Yearly Archives: 2008

Chris Mather, director and founder of the comprehensive Internet venue, cmather.com, announced today the enhancement of an innovative classified advertising service. “Our company recognizes that in this day and age an ever increasing number of people from all walks of life and from all over the world are in need of online advertising space and services, including classified advertising. We wanted to develop a creative and dynamic venue through which people can post classified advertisements … for no charge or for a very low cost,” Mather explained. There are no back end buy or sell fees or other surprise costs that are found at many other so-called free or reduced cost classified ad sites.

Beyond providing classified advertising space and services at no charge, cmather.com has also made it profoundly easy to place an ad. First of all, under the streamlined system at the site, a person or business wishing to place a classified advert does not have to register. Moreover, the ad itself can be placed within a matter of seconds. If desired, an ad placed through the site can come complete with a photo at no additional cost. Free ads remain up and posted for thirty days.

“We provide extremely effective options to people or businesses that place ads with our site. For example, a classified ad can be localized to a very specific community or geographic area,” Mather remarked. Ads can be placed by country, state or city. “Of course, understanding that the Internet opens up a world wide marketplace, a targeted advertisement is viewable all over the world,” Mather added.

In addition to more typical classified ads designed to buy or sell, the site also allows for the placement of event notifications — an ideal feature for promoting entertainment, meetings, presentations and gatherings of different types.

Other features of the free classified program at cmather.com include premier linking of an ad to popular community and search engine marketing sites. All URLs associated with the site are search engine friendly, which draws significant traffic to the site each and every day.

“We also understand that some individuals and businesses need something more extensive when it comes to their classified advertising needs. As a result, our site now offers both an extended and a featured ad program at reduced prices,” Mather said. Extended ads run for 365 on the network. Moreover, more traffic share is included in regard to extended and featured advertisements.

Whether the need is for a free, extended or featured ad, the site allows a person or business requiring an advertisement to select a placement from over 300 classified categories. Finally, the site provides around the clock customer and technical support, seven days a week and 365 days a year. “Our customers are our number one priority at cmather.com,” Mather said.

About CMather.com Services
CMather.com offers web hosting, design services, domain names, search engine, advertising and ecommerce applications to over 20,000 users daily. For more information, contact Chris Mather 1300 628 437 or visit the link below.

CMather Internet Home: http://www.cmather.com/
CMather Classifieds :http://www.cmather.com/classified/
Domain Name and Web Hosting Applications: http://domain.cmather.com/

Microsoft Corp. has announced that since its launch in May, Microsoft Live Search cashback has seen positive traction in all three of the key metrics on which the company said it would report: number of offers in the system, advertiser return on investment (ROI), and percentage of commercial search queries as measured by comScore Inc. The company also announced that 20 of the top 50 online retailers in the U.S. and 140 of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 are now participating in the program, including new advertisers AT&T, Drugstore.com Inc., FTD, Gap Inc. properties (including Banana Republic and Old Navy), Kmart, RedEnvelope and Saks Fifth Avenue.

“We are pleased to report a 30 percent increase in the number of product offers available in Microsoft Live Search cashback, indicative of the strong advertiser interest in the program and early results on its ROI,” said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Microsoft Live Search. “We have seen an average of 4.5 million unique users per month visiting cashback who have conducted more than 68 million commercial queries. We believe this early traction speaks to the differentiated and unique value proposition of Microsoft Live Search cashback for both consumers and advertisers, especially in these tough economic times.”

On advertiser ROI for the program, according to Stephanie Tilenius, general manager of eBay North America, “Combined with eBay’s already great prices — frequently 30 percent below retail on the items people want — the Microsoft Live Search cashback program is bringing home holiday deals for eBay shoppers that can be an incredible 60 percent below retail. Beyond the great deals for buyers, Microsoft Live Search cashback (http://www.live.com) has improved our ROI on paid search by 50 percent, and based upon our shared success, eBay is increasing its search marketing spend with Microsoft Live Search by threefold.”*

Other advertisers are also reporting strong results. Sales at ShoeMall have increased over sixfold since it began participating in Microsoft Live Search cashback, prompting ShoeMall to devote even more marketing dollars to the cashback program for holiday and beyond.

In addition, according to a custom comScore study, in the second quarter of 2008, Microsoft Live Search referred almost 12 percent of total U.S. commercial online transactions and about 13 percent of total U.S. online spending among key retail categories. Microsoft Live Search placed among the top two U.S. engines in five of the 10 key commercial categories for conversion rate, including Computer Hardware, Movies & Videos, Home & Garden, Music, and Travel. Microsoft Live Search also shows a competitive advantage in attracting high-quality and high-spending buyers. Microsoft Live Search ranked as the top engine among the competitive set by a large margin in dollars spent per buyer, across the combined 10 key commercial categories.

Shopping Cart Providers Expand Program’s Reach

Microsoft also announced today that Microsoft Live Search cashback has entered into agreements with shopping cart providers Miva Merchant, Early Impact Inc. (ProductCart) and 3DCart. Under the agreements, retailers using these shopping carts on their sites are now eligible to become a part of the Microsoft Live Search cashback program. Each of the providers has implemented a set of tools to easily enable its retailer partners, mostly small to midsize merchants, to join Microsoft Live Search cashback. The addition of these merchants through the shopping cart providers is projected to greatly expand the set of product offers available to consumers through Microsoft Live Search cashback.

About Microsoft Live Search cashback

With Microsoft Live Search cashback, Microsoft helps merchants maximize their advertising investments and drive more sales by providing consumers with an added incentive to buy — a cash reward. Online advertising spend that participating merchants would otherwise pay to Microsoft is instead passed on to customers who complete sales under the Microsoft Live Search cashback program as cash rewards. A complete list of Microsoft Live Search cashback partners can be found at http://www.live.com/cashback.

LinkShare, a global online advertising services provider, today announced the addition of 74 new advertisers to its network for the third-quarter of 2008. The new customer count outpaces LinkShare’s second-quarter growth, reflecting both the company’s success in providing full-service online marketing solutions as well as the increasing demand for performance marketing as a result of the current economic landscape.

“Now more than ever companies are looking for measurable return on investment from their marketing dollars,” said Yasuhisa “Yaz” Iida, Co-President, LinkShare Corporation. “We are pleased to see these new customers joining LinkShare’s network for performance-based marketing solutions. For all of our customers — both existing and new — LinkShare consistently strives to provide excellent services while developing new and relevant technologies that support the specific and evolving needs of today’s online marketers.”

Known for attracting large, sophisticated ecommerce companies, third-quarter additions to LinkShare’s network include 42 small-and-medium-sized companies. Ecommerce programs, such as cost-per-action (CPA) marketing, that are measured based on performance, have become a vital part of many business strategies as a way to significantly improve both revenue and ROI.

“LinkShare is proud to welcome so many small-and-medium-size businesses to our network,” said Jonathan Levine, Co-President, LinkShare Corporation. “In today’s tough economy, these advertisers can benefit from our global network of publishers to market and sell their products while tracking each affiliate marketing dollar spent. LinkShare continues to offer a dynamic interactive network where advertisers and publishers of all sizes can work together to form mutually beneficial relationships.”

Third-quarter additions to the LinkShare network include companies within the Internet’s fastest-growing and most dynamic markets, including retail, media and fashion. One small-to-medium-sized business that has joined the LinkShare Network is Hay House, Inc.

Hay House

“Hay House was started by one woman with an idea, and has now become one of the fastest growing self-help and transformational publishers in the world,” said Tiffini Alberto, Internet affiliate manager, Hay House, Inc. “Through our partnership with LinkShare, our affiliate marketing program is on track to generate nearly $1,000,000 in revenue this year. Our network has grown to include more than 4,700 affiliates that carry the Hay House brand. We are able to manage and track our affiliates’ successes using LinkShare’s extensive portfolio of services, which allows us to focus on building and maintaining customer relationships and growing our brand. ”

Despite recent macro-economic trends, online retail sales are expected to reach $44 billion this holiday season. For companies seeking to reach the widest audience of prospective buyers, affiliate marketing programs have proven to be extremely cost-effective.

About LinkShare

LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a wide range of online marketing services including Search Marketing (SEM), Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing. Advertisers can increase their online sales by leveraging LinkShare’s massive performance marketing network along with expert consultative services and patented technology. Superior service combined with technology innovation allows advertisers and publishers to acquire and retain new customers, increase revenue and drive results.

LinkShare clients include Fortune 500 and other prominent and emerging companies doing business online, including J.C. Penney, 1-800-Flowers.com, American Express, and Avon Products. LinkShare was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, London and Tokyo. LinkShare is a division of Rakuten, Inc.

About Rakuten, Inc.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Rakuten is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive Internet service companies, providing leading services in e-commerce, portal & media, travel, financial services, and professional sports. Rakuten focuses on new business development and increasing its scope in order to improve and diversify service offerings. Rakuten, Inc. is a publicly traded company in Japan (JASDAQ: 4755).

Web site: http://www.linkshare.com//

Website Optimization, LLC (WSO), a leading website optimization and speed optimization provider, is happy to announce a major upgrade to our popular Web Page Analyzer tool. The new Analyzer features faster performance, HTML and CSSTidy integration, and updated HCI guidelines.

“Due to the increased load on the Web Page Analyzer and our website we have upgraded our main server to a more powerful model,” stated Andy King, President of Website Optimization, LLC. “The new server has dual high-speed Xeon processors, faster solid-state hard drives, and twice the available bandwidth. The Analyzer tool has been moved to its own dedicated server to handle the load independently of the main WSO server. These changes, plus the addition of CAPTCHA and usage throttling, allow us to continue to offer the analyzer free of charge, and scale for more users. We’ve thrown in some other tweaks, including making the CAPTCHA “this-is-a-human” test faster. We hope you find the new server more responsive, we’re already noticing the difference in response times.”

The Web Page Analyzer Tool will scan, analyze, and calculate page size, composition, and download time of any web page. With the push of a button, the WSO Web Page Analyzer Tool is sent out to view your web page, and all of the objects within the page. Then the tool analyzes the entire page and its components for size and download speed at different bandwidths. Once the check is complete, a full report is produced for you in HTML format with a summary on how the page performed.. Users also receive page and object information including::

Page size and composition
Formatted XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS files
Recommendations based on the latest HCI research and average web page size

The Web Page Analyzer tool incorporates best practices from the popular book titled “Webiste Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Search Engine Secrets” by Andy King into its recommendations. For the Web Page analyzer Tool, see:

http://www.webpageanalyzer.com

Melbourne based e-media company iGEN Media Corporation is set to launch its mobile-to-web classified advertising site txt2ads.com.au. Aimed at the “mobile generation”, typically 18 – 35 year olds, txt2ads.com.au combines the immediacy and simplicity of mobile messaging with the richness and reach of the Internet.

“By bringing these two unique forms of communication together, advertisers are able to get their message quickly online, without actually needing to be online,” Edward Fenech, Managing Director of iGEN Media Corporation said.

Mr Fenech went on to say that he wanted txt2ads to evolve the classified advertising paradigm and to bring something notably different to a generation of consumers that are prevalent users of mobile messaging and the Internet.

“txt2ads leverages the incredibly powerful yet very user friendly communication capabilities of SMS and MMS as an online content originator. While there are a number of providers delivering content to mobile phones, very few if any are using the mobile phone as an originator for online content; we certainly believe we’re the first to do so in the classified advertising sector.”

Mr Fenech said that even though there are a number of online classified directories, most had followed very similar formats and he wanted txt2ads to offer something new to customers.

“We wanted to give customers a new experience; not just in relation to how they place their ads but also in how we present their ads online. Our design approach was a deliberate shift away from the classified directory styles used by other sites and I believe that by adopting this approach it will be a great deal easier for us to continue innovating the service,” Mr Fenech said.

In relation to security, iGEN Media Corporation’s Director of Technology, Mr Steven Long said that txt2ads.com.au used a ‘Closed Loop Authenticated Mobile’ system, along with a number of other measures to protect customers.

“Our system is designed around authenticated mobile numbers and individuals can’t place an ad without first having their mobile number authenticated,” Mr Long said.

“This security process is initiated by the customer directly from their mobile phone and is only successfully completed when we’re able to deliver a security PIN back to their mobile phone.”

Adding to this, Mr Fenech said that given the concerns many consumers had with doing business online, they had introduced a number of measures that protect the privacy of users.

“We have worked very hard to reduce privacy concerns. One example is that advertisers don’t need to publish their contact details in their ads; this is especially beneficial for private advertisers. The system enables them to receive enquiry notifications directly to their mobile phone via SMS,” Mr Fenech said.

“People making the enquiry will of course need to have their mobile number authenticated before they can send enquiries and we also have a number of constraints in place to prevent someone abusing the system.

“It’s also important to note that we don’t directly bill the advertiser; they’re billed for the service by their mobile carrier. This means we don’t collect the same level of personal or credit card information as other online sites. It’s reasonable to say that these measures will give our customers a very secure online environment to do business.”

txt2ads.com.au will be fully available from the 27th October 2008. Visit http://www.txt2ads.com.au/

Yesup Ecommerce Solutions, Inc has entered into a joint venture with Clicksor.com, Inc. to establish the Contextual Open Media Exchange (OME), the premier Contextual Adserving Solution. This joint venture will take advantage of Yesup’s strength in online marketing operations and Clicksor’s advanced Contextual Technology to deploy a competitive leveraging platform and solution to face an increasingly challenging market.

The joint venture will streamline the buying and selling process for online advertisers, webmasters, communities, and agencies. With over 120,000 reputable network partners, the system will optimize the placement of ads with an automated targeting system based on the content that a visitor is viewing, called contextual targeting. “Contextual advertising will help get your website in front of the right person at the right time,” said Jack Cheung, Business Development Director of MyAdMarket.com.

MyAdMarket.com also announced that its newly integrated solution will broaden the capabilities of online advertisement delivery:
– Exclusive inline text link advertising;
– Contextual CPC and CPV XML feeds;
– Strategic geo-ip targeting;
– Automated billing system and; newsletter generator.

These unique set of services will offer a competitive advantage to give advertisers and webmasters the opportunity to develop the most effective online advertising programs. MyAdMarket.com delivers more than just a promise of a pervasive advertising system. Its Contextual Adserving System will ultimately enhance efficiency and maximize ROI by continually focusing on providing innovative technology to meet the ever changing needs of its clients.

About MyAdMarket.com
MyAdMarket.com is a division of Yesup Ecommerce Solutions and is genuinely committed to providing comprehensive and efficient ad serving solutions for advertisers, publishers, networks, and agencies. Yesup is a privately funded company based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. For more information, visit http://www.yesup.net

It’s been heavily publicized that small and medium sized businesses are feeling the pressure from tougher economic times. They’re actively seeking online advertising that generates real measurable results.

Search Engine Marketing pioneers ineedhits (http://www.ineedhits.com/), have responded to these needs and released an enhanced Google and Yahoo! Search advertising service that delivers more than just website traffic.

Rene LeMerle, ineedhits VP of Marketing, explains further:
“Now, more than ever, businesses are feeling the pinch from the current economic downturn. They need more than just traffic to be sustainable.

We set the challenge to our product development team to re-engineer our search advertising products so they deliver genuine sales opportunities for our customers.

The result of their efforts is our revamped Easy Search Advertising service. The in-built Lead Generating System helps improve conversion on campaigns and generate more sales for our clients. Ultimately they get a better return on their advertising spend.”

Easy Search Advertising, continues to be one of the leading solutions in the market, with its new in-built Lead Generator System. It’s also one of the most affordable search advertising services available with businesses able to start campaigns from $199 per month.

ineedhits is a company that prides itself on offering results driven and affordable search engine marketing services to the SMB sector. Over the past 12 years they’ve helped thousands of businesses grow online.

This latest release highlights their commitment to innovate and ensure that their partnership with small businesses is profitable long term, whether economic times are tough or prosperous.

About ineedhits:
Founded in 1996, ineedhits (http://www.ineedhits.com), a pioneer in search engine marketing, has provided search engine optimization (SEO), and Search Engine advertising (pay-per-click) services to small and medium sized businesses for over eleven years. The company has serviced over 30,000 customers and 700,000 subscribers worldwide, with over 80% of those based in the United States.

ineedhits current partners include Yahoo!, LivePerson, ExactSeek and Net Applications. The company has received numerous awards including the Deloitte Touche Fast 50 (2003 & 2004) and BRW Fast 100 (2002 & 2003).

The proportion of online advertising budgets that are devoted to online lead generation are set to rise exponentially across Europe in 2009, according to Goallover, the creator of Europe’s premier lead generation management and validation platform, as advertising budgets from traditional media channels are re-deployed.

With reports indicating 71%* global growth in the sector throughout 2008 and identifying lead generation as the hottest new online advertising trend in the US over the last twelve months, the growth looks set to translate to the European market in 2009, where previously it had been held back by heightened sensitivity to the EU and national data protection laws.

UK advertisers will spend an estimated £3.4 billion** online in 2008, a rise of 27% on the previous year, according to a recent report from eMarketer (March 2008). The report predicts a continued rise in online advertising spend, with double digit growth resulting in the industry’s expansion to £4.3 billion in 2010 and in excess of £5 billion by 2012.

A key contributor to this rapid increase is the online lead generation (OLG) sector, which is currently estimated to be worth over $1 billion* globally per annum as a result of the current year-on-year growth. Central to that growth is the advance of pioneering technologies, such as Goallover’s Lolagrove platform, a patent pending optimisation technology which indemnifies publishers and advertisers with a 100% online data protection guarantee, as an independent lead validation and management solution for lead processing – solving legal issues and allowing advertisers and publishers to meet on the “lead generation playing field” in a compliant manner.

Robin Caller, Managing Director of Goallover said: “With advertisers rightly demanding both increased value from online advertising and tangible returns on investment irrespective of the current global economic downturn, numerous factors are potentially responsible for the sharp global adoption of online lead generation. Compared to other online advertising disciplines, lead generation stands out by providing increased control and the ability to quantify the source, cost and value of a lead, helping to achieve higher data quality and rates of conversion.”

Although online lead generation is an emerging sector in the UK and European markets, a survey carried out by E-Consultancy in 2007 reported that 82% of online marketers forecast OLG as a strong growth area.

Indeed, the health of the online lead generation sector is supported by the latest report from the European Interactive Advertising Association (September 2008) that 82% of advertisers who have seen an increase in their online spend admitted it is coming directly from the likes of print media (40%), TV (39%) and increasingly DM (32%) budgets. Across the board, 73% of respondents in the EIAA survey stated that they are increasing their use of online as an advertising medium whilst cutting back across more traditional advertising channels such as TV (31%) and Newspapers (40%).

Goallover’s “LolaGrove” solution represents the next generation of OLG technologies – a self learning validation engine that incorporates numerous levels of qualification filtering, including forensic level analysis of the congruous nature of leads in a brand safe environment.

Robin Caller continued: “In the UK, the online market represents about 15% of the overall advertising market and is showing consistent growth in an otherwise depressed advertising market. Press, TV, Radio, Cinema and Direct Mail are all experiencing falling revenues but the online market – and particularly the lead generation sector – are in fine health”

For more information visit www.goallover.net or call 0207 843 0130.

Content & Motion (C&M) formally opened its doors for business today after the successful beta launch of its new web site. The company, which describes itself as a Content Creation, Content Optimisation, SEO and Online PR agency all rolled into one, is led by ex-IBM head of media relations Roger Warner, and is already beginning to cause a stir with its range of content-centric web marketing offerings.

C&M’s goal is to help its clients address their most pressing web marketing challenges through the delivery of content-based solutions. In practice this means identifying a clear set of objectives and corresponding audiences or targets; creating the right content offers to turn them on; using a bit of social media, SEO and online PR pixie-dust to seed it with them and have them beat a path to the right doors; and optimising the target web sites to convert them to a cause.

This process is formed on the basic understanding that good web marketing, good SEO, and good online PR must now be based on great content that satisfies two essential audiences in equal measure – search engine spiders (so that a a web page can be crawled, indexed and ‘understood’ in the right fashion) AND human beings (so a page is compelling enough to be read, understood, rated and linked to).

Says founder Roger Warner: “We’re kind of like an uber-new PR firm for the interweb era. Our goal is basically to help the world take a more profitable, cost-effective and content-first approach to its web marketing challenges.”

“You simply can’t game Google with meta tags and invisible technical wizardry any more,” continued Warner. “Web marketing is less technocratic than it used to be, and relies more on the creative processes involved in hatching a good plan, producing great content and seeding it amongst the interweb. Technical know-how is necessary (and we have it in spades here at C&M), but the real job is in producing killer content that makes heads turn – of both search spiders and human beings.

“This is great news for companies of all sizes and their customers, because producing great content isn’t hard – we all have great ideas and opinions to supplement our products and services. And if good web marketing means placing more of this stuff in the public domain, then the customer experience can only get better and better.”

As part of its mission, the company is also committed to producing a variety of best practice ‘How To’ guides that demystify the processes of SEO, content optimisation, search engine marketing and online PR, which are all published free of charge via its new website.

In addition, the company is producing an ‘industry insight’ blog which will produce a weekly stream of helpful web marketing advice to marketers in every walk of life. The common goal is to make web marketing accessible and do-able for a non-technical marketing audience, and to take the ‘rocket science’ out of SEO and content optimisation.

Check out C&M’s web site for further information about the company’s new Online PR and Content Optimisation Services.

http://www.contentandmotion.com/services/

Pay Per Click (PPC) Summit, the leading Search Engine Marketing (SEM) conference, today unveiled the new agenda for the Los Angeles Summit taking place on Sept 25-26, 2008. With so many companies reporting marketing budget cuts this year, marketers are moving their spending from traditional campaigns to online marketing tactics to save money and increase results. PPC Summit LA will address the factors that will help marketers integrate search engine marketing into their overall marketing plan and provide how-to strategies for optimal results. Sessions will cover hot topics such as: A Complete Overview of Search Engine Marketing, Improving Quality Score for Better ROI, and All You Need to Know to be a Successful Google Adwords Advertiser. PPC Summit is offering a $200 early bird discount for those that register by Sept.18.

http://www.ppcsummit.com

Studio City, Calif – Seed Corn Advertising, a Studio City, California- based online marketing firm, was recently featured in Inc. Magazine for not only offering traditional multi-tiered online advertising for its clients, but also releasing a new 3-D social networking site, RipLounge.com, that allows users to create their own avatars and dance, listen to streaming music, post pictures, video and content and video/voice chat with other members in a unique 3-D environment; all without a download and completely free.

Seed Corn Advertising specializes in display advertising, search and opt-in permission based email campaigns that fit their clients’ strategic goals. Their network of affiliates, strategic partners and proprietary sites serves over a billion impressions per month; providing relevant and unobtrusive advertising to millions of users.

Seed Corn Advertising helps its clients determine which advertising mediums and creatives are most suited to the products and services they offer while cultivating a media plan and strategy that maximizes those placements. All Advertisers receive a real-time login to monitor their campaigns and are given a dedicated customer support representative to optimize each individual offer.

Seed Corn Advertising, through its sister company Stable Media, recently launched www.riplounge.com, an interactive social networking site that allows users to meet each other through virtual representations in real time. Advertising is embedded within the site’s content through product placement, sponsorships and banners.

To read the feature on Seed Corn Advertising, go to www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-profile.html?id=200846150, and for more information on Seed Corn Advertising, go to www.seedcornadv.com.

London – Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the Advertising – Marketing industry is available in its catalogue.

World Online Advertising Market

http://www.reportlinker.com/p092532/World-Online-Advertising-Market.html

This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Online Advertising in US$ Million. The formats of Online Advertising market analyzed are Search, Display, and Others. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Rest of World. Annual forecasts are provided for each region for the period of 2000 through 2015. The report profiles 255 companies including many key and niche players worldwide such as 24-7 Media Group, AOL LLC, Baidu.com, Inc., Copernic, Inc., DoubleClick, Inc., Eniro AB, Google, Inc., IAC/InterActiveCorp., IAC Search & Media, InfoSpace Inc., MSN, Sina Corporation, Sohu.com Inc., Tencent Inc., Tom Online Inc., TradeDoubler AB, ValueClick, Inc., and Yahoo Inc. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are mostly extracted from URL research and reported select online sources.