Facebook is currently the world’s biggest social media site. Any doubt?

The latest news is that they are going to dump Microsoft adCenter. They are getting ready to launch their own advertising platform. But with the original deal not running out until 2011, full worldwide, Bing integration appears to have been the real deal sweetener.

Facebook is a good platform for any advertiser to exhibit or promote their products. It is equally effective in delivering good returns to the host – Microsoft. However, in something of a surprise move, Facebook have ended their agreement with the technology giant. Now they want to manage their advertising system in-house.

With a year left in the contract, clearly Microsoft will seek something in return and it appears as though it may come in the form of Bing being integrated into Facebook as the default search engine, worldwide. Obviously the exact nature of the agreement is still largely under wraps, but Bing could be set for a huge promotional push, starting off with 350 million+ Facebook users.

2010 will be a crucial year for Bing as it looks set to become integrated in Yahoo!, the search engine of choice for iPods and now could appear on the pages of Facebook. Microsoft is putting plenty of effort behind their search engine currently. In this effort they are getting help from another technology giant Apple.



Launching own advertising platform will give Facebook a chance to create a larger revenue stream themselves, without having to pass anything to Microsoft.

I was facing some issue related to analytics. I had to track the IP address of visitors from one of my client's Website. To find a solution I just posted a question in LinkedIn.

Here is one of the answer I got. Looks interesting...

This solution was given by Tom Griffin
(LinkedIn of Tom)

Justine-

You can setup Google Analytics to include the user's IP address in reports using pageTracker._setVar.

Background:

pageTracker._setVar allows you to segment traffic using a user-defined variable. This information is then reported in Google Analytics under 'User Defined', under the Visitors menu. Usually marketers segment traffic according to user segments, such as logged in visitors versus not logged in. In this case, you want to segment on a much finer level: the user's ip address.

Execution:

Your goal is to write the user's ip address to Google Analytics using SetVar. Your Google Analytics code will look something like this:



You will need to insert some code in the "USER's IP ADDRESS GOES HERE" placeholder which will inject the IP address into pageTracker._setVar. For example, if your server supports PHP, the code would be as follows:

pageTracker._setVar('');

Benefit:

There is a ton of ways you can get IP address information from your visitors - but the benefit of having it in Google Analytics is that you can then cross/filter/segment it along with the rest of your data. For example, you'll be able to drill down on a specific IP address and understand their site behavior, including pageviews, events (if you're using event tracking), etc...

Let me know if you have any questions on the approach :-) And good luck!

TG

What Information Have the Engines Provided About the Canonical URL Tag?

Google:

Is rel="canonical" a hint or a directive?
It's a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.


Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as ?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.

Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.


What if the rel="canonical" returns a 404?
We'll continue to index your content and use a heuristic to find a canonical, but we recommend that you specify existent URLs as canonicals.

What if the rel="canonical" hasn't yet been indexed?
Like all public content on the web, we strive to discover and crawl a designated canonical URL quickly. As soon as we index it, we'll immediately reconsider the rel="canonical" hint.

Can rel="canonical" be a redirect?
Yes, you can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL. Google will then process the redirect as usual and try to index it.


What if I have contradictory rel="canonical" designations?
Our algorithm is lenient: We can follow canonical chains, but we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page to ensure optimal canonicalization results.



Yahoo!:

The URL paths in the tag can be absolute or relative, though we recommend using absolute paths to avoid any chance of errors.

A tag can only point to a canonical URL form within the same domain and not across domains. For example, a tag on http://test.example.com can point to a URL on http://www.example.com but not on http://yahoo.com or any other domain.

The tag will be treated similarly to a 301 redirect, in terms of transferring link references and other effects to the canonical form of the page.

We will use the tag information as provided, but we’ll also use algorithmic mechanisms to avoid situations where we think the tag was not used as intended. For example, if the canonical form is non-existent, returns an error or a 404, or if the content on the source and target was substantially distinct and unique, the canonical link may be considered erroneous and deferred.

The tag is transitive. That is, if URL A marks B as canonical, and B marks C as canonical, we’ll treat C as canonical for both A and B, though we will break infinite chains and other issues.


Live/MSN:

This tag will be interpreted as a hint by Live Search, not as a command. We'll evaluate this in the context of all the other information we know about the website and try and make the best determination of the canonical URL. This will help us handle any potential implementation errors or abuse of this tag.

You can use relative or absolute URLs in the “href” attribute of the link tag.

The page and the URL in the “href” attribute must be on the same domain. For example, if the page is found on “http://mysite.com/default.aspx”, and the ”href” attribute in the link tag points to “http://mysite2.com”, the tag will be invalid and ignored.
o However, the “href” attribute can point to a different subdomain. For example, if the page is found on “http://mysite.com/default.aspx” and the “href” attribute in the link tag points to “http://www.mysite.com”, the tag will be considered valid.

Live Search expects to implement support for this feature sometime in the near future.

Yes... you heard it right... If everything goes well, you can watch videos in 3D from YouTube.

Google is still working on this, hopefully will be ready to launch soon. This 3D videos cannot be embedded.


YouTube has now invited users to upload our own 3D video.

How to do this...?
Here is the tips, taken from YouTube blog

Tag the video with yt3d:enable=true, and leave the link in a comment on this blog.

Some basics around shooting 3D videos (this isn't easy, so patience is key):

* Use two cameras arranged like a pair of eyes.
* Start both cameras recording simultaneously.
* In your video editing program, place the footage for the left and right eyes together in the frame side by side, with the right eye on the left and the left eye on the right.
* Upload your video! Edit your videos tags and add yt3d:enable=true. If video is widescreen, add yt3d:aspect=16:9 too.

As we know, micro blogging or Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media. But are we making enough use of this?
Twitter couldn’t find out yet how they can make money out of it. But others are making use of it. E.g. Dell.
There was some news that the revenue of Dell has been increased tremendously after them trying to market products through Twitter.
How can we make use of Twitter in PPC, or Search Engine Marketing? The main advantage of Twitter from a Search Engine Marketing point of view is that we can easily identify what is happening in the market. What people are talking about our brand? What people are talking about our competitors?
We can find out who is talking about our brands on Twitter, know the influence level of our brand and competitors brand on them
Then just analyze the influence and reputation level of twittees. This will help us to make a campaign strategy.

Now how to search in Twitter? Its easy.
Just go to Twitter Search and type the keyword you would like to know about. Thats it...

Yes, that is the new search engine by Microsoft. After Live Search, Windows Live Search and MSN, this is MS’ next triumph card to compete with Yahoo! and Google.

This went fully online on 3rd June 2009.

There are a few notable changes in the Bing such as the listing of search suggestions in real time as queries are entered, and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane" on the left side of search results), based on semantic technology from PowerSet which Microsoft purchased in 2008.

Bing also has the ability to Save and Share search histories using Windows Live, SkyDrive, Facebook, and e-mail.

The home page image of Bing changes daily.

Hello everyone... Posting something after a long time...

I had this doubt in mind. Since I was more into PPC, this was disturbing me or rather confusing me. I just posted this in Linkedin and got some truly amazing responses...
Here are those for you...

My Question Was
What is the future of Pay Per Click?

The avg CPC of keywords are increasing every year... Might be after 5-10 years advertisers will not get the leads/sales at an acceptable CPL/CPA.
Then how will PPC be profitable? If they start other channels like Social networking, shouldn't it affect PPC? Your thoughts...

See the replies I got in Linkedin

Benin Brown
Co-Founder, Pamoja Media, Inc.

I think that with the economic challenges faced by the world's most developed economies right now the one thing that seems to be the biggest driver of online ads or advertising period is ROI.

With that being said I think that any of the cost per action models-CPC included are all here to stay. Perhaps they will undergo many more changes in the future to meet future demand. But in my opinion they are priced correctly, it is only that more companies are looking towards the direct marketing model as a way to quickly boost sales and as a result the price overshoots the supply of clicks available and hence is reflected in the pricing.


Chetna Khanna
Regional Head,
Sales and Marketing (West) at Banyan Netfaqs Pvt Ltd (www.afaqs.com)

The PPC, PPL, PPA models gained importance when organisations began to look at ROMI. While PPL and PPA are both effective when the campaign wishes to drive sales, there are not real measures in place to judge the effectiveness of brand campaigns. In such a scenario, the only real measure of a brand campaign aimed at grabbing mind share is a PPC model. A click on a creative gives to some extent a measure of the involvement of the surfer with the brand.

Thus, as long as there is a pressure on marketers measure their returns on marketing investments on campaign that do not initiate a direct response from the surfers, a PPC model would be the only measure of effectiveness of the campaign and will thus remain popular.

Brett Nicholson
Digital Marketing & Media Analyst at Next Digital

Hey Justine,

I find that for for the big brands to succeed on social environments, and sites outside of search there is a big component many fail to see. The focus on the 'click' (although we are miles behind in Australia with CPM dominating) will fade dramatically and success will be focused on engagement.

What happened when users saw the content - did they forward it on, watch, act, join, talk about, did it increase brand recall? These are all factors which the current CPC metric doesn't take into account.

Yes CPC will become more competitive if demand starts to out-wiegh supply, but it all seems cyclical in one way or another to me.


Hendrik van Slooten
Marketing & Development Manager Jr. at CameraNU.nl

Well there are already portals (which send people through with a CPC-model) who can actually see how much revenue "their" customers are creating, so even after those customers found you and closed the portal, it's still possible for them to see how much sales you really got, from these customers, on you own website. Seeing the amount of portals grow rapidly, makes me believe that the buyers (which pay for the clicks) will have more and more leverage to force portals only to charge valuable (read: REALLY BUYING) customers. This leverage is caused by the fact that if you have a non-cooperating portal, you just go to another one. Of course this isn't always possible, but I believe it will become more and more..

Steve Bottomley
Director of Broadcast Strategy at ITV plc

Hi Justine,

PPC is a pure method of payment for results but market CPMs will be set by the balance of supply and demand and demand is made up of advertisers who can afford very different customer acquisition costs. If a channel is effective for high margin product campaigns the market price will tend to increase making the channel expensive for low margin sectors. As markets mature there will be market price cycles driven by the demand profile.

As Brett says the purity of CPC pricing misses the value delivered (or not?) by previous ad views by the same customer which may have contributed to the decision to click/purchase. This branding value will be variable depending on the product, channel, creative etc. but it is the stuff thata drives the relatively high cpms of TV, Press etc. If content producers/channels rely on CPC models only they will probably deliver a lower RoI on their investment than if they use CPM models. IN my experience of TV I have never seen a pay per response TV campaign that produced anything like the same revenue as a 'normal' CPM (CPT) campaign. DRTV campaigns tend to run at the periphery of the schedule as a result.

So, I see advertisers pushing for CPC and media owners/channels pushing for CPM. Buyers have their own business dynamics which mean they must balance the need to produce results for their clients while adopting the trading method that produces a profit for them.

As online content develops further I would expect to see an amalgam of pricing models that reflect the differing levels of engagement, response delivery and measurability offered by differing channel types e.g. information websites, social sites, portals, media rich sites, blogs etc.

The onlne market has the potential to be as complex as all other media markets combined and more so. So, individual marketing campaigns will need to plan for, adapt to and cope with varying response levels, pricing models and value metrics.

As the market develops we will probably see many boom cycles and bubbles within it.

Steve

Dinesh Kulchandra
Sr. Manager Business Planning Communicate2

Search Advertising has been the mainstay of marketers looking at generating relevant eyeballs on their m-sites/acquiring leads. However important this medium might sound there is a general discomfort faced by advertisers owing to it's susceptibility. Misdirecting audience, for one had never been so dramatically convenient.
Somehow, contextual advertising is the next step in PPC considering that if my OOH audiences shift to CPC or CPL, with dynamic bidding models OR consider Print getting in contextual mode wherein if a SALE is happening aound my area is visible to a specific radius...
Best..
Dinesh

Taseer Rangrez
Business Development, Marketing, Sales Operations


PPC programs can deliver instant targeted visitors to your website in streaming amounts, but bear in mind the downsides of click fraud.

It has been estimated that up to 38% of all clicks through PPC advertising are fraudulent. Allegations have even been brought against the major search engines for not doing their part to control the click fraud issues, and critics are quick to point out the fact that search engine companies earn 99% of their income through this advertising method.

Industry analysis's predict a change in the next few years as PPC advertising shifts to CPA advertising with search engines. This will eliminate the click fraud issue, because advertisers will began to pay for actions instead of clicks. This form of advertising will become the most dominant form of online advertising.

properly managed PPC advertising campaign can still be the most effective online advertising method for a company. It IS still possible to achieve a great ROI for a particular product or service, and will continue to drive the most traffic, clicks, and sales for online advertising for years to come

Gianluigi Cuccureddu
Web Marketing Strategist Consultant @ Traffic4u

Hello Justine,

Competition will increase and be it by technology or ultra effective campaign management, outsmarting through targeting the right keywords at the right time at the right person will be the challenge.
Also the neverending increase of CPC's has its positive effect, at one point, the average advertisers will bail out due to price/competition and the price level will normalize.

Best regards,
Gianluigi Cuccureddu