Digital Marketing Blog

Netscape to expand its paid navigator system

Jason Calacanis has announced the hiring of more Netscape ‘Navigators’, and revealed he may spend up to $2.4m a year on more user-generated content for the bookmarking site.

Netscape now employs 23 of these navigators on what Calacanis calls a ‘very part-time’ basis, paying them $12,000 a year each to submit stories, lead discussions and generally do housekeeping tasks, such as closing down duplicate stories and eliminating spam comments.

by Graham Charlton 16 November 2006 15:45pm 0 comments

Workers like to shop online on Friday lunchtimes

New research from the Royal Mail suggests that, for those employees who like to do their online shopping from work, Friday lunchtime is the most popular time.

Of those online shoppers who have internet access at work, 65% are likely to buy during the week - and Friday afternoon at 1pm is the most popular time for one in eight.

by Graham Charlton 16 November 2006 14:07pm 0 comments

New paid search guide for client teams and agencies

We've just published our mega-comprehensive Paid Search Marketing (PPC) Best Practice Guide, which is going to help a lot of you to finesse your PPC strategies.

by Chris Lake 16 November 2006 12:04pm 0 comments

New local shopping search engine launches in the UK

AskTheLocal is a new shopping search engine that allows users to search for products in their local area, with the intention of directing customers to the offline - rather than online - store.

The site aims to emulate the success in the US of sites like ShopLocal.com, which reached 1.8 million visits per month just a year after its launch in August 2004.

We caught up with AskTheLocal co-founder Peter Abrahamson to ask a few questions about the new site...

by Graham Charlton 16 November 2006 11:35am 4 comments

Are social news sites like Digg 'better' than Google News?

Muhammad Saleem at The Mu Life wrote an article last week claiming that social media is more effective at disseminating news than Google News.

Muhammad’s article, ‘Why Socially Driven News is Better’ used the news of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation as an example of social media beating Google News to a major story.

Interesting argument, but it doesn't stand up...

by Graham Charlton 16 November 2006 11:22am 2 comments

YouTube threatens to sue TechCrunch on copyright concerns

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has been hit with a cease and desist order by lawyers acting on behalf on YouTube.

His 'crime' was to post an article advising readers how to download videos from YouTube to an iPod, or a computer’s hard drive. Arrington had checked YouTube’s terms of use before posting this, and found nothing in there to prevent this.

Or so they thought…

by Graham Charlton 16 November 2006 11:01am 0 comments

Search engines aim to ease indexing process

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are teaming up to develop a unified way for webmasters to update their crawlers.

The three search giants will support a new version of the Sitemaps protocol, which was first released by Google in June last year.

by Richard Maven 16 November 2006 09:54am 1 comment

Understanding different types of keyphrases for PPC success

The majority of search queries consist of more than word - over the past decade searchers have gradually increased the amount of words per query, from 1.2 in 1998 to 3.3 in 2006.

Partly, this is because there is more noise to cut through on search engines like Google and Yahoo. But it is also about savvier searchers, finessing their query to return the most relevant results.

If you are running paid search marketing campaigns you need to understand how search queries indicate propensity to convert, and customer value.

Figuring this out can make a big difference to your return on investment from PPC campaigns...

by Chris Lake 15 November 2006 18:19pm 0 comments

Interview with AllPeers founders Cedric Maloux and Matt Gertner

Skype founder Niklas Zennström recently named AllPeers among Europe’s four most innovative tech start-ups - and you can't really argue with him.

Launched at the end of August after four years of development work, AllPeers’ private P2P platform allows users to share videos, photos, webpages and other paraphernalia with their family and friends.

But next year, it also intends to expand its technology to allow files to be shared publicly, and to offer content creators a chance to earn money through micro-payments, rather than through advertising.

We met up with CEO Cedric Maloux and CTO Matt Gertner to find out more.

by Richard Maven 15 November 2006 13:44pm 0 comments

Murdoch: MySpace worth $6bn

Rupert Murdoch has told a meeting of Australian investors that MySpace would be worth $6bn if News Corporation were to sell it now.

The media giant paid $580m for the world’s most popular social network site last year, and Murdoch now considers MySpace to be a vital part of his media empire.

by Graham Charlton 15 November 2006 11:52am 0 comments