I mentioned Google’s virtual world, Lively, in a post about advertising in games last Fall. This weekend the New York Times ran a piece about Lively, Dodgeball and other recently axed Google developments and acquisitions. [link] Some internet marketing products number among the programs that have recently been cut, Google Radio and Newspaper Ads.

Sure, focus comes back to the core of Google AdWords, pay per click advertising, which is one of the things Pure Visibility does best. But it was cool to see Google explore new directions in advertising. Read More

The minutia of technology news tends to distract me from the big picture. The specs of the new Macbook, AMD backing off the move to next generation chips, plans for a YSM or adCenter Desktop Editor, the widget that makes you look like Shepard Fairey’s Obama portrait…etc. I’d like to briefly reflect on the big picture, and momentarily shelve my enthusiasm for the latest and greatest.

As of yesterday, America has a new President. What do you think about the new administration’s technology goals? I think I see Eric Schmidt’s fingerprints on some of those priorities, particularly health informatics and energy ideas that overlap with Google.org goals. It’s interesting to see network neutrality prioritized; it’s right at the top of the page. [Here's a Washington Post article on the subject. Tech Crunch has a pretty good piece too.]

The issue as I understand it: should website owners pay telecoms for higher levels of service, to make their sites run better than their competitors, and help those companies like Verizon, ATT, pay for their networks by doing so…

Now, fair warning, I’m going to try to incorporate this big picture stuff to Pure Visibility’s business.   I often think about democratic aspects of online experience. And I think the text ads that Google, Yahoo & Microsoft display, are pretty democratic. Yes, they use an auction system, so you pay for higher visibility. But regardless of who the advertiser is or how much they bid, their text ad will be four lines of text. At Pure Visibility, we talk regularly about goals for what we do. The co-founders of the company, Catherine and Linda, are very community oriented, and dedicated to helping Michigan businesses grow. I like that text ads provide an effective opportunity that scales well for businesses of all sizes to reach customers online.   I like that the barrier to entry is such that is system is a viable opportunity for companies spending millions of dollars a year, or only a few dollars a month.

For an introduction to Mozilla Labs creation Ubiquity, watch this video called, Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us. In it, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch delves into the commonplace activities creating, consuming and sharing information online. He helps us reflect on how revolutionary these activities are.

Ubiquity enables us to add the next layer of richness to our everyday communications. The application will help people combine the functions of different websites. Read More

I’ve created sign in information at dozens of sites. Here, I’ll list a couple; how many of these do you have? I’ve got user names and passwords for Amazon, Flickr, del.icio.us, personal Google accounts, work Google accounts, last.fm, WordPress, Basecamp, Salesforce.com, Newegg, mapmyrun.com, YTMND, my public library, iTunes, and Chowhound. Ok, that’s fifteen? Believe me, that’s just a small sample. What does this inconvenience have to do with internet marketing? Bear with me; I think it may be a step in growing online media conglomerates. Read More

A provocative piece on Search Engine Journal incited some interesting comments about tension between marketing strategies and the interests of Internet users.

The author’s job is doing SEO for a company that sells eyewear, and one of his initiatives recently flatlined. One of his strategies was to create an account for his company on the Flickr (the Yahoo-owned photo hosting and sharing service) account for his company, and post pictures related to their business… movie stars wearing their products, pictures of the stuff they sell, etc. The idea was to create images with keyword rich titles that would show up in search engine results, and get people to the company’s website by linking to it in each Flickr picture description. In December 2008, the account got shut down for violating terms of service regarding commercial use.

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Backstory: On November 11th, the Wall Street Journal has an article that says Facebook still isn’t selling ads like MySpace, despite surpassing their market share. It’s interesting, and compares formats of online advertising that are now considered traditional with more novel ideas like Facebook’s engagement ads.

Wired and cnet were, of course, among those to respond to the the WSJ article. All three articles quoted industry & media research people, like eMarketer, Forrester, etc. But here’s the part I want to talk about…Wired takes a quote from the AdAge interview with Ted McConnell, who heads up Proctor & Gamble’s interactive marketing and innovation operations.

“What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

The piece on McConnell is wonderful, read it; it shows that he’s very conscious of the potential value of demographic targeting on sites with user generated content. But he identifies as a consumer advocate, and suggests that the propriety of monetizing media is dependent on who creates it and why. It bears consideration; I’m really interested in how to do online marketing in ways that satisfy both consumers and advertisers. I feel that way because advertising is core to the business model of many free web-based apps that I’m crazy about.

So, take McConnell’s example. How, in heaven’s name could you think about monetizing the real estate where someone’s breaking up with his girlfriend.

A couple ideas:
Puffs (P&G tissue brand) a sad story contest. prize = a vacation for one.
iTunes or Amazon solicits user created breakup mixes

What do you think? Worst / most heartless ideas you’ve ever heard? Am I awful for thinking that would be funny? You see any fun opportunities given this difficult hypothetical?

WSJ : Facebook Tries to Woo Marketers
cnet news : MySpace beating Facebook on ads? Well, duh
Advertising Age : P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook
Wired : Facebook Ads Not Dead Yet

Yesterday, election day, Facebook displayed a counter showing how many members had cast their vote. Anyone know what this element was or who developed it?

It can be tough to tell who created what, especially as the company tries to find an advertising model to justify their multi billion dollar valuation.

Below are some examples of advertising and marketing opportunities on Facebook. I don’t think the Election 2008 element is any of these; I think it was created by Facebook, but I can’t find it today. Insight anyone?
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This post was meant to be quick & glib, with a glimmer of of insightful commentary the future of advertising online, specifically in products like Second Life. However, I ran into some very thoughtful writing on the subject that’s way more interesting than what I had to say. So, I’d like to write about their writing…a metapost.

Google released Lively a couple months ago, and I’ve been meaning to write a post about it since July. Lively is a virtual world, like Second Life; users customize a character, or avatar that represents them, and rooms in which to interact with other users.

I found out about the launch from a Hitwise company blog post about Google’s next moves. Hitwise is one of the major competitive intelligence tools for the web. They provide information about web trends relevant to specific industries, and help companies understand how well they’re doing on the web relative to their competitors. They wrote a ‘how awesome are we post’ because six months earlier they predicted Google would launch products around health and entertainment, based on the interests of Google.com visitors.

So, the Hitwise prediction gave me the idea to write about ads in Lively and Second Life. Second Life got a lot of attention over the past few years in part because the “game” developed a vibrant economy involving the sale of real estate, clothing, and just about everything in between. Sensing opportunity, several businesses have established themselves in Second Life. [Link: NY Times] Google’s shrewd. They definitely want in on new opportunities to serve ads. Games? Heck yes! [Link: another NY Times piece]

I looked around to see if I could find any writing about ads in Second Life to springboard my post a bit. Cause, honestly, I never got into Second Life, despite liking Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash…a lot. I hoped to get commentary from someone who really knew advertising and the Second Life community. As often happens on this great series of tubes, I found more than I was looking for.

Here’s Ilya Vedrashko’s 2006 post about American Apparel’s Second Life store. He also wrote his thesis on the subject, for his Master’s in Comparative Media Studies at MIT (cool program BTW). It’s called Advertising in Computer Games. Rather than comment further, I think I’ll read his thesis and revisit the subject in the future. Hey gamers! What’s been your most interesting encounter with advertising in a game?

So, in early 2008 Yahoo bought IndexTools. Then, last week, Yahoo announced that they’re beginning to roll out the product born of that acquisition, Yahoo Web Analytics [press release]. It’s not public yet; the beta will expand to more groups over the next year.

No word on the details of the release schedule, but the word from product manager Jitendra Kavathekar is that like Google Analytics, the product will be FREE (as in beer), and “eventually all Yahoo! advertisers, publishers and developers will have access in one way or another.”

The buzz on this product so far?

The feature that people are really excited about is real time reporting. Google Analytics can take up to 24 hours. (Looking for reliable documentation on this.) GAAC’s who saw the index tools product demo say the delay is no more than a couple minutes.

I’m personally interested in the click path display, which looks pretty good. Google Analytics is pretty weak on this, and can actually be pretty confusing. (Ever wonder why your navigation summary shows your previous and next pages the same as the page you’re looking at? Yeah, me too. Explanation here.)

Tough to say when I’ll start using Yahoo Web Analytics on client accounts, but I think having more than one analytics account on a site isn’t a bad idea. Plus, features vary across products, and of course, these tools are just plain fun!

Hal Varian, Chief Economist for Google, Berkeley Professor, author of the awesome book Information Rules and amateur Sam Eagle impersonator, tears down a white paper by an SEM company that predicts that the deal Yahoo made to serve Google ads will cause a 22% increase in Yahoo PPC bid prices. Varian asserts that the defects in the paper’s methodology make its conclusions about as legitimate as a $50 Rolex.

Whew, I’d hate to be those guys. The thought of going toe to toe with Varian is terrifying. But Professor Varian’s critique of the study does nothing to address advertisers concerns that changing the bidding structure will impact the price of advertising on Yahoo keywords.

Ask Jeeves partnered with Google to serve ads on Teoma and other products back in 2002. They determined whether to display an Ask Jeeves ad or a Google ad by the $$$$ they’d receive. Expensive ad goes to the top. Makes sense. Professor Varian says that Yahoo has a “strong economic incentive” to serve their own ads rather than Google’s; full share vs. partial share of profit. He also points out that Google and Yahoo won’t be able to see one another’s bid prices.

But neither company has detailed how their ad services will be integrated. Advertisers make higher bids for Google than Yahoo; it’s not unreasonable to speculate that Google and Yahoo might adopt a bidding model that would result in advertisers driving up prices on Yahoo keywords. There has been no information on the workings of the bidding system that demonstrates that this won’t occur.

Here’s Google’s press release about the agreement to provide ads for Yahoo. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-agreement-to-provide-ad-technology.html

Here’s Yahoo’s press release on the same subject.

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=316450

Search Engine Watch Article about Google deal to provide ads for Ask Jeeves
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2164921