I Am Adam Smith

Fresh CPM Ad data

I love when blogs publish hard numbers... on anything really. New data from PubMatic on cost per thousand (CPM) rates. Here's the data via TechCrunch

Online ad-optimizing service PubMatic is now publishing an AdPrice Index with the average rates collected for remnant ads by 3,000 Web publishers. These are the ads that sites place from the big ad networks when they cannot sell the inventory themselves at normally higher rates. Small sites (those with less than one million page views per month) command nearly three times as much per ad as large sites (those with more than 100 million page views per month): an effective CPM (cost per thousand) of $1.18 versus $0.38. The effective CPM across sites of all sizes is $0.49. All of these figures are for March, 2008. Ad rates are also growing faster for small sites, up 18 percent since January versus 12 percent growth overall.

The low average rates for large sites reflects the poor returns on social networks, entertainment, and gaming sites. Effective CPMs for social networks are amongthe lowest at $0.37 in March. But there is hope, that was up 69 percent from $0.22 in January.

Gigya and ClearSpring offer branded widgets

The two big widget distributors, Gigya and Clear Spring now offer branded widgets. This opens up great opportunities for both delivering functionality and branding

SubDural Marketing: Or How 9 Inch Nails Ran a Kick Ass Alternate Reality Game

Wired has an amazing story on Alternate Reality Games. Basically a huge game played by hundreds of thousands of people to promote NINs new album. Involved hard drives left in bathrooms with coded messages, slightly offset typography on Tshirts revealing secret websites, that all culminated in a secret rooftop concert.

The clues are obscenely obscure, but people are so into it that they go to crazy lengths to play. And from a marketing perspective, theres the hook.

We're all getting very good at tuning out marketing BS. But making a fun, engaging game can get tons of people to not tune you out; but rather spend time and money to find you. The key is to engage people; dont treat them as if they're stupid; give them a challenge and something new to chew over. A bonus is letting them colloborate.

I highly recommend the wired article, not only is it a lot of fun, it will give you some things to mull over in promoting your idea/concept/product/image.

First Impressions of Ingenio - Pay Per Call Advertising

We launched the new PHASE 2 SaaS website last week. I've been playing with a whole bunch of new ideas for marketing the site. I'll be posting about them here.

Today's Review: Ingenio. Grade D

I read about Ingenio on TechCrunch awhile ago, seemed like a great idea. Similar to Google AdWords. You create an ad with a title, 2 lines description. Ingneio displays the ad in their content network and  includes a toll free number with your ad that redirects to a phone number you provide. They charge per call. There is no link to your website.

Sounds like a good idea, but their implementation hasn't been great. You can't insert ads by keyword. You have to use their pre-selected categories. Problem is, you don't know what categories are available, there's no way to browse. You have to guess, and then search for your guess in their system. Another problem is that after you write your ad, they prompt you to select up to 5 categories to associate it with.

After doing all this, all my ads got rejected... why? Because i associated more then one category to the ad. Not smart. They want me to rewrite every ad, upload a logo, select a geographic location, upload company history, select payment options for every ad in every category.

Also, their reviewing department was super strict, and inflexible.

After one week of writing, resubmitting, and 4 phone calls. I got the ads up.

After two days, there have been 2 impressions and 0 calls.

Ouch.

In theory, this is a great service. The bidding is still pretty cheap, and someone who calls, is likely to be more qualified then someone who simply clicks a link. ATT bought Ingenio a few weeks ago. Hopefully they revamp the site to make for a better customer experience.

On a side note, Jane, my service rep was very helpful and nice!

My favorite quote "Please, help me spend money on you guys, i can't seem to do it!"

idesktop.tv launches

IDesktop.TV just launched. Its essentially a new GUI for Youtube. However, the feature I'm using it for is their download video function. Can get nearly any video file type. - and doesn't have the youtube logo in it.

Overview of Online Affiliate Programs

Here's a listing of online affiliate programs, ranked in a survey from 2001. Probably out of date, but a starting point in pay per action, and affiliate marketing

Program Name	Ranking	Respon- dents	Affiliates (average)
Synergyx	9.4	7	2,420
My Affiliate Program	8.7	15	817
Ultimate Affiliate Package	8.5	4	23
AffiliateShop	8.7	3	22
AssocTRAC	8.0	4	368
ClickBank	8.0	3	2,008
BeFree	7.8	4	6,333
AffiliateTracking	7.3	4	203
LinkShare.com	7.2	6	12,500
Commission Junction	6.9	15	2,443
Tradedoubler.com	6.5	2	51
ClickTrade	6.5	2	108
In-House Programming	6.4	13	2,479

Facebook Ad Platform

Facebooks new ad platform is up. Fred Wilson's blog goes over his experience setting it up and using it.

Allows you to create a Facebook page for your business. Then, target people by demographics and interests.

Sites with Free Photos

Pictures are good for making a site more attractive, but more and more, they can also help with SEO. Here'a a list of ten sites with free pictures.

• Flickr.com allows you to share, store, search, and sort your photos. There are always plenty of images available for you to use. Flickr is free, though you will have to register if you want to upload and edit your own images. The photographers establish the terms, so read the permissions carefully. If you use someone else’s Flickr image, it’s always in good taste to link back to its source.
• Bigfoto.com offers pictures from around the world, including America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Pacific. Each main category has subcategories, for instance “aviation,” which allows you to choose from pictures in a certain theme.
• Fotogenika.net has photos for free download for personal, educational, and nonprofit use. However, you cannot use them commercially, sell them, or claim authorship. The site is well organized, and it includes categories such as architecture, animals, people, and textures.
• FreeDigitalPhotos.net has over 2000 free images that you can use in commercial and noncommercial work. You are not allowed to sell, redistribute, or claim these images as your own. You can browse by category or search for exactly what you need.
• FreePhotosBank.com allows users to have non-exclusive, non-transferable license to images. You can search for photos, see which photos are the most popular, and which ones have the highest ratings or the most downloads.
• FreeMediaGoo.com has a large collection of images, audio, textures, and other visual mediums that you can use for free with some restrictions. You do not even have to credit the images. The site also features some amazing digital images if you are looking for something different.
• MorgueFile.com offers stock photographs in high resolution digital. With over 55,000 images, divided into several categories, they are sure to have something you can use. The thumbnails are small, but your search results display quickly, and the photos are of top quality.
• PhotoRogue.com offers a different concept. If you cannot find what you need, you can send a request. The service is free and uses volunteer photographers. If you like, you can also sign up for an RSS feed that will let you know when new images become available.
• SXC.hu offers high quality images taken around the world by amateur photographers. If you have an interest in photography, you can even submit your own pictures. There are various searching options and over 100,000 images. The photographers establish the terms, so read the fine print, but most pictures can be reused immediately.
• Picsearch.com is another option for those who are not sure exactly what they are seeking. Picseach is a search engine that crawls the web and indexes images. However, make sure that you see the site’s licensing terms or contact the copyright holder before you download pictures. You can edit your search by animation, color, or size to find exactly what you need.

via SearchEngineJournal

Search Engine Optimization Basics

Some basic DIY tips for search engine optimization, via the Online Marketing Blog...

The more I read about SEO, the more I realize that its a slam dunk for lowering your customer acquisition costs. Marketing Sherpa has some good SEO info as well.

• Define clear and measurable goals for the site and take benchmark measurements
• Keyword research - generate a glossary of keyword phrases that addresses both prospect needs and the content you’re publishing. Here is a list of the best keyword research tools as voted on by our readers
• Content creation plan - Think of it as an editorial calendar for your web site. You must PLAN on creating keyword sensitive content on an ongoing basis that adds to the user experience
• Keyword mapping - Using a spreadsheet, map keywords to the page or category. Focus is important, 1-2 phrases per page
• Keyword phrase order - Does the keyword order in the page match order in the query? Anticipate queries and match the word order: “luxury hotels Chicago” vs “Chicago luxury hotels”
• Keywords and the buying cycle. Consider the content and where it fits within the buying cycle: Research, Consideration, Evaluation, Purchase
• Keyword prominence (how early in the page content or title/meta description tag) - Guide: most important phrases high and to left
• Write to inform and convert as your priority, not to rank. Title tags and meta description tags should be written with keywords in mind, but the focus must be on motivating the reader to click through or to perform some other desired action
• Keyword in alt text of images, particularly of images that link to another web page. Keywords should be relevant to the page being linked to
• Filenames containing keywords are useful, but do not change your entire site URL structure if you’ve already published another URL syntax
• Use hyphens in file names, not underscores
• HTML site maps listing links to all pages or top level categories on the site are still a good idea
• Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer accounts can provide useful crawling and link information/resources
• For bloated pages, try to place JavaScript and CSS data in an external file to speed page load and to move content up in the document
• Implement and review web stats for trends, visitor behavior, content performance, referring traffic and optimization enhancement opportunities: Google Analytics, WebTrends, ClickTracks, Index Tools, HitsLink Enterprise

About Links:

• Anchor text of interlinking site pages should include relevant keywords, not “click here”
• Are all internal and external links valid? - Validate all links to all pages on the site
• Employ a tree-like/organization chart linking structure with a minimal number of clicks to any particular page
• Intra-site linking - Use appropriate links between lower-level pages. cluster links between sub categories
• Linking out to external sites - Only link out to relevant, information rich sites. Do not link to sites that do not add value to the visitor experience
• Avoid exchanging links for the sake of improving rankings
• Ensure link stability over time - Avoid “Link Churn”, i.e. changing outgoing links often

Linking tactics:

• Employ a linking program to acquire incoming links from relevant web sites by researching back links to high ranking competitor web sites
• Contribute articles using keywords in titles to industry publications - not article directories
• Engage in blogger PR and online media relations with relevant industry web sites
• Submit keyword optimized press releases to search engine friendly wire services such as prweb.com, prnewswire.com, marketwire.com or pr.com
• Submit the site to major directories - Yahoo directory, BOTW.org, DMOZ, Business.com
• Leverage social networks and micro-blogging to promote linkable content
• Diversify your link building tactics

A few things to avoid:

• Don’t block your entire site from search engine spiders with a robots.txt during development and then forget to allow after publishing (believe me, it happens more often than you think)
• Avoid all Flash, all Ajax, iFrames or anything that makes it difficult for a search engine to find and understand site content
• Avoid more than 100 total links going out on any given page. Site maps can be broken up
• Avoid JavaScript for navigation links. Use CSS for rollover or foldout menus instead
• Avoid temporary (302) URL redirects. Use permanent redirects (301)
• Avoid dynamic URLs with session ids, or URLs with more than three parameters and approximately 10 or less characters per variable
• Avoid buying links from networks of blogs or sites of unrelated content. While we don’t have any particular issue with the idea of buying links as advertising, at TopRank, we prefer to “earn” links for the most long term value and lowest cost per acquisition

The DIGG Toolbox, 70 Marketing tricks with DIGG

I haven't learned enough about Digg yet, but need to. Here's a "Toolbox" of 70 Digg apps using Digg to promote your site.