Gamers coming clean on scam ads: Is contrition enough?

The social gaming lead-gen controversy sparked by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington came to an end this week when OfferPal, the company he singled out for scamming users and advertsers, replaced its CEO and posted a mea culpa for its past and current practices.

Beyond that, Facebook, MySpace and mega gamer Zynga have made moves this week to better regulate gaming offers. Will the move decimate the social gaming industry?

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Posted 06 November 2009 23:54pm by Meghan Keane with 0 comments

The five biggest myths about Google

On the internet, few companies receive more attention than Google. And for good reason: Google touches so many individuals and businesses. From search to its 'side projects', just about everything Google does creates interest.

Google's prominence, not surprisingly, has led to the creation of many myths. Here are my top five.

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Posted 06 November 2009 11:00am by Patricio Robles with 3 comments

Online advertising stats round up

Here's a selection of recent social media stats, taken from a range of sources, including Econsultancy's Internet Advertising Statistics document, which forms part of the Internet Statistics Compendium, and other reports...

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Posted 06 November 2009 09:27am by Graham Charlton with 0 comments

Nielsen: Search matters for retail, but you can't ignore display

What matters more for online retailers: display advertising or search? It's likely not an either or answer, but it's a question that has been the subject of an ongoing debate in our comments section this week.

I wrote this post after reading an AdAge article that implied search only accounted for 10% of traffic sent to online retail sites. Abby Klaasen wrote:

"Nielsen found the majority of retailers' web traffic (61%, on average) comes from people going directly to a retail site -- consumers typing, say, Amazon.com into a browser address bar."

The idea that only 10% of traffic would be driven by search was new to me, and we asked our readers to weigh in with their own experiences. Many were surprised and confused by Nielsen's numbers (and there is a ton of information in those comments for anyone interested in the subject).

I spoke with Kenneth Cassar, Nielsen's VP of industry insights, to get some clarification. And as always, it turns out that context is key with these numbers.

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Posted 05 November 2009 21:53pm by Meghan Keane with 10 comments

Ad:Tech: How do you market to cellphone users who don't want marketing?

For marketers working in mobile, talk about cellphones being on the verge of breaking out can feel more than a bit repetitive. At least that's the way Brian Levin of Useful Networks put it at the Location Awareness panel at Ad:Tech today.

"I feel a little like Bill Murray in 'Groundhog's Day.' I was on this panel last year."

Despite all the technological progress and increased user adoption that mobile phones have experience in the past few years, they still occupy only a small percentage of most marketing budgets.

Amid all of the promise held out in the future of mobile, how is the market actually going to break out? The panelists at Ad:Tech's panel on location werein agreement on a few things (besides the Corona's that were served on stage to celebrate impending happy hour).

A lot of it will rely on users self-reporting their data. 

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Posted 04 November 2009 22:47pm by Meghan Keane with 1 comment

Ad:Tech NY: Free doesn't have to be a four letter word

With media companies thinning out their newsrooms, struggling to stem revenue losses and worrying about the plausibility of subsisting on dwindling ad revenue online, there's been a lot of talk over the past few months about charging for content.

The free versus paid debate was at the forefront of discussion on the first day of ad:tech in New York this week. Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, showed his cards early in the day, opening the event with a talk where he put his money with Rupert Murdoch when it comes to making customers pay for media content online:

"In order to make traditional models viable... you have to plumb where people are willing to pay for content."

Sorrell seems bullish on consumers paying varying rates for content of varying quality, and despite predicting a winnowing of content suppliers online, is confident that media brands will need to charge to sustain the quality of their content. It's a theory that found root later in the day as well.

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Posted 04 November 2009 20:36pm by Meghan Keane with 0 comments

Nielsen: Display ads send more traffic to retail sites than search

Display advertising is starting to look like the little ad format that could lately. Online advertisers are moving away from click-through rates as a metric for display success, large companies from Google to Yahoo are stepping up their display efforts and now Nielsen has come out with numbers that imply display may be more effective for retailers than search advertising.

According to Nielsen, less than 10% of online retailers' web traffic, on average, comes from search engines. That's good news for display ads. But is it true?

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Posted 03 November 2009 21:26pm by Meghan Keane with 35 comments

30+ Twitter Lists and 5000+ Twitter accounts worth following

Twitter Lists are now officially available to all of Twitter's users. And there are plenty of them. While it remains to be seen whether Twitter Lists will help Twitter boost user engagement, Lists offer a no-hassle means to discovering and following people who you might find interesting.

Here are 30+ Twitter Lists that collectively follow more than 5,000 interesting Twitter accounts.

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Posted 03 November 2009 11:46am by Patricio Robles with 9 comments

Google's future in behavioral targeting looks bleak

The future of behavioral targeting is in danger. With an ongoing Congressional investigation and growing privacy concerns, it looks as though consumers and regulators are not keen to have advertisers track web surfing behavior online. But there's another side to the story — does behavioral targeting even work?

The idea is that by following users online, they can get a clearer idea of people's buying habits and serve more relevant advertising to them. If that is not true, the case for behavioral targeting falls apart. And if preliminary results from Google's nascent attempts are any indication, BT does not appear to be working for the search giant.

According to Jim Brock, founder of PrivacyChoice, chairman of Attributor, and former senior VP at Yahoo, Google's “interest-based advertising” only reaches about 25% of AdSense sites. 

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Posted 30 October 2009 18:22pm by Meghan Keane with 0 comments

Why SEM isn't all that

You have to love a contentious headline. In this article, I won't be declaring search engine marketing (SEM) dead. What I want to explore are the various ways you should support this kind of marketing elsewhere on your website.

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Posted 30 October 2009 11:01am by Kevin Gibbons with 2 comments