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Having trouble with Google AdWords placement-targeted campaigns? In today’s Content Advertising column, “Placement-Targeted Campaigns: Taming the Beast,” David Szetela shares the secrets of getting those stalled campaigns off the ground, churning out conversions like the best search campaigns.

In the world of social media, Digg is a behemoth. A hot Digg submission is capable of generating tremendous volumes of traffic and links – so much so that many sites experience the “Digg Effect” for the first time and crash under the strain of the traffic.

That said, Digg can be a very important component of many social media and search campaigns. But, how can you possibly explain the Digg concept and its implications to clients who still haven’t really acknowledged the Internet as anything more than a passing fad?

Digg is Like a Newspaper
Think of Digg as a newspaper … though not for a specific region, but rather for the entire English-speaking world. This of course means there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of stories submitted daily.

Sections
Newspapers have different sections; Business, Sports, Lifestyles, Technology, and so forth. So too does Digg. It has:
a. Technology
b. World & Business
c. Science
d. Gaming
e. Lifestyle
f. Entertainment
g. Sports
h. Offbeat

Within each section, there are subsections. These are needed to manage the sheer volume of news and information, and help people search by core interests.

The Organization of Stories
Democracy meet editorialization … readers are the editors! Unlike traditional newspapers, where front page news is determined arbitrarily by editors at the paper, Digg-type sites permit voting on each story. Stories with the most votes by readers in each section or subsection move progressively nearer the front page of the section or subsection, with the most popular appearing in the best positions. Ultimately, stories with very large numbers of positive votes will be moved to appear on the main page of Digg, which is equivalent to appearing on the front page of a newspaper.

The Reporters
While traditional newspapers often have reporters trained in the art of journalism creating their content, Digg-type sites do not. Stories (news, humor, and educational types) are found across the web, and are submitted by everyday people. Some of these stories will inevitably come from newspapers, but also from blogs, videos found on video sites, and images found virtually anywhere online. This is very interesting though, as it means Joe Average Blogger now has an opportunity to experience the benefits traditionally reserved for the biggest companies. What can follow is exceptional traffic, branding, and numerous relevant links.

Conclusion
As a result, clients need to be involved in the content creation process, or at the very least, willing to adopt a content-centric strategy. Do so, and your chances of winning online increase exponentially.

ComScore did what Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and Digg only dreamed of.

ComScore killed the search engine star.

ComScore data on Google paid clicks rocked the world this week. The proprietary comScore qSearch report was analyzed to death by Wall St. analysts and media pundits. Data: summarized and judged; Google, convicted, flogged and sentenced to an early demise.

It wasn’t hit and run, though: comScore’s SVP of Media and Search, James Lamberti, and CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Magid Abraham delve deep into the data to correct the rush to judgment in the marketplace. It’s a must-read. Great analysis; surprisingly lifeless title: “Why Google’s surprising paid click data are less surprising.”

It should’ve been “Data doesn’t kill Google, people do.”

QSearch showed a 7 percent decline in January ‘08 vs. December ‘07. Paid click annual growth? Flat for Google.

Month-over-month the number of paid clicks per search on Google dropped by 8 percent (December ‘07 to January ‘08). Consumers clicking less on search ads? Maybe. A weaker buying appetite?

Google’s share price took a hit and rebounded. Reports of Google’s early demise? Greatly exaggerated. That doesn’t mean the momentum-driven Google shares won’t take a hit if Google fails to impress the Street this quarter.

Wall St. analysts - looking for clues where Google gives no guidance - had accomplices: mainstream media and bloggers hoping for a Google stumble.

No one wants to miss the Hindenburg. The only problem? The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly when Google news goes viral.

The Google backlash reared its ugly head and this time it wasn’t just Valleywag.

LendingTree whose multimillion dollar paid search campaigns are managed by search marketing firm Efficient Frontier, made public its new online marketing strategy: cutting back on PPC or paid search.

LendingTree spokesperson Allison Vail was quoted in CNET News.com by Stefanie Olsen.

“With the Fed changes in January, we were driving natural traffic. It’s smarter for us,” said Vail.

Our readers know it’s always smart to optimize for natural search. I’m not sure anecdotal evidence from a financial services pure play in the throes of a global subprime mortgage crisis proves paid search revenues are declining.

Statistics from search marketing firms, though, would lend credence to the argument.

For average CPC (Cost Per Click) by industry vertical (Financial Services, Mortgage, Credit, Auto), click here.

Efficient Frontier Chairman Ellen Siminoff, chairman told CNET that paid search advertising spendi in financial services has typically risen between 30 percent and 50 percent annually.

So far this year it’s either flat or down for some companies. credit and mortgage advertisers raised their spending by 24 percent, but this year, their spending has risen only 3 percent year over year, according to Efficient Frontier data.

Coming soon: Efficient Frontier / Search Engine Watch Average CPC data for February.

Be the first investment banker or hedge fund manager on your block to see the stats.

The lack of uniform analytics definitions creates problems for marketers. In today’s SEM Crossfire column, “Tracking and Analytics 101,” Frank Watson offers some basic definitions to get started on a conversation about using Web analytics for your search campaigns.

The New York Times, CNET, InformationWeek, and 52 other Google News sources missed the significance of Microsoft’s new Research Lab in Cambridge, Mass., headed by Jennifer Chayes and her husband, Christian Borgs. The Times implied that Chayes and Borgs work in an ivory tower where basic research doesn’t have a business imperative.

Nothing could be further from the truth in the online world.

Jennifer Tour Chayes, PhD in mathematical physics, led the highly esteemed Theory Group specializing in theoretical computer science. She’s the co-author of almost 100 scientific papers and co-inventor of more than 20 patents. The New York Times only mentions her work in developing simple models of liquids and solids and the development of some exceedingly fast networking algorithms. Hunh?

Their groundbreaking work in search engine algorithms and social search may be the foundation of a successful Microsoft-Yahoo merger.

Chayes is one of the world’s experts in the modeling and analysis of random, dynamically growing graphs (social graph, social search, Facebook, MySpace) – which are used to model the Internet, the World Wide Web and social networks.

One of the papers the couple co-authored, “Bid optimization in online advertisement auctions”, details the ways paid search campaigns can be optimized by advertisers and search engines. “Multi-unit auctions with budget-constrained bidders”, written by Borgs, Chayes, Nicole Immorlica (MIT), Mohammad Mahdian, and Amin Saberi (published in June 2005), discusses ways to optimize revenue for search engines given the fixed budgets of search marketers.

Their recent work provides a tutorial on search engine optimization and PageRank, before delving deep into algorithms few search marketers (myself included) understand.

Search engine optimization lives and dies by PageRank. Here’s what you need to know about their research into PageRank.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Rising Voices, a citizen media outreach initiative of the Global Voices, has just released the first of a series of planned guides, An Introduction to Citizen Media. This brief guide offers context and case studies which show how ordinary citizens across the world are using blogs, podcasts, online video, and digital photography to engage in [...]

When building a new startup, you initially see search marketing boom year over year. Inevitably, that growth will slow. In today’s Big Biz column, “Slow Growth in Search? Long Tail Keyword Solutions,” Aaron Shear explains that the first step in reversing the slow growth trend is to admit your search campaigns may have hit a [...]

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:

Oodle 2.0: Improved Classifieds SearchWith a new release it’s dubbed “Oodle 2.0,” the classifieds search engine has greatly improved its search functionality [...]

Little-understood, content advertising consumes a big portion of many advertisers’ PPC budgets. But for many advertisers, content advertising performs far worse than their search campaigns. In today’s Content Advertising column, “Content Advertising Explained,” David Szetela, founder of Clix Marketing, kicks off his new column that will explore the myriad problems with content advertising, and the [...]

Participants in the Microsoft Office Live adManager Beta can fire up their search campaigns by purchasing ads for display on MSN and Live Search, and on Ask Sponsored Listings.Microsoft’s Office Live provides three options for business owners to build their websites and implement optional productivity tools. Naturally, Microsoft would love to see those entrepreneurs take [...]