SEM Wired

Companies prefer to spend/waste their money on banners, Adwords and affiliates campaign rather than producing some silly tv clip. It was pretty predictable.

Especially if we realize the current economic downturn. I guess it means that advertiser prefer to spend money where they can get some more valuable feedback information, with a more precise and extensive targeting and value for money.

Sounds right to me…but are we really sure that sticking banners and Google Adwords actually works?

Let’s get some hints from the same Guardian article’s comments:

Record £1.75bn online spend… and you still can’t make a profit with your website.

Indeed. Everybody knows or has been working on a company or project which injected a awaful amount on money on internet advertising without getting any profit back, not even in the long term.

This one it’s even better:

I don’t think they actually wasted all that money but expectations on conversions and sales, yeah, those might be quite high if spending get’s up to those digits. And guess what, while only getting away from the last economic downturn, so they guy here could be pretty right.

Anyway, the following comment might settling this down:

I disagree with many of these posts. Web advertising is much more accountable than TV, radio and print advertising – which is why it works. It doesn’t matter if some of you ignore them. Enough web users see them, and, more importantly, click on them.

That’s pretty much my opinion on the problem. And also the way things actually work out in a real enviroment, if you happen to work in marketing or advertisement.

The perception people has got of online ads it’s quite biased though: those who do not click on ads think they do not work:

…but according to these figures (1.75bn quids is not a few pennies) there’s actually some people who click on those ads and purchase products.

In the end, better a few more ads on a page (and adblock activated) rather than more tv crap (who does watch tv anymore… ).

The original article here.

It’s quite of a surprise but it seems that Google has just added a tiny line of text into his homepage in order to launch a new HTC mobile with Google Android.

Until now, the ad is displayed only in the italian and spanish mirrors:

This is Google.it homepage:

This is Google.es:

The links goes to a Google Landing page which describes the HTC Mobile features. On this page there’s a another link which goes straight to the vendor’s ecommerce page.

Bing has just released its Bing Webmaster toolbox.

It’s basically the Bing version of Google Webmaster tools. According to Microsoft, Bing Webmaster Toolbox development will aim toboost user engagement and traffic to websites and web-based application. The Toolbox is an organized set of tools for the entire Bing community, plus links to Webmaster and Developer community blogs and forums.

Compared to competitors like Google and Yahoo, I guess the community its the real bonus of the toolbox. The collaborative and collective help of users is way more valuable than any webmaster toolbox, especially when it comes to SEO and content optimizacion, considering how recently Bing has been released.

According to this CNET report,  Twitter will feature a search algorithm which will be able to:

crawl the links included in tweets and begin to index the content of those pages. [...] Twitter Search will also get a “reputation” ranking system soon [...]

After all, it was easy to predict. Plenty of people has been wondering that this would have happened sooner or later.
The question is if it would be able to gain a tiny share of the search engine market, considering Google evergrowing power and

If they really want to go this way they should come to terms with two main issues:

Gain some content authority

They should get a rid of all those bots and try to better develop and organize a following system able to guarantee some sort of authority: too many people add friends randomly trying to get hopefully followed themselves. This can affect link reputation and ranking system, if they’re really keen to develop one. I guess this is the first issue the should deal with.

Get safe and make people feel safer

Hacking Twitter is a bloody joke. It’s unbelievable easy. They must deal with it and sort things out as soon as possible. No service can grow in the market if people do not feel safe enough to use it and share data.

However, Twitter is still able to seduce investors. I guess it’s the proof that its search model could really work anyway. New rumors are spreading about Apple considering investing some bucks on it.
Apparently this first quarter Apple’s financial result make people wonder what will be the next step: maybe buying Twitter or jump into the videogame bandwagon with Electronic Arts?

Whatever will be, Twitter has already gained a prominent position into the market, soon things will change, and Google will have to make its move.

EVen if the hype generated by the released had been soon vanished (and its market share seem’s not improving at all), Google as just released a few tricks to make sure your websites will be displayed properly on Chrome.

I experienced some troubles with Chrome recently, Google has released this tricks right on time for me.