mThink

Advertising on Google is still one of the staples of online marketing: pretty much everyone should kn

Yesterday was a big day for more than 2 million publishers: Google began the rollout of its new Google AdSense interface. The interface has been four years in development and will be provided in over 200 countries and more than 30 languages. Two questions arise: how is it going to help publishers make more money? And why should other networks be paying attention?

The Microsoft/Yahoo PPC alliance was always going to have teething troubles and give advertisers some headaches. We are gradually learning just where those are going to come from.

The most complicated issues are likely to spring from the differences in the way that Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft’s adCenter treat keywords. adCenter in general provides much finer control over management of keyword mis-spellings and plurals, significantly greater limits on negative keywords, as well as taking a different approach to geo-targeting.

Twitter has made its move towards monetization and there are big opportunities for performance advertisers as a result..

In the last 48 hours they have announced a new performance advertising platform, new targeting capabilities via geo-location, and that Twitter now has 105 million registered users with 75% of traffic coming from outside Twitter.com.

Google is cracking down. Last month, Google filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and several others as part of an effort to stop fraudulent “Google Money” schemes. These are scammy offers that use Google’s brand to attract unsuspecting customers and then trap them into hard-to-break continuity programs, often via negative option contracts.

Google is cracking down. Last month, Google filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and several others as part of an effort to stop fraudulent “Google Money” schemes. These are scammy offers that use Google’s brand to attract unsuspecting customers and then trap them into hard-to-break continuity programs, often via negative option contracts.

Over the last seven to 10 years, paid search has proven to be a cost effective channel for affiliates and performance marketers alike to drive high quality leads while maintaining strong ROI. In fact, search engine marketing (SEM) frequently represents an inordinate portion of a performance marketer’s business – often more than they care to admit.

Hamlet Batista, president and CEO of NEMedia, wants to change your content. He wants to change it so much that he can’t wait to get his search team cracking on it. It’s his bread and butter. And like any SEO outfit, he claims he can get your site optimized and ranking rapidly. But he also has a passion for words. He wants to respect your content – the carefully crafted articles, summaries and reviews you painstakingly labor over. “You have to write the content for the user,” he says. “If they don’t like it, they are going to leave.”

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Blendtec. I bet you are familiar with Blendtec and I bet I know how you first heard of their blenders – from their viral video series called “Will it blend?” That series, showing iPods and other unusual items being reduced to powder by a powerful blender, serves a strong branding message: If it can annihilate an iPod, it will make quick work of your smoothie.