August 25th, 2010 by Josh
Microsoft adCenter has announced additional capacity for negative keywords. The new limits allow “1000′s” of keywords at the campaign and ad group levels, and the character limit at the keyword level increased as well. Negative keywords are critical for managing costs and achieving optimal ROI, and the extended capabilities offer more control. Now we just wish [...]
August 18th, 2010 by Josh
This week Microsoft sent emails to US advertisers stating that Bing is beginning to power Yahoo natural search results: This week, Bing will begin powering organic search results on Yahoo! Search for the English language in the United States and Canada. This only affects natural search, not paid results at this time. Microsoft is still [...]
August 17th, 2010 by Josh
Submitting a sitemap to Bing is trivially easy. Simply go to http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml, replacing “www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml” with your website’s sitemap URL. Unfortunately this method provides no feedback about the success of processing your sitemap or if errors were encountered. The more advanced method is to utilize Bing Webmaster Tools. Adding your site enables you to see information [...]
June 29th, 2010 by Josh
A sudden increase in spending in a client’s Google Display Network prompted some head scratching. Our clicks jumped, but our conversions didn’t budge. After some sleuthing, we isolated the source of the new clicks to be a single domain, adsenseformobileapps.com. This domain isn’t real; its a designation for ads embedded within mobile apps for iPhone [...]
April 29th, 2010 by Josh
Over the years we’ve lamented the online popularity and over-reliance on Flash because of concerns relating to usability, navigability, indexability, measurability, portability, and so on. Now Steve Jobs has provided a litany of additional reasons that Flash is not supported by Apple products including the iPad, iPod, and iPhone. While some of our concerns make [...]
April 8th, 2010 by Josh
Apple announced that iPhone OS 4 will include iAd, a mobile advertising program tightly integrated with the OS. Very little information is available at this time. To quote Apple: Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. When users click on mobile ads they are almost [...]
April 5th, 2010 by Josh
Today we welcome a guest post from Thomas Holtz. Google has just rolled out a new AdWords feature called Remarketing. It is a modification of the AdSense model which so far couldn’t even get close to the traffic quality of the search engine. But now, that might change somewhat. Remarketing provides a second chance for [...]
March 31st, 2010 by Josh
According to TechCrunch, the Yahoo Publisher Network is being shut down. Participants are being directed to Chitika as an alternative. Yahoo Publisher Network can be thought of as Yahoo’s version of Google AdSense, a program that allows website owners to easily display and gain revenue from ads. This change primarily affects publishers of ads, not [...]
March 23rd, 2010 by Josh
Google has won a court case in Europe that upholds the right of advertisers to show ads when someone searches on trademarked terms. This case does not address trademarked terms in ad language. This is a big win for advertisers and, as we’ve said before, is consistent with fair use and the rules that apply [...]
March 9th, 2010 by Josh
A long time ago, we wrote briefly about how higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR) values aren’t always desirable, and our clients often ask how to best interpret the significance of CTR. CTR is literally defined as the percentage of people who viewed an ad that clicked on it. For example, if an ad is shown 100 times [...]