Let’s Discuss:
MicroHoo, YahSoft… whichever way you mash it up; it’s official! The Microsoft/ Yahoo deal proposed last summer has finally received clearance from U.S. and E.U. regulators.

EMG 30-Second Rundown:
What does this mean aside from some serious fist pumping from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer?

We’re entering a new era of search with an alliance that aims to challenge Google’s market dominance. Yahoo and Microsoft shadow Google with recent comScore reports ranking Google’s share of searches at 65.7%, followed by Yahoo and Microsoft at 17.3% and 10.7% respectively.

Combining search from Yahoo and Microsoft will expand the collective data pool from which Microsoft can further develop, test and tweak platforms, search-related features and algorithms. The enhanced performance will boost both companies’ ability to compete against Google by improving search results, as well as amplifying appeal to search advertisers.

Taking over Yahoo’s search functionality will grant Microsoft access to nearly three times the search queries it’s receiving independently. The increased search volume will enable accelerated algorithmic innovation resulting in more relevant results for a larger pool of search queries.

Delegating search duties to Microsoft frees up Yahoo to focus investment on areas in which they excel including building their portfolio of destination web properties and display advertising capabilities.

So what will this new alliance look like? In a nutshell, Microsoft (Bing) will power Yahoo’s organic and paid search platforms while Yahoo will handle premium search advertising sales for the combined unit.

Celebrations for overcoming this regulatory milestone will be short-lived as the companies’ goal will is to have U.S. implementation completed by the end of 2010. Further details can be found on the official Search Alliance site.

EMG Takeaway:
Attention advertisers, marketers, shareholders and general search enthusiasts (i.e. everyone)… prepare yourselves because the real battle for search market dominance is about to begin!

We’re going to see more performance improvements, more product innovation and better integration from all players as Google’s monopolistic advantages wane under increased competitive pressure.

Google may be forced to up the ante on traditional media buys (e.g. “Search Stories” Super Bowl spot) to defend against Bing’s mass media quest for search mind share as the “Decision Engine.”

Ultimately, this deal is going to mean different things to different groups of people. However, we will all benefit from stronger competition in the search marketplace as it forces companies to work harder for our loyalty.

Final Words:
There will be big changes in the search market landscape with the Microsoft/ Yahoo search alliance rapidly coming to fruition. Maintaining and acquiring search share will demand that key players (and challengers) diversify product offerings without diluting the meaning behind their brand promise.

While search is as much a societal mainstay as the internet, the business of search is still very much in its infancy. Whether the search engine on top will be Google, MicroHoo or a new challenger, one thing is certain; the biggest winner will be the engine able to monetize search services beyond “10 Blue Links” and banner inundation in a manner that benefits searchers, advertisers and publishers.

Three Questions to Continue the Discussion:
1.)    How is this going to affect SEM campaign management?
2.)    What efforts will Google take to maintain search dominance?
3.)    Preferred mashup; MicroHoo or YahSoft?

I think it’s important for us to get a clear understanding of the playing field as it relates to digital marketing today in order to prepare for the challenges we most definitely will face tomorrow. My hope is to provide context for the ideas and direction EMG is heading.

I begin with a few questions that I ask myself every day.

What ideas should we lead with? – The one’s with the best or most compelling creative, relevant strategy, newest technology, most popular or that shows the most promising return on investment? Is it all of the above or something much more complex, integrated and visceral?

How do we measure or benchmark success? Monetize social media? Break through barriers? How do we adapt faster and test quicker? Who are we influenced by? Who do we want to influence?

We now know that digital marketing can at times become the single backbone to success or failure – that it is no longer for simply marketing to youth, Millennials and soccer moms.

We have a continuous flood of information and intelligence resources to help us monitor, uncover and identify common campaign curses, unforeseen pitfalls, potential market penetration opportunities, unique engagement challenges, unconventional strategies and user experience best-practices.

Thought Leaders, must now work together to quickly take advantage of the ever changing digital landscape in order to continue to meet and surpass audience expectations; to not become stale; to determine what to embrace and what to ignore.

Digital marketing has now moved well beyond its infancy of simple electronic press kit sites and landing pages, search marketing, widgets, apps, online promotions and mobile contests, display advertising and even alternate reality games.

Think about the ground-breaking campaigns that are showing success with non-competing partnerships; campaigns that are reaching unbeknownst audiences via aggregated and unique content, popularity rankings, social evangelism and innovative creative; that are creating a personalized story and connection with our audiences outside the boundaries of the previous conventional digital campaign.

How much risk do we take, however?

Regardless of the complexity, all of our goals are singular, simple and historical. Identify the audience, both the core and the fringe, find the best way of delivering our content to them, learn from our success and failures, and risk just enough to stand out and be different.

There are two ways to set up your campaigns on Google Content Network: using placement targeting and keyword targeting. As I discussed in my previous blog post, both methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. In this post we will uncover the secret of getting the most out of Google Content Network using both methods at the same time.

Start with creating placement targeting campaign. First of all you need to answer the question: what websites does your audience likes to visit? Here are a couple tools that will help you to answer this question and carefully target your audience:

AdWords Placement Tool: Within the AdWords account, you can click the Placements tab of any given ad group and then select “Find and Add Placements.”  The Placement Tool will then allow you to search for placements based on URL, subject category, demographic, or topics. 

Use Google Ad Planner to get more insight info about your users and websites you are targeting. Ad Planner has over the Placement Tool inside the AdWords interface is that it allows you to search for sites using multiple dimensions (Education level, household income, and whether there are children in the household) https://www.google.com/adplanner/

Additional Tips:

• Some placements only allow certain ad formats or sizes, so be sure you keep in mind the type of ads you plan on running.

• Remember that although image and video ads have higher CTRs than text ads, text ads might receive more impressions because this is the most popular format. So don’t forget to write a couple text ads.

• Use PPC model for your placement campaigns. CTRs and CPCs on the content network are usually a lot lower than on the Search Network. PPC model allows you to make sure that you only pay for “Qualified” audience that is interested in your products/secrecies, while CPM model only allows you to be sure that these visitors are “Pre-Qualified”. Using PPC model also assures that you don’t have to worry as much about the placement of your ads on the selected pages, since if it didn’t get a click – you were not charged and your ROI was not affected.

• Add keyword targeting to your placement campaign. This Simple.  For example you are promoting a CD of the new Rock Band and want your ad to show up on MySpace, but only on pages that mention the keyword “rock band” or “rock concert” or something similar.  Now you can simply start a placement targeted campaign, choose MySpace as your target placement, and start entering keywords and ads that complement your landing page.  Instead of showing up on all the placements across MySpace at random, you’ll only show up on those pages that are likely to convert a target market.

As cost per click across almost all the industries is continuously going up as a consequence of the growing online competition, advertisers need to be more careful when choosing their online marketing strategies. These days advertisers not only have to be more creative about the ways they communicate and reach their audience, but also make sure that their online marketing strategy is cost effective and the audience they target is right.

Google is most famous for its unarguably efficient and measurable Google Search Network model, where ads appear on Google and Google Network sites based on searches people make. However, we shouldn’t forget that advertisers also have the option of running their ads on Google Content Network that includes millions of websites all over the world and according to Google is able to reach 76% of US internet users.

Content Network shows AdWords ads based on website content in relation to the ads, versus search network that shows ads based on search queries. There are 2 ways to target Content Network: Using Keyword Targeting and Placement Targeting.  So which one is better and what kind of model should you use – CPC or CPM?

Keyword Targeting

Advantages:

• Easy to setup: keyword targeting for content network uses contextual matching algorithms that align your ad exposure with keyword themes inside your ad group. You just need to create an ad group with a tightly focused set of keywords. Then let Google find relevant sites to show your ad on.

Disadvantages:

• Keyword targeting for content network doesn’t give advertisers 100% control over the sites where ads are going to appear. Google’s contextual matching algorithms select websites that it considers relevant to your business, but unfortunately these algorithms are not that good and it’s very likely to show your ads on less relevant sites too.

• You need to constantly use Placement Reports to find the not-so related sites and exclude them using site exclusions, and in the big campaign where ads are showing up on the thousands sites, it can be too much work.

Placement Targeting

Advantages:

• Placement Targeting allows you to target particular websites and sub domains

• Allows a lot more transparency about where exactly your ads are going to show up before you start the campaign

• It’s very easy to keep track of your ad performance on each website and adjust your bids for each site based on it.

• You can specify which areas of the site you want your ads to appear at. This is especially important if you use the CPM model because in this case you pay for impressions and you really what to make sure that you avoid sites that show Google Ads in the footer, or below 600 pixels. 

Disadvantages:

• Placement targeting doesn’t allow specifying the themes sometimes of the pages within the website you selected as your placement, so for example if you selected MySpace as placement, you what to make sure that only those who are interested in your services/products will see your ads.

So how can you combine the advantages of both types of campaigns and avoid disadvantages? Here is your answer: now you can set up keyword targeting within your placement targeted campaigns!

For more info on how to get the best out of your content network check out our blog next week!

Google is introducing another beta (in development status) tool to make the search engine marketing game even more intriguing. The Google Video Plusbox is a new feature that enables search engine marketers to display an expandable video player right at the bottom of the text ad copies.

The Google Video Plusbox can be a great solution in outperforming the competition in the fragmented search arena and get the immediate attention of the searcher right on the Google search results page by providing a sound and motion based user experience.

As Google Video Plusbox is in Beta, it is only available to a limited number of advertisers for testing-purposes …Earthbound Media Group is one of the early players in the market given the chance to participate in this beta program with the 20^th Century Fox Film  I Love You Beth Cooper

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I don’t know about you, but I would LOVE a new 17″ Macbook Pro! So, how do you win a new Macbook Pro? Enter the Day JCR Cup 2008! Simply create a content-centric application and submit it no later than midnight September 30th, 2008. Detailed information (more so than what I’ll cover in this blog) can be found at:

http://dev.day.com/microsling/content/blogs/cup.c.html

JCR/JSR 170/Content Management:

You may be asking yourself, ‘what does JCR stand for?’ JCR stands for the Java Content Repository. Day Software (Day) has been an emerging leader in the field of Web Content Management (WCM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for over a decade now. In an effort to not only promote themselves more amongst the Open Source Community, but also in promoting the concept of Content Management Systems (CMS) (I know, I know, let the acronyms fly!), they created the JSR (Java Specification Request) 170.

The Apache Software Foundation created an open source, fully compatible version of JSR 170 by creating the Jackrabbit project. Day’s commercial implementation of JSR 170 is the Content Repository Extreme (CRX). Day’s flagship WCM, Communique, is a set of API’s built on top of the CRX.

One of the neat things about this contest is that it gives developers a chance to obtain a free, trial version of the CRX. When you sign up for the contest, a trial key is emailed to you. The contest page has links to documentation, quickstart guides, FAQs, mailing lists, and all associated technologies needed to build out a complete CMS.

One final note before I end this blog… I’ve been developing with Day Communique for over 5 years now. I am VERY curious to see what the new version, CQ 5, will look like. I have a sneaky suspicion that all of the technologies involved with this content (JCR, SLING, etc.) are a good indication of what CQ 5 is going to look like…

Until next time…

Todd

There’s been a lot of talk lately on the value of social networking tools, sites, blogs, blah, blah, blah… and it starts me wondering, “How do you build community?” Seriously. So, the social scientist in me takes over and I begin to digg into this deli.icio.us question and see what the rest of the oncomm has to say about it. I’m sure if the information is out there, by now I must have reddit.

This concept of building community sounds great, especially to marketing types who see this as a way to generate traffic “for free” but kind of breaks down when it comes to actually starting to build. Lets consider for a moment the reasons why we might “build community” purely for marketing reasons and then we’ll dive into perhaps the factors that actually drive community which might give us some insight into how community actually gets built.

• TRAFFIC-> Interesting content means interested visitors, right?
• KNOWLEDGE -> Sharing or obtaining. If you write it, they will come.

Now, let’s think about what these factors mean to community.

First, we should probably establish the difference between traffic and community. Amazon.com gets a ton of traffic and plenty of comments and feedback on products. Does it have “community” or “web2.0″ features? Is it a “social networking” site? Hardly. It’s pretty clear that traffic isn’t community. Next let’s consider knowledge sharing and community. For this let me use the example of, well… how about Micro$oft. Like many other software vendors, the redmond elite have used their online presence to produce a great deal of “knowledge” to be shared with the world. This certainly generates a certain amount of “traffic” and “content” but again, hardly creates “community.”

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