Month: November 2006

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The new Weekly Insight podcast that we recorded on Friday is now up. The show is getting better and better every week, and I’d definitely suggest checking out this new episode if you haven’t done so already. We grill affiliate educators, grill Wayne on ReveNews and have a great debate on the state of affiliate marketing (you can only imagine what Jeff, Amanda and I came up with!).

Thanks to Carsten for the plug on ReveNews as well!

Weekly Insight – 11/03/06 (83 MINUTES)

This Week’s Gossip and News:

– MonkeyPhonecall to Scoble
– Affiliates: To Educate Them or Not?
– A Critical Look at Revenews, Gurus, Conferences
– Is Our Industry Looking Backward?
– Deep Thoughts: Search, Memetics & Affiliates

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George Michie, VP of Client Services at The Rimm-Kaufman Group, has sent me a detailed and illuminating response to a previous post where I questioned some of his conclusions about Google’s AdWords Broad Match. Thanks for the bak-and-forth, George! Let us know what you think of the issue in the comments.

“Brooooooad match as you ably define it is a nice crutch for advertisers who don’t want to take the time to billed a massive term list with carefully assigned landing pages and targeted copy. The bottom line is Google’s matching algorithms are the best in the world, but they’re no where near as good as those of a smart human, and imho never will be. Language is really hard.

But the proof is in the pudding. Every time we’ve pulled terms off of broad/extended match and put them on phrase or exact match, the conversion rates on those terms have improved. The tough calculus is whether that improvement gives enough ability to bid more and gain higher position and traffic, such that you get better performance and just as much volume. Often it turns into a volume versus efficiency game.

Particularly with the added complexity brought in by the local advertising network, it seems that Google’s brain center has too many ads to choose from within a retailer’s portfolio, and they aren’t making choices with the best interests of the retailer in mind. We think retailers will benefit by shrinking the choices for them until they learn to better prioritize among them.”

Here’s the plot summary: Yesterday on the Weekly Insight Podcast, there was a discussion of a Monkey Phone Call that Microsoft MVP and Google VIP Wayne Porter had sent my way. He then hatched the plan to send one to Robert Scoble because we were discussing LinkedIn and I brought up Scoble’s infamous post on his hatred of that platform. The rest follows from that. You have to read this for yourself (Ender’s Game meets On the Road).

btw, I’m building an API for WordPress that will translate Porter-ese in the future…

“Hi Scoble, hey, few of us on a podcast (not drunk although I suspect someone hit the rubber cement a bit- host)…It should be coming out soon perhaps when Tipper Gore is done labeling it. In truth, really it is that long and I advise you just to skip to the last 10 minutes where there is some real insight into AIs affecting algorithms (unlike this totally ridiculous crap on broadmatch) and save the other valuable time in your life to do anything else….or listen to the monkey phone call piece.

One guy, that Ze Frank loving- Summerian babbeling (ok listen to podcast for that) was on too- Sam Harrelson. Sam and I were wondering did you get get the monkey phone call I sent over earlier? If so- how was it? Was it performed well for the $10 bucks? (I prefer Lindex$)

Scale of of 1 to 10 with 1 being equal to having your linkedin url scrawled on a restroom wall of a Second Life Gor convention and a 10 having naked conversations hit the bestseller list and only to find you had accidentally encoded the location of the Holy Grail and even random passages of the Da Vinci Code….(btw I’ll work on a way to make LinkedIn fun for you- I did it for spam- I can do it for dry business networks.)

Thanks for the time.. if you have a moment to give us a numeral- we need a number to settle the bet (it decides the amount of times I get to punch Jeff with my MSFT MVP pin in his eye)…if you haven’t gotten the call yet (Sam Harrelson got his and it worked out pretty well, but he said it was kinda weird and I think in a fatal attraction kind of way) Please tell me so I can ensure the call was delivered. see http://www.monkeyphonecall.com

I’ll work hard on your christmas gift maybe something you can blow up in a podcast or an old Apple PC- no real difference really. Btw- if you know Rubel’s cell number please let me know (I’ll treat it respectfully- well most of the time- I swear never to put on the wall of a truckstop)- we figure the whole Edelman- Walmart thing has Rubel down a bit, like from A to B – status maybe a C…. It really isn’t him totally- I have dealt with various aspects of Edelman over the years and well…idiots pretty much.

So I think three or four monkeycalls in a row has got to make him smile or have a transient ischemiac attack…which could erase the memory….or perhaps get me sued by Edelman. Both equally entertaining given Edelman’s lawsuit would probably get kicked out when they figured out they sent in one-two year graduates to do jury manipulation lies halycon laced drinks influence…. really if you are going to do it- do it with style, nothing worse then bad WOM- it doesn’t even approach memetics.

Anyway thanks and so long for all the fish. Note- 42 is no good… need integer from 1 to 10.

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“Working on a way to create a strain of syphillis to transmit in a VRML environment”.”

With $1 million in funding, BrightRoll (formerly PostRoller) has launched and is seeking to carve out a niche of contextual ad serving by making use of networks of various sites. While this is not particularly a new concept (see BlipTV or Streetfire or Magnify), BrightRoll has attracted huge media players such as MetaCafe.

The main question for BrightRoll and the others in this vertical is… what about Google? We know contextual Adsense ads are coming from Google in the YouTube and Google Video platforms, and that will set an industry standard in terms of relevancy and performance metrics. Will these competitors have time to line up major players before Google formally enters the market?

BrightRoll takes 50 percent of the ad revenue, but charges less depending on volume. He’ll never compete with a Valueclick, or sell ads to CNN. However, Sacerdoti said he wants to sign up networks of sites, so that he can run a relevant advertisement across, say 25 entertainment sites. The trick is getting a large enough network to make this pay.

VentureBeat » BrightRoll serving contextual ads in video

technorati tags:contextual, google, bliptv, magnify, brightroll

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Alan Rimm-Kaufman is a brilliant analyst (even has a PhD in Operations Research and Statistics and is a fellow Yalie… boolah boolah). However, I disagree with my fellow bulldog on some of the conclusions he makes about Google’s expanded search algo’s. I see those algo’s rapidly using the AI tech that Google has been developing for years to tack ahead and flank abusers and potential cpc issues of reporting. That AI (expanded match as Google defined it) allows for the AdSense platform to attempt to stay one click ahead of the frauders (admittedly, not always the case as Wayne Porter could certainly point out). But to dismiss the new results as mostly non-relevant ad serving based on a few observations seems premature. Google, more than ANY marketer, is concerned with relevancy, in my opinion (contextual, wiki’s, blogs, merchant process through Checkout, Docs, YouTube, possibly radio). I think Google has a good eye to the long term because of this concern on relevancy. Read Kaufman’s insightful piece and let me know what you think…

I think Google’s revenue maximizing algorithms have discovered that the combination of “extended match” and quality-score based auctions means they can pretty much serve any ad you have on any search related to your category. The result? Higher cpcs, less traffic because of the less targeted copy, and lower conversion rates because the landing pages are wrong: a perfect storm for advertisers, degraded results for users, but more short-term revenue for Google.

New Adwords Broad Match Can Harm SEM PPC Campaign Economics

technorati tags:adsense, google, search, clickfraud, ppc, seo, affiliate

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ValueClick continues to draw attention for its higher than expected earnings last quarter.  It’s shares have jumped more than 15% already.  When will the VC’s start coming and will a bigger fish be making a move soon?  Too early to tell, but we’ll keep our eyes open…

Not in the betting mood on the market, but I am definately adding some ValueClick to the portfolio tomorrow.

An amazing breakout to all-time highs. In reading about the business, I am amazed no one has made a play for them and emailed a smart friend just that this afternoon.

Value Click continues to benefit from a continued fragmentation of online media media consumption.

Howard Lindzon

technorati tags:valueclick, affiliate, marketing

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Content king/queen/monarch MarketingSherpa has been acquired and I can’t say enough about Anne’s hard work in making this happen.  The MarketingSherpa team is a class act and has always been (and will continue to be, I’m sure) a great resource for those in online marketing or affiliate marketing.  With over 200,000 readers and 700 case studies, the Sherpa is poised to elevate itself even further…

Anyway, enough gushing. I’m happy to hear they’ve been acquired by yet another class act in MEC labs. Congrats to Anne and all my other friends at MS! Official release here.

MarketingSherpa Gets Acquired By MEC Labs Group – ReveNews – Jim Kukral, Online Revenue News & Opinions Since 1998

technorati tags:marketingsherpa

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Mashups have revolutionized the social web by freeing up access to services and allowing publishers to have a stake and claim in the chain of interaction with a merchant besides just passing on eyeballs or qualified leads.  It’s inevitable that CPA affiliates begin to use mashups.  SuperAff.com has a nice post today on the subject…

The technical side to this is above my capabilities atm, but I can definitely see what an important tool this can be for Affiliate Marketers.

The Affiliate Marketing Blog

technorati tags:mashup, affiliate, marketing

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