings forum, focusing on philosophical scuffles between the white hat / black hat crowds, content update frequencies, linking techniques and the uses and abuses of nofollow.

Teddy also talks about the Neutralize / eConsultancy 2008 UK Search Marketing Benchmark Report and encourages UK SEM’s to take part.

Teddy Cowell, Neutralize, SES London 2008, Organic Rankings

Cowell heads up the Neutralize team of enterprise search engine marketers. Introduced to the Internet in 1996 while working for MSN during the launch of Internet Explorer 3 in the U.K., he then moved on to work for BNP-Paribas (the fourth largest investment bank in Europe), and up until September 1999, he specialised in Internet-based technology and the research of growth Internet businesses and business models.

Teddie co-founded Neutralize in 1999 and has since established an industry reputation for thought leadership, best-practice techniques and highly effective SEO approach with large, dynamic websites for clients like Nestle, SkyBet, Black and Decker, London Stock Exchange, and CNET.

Watch my video interview with him on the SES Conference Expo channel on YouTube.

The concept of hypnosis is even older than we imagine and it seems to have rooted for the first time in Europe. The Scandinavian were among the first people to encompass the notion ??~hypnose??TM and i…
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Yahoo took advantage of the CeBIT conference in Hamburg, Germany to announce the forthcoming launch of onePlace, a content management solution developed as part of the company’s growing mobile services. The platform works on a system of bookmarking, allowing users to categorize their favorite content (news, videos, images, emails, etc) and then view it with ease on their mobile device.

Dynamic content will be automatically updated, which should appeal to the likes of sports fans, investors, and frequent flyers. A feature called “Pulse” enables users to view the latest changes to their content collections.

The success of onePlace will depend on its ability to aggregate content to meet the demands of the mobile user. Small screens and connectivity issues require mobile content to be organized and presented in a more streamlined manner than for desktop browsers.

The launch of onePlace is expected to take place in the second quarter of 2008. It could coincide with the expected Q2 launch of Yahoo’s mobile phone service, oneConnect.

This news comes on the heels of Yahoo’s announcement of a partnership with T-Mobile in Europe for its oneSearch mobile offering. Yahoo seems to be staking out its territory in mobile search as Google attempts to grab a piece of the mobile pie by strengthening its ties with Apple and AT&T earlier this year.

Search Engine Strategies London wrapped up last week and the 2,000 attendees have returned to work with a new understanding of how Google’s universal search is incorporating images as well as videos, news, maps, books, and websites into a single set of results. And, demonstrating that they aren’t the cobbler’s children, some of the speakers at SES London 2008 have shared their news photos, party pictures and professional event photography with the rest of us.

As I mentioned in my previous post, “Tag your Photobucket, Picasa and Flickr photos: SES London 2008,” I have selected the Best Photo of SES London 2008, the Best Photos of SES London, and Best Photography of SES London 2008.

The envelope, please.

And the winner of the Best Photo of a market trend at SES London 2008 is … Mel Carson, adCenter Community Manager, Europe, Microsoft adCenter. The winning entry can be found on Mel’s Biog in a post entitled, “SES London 2008 - A Few Pictures.” Mel captured the Orion Panel All-Star Analytics Team – Jim Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg, Ian Thomas, and Steven Jackson – all on their mobile phones! Coincidence? I think not.

Mel wins one static text link to his blog: DigiTales & Other Stories.

As of this afternoon, there were 451 photos from sessions, panels, exhibits, the night life, and everything in between in the SES London 2008 Flickr pool. Now, you might think this would make it extremely difficult to select the winner of the next award. But, you would be wrong.

The envelope, please.

And the winner of the Best Photos of SES London 2008 posted to a photo sharing site is … Liana “Li” Evans, Director of Internet Marketing at KeyRelevance. With 300 photos, Li (aka storyspinn) was the top contributor to our group photo pool on Flickr.

Li wins one static text link to one of her blogs: Search Marketing Gurus.

The final award is for Best Photography of SES London 2008 by a professional photographer.

The envelope, please.

And the winner is … Edward Klaus of ProPictures. Now, I should disclose that SES London is a client and that I hired ProPictures to help document the event at the Business Design Centre in Islington. But, I hope there’s no debate over the quality of the 113 photos that they took at SES London 2008. Make your own judgment by looking at five of Edward’s photos below.

Still, it would be wrong to link to someone that I hired. It would appear to be a conflict of interest. So, instead, let me donate one static text link to The Scientist Photographers Group’s Annual Charity Project, which supports Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders.

Which raises an interesting question: Why doesn’t the search engine marketing industry have a similar charity projectt? If you’re going to SES New York next month, let me know what you think of this idea.

And don’t forget to bring your camera or cameraphone.

The Business Design Centre in Islington

Audience listening to the Orion Panel: All-Star Analytics Team

Left to right: Kevin Ryan, Fredrick Marckini and Mike Grehan at SES London 2008

Catching up with the office between sessions at Search Engine Strategies London

The Landing Page Testing & Tuning session at SES London 2008

So I was reading Techmeme, clicked thru to the Times of London story on Apax Partners bidding on Reed Business Information (£1.25 billion publisher of Variety, New Scientist, Computer Weekly et.al.) to merge with eMap (bought for a cool £1 billion) and Incisive Media (that would be us).

Then I noticed another TL story on the power of search in the jackass world: “Microtrends: gangsta spray tans.”

U.S.-based sports blog (more of an online lad mag) barstoolsports.com posted pix of spray-tanned Guidos. If only the barstool blogger had googled the Gotti-wannabes before labeling them “New Jersey Freakshows.”

The London Times reporter Tom Whitwell asked, “What makes a young man paint himself orange, put on a skin-tight T-shirt and pose like a supermodel?”

Whitwell called the pix “a window on a bizarre and unexpected underworld.” (Not if you had mobsters in your extended family, as I did. Or grew up in my neighborhood, as I did.)

The barstoolsports blogger thought the pix were taken in Jersey clubs. Jersey guys said no way, “Long Island.” (I would’ve guessed Staten Island.)

The truth? Europe. The Old Country. One more reason theworld needs Google Universal Search.

The pix were from PartyPhoto.hu a Hungarian Website showing musclehead, spray-tanned club kids in Vienna, home of Sigmund Freud and more tellingly, erstwhile home of Governor Schwarzenegger. Ahh-nuld. That explains it.

Of course barstoolsports might’ve been tipped off by the .hu domain in the big red PartyPhoto.hu letters imprinted on one jpg they published.

As the astute Times reporter noted, the club kids were no doubt inspired by the grandchildren of the late (reputed) Mafia boss John Gotti.

(Like Michael Corleone and the Italian American Anti Defamation League we deny the existence of any organization by the name of Mafia or La Cosa Nostra.)

We do believe in the 24 hour takeover of MTV Studios today by Jackassworld.com, the just-hardlaunched Johnny Knoxville blog Frederick Marckini tipped us off to at SES London (at the cocktail reception, not during his SEO keynote address, natch).

But that’s another bizarro world search story …

When Search Engine Strategies London gets underway on Tuesday, Feb. 19, there will be more than a dozen chieftans of the SEM and SEO blogging community gathered at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

(I’d compare what will take place next week to a “gathering of the clans,” except it involves a big bunch of SEM bloggers, not a large group of related people wearing kilts. Plus, it’s taking place in England, not in Scotland. But, there may be some drinking of Scotch, so I think my analogy is not entirely off base.)

I’ve already mentioned a number of blog posts about SES London, including:
– “Fredrick Marckini iProspect Exclusive SEO Interview with Dan Horton;”
– Christine Churchill’s “A Chat with Analytics Guru Jim Sterne;”
– Simon Heseltine’s “SES London 2008 Interview - Piers Stobbs;”
– Massimo Burgio’s “Pre-SES London interviews: Piers Stobbs, comScore;”
– Lee Odden’s “SES London: News & Blog SEO, Reputation Management;” and
– Lisa Barone’s “Gearing up for SES London!.”

(Lisa will be missing the show, but the other prominent search engine marketing industry bloggers will be there.)

But wait! There’s more!

After watching a similar but different gathering of the clans on NESN, the New England Sports Network, this morning — which broadcast the first workout of Red Sox pitchers and catchers during spring training live from Fort Myers — I used Google Blog Search to discover more than a dozen other posts about Search Engine Strategies London.

This includes:

– SES London 2008 - 10 Reasons To Attend. Mel Carson was doing quite a bit of work this weekend to clear the decks so he can immerse himself in all the sessions, all the talking, and he says that he might be found with a beer in his hand (instead of a Scotch) on some, if not all, of the evenings.

– Andy Beal Speaking at SES London Feb 19-21. You’d think that being a British ex-pat, Andy Beal would have had many opportunities to speak at SES London in the past. Well, next week will actually be his first time speaking at the London event — joining his good friend Mike Grehan.

– SES London 2008. Pam Hoffman writes, “If you live and breathe search, or just want to know more about it, then Search Engine Strategies is for you. SES is a great show for anyone who wants to hear experts share their knowledge, find out about the latest developments and future technologies, and hone their search expertise.”

– Connectpoint to attend SES London 2008. Both Peter Young, Head of Online Marketing for Connectpoint, and Will Graham, the firm’s Online Marketing Manager, will be attending Search Engine Strategies London. Pater says, “It is the first time we at Connectpoint will be attending one of the UK SEO showcase events, and definitely not the last.”

– SES London 2008 Interview - Jon Myers. Simon Heseltine also interviewed Jon Myers of Mediavest, a Manchester, England based firm. Jon is actually involved with 5 different sessions at this conference, but this interview deals directly with the Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues session on Tuesday Feb 19th at 11am.

– Reminder: Microsoft adCenter Team at SES London. Mel Carson also has another post that points out that quite a few of the members of the Microsoft adCenter Team are speaking at sessions throughout the conference.

– Meals for the Day - 2/15/08. Okay, so this one is a bit of a mish-mash. But Jennifer Laycock meant to make chicken, asparagus and maybe some pasta for dinner, but she’s been working for hours and hours on her PowerPoint for the training event after SES London and completely lost track of time.

– SES Paris 2008 – Interesting Observation… Technically, this isn’t about SES London. But, Mona Elesseily does say, “I can always get me some bangers and mash at SES London 2008 (starts on February 19 2008). (If you see Mona at the show, tell her she has “nice shoes.” Trust me on this.)

– SES London Preview. And, while this isn’t a blog post, check out this preview of the upcoming SES London show with Kevin Ryan, Vice President and Global Content Director of Search Engine Strategies and SES London Chair Mike Grehan.

– London to host search engine marketing event. Chris Bolwig of IceNews writes, “The event is seen as one of the most comprehensive SEM/SEO education opportunities in the UK or Europe and a number of highly-specialised sessions on search engine optimisation will be on offer. Search marketing guru Kristjan M. Hauksson, director of a growing Internet marketing company in Scandinavia, will deliver a session on ‘Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics’.”

– Search Engine Strategies sets agenda for London 2008. According to this news article, “This year’s conference will be hosted by search marketing specialist Mike Grehan. Mike is recognized as one of the foremost SEM experts. He was voted one of the UK’s top 100 influential people in Internet marketing in a poll of e-Consultancy’s 22,000 UK members.”

– Search Engine Strategies. In this forum post, Fintan aka Wannabe Geek asks, “Any one going to Search Engine Strategies London - 19-21 February 2008 - the intersection of search, marketing & commerce in London this month?” There are lots of replies.

– Anyone going to Search Engine Strategies 2008?. In another forum, Simon aka Figleaf asks, “Is anyone going to Search Engine Strategies in London 19-21 Feb? I think I will be going so if anyone fancies a meet up, drop me a line.”

Now, I should disclose that SES London is a client. But, that’s not so bad. While reading The Boston Globe this morning, I saw the most tortured disclosure statement that I’ve ever stumbled across. In his column, “It’s live - but not lively,” which is about NESN’s live broadcast from Fort Myers, Dan Shaughnessy wrote, “Disclaimer: the New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, owns 17 percent of the Red Sox, who own 80 percent of NESN.”

Now, that’s something that I can discuss with the SEM bloggers gathering at Search Engine Strategies London — over a Scotch, a beer, or some bangers and mash.