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Marchex Extends Local Strategy to Mobile Channel

Published May 2, 2008 in Domain Names, Internet and Marketing. 0 Comments

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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)

Google adds $2.6 billion in advertising revenue

Published March 14, 2008 in Marketing and Search Engines. 3 Comments

GoogleHenry Blodget has analyzed the change in advertising spending and its shift from traditional media to the Internet throughout the last year. The final results are not surprising, but they’re pretty impressive:

Google could add more than $2.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2007, which constitutes a 44% increase over the company’s 2006 revenue. In total, Google made about $8.7 billion.

Continue reading ‘Google adds $2.6 billion in advertising revenue’

EU approves Google’s DoubleClick acquisition

Published March 14, 2008 in Internet, Marketing and Search Engines. 0 Comments

DoubleClick

The European Commission has unconditionally approved Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. This marks the biggest purchase in Google’s history. Microsoft was interested in the online advertising provider as well, but the Redmond company backed out of negotiations when offers climbed above $2 billion.

The EU’s approval came despite objections from rivals (including Microsoft), because the companies did not operate in the same online advertising markets: Google’s focus is on contextual advertising while DoubleClick sells banner ads and provides so-called “ad serving”. However, Google has already been by far the most powerful company in online advertising, so I’m sure this acquisition will put them further ahead of runner-ups Microsoft and Yahoo. Especially with DoubleClick’s ad serving technology that allows its clients to easily target specific websites and customers. Continue reading ‘EU approves Google’s DoubleClick acquisition’

Google lets advertisers opt out of domain parking

Published March 14, 2008 in Domain Names, Marketing and Search Engines. 2 Comments

As reported by Andrew of Domain Name Wire, Google AdWords has added a new option that lets advertisers opt out of domain parking sites:

To opt out of domain parking pages, advertisers use the “Site and Category Exclusion” tool in their account (see picture below). In addition to being able to opt out of parked pages, customers can opt out of error pages, forums, social networking sites, image sharing sites, and video sharing sites. Forums and social networking sites are known to have low click through rates, and conversions can also be low.

Google states, however, that ads on domain parking pages have been performing just as well as ads on other websites. I would even argue that traffic originating from generic domains’ parking pages, which is mostly direct navigation traffic, is highly targeted and converts better than ads on other sites in many cases. Still, most advertisers believe parking sites to be of no value, so I expect many of them to opt out of parking pages. This will probably be followed by a further fall in parking revenues for domain name owners and it is yet another reason why developing your best domains would make sense. As I said in earlier posts, I’m going to get my feet wet and finally develop one or two of my domains this year, too. My earnings from domain parking have really gone down during the past year and there is nothing in sight that would indicate a trend reversal.

Monetize your PDFs

Published March 10, 2008 in Internet, Marketing and Search Engines. 1 Comment

Adobe PDFYahoo has just launched its new Ads for Adobe PDF program, which will allow publishers to display contextual pay-per-click ads in a panel adjacent to the content within PDFs.

Details can be found on the official Ads for Adobe PDF blog.

I think this is a good opportunity for writers to monetize their content while keeping it free for their readers. For example, this new service allows the integration of ads into eBooks or scientific reports published online.

It is my understanding that the service is only available to a limited number of publishers at this time. But if you’re interested, you can apply here.

Marriott.com among top 10 e-commerce sites

Published March 3, 2008 in Internet and Marketing. 0 Comments

Marriott.comAccording to this Washington Post interview, Marriott.com ranks among the Internet’s top 10 for sales. Shafiq Khan is Marriott International’s senior vice president of e-commerce, and he is in charge of the hotel chain’s website. He had been working for United Airlines and US Airways before going to Marriott and his online marketing experience helped Marriott to get where it is today: In 2007, Marriott.com generated more than $5.2 billion in sales.

But Khan says that the company has only scratched the surface so far. He already has plans for a new Marriott.com site that will be more personalized. For example, Marriot’s site doesn’t recognize return visitors and it doesn’t take their past purchases into account. Once the company has implemented better targeting for their return visitors it will make millions more from online sales.

In addition to that, Marriott is also currently considering to sell advertising on their website, although this could be a risky undertaking for a corporate website. After all, the hotel chain wants to make sales and complete transactions, it does not want to distract potential buyers from its offerings. Khan mentioned a good subtle possibility they’re looking into, which is “powered by…” ads and products the site will offer to you after the transaction has been completed, such as books or other products you might want to take with you when travelling.

I don’t know any personalized hotel website yet, so I think Marriott will be very successful with its new online presence if they can pull it off by 2009, as planned. Targeting does not only work for Google, Amazon or Netflix. Targeting is one of the great benefits of online marketing every business should make use of in order to boost sales and profits.

Better Targeting through Local Newspapers

Published February 28, 2008 in Domain Names and Marketing. 0 Comments

According to this AdvertisingAge article, New York-based Interpublic Group has developed a new analytical tool that lets advertisers buy print ads at a sub-ZIP code level for better targeting of consumers. The tool allows the company’s clients - including Home Depot, Sears and Bridgestone - to focus on smaller metropolitan areas through a combination of “newspaper zoned editions, preprint inserts, direct mail, shoppers and other publications” instead of having to buy ads in large nation-wide newspapers.

Might that potentially be more bad news for slumping newspapers, a mass medium that has traditionally benefited from the adage that advertisers know half their ad buys are wasted, just not which half?

Not so, said [NSA Media Chief Development Officer] Mr. Desens. He cited the case of a mid-sized local restaurant chain that might not be able to afford to regularly blanket an entire metro area with ads. “If you’ve got eight locations, you now have the capability to advertise in just these eight neighborhoods,” he said, suggesting marketers would then advertise more. “But there may be a proportion of big clients who say, ‘I can now be more efficient so I can put some of the money back in my pocket.’”

The AdAge article lets this tool look like a great breakthrough in marketing, but isn’t it what has been possible on the Internet for a long time? Sure, this new tool can save companies money by assisting them with their newspaper ad placements… But take a look at Seattle-based Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) or at other media companies currently exploring the vast possibilities of local content networks and local search. The Internet has made it easier than ever before to only target consumers in a very specific area anywhere in the world. In addition, it’s even possible to only display ads that these consumers are more likely to be interested in seeing by taking into account their past purchases, user account settings as well as the age, sex and job of every single user of that particular service.

Local content and search will be huge on the Internet in a very short time and it will help advertisers to place ads more efficiently. Take geographic domain names as another example, if you will. A developed geo-domain such as NewYork.info, Lowell.com or Houston.com receives lots of targeted type-ins every day in addition to visits from search engines and external links. Each of these domain names potentially is a local newspaper!

Interpublic Group’s analytical tool might be a useful invention that will come in handy for advertisers buying newspaper ads, but it doesn’t change anything of the fact that the advertising dollars are migrating from the traditional media to the Internet and it will certainly not save newspapers that cannot successfully handle the shift from offline to online. Wise advertisers will spend more of their advertising budgets on targeted online ads sooner than later.

Google AdWords “Automatic Matching” Beta

Published February 26, 2008 in Marketing and Search Engines. 1 Comment

GoogleA handful of Google AdWords users are currently testing the beta version of a new AdWords feature called “automatic matching”. This new feature shall help the advertisers to use their full budget by also targeting keywords suggested by Google’s system. This is how it works:

If an advertiser hasn’t made use of his full budget, let’s say he used only half of his pay-per-click advertising budget, Google automatically detects other keywords the advertiser hasn’t put on his keyword list and then adds them to the list in order to bring the ad to the attention of a larger audience. This is still a very early beta version, as far as I know, and AdWords users can opt out if they want.

“Automatic matching” sounds like a good function for advertisers who don’t have much experience in search engine marketing, because it can assist them with choosing targeted keywords that will expand the reach of their ads. However, it is debatable whether Google should be allowed to automatically modify a user’s keyword list. That’s why I think Google should keep the opt out option in the AdWords accounts if it decides to launch ”automatic matching” in the future. I hope the beta results will be good and Google will decide to launch it, though, as this certainly has the potential to increase the efficiency of your AdWords campaigns even if you don’t stay on top of your campaigns, changes in click prices and search volume of certain keywords 24/7.

Buy Seth now

Published December 30, 2007 in Marketing. 0 Comments

Seth Godin - Marketing Guru Action FigureThis is absolutely hilarious, but it’s true: You can buy a Seth Godin action figure now! The marketing guru figure produced by Archie McPhee costs under $9 and, according to Seth, all proceeds go to the Acumen Fund. I bet you won’t get a marketing guru (complete with marketing secrets) for less than that ever again.

Stupid, yes. But this marketing gag is just as brilliant, and who knows, maybe they can really raise some money for the Acumen Fund.

Too bad that it didn’t come out before Christmas… ;)

Quoted: Seth Godin

Published October 29, 2007 in Domain Names, Marketing and People. 1 Comment

Seth Godin, marketing guru and author of several books, on the importance of domains for the corporate world:

The internet has taught people what to do when they see a domain. It’s not just an address, it’s the first bit of marketing. (…) If you’re looking to start an online business, consider finding a great domain and build the business around it, not the other way around.

Source: Thinking about domains

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