Scoble leaves Microsoft, joins Valley startup
Robert Scoble, aka The Best Known Corporate Blogger In The World, has decided it is time to quit the day job by leaving Microsoft to join a Valley-based startup called PodTech.net.
eBay 2.0 to introduce user blogs, wiki and tags
eBay is launching new community tools and features to help sellers better market their products, according to a report on AuctionBytes. In particular, the online auction behemoth is adopting tagging, blogs and a community wiki.
Good move, by my reckoning...
BoingBoing receives World Cup legal warning
Lawyers acting for FIFA’s media rights agency have launched a pre-emptive strike on BoingBoing, one of the most popular blogs in the world.
The legal eagles said they "anticipate the possibility of unauthorized streaming and downloading of FIFA World Cup matches” (on BoingBoing). That’s what we call forward-thinking, or, maybe it is simply a good opportunity to bill the client. Lawyer’s letters ain’t cheap...
Google Base replaces Froogle for product feeds
Retailers are being asked to submit products directly into Google Base, rather than using the now-defunct Froogle Merchant Center.
The move reflects Google's attempts to make Base a central depository of third party information, something that was reinforced by CEO Eric Schmidt in a conference call yesterday.
Does keyword deflation add up to click fraud?
Pay-per-click keyword prices have been falling in many sectors for the past year or so, according to the agencies and client-side marketers whom we regularly speak with in the UK, and as evidenced by the great US-focused research published by Fathom.
In 2005, my gut reaction to falling keyword prices was that it was merely a correction. After all, growth in spending on paid-search surged massively between 2004 and 2005, driven by much competition and new entrants to the PPC scene.
New advertisers – and some existing ones - may have over-egged the cake to secure a number one listing, before revising keyword bids downwards once the resulting sales didn’t provide enough (or any) return on investment. Paid-search is seen as one of the lowest hanging fruits for those new to online marketing, and PPC virgins may simply have been a bit too gung-ho to begin with.
But maybe keyword deflation suggests something more sinister, something that isn’t purely about new entrants bidding too much to attract visitors. Falling ROI may indicate a rising number of fraudulent clicks.
Is click fraud is in fact a bigger issue than the paid-search networks are prepared to let on? And is keyword deflation the smoking gun?
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
