Internet Marketing Weblog
Julian Sharpe | 4:56 pm | November 10, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, Events, Google, Jobs, MIVA, MSN, Mobile, News, Online Media Planning (OMP), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media, Tracking, Viral, aol, yahoo
With the Credit crunch still biting it is predicted that Christmas shoppers will turn to the Internet pushing sales up by 15 per cent from last year. Online sales for the final 3 months of this year are forecasted to be around 13.16 billion.
December the 8th has be ear marked as the biggest online shopping day, so let’s see if the statistics agree on the 9th.
Julian Sharpe | 11:55 am | October 7, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, Google, MSN, News, Online Media Planning (OMP), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media, yahoo
Even with the current Credit Crunch issues sweeping the nation Internet advertising spend seems to still enjoying a level of growth with overall spend reaching 1.68bn in the first half of this year, which is a 21% like-for-like increase based on last year (Source: IAB).
The highlights of the latest survey is a 28% year-on-year growth for paid search, which now accounts for 58.3% of total online spend and almost breaking the 1bn barrier (981m) for the first time in a six-month period.
Other areas saw Display advertising rise 16.3% year-on-year to 333.8m, this was helped by a 36.6% increase in investment on embedded formats such as banners, rich media and video via social media networks.
Report shows that the majority of online display ad spend is still being achieved via the major portals and online publishers, but sales networks representing thousands of smaller sites have increased their volumes and accounted for 41% of all display expenditure.
Classifieds advertisements grew by 30.2% year-on-year to 361.6m as recruitment, property, automotive and small ads continued their migration to the internet from print classifieds, which declined 10% year-on-year.
Technology leads the market sector advertising spend table with a 17.3% market share, followed by finance at 11.9%, entertainment & media at 10.7% and recruitment at 9.9%.
Overall online increased its market share by four points to 18.7% of the total UK ad market, only 0.6% behind total press display (19.3%) and 3% behind TV (21.7%). The total advertising market was £8.98bn, down 0.7% year-on-year, during the period January to June 2008. The advertising market would have experienced a 4.6% decline without internet advertising growth.
Julian Sharpe | 9:54 am | September 3, 2008 | Google, MSN, Mobile, News, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Google has now moved into the browser market taking on Microsoft only area of true dominance with the launch of Google Chrome, an open-source web browser.
The new browser is released in beta initially and claims among other features to offer the following browser improvements.>
Improved protection from rogue sites>
Improved speed and responsiveness>
More powerful JavaScript engine to power web applications not possible in existing browsers.
Google Chrome has been created using components from both Apple’s Web Kit and Mozilla’s Firefox and the code has been made open to all to harness the power of the development community a kind of Kit car browser is you like. It will initially launch for Windows, with Mac and Linux versions to follow.
The launch of the browser follows on from Google’s previous moves into the operating system market in mobile with Google Android and the document processing market Google Docs, which as expected is challenging Microsoft’s Windows for Mobile and Microsoft Office core products.
First impressions do show a much quicker browser although some comments have been made in regards to imagery issues, but here at Lakestarmedia we will test away and let you know our thoughts on the Chrome browser.
Garret Cunningham | 3:52 pm | September 2, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, Online Media Planning (OMP), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Tracking
Tracking visitors from their arrival on your website through to their departure is an essential component of any online marketing campaign.
It is only through effective analysis of this information campaigns can be improved and developed to grow the performance and improve the user experience.
A few of the key factors we can determine from the use of an effective tracking system include:
· Which keywords generate the highest Return on investment (both sponsored and natural)
· Which external websites drive the most traffic and revenue for your site (including search engines)
· Number of visitors to your website
· Average length of stay on your site
· Which pages result in the highest number of visitors leaving your website (may help identify pages with errors)
· Visitors trends, showing correlations between new visitors and returning as well as the impact of each media channel on the performance of others
Various tracking options
There are many tools available which can provide these functions individually, but few which operate as a complete service.
The suitability of each tracking tool also depends greatly on the needs of the campaign.
For example, to only track a Pay per click campaign running on Google, Google conversion tracking would suffice, however this would not help with measuring user experience or any other media channels.
Google Analytics
For in-depth Website analytics, which would provide a valuable insight into user experiences, search engine performances and traffic levels for your website, Google Analytics can be very effective, as this provides much of this information as standard, but also has the opportunity to expand on the standard services to then include e-commerce information relating to products sold and the revenue generated.
Another benefit is that it is free!
Lynchpin
For a more simplified view of the performance of each media channel we recommend a tracking tool such as Lynchpin, which as opposed to providing website analytical information, focuses on sales and revenue for each media channel.
This tool can also provide an overview of the impact of each media on others, giving an idea of which channels generate new visitors, and then through which channels they return again in the future.
Costs start at around £400 per month.
DoubleClick
Probably the most efficient performance measuring tool which provides similar information is DoubleClick.
Again this operates as a revenue and sales reporting tool as opposed to analytical data, but offers even more in-depth information than most other reporting tools.
DoubleClick is especially effective for media campaigns covering many channels and especially when integrating Online media Planning.
It is especially effective for Online Media Planning as this is a channel most commonly associated with building brand awareness, but not directly generating a return on investment.
With a tool such as DoubleClick not only can the direct return on investment be measured, but also the indirect.
The key differentiating factor with DoubleClick is the use of the post impression cookie. This allows the tool to not only track users who click on a link, but also those who have simply viewed a banner ad, giving a better reflection of how effective the brand building exercise is performing.
Costs are more complex and include a set up fee and then it operates on a CPC basis depending upon your traffic levels.
A few things to consider
When deciding which tool is most suitable to match your campaign needs it is important to take into consideration a number of factors:
· What information is needed
· The level of detail required
· Which key performance measures are most important to your business and how these need to be split out
· And finally what level of investment you are prepared to commit to, as the price of these tools vary greatly
Julian Sharpe | 1:51 pm | July 14, 2008 | Google, News, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The Google map car has finally made its visit to Manchester and passed by the Lake Star Media offices this morning, with an array of pointing members of public wondering what was going on.
Using an 11-sided camera it will be interesting to see if anyone in the office was caught on camera, with the privacy law people still trying to fight it, we say hurrah to Google and look forward to Manchester getting its street level views at last.
Julian Sharpe | 6:46 am | June 8, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, Mobile, News, Online Media Planning (OMP), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media
AOL has announced that its Platform A advertising division will be released across Europe throughout this year.
The new service allows advertisers to purchase across AOL’s range of services, including Advertising.com, affiliate network Buy.at, behavioural targeting providers Quigo and Tacoda, and mobile ad network Third Screen Media making for a very effective overall media option package.
AOL has claimed to reach more than 125m consumers in Europe and is quietly confident that it can now deliver advertisers more effective tools to help run campaigns.
Julian Sharpe | 9:13 am | June 3, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, Mobile, News, Online Media Planning (OMP), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media
The news that everybody already knew is now official with Online advertising spend across Europe jumping 40 percent to 11.2bn euros around 8.9bn sterling in 2007, in figures released by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe.
These new figures show continued growth in the market, with advertisement spend up 4bn euros on 2006 with 7.2bn euros (5.7bn).
Top 3 countries are UK, Germany and France and were also the biggest spenders in 2007, accounting for 65% of European online ad spend. While advertisers spent an average €81 (£64) per European internet user in 2007, in the UK this figure reached 121 euros per person.
Further more the findings also revealed that the entertainment & leisure sector spent the most on online advertising, followed by finance & insurance.
IAB Quote
Alain Heureux, president of IAB Europe, said, “Despite a slowdown in advertising spend on some traditional media, the rise of online advertising in Europe continues unabated.”
“Not only is the growth coming from some of the smaller markets which are seeing significant increases in their market value, but also from the more mature countries as companies move their advertising budgets online for the first time.”
However the European growth still falls below that of the US market, where online ad spend reached 14.5bn euros during the same period.
Neil Yeomans | 10:52 am | March 13, 2008 | News, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The latest player to enter the search engine market is Search Me which promises to deliver a unique interface with the long term aim to target a market share from Google, Yahoo and MSN. Ask have relaunched numerous times over the past years with some success but not anything of impact to worry the big 3.
Like all search engines, its all about the results and until the site is up and running it would be hard to assess but the inital tests by people could prove to be its long term or just gimmick level of status
The interface is very much like Mac and Vista desktops visual showing webpages returned like programs open on these 2 platforms so nothing new there, you can also highlight search term within the text on the page again nothing new.
But like all new players everyone deserves a chance so I will add to my favourites at least for the time being anyway.
Introduction to Search Me
Search Me Demo
Neil Yeomans | 2:28 pm | January 7, 2008 | News, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media
Wikia Search Alpha went live today. This much anticipated search engine goes against the closed nature of the major search engines and advocates open-source, transparency and user participation:
Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.
http://alpha.search.wikia.com/about.html
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