Internet Marketing Weblog
Julian Sharpe | 10:28 am | January 30, 2008 | News
Thomson the travel tour holiday operator has revealed plans to close over a 100 of its UK based Travel Stores as part of a new drive to reduce overheads with an increased drive via internet sales.
As we all know it costs money before you even open your business door, Thomson are claiming they will be saving in excess of a 100 million at year that will see a great level of advertising budget increase but it will be interesting to see if they become market leaders in online travel as we approach the seasonal business end for these sunshine firms with this new found cash pot.
As you can read on many of the holiday review and Blog sites maybe the money should be spent on customer service levels after all there no point in getting extra sales if you cannot fulfil the demand and the service level consumers demand.
As a result of this move will we now see other high street travel companies following the trend, as the internet becomes the first stop for Holidays and Travel, as well as all other life’s essentials?
It’s very likely….
Top Holiday Tip:
When booking holiday’s online, search for reviews on Hotel names it can give you a good feel for holiday and hotel from people who have actually been there.
Resource Sites:
www.thomson.co.uk
http://www.holidaywatchdog.com/
www.tripadvisor.com
http://www.holidays-uncovered.co.uk/
Garret Cunningham | 10:26 am | January 24, 2008 | News, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Social Media
Google have just launched the Beta test of Demographic targeting and Reporting.
The tool will allow advertisers to use Googles content network and target their visitors based on age and gender. When users sign into publishers websites, such as social networks the tool will advertise ads to them in relation to the demographic information they have entered in their profile.
There will be no personally information passed to Google, only age and gender, and no information relating to under 18’s will be given as it will not be permitted to target these individuals.
The tool will work similar to the MSN tool, whereby advertisers can choose to increase bids when ads are shown to a particular demographic. eg. increase bids by 150% to males 25-30 years old.
Along with this there will also be the option to omit a demographic from seeing your ads, eg. Do not display ads to Females, 18 - 35 years old.
To help integrate the tool there will also be a demographics reporting function added. This will allow advertisers to view which group of users ads are appearing for as well as other relevant stats such as, click through rate, clicks, conversions, ROI and CPA.
During Beta the tool will slowly be rolled out to more and more advetisers.
To sign up visit Google Demographic Beta.
Garret Cunningham | 1:10 pm | January 22, 2008 | News
Price comparison websites are to be investigated by the FSA.
The FSA have investigated the work of sites such as moneysupermarket.co.uk and uswitch.com in the past, but following some fresh concerns in the insurance sector they will be revisiting the investigations.
The Insurance industry is concerned that price comparison websites are not providing customers with enough information, and as a result consumers are choosing insurance policies solely on the price, without a proper knowledge of the services which are being provided or are available.
One of the major concerns involves the fact these sites can sell insurance policies to consumers where as insurance brokers must meet certain criteria before they can advise on which insurance policy is best.
This raises the question of what is best for the consumer, to be lead down the path of opting into the cheapest insurance policy, or to be over-informed and pay over the odds for services they may not need or understand.
The FSA will be aiming to ensure the right mix is available to the consumer so they are always in control.
Neil Yeomans | 5:15 pm | January 18, 2008 | Social Media
Andy Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim suspects that he has become one of the latest victims of the infamous Digg Bury Brigade.
I’ve seen an increase in the number of Marketing Pilgrim stories buried on Digg, and I know others have seen the same.
Are Digg Editors Burying Your Story?
This is not the first time that an Internet marketing weblog has been affected. Copyblogger has experienced similar issues & talks about the “Digg auto-bury list”.
Garret Cunningham | 3:29 pm | January 16, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, News
Leading affiliate network TradeDoubler has launched TD Technology in Japan. The network launch has been facilitated by the acquisition and rebranding of The Technology Works which was acquired by TradeDoubler last year around July 2007. TD Technology’s strategic position in Tokyo, one of the world’s leading technological hubs adds “technology innovation” to TradeDoubler’s portfolio which now also includes search marketing after their recent acquisition of The Searchworks.
TradeDoubler’s CEO William Cooper had this to say: “We have long been committed to entering the Asian market and are very glad to be doing so through such a well-established and promising business in Tokyo.” The acquisition of TD Technology comes after the launch of TradeDoubler’s Searchware4 which is a search management interface that allows online advertisers control and optimize all of their online marketing channels through one portal.
Trade Doubler have been one of the market leaders in affiliate marketing and been in the industry for quite some time. They have a strong European presence and over 350 employees. Major programs on the network include AOL, Dell and Royal Bank of Scotland.
Julian Sharpe | 10:24 am | | News, Social Media
Facebook the social network site has grabbed the attention of the toy makers Hasbro with its online version of Scrabble called “Scrabulous”. With loud cries of copyright infringement and the request that it be removed immediately or face legal action.
The smart move would have been to embrace the idea and get a foothold on the site with almost 8,000 Facebook users using the program surely it would have given Hasbro a chance to push its other array of games online direct, its current online games area does not seem to feature an interactive scrabble.
Final, what about all the other third party applications that might seem to look like established games or products, are we looking forward to an all out attack from the top companies in an attempt to stop this applications reaching the public domain, lets hope not.
Garret Cunningham | 6:30 pm | January 15, 2008 | News, Social Media
Honda have launched a new promotional website to launch the new Honda Civic hybrid.
Problemplayground.com invites users to help put together a 20,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, with a chance to win a new car with every piece successfully placed.
As of February 4th the site will official go live with the completed homepage, and also containing content relating to the Civic Hybrid as well as the FCX Clarity. Both new models reinforcing the companies emphasis towards producing environmentally friendly cars.
Julian Sharpe | 2:55 pm | January 14, 2008 | News, Social Media
10 years ago Mobile phones could be used to prop up cars and Google was a mere glint in the online marketing eye, the Ipod was not even around and forget the X box 360 and wii the Nintendo 64 was king of the consoles with the Legend of Zelda and Mario working the controllers.
Your portable gadgets included the disc man or minidisk player with the unstoppable ipod not launched until 2001. Computer specifications have also come a long way, the top machine in 1997 was:
2gb Hard Drive
32mb RAM
12x CD Rom
Processor 25MHZ
Fax Modem 33.6kps
This seems almost laughable at today’s standards with the latest computers not just your office or home work centre, but now enable you to:
Watch TV and Movies
Book Holidays
Do your weekly shopping
Speak instantly to anyone, anywhere in the world via video or instant messaging
A prime example is this years Christmas shopping with most people buying or reserving gifts online, and the store starting sales on Christmas day online. With stores recording record losses over the normal very productive Christmas period. Then we enter social networking which is opens up a whole new world to many people, with sites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace. You can join on communities, find old friends and let of steam this vitual world is vast and grows daily, no need for planning permission here.Where will we be in 10 more years? Who knows but its going to be fun doing it.
Garret Cunningham | 6:12 pm | January 11, 2008 | News
Following the popular release of Google trends, where users can view fluctuations in daily search trends for particular queries on Google, they have now released Google Checkout Trends.
Checkout Trends now allows users to view and analyse the sales revenue trends for products bought using Google Checkout.
Looks like it will be handy tool for sampling what is strong in the market, not just in terms of search volume, but also in revenue volume.
Users can compare a number of products and graph their progress in the market.
Looks like it will be very just for tracking performance of some of the more competitive markets. eg. Games Consoles:
The tool looks very useful, but we must still remember the pit falls of sample data, this information is only based on Google checkout users, therefore it excludes all other online transactional programmes including Pay Pal…
Garret Cunningham | 12:01 pm | | News, Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Google’s free Conversion optimizer tool, designed to aid in managing performance for Google CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) campaigns, is no longer in Beta.
Previously the feature was only available to advertisers who achieved 300 or more conversions in the last 30 days (Tracked through Google Conversion Tracking), now this has been reduced to 200, widening the landscape for more advertisers to benefit from the tool.
The tool acts much the same as other bid management tools. The campaign manager sets a target CPA for each Adgroup, and based on current and historical data the tool automatically manages and changes bids to optimise the campaign to achieve the desired CPA.
To find out more about the tool and catch up on some success stories visit Google Conversion Optimizer
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