Flash and Search: Best Friends?

July 1, 2008 – 8:13 am

I love algorithms: “Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.”

Late yesterday Google and Adobe announced a collaboration to make dynamic web content more searchable. Finally, millions of sites that use Flash technology will be searchable without the need for companies to alter them.

Search engines currently index very limited data about Flash sites which has caused major challenges for designers in marrying creative, dynamic content, and searchability.

What will be indexed by Google? Google says all of the text that users can see in the Flash file will be indexed and can be used to match query terms in Google searches. If the Flash site contains only images, they will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. These elements will be invisible to Google. Although they will be able to better crawl links in the site, they won’t be able to read the anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

How will this impact PPC paid search? Will Google use this new algorithm for the Google AdsBot? Since the AdsBot collects only landing page information to apply to quality scores, it makes sense this technology would eventually be used to read Flash landing pages. This would allow advertisers to offer a more customized and dynamic user experience and better meet the needs of searchers. Fer sur.

Yahoo also plans to support searchable SWF. Hurry up, Yahoo…

By Lisa R | Posted in PPC, SEO | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

TV and Web Convergence The Third.

June 24, 2008 – 9:27 pm

The topic of web and TV convergence is becoming something of an obsession with me. My choices to watch long-form programming on my home computer are increasing rapidly, and I wish I had time to watch everything I want to. I’m not just an early adopter - just about 74% of the online audience tunes into some sort of online video every month, averaging to over 235 minutes each!

yep

While I have not had the pleasure of placing during the top TV networks on-demand programming online, I’ve been closely following the possibilities. There are different tactics used by the big three to keep people coming back including community features and mobile applications. These are the most attractive to me for many of the same reasons that TV is attractive to advertisers - great monitored content with large, loyal audiences. Now all we have to do is convince the clients. Breaking into advertising on the big three online isn’t extremely cheap, and targeting capabilities are fairly limited. One study shows that the Internet brings in 50% more GRPs than TV. Despite this, only 7% of ad dollars are allocated to web even though online usage accounts for 17% of time spent for the average person. The article referenced mentions that this must be because TV budgets are brand dollars and marketers have been trained to think online advertising as a direct response vehicle. I’ve been hard at work in hopes to shape my fellow advertising professionals and clients to stop focusing on CTR and start seeing all the great branding that can happen from a well-planned online campaign.

I’m crossing my fingers that some of the broadcast buyers at our agency will be offered make-goods online, as ABC recently announced they will be experimenting with. I just have to hope that they embrace online video professionally as much as they most likely do personally. Am I, Interactive Planner/Buyer and they, experienced Broadcast Buyers ready for the convergence that seems to be coming down the pipes? What does this mean for our jobs? Will I need to re-immerse myself in GRPs? Will they need to learn about impressions, ad serving, and behavioral targeting? All I know is I’m going to keep obsessing, researching and predicting. Think of this series that never ends…

If you missed them, here are parts one and two of my reports on the subject.

Now I’m off to watch my ninth episode of Dexter online this week!

By szielie | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

My Boss Read My Blog Plus 4 Other Reasons to Care About Your Personal Online Reputation

June 6, 2008 – 3:13 pm

I just recently found out that my boss isn’t as square as I thought. He’s been using the Internet to find things and research people. Maybe he is reading this right now…

There are a million reasons to care about what you say and what is said about you online. Savvy marketers have known this for a long time and have used online sources to establish credibility and pimp their businesses.

Here are a few other thoughts on managing your personal online reputation:Photo from MySpace

1. Potential employers can search for you online. You don’t want them to read your blog rants or see that awesome photo of you on MySpace with a giant beer while playing drinking Jenga.

2. Competitors. There’s only one first place. Personal business or trade secrets posted online can be easily found, leveraged, used against you. So please don’t brag about your new secret product in your “working on” status on Linkedin. Many people Twitter about who they meet with, what they talk about, and how cool it is. It’s easy to monitor the competition when they hand it over to you in your RSS feed.

3. Distant relatives once found my resume on Google and proceeded to send me “hilarious” email forwards. There was no way out. Since I opted-out of their BBQs, I was eventually phased off the list, but don’t let this happen to you!

4. General embarrassments and wacky misunderstandings often occur when you put it all out there. Remember, I can see what you write, we’re “friends”.

With the amazing impact of social media, it’s more important than ever to consider who can find the personal information and photos you post online.

And remember your boss reads your blog. Don’t call him a square.

By Lisa R | Posted in search, social media | Tagged , , | Comments (7)

I Heart Twitter, Vertical Ad Networks, and the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium.

May 19, 2008 – 10:07 pm

I’m skipping the Family Guy re-run this evening to fuss about my new Online favorites. Giggity Giggity.

Although I’ve been reading about the micro-blogging site Twitter for years and have created profiles several times, they were typically abandoned after a few days of reading random Tweets. Now, with it’s popularity bang there are so many more interesting people to “follow”, and with the Twitter Facebook Application

I can feed my addiction to updating my Facebook status by text. Not new, I know, but new to Sarah’s List of Interactive Addictions. In fact, now you can follow the Mavens! Although we’re sometimes too busy to blog, we’re rarely to busy for 140 characters or less.

My newest addiction while planning Online Display campaigns is Vertical Ad Networks. While several more traditional ad networks make a number of different content channels available, I’ve found that when you are looking for something more targeted, Vertical Ad Networks are a nice way to gain some more contextually targeted inventory within one buy. Many times they have premium inventory and a shorter list of sites that are easy to relay to a client and ultimately sell through. While I still love my Ad Networks, it’s sometimes hard to illustrate their value to more traditional clients.

Some networks such as Martha’s Circle are a nice addition to a larger premium publisher buy on MarthaStewart.com. No more sneaking a high volume of text links and below-the-fold placements to bring that eCPM down! Other networks offer hard-to-reach audiences such as the Luxury Ad Network, Adcision. The one I’m most stoked about, as a girl with a lot of single market initiatives, is the Local Ad Network, such as what CBS is launching with providing local sites with a news widget wrapped around an IAB unit.

My third blog-worthy favorite du jour is the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium. As mentioned, as a gal with a lot of single market initiatives to plan for, I often have the single market budgets that prohibit me to run on some of the larger sites like Yahoo because of their spend minimums. As a result miss out on some of that great targeting. The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium has helped me ad reach to a few low budget, single site plans. Kudos to the people at Yahoo! for this great idea. Stay strong brothers!

TTFN!

By szielie | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Social Media Marketing: Big Buzz or Buzz Kill?

May 15, 2008 – 12:18 pm

Last night at MIMA (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association), a panel of local social media experts assembled to discuss how big businesses approach social media. It was a lively and very interesting discussion.

Big names like General Mills, Best Buy, Fingerhut, and Target tackled questions and shared their individual philosophies on what it means to participate in social media and why they think it’s important.

I gave myself two post-it notes (hey…where was 3M?!) to jot down a few take-aways for the online marketer thirsty for knowledge in social media.

Big Buzz
- All the panelists agreed that the value of social media to businesses is the opportunity to listen to customers. This ability to listen to consumers and glean information from them has never been so easy and cheap. Once you have stopped talking and start listening, act on that information. Provide social applications with a real, genuine use and value.

- Try. Try something new quickly to get out there rather than spend too much time on costly large social marketing initiatives. From these small initiatives, learn from the failures and try again.

- Successful social media programs the panel discussed were tightly aligned with building communities where the communities live. For example, Target’s back to college program engages students on Facebook with an application boasting over 33,000 users. Makes sense, considering 41% of users are aged 18 to 24 (During Jan 2008, according to Hitwise ). Best Buy too, created an internal social platform for employees eyes only called Blue Shirt Nation. It’s gotta be better than working…

Buzz Kill
- How do we consider different age groups in social media? Considering the fastest growing social network is Webkinz (7 - 12 yr olds) and visits from the 55 and older crowd represent the largest increase over the past 2 years (Hitwise), won’t we be missing the boat if we don’t plan for this opportunity now? Are college kids really the biggest consumers on the planet?

- ROI. Panelists did not have clear direction on showing ROI for social media. They suggested that social media costs be put in product research or other buckets. They suggested that “relationships” can not be measured in dollars or cents. Shouldn’t we be more accountable? This is why I’m glad I work in search, most of my stuff is measurable. If I’m getting you crappy results, you should fire me. I deserve it.

Wanting More Social Media
They are the most brilliant social marketers! I left feeling motivated, social, and engaged. They left me wanting more. More answers. More testing with social marketing tactics.

I started right away and signed up for twitter. I intend to use the powers of social media (twitter, Facebook) to follow these social media mavens and learn all the secrets not left behind…

By Lisa R | Posted in online marketing, social media, social networking | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)