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Yahoo’s Bartz Sounds Off on the Advertising Industry, AOL and More

Written on March 5, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

Leave it to Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz to stir up a little controversy from time to time. It seems like that’s the best way for Yahoo to get in the news these days. In recent months most stories are more about what Yahoo used to be and people trying to figure out what it will be. For any business, especially in the Internet advertising space, news of progress and innovation is a better message wouldn’t you say?

So when AdAge sat down with Bartz she had boat loads to say and the most interesting came at the end of the interview when she called out the advertising industry.

For an industry that’s based on creativity and inspiring people, I don’t know why it’s so afraid. I don’t think it should be afraid to just try some crazy new stuff. But when I talk to people about online marketing, they just seem to freeze. … I thought this was going to be a much racier industry that wore black and got out there and rock and rolled and I see it being a little shier. I mean, I’m the crazy lady.

Well, she may not get arguments on certain parts of that statement for sure but she certainly isn’t afraid to speak her mind.

The interview had some other moments not the least of which was her offering the standard line as to why Yahoo has struggled as of late and what will pull them out in the future. Notice the first point of the answer is not about innovation but circumstances.

Growth will come from multiple areas. One is the economy coming back. We’ve all been victims of the world economy for the past two years. So that’s No. 1. Two is we really believe we’ve made advancements in the world of display advertising — how to measure, how to get better ROI. So we think we can help online branders come online. The third issue is there’s immense growth internationally to bring new-to-net users online and then downstream to monetize them.

Hasn’t Google and other profitable online players been experiencing the exact same economic conditions? Personally, I believe this line of thinking needs to be struck from corporate speak. Yes, things have been bad but we need to hear about companies that are not waiting for things to change but rather innovating to make things change. Enough excuses already. Sure the economy sucks. Get over it.

As for Yahoo moving forward? It appears that she pushes back on the concept of Yahoo being a content company.

It’s a bit too simplistic to say we’re only a content company. The amount of science and technology that we have behind our sites and our ability to target and the insights we give with precision to the client, it’s much, much more than content. The content is to draw the user in, the technology is for the advertiser to find an audience at scale. It has both sides and always will have.

Another bit of wisdom that should bring a smile to anyone’s face is her impression of what AOL is doing in its push to be the content machine of the Internet. Asked about what makes the two companies different she responds:

Generally it’s not different, we’re just a lot bigger. The fact of the matter is, what they’re trying to do at AOL — and I shouldn’t speak for AOL, they’re very capable of speaking for themselves — but I think it’s like a mini Yahoo.

Mini-Yahoo. Good one!

Lastly, you can look for Yahoo to be spending some money for acqusitions. When asked about whether or not the purse strings will be loosened she responded:

Absolutely. We’ve been very forward about this. Last year was looking internally — I hired a new team, restructured the company. This year it’s about what technologies: Do we need to fill in the blanks, what analytics, what tools?

…..whether it’s acquiring an audience — a group of female bloggers, or whether it’s acquiring some better analytics tools that help us guide campaigns with our partners, or whether it’s technology. Last year we bought at company called Zoobut, which is better photo technology, so it let us do very modern photos in our mail. It’s that sort of thing — audience, technology and tools.

So look for more than just updates about how the whole Microsoft – Yahoo thing is going this year. At the very least we should have some great quotes from Yahoo’s c-suite to keep us wondering where it will land eventually.

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Yahoo’s Bartz Sounds Off on the Advertising Industry, AOL and More

Listen to Your Customers to Adjust Your Keywords

Written on February 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide, seo

by Mike Moran

You probably use many sources to brainstorm your search keywords, but how do you know if your customers are starting to change the way they search for your products? Have you listened to what your customers are saying? Time was that listening to customers demanded expensive focus groups and surveys, but that time has passed. Nowadays, you can listen to social media conversations and analyze them for any number of purposes, including search keywords.

Think about how you do keyword research normally. You probably start by entering into the search engines some keywords you know are relevant. Then you look at what pages come up and start to catalog in your mind some other words that you see on those pages. Then you start entering some of those words and continue the process until you start to see that you are getting too far away from the original subject.

Then you take those words and use a keyword research tool to help you see which words are searched for frequently enough to be valuable, and then you let those tools show you other popular variations. And while all of that is very smart, you know that over time your customers start to shift what they are looking for.

The language around your product might change, due to technology changes (cell phone becomes smart phone), changes in customer needs (low cost becomes total cost of ownership), or simple shifts in the language (energy efficient becomes green). When it does, you need some way of picking up on what’s happening so you can adjust your keyword mix in response.

For large businesses, you can use social media listening services to help you find new words that your regular keyword research might not have uncovered. The listening companies will do the work for you and find those nuggets that you might have missed. [Full disclosure: I serve as Chief Strategist at Converseon, one of those companies happy to listen to your conversation and help you with search marketing also.]

But for small businesses with limited (no?) budgets, what can they do to listen to their customers’ conversations?

Google Alerts to the rescue. You probably already use Google Alerts to monitor mentions about yourself and your company, but you can also use it for keyword research. You can load up Google Alerts with a bunch of your keywords and start reading the stories that come your way for new keywords.

But, gee, that seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

To take the drudgery out of it, use a word cloud (as pictured above), which visualizes the words being used so that you can see which ones seem to be occurring more than others. To automatically generate a word cloud from your Google Alerts, set up an RSS feed for your Google Alerts, rather than e-mail notification. Then, enter the URL for that RSS feed into Wordle, which creates a word cloud from any RSS feed.

Just point your RSS feed at this tool every once in a while, and immediately see what you are missing. When you listen to what your customers tell you, it’s amazing how smart you can look. (Only you and I know the truth…)

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Listen to Your Customers to Adjust Your Keywords

AOL’s Q4: When Failure = Success

Written on February 4, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

And not in the positive “I now know 999 ways not to make a light bulb” way.

AOL’s Q4—their first earnings report since spinning off from Time Warner—numbers have all kinds of red ink and negative signs in front of them: display advertising revenue down 3% total YOY, international display down 22%, search and contextual down 19%, total ad revenue down 8%, subscription revenue down 28%, Other revenue down 5%. The only gain YOY was in US display advertising: a whopping 1%. And despite total revenues being down 17%, AOL still handily beat Wall Street expectations.

Yes, failure = success when people expect almost nothing of you. Says All Things D:

After factoring out one-time charges, AOL posted earnings of 71 cents per share on revenues of $801 million. Wall Street expected earnings of either 62 cents or 66 cents per share, depending on who you ask, on revenue of around $766 million.

And that earnings per share is way higher than, say, Yahoo (22

From Lab to Beta: Google’s Social Search For All

Written on January 28, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

It’s rare that Google gets trumped on news but with all the Apple iPad (insert your favorite disgusting nickname here) hoopla from yesterday the announcement that Google’s social search is now in beta for all to use kinda slipped by. After a little reading on the subject there may be a good reason for this. In other words, Google maybe didn’t want to make a big deal on this one. Read on to find out why.

The Official Google Blog announced the move with this

We think there’s tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. We’re leaving a “beta” label on social results because we know there’s a lot more we can do. If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile, where you can add links to your other public online social services.

They then give one of their nifty little videos to explain just what they are up to.

But the real concern is raised by John Batelle at his blog

Forget the iPad, today Google is taking another step toward its stated goal of “making search more social.” There’s a lot of goodness in here, in terms of features and approach, but it’s just silly to pretend you can do any of this without directly addressing the 400 million-person elephant in the room called Facebook. Put simply: I can’t figure out if this new service uses my Facebook social graph. And to my mind, that’s a problem.

Batelle then takes you through his attempts to see if, in fact, the Facebook social graph is incorporated in some fashion. You can follow his humorous attempts to see what he might be missing. He even digs around to find out what is truly going on with the social search for Google as it relates to Facebook and Google sent this to him:

“If someone links to his Facebook account from his Google profile, Social Search may surface that user’s public profile page. These are the same public profile pages already available on a search of Google.com and other search engines today. While we’re interested to continue expanding the comprehensiveness of Social Search, we do not currently use your Facebook connections as part of Google Social Search.”

This begs the question of just how social is social search for Google. Maybe Google’s ‘announcement’ of this service yesterday wasn’t a coincidence with regard to the timing of the iPad introduction to the world. Not including Facebook connections is a huge gap in this offering that makes one wonder just what is going on behind the scenes. Expect this beta tag to hang around for a while until this one is hashed out. Stay tuned.

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From Lab to Beta: Google’s Social Search For All

Get “Inside The Mind Of Google” On CNBC Tonight At 9PM ET/PT

Written on December 3, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: Object

Tonight at 9pm ET/PT on CNBC there will be a special premier of “Inside the Mind of Google.” The show will go over how Google got started, how they grew over the years and what challenges they have had recently. Our very own Danny Sullivan is interviewed in this documentary, so you [...]



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Get “Inside The Mind Of Google” On CNBC Tonight At 9PM ET/PT

Thankful Wishes From Online Marketing Blog

Written on November 25, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

With Thanksgiving almost within reach, it’s hard to think of anything but turkey, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and warm homemade rolls. Actually, for me, my mind is on my aunt’s chocolate pie and my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese.

But regardless of the type of food item occupying your thoughts right now, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what we have to be grateful for. I, for one, realize I have a lot to be grateful for, considering the people I interact with on a daily basis and the work I’m tasked with each day.

Michelle Bowles

Having been a part of the TopRank Online Marketing team for 4 months  now, I’m thankful for my fellow team members who have patiently shown me the ropes along the way and made me feel welcome.

And as a brand-new Minnesotan, I’m also thankful for my team members’ recommendations on the best restaurants in Minneapolis, directions to the neighborhood post office, insight on the area speed traps to look out for – you name it!

In the spirit of such thankfulness, I asked some of my fellow Online Marketing Blog contributors here at @TopRank to share what they’re thankful for this holiday season:

Jolina Pettice

“This Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for TopRank clients. 2009 has been a great year of achieving new heights and celebrating success, whether it was attaining that sought after 1^st place ranking for a competitive term, increasing inquiries or launching a blog. I am also extremely thankful for the TopRank team for their dedication, and my friends and family who keep me laughing all year long.”

Adam Singer

“I’m thankful for being a team member of an industry leading digital marketing firm like TopRank, writing for Online Marketing Blog, working with high-quality clients and the marketing community as a whole for being a great group of people. Additionally, as a (relatively) new Minnesotan, I’m thankful that it is nearly December and I still have not had to use the ice scraper provided to me by Dana.”

Thomas McMahon

“I’m thankful to work in a company that is open to new ideas, new media, and that is ever evolving into new and exciting spaces. I’m also thankful for my coworkers who keep me entertained with their witty, and sometimes strange, stories.”

Lee Odden

“I am truly grateful for the amazingly talented and hard working team we have at TopRank and the clients we are fortunate to serve. There is a real spirit of collaboration, problem solving and work quality here that a lot of other agencies don’t have. The heartbeat of our company is Susan Misukanis, and her dedicated long hours keep our team running smoothly – I am forever thankful for her leadership and commitment.

“I’m also thankful for the TopRank community of blog readers, Twitter followers and IRL friends at conferences, in the industry and the media that have been so generous with their participation and attention. I only hope we’ve provided as much value to you as you have to us.

“Last, but not least, I am thankful for my 3 little ‘munchkins’ who make me proud, make me laugh and remind me of what’s most important of all.”

Dana Larson

“Since I began working with TopRank, the thing that I am most thankful for on a continuous basis is the ability for each team member to help each other out when necessary. No one hesitates to lend a helping hand, and we all maintain a positive attitude. Working as a team ensures all ideas are heard, and we all pitch in to benefit the company as a whole. I am also thankful when our TopRank team members help out coworkers outside of work, such as when I am moving next month *hint hint*

Now it’s your turn. What are you thankful for this holiday season?