Gasta Comment: Google doesnt own the Internet

Matt Cutts Explains Why You're Out of Luck

If you've been involved with the web for any significant amount of time, there is a good chance there may be pages up somewhere that you're not thrilled about, but are out of your power to remove. Whether it is a page you made in high school or somebody else talking smack about you, you're concerned about your online reputation (as you should be) and would like to see the page removed from Google's index altogether.

Unfortunately, Google cannot be held responsible for this because as they say on the official help page for "How do I remove content from Google Search Results?" they do not own the Internet. The company says, "In order for information within Google search results to change, the information must first change on the website where it appears."
Matt Cutts Blog

Google's Matt Cutts posted about this on his own blog after receiving countless emails from people making such requests. He was kind enough to share his response to these emails, which usually goes something like this:

Unfortunately there’s not much I can do. The page you pointed out is not spam, and pretty much the only removals (at least in the U.S., which is what I know about) that we do for legal reasons are if a court orders us. We typically say that if person A doesn’t like a webpage B, only removing page B out of Google’s search results doesn’t do any good because webpage B is still there (e.g. it can be found by going to it directly or through other search engines). In that sense, the presence of that page in Google’s index is just reflecting the fact that the page exists on the wider web.

The best actions for you from our perspective can be one of a couple options. Either contact whoever put up webpage B and convince them to modify or to take the page down. Or if the page is doing something against the law, get a court to agree with you and force webpage B to be removed or changed. We really don’t want to be taking sides in a he-said/she-said dispute, so that’s why we typically say “Get the page fixed, changed, or removed on the web and then Google will update our index with those changes the next time that we crawl that page.” Our policies outside the U.S. might be different; I’m not as familiar with how legal stuff works outside the U.S.

This is pretty much the same thing you get from the official page. "If you can't get the webmaster to do anything, we're really sorry, but our hands are tied without action from the webmaster," is the position stated there. Though Google uses the opportunity to suggest reporting social security or credit card information in results, adult content in results when SafeSearch is on, defamatory content in results, and inappropriate images in video results. So if the content you're trying to get removed falls into any of these categories, there might still be hope for you.

Once people understand that Google can't take responsibility for listings they don't like, they seem (for the most part) to accept the explanation. It's the understanding in the first place that is often lacking. Hopefully Matt's comments will set the record straight.

Ultimately this leaves you no choice but to amp up your reputation management efforts. Go to the root of the problem. Make nice with people if you have to. It won't always work, but just like with the rest of life, sometimes you have to live with past mistakes and acceptance that someone might not like you.

Gasta News: Top ten online retailers in UK see Increase in Traffic in December 2008

Visits to the top ten online UK retailers grew by an average of 37% year-on-year through the Christmas period, according to Nielsen Online.
Amazon, which averaged 15.6m unique users each month during the Christmas period (October to December) and Play.com, which averaged 5.7m unique users a month, were the only pure-plays to feature in the top ten.
Amazon was top of the list, with Argos coming in second (8.2m users on average per month) and Tesco in third (7.3m MW Live users on average each month).
Littlewoods, which ranked sixth, was the fastest growing site in the top ten after it saw a 66% year-on-year increase.
Asda (8th) grew by 53% over the Christmas period while Marks & Spencer (5th) saw a 46% increase.
Alex Burmaster, communications director of Nielsen Online, said, "Online retail won't be impervious to the tighter financial environment but it has an opportunity to weather the storm better than other elements of the economy, particularly if retailers promote the web as the best way of finding cheaper goods in the most efficient and convenient way possible."

Gasta Vertical ad network

Can Advertisers use Ad Networks for Brand Advertising?

That depends on the network. Over the past decade we have seen some very creative advertisers do amazing online brand building programs. Yet, most of these clever programs that come to mind were executed on an individual site or portal. Are ad networks only going to attract the direct response campaigns and the low CPMs associated with direct response? The answer is: “No”


The more complete answer is still “that depends” on such things as the quality of the network’s members and the networks ability to execute hi impact ad opportunities. Most ad networks are often associated with remnant advertising on lesser quality sites. This is often why the network does not disclose a complete list of its sites. Call me old fashioned, but if I am responsible for building a brand I want to know where my hard earned ad dollars are being invested, and I probably don’t want my ad impressions only showing up at 2:00 AM (unless of course I am selling sleeping aids).


More and more ad networks are willing to show a complete site list, offering things like geo targeting and even day parting. Yet, that is still not enough to satisfy many brand advertisers who care about things like editorial quality and high impact ad campaigns. That is why vertical ad networks associated with real media companies are becoming more popular.


Media companies like IDG, Forbes, Martha Stewart have been creating some of the highest quality content in their respective verticals and have been executing big online brand campaigns for year. Now these established media companies, and many more like them, are expanding the brand solutions they offer by building online ad networks. This creates a great opportunity for brand advertisers looking to expand their market share.


When you stop and think about it, a media company like IDG already is an ad network with over 450 “owned and operated” technology websites around the world. It makes sense for IDG to expand to include selected independent technology sites. For example, IDG already knows how to recognize, recruit and nurture the best editorial experts in technology media. IDG also has executed countess online branding campaigns across its network of sites. IDG’s TechNetwork is a natural extension. Plus, IDG’s vetting of each partner site insures advertisers will get the quality editorial environment and multiple site execution which are critical to an ad network branding campaign.


The best part for big brand advertisers is when these high impact ad campaigns arrive on these independent sites the impact can be well above average. That is because independent sites often miss out on the online brand campaigns until they partner with an establish media company. Many experts predict that more and more established media companies will be building high quality networks of sites which is good news to brand advertisers looking to find uncluttered ad environments and independent sites looking for access to brand advertisers in their markets.

By Kevin Normandeau on Jul 21, 2008 in The Aggregation of Fragmentation

Gasta News:New domain to be web's phone book

source: BBC
The .tel addresses will be reachable via mobiles too

From 3 December companies will be able to buy addresses associated with a new web domain.

Called .tel, the domain is intended to act as a universal contact point rather than as a hook on which to hang websites.

Owners of .tel domains will be encouraged to populate it with details about how they can be contacted.

The domain is designed to work on the web and with mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone and Blackberry.

"All other top level domains like .com use the net's domain name system in the same way," said Kash Mahdavi, head of Telnic which runs the .tel registry. "They all store IP address and they are all about websites."

By contrast, he said, .tel had been designed to act as a repository for all a company's or individual's contact details. A .tel domain, said Mr Mahdavi, could feature phone numbers, e-mail addresses, GPS data or buttons that kick off a Skype call.

Mr Mahdavi said it had some similarities to the Enum projects that aim to bind phone numbers and e-mail addresses into a unified contact system.

The flaw, he said, with Enum was that it demanded people be on the web. By contrast, .tel will work with many different devices such as smart phones.

Phase one

Owners of .tel domains will be able to manage their contact details via a simple dashboard and surrender as much or as little information as they desire, said Mr Mahdavi.

He added that .tel domains have a "friending mechanism" that will grant close friends access to private areas that give more ways for a person to be contacted.

"It will become their place on the cloud," said Mr Mahdavi.

Access to the domain is being granted in three phases. The first begins on 3 December and is the "sunrise" phase for trademark owners to get domains related to their brands.

The second phase begins on 3 February 2009 and is a "landrush" phase open to anyone though domains will be on sale at a premium.

The final general availability phase starts on 24 March 2009 when the domain will be open to all comers.

Phil Kingsland, director of communications for Nominet, the firm that manages the .uk domain, notes that a number of new domains will go online when a new process for allocating them rolls out next year.

"Businesses will need to be aware of the potential uses of .tel and how it can work for them," said Mr Kingsland.

"They should have a clear and robust domain name strategy in place, so that when new top-level domains such as these come onto the market, they are ready for them."

Mr Mahdavi would not be drawn on the final price for a .tel domain but said it would be in line with that charged for other domains.

Gasta Long tail keywords

Keywords can be split into two main groups, short tail keywords and long tail keywords, or broad keywords and narrow keywords. The term ‘long tail’ was coined by Chris Anderson and is used to describe the strategy of targeting less-competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive broad keywords. A long tail keyword is something like ‘Small Business Web Design’ while a short wail keyword is something like ‘Web Design’.

When you compare the two keywords, ‘Web Design’ has about 30 times as many competitors as ‘Small Business Web Design’ but ‘Web Design’ also gets far more searches each month. A small number of broad terms such as ‘Web Design’ and ‘Marketing’ account for a large proportion of searches but an equally large proportion of the searches are made up of millions of more specific search queries such as ‘Small Business Web Design’. This search distribution can be understood through the following graph.

Long Tail
A real life example
I speak about www.NarutoWallpaper.biz a lot and I will speak about it again in this article, each day NarutoWallpaper gets over 1000 visitors from search engines from roughly 200 unique keywords but the best keyword brings almost 50% of those visitors, following is a list of the top 12 keywords. Notice that the first keyword brings 45%, the second keyword brings 20% and the remaining 198 keywords account for the remaining 35% of the searches.

Keywords List


This distribution seems very similar to the graph I displayed earlier, the top few keywords account for a lot of the searches but there is many, many more specific searches which cumulatively total a significant figure. Let me display the keywords in graph form.

NarutoWallpaper Long Tail


You can see that the top two keywords bring in lots of traffic and the remaining keywords each bring minute amounts of traffic that cumulatively totals a significant amount, but separately are not significant.
Benefiting from the long tail
You may be wondering why anybody would want to target hundreds or thousands of keywords which bring only small traffic. Well the answer is simply that there is less competition so you can rank on the first page of Google for long tail keywords far easier than ranking for short tail keywords. Yes, they don’t bring a lot of traffic separately but if you target lots of long tail keywords you can get lots of easy traffic. Not everybody is capable of ranking highly for highly competitive keywords but anybody(!) can rank for long tail keywords.

Another benefit of long tail keywords is that the visitors convert amazingly well to sales and ad clicks. The visitors searching for long tail keywords know exactly what they want, be it ‘Small Business Web Design’ or ‘Half Price Armani Suits’, they know exactly what they want and hopefully you can provide it to them.

To put this into numbers, in general my websites might make $5 per 1000 impressions but from long tail visitors I can earn $100 per 1000 impressions, that’s 20 times the revenue if the traffic is equal. Although admittedly the traffic is not equal, my best keywords bring in more visitors than the long tail keywords combined, but the long tail keywords still bring in nice revenue.

On this website I have two pages providing free business resources: Free Business Card Templates and Sample Marketing Plan and Marketing Plan Template. Both are targeting long tail keywords such as ‘DJ Business Cards’ and ‘Massage Business Cards’. Those two pages make a lot of revenue per 1000 impressions but currently have low traffic. The keywords I am targeting are very specific and the visitors are getting what they came for so they convert well.
Conclusion
Whether you can achieve high rankings for competitive keywords or not, long tail keywords could be highly beneficial for you. If you have a website selling ‘Armani Suits’ but can’t pull any search engine traffic, rather than targeting the keyword ‘Armani’ or ‘Armani Suits’ try targeting more specific keywords such as ‘Armani Mens Suits’. Hopefully you will see an increase in conversions and sales.

Popularity: 43% [?]

Gasta Search Network:New Report Documents Insanely Long Tail Of Search

New Report Documents Insanely Long Tail Of Search

When something seemingly insignificant is able to control a more powerful entity, talk of the tail wagging the dog occasionally comes into play. But according to a new report from Hitwise, the long tail of search is capable of something more akin to launching the dog into orbit.


Dustin Woodward, a Seattle-based SEO and Web analytics expert, tried to look at the top 10000 search terms recorded by Hitwise during a three-month period. What he got was a very strange-looking graph, with data displayed in almost invisible amounts along great stretches of both axes.


"Top 10,000 Search Terms by Percentage of All Search Traffic" (Source: Hitwise)

So Woodard then examined just the top 100 terms, and this sample generated a graph more normal in appearance. He writes, "However, this is just 100 search terms out of the more than 14 million."

It turns out that, at least in this particular three-month data set, the top 100 terms accounted for just 5.7 percent of all search traffic. Expand to the top 500, 1000, and 10000 terms, and just 8.9 percent, 10.6 percent, and 18.5 percent of all search traffic is involved, respectively.


"Top 100 Search Terms by Percentage of All Search Traffic" (Source: Hitwise)

Woodard concludes, "This means if you had a monopoly over the top 1,000 search terms across all search engines (which is impossible), you'd still be missing out on 89.4% of all search traffic. There's so much traffic in the tail it is hard to even comprehend. To illustrate, if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles."

Lone bloggers, SEO professionals, and small businesses (among all other sorts of things) should be able to take comfort in this discovery. Woodard's analysis makes it look like there's plenty of traffic for everyone, without a need for cutthroat behavior and the spending of huge sums of money over the top few search terms.

A better approach might be to optimize for a lot of truly niche terms and see what happens. Be careful not to confuse increased holiday traffic for success - and also not to put your holiday income at risk in the event of failure - but some small-scale testing seems appropriate, at least.

Anyone wanting even more reasons to experiment should know that the Hitwise sample only included 10 million U.S. Internet users, adult search terms were removed by filters, and the three spotlighted months were relatively slow ones.
By Doug Caverly

Gasta News: PAID SEARCH: How the paid search industry is killing itself

PAID SEARCH:
How the paid search industry is killing itself
It may not be as bad as the banking industry, but SEM could use some help. Here's how paid search can get itself back on track before things get worse.
As the financial markets continue to turn out bleak news, I've begun to think about the many parallels existing between Wall Street and the SEM industry.
Mergers, acquisitions and shotgun marriages
To start with, we're now in the middle of a wave of consolidations that are reminiscent of the successive mergers and takeovers now taking place in the banking sector.
Range Online is the latest independent SEM agency to pack up its tent, as it was folded into iProspect, which was itself acquired by U.K.-based Aegis some time ago. Range follows Outrider (bought by ad holding company WPP, which also owns 24/7 Real Media), Reprise Media (snapped up by Interpublic) and Inceptor (purchased by Verizon).
It's clear that many SEM agencies are having a tough time going it alone, and the shotgun marriage M&A trend will accelerate if the macroeconomic environment continues to deteriorate and the SEM industry -- like the financial markets -- continues to suffer from ills that are largely of its own making.
Search engines enabled this mess
The SEM industry has no direct equivalent to sub-prime mortgages, collateralized debt obligations or over-leverage, but it suffers from structural issues that are largely a product of its ostensibly self-serve nature. Google and the other engines have stoked the fever of irrational optimism by encouraging everyone to believe that all it takes to succeed at search is a credit card and a couple of hours studying the AdWords help file.
The result is a world in which marketers behave like self-medicating patients who believe that watching a webinar on urinary tract infections is equivalent to getting a consultation with an experienced urologist. The fact that a number of people believe they are more qualified to run search than the experts reflects a dismal lack of confidence in SEM agencies. So it's no surprise when expert companies feel that getting swallowed up by a larger conglomerate is preferable to going it alone.
Killing the golden goose
But the search engines aren't the only ones to blame. Like Wall Street's "shadow market," in which trillions of dollars worth of complicated instruments are traded without any oversight, the SEM industry has its own shadow industry -- the conference and trade show business. This business depends on a simple proposition: if you go to enough shows, attend the right panels and rub elbows with the right people, you'll walk away knowing enough to run a competent search campaign. This is as absurd as saying that you can become a qualified mechanic by attending an auto show.
The only reason conferences and trade shows are so profitable for the people who run them is that exhibitors remain willing to buy very expensive booth space. Heaven help the trade show people, however, if exhibitors ever actually read the shows' agendas, which are chocked with seminars on how to succeed without an SEM agency!
Greed may destroy us all
And now let's talk about greed, which is as rampant in SEM as it is on Wall Street. Too many SEM agencies seem to have taken their sales approach directly from Moe's Mortgage Shop. These agencies are commission-driven -- not service-driven -- organizations that don't realize that overselling their services actually hurts long-term revenue goals by disappointing clients, creating client churn and destroying reputations.
Unfortunately, even good SEM agencies get tarnished by the continued operation of the fly-by-nighters. The SEM industry has failed to purge itself of these people and I have zero confidence it will do so at any time in the future. If it turned out that Macy's was filled with pickpockets, don't you think people would stop shopping there? So yes, the SEM industry needs to choose responsible conduct over unrivalled greed, or we're all headed over a cliff.
How to bail ourselves out
I don't think the SEM industry needs a billion-dollar bailout, but I do think it needs to clean up its act. Cancerous companies, much like toxic CDOs, need to be cleansed from the SEM books before confidence can be restored. Paid search practitioners need to be meaningfully accredited, not merely rubber-stamped, before they can run search campaigns. The search engines and the shadowy SEM conferencing business need to stop pushing the ridiculously destructive notion that neophytes can become as qualified as those with years of experience after only a few quick lessons.
Finally, SEM agencies should start thinking seriously about sharing risks with their clients. Hopefully the seasoned, expert agencies will launch programs to limit clients' downside risks and help stabilize the SEM industry once again. After all, the world has more than its share of uncertainty to navigate through on a day-to-day basis, and all the "black boxes" in our industry can be mind-boggling. The least we can do for our clients is present the clarity they deserve when we engage with them.
Mark Simon is vice president, industry relations, Didit.

Gasta News: Music goes portable again.

In a week that will see heavy coverage of MySpace Music when it launches, SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) has announced an ambitious venture to sell its microSD memory cards pre-loaded with DRM-fr*ee MP3 music from all the four majors EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. The service, dubbed “slotMusic”, will launch this coming holiday season in U.S., at Best Buy and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), among others, and then will be launched in Europe, though no specific timeline was given.

The MicroSD format, a SanDisk invention, is used mainly in mobile phones, and also in some MP3 players. When slotMusic goes on dale, these cards will be packaged with a tiny USB sleeve so that they can be compatible with various PCs and laptops, and any other device with a USB connector, including say an in-car sound system. The MP3-based music tracks will be played back at up to 320 kbps, the company said. With 1GB of capacity, slotMusic cards can hold songs, as well as liner notes, album art, videos, and other content that an artist/labels may choose.

There have been previous attempts by SanDisk and others to sell music and content cards through retails, though with limited success.

SanDisk is also in the midst of a takeover attempt by Samsung, which made its $5.85 billion public bid for the company last week, but the company rejected it as too low.

Gasta Advetising set to grow

Find the online opportunities in your own backyard: Gasta.com

Billions of local ad dollars will be moving online in coming years. Find out which outlets offer the best potential returns.

These days, the advertising community is focusing its attention on how to create ads for online media -- including video, rich media, Flash, etc. -- and the revenue potential associated with these channels. However, a less-often-asked but vitally important question in terms of industry shift, as well as dollars and cents, is this: Where will these ads be placed?

Industry estimates suggest that mobile advertising will reach nearly $10 billion in the next few years, with online video reaching nearly $3 billion. However, advertising at the local market level -- although not as frequently discussed -- has the potential for even bigger numbers and greater growth. What's more, local advertising isn't at odds with mobile and online video, as many assume. Rather, rich media and geotargeted place-based mobile advertising are likely to be big components of that local online ad spend. Within the context of the changing media landscape, local online advertising represents a massive opportunity that is coming into its own -- and bears more attention from the advertising community.

Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local." And while that's not quite true of advertising, it does resonate when assessing this new shift into hyper-local marketing and advertising. According to eMarketer, $97 billion of the $157 billion -- more than 60 percent -- of the advertising market in the U.S. is focused on local. The online portion of that has thus far lagged behind the other advertising channels, with only about $2.1 billion -- 2 percent -- of local advertising being online at the end of 2007. However, that number is expected to more than triple over the next four years to more than $7.8 billion. That's a huge movement of dollars shifting toward reaching local audiences online.

But where are these dollars going to end up?

Although traditional local media -- Yellow Pages, newspapers, radio and broadcast television -- all have an online presence, none of them enjoys the dominance on the web that they do in their "home markets." Yet their audiences are moving online at faster and faster rates, resulting in major drop-offs in print subscriptions to newspapers, broadcast TV audiences, terrestrial radio listenership and Yellow Pages customers.

For example, the Kelsey Group recently found the erosion of print Yellow Pages is going to increase from 2-3 percent to more than 10 percent this year. That's a pretty massive decrease year over year. And even the Yellow Pages Marketing Association concedes that although online usage of Yellow Pages is growing, a 10 percent drop in print usage dwarfs the increase in online searches. Newspapers are in a similar boat with their advertising; online ad sales are climbing, but offline usage declines are taking a larger chunk of ad sales away from the industry as a whole.

And yet, projections show online ad sales more than tripling -- and there has to be a place for all that advertising to land, outside of the traditional media's online presences mentioned above.

With Google, Yahoo and online Yellow Pages growing their audiences, there is certainly going to be growth in local business searches. But what about brand advertising and trying to reach people who are migrating away from traditional television, radio and newspaper outlets for their news?

The numbers are a little grim. There are about 1,400 daily newspapers and 7,000 television and radio stations in the U.S., and back-of-the-envelope math shows that they each produce about three to six stories per day, or about 22,000 local stories for the entire U.S. This for an audience of roughly 20,000 individual cities and towns. All these players used to be able to back up their locally produced content with national stories, thereby providing a full news experience for their viewers or readers. But, the internet has changed all that; people get their national news from national sources. Instead of competing with other local newspapers, papers are competing with every news site that has a web page. Given this fragmentation, local news sites are not maintaining their market share.

So what's going to take up the slack?

Well, nature abhors a vacuum. Thus, amateur, user-generated content and commentaries are taking off in local markets. The internet's solution to the dearth of local news coverage is the same as it has been with other problems of scale: let the people build it themselves. Similar to Wikipedia, the Open Directory and Usenet, truly local content is going to be provided by the people who live there.

In looking at sites like MetroBlogs, Gothamist publications, Outside.in, NowPublic, Baristanet and Topix (the site that I run), it becomes apparent that a massive amount of attention and investment has been paid to giving people a platform for engagement with the places they live. And while social networks (based on who you know) like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace have generated a lot of usage, and even more buzz, none of them has really provided a locally contextual venue. You are unlikely to meet the neighbors who live two blocks away via Facebook or LinkedIn. However, when that same family starts blogging about your neighborhood or commenting on something another neighbor wrote, it's a compelling discussion -- one that you're likely to read and possibly even join.

Given the aforementioned advertising growth and the decline of the traditional places for it to go, user-generated content is where the action is going to be. The local online outlets that make the most sense for a given campaign will vary greatly depending on where you live and who you're trying to reach with your advertising. But the potential audience size available through these channels is impressive. Speaking for Topix, we've seen comment rates go from around 30,000 comments a day in the middle of 2007 to more than 140,000 comments a day -- or more than 3.5 million comments a month -- across more than 20,000 cities and towns within the U.S.

Media consumption and local audiences' preferences are shifting. Advertising is going to shift as well. So along with that cool viral video and mobile campaign, consider how you can make the most of region-specific opportunities as the $97 billion gorilla of locally targeted ad dollars spent in the U.S. starts to move online.

Chris Tolles is CEO of Topix

Gasta Ad Network

Does your ad network make the grade?

With an explosion in the number of ad networks over the last 18 months, it has become increasingly difficult for agencies and clients to identify which network is their best long-term marketing partner -- the network that can deliver a brand's objectives year in, year out.

It will come as no surprise that I believe in the value that a strong network can provide a brand, but the operative word in that sentence is "strong." Ad networks are emphatically not interchangeable, and the business relationships you create in this sector can make a big difference in how well you exceed your business objectives.

As one of the pioneers in this space, I have seen a lot of brands and networks work together over the years. That experience has led me to conclude that there are nine key considerations that should be used to determine what ad networks a planner should choose to have as part of their marketing plans. In my experience, these factors are relevant to both the "vertical" ad network sector, as well as the "horizontal" or general market sector:

Take a look at your ad networks checklist.

Site quality and transparency

• Site quality: Some ad networks truly represent the best sites online. Some mostly sell junk. In my view, the quality of content has both qualitative and quantitative benefits for a brand. On the quant side, sites with better content hold viewer eyes longer on each page, and that enduring exposure makes it far more likely that a user will notice an ad, interact with it and process its message. Qualitatively, there is evidence that the strength of content surrounding an ad can have an impact on brand perceptions. Quality content gives a brand increased credibility; in the vertical sector, having ads placed in quality content can also demonstrate brand support of a user's interest areas.

• Transparent site lists: There appear to be three kinds of site lists out there now: 100 percent transparent, ersatz transparent and "black box." The first and third categories are self-explanatory, while the second refers to networks that are willing to provide some "example" sites, but not the entire list. Although our network does share its entire site list, I don't believe that is an essential consideration for an advertiser. This is because the sites not on your plan have no bearing on your brand, but the sites on your plan do have a profound bearing on your brand. You deserve to know where your ads are running -- all of your ads.

Reach and targeting

• Reach: You don't need to go with the biggest network, but focus your major network spending on players with large numbers of your users/prospects, for practical reasons. Digital planning, buying and reporting are complex enough without having to deal with 25 networks for every buy. By choosing a mix of larger vertical networks and a leading horizontal or two, you can simplify your efforts considerably.

Targeting options: Whether or not you are currently using advanced targeting approaches, having access to some of the methodologies can be a boon for a planner. Behavioural, retargeting and audience segmentation will likely be a part of your future plans, and creating working relationships with highly capable networks can make capitalizing on these technologies easier and more productive in the future.

Cross-platform and growth

Cross-platform opportunities: Just when most marketers are becoming reasonably comfortable with online ads, the media environment has begun to diversify across digital media platforms in a big way. While vehicles like mobile, gaming, social media and widgets aren't new, they are all rapidly reaching a critical mass state that makes ignoring them shortsighted. Some networks have already recognized this glacial change and can offer you entrée into such platforms as part of your standard buys. You would do well to consider these networks more carefully, as they can help guide your efforts through our dramatically changing media environment.

Growth trends: Networks and sites that are growing make under-delivery less likely and ensure that your ads appear in highly involving content. Additionally, when more and more sites are joining a network, you can be assured that they are offering a quality marketing environment.

Exclusive sites and reporting

Exclusive site representation agreements: The polar extremes of the network business are "leftover" networks that sell remnant inventory versus "exclusive" networks that are the outsourced sales arms of publishers. Naturally, most networks fall somewhere in between. But particularly in the "vertical" side of the business, working with networks that are the exclusive sales agents of at least some of their sites provides assurance that they have unique understanding of that vertical, and can provide value-add insights that help make your efforts more efficacious.

Reporting capabilities: If you think about how much time your team spends futzing with spreadsheets, it'll be immediately apparent why working with partners that offer strong reporting should be high on your list of considerations. Depending on your reporting approach, they should either offer strong standalone systems or a way to easily integrate data into existing reporting platforms like DFP. Good reporting also makes real optimization possible -- and to actually optimize, you need to free up hours that would otherwise be spent cursing at Microsoft Excel files.

The people: Before you sign with a network, think about the person who will be serving your account? Is he/she responsive? Proactive? Smart? Do they answer your call promptly? Do they really listen to what you want and need? Great networks can be murder to deal with if your salesperson is lousy. Do yourself a favour and skip the networks that have teams that create problems instead of solutions.

Nine simple considerations -- none of them rocket science -- but each of them an important way to filter the 300 or so networks out there down to a manageable short list. If you choose correctly, you will benefit from long-term relationships that really help build your success.

I hope this brief list of considerations helps you find exactly the right ad network for your future efforts

Robert Tas Sportgenic.

Gasta SEO: ThinkMetrics Articles

Learn where most companies misstep when it comes to this crucial component of their online marketing strategies.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of tuning the content and coding of a website in order to maximize its listings in search engines. SEO should be part of every well-rounded online marketing program. Pay-per-click advertising is all very well, but it means you have to pay for every visitor. SEO is about getting free traffic from the search engines. Over the course of two years or more, nothing has a better return on investment than SEO. Thus, if you plan on having a website that runs for more than two years, search engine optimization should be a key part of your online marketing strategy.

I started doing search engine optimization in 1996 when Web Position (the world’s first SEO tool) was in beta. I remember receiving an e-mail from the company that pointed out that its tool would make it possible to sell SEO services to clients. At the time, nobody was doing search engine optimization, but it was instantly obvious to me that such a service would be essential if people wanted to be found on the web. I have now been doing search engine optimization for 12 years -- and in some areas I "own" Google.

The most common mistake that organizations make with regard to SEO is bringing their SEO consultants into the process too late. Many companies fail to give SEO its due consideration during a website's design phase. In fact, many companies don't give it any thought at all until after a site's design has been finalized. However, it is during the planning and design processes that SEO considerations are most important and will provide the greatest advantage.

Coding for success

The coding of a site affects search engine optimization in many ways. In fact, coding has a greater impact on a site's listings in the search engines than the site's content. Many sites -- including those of some top brands -- simply cannot be read by search engines at all. If you want to see for yourself, install the Google taskbar in your browser and start looking at the page ranks that appear when you visit various sites. Page rank is Google's assessment of the global importance of a site. It will not take you long to find major sites that have no page rank. Unless the site is very new, a lack of page rank means Google cannot read it.

The technology used to build a site has a direct bearing on search engine optimization. For example, most search engines will not read a page if a URL contains a question mark. A question mark indicates that the content is the result of some dynamic process, such as a content management system or PHP. In other words, it tells a search engine that the content is being generated automatically.

When a search engine perceives that content is automatically generated, it has no way of knowing if the content is generated every hour or only once a year. There is typically a delay of six to eight weeks between the time that a site is read by a search engine and the time at which it appears in the listings. Thus, the search engine has no way of knowing whether what it has just read will still be there when it sends a user to the page in a month or two. In short, any page with a question mark in its URL is potentially untrustworthy. It was precisely for this reason that the mod rewrite module was produced for Apache. (Microsoft has a similar module for IIS.) Mod_ rewrite enables you to lay static URLs over dynamic ones. Adding mod_ rewrite to a system before you start coding it is a small job. Adding it to a large dynamic shopping site after it is running is a major headache, and may simply be impossible.

If you read Larry Page's and Sergey Brin's Stanford University dissertation, describing the algorithms they wanted to use in a search engine, you will find that a great deal of space is devoted to the analysis of the importance of pages according to their position inside the navigation structure of a website. Therefore, how you arrange the pages and how they link to each other has a direct bearing on the search engine optimization of those pages. I have used this information to look at potential site designs and, in some cases, have found that the core content would actually rank as less important than the site's privacy policy, simply because of the way links were built to the respective sections.

There are many ways of coding the same page, and not all ways are equal to a search engine. Dynamic menus are a case in point. At present, search engines cannot run JavaScript or Flash. The only hyperlinks that they can follow are standard HTML tags. You want search engines to follow your links because that is how they find the pages inside your site. It is therefore important that you create navigation structures that they can follow. Some dynamic menus can be followed by search engines and some cannot. It depends on how they are coded. Generally speaking, menus that are dynamic because of changes to CSS properties are fine. However, those in which the target page is called via programming are not. Once again, it is best to lay considerations like this down during the design brief because changing every link in the site later is expensive.

This becomes more important if you plan on having a content management system (CMS). If software is going to be writing your copy, or code, you need to ensure that what it produces is as search engine-friendly as possible. Many content management systems generate horrific code from a search engine point of view. Once again, changing a CMS after it has been deployed is a major nightmare -- and often impossible.

Early communication for optimal results

You often won't hear complaints from SEO consultants unless search engine activity is absolutely impossible (and sometimes not even then). SEOs are used to dealing with (from their perspective) sub-standard sites, sites that are barely readable by search engines, and sites that contain many problematic elements. SEOs have learned to accept such sites, and they often have no choice but to do the best they can with the garbage they are given by customers. Many SEOs have learned that pointing out problems may result in a client's deciding to go to a yes-man who will not make waves and is happy to take the client's money for a year or two while achieving nothing.

If you want to get the most out of search engine optimization, your SEO consultant should be the first person you talk to when developing a site -- before you even write a brief and start searching for potential designers. The sites that have had the most success when I've worked with them are the ones that asked me to modify their briefs to cover the requirements of SEO. The last time I did this, three of the five design agencies that had been asked to bid withdrew because they could not meet the standards required to make a search engine-friendly site. Throughout the design and construction process, I worked closely with the coders. Most new sites don't get listed by Google at all for months. Our site was No. 1 in Google within two weeks of launch.

Bring SEO experts into the discussions of what will be built at the earliest possible moment. Don't let the design agency or your own designers get their feet under the table until you have spoken to the SEO expert.

There are many elements that need to be considered during the SEO process, and these discussions often result in the SEO expert becoming the most unpopular person at the table. Such conversations often degrade into a litany of "no, you can't do that because the search engines don't like it," followed by "no, you can't do that because the search engines don't like it." Companies have to watch their favorite design features drop like flies. Sometimes designers have even gone so far as to accuse me of trying to cripple their designs. But ultimately, it is not the fault of the SEOs; they are just the messengers. They are simply telling you the way things are. When it comes down to it, if you want your site to get listed in the search engines, you have to give the search engines what they want.

Remember: Search engines do not have to list every site on the Web. In fact, despite what they may claim, they don't even try. All a search engine has to do is provide people with a list of 10 reasonably valid results from which to choose. The lesson: You need the search engines. They don't need you. Therefore, it is incumbent upon you to understand what they require and give it to them.

Bringing an SEO in after a site is finished is like deciding to do the electrical wiring on a house after you have moved in. By bringing an SEO into the site design process, you can save time and money later. In addition, your site is likely to achieve listings that it could never achieve if SEO were undertaken after the site was already finished.

Design a site for the search engines, and the viewers will follow. Design a site the search engines can't read, and nobody will ever know it exists.

Brandt Dainow is an independent web analytics consultant and the CEO of ThinkMetrics.

Gasta News: Sky Music

Sky is set to launch a digital music store, in a bid to take on the likes of iTunes, HMV and Tesco.

Sky has partnered with major Universal Music to enable visitors to download thousands of songs from its artists including U2, Girls Aloud and Kanye West.

The service will be available for a single monthly subscription charge and users will able to both stream songs on-demand and download tracks. Customers will be able to listen to tracks through a range of devices such as iPods, MP3 players and mobile phones.

Sky, which plans to partner with other major and independent record labels, for the joint venture service, said it will roll out the digital store later this year.

Mike Darcey, COO at BSkyB, said the service is being set up to meet consumer demand for online music.

"Companies like Sky and Universal Music are well placed to work together to meet consumers' needs. We aim to offer an easy and affordable service for all UK music fans, while ensuring that artists are properly rewarded for their creativity."

Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive, Universal Music Group International, said, "The new Sky service will provide a compelling digital music experience, built for the ever growing digital appetite of music fans. In a world where a majority of UK homes have high speed broadband access, consumers will welcome a safe, state-of-the-art service and legal alternative to those services which exploit musicians without compensation."

Gasta SEM: SXC Marketing

Think you have SEM under control? Think again. Find out how to increase efficiency and lower the boom on the pesky problems of this popular tool.

Your SEM program is terrible. But that's all right because your boss doesn't understand a single thing you do -- he's just concerned that you are doing it and that your numbers look great.

So what are you doing wrong? First of all, stop patting yourself on the back with how great your SEM program is. You're really not that good. Seriously. Now let's move on.

A rock with arms can make SEM look good. Why? Because it's the last stop a consumer makes. By the time they type in a keyword on Google -- and it really is all about Google -- they've already decided what they're looking for. Television, radio, print, banners, events and billboards have all sucked their brains so dry that by the time they come to SEM, they are mindless lemmings.

"I must have product X. Must type in keyword to find product X. Must consume. More, more, more. It will make me happy."

What gets the credit for that last stop? SEM, of course. The consumer sees a television commercial, a print ad, an outdoor billboard and then goes online and types something into Google to find it. Voila!

Did SEM cause that sale or visit? Of course not. It is merely the conduit to it. It's like having an extra door to your store to let more people in. I always marvel at myopic managers who cut their other ad budgets and slowly see their SEM traffic drop and can't figure out why. The trickle may be slow at first, but the curve does become apparent over time. If you want to look like the hero in advertising on the brand side, go into SEM. It's just a shame the creative format requires the writing ability of five-year-old. But it's not about the creative, it's all in the strategy.

In SEM, if you are not maximizing the long tail you might as well be a rock with arms. Why? Google has become the de facto internet navigation engine. Forget portals. If someone wants to go somewhere online, they start at Google. A much smaller entity can compete in the niches of the bigger player's mass reach. It is precisely that "phenomena of choice" that makes the whole AdWords universe work. Unlike in product manufacturing, the price advantages of the long tail are huge in SEM. The fractured niche universe works here, because it's not about someone knowing your brand; it's about them knowing what they want. Going after the long tail in search is different than in product development, chasing after those consumers. As I wrote last week, the costs there can often be quite high, and your business model greatly dictates whether that is advisable.

So how and, more importantly, when do you go after that long tail? Make Google work first
The biggest problem I see with most marketers is diversifying too early. They go on MSN, Yahoo, Google and Ask simultaneously, constantly tweaking each individual program, keyword list and copy. All of that work requires duplicative efforts and drains the time on reporting requirements for your staff. They constantly question why this is working here and not there. It's not strategy, but comparative paralysis.

The Google universe is huge. It is also the biggest market opportunity. Get your entire program to work there first. Build the keyword lists, tweak the copy, expand, optimize and concentrate on making it work on Google. Keep on going down that long tail of keywords. Track performance over months. Expand to the Google Search Network; make the program work there first. Then, once you are hitting the point of diminishing returns, expand the entire program to MSN, Yahoo and Ask. This way it is a strategic approach that is efficient. You just port your program.

Now, are there going to be different performance dynamics across the other engines? Of course there will be. But getting Google to work first is essential. You will end up being able to expand faster than if you work on all platforms simultaneously.

"No time," is what I hear everyone in our industry scream. "Then be more efficient," I scream back. If you can't get your program to work on Google, it's not going to work anywhere else.

Shoot the copywriter, befriend the lawyers
Okay, this is hard for me. I am a copywriter, but seriously, using copywriters for SEM copy is like using a fly fishing pole to catch tuna. It's an efficiency nightmare. A net is coarse, bulky and blunt, but it is a lot more efficient. If you are going after the long tail, where the volume of keywords you will be using can approach the hundreds of thousands, eliminate the process of using a copywriter. A copywriter will grind your process to a halt.

But the copywriter isn't the only drag on efficiency. Remove the approval processes for all copy internally. Your director doesn't need to see it, and neither does your VP. Any approval process on copy just wastes time, a lot of time. And a lot of money, too. It is not about the individual keyword and the copy. It is about the corpus of words. You can A/B test copy within Google all day and keep tweaking it for best performers. A copywriter will never be able to provide copy that is so much better and more responsive that it overcomes the time suck from going after the long tail. The long tail value will far outweigh that. Step back and see the big picture.

In fact, the ones you really want to eliminate from the process are the lawyers. "But legal always has to see the copy!" No one is going to sue you over SEM copy because the search engines will shut you down long before that happens. They are the gatekeepers.

So what should you do with that legal department that is causing you nightmares? Well, befriend them. Sit down with them. Explain the issues, the cost to the company, the time drain on them, the speed to market issues and ask them to draft copy guidelines that you must adhere to. Can't use the word "Guarantee?" Then eliminate it from your copy and post those guidelines in the SEM department. You will save an enormous amount of money, time and frustration.

Look, a legal department once told me that we had to have a disclaimer in our SEM copy. The disclaimer was 120 characters. Ha! Show them the process, the copy and how it works. Set up a meeting with them to walk them through a single keyword posting, copy, the Google Console and then explain that you have 20,000 keywords. They'll get it.

Automate
Utilize ad optimization companies like DidIt or Efficient Frontier. You can try and go after the long tail yourself, but the only way you can effectively manage the portfolio as your keyword list expands into the thousands is to bring in some firepower. It's not about getting a click on your SEM ad, it's about getting the conversion on the back end. Remember that the click is irrelevant. What the consumer does when they get to your site is everything. Agencies like Efficient Frontier and DidIt not only have the tools to help you, their optimization technologies can adjust bid pricing for the most efficient conversion. The money you spend with them will never be more than the amount you save by using them. But it does take time for those systems to gain all of the intelligence they need to properly optimize.

I have heard stories of brands saying they tried optimization software but it didn't work. The only cases where I've seen optimization fail have been when companies did not give it enough time, were short-sighted or when companies approached SEM from a test program they did internally that showed better results. The problem with internal test programs is that anyone in SEM can make a small list of keywords extremely efficient. But when it's time to expand that list, the problem becomes unmanageable.

There are only two companies I know who took SEM in-house and ran it more efficiently. Both had unique business models and both designed their own optimization technologies for their business models. Essentially they have their own SEM agency internally. But Bob, Mary and that intern have no hope of making it scale efficiently internally unless they are given the resources to do so, and the one thing they will need most is time. If you are a small shop, agency or brand, you can do it yourself. It will just take a lot more time to scale, that's all.

Okay, so maybe your SEM program isn't awful, and maybe you're not a rock with arms. SEM is all about efficiency. It may not be the ad venue that's glamorous, and you're not going to be able to point to the television or billboard and brag as you tell your friends you did that. But if you start strategically and approach the process diligently, you will see better results with less of a headache.

Sean X Cummings

Gasta Faster than 85% of Other Websites

Gasta Speed and Accuracy continues to reach Global audience.

• Gasta.com has a traffic rank of: 86,86858 (7793,845)
• Speed: Very Fast (85% of are slower), Time: 1.5econds
• Other sites that link to this site: 18190
• Online Since: 29-Jul-1998

Gasta Branding: Organic Search listings

Purchasing your keywords in InstantAds or SearchMatch on the Gasta and Europasearch network will significantly increase you web presence for the minimum price.

Google has unveiled its first major piece of research to prove search can have a big impact on a company brand . The move could help to drive significantly more brand budget online. The findings, from a pan-European research project commissioned by the search giant, showed coming top of organic listings raised purchase consideration of a brand 4%. It also found exposure to a listing in the top paid position, with no organic listing on the page, increased purchase consideration 20%. The new and (to the tech savvy generation) most important factor in branding your company is to get into search listings and Gasta.com is a really simple and inexpensive way of doing that.

Gasta Domains: www.londondocklands.com

Gasta has over 450 Domain names for sale including

www.londonsdockland.com

Domain Advertising Agency Offers £1.5M LondonDocklands.com For Sale!

London, May 19, 2008 - Today Domain Advertising Agency(DAA) announces it will broker the potential sale of one the most lucrative Geo Domain Names in the UK and Europe “LondonDocklands.com”. The London Docklands is a vast geographical area and one of the most historical destinations in the city of London. The area of London Docklands also represents many billions in financial trading terms through the most powerful global investment banks such as Morgan Stanley, with thousands of employees, residential and commercial real estate such as Canary Wharf with the tallest skyscrapers in Britain.

Prospective buyers are invited to submit offers by visiting the following url:

http://sales.domainadvertisingagency.com/domains/954/londondocklands.com

Domain Advertising Agency will post the wining bid on the front page of its website http://www.domainadvertisingagency.com when the domain is sold. The price tag of £1.5M is a cinch, considering the average 1 bed apartment price of £500,000 and the average commercial premises runs into several millions of pounds on average. The 2012 London Olympics is also right on the doorstep of London Docklands, and is also likely to drive up real estate prices in the area going forward.

Only two weeks ago, another geo domain name, “Bellvue.com” a vibrant suburb in Seattle, Washington sold for $150,000. Likewise, several geo domain names have sold over the last 18 months such as Branson.com for $1.5M, Buckhead.com an Atlanta suburb for $250,000 and Surrey.com a greater London suburb for $200,000 and WallStreet.com sold for over a million dollars in 1999.

London Docklands which stretches from the historic docks of Wapping , through the massive Canary Wharf financial centre, the Royal Docks and all the way through sought after Greenwich comprises some of the most historic buildings in the United Kingdom, juxtaposed with impressive modern architecture and thousands of impressive contemporary residential apartments for 21st century living. Other major attractions are the Millennium Dome, huge venues such as the Excel conference centre hosting mavericks such as Anthony Robbins, the gleaming Jubilee line tube extension and the busy London City airport, connecting business and leisure flights directly with Europe.

We hope to attract interested buyers such as London City Traders looking for a new venture investment, city property developers, online media consortiums and particularly foreign investors across Europe, Asia the Middle East and North America, looking for a niche opportunity to leverage their presence and investment in London. We certainly notice the significant number of Russian Oligarchs all over London, they are very welcome to submit offers too!

The domain owner, a born and bred Londoner and founder of Domain Advertising Agency.com, as a humble gesture of giving back to the community, will pledge ten percent of the net resulting sale to a charitable organization catering for the welfare of homeless citizens living in London Docklands.

Submitted by: Robert Haastrup-Timmi Find out more.

Gasta News: Brand Piggybacking

It's time to stop complaining about people piggy-backing on your search terms. Use it as an opportunity to hit back, be smarter, more nimble and win, just like Gasta.

Why the hell is someone able to advertise on Google using my brand name? Don't I own my brand name, and my product names? The simple answer is no, you don't, especially when it comes to using them in search. For the delusional lawyers that think they do, can I please laugh at you? It's gone. Shattered. You can have your brand terms copyrighted, trademarked and employ a whole team of leaders for their defense, but owning? That control state exists only in lawyers' minds. Yes, you may OWN them, but the reality is you just can't sue everybody, not anymore. Like copyrighted material that makes it onto video sites, it's a losing battle.

So, what you really need to do is look at this as an opportunity, not an obstacle.

The way that Google works, and I'm sure as hell going to get flack if I get this wrong, is that if the name is in the competitive set and it is relevant to the purchase, category, product or topic, you can buy it.

Now, what you cannot do, or are not supposed to do as a competitor to the brand, is use that brand name in the copy of that ad. You can use it in the title due to dynamic replacement, but you are not supposed to -- or it is greatly frowned upon if you do -- use it in the copy of the ad. But the reality? Eh, a lot more murky. There are just way too many advertisers buying terms, and it's that democratization that is fueling a lot of the growth.

Look, if a company is buying your product name, or your brand name, then you are doing something right. Are they riding the coattails of your brand equity? You bet your lazy corporate lemming butt they are. And they will ride it and ride it until you wise-up on how to defend it.

There are a number of companies that insist on not buying their brand names with the belief that "I am already ranked at the top of the organic results, so I don't need to." And that is true for many clients. But not buying your brand name in addition is ludicrous.

Here are three main reasons why you want to do this:

1. Combination punching
Enough research out there has shown us that the combination of having an organic link and a paid listing increases response by somewhere around 25 percent. Now, you could argue that the organic link is free and that paying for an additional 25 percent is not worth it. Wrong! Your competitors are unlikely to be over in the section of organic listings. They are hitting you in the ad space. Occupy that space so they don't own you. 2. The message
It's the one real way that you can exert control -- your message. The copy that is picked up thorough organic listings is much less easily controlled. It is the crawlers that determine it, and your homepage has to be specifically designed for that purpose to make it better. It is also relatively static and does not change over time. That would require new copy on the homepage, new tweaking and a whole new crawl by Google. When will that happen? Who knows. But you can control exactly what copy appears in a paid listing and about your brand. Adapt that copy to what is going on in your company right now. What is relevant today? Do you want everyone to end up on the one page that gets the highest organic listings? Are you sure? Have you just been hit with some bad PR? Thwart it right there and then lead the user directly to your response. Have: "Rumors untrue, company not being acquired" in the search copy.

There are a hell of a lot more people who search on terms than click on ads. Just because they didn't click doesn't mean you can't seed that meme. Press releases are a thing of the past -- a top-down linear cascade that no longer has relevance to today's consumer. Your brand names are your first line of defense in the PR war, so use them wisely.

3. Navigation
Search is not as much about searching and finding anymore as it is about navigation. People use search engines as "navigation engines" to get to where they are going. You look at the most popular queries in search engines -- the real top searches, not the ones that are edited. They are littered with URLs and brand names. It has just become easier to use search engines to type in URLs and company names than worry you'll end up at some domain park by typing one wrong letter. Spellcheck means you'll almost always get to where you want in the next click.

One of my most amusing ad buys at Ask.com was buying the word Yahoo for purchase on Google that led to Ask.com -- a wonderful triad. When running marketing at Ask, we had some significant challenges. It was never about beating Google. We were Google's largest distributor of ad listings in the world. It was a very symbiotic relationship. Frienemies, if you will. It was about getting people to think of us when they think of "search." Just by being there, we spur top-of-mind awareness for our brand. We were just not in people's consideration set. Look, the reason why Google seems lax is because competition in our business moves our whole industry forward, not just those companies that have been sitting on their brand equity like luddites. It was easy in offline -- just throw a bunch of lawyers at them. But online doesn't just mean those companies in your immediate competitive set, it means thousands of smaller shops that can now afford to advertise.

It's time you stopped complaining about people piggy-backing on your terms and started to look at it as an opportunity to hit back. "But they're driving up my costs for those words, and it's unfair!" Since when is life or business fair? Like sucker fish on sharks, start to look at that relationship as symbiotic. Use them and what they say to your advantage. Stop sticking your heads in the sand, get out there, think of how you can leverage and thwart those efforts -- and attack. Be smarter, more nimble.... and win. Or you can just throw lawyers at the problem, stick your head in the sand and watch them rip business away from you.

By Sean Cummings (nod to Imedia)

Gasta News:Brand Identity

Tough economic times call for small businesses to get creative. Here is why you should consider implementing a multi-domain strategy for your business.

COST. A memorable, highly targeted and keyword-rich domain name, garners free organic search engine traffic. By acquiring a domain name from the secondary domain market, you are spending less money in traffic than by engaging in often costly keyword search buys or print advertising.

BRANDING. Acquiring domains related to your products and or services sends a strong and consistent message to your customers and builds brand equity while avoiding customer confusion and lost traffic. For example, a photographer's website would benefit from camera, weddings and portrait themed domains.

GLOBAL REACH. Although the "dot com" is the most common extension, you should cast your net wider by getting as many extensions possible, including country code specific extensions. Act locally, think globally!

CAPITAL INVESTMENT. Like fine wines, domain names appreciate in value as they get older, thanks to the navigation traffic they acquire from prominent search engine positioning. By acquiring multiple premium domain names you are building a valuable portfolio of assets.

Are you ready plan a multiple domain strategy for your business? BuyDomains has the largest inventory of premium domain names — let us help you find one that matches your business needs. Contact domains@buydomains.com.

Gasta News:Search Strategy is Critical

When the going gets tough, the tough get searching.
As the shadow of a recession looms large, the knock-on effect has seen ad budgets if not slashed then certainly tightened.
This week's NMA highlighted concerns raised by key figures within the online industry that brands are rethinking their online ad strategies in light of the current economic misery.
However, one area that looks like it will benefit is search - an accountable, proven marketing channel that shows no sign of slowing down.

Almost everyone from the numerous agencies NMA spoke to for this week's front-page story said that search, and indeed affiliate, will see more money pumped in to it as brands look to areas they can pretty much guarantee will work.
But as brands demand results, does that mean that creativity is sucked out of search?
We've seen plenty of moves this year that have given search specialists the chance to show how creative they can be with campaigns.
Reaction to Google's trademarking decision is probably the most high-profile example, with agencies saying that launching brand protection campaigns was now almost as high on the agenda as brand building and acquisition campaigns for some clients.
But will creativity now be put on hold in favour of results? Will clients solely demand ROI, rather than creative thinking?
Similarly, if search becomes the commodity that it's threatening to be and so simply Just Another Media Buy, will that take the excitement out of it?
I doubt it, but I'm sure that there'll be plenty of meetings between marketing directors and search agencies in months to come where the question of creativity versus results will be top of the agenda.

Gasta News:Internet feels the bite of Crunch!

Mixed News as internet feels the bite of Crunch!

A straw poll of media agencies from the NMA Top 100 Interactive Agencies 2007 guide found budgets are under pressure as marketers alter their media plans ahead of the potential economic downturn. The findings are in conflict with market predictions. A report by analyst firm Enders Analysis this week said UK online ad spends was set to grow...
Meanwhile automotive brands plan to stop using dedicated campaign sites as budgets tighten and consumer’s tire of fragmented content. Car brands including Mercedes and Land Rover plan to pull back from campaign sites for car launches, switching to a central online hub. Mercedes has launched a global online hub, built by Digital Annexe that will house all its brand activity. It has been built to incorporate video streaming, an easily updateable back-end system and increased promotional space....


Online Video's Short Shelf Life

On average, video viewer ship peaks early in a video's life-cycle.
Thursday 19th of June 2008 12:00:00 AM
We set out with a simple question: throughout the life of a video, do most views occur in the first few days and weeks or are they distributed randomly over time? Since Tube Mogul tracks millions of videos, we turned to the data and were surprised to find such a robust trend: viewer ship peaks early.
Methodology
Our sample includes data for views by day for 10,916 videos over a 90 day time period. In order to exclude casual creators of online video (i.e. "Mickey’s Birthday"), each video in the sample achieved a minimum of 1,000 cumulative views over the 90 day time period.
On average, videos are time-sensitive. Trends pointed out elsewhere, such as "evergreen" (non-time sensitive) content always fetching views or videos randomly "going viral," seem more of a rarity than an underlying trend in the data.