Gasta has launched a third of its web2.0 white label search engines in USA. Gasta has partnered with Chris Nielsen Technologies to launch www.flashseek.com
The flashseek.com search engine was created to focus on Flash services and Flash development Chris Nielsen owner of FlashSeek and WebDomination (a second Gasta white label search) said " Having the opportunity to work with Gasta has been a great experience, the search engiunes were launched in a matter of hours and now it all about bringing people in to share the experience, I think local newspapers around the world who are suffering from the downturn, would do well to look closely at this service. The social marketing tools are great and certainly the in touch with the web2.0 genberation."
If you would like to hear more about Gasta hosted white label search engines contact the gasta website.
Showing posts with label Long tail Keywords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Long tail Keywords. Show all posts
Monday, June 15, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Gasta Advertisng slots model: increases in popularity
Leading economists are calling the current economic meltdown the worst crisis in history, and are stressing the need for a new and more responsible capitalism. This is notable, but by no means new. As far back as 1848, Karl Marx theorized that unconstrained capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, the dialectic of capitalism.
Marx argued that there was an inherent conflict between the base of capitalism and its superstructure. The economic base of capitalism was industrial production. The superstructure was the system of private property, under which people owning the technical apparatus received the lion's share of the returns. The two were mutually incompatible with each other.
Why?
According to Marx, the base (industrial production) relies on community members working together in an organized and interdependent manner. On the other hand, the superstructure (private property) was highly individualistic. A complex capitalistic society would need rigid structure and direction, but capitalists themselves would seek out a ruinous freedom.
There are important lessons for online advertising professionals here. There are a variety of pricing models available today, and it is important to examine the dialectic within each of them to see which of them would prompt a race to the bottom, and which would result in a steady state.
To be more specific, this argument especially applies to the rapid growth of the cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model that is ascendant in the marketplace today. According to eMarketer, search engine marketing accounted for as much as 40 percent of the internet advertising spend in 2008.
The CPC pricing model has moved from strength to strength since the last recession in 2000-2002. As you might recall, even as online advertising declined by 27 percent, CPC advertising grew by a staggering 820 percent.
The shift was primarily driven by the fact that CPC advertising allowed advertisers to pay for clicks and not for wasted impressions. Advertisers warmed up to the offerings of Google and other search engines, and since then, the growth of CPC advertising has continued unabated.
However, like the example of unconstrained capitalism referenced earlier, CPC advertising cannot maintain its growth in its current state. It contains within it factors that run counter to its promise of increased returns and measurability of online advertising, which in turn will cause it to slow down, and in the long term give way to other pricing models.
These factors include:
Increasing costs of keywords
You might have heard of Jama, the Portland-based software company that moved money away from search engine marketing toward charitable contributions to see if the resulting publicity could generate business in a more affordable way. Jama is not alone in worrying about the rising cost of keywords. If you are a search marketer, you probably have worried about your marketing ROI.
A 2007 DoubleClick Performics Search Trends Report shows that there were nearly six times as many keywords with a cost-per-click of more than $1 in January 2007 than the prior year. The cost-per-keyword increased by 33 percent and the cost-per-click rose by as much as 55 percent.
That, to say the least, is a lot.
Increasing click fraud rate
In the third quarter of 2008, the Click Fraud report maintained by Click Forensics showed a 16 percent industry click fraud rate. The report said that average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks (e.g., Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network) was as high as 27.1 percent.
With sophisticated technologies like botnets used to perpetrate click fraud on the rise, advertisers could very well end up paying for fraudulent clicks, which in a bad economy is more than wasteful -- it is criminal.
Lack of transparency
Search engines commonly deploy algorithms to determine the cost-per-click and the position of the advertisements. Yahoo, Ask.com, and Google have their own algorithms to determine the amount marketers will have to pay for a given advertisement.
The problem is that there is little to no transparency in the algorithm. It is difficult for marketers to determine how landing page quality, the quality of the ad copy, and variations on the bid price work together to determine the exact position and price of the search advertisement.
There is yet another element that contributes to the lack of transparency.
Often, it is difficult for the online marketer to know exactly where the click is coming from. Search networks often encompass a large number of sites beyond the primary entity. Many search engines don't divulge the member sites of their "content network."
The lack of transparency can ultimately be an inhibiting factor in increasing return on investment.
Difficult to tie campaign to business metrics
Metrics such as clicks, click-through rates, and cost-per-clicks are far removed from actual business metrics like acquisitions and sales. As a result, many marketers are unable to correlate the two, and optimize campaigns in an effective manner that will help them drive revenue.
According to the "2007 Marketing ROI and Measurements Study" from Lenskold Group and Marketing Profs, only 9 percent of marketers say their ability to measure the financial returns across all forms of marketing is "a real source of leadership" or "as good as it needs to be."
A McKinsey report, "How poor metrics undermine digital marketing," written after a survey of 340 senior executives around the country, sums it up aptly: Hobbled by nascent technologies, inconsistent metrics, and a reliance on outdated media models, marketers are failing to tap the digital world's full power.
To prevent a race to the bottom, the online advertising industry will have to ring in important changes that will address the shortcomings of CPC campaigns as they exist today.
1. Change in pricing models: If the last recession saw the industry move from a CPM to a CPC pricing model, the current recession will see the logical progression towards the cost-per-lead (CPL) pricing model. A move to CPL advertising will solve the problems resulting from expensive keywords and high click fraud rates.
"The industry is moving towards CPL advertising," says Daniel Taylor, senior analyst in Yankee Group's Consumer Research group. "The CPC pricing model is a placeholder for CPL," he says. "Advertisers only want to pay for very specific consumer interactions, and not for wasted clicks or impressions."
2. Improved transparency: Be it for display advertising, search advertising, or online lead generation, there will have to be a move toward greater transparency. Stretched for dollars, advertisers will want to optimize their campaigns to the greatest extent possible, and transparency helps them identify better performing placements accurately.
3. Improved customer relationship management (CRM): Marketers will also have to focus to a greater extent on the campaign backend to ensure that their marketing campaigns convert into tangible returns and revenue.
Email service providers and other CRM solutions will reap the benefits of this holistic marketing approach. According to Datamonitor, the CRM industry is forecast to reach $6.6 billon by year-end 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.5 percent.
Bad times bring about change -- that in turn lead to good times. The movement toward CPL advertising, improved transparency, and a greater focus on CRM are important ones will help online advertising deliver on its promise and hopefully prevent it from sowing the seeds of its own demise.
Zephrin Lasker is co-founder and CEO of Pontiflex.
Marx argued that there was an inherent conflict between the base of capitalism and its superstructure. The economic base of capitalism was industrial production. The superstructure was the system of private property, under which people owning the technical apparatus received the lion's share of the returns. The two were mutually incompatible with each other.
Why?
According to Marx, the base (industrial production) relies on community members working together in an organized and interdependent manner. On the other hand, the superstructure (private property) was highly individualistic. A complex capitalistic society would need rigid structure and direction, but capitalists themselves would seek out a ruinous freedom.
There are important lessons for online advertising professionals here. There are a variety of pricing models available today, and it is important to examine the dialectic within each of them to see which of them would prompt a race to the bottom, and which would result in a steady state.
To be more specific, this argument especially applies to the rapid growth of the cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model that is ascendant in the marketplace today. According to eMarketer, search engine marketing accounted for as much as 40 percent of the internet advertising spend in 2008.
The CPC pricing model has moved from strength to strength since the last recession in 2000-2002. As you might recall, even as online advertising declined by 27 percent, CPC advertising grew by a staggering 820 percent.
The shift was primarily driven by the fact that CPC advertising allowed advertisers to pay for clicks and not for wasted impressions. Advertisers warmed up to the offerings of Google and other search engines, and since then, the growth of CPC advertising has continued unabated.
However, like the example of unconstrained capitalism referenced earlier, CPC advertising cannot maintain its growth in its current state. It contains within it factors that run counter to its promise of increased returns and measurability of online advertising, which in turn will cause it to slow down, and in the long term give way to other pricing models.
These factors include:
Increasing costs of keywords
You might have heard of Jama, the Portland-based software company that moved money away from search engine marketing toward charitable contributions to see if the resulting publicity could generate business in a more affordable way. Jama is not alone in worrying about the rising cost of keywords. If you are a search marketer, you probably have worried about your marketing ROI.
A 2007 DoubleClick Performics Search Trends Report shows that there were nearly six times as many keywords with a cost-per-click of more than $1 in January 2007 than the prior year. The cost-per-keyword increased by 33 percent and the cost-per-click rose by as much as 55 percent.
That, to say the least, is a lot.
Increasing click fraud rate
In the third quarter of 2008, the Click Fraud report maintained by Click Forensics showed a 16 percent industry click fraud rate. The report said that average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks (e.g., Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network) was as high as 27.1 percent.
With sophisticated technologies like botnets used to perpetrate click fraud on the rise, advertisers could very well end up paying for fraudulent clicks, which in a bad economy is more than wasteful -- it is criminal.
Lack of transparency
Search engines commonly deploy algorithms to determine the cost-per-click and the position of the advertisements. Yahoo, Ask.com, and Google have their own algorithms to determine the amount marketers will have to pay for a given advertisement.
The problem is that there is little to no transparency in the algorithm. It is difficult for marketers to determine how landing page quality, the quality of the ad copy, and variations on the bid price work together to determine the exact position and price of the search advertisement.
There is yet another element that contributes to the lack of transparency.
Often, it is difficult for the online marketer to know exactly where the click is coming from. Search networks often encompass a large number of sites beyond the primary entity. Many search engines don't divulge the member sites of their "content network."
The lack of transparency can ultimately be an inhibiting factor in increasing return on investment.
Difficult to tie campaign to business metrics
Metrics such as clicks, click-through rates, and cost-per-clicks are far removed from actual business metrics like acquisitions and sales. As a result, many marketers are unable to correlate the two, and optimize campaigns in an effective manner that will help them drive revenue.
According to the "2007 Marketing ROI and Measurements Study" from Lenskold Group and Marketing Profs, only 9 percent of marketers say their ability to measure the financial returns across all forms of marketing is "a real source of leadership" or "as good as it needs to be."
A McKinsey report, "How poor metrics undermine digital marketing," written after a survey of 340 senior executives around the country, sums it up aptly: Hobbled by nascent technologies, inconsistent metrics, and a reliance on outdated media models, marketers are failing to tap the digital world's full power.
To prevent a race to the bottom, the online advertising industry will have to ring in important changes that will address the shortcomings of CPC campaigns as they exist today.
1. Change in pricing models: If the last recession saw the industry move from a CPM to a CPC pricing model, the current recession will see the logical progression towards the cost-per-lead (CPL) pricing model. A move to CPL advertising will solve the problems resulting from expensive keywords and high click fraud rates.
"The industry is moving towards CPL advertising," says Daniel Taylor, senior analyst in Yankee Group's Consumer Research group. "The CPC pricing model is a placeholder for CPL," he says. "Advertisers only want to pay for very specific consumer interactions, and not for wasted clicks or impressions."
2. Improved transparency: Be it for display advertising, search advertising, or online lead generation, there will have to be a move toward greater transparency. Stretched for dollars, advertisers will want to optimize their campaigns to the greatest extent possible, and transparency helps them identify better performing placements accurately.
3. Improved customer relationship management (CRM): Marketers will also have to focus to a greater extent on the campaign backend to ensure that their marketing campaigns convert into tangible returns and revenue.
Email service providers and other CRM solutions will reap the benefits of this holistic marketing approach. According to Datamonitor, the CRM industry is forecast to reach $6.6 billon by year-end 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.5 percent.
Bad times bring about change -- that in turn lead to good times. The movement toward CPL advertising, improved transparency, and a greater focus on CRM are important ones will help online advertising deliver on its promise and hopefully prevent it from sowing the seeds of its own demise.
Zephrin Lasker is co-founder and CEO of Pontiflex.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Gasta News:Microsoft’s Ballmer Seeks More Web-Search Agreements
Microsoft Corp. will aim to strike more agreements for its Web-search software to be included on computers and mobile phones, even though the deals may not always make money, Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said.
“It might still be a good marketing investment for us to make,” Ballmer said today in an interview in New York. The deals may not make “economic sense” at the outset, he said.
Microsoft, Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. form partnerships to make their search engines the default setting on computers and mobile phones to attract new users. Google can pay more for the deals without losing money, Ballmer said.
Google, the most-popular search engine, gets an estimated 9.5 cents to 10 cents on average in ad sales from each search, while Microsoft and Yahoo get 4 cents to 5 cents, Ballmer said. That means Google can give its partners 8 cents from each search, while Microsoft may have to lose money, he said.
“Google can bid them to a point where we are not economical,” said Ballmer, 52. Microsoft will probably do a “bit of investment” in those agreements as existing partnerships that companies have with Google and Yahoo expire, he said.
Microsoft handled about 8 percent of search queries in the U.S. in February, compared with Google’s 63 percent and Yahoo’s 21 percent, according to researcher ComScore Inc. Outside the U.S., Microsoft’s market share is even smaller.
Dell, Verizon
Kim Rubey, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, declined to comment on how much revenue the company makes per search. Google, based in Mountain View, California, didn’t have an immediate comment.
Microsoft struck partnerships to put its search software on Dell Inc. computers and Verizon Wireless mobile phones this year, beating out Google for the deals. Last year, Microsoft reached agreements with Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Facebook Inc. Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest personal-computer maker, had a deal with Yahoo.
The agreements mean that new computers come preloaded with a toolbar that lets them use Microsoft’s Live Search. The search engine also appears on the home screen of some Verizon handsets and is included when customers download Sun’s Java software.
Ballmer reiterated that he’s interested in a search partnership with Yahoo because it “makes all the sense in the world.”
Ballmer said earlier today at a conference that he has spoken with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and that they will talk when it’s appropriate.
“What’s she been there now -- all of a month and a half, two months?,” Ballmer said in the interview. The Web-search industry has been harder for him and other executives to learn than most businesses, Ballmer said.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, rose 18 cents to $17.14 today in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have lost 12 percent this year.
“It might still be a good marketing investment for us to make,” Ballmer said today in an interview in New York. The deals may not make “economic sense” at the outset, he said.
Microsoft, Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. form partnerships to make their search engines the default setting on computers and mobile phones to attract new users. Google can pay more for the deals without losing money, Ballmer said.
Google, the most-popular search engine, gets an estimated 9.5 cents to 10 cents on average in ad sales from each search, while Microsoft and Yahoo get 4 cents to 5 cents, Ballmer said. That means Google can give its partners 8 cents from each search, while Microsoft may have to lose money, he said.
“Google can bid them to a point where we are not economical,” said Ballmer, 52. Microsoft will probably do a “bit of investment” in those agreements as existing partnerships that companies have with Google and Yahoo expire, he said.
Microsoft handled about 8 percent of search queries in the U.S. in February, compared with Google’s 63 percent and Yahoo’s 21 percent, according to researcher ComScore Inc. Outside the U.S., Microsoft’s market share is even smaller.
Dell, Verizon
Kim Rubey, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, declined to comment on how much revenue the company makes per search. Google, based in Mountain View, California, didn’t have an immediate comment.
Microsoft struck partnerships to put its search software on Dell Inc. computers and Verizon Wireless mobile phones this year, beating out Google for the deals. Last year, Microsoft reached agreements with Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Facebook Inc. Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest personal-computer maker, had a deal with Yahoo.
The agreements mean that new computers come preloaded with a toolbar that lets them use Microsoft’s Live Search. The search engine also appears on the home screen of some Verizon handsets and is included when customers download Sun’s Java software.
Ballmer reiterated that he’s interested in a search partnership with Yahoo because it “makes all the sense in the world.”
Ballmer said earlier today at a conference that he has spoken with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and that they will talk when it’s appropriate.
“What’s she been there now -- all of a month and a half, two months?,” Ballmer said in the interview. The Web-search industry has been harder for him and other executives to learn than most businesses, Ballmer said.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, rose 18 cents to $17.14 today in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have lost 12 percent this year.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Gasta News: Would you buy a car from this website? Car sales up on the Internet.
The internet is the main influence which determines a consumer's car purchase as the majority believe they'll locate a better deal online, according to research from Microsoft.
A sample of 622 people found just two out of 10 people planning to buy a car in the next six months might delay the purchase due to the economic climate, and 65% believe this landscape will provide them with a better deal.
in the decision making process, with online shaping decisions about which make and model consumers choose.Some 39% of people intending to buy said they had not decided on the category of car before coming online, with 55% still undecided over the brand and 61% over the model.
Furthermore, 69% of people said they used the web specifically for deciding which extras they wanted.
The report also said internet research empowered consumers, with 70% saying they feel more confident walking into a dealership if they have researched online first.
Jacqueline O'Sullivan, head of marketing communications at Microsoft Advertising, said, "The internet has now become the most important influence in a car buyers' decision-making process. Also, as less decisions are made before going online car brands have multiple opportunities to demonstrate why theirs should be the one that should be bought."
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Gasta Vertical Ad Network
As advertisers look for more ways to yield greater efficiency, going narrower but still with some scale means looking seriously at vertical ad networks.
Vertical ad networks are all the rage. If they aren't the toast of the town these days, they certainly are the talk of it.
However, vertical ad networks are nothing new. They are online advertising networks that have a particular focus. They aggregate a collection of sites together that have an affinity with one another and bring those "passion places" together in a way that provides advertisers meaningful scale without the uncertainty of a vast collection of unknown and dissimilar sites.
The appeal of a vertical ad network is first and foremost its focus. Second is the modicum of control it offers. As advertisers look for more ways to yield greater efficiencies and better accountability, going narrower but still with some scale means looking more seriously at vertical ad networks.
Travel Advertising Network is one such vertical, and company representatives gave the folks at the iMedia Agency Summit in La Quinta, Calif., a good look at what they are doing and why vertical ad networks are so important.
Travel Ad Network actually has the largest travel information audience in the world, with 19 million users worldwide (14 million in the U.S.). Notice that I did not say "travel" audience. This is an audience looking for information about traveling, be it destinations or transportation or boarding. This is not where they transact, according to Cree Lawson, founder/CEO, and Brian Silver, president. Their users are "in the aisles."
Why a vertical ad network?
The reason Travel Ad Network went this route was for three reasons: They listened to their clients who were demanding some level of transparency; they could get a better quality of advertiser; and they offered exclusive representation.
The guys from Travel Ad Network proceeded to deliver some valuable information in the form of a kind of Trivial Pursuit game. These questions and their answers make a terrific primer on vertical ad networks (particularly of the travel variety).
1. Are consumers different at vertical ad networks than horizontal ad networks? No. The reason advertisers should use vertical ad networks is not necessarily because the audiences there are so different than horizontal ad networks, but because those audiences are more engaged. As Lawson and Silver pointed out during their Spotlight presentation, people found in either horizontal or vertical ad networks are equally diverse. But those found within the confines of a vertical network have a higher degree of engagement and specialization. They are in their passion places.
2. Which ad supported property is in comScore's Buying Power Index top 10 list? Yes, Yahoo is there. But at the very top is Travel Ad Network, with a BPI of 280. That means that the average person found within Travel Ad Network has 2.8 times more buying power than the average person online.
3. What percentage of brands that advertise in verticals are endemic versus non-endemic? It turns out a lot more non-endemic advertising is going on. Just to give you a sense of what is meant by this: Less than 25 percent of advertising in a travel magazine is from travel product advertisers.
4. How many visits to travel sites does the average consumer make before booking a trip? Twenty-two. Before you click that "buy" button to book your airfare or hotel, chances are you've been to sites 22 times. That doesn't mean you've been to 22 sites, but you have made 22 different trips online before making your decision. It turns out that 15 percent of people don't know where they are going when they start planning, and 39 percent don't know when they will be traveling. This provides ample opportunity to talk to people in the questing frame of mind, to inform their seeking.
5. How much has the share of total page views changed for travel agencies in the last two years? It's down 15 percent. With all the information out there, people are starting to go around booking engines to find out what they want to know, and then pop onto that booking engine at the last minute to get the transaction done. If you are looking for an audience that is a travel audience, or has affinity with it, there are many chances to message that audience before they get to buy.
6. How much of every dollar spent online is spent on travel/travel products? Forty-four percent. That's right, $.44 of every dollar is spent on travel. This does not mean that travel makes up the bulk of the transactions. As someone in the audience pointed out, the dollars per transaction for travel are much higher than they are for, say, books. But all that means is that the online travel buyer is someone comfortable with spending a good deal of money online. The point here is that verticals are good for those "spending" audiences.
Vertical ad networks, like any ad network, may consist of a lot of sites an advertiser has never heard of. But if the audience they are looking for has, and that audience is at those sites, it makes sense to be there when the audience is there. You may not recognize the cover of the book, but if the book is being read, isn't that all that matters?
Jim Meskauskas
Vertical ad networks are all the rage. If they aren't the toast of the town these days, they certainly are the talk of it.
However, vertical ad networks are nothing new. They are online advertising networks that have a particular focus. They aggregate a collection of sites together that have an affinity with one another and bring those "passion places" together in a way that provides advertisers meaningful scale without the uncertainty of a vast collection of unknown and dissimilar sites.
The appeal of a vertical ad network is first and foremost its focus. Second is the modicum of control it offers. As advertisers look for more ways to yield greater efficiencies and better accountability, going narrower but still with some scale means looking more seriously at vertical ad networks.
Travel Advertising Network is one such vertical, and company representatives gave the folks at the iMedia Agency Summit in La Quinta, Calif., a good look at what they are doing and why vertical ad networks are so important.
Travel Ad Network actually has the largest travel information audience in the world, with 19 million users worldwide (14 million in the U.S.). Notice that I did not say "travel" audience. This is an audience looking for information about traveling, be it destinations or transportation or boarding. This is not where they transact, according to Cree Lawson, founder/CEO, and Brian Silver, president. Their users are "in the aisles."
Why a vertical ad network?
The reason Travel Ad Network went this route was for three reasons: They listened to their clients who were demanding some level of transparency; they could get a better quality of advertiser; and they offered exclusive representation.
The guys from Travel Ad Network proceeded to deliver some valuable information in the form of a kind of Trivial Pursuit game. These questions and their answers make a terrific primer on vertical ad networks (particularly of the travel variety).
1. Are consumers different at vertical ad networks than horizontal ad networks? No. The reason advertisers should use vertical ad networks is not necessarily because the audiences there are so different than horizontal ad networks, but because those audiences are more engaged. As Lawson and Silver pointed out during their Spotlight presentation, people found in either horizontal or vertical ad networks are equally diverse. But those found within the confines of a vertical network have a higher degree of engagement and specialization. They are in their passion places.
2. Which ad supported property is in comScore's Buying Power Index top 10 list? Yes, Yahoo is there. But at the very top is Travel Ad Network, with a BPI of 280. That means that the average person found within Travel Ad Network has 2.8 times more buying power than the average person online.
3. What percentage of brands that advertise in verticals are endemic versus non-endemic? It turns out a lot more non-endemic advertising is going on. Just to give you a sense of what is meant by this: Less than 25 percent of advertising in a travel magazine is from travel product advertisers.
4. How many visits to travel sites does the average consumer make before booking a trip? Twenty-two. Before you click that "buy" button to book your airfare or hotel, chances are you've been to sites 22 times. That doesn't mean you've been to 22 sites, but you have made 22 different trips online before making your decision. It turns out that 15 percent of people don't know where they are going when they start planning, and 39 percent don't know when they will be traveling. This provides ample opportunity to talk to people in the questing frame of mind, to inform their seeking.
5. How much has the share of total page views changed for travel agencies in the last two years? It's down 15 percent. With all the information out there, people are starting to go around booking engines to find out what they want to know, and then pop onto that booking engine at the last minute to get the transaction done. If you are looking for an audience that is a travel audience, or has affinity with it, there are many chances to message that audience before they get to buy.
6. How much of every dollar spent online is spent on travel/travel products? Forty-four percent. That's right, $.44 of every dollar is spent on travel. This does not mean that travel makes up the bulk of the transactions. As someone in the audience pointed out, the dollars per transaction for travel are much higher than they are for, say, books. But all that means is that the online travel buyer is someone comfortable with spending a good deal of money online. The point here is that verticals are good for those "spending" audiences.
Vertical ad networks, like any ad network, may consist of a lot of sites an advertiser has never heard of. But if the audience they are looking for has, and that audience is at those sites, it makes sense to be there when the audience is there. You may not recognize the cover of the book, but if the book is being read, isn't that all that matters?
Jim Meskauskas
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Gasta News: The Power of Search Networks
What the Search Engines Have Found Out About All of Us
Gasta.com European Search Network
Google has released its map of the national brain and appetites for 2008, and it turns out that many, many people across America have been asking the Internet “what is love?” and “how to kiss.”
And to tighten the focus, Google has also provided a list of search queries made by people sitting at computers in New York City.
It turns out that New Yorkers are looking for something a bit different. On a list of the 10 subjects that posted the greatest increases this year, the country as a whole was looking for Fox News and information about David Cook, the “American Idol” champion.
Neither made the New York list. Then again, the national list did not have 2 of the city’s top 10: Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus architecture school, and the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile circular underground tunnel in Switzerland that was built to smash protons into each other at the speed of light.
No doubt someone out in cyberspace can explain the surge of interest this year in Gropius, who has been dead since 1969 and has only one structure of any note in the city, the former Pan Am building.
The collider is easier to understand. There were worries that the crash of protons would instantly create a black hole, but in good news that was widely overlooked at the time, no hole appeared — or is it disappeared? — on Sept. 10, the day the machine was turned on. Search-engine interest in the collider promptly dropped off, as people pointed their anxieties and inquiries toward “Wall Street.” (The collider is currently on the fritz, as is Wall Street.)
On the surface, these kinds of lists are supposed to reveal what Google calls the zeitgeist of 2008, though it’s not much of a surprise that people were interested in Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. But they also provide hints of the level of personal details that people are now turning over to search engines and related businesses without much awareness.
The lists, said Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a professor of computer science at West Point, “are just major tsunami-type activities, big waves in the online searches.”
Professor Conti, the author of “Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?” (Addison-Wesley, 2008), contends that Google’s internal tools make it possible to develop detailed pictures of individual interests, not just of masses of teenagers looking for the very latest about Miley Cyrus.
“A complete picture of us as individuals and as companies emerges — political leanings, medical conditions, business acquisitions signaled by job searches,” he said. “It would be very scary if we could play back every search we made. Those can be tied back very precisely to an individual. You can go all the way from individual molecules of water up to the tsunami.”
INFORMATION on the Web looks free, but it is actually swapped for little bits of data that are useful to businesses. Google records Internet protocol addresses that are generated by each computer, cookies permitted by the users, the kind of browser being used, and the operating system of the computer, said Heather Spain, a spokeswoman for Google.
After nine months, Ms. Spain said, Google “anonymises” the data it has collected.
“At that point we permanently delete the last two digits from both the I.P. address and parts of the cookie numbers,” she said. “This breaks the link between the search query and the computer it was entered from. It’s similar to the way in which credit card companies replace digits with hash marks on receipts to improve their customers’ security.”
Professor Conti said that few people have the slightest idea how much of a trail they leave across the Internet. “People tend to think they’re only leaving footprints on sites that they trust,” he said, but many Web sites contain invisible code, like Google Analytics, that can track users over swaths of the Web.
The lists of popular searches, Ms. Spain said, are the products of inquiries by millions of people and do not threaten anyone’s privacy. The tools Google provides to the public for analyzing searches generally make it possible to look at the inquiries made in a particular state, not by individual cities.
For now, surrendering personal information is the cost for asking questions and getting answers quickly. All of the privacy measures are cumbersome.
“I speak about this at hacker conferences,” Professor Conti said, “and if they say something’s hard to use, believe me, it’s hard. There’s really no solution now — except abstinence. And if you choose not to use online tools, you’re not a member of the 21st century.”
By JIM DWYER
Gasta.com European Search Network
Google has released its map of the national brain and appetites for 2008, and it turns out that many, many people across America have been asking the Internet “what is love?” and “how to kiss.”
And to tighten the focus, Google has also provided a list of search queries made by people sitting at computers in New York City.
It turns out that New Yorkers are looking for something a bit different. On a list of the 10 subjects that posted the greatest increases this year, the country as a whole was looking for Fox News and information about David Cook, the “American Idol” champion.
Neither made the New York list. Then again, the national list did not have 2 of the city’s top 10: Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus architecture school, and the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile circular underground tunnel in Switzerland that was built to smash protons into each other at the speed of light.
No doubt someone out in cyberspace can explain the surge of interest this year in Gropius, who has been dead since 1969 and has only one structure of any note in the city, the former Pan Am building.
The collider is easier to understand. There were worries that the crash of protons would instantly create a black hole, but in good news that was widely overlooked at the time, no hole appeared — or is it disappeared? — on Sept. 10, the day the machine was turned on. Search-engine interest in the collider promptly dropped off, as people pointed their anxieties and inquiries toward “Wall Street.” (The collider is currently on the fritz, as is Wall Street.)
On the surface, these kinds of lists are supposed to reveal what Google calls the zeitgeist of 2008, though it’s not much of a surprise that people were interested in Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. But they also provide hints of the level of personal details that people are now turning over to search engines and related businesses without much awareness.
The lists, said Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a professor of computer science at West Point, “are just major tsunami-type activities, big waves in the online searches.”
Professor Conti, the author of “Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?” (Addison-Wesley, 2008), contends that Google’s internal tools make it possible to develop detailed pictures of individual interests, not just of masses of teenagers looking for the very latest about Miley Cyrus.
“A complete picture of us as individuals and as companies emerges — political leanings, medical conditions, business acquisitions signaled by job searches,” he said. “It would be very scary if we could play back every search we made. Those can be tied back very precisely to an individual. You can go all the way from individual molecules of water up to the tsunami.”
INFORMATION on the Web looks free, but it is actually swapped for little bits of data that are useful to businesses. Google records Internet protocol addresses that are generated by each computer, cookies permitted by the users, the kind of browser being used, and the operating system of the computer, said Heather Spain, a spokeswoman for Google.
After nine months, Ms. Spain said, Google “anonymises” the data it has collected.
“At that point we permanently delete the last two digits from both the I.P. address and parts of the cookie numbers,” she said. “This breaks the link between the search query and the computer it was entered from. It’s similar to the way in which credit card companies replace digits with hash marks on receipts to improve their customers’ security.”
Professor Conti said that few people have the slightest idea how much of a trail they leave across the Internet. “People tend to think they’re only leaving footprints on sites that they trust,” he said, but many Web sites contain invisible code, like Google Analytics, that can track users over swaths of the Web.
The lists of popular searches, Ms. Spain said, are the products of inquiries by millions of people and do not threaten anyone’s privacy. The tools Google provides to the public for analyzing searches generally make it possible to look at the inquiries made in a particular state, not by individual cities.
For now, surrendering personal information is the cost for asking questions and getting answers quickly. All of the privacy measures are cumbersome.
“I speak about this at hacker conferences,” Professor Conti said, “and if they say something’s hard to use, believe me, it’s hard. There’s really no solution now — except abstinence. And if you choose not to use online tools, you’re not a member of the 21st century.”
By JIM DWYER
Friday, November 14, 2008
Gasta Long tail keywords
Keywords can be split into two main groups, short tail keywords and long tail keywords, or broad keywords and narrow keywords. The term ‘long tail’ was coined by Chris Anderson and is used to describe the strategy of targeting less-competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive broad keywords. A long tail keyword is something like ‘Small Business Web Design’ while a short wail keyword is something like ‘Web Design’.
When you compare the two keywords, ‘Web Design’ has about 30 times as many competitors as ‘Small Business Web Design’ but ‘Web Design’ also gets far more searches each month. A small number of broad terms such as ‘Web Design’ and ‘Marketing’ account for a large proportion of searches but an equally large proportion of the searches are made up of millions of more specific search queries such as ‘Small Business Web Design’. This search distribution can be understood through the following graph.
Long Tail
A real life example
I speak about www.NarutoWallpaper.biz a lot and I will speak about it again in this article, each day NarutoWallpaper gets over 1000 visitors from search engines from roughly 200 unique keywords but the best keyword brings almost 50% of those visitors, following is a list of the top 12 keywords. Notice that the first keyword brings 45%, the second keyword brings 20% and the remaining 198 keywords account for the remaining 35% of the searches.
Keywords List
This distribution seems very similar to the graph I displayed earlier, the top few keywords account for a lot of the searches but there is many, many more specific searches which cumulatively total a significant figure. Let me display the keywords in graph form.
NarutoWallpaper Long Tail
You can see that the top two keywords bring in lots of traffic and the remaining keywords each bring minute amounts of traffic that cumulatively totals a significant amount, but separately are not significant.
Benefiting from the long tail
You may be wondering why anybody would want to target hundreds or thousands of keywords which bring only small traffic. Well the answer is simply that there is less competition so you can rank on the first page of Google for long tail keywords far easier than ranking for short tail keywords. Yes, they don’t bring a lot of traffic separately but if you target lots of long tail keywords you can get lots of easy traffic. Not everybody is capable of ranking highly for highly competitive keywords but anybody(!) can rank for long tail keywords.
Another benefit of long tail keywords is that the visitors convert amazingly well to sales and ad clicks. The visitors searching for long tail keywords know exactly what they want, be it ‘Small Business Web Design’ or ‘Half Price Armani Suits’, they know exactly what they want and hopefully you can provide it to them.
To put this into numbers, in general my websites might make $5 per 1000 impressions but from long tail visitors I can earn $100 per 1000 impressions, that’s 20 times the revenue if the traffic is equal. Although admittedly the traffic is not equal, my best keywords bring in more visitors than the long tail keywords combined, but the long tail keywords still bring in nice revenue.
On this website I have two pages providing free business resources: Free Business Card Templates and Sample Marketing Plan and Marketing Plan Template. Both are targeting long tail keywords such as ‘DJ Business Cards’ and ‘Massage Business Cards’. Those two pages make a lot of revenue per 1000 impressions but currently have low traffic. The keywords I am targeting are very specific and the visitors are getting what they came for so they convert well.
Conclusion
Whether you can achieve high rankings for competitive keywords or not, long tail keywords could be highly beneficial for you. If you have a website selling ‘Armani Suits’ but can’t pull any search engine traffic, rather than targeting the keyword ‘Armani’ or ‘Armani Suits’ try targeting more specific keywords such as ‘Armani Mens Suits’. Hopefully you will see an increase in conversions and sales.
Popularity: 43% [?]
When you compare the two keywords, ‘Web Design’ has about 30 times as many competitors as ‘Small Business Web Design’ but ‘Web Design’ also gets far more searches each month. A small number of broad terms such as ‘Web Design’ and ‘Marketing’ account for a large proportion of searches but an equally large proportion of the searches are made up of millions of more specific search queries such as ‘Small Business Web Design’. This search distribution can be understood through the following graph.
Long Tail
A real life example
I speak about www.NarutoWallpaper.biz a lot and I will speak about it again in this article, each day NarutoWallpaper gets over 1000 visitors from search engines from roughly 200 unique keywords but the best keyword brings almost 50% of those visitors, following is a list of the top 12 keywords. Notice that the first keyword brings 45%, the second keyword brings 20% and the remaining 198 keywords account for the remaining 35% of the searches.
Keywords List
This distribution seems very similar to the graph I displayed earlier, the top few keywords account for a lot of the searches but there is many, many more specific searches which cumulatively total a significant figure. Let me display the keywords in graph form.
NarutoWallpaper Long Tail
You can see that the top two keywords bring in lots of traffic and the remaining keywords each bring minute amounts of traffic that cumulatively totals a significant amount, but separately are not significant.
Benefiting from the long tail
You may be wondering why anybody would want to target hundreds or thousands of keywords which bring only small traffic. Well the answer is simply that there is less competition so you can rank on the first page of Google for long tail keywords far easier than ranking for short tail keywords. Yes, they don’t bring a lot of traffic separately but if you target lots of long tail keywords you can get lots of easy traffic. Not everybody is capable of ranking highly for highly competitive keywords but anybody(!) can rank for long tail keywords.
Another benefit of long tail keywords is that the visitors convert amazingly well to sales and ad clicks. The visitors searching for long tail keywords know exactly what they want, be it ‘Small Business Web Design’ or ‘Half Price Armani Suits’, they know exactly what they want and hopefully you can provide it to them.
To put this into numbers, in general my websites might make $5 per 1000 impressions but from long tail visitors I can earn $100 per 1000 impressions, that’s 20 times the revenue if the traffic is equal. Although admittedly the traffic is not equal, my best keywords bring in more visitors than the long tail keywords combined, but the long tail keywords still bring in nice revenue.
On this website I have two pages providing free business resources: Free Business Card Templates and Sample Marketing Plan and Marketing Plan Template. Both are targeting long tail keywords such as ‘DJ Business Cards’ and ‘Massage Business Cards’. Those two pages make a lot of revenue per 1000 impressions but currently have low traffic. The keywords I am targeting are very specific and the visitors are getting what they came for so they convert well.
Conclusion
Whether you can achieve high rankings for competitive keywords or not, long tail keywords could be highly beneficial for you. If you have a website selling ‘Armani Suits’ but can’t pull any search engine traffic, rather than targeting the keyword ‘Armani’ or ‘Armani Suits’ try targeting more specific keywords such as ‘Armani Mens Suits’. Hopefully you will see an increase in conversions and sales.
Popularity: 43% [?]
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