Due to the tough economic climate, advertisers are choosing to spend their budgets as wisely as possible and due to the great returns and ability to track ROI, online advertising is where they will be focusing a lot of their spend over the next few years.

It is predicted that the level of percentage growth is going to decrease after 2012 but the amount spent is estimated to increase each year until it reaches $62 billion in 2016.

In 2012 it is predicted that the amount of money spent on online advertising will exceed that spent on traditional print advertising for the first time ever. The gap between the two is due to increase over the coming years with the predictions for 2016 being $62 billion spent on online advertising vs. $32.3 billion on magazine and newspaper adverts.

eMarketer also predicts that over the next 4 years the gap will close between online ad spending and that spent on television advertising, with a difference of just $10 million in 2016 ($62 billion online vs. $72 billion on television adverts).

This is also the case in the UK as it has been reported that businesses are losing confidence in traditional media such as TV, press and radio advertising in favour of online channels, according to the latest Bellwether survey.

Even though businesses are choosing to reduce their investment in the main media channels, online advertising has actually grown by the largest percentage of all sectors and within that division, search has grown by the most.

Chris Williamson, author of the Bellwether survey and Chief Economist at Markit said: “there are signs that companies have become increasingly reluctant to invest in traditional media campaigns, instead diverting money towards the internet and direct marketing. This reluctance reflects lower than expected sales and profits in recent months, as well as growing unease about the economic outlook."

It will be interesting to see how these predictions pan out in 2012 and how the advertising landscape changes as more businesses choose to spend more of their budgets online.

Image via flickr.com/photos/scobleizer

In the words of Google’s Matt Cutts, "Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content "above-the-fold" can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward."

Many websites overload the page space above the fold with ads, as more money is to be made from placing ads higher on the page. Google even states, "by moving ad units buried at the bottom of your site to a more prominent location above the fold, you'll generally see an increase in performance". The eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) for above the fold units is noted by Google to be approximately 80% higher than below the fold units.

Google states that it will are not be punishing all sites that simply place ads above-the-fold. Instead it will be looking at sites that choose to load the top of their page with an excessive amount of ad space, resulting in relevant content being pushed down the page.

According to Matt Cutts the algorithm change will only affect only 1% of search globally. If your site has been hit by the change and you decide to ammend you page layout, Google will automatically re-crawl your pages and hopefully restore your website to a more favourable ranking.

It should also be noted that the new page layout algorithm punishes entire websites for placing too many ads above the fold, even if there’s just one offending page.

Google has been making some radical changes of late, from algorithmic alterations to increased socialisation of search. The company’s latest change comes in the form of combined user data and a new unified privacy policy.

From the 1st March Google will combine information that (signed-in) users provide in one service with information from other Google services. In a nutshell, Google will treat you as a single user across all of its products, be it Gmail, Search, YouTube or Calendar.

According to Google this should mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience and will result in more relevant ads and search results.

What this means

For Google account holders, your information will be shared throughout the Google services you use. This means that Google will be able to learn more about your search habits, for example, Google will be able to figure out what you really mean when you search for homonymous terms such as jaguar, apple or salsa. This will in turn allow Google to serve you more relevant ads.

Google explains; “it’s January, but maybe you’re not a gym person, so fitness ads aren’t that useful to you. We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before. People still have to do way too much heavy lifting, and we want to do a better job of helping them out.”

Privacy

Google’s privacy policies have been criticised in the past, partly because there were more than 60 different policies for Google’s products and services. However to reflect its new data mashup and appease web regulators, the new policy consolidates all of those existing policies in to one easy to digest policy.

Google has also trimmed down its Terms of Service (the terms you agree to when you use Google products) which you can check out here.

Too much?

You could be forgiven for thinking that Google is starting to get a little creepy, as it almost certainly knows more about your web habits than you do.

However, if creepy equates to a better advertising service for marketers, improved ad targeting and improved search relevancy, then surely creepy is good?

To learn more about Google’s new privacy policy and terms of service head over to www.google.com/policies.

Advertisers can include information about the offer within the ad alongside the link to try and entice people to click on the link and view more information about the deal.

The most interesting thing about the feature is that the offers can be redeemed online in the form of a voucher code (or something similar), or alternatively can be printed out in the form of a physical voucher for use in store.

If the advertiser chooses the offline redemption option, the potential customer who clicks on the ad will be taken to a page that is hosted by Google, where they will be able to print out the voucher or save the page in the ‘my offers’ section of their Google account to print out at a later date.

If the advertiser chooses the online redemption method, the customer will be taken to a page on the advertisers site outlining the offer and giving them details of how to redeem it online.

Google has recognised advertisers frustrations about not being able to track footfall from PPC traffic and this feature is its latest attempt to give its advertisers an insight into how the two correlate.

We find that a lot of our e-commerce clients that also have shops often find it very difficult to measure the affect of PPC on in store sales. This new feature will give them the option to get an insight into the amount of people that clicked on their ads but and end up making a purchase in store.

Obviously this is not a fool proof solution and is likely to encourage more footfall in stores for those advertisers that choose the offline redemption method. Therefore the feature will not give an accurate portrayal of how many genuine people simply click on an ad and then go in store to purchase the product instead of purchasing online.

However it will give them a better idea of the number of people that are seeing the ads and provide in store staff with the opportunity to question any customers using the vouchers about their online activity. i.e. why have they chosen to visit the store instead of purchasing online? (apart from just to get the discount).

It would also be more interesting if the vouchers that are used in store could be traced back to the exact click in someway, as then advertisers could see which users actually used their voucher in store, the value of their purchase and which keyword phrase they used to find the offer.

To find out more about offer extensions visit www.google.com/ads/innovations/offerextensions.

YouTube revealed earlier this week that its users are now uploading video content to the site at a rate of one hour of video per second, or if you prefer, a day of video every 24 seconds, 9 months every 2 hours, a decade a day or a century every 10 days.

However you look at it, it’s an amazing milestone.

Additionally, the average YouTube visitor spends an average of 15 minutes a day on the site, accounting for a total of 4 billion video views per day, yes, BILLION.

To visualise this information the good folk at YouTube have created www.onehourpersecond.com. This fun microsite helps put the numbers in to some perspective, for example;

• In 1.5 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the International Space Station completes one orbit of the earth
• In 36 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the Byrd Glacier in Antarctica moves 14.76 feet
• In 48 seconds of uploads to YouTube, a Bamboo plant grows 6 feet
• In 3 minutes 27 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the International Space Station completes another 135 orbits of the earth
• In 4 minutes of uploads to YouTube, 10 days of video is uploaded, and Fenton the dog chases a herd of deer over 3,600 miles (not seen Fenton? Watch it here and all will become clear)
• In 4 minutes 11 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the average person blinks 157,500 times

To list them all would spoil the fun, so head over to the site and experience it for yourself.

This milestone is of course impressive, but for YouTube the stats could prove to be a valuable asset in drawing advertisers to the site. With sites such as LoveFilm and Netflix also looking to increase their share of the online video market, there’s more competition than ever. Will numbers alone be enough?

For example you can use Automated Rules to alter your daily budget based on the day. For instance if you know a day in the future or a chosen day of the week is particularly quiet or busy you can schedule AdWords to alter your budget accordingly.

It can even be used to alter CPC bids based on the click through rate (CTR) or conversion rate, meaning that if these stats fall below a chosen level you can schedule AdWords to increase the CPC bid to try and boost the average position and therefore CTR and / or conversion rate back up again.

Earlier last week Google announced that it has increased the amount of automated rules you are allowed to 100.  Previously advertisers were only allowed to set 10 rules, so this extra 90 will give advertisers the ability to test more rules and use them to automate more processes in their accounts.

Google has also added the option to undo a rule, so if an advertiser sets up an automated rule and it does not have the desired affect they can simply choose to ‘undo’ them in the ‘Actions’ columns of the Logs table.

Like many of Google features the use of Automated Rules could be extremely helpful if used properly. In order to set up an Automated Rule, navigate to the level (ie. campaign, ad group, keyword or ad) for which you want to apply a rule and then highlight the ones that you would like to schedule changes to. Then click the ‘Automate’ drop down, which is located just above the column titles, alongside ‘change status’ and ‘alerts’ drop downs.

In the drop down box you have the choice to “enable campaigns / ad groups / ads / keywords when…” or  “pause campaigns / ad groups / ads / keywords when…” along with options to change bids for keywords or daily budgets for campaigns (depending on which tab you are in).

Once you have selected the type of changes you wish to make you must select your criteria for the rule, these include ‘Requirements’ and ‘Frequency’.  Here are some examples of the screens you will see:

By setting requirements your rule will only make changes when specific conditions are met. You can choose to have several or no requirements at all.

Frequency is how often you want Google to run the rule: daily, weekly or monthly etc. along with the chosen day and hour (if applicable) and when to use the data from, which allows you to specify how much data should be considered by the requirements that you've selected.

To find out more about How to create Automated Rules visit https://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=190516

The opposite can be said for the word’s favourite social network, Facebook, which until now has restricted its users to a ‘thumbs up’ or nothing at all when it comes to acknowledging things they, well, like.

However, at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, Facebook threw the social world a huge curveball by confirming the arrival of ‘Actions’, a feature that’s been a hot talking point since Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference last year.

Actions, like the name suggests, are a new way of interacting with things we come into contact with everyday, evolving beyond the current ‘like’ feature that we all know and love.

Let’ use the humble book as an example.

Say you buy a book from an online book vendor. You read the book and you enjoy it so much that you feel inclined to share your new found enthusiasm for said book with your Facebook friends. Currently you have two choices, either compose a status update a la “I just read <insert book name here> and it’s totally awesome”, or you could ‘Like’ it. The latter method has always seemed a little woolly.

For the sake of example, Facebook’s new Actions will allow you, the book fan, to communicate your book buying and reading habits via more relevant ‘Like’ alternatives, such as ‘Own’, or ‘Read’.

You may also start to see your friends ‘Eating’, ‘Playing’ or even ‘Knitting’, for example.

Of course, Facebook has already introduced a few actions, including ‘Listen’, which ties in with Spotify and more recently ‘Watched’, to accommodate the recent UK launch of Netflix. Both of these actions go relatively unnoticed, however expect to start seeing some more absurd gestures in the near future.

Actions will be displayed in the Ticker – the mini feed that sits in upper-right corner of the Facebook homepage and serves up recent activity in real-time. Initially the Ticker was badly received, mainly because no one really saw the point of it. However, your friends’ Actions activity will bypass the newsfeed and be displayed in the Ticker, arguably making it a little more interesting.

Developers using Facebook’s Open Graph can start using Actions now to help enhance the way that users interact with brands, products or services, but there are of course limitations. For example, the verbs used to reflect actions must "represent an actual action the user took at that time" and hateful or sexually explicit language is strictly forbidden.

There’s no denying that Actions present some potentially exciting opportunities for marketers, as well as offer Facebook users a totally new way of sharing information with their peers. But will Actions result in information-overload?

For more information about Facebook’s Open Graph visit developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph.

It looks like Wipeout (or perhaps F-Zero?), has gone through a dubstep obsessed puberty, watched Tron too many times and emerged as an adrenaline fuelled android. And the best part is, somehow, this game is completely free!

The fact that this is available for nothing on the internet got the cheapskate inside me thinking: What other, perhaps more useful freeware is available online? Of course to list it all would take forever, but here are a few that have caught my eye.

Recuva

Say you’ve just finished that important documents you’ve spent hours on but somehow, through a combination of butterfingers and idiocy, you manage to delete it, seemingly irreversibly. We’ve all done it. But no longer will you instantly start weeping and tearing your hair out.

Recuva can retrieve deleted files from formatted hard drives, peripheral devices (digital camera, USB Drive etc), restore lost music along with full track information and recover unsaved documents, usually in under a minute.

This software is an absolute life saver. You can also permanently delete data, along with any traces of it’s existence. But bear in mind, not even Recuva can retrieve this data once deleted in this way.

Download Recuva here – www.piriform.com/recuva

Malware Bytes

If, for some strange reason, you don’t use Malware Bytes already, start using it now! This is the virus detection and prevention tool that paid services have been known to refer customers to. All you’ll have to do is regularly scan your computer to minimise the chance of any virus/malware based mishaps.

Malware Bytes is easy to use, has great features and competes with the vast majority of paid services. You can’t say fairer than that. Download it at www.malwarebytes.org

SpiderOak

You’ve heard of Dropbox, right? Whilst Dropbox is a great service, there is now a better alternative. Spider Oak comes with the same amount of storage, plus an array of additional features. The software can be configured to automatically back-up data, and you can also gain an extra gigabyte of storage for everyone you introduce the service.

I suspect the lack of recognition is due to the weird choice of name. You kind of know what Dropbox is about before you even use it, due to the sheer simplicity of the name. On the contrary, Spider Oak sounds like a company that might sell dream-catchers and hand whittled wooden owls. But despite the name, it’s another great, free service to be taken full advantage of.

Checkout SpiderOak at spideroak.com.

Wunderlist

This task-management application has a great UI (user interface) and is a genuinely useful little tool. It’s essentially a cloud based to-do list, but it’s layout and features make it so accessible and manageable, it should instantly become a part of your daily routine.

It allows multiple people to edit your schedule and is suitable for both business and personal use. No longer will I be blu-tacking illegible lists to my desk and surrounding areas! Find out more at www.wunderlist.com.

All the above programs are great for organising and streamlining your life, not to mention saving the countless hours spent recreating lost documents and fixing a malware infested computer.

If you’ve got any free programs you think we should know about, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below we, would love to hear about them.

Early adopters of the site have been ‘pinning’ like mad to create ‘boards’ for all manor of purposes, like planning weddings, storing favourite recipes, bookmarking design inspiration, collating hilarious pictures of kittens and so on. 

There’s been quite a lot of noise around Pinterest since it launched toward the end of 2011, but with new social networks ten to a penny these days, I must admit it slipped my attention.

However, it’s only this week (yes, I know) that I thought I’d give Pinterest a proper look in. And I’m glad I did, because cutesy wish lists and pictures of kittens aside, it turns out that Pinterest may offer some nice opportunities where marketing is concerned.

A number of businesses have already adopted Pinterest in order to display and share their products, which has obvious benefits. But there’s potentially more wins to be gained through Pinterest than eyeballs alone.

Take the following screen grab of a ‘pinned’ Belkin Chef Stand as an example:

The image shows links on multiple parts of a pin, which, for now at least are ‘do-follow’. Team these links with the vibrant sharing nature of the site and suddenly Pinterest becomes a little less easy to ignore. 

There’s nothing drastically new here as Pinterest is essentially a visual alternative to bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon or Digg. There’s also Tumblr, which adopts a similar content-sharing policy through it’s ‘repost’ feature. Whilst none of these sites are the definitive answer to better organic rankings, there’s every chance they’ll help.

I’m fully aware that I’m a little late to the party on this one but I would love to hear your thoughts about Pinterest and any examples you have seen in regards to using the site as a marketing tool.

Happy pinning.

Google’s Search, Plus Your World update aims to make search results more social by mixing privately shared information (Google+ content) with public web results (natural listings).

In Google’s words, “Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about.”

So as a ‘real world’ example, when searching for holiday destinations, Google will serve up organic public listings as before, with the addition of any holiday-related content posted within your Google+ network. Google will also serve up photos from your private Google+ and Picasa stash, based on captions, comments and album titles.

Additionally, Google will also now present user profiles and pages in search results, as well as autocomplete results. You will be able to follow these people and pages directly from the SERP, because according to Google “behind most every query is a community”.

So from now on when you search for your your favourite football team, for example, you might see prominent people who frequently discuss that team on Google+. These results will be displayed on the right-hand side of the results page. You then have the option to connect with these like-minded strangers in order to grow your network.

There are obviously a number of privacy concerns associated with Search Plus Your World as users’ private content appears amongst public results. However, all Google+ content is secured by a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, the same privacy standards applied to that of Gmail.

If at this stage you're thinking either “I don’t have a Google+ account” or “what if I don’t want social results”, you’re probably not alone. But fear not, because Google will offer a degree of control over what you want to see in your search results, be it ‘Public’, ‘Limited’ or ‘Only you’. Additionally, people in your results are clearly marked with the Google+ circle they are in, or as suggested connections.

Google is also adding a button on the upper right of the results page which will allow you to toggle between a ‘personalised’ and ‘un-personalised’ view of search results.

At present, Search plus Your World is a minor update in comparison to the potential it holds. Where as the current state of ‘Search Plus Your World’ would be better described as ‘Search Plus Google+’, it would be a very different scenario should Google integrate content from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc..

That slightly unnerving, albeit not-impossible-in-the-future level of social integration is currently blocked by those sites’ terms of service, which prevent Google crawling and storing their data. Currently Google+ is the only site that provides such a “persistent service”. Unfortunately for Google it’s also the site with least public interest, which makes the current state of social search less than appealing to the masses.

In relation to multi-network integration, Amit Singhal of Google told searchengineland.com “if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work”.

The Google-Facebook relationship is rocky to say the least, as Facebook currently, and always has walled off its data from Google’s search engine. Years ago this wasn’t too much of a concern for Google, but with more than 800 million active users under its belt Facebook now makes up a significant, and rapidly growing portion of the web.

It’s highly unlikely that Facebook will give up its data any time soon but we’ll be watching closely as the war for internet dominance continues.

Technology magnates Google and Apple could be on course to compete with the likes of BSkyB, ESPN and al-Jazeera for the rights to broadcast live English Premier League football matches between 2013-2016. With details of the broadcasting packages due to be made available in the second quarter of 2012, there are many onlookers that will be watching closely to see if either Google or Apple decide to throw their names into the hat.

Internet streaming of live Premier League games does exist today, with SkyGo  allowing Sky Sports subscribers to watch match coverage through a computer, laptop, smartphone (etc). Despite this being a relatively new innovation for UK sports coverage, illegal internet streaming of Premier League matches has become a massive grievance for the Premier League in the same way file sharing has affected the music and film industry.

If an internet-based broadcaster will look to invest in secure, live streamed coverage of football matches, the Premier League would surely welcome the likes of Google and Apple into the bidding war about to take place.

Image via uk.eurosport.yahoo.com

Having read a few blogs on the subject, some ‘experts’ suggest that Apple is less likely to bid, primarily due to difficulties with fitting live Premier League coverage into its current payment model for services like the AppStore or iTunes. Subscription-based live sports coverage already exists on Apple TV in the form of Major League Baseball, so this would suggest that Apple would be able to accommodate Premier League football to its offering.

Beyond the obvious benefits for a broadcaster to show live matches, Apple may see securing live Premier League coverage as a way of establishing Apple TV in the UK marketplace, as well as drive sales of other Apple products. There is already a deal in place to purchase archive Premier League content through iTunes, so live broadcasts could be seen as a natural progression for the company.

Other Gossip

Most football fanatics have used Google subsidiary YouTube to watch video clips of their favourite football moments, player montages or recent match highlights. With the video-sharing website rolling out the YouTube Live channel last year, it has the capacity to integrate live Premier League action to its proposition.  

However, the Premier League and Google haven’t enjoyed the best of relationships in the past, so much so that the sports organisation attempted to sue YouTube in 2007 over copyright infringement of video clips of Premier League matches appearing on the site. It was deemed by the courts that YouTube were protected by US legislation, on the understanding that the service provider (YouTube) removes the material from the site when notified by the copyright owner (the Premier League). This is why if you find highlights of English Premier League matches on YouTube these days, it won’t be accessible for long.

Any Google bid for live match coverage would have to come with extensive efforts to eradicate content that infringed on copyright laws (ie. the video clips you can currently find on YouTube of Premier League content). The other main issue for Google would be how live Premier League coverage would fit into YouTube’s current revenue model.

And Finally

If either of the two technology giants enter the bidding process for live match coverage, Apple seem the better suited at this stage. Premier League rights may be a valuable incentive for consumers to take up Apple TV in the future.

It would be hard to imagine Google being interested in bidding for live match coverage, as it may be too much effort to be profitable. Google may be more interested in securing the UK online and mobile highlights packages currently held by Yahoo and ESPN respectively.

The combined broadcasting packages for live Premier League matches in the UK cost the current holders over £1.7billion, so any intention to enter the running for broadcasting right would be an expensive one.

Image via technicolor76

The last remaining physical music presence, at least in mainstream society is the CD, but that might not be the case for much longer.

According to The Nielsen Company & Billboard’s 2011 Music Industry Report released last week, the music industry hit a major milestone in 2011, as digital music sales surpassed physical music sales for the first time ever. Here are some stats;

• There were 1.27 billion digital tracks sold in 2011, a new record and 8.4% higher than 2010
• Digital music sales accounted for 50.3% of all music purchases in 2011
• Digital album sales exceeded 100 million for the first time with a new all-time high of 103.1 million sales, an increase of nearly 20% on 2010
• While total digital album growth was 20% in 2011, certain genres flourished more than others. Most noticeably; Rap and Electronic (up 42%), Country and R&B (up 27%) and Latin (up 23%)
• For the first time ever, a digital song had more than five million downloads in a calendar year; Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” (5.8 million) and LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” (5.5 million)
• For the first time, more than 100 Digital Songs (112) exceeded the 1 million sales mark for the year
• In 2011 there were 38 different digital songs with sales that exceeded two million (compared to 37 in 2010, 31 in 2009, 19 in 2008 and nine in 2007)
• In 2011, eight different artists broke the 10 million digital track sales mark

Facts done, now for a slightly hypercritical, nostalgic rant.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that although I’m pleased to see the digital music industry flourishing, I can’t help but feel a little sad about the decline of physical formats that I’ve grown to know and love.

I’m one of the few weirdo’s who still buys CDs – an actual item that I can pick up, admire, read, carry to my car, share with friends and store on my shelf with the rest of my music collection.

Digital music is different. I’m all for instant gratification but digital media has become almost too accessible, meaning there’s no connection with the product as it’s filed on our computer with all our other media, probably destined for a life on the ‘shuffle’ playlist.

Understandably the vast majority of people don’t care how and where their music originates and it’s each to their own, but let’s not lose touch with the bigger picture because there’s so much more to music than an an audio file.

Long live the CD.

That’s why it was particularly shocking when it was revealed early last week that Google had seemingly violated these guidelines, with hoards of blog posts showing as ‘sponsored by Google’ appearing on search engine results pages.

It has since emerged that Google’s intentions were not to engage in black hat techniques, but instead the campaign which was managed by a marketing agency, and not Google itself was intended to get people to watch videos rather than link to Google. The simple fact that third parties entrusted by Google to manage it's marketing activity had gone against Google rules was enough to justify a punishment in Matt Cutts’ opinion:

“Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos–not link to Google–and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3.

In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page”.

The more cynical amongst us could argue that Google had no choice but to penalise itself, after all it hasn’t hesitated to issue punishments to other sites that have violated their guidelines in the past, whether it be through their own intentions or bad advice from rogue companies. It’s also brought about an argument as to whether Google should alter its algorithm to penalise sites that use black hat techniques before their rankings change in search engines – something I can imagine will only gain momentum in the coming months.

It also touches on the issue of Google having its own sites ranking well organically (think price comparison sites such as beatthatquote.com, Google Flights, etc.) – this is surely going to russle the feathers of existing brands, most of whom pump a LOT of money into Adwords. It will be interesting to see if there are definite signals of prioritisation / favouritsm / blatant monopoly in the coming year…

At the very least it’s been a tough and slightly embarrassing lesson for Google and hopefully an eye-opener to sites that are tempted to cut corners where SEO is concerned – black hat techniques don’t bring good results.

At the beginning of the year, Google implemented changes to the Ad Preview tool, retiring the old Ad Diagnostic tool and instead combining it with the ad preview tool in a single ‘Ad Preview and Diagnosis’ tool under the ‘Tools and Analysis’ tab in AdWords.

This has become a really useful feature for those advertisers that are targeting ads to a location that they are not in. The advertisers can preview results from their chosen locations and Google domains to see if their ads are appearing, and if not, why not.

In February Automated Rules became available to all advertisers after its launch in December 2010. This feature allows AdWords advertisers to automate ads, pausing or adjusting ads bids based on their performance, ie. when the CTR drops below a chosen value etc. This is another great feature for those managing multiple campaigns and ads.

Also back in February Google launched a new ad rotation setting “Optimise for conversions: Show ads expected to provide more conversions”. This feature uses both click through rate and conversion rate data from your ads to determine which ad is performing better at driving conversions and therefore chooses to show that ad more often in the auctions.

Personally I still choose to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly” and make that decision for myself.

February also saw the launch of longer headlines for selected in ads. For example, in cases where each line of an ad is a distinct sentence and ends in a punctuation mark, the first line of description is moved to the headline, separated by a hyphen:

This was later followed in May with the inclusion of the domain in headlines of applicable ads (also seen above). Both of these features were aimed to help increase CTR for ads and help advertisers make their messaging or brand more apparent within the small character limits of an ad. As Google does not report on this it is hard to know whether it works or not and is again only applicable to the ‘top’ performing ads.

At was in March that the +1 button was launched for AdWords ads which allows signed-in Google users to recommend the content and ads that they like on the web to their friends and contacts. These stats can be seen within AdWords under the segment drop down. From experience we have not seen a lot of evidence of the +1 button being used on AdWords ads. Have you?

Back in April 2011 Google launched instant preview for ads allowing users to instantly view the contents of the landing page of an ad by hovering their cursor over the arrow to the right of the ad without having to click through.

June saw the launch of embedded site links in AdWords ads, allowing advertisers to embed deep links to their sites’ within the description of their ads. This is a very subtle change that requires a bit of work to get right as you have to be able to include the site link terms / phrases within the character limitations of the two description lines of an ad; normal site links extensions are a lot easier and distinctive.

It was in July that Google launched the Top vs. Side segment, allowing advertisers to see when their ads are performing better based on which area of the page they are located. This is another useful and interesting feature, generally showing that when ads are within the top positions the CTR is higher than when found at the side / bottom of the page, which is to be expected. However, if that is not the case for some keywords or ads then it is very useful for advertisers to know.

In October AdWords Express and Dynamic ads (beta) were launched, two tools aimed to help automate the ad creation process for those with little experience with AdWords or a high volume of products on sale on their websites.

Finally in November product listing ads were rolled out to the UK allowing advertisers to include images, prices and links to specific products on their sites’. This is a feature that Google claims has helped those advertisers using it to improve their CTRs and Conversion Rates, as the user can see the products before clicking through and incurring a cost for the advertiser.

In summary, there have been many changes to AdWords throughout 2011, some of which have not made a huge amount of difference to ad performance but Google has added some features that have proved very useful, such as ‘Ad Preview and Diagnosis’, ‘Top vs. Side Segment’ and also ‘Automated Rules’ (if used properly).

We hope that Google will continue trying to improve the platform and the relevancy of its results in 2012. Happy New Year.

Image via www.flickr.com/photos/anniemole

Mobile has been dubbed as ‘the next big thing’ for what seems like forever now. But according to Google, 2011 was the year that people finally started to take mobile seriously.

Last week Google published ‘A look back at 2011’ in which it identified 5 major mobile trends that emerged in 2011, and in Google’s words, “will carry us into 2012, and beyond.”

1. Everyone goes mobile

Smartphones and tablets have fast become ‘the norm’, with everyone from your little sister to your nan connecting via these once geek- only devices. This shift has allowed us to communicate with each other, and with businesses like never before – the consumer has been ‘mobilised’.

According to research;

• 79% of smartphone users use their phones while shopping, from sourcing retailers, comparing prices or searching for product information & reviews
• 70% use their smartphones while in a store
• 77% have contacted a business via their mobile, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business

2. Mobile search transforms shopping

In 2011 Google “learned a lot about the ‘timing’ of mobile and tablets”; in that they enabled users to be constantly connected to the internet.

This round the clock connectivity has changed the way users connect with businesses, with more people searching for deals prior to visiting a store, or within a store. An example of this growth is highlighted by ”Black Friday” related mobile search queries, which were over 200% higher than 2010.

Google also predicted that 44% of searches for last minute gifts and store location queries came from mobile devices over the Christmas period.

3. Mobile advertising progresses

It may be very early days for mobile advertising but the past year has presented some huge progressions, with advertising standards and the momentum behind HTML5 helping mobile marketers make the most out of the platform.

Another key point in progression was getting existing tools to “speak mobile”, which was key to helping mobile advertising grow with the demand of businesses and consumers.

Google is making gains with familiar search and display tools, which are slowly but surely becoming ‘mobilised’. There’s still a way to go, but 2012 will surely present some monumental changes.

4. Tablets join the party

2011 was undoubtedly the year of the tablet, with people using the devices to shop, play games and consume media, the majority of people doing so in the evenings.

November 2011 compared to December 2010 saw 440% growth in traffic from tablets on the AdMob network. As Google says,“tablets are a third screen to be reckoned with for marketers”.

The potential opportunities that tablets offer are huge. Research has proven that users are more inclined to shop and make purchases on tablets. In addition, campaigns run across several screens have been shown to work ‘better together’.

5. Businesses start thinking mobile first

To quote Google, “Smartphones and tablets aren’t small desktop computers – they’re new devices being used in entirely new ways”. Indeed.

2011 was the year that businesses began to grasp this concept and embrace mobile as a unique platform, with many good things happening in the form of mobile specific sites and ad campaigns.

There’s no denying it’s been a huge year for mobile, and it’s amazing to think we’re still just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Bring on 2012…

However, sometimes a public display isn’t always needed, and for shy types, or in certain Facebook communities a private conversation may be more appropriate. Pages of a sensitive nature that deal with health related issues, for example.

To tend to those needs, Facebook has started testing a new feature that will appeal to page owners and users alike, allowing users to avoid the attentions of the public and message pages privately.

Unlike Twitter, where either party can initiate conversation, the user must make the first move. However, once that has been done, the conversation is open to both parties. A good way of stopping the spam, but also allows page owners to follow up on important conversations.

Social media as a ‘one-on-one communication platform’, is more theory than reality, with most brands preferring to market to the masses rather than individuals. There are exceptions of course, but the sheer volumes of many pages makes targeting individuals near impossible.

As a recent blog post by Econsultancy says; “when you have a few hundred thousand followers on Twitter or a few million fans on Facebook, it's far easier to market to consumers than it is to communicate with them”.

Perhaps this new feature is a reflection that Facebook has identified the need for a more personal approach to social marketing?

Whatever Facebook’s agenda, it does seem like a step in the right direction. And much of the web seems to agree.

Looking at a number of comments on various industry blogs, the response to this new feature appears to be overly positive, with most Facebook users and businesses saying that they would use the feature.

What do you think? Who does this really benefit? Is there a danger that businesses will be deterred by the extra management required? Please feel free to share your thoughts below.

We recently held our annual office ‘Secret Santa’ ceremony, in which we presented each other with hilarious, occasionally offensive gifts. This year we all bought each other mugs, which significantly lessened the usual decision making stress.

But it got me thinking, other than offensive drinking vessels, what else is out there for the digital marketer?

Here’s a few ideas that are sure to excite the geek in your life.

Google merch

From sunnies to stickers, hoodies to hacky sacks, Google has it all. Yes, even cycling shorts – the ultimate in geek-chic.

Bling

For a slightly more subtle approach, why not treat that someone special to a piece of geek-jewellery. Apple fanboys, take not note of this iNecklace, the ultimate gift for your Apple fangirl. It has built in LEDs and even ‘breathes’ like a proper Mac.

Geek kicks

These custom kicks from Brass Monki are cooler than a polar bear’s toenails. They’re also very expensive, so best kept indoors.

Like and Dislike Stamps

Make your feelings that little bit less subtle by stamping your approval, or lack of approval on absolutely everything. And everyone.

Hand exerciser

The ultimate hand-strengthening accessory for the hardcore blogger/link builder/foosball pro.

Generic SEO apparel

Any of these HILARIOUS t-shirts will have your closest friends laughing with you, and everyone else laughing at you for being such a nerd.

Mobile office

For the desktop geek who can’t stop geeking. Who needs a convenient mobile device when you can have this real mobile office, spare chair and all.

USB cufflinks

If James Bond ever needed constant access to 8GB of data, he would probably wear these.

Wi-Fi detector clothing

What could be better than a hat or t-shirt that lights up when in the proximity of a Wi-Fi signal. Guaranteed to boost cool points by at least 200%.

Smartphone-friendly gloves

The humble winter glove is the touchscreen's worst enemy, but add some “specially formulated conductive threads” to the forefinger and thumb and ‘voila’, smartphone friendly digits.

Admittedly, it’s a little late to start your Christmas shopping, and a few of the above items are just concepts. But I think they’re all brilliant. Please feel free to share your ultimate geek gifts below.

Merry Christmas!

So, as promised, here is my brief guide to getting some links out of the hordes of bloggers out there.

My “Ultimate Search Query” is an excellent method for finding opportunities with minimum time and effort. I showed the query to a friend of mine who wanted to write articles and review computer games for a living. Within days he was accepted as a staff writer on a major games review site, and is in the pool of writers for a new Brighton-based arts and culture magazine.

But in many ways, it’s easier to find sites to guest post on if you have a genuine interest in the subject, with no ulterior motive. For SEO purposes, you’re not writing solely for the love of writing. You want links. So how do you go about getting them?

Look at the website & make a judgement

There’s a huge variety of blogs on the internet. Some are sleek, features websites, designed to appeal to a professional audience. Others are simple WordPress themes, made by individuals purely for their a love of a subject.

Some content will be written in a formal manner, and others will write with more freedom and personality.

Each site should be approached differently when requesting a guest post, the rule of thumb being, the more formal the site, the more formal the initial contact should be. Whereas a corporate business blog may require a very formal email, an arty design blogger, for example, probably won’t respond well to an overly officious request.

It may be that another platform is better suited when making initial contact, such as Twitter or LinkedIn, for example.

Be honest & build relationships

Let the blog owner know if you require any links in the first few emails, if not in the initial contact. Any attempt to conceal your intentions will be perceived as underhanded in the long run, and could prevent from building what could be a valuable relationship in the long-term.

Once a relationship is established with a blogger, there may be an opportunity for links to be garnered in the future. Also, niche bloggers tend to have their own communities and often they will have contact with other active members within their unique corner of the blogosphere. If one blogger puts in a good word for you, a new raft of potential link opportunities could present themselves.

Create great content

This step in easier said then done. Really interesting content creates links all by itself, which is the ultimate goal of the content marketer. It’s better to spend the time coming up with a unique concept that will draw the attentions of a blogging community than to churn out hackneyed content on generic topics.

If the content reads well and is truly original, vital social signals and other link opportunities will present themselves.

Building a network of bloggers to contact is a great practice for any SEO, and any trust gained within a community can only give a boost to current and future link building campaigns. So get out there, get writing and get published.

The idea is for advertisers to use the “Top vs. Side segment” to determine how their ads perform when on top of the SERPs compared to when they appear at the side (or now at the bottom too). If AdWords shows that their ads are performing best when at the top of the page then they can use the top of page bid estimates as a guide to setting a CPC bid that should get their ads to the top section of the page.

Obviously just by increasing the CPC bid of your keywords to, or above, this recommended value isn’t going to guarantee that your ads rank above all the rest, as Google still takes many other factors into consideration when setting ad position, such as quality score, budget, competition etc. This means that your ads and keywords need to be relevant to your landing pages and attract a high click through rate (CTR) to help increase your average position and ultimately lower the price you pay per click.

Google is now supporting this new feature in Automated Rules and AdWords Editor 9.7.1 to make it easier for advertisers to see these recommendations and set their CPC bids accordingly.

Automated Rules allows advertisers to program AdWords to automatically update the CPC bids of their keywords to the estimated top of page bid, just as you can set it to pause keywords if the CTR dips below a certain value or if an ad has had a chosen number of impressions or clicks but not converted. (NB: To use rules such as these, you will need to authorise AdWords to access and make modifications to your account on your behalf.)

But how accurate are Google’s estimates for first page and top of page positions?

We have found with a lot of accounts that Google can say that the CPC bid is below the 1st page bid estimate on keywords, with an average ad position of anything up to 1.9 and an average CPC of a lot lower than the bid and first page estimate stated:

Similarly we have found that Google’s estimates for top of page bids can also be way out. For instance on one keyword in one of the accounts that we manage the average ad position is currently 2.7 and Google recommends we should increase the current bid by £5.50 to get it to the top section of the page:

This clearly shows that there are occasions when Google can get its estimates wrong so choosing to automatically increase your CPC bids according to these figures may not be the best idea as it may be costly – especially if you are not optimising your account and concentrating on getting a good CTR and quality score for the keywords in question.

Image via andrewchenblog.com

If you’ve ever spoken with any of us here at Browser Media, there’s a good chance you would have received an ear bashing about the potential rewards that regular blogging can offer.

A well managed blog can act as a fantastic marketing channel, it gives your site a heartbeat, injects some personality in to your brand and can even offer some pretty impressive SEO benefits. But that’s a different discussion, because recently we have discovered that there can also be some great internal wins.

Historically our blog has been managed by one person (with occasional exception) who has been wholly responsible for creating content and generally managing the blog’s upkeep. But more recently we’ve been testing a new way of doing things, by encouraging everyone in the company to get involved. After all, it is a ‘company blog’.

Why

Firstly, to share the load, because as any blog manager will know, coming up with fresh content isn’t always easy and can prove a time consuming process. The more people involved, the lighter that load becomes.

We also wanted to diversify the content we publish. Not because what we had was bad, but it’s easy to get caught in a routine way of doing things, which just isn’t the way we roll. We, as a company also offer a number of different services, and every member of the team brings with them unique experiences and skills.

We thought it was important to share that diversity with our readers, and also show the outside world that there are personalities behind the posts.

One of our main objectives was to introduce a sense of pride and ownership throughout the team, to get them to ‘care’ about the blog, if you will. Those who blog regularly will recognise the sense of achievement gained when a piece of content is received well by the audience. We thought it was important for everyone to experience this.

Challenges

Of course, encouraging people to take time out of their busy day to write for the blog presents some minor challenges – “what the hell do I blog about?” and “when am I going to find the time to do it”, being common responses.

To some, blogging may seem like an inconvenience, but build it into the weekly routine and it soon becomes second nature.

There’s also a danger that ‘forcing’ people to write blog posts could lead to a library of last minute, re-hashed news pieces. To avoid this situation we encourage employees to write about things that genuinely interest them.

To help keep things organised we created a collaborative blog calendar, which everyone can access in order to share content ideas for future posts. It’s also here where we record statistics about each blog post.

Wins

One of the most effective ways to encourage the team to write ‘quality’ content was to introduce some light hearted competition. For every piece of content posted on the blog, we record the number of reads, comments and social shares it receives and announce the winners in our internal meetings. Not only does this make people want to create good content, it also provokes thought about future posts and what might, or might not appeal to readers.

Two months in and we’re seeing some fantastic results. Our traffic may not have doubled, and we haven’t won any awards yet, but we’ve noticed a huge shift in attitude.

Rather than having to be chased for content, people are now asking when their next blog post is due and throwing ideas around well in advance.

People are taking an interest in the traffic passing through the blog, checking regularly for comments and perhaps most interestingly, sharing their posts religiosly on social networks (something that never happened before).

So what?

Although blogging may not win you any business, or major recognition, there’s much more at stake. Consider diversifying your blogging efforts, you may be pleasantly surprised.