Archive for the 'Marketing' Category

Marchex Launches Adhere

Marchex, Inc.Marchex Launches Marchex Adhere to Better Serve National and Local Advertisers;
Further Extends Reach through New Distribution Relationships

New pay-per-click advertising channel delivers a national presence and local impact

SEATTLE, WA - June 9, 2008 - Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHX, MCHXP), a local search and advertising company, today launched Marchex Adhere™, a new pay-per-click advertising channel that provides advertisers and agencies with exclusive placement on hundreds of premium publisher Web sites and on Marchex’s OpenList® network. Marchex is also adding several new premium publishers and locally focused Web sites to Marchex Adhere, further expanding the breadth and depth of the network and enhancing Marchex’s leadership position in local search and advertising.

Marchex Adhere allows advertisers of any size and budget to reach a unique, highly-qualified audience at scale:

  • It enables national advertisers to efficiently fulfill their online budget in the same manner as they purchase offline advertising; namely national, spot and local in a single media buy.
  • It provides small- and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to reach local customers directly through Marchex’s OpenList and reach national customers through premium, vertically focused publishers.

“Local advertising isn’t just for small businesses,” said Pete Christothoulou, Marchex Chief Strategy Officer. “National advertisers are responsible for more than two-thirds of the $100 billion in local ad spending¹. With the increasing fragmentation in the local market, it is nearly impossible for national advertisers to take full advantage of the tremendous local opportunity and find enough quality traffic at scale to fulfill their campaign needs. Marchex Adhere provides a single source for advertisers and agencies to reach exclusive national, vertical and local traffic.”

“Many of our clients are increasingly looking to build their brand awareness on a national level while leveraging that brand to drive transactions at the local level,” said Michael Lee, Director, Strategic Partnerships, DoubleClick Performics. “The ability to target premium publisher Web sites as well as vertical and local search sites in one source enables us to deliver additional quality traffic, at volume, to our clients in a very cost-effective manner.”

Marchex is one of the biggest players in local search and advertising. Currently, more than 65,000 national and local advertisers use Marchex’s advertising products and services to reach consumers online, including the more than 30 million people monthly who visit Marchex’s OpenList² network to make more-informed local buying decisions.

National Presence, Local Impact
Marchex Adhere allows advertisers and agencies to select site-specific or category-based placements on more than 200 premium publisher Web sites including BusinessWeek Online, Bankrate.com and Kiplinger.com, as well as keyword-targeted placements on top search, vertical and local Web sites, including Marchex’s OpenList.

In conjunction with today’s launch, Marchex is adding several new premium publisher and local Web sites to Marchex Adhere through new and expanded distribution partnerships, including:

  • IDG - Publishers of PC World, CIO Magazine and Macworld
  • Ziff Davis Enterprise - Publishers of eWeek, CIO|Insight and Publish
  • Banks.com - Timely advice and first-class tools for building personal wealth - covering banking, loans, investing, insurance, taxes, real estate and autos
  • RealtyTrac - the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, providing all the resources that home seekers, investors and real estate agents need to locate, evaluate and buy properties below market value
  • AmericanTowns.com - a national network of community-based websites where people can find & share the best local information for every town in America
  • YourStreet.com - Indexes and maps thousands of articles, blogs, and conversations down to the street level
  • Lat49 - an online ad network providing local and brand advertisers with delivery of geo-targeted and contextual ads across a network of online maps
  • HelloMetro - city level information on local history, attractions, real estate, jobs, Yellow Pages, White Pages and local resources

“Marchex’s relationships with top-tier publishers combined with our own local traffic and high level of client service helps advertisers and agencies obtain both a national presence and local impact online,” added Christothoulou. “According to recent data, local searches are growing more than three times faster than other searches and 86% of search engine users search locally for products and services³. Marchex’s laser-sharp focus on local, combined with the reach, breadth and volume of our traffic enables advertisers to capitalize on the local opportunity now and as it continues to grow exponentially.”

With the launch of Marchex Adhere, Marchex subsidiaries, IndustryBrains and Enhance Interactive are unified under the powerful Marchex Adhere brand.

(Source: Company Press Release)

Local Ad Revenue to Grow by 50%

Via Advertising Age:

Local ad spending online may be the nexus of traditional publishers’ greatest hopes for future growth, but the anticipated spoils have already generated fierce competition, according to a new report from Borrell Associates.

Local ad revenue online looks likely to grow by 50% this year to $13.1 billion from $8.7 billion in 2007, Borrell said. The expansion can’t sustain that pace much longer, though; its compound annual growth over the next four years is likely to fall to 15% from 48% over the last four years.

Local advertising offers many opportunities to both pure web companies and “traditional” media companies that are now extending their offerings to the Internet. But looking at different types of ads, some ads are better for local marketing than others, in my opinion.

CPM advertising, as still offered mostly by websites of newspapers and by the bigger online portals, doesn’t offer as much value to advertisers as contextual sponsored links, individual flat-fee advertising deals and classified ads. This is because most CPM advertising campaigns are still untargeted and they do not offer any incentives for publishers to offer related quality content. Instead, CPM advertising might induce publishers to simply concentrate on the number of pageviews their site generates. PPC ads, flat-fee ads and classifieds, on the other hand, rely very much on traffic quality and high conversion rates. Thus these types of ads offer publishers an incentive for creating quality content and attracting quality traffic that will convert well into actual leads and sales for their clients.

That is why I think both publishers and advertisers should try to make more use of contextual advertising and classified ads, especially in local marketing, as it should result in more value being created in the long run.

Seth Godin wants you

If you’ve always wanted to be on the cover of a book, now might be a good opportunity to appear at least in a tiny section of one. Seth Godin, marketing guru and author of bestselling marketing books, is looking for photos of his readers to put on the cover of his new book which will be out in October.

If you’d like to be on the cover–at least in a teeny tiny little section of it– (no promises, none at all–the cutting room floor is bigger than the cover), send a photo of yourself (headshots are best) to me here. If you’re lucky, you’ll join a thousand other handsome folks immortalized in print. It could even get you on the Dick Cavett show. Here’s your chance to be slightly famous.

Seth Godin is the author of books such as Unleashing the Ideavirus, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, The Dip, Meatball Sundae and several others. I’ve read a few of his books and I’m a frequent reader of his blog, which I really enjoy reading because of the often out of the box ideas and topics he covers. He hasn’t written about domain names yet, unless in the context of SEO or business names, but who knows… maybe he too will eventually “get it”.

Microsoft wants to buy search share

Now that Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo and isn’t going to do so in the future, it is considering new ways to gain share in web search. The company is going to sort of buy share by offering users cash as part of its Cashback program for using its Live.com search engine:

  1. Search for cashback deals at Live Search cashback. Each time you click a Live Search cashback listing, you’ll find great deals on the product you chose. Your results will clearly list the cashback savings you’ll receive off the store price, and your final bottom-line price that includes tax and shipping costs. Also look for this icon (omitted) when you search for a product on Live Search to find great cashback deals.
  2. Compare and sort products by the bottom-line price. Click the best deal to go to the store. Everything you buy during that store visit will be eligible for Live Search cashback. On your first time using Live Search cashback, we will ask you for an email address so we can tell you how to quickly set up your free cashback account.
  3. Keep saving money each time you use Live Search cashback. Every time you make a qualifying purchase, we’ll send you an email to confirm your Live Search cashback savings. When your cashback account reaches a balance of at least $5, you can claim your cold, hard cash.

This is an innovative approach to growing insofar that no other competitor in the search engine market has taken this road before, as far as I can tell. But I’m not convinced that Live Search Cashback will actually work out in the long run and help Microsoft close the gap between Live.com and Google.com. The software giant certainly can afford to give money away to its users, it is sitting on a big pile of cash. The question is, however, whether the incentives offered through Cashback will result in sustainable growth.

I remain skeptical, because I believe Microsoft will need innovative search products in addition to innovative marketing if it wants to seriously compete with the world’s number one search engine Google.

Guy Kawasaki on blogging

I’ve read two interesting interviews involving Guy Kawasaki today. The first one is a discussion about blogging with Guy interviewing Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net, in the other one Guy is interviewed by Lee Odden of the Online Marketing Blog, also on the subject of blogging and social media:

Excerpt from first interview:

Question: How much can a blogger, assuming she is working hard and creating good content, really make?

Answer: The vast majority of those who blog don’t even consider the idea of making money from their blogs. They blog for fun, to keep in touch with family and friends, as a hobby and as a result making money doesn’t enter their minds (and in most cases it shouldn’t because making money from personal blogs is an uphill battle).

When it comes to bloggers who are in it for the money, the sad reality is that most don’t make a lot. Last time I surveyed my readers at ProBlogger about their monthly earnings the majority were earning very little (49% said that they earned under $100 a month). Many of these are new bloggers (ProBlogger has a very large percentage of it’s readers in their first months of blogging) but unfortunately even many mare experienced bloggers don’t earn much despite working hard and writing good content. …

Continue reading here…

Excerpt from second interview:

You’re no stranger to marketing and promotion and the “brand of Guy Kawasaki” is known world wide. What tips do you have for online marketers that want to stand out from the crowd?

The only tip that really matters is this: “Market something good.” That’s the secret. It’s very hard to market a piece of crap. It’s very easy to market something good. I believe all marketing is based on good products and services.

Continue reading here…

Internet ad revenue reached $21 Billion in 2007

As reported by AdAge, online advertising revenue reached $21.1 billion in 2007. This marks a 26% increase over 2006, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s and PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ annual report of ad spending.

This big jump in revenue pushed web ad spending past radio and, more surprisingly, cable. Cable ad revenue was “only” $20.9 billion. The often cited migration of advertising dollars to the Internet will continue in the future, possibly at an increased rate.

Continue reading ‘Internet ad revenue reached $21 Billion in 2007′

Username Squatting

Apparently there is not only domain name squatting, also frequently referred to as cybersquatting or typosquatting, but username squatting too. Most companies do not open an account under their company name at the popular social networking sites, and that’s why about every well-known business name has been taken by users now infringing on the respective companies’ trademarks.

Continue reading ‘Username Squatting’

Demographics added to YouTube Insight

Yesterday Google added some new features to YouTube Insight, the free video analytics tool available to YouTube publishers. The most interesting feature is the demographics tool, which can display the view count broken down by age, gender and geographic location. This allows publishers to better analyze who is watching their videos, hence allowing them to create more compelling content to meet their viewers’ needs.

(via Google)

Time Inc. relaunches Health.com

Only a few days after BPHG Media launched the project for its one-word generic domain Prices.com, another company is planning to bring its domain to the next level. Time Inc. is going to relaunch its Health.com portal on Monday. The site was not much more than a so-called brochure site before, which means that it was barely more than the online destination of a Time Inc. health magazine and it did not feature enough original online content or web 2.0 features to compete with other popular websites in the lucrative health sector.

Continue reading ‘Time Inc. relaunches Health.com’

Marchex Extends Local Strategy to Mobile Channel

Marchex Extends Local Strategy to Mobile Channel - Company to Provide Call-Based Advertising Services to AdMob and Other Leading Mobile Advertising Providers

SEATTLE, WA - April 30, 2008 - Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHX, MCHXP), a local online advertising company and leading publisher of local content, today announced that it has extended its local advertising strategy to the mobile market, entering into agreements to provide call-based advertising services to three leading mobile advertising providers: AdMob, Ringleader Digital and 4INFO.

Marchex’s VoiceStar subsidiary will deliver call tracking services to all three companies, enabling them to validate the effectiveness and return on investment of their mobile advertising networks and provide their advertisers with analytics to help them optimize their mobile advertising campaigns.

Marchex’s call tracking enables mobile advertising providers to: (i) track the calls generated by advertisements on their network, (ii) determine exactly which advertisements delivered the calls, (iii) track and report key information including the duration, time of day and geographic location of callers, and (iv) record the calls. Marchex makes this information available to the mobile advertising provider through its comprehensive reporting interface.

In addition, Marchex will provide pay-per-phone-call services to AdMob, which will enable them to bill advertisers for the phone calls they deliver, which maximizes the value of their advertising inventory.

“Marchex is focused on partnerships with leading aggregators of local advertisers across all channels: online, offline, and mobile,” said John Keister, Marchex President and COO. “We believe that the mobile advertising opportunity is significant and is poised to realize tremendous growth over the next five years. Our call tracking and pay-per-phone-call capabilities provide a significant advantage for Marchex in the mobile search advertising market.”

“We are excited to bring new tools and technologies that will provide our advertising customers with results-focused advertising solutions,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO AdMob. “By linking the browsing experience of the mobile web with the communications capabilities of mobile phones, AdMob continues to deliver a powerful new tool for advertisers. Marchex’s call-based advertising services and suite of analytic tools enable us to better monetize our inventory and enable our advertisers to maximize the return on investment for their mobile advertising campaigns.”

“It is intuitive for consumers to search for a merchant’s phone number on their mobile device and call the merchant directly with just one click,” said Ari Jacoby, President of Marchex’s VoiceStar division. “It is getting easier for consumers to access a number for pizza delivery, car repair or whatever they need on their mobile device. As this occurs, pay-per-phone-call advertising and call tracking will play increasingly important roles in this mobile advertising ecosystem.”

For more information on Marchex’s call-based advertising services, visit www.voicestar.com or www.marchex.com.

(via Marchex, Inc. Press)