Webmaster world and SERoundtable has reported that the Google Adwords advertisers are annoyed over the column sorting bug. When a advertiser tend to sort his data’s with respect to a specific column, the data was sorted accordingly but no more remembered.

This seems to retain for a couple of weeks and Google advertisers seem to be very annoyed according to the discussion in Webmasterworld forum.

Few statements from Advertisers,

Keep reverting to cost, with zero cost ad campaigns at the top. Normally when you change the column sorting, Google remembers. Mine keeps going back to AVG CPC in ascending order.

I keep changing it back to AVG CPC descending order but it won’t remember it. This happened some time ago, and it’s happening again.

It’s still happening. Annoyed

Mark

SEO Tags : Google Adwords, Search Engine Marketing, Google Webmaster Tools, Google

YSMBlog has reported that your click charges to be based on quality of traffic. To potentially reduce the cost and increase the value of traffic to Yahoo advertisers Yahoo search moves to quality based pricing models.

Quality calculation from ysmblog,

“Quality” is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability of our partners’ sites to deliver more interested, valuable customers to you.

The impact of these changes will be on the cost-per-click and the also on the amount spent on Ads.

Mark

SEO Tags : Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search marketing

Blinkx, a video search engine as discussed has indexed more than 12,000,000 hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it “fully searchable and available on demand.” Blinkx Strikes Ask.com Video Search-Engine Deal from CNNMoney.com reports that Blinkx will establish a deal with Ask.com and will help in video searches.

From CNNMoney,

Ask.com customers will be able to search for news clips, music videos and other television content by accessing a Blinkx search box on the Ask.com website.

Blinkx claims it’s the world’s largest video search engine and is looking to profit from video advertising spending, which research firm eMarketer estimates will top $2.9 billion in the U.S. alone by 2010.

From Prnewswire,

“Ask.com’s momentum is impressive and we’re very proud to be powering their new video search offering,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. “This relationship further demonstrates our technology leadership in the video search space and is an exciting development for our 130 or so media partners whose content can now be accessed through Ask.com.”

Mark

SEO Tags : Ask.com, Blinkx, Video Search

Search Engine Land has mentioned the study of search engine queries from Dogpile. From the April 2007 study by Queensland University of Technology and Pennsylvania State University has stated that,

• The percent of total results unique to one search engine was established to be 88.3 percent.
• The percent of total results shared by any two search engines was established to be 8.9 percent.
• The percent of total results shared by three search engines was established to be 2.2 percent.
• The percent of total results shared by the top four search engines was established to be 0.6 percent.

The majority of first page results are unique:

• On average, 69.6 percent of Google first page search results were unique to Google.
• On average, 79.4 percent of Yahoo! first page search results were unique to Yahoo!

Sponsored links on Google and Yahoo:

• Only 4.6 percent of Yahoo! and Google sponsored links overlap for a given query.
• For 22.8 percent of all queries Google did not return a sponsored link where Yahoo! returned one or more.
• For 9.9 percent of all queries Yahoo! did not return a sponsored link where Google returned one or more.

Find the complete study on infospace.

Mark

SEO Tags : Dogpile, Search Engines, Google, Yahoo

Don Dodge, who works for the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, has made an interesting post on the worth of search market. Applying some math on the Google’s financial results, market cap and search market share, he says that “Each 1% of market share is worth at least $1 billion in market cap”. His post explains why major players like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Ask are fighting hard for every 1% of search market share.

Aravindhan

Tags : Search, Google, SEM

BBC news reports that Google is to ban advertisements from Essay Writing services. Many complaints have been received regarding the plagiarism which is a great threat for integrity of university degrees. Students use to take everything from the Internet and submit it as their own.

This ban from the search engine Google has been welcomed by university authorities and angered essay writing firms. Google banned advertisements for Guns and Booze earlier and Essay Writing is also added to the list. About 12,000 essays are being sold to students in a year, says Universities UK.

From BBC news,

Google’s forthcoming ban on adverts for “academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations” means that essay websites join a blacklist of “unacceptable content” including adverts for weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and “miracle cures”.

The ban was expected to be applied across Google’s global network

Mark

SEO Tags : Google, Google AdWords,  Essay Writing  Ads

Microsoft has announced that it will acquire aQuantive, Inc., which owns Atlas and Avenue A/Razorfish, for around $6 billion in cash. This is the biggest acquisition in the Microsoft’s history and it is an effort to expand its presence in the Internet advertising market.

This deal follows the Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion and Yahoo’s buyout of Right Media Inc. for $680 million. The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2008.

From Microsoft’s press release,

“The advertising industry is evolving and growing at an incredible pace, moving increasingly toward online and IP-served platforms, which dramatically increases the importance of software for this industry,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Today’s announcement represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network from our initial investment in MSN, to the broader Microsoft network including Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live, and now to the full capacity of the Internet. Microsoft is intensely committed to creating a thriving advertising business and to partnering closely with all key constituencies in this industry to help maximize the digital advertising opportunity for all.”

The aQuantive acquisition enables Microsoft to strengthen relationships with advertisers, agencies and publishers by enhancing the Company’s world-class advertising platforms and services beyond its current capabilities to serve MSN. The acquisition also provides Microsoft increased depth in building and supporting next generation advertising solutions and environments such as cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV. Combining aQuantive’s technologies and services with Microsoft’s portfolio will provide value for the industry’s key constituencies as follows:

• Advertisers and ad agencies will benefit from a world-class media planning, buying and campaign management solution to drive maximum ROI and optimize their reach to audiences across the increasingly fragmented, interactive media landscape.
• Media owners/publishers will gain access to best-in-class inventory optimization and monetization solutions across a full suite of rich media, video and targeting capabilities.
• The broader advertising ecosystem will benefit from the leading interactive advertising agency, Avenue A | Razorfish, continuing to serve its impressive client roster, while also embedding the voice of the marketer into Microsoft’s next generation advertising solutions and services.

Founded in 1997, aQuantive, Inc. (NASDAQ: AQNT) is the parent company of one of the industry’s most successful families of digital marketing service and technology companies, encompassing three primary brands.

• Atlas provides a set of advanced tools for both advertisers and publishers. The Atlas Media Console is an industry-leading toolset providing agencies and advertisers with capabilities to maximize ROI. The Atlas Publisher platform enables publishers to maximize monetization opportunities for their content.
• DRIVEpm provides services to publishers and advertisers that match advertiser campaigns with publisher inventory enabling all parties to maximize ROI.
• Avenue A | Razorfish is one of the largest interactive ad agencies in the world, providing advertisers with industry-leading digital marketing consultation, media planning and buying, and creative services that help advertisers use the online channel to build meaningful, profitable relationships with their customers.

“Combining the talented people and deep technology and service expertise of these two companies will help make buying and selling media simpler, smarter and more cost effective for advertisers, agencies and publishers alike,” said Kevin Johnson, president, Platforms and Services Division at Microsoft. “Joining the capabilities of these groups is an important step toward our goal of becoming an industry leading, Internet-wide advertising platform.”

“aQuantive’s mission has been to leverage the power of digital marketing services and technologies to drive measurable results for our clients,” said Brian P. McAndrews, chief executive officer of aQuantive. “Microsoft has set a leading example in prioritizing industry partnership, transparency, measurement and quality, and we look forward to combining forces and bringing the value of our combined assets to bear for the benefit of advertisers, ad agencies and publishers.”

Aravindhan

Tags : Microsoft,aQuantive,

Preview for Google Adwords can be seen in http://www.google.com/adpreview page as many would have known earlier. Brad Geddes has reported that the preview for Mobile Ads is launched by Google and is available at http://www.google.com/m/adpreview.

The preview can be based on

Country & Carrier
Spoken language
Markup Language
Search type

This preview of Mobile Ads will provide you an easy understanding of how your Ad looks like? and are you in the right area? So I think it will be easy for all to provide your Ads effectively.

Mark

SEO Tags : Mobile Ads, Google Adwords, Search Engine Marketing

Google personalized home page iGoogle, which contains small Google gadgets will have Ads in them. Media Post reports that Google has begun beta testing “Gadget Ads”.

Although the beta was revealed earlier during a marketing summit for the auto industry, The Gadget Ads will be available to all ad categories by this summer.

The existing auction system will be used for ad placement and will allow marketers the option to bid by publisher’s site or content theme. It appears that Gadget Ads will be part of the AdSense network and the pricing will be based on eitther CPC or CPM model.

To support the changes, Google has developed specific “interaction reporting” tools as part of its Google Analytics performance feedback services.

As “user engagement” evolves into a key accountability metric for measuring digital ad strategies, it will also become increasingly important for advertisers to track these statistics.

Mark

SEO Tags : Google AdWords, Google, Search Engine Marketing, Gadget Ads, Google AdSense

According to The New York Times, Yahoo is planning to acquire remaining 80-percent interest in Right Media.

Yahoo had brought 20-percent of stake Right Media in last October. Now Yahoo will pay $680 million for the remaining interest in the company.

Right Media, a four year old company which runs open exchange to help buyers and sellers trade digital media. As per The New York Times, Yahoo executives said that after the acquisition it would increase its participation in the exchange as both a buyer and seller of ads.

Yahoo had gave press release regarding its plan.

Kannan

SEO Tags : Yahoo, Right Media