Hey search marketers, how's your bid strategy? Well, whatever is, it better be an aggressive one, said pepperjamSEARCH.com President and CEO Kristopher Jones at the most recent Search Engine Strategies show in New York. As paid search prices move up and competition continues to heat up, Jones says that developing an automated approach that picks and chooses the right battles is essential to SEM success. It's all about ROI-based bidding, bid jamming, bid surfing, and bid shadowing, he said. The first refers to constantly updating and maintaining specific bid positions based on an ROI objective. The second means strategically bidding …

The New York Times today has a lengthy article about production companies developing niche content for broadband TV.   There are thousands of producers focused in very specific areas whose content would never make it to prime time, but they have very dedicated small audiences. The Times, in trying to coin a new buzz word, calls the phenomenon of producing TV content for small dedicated audiences on the Web, "slivercasting." Fine. But more importantly, this phenomenon underscores the Internet's ability to offer an infinite selection of content that would never sell in a store or on TV. As Discovery Communications' …

It may come as no surprise that experts believe that Google itself is the biggest winner from search giant's recent click fraud settlement. It's kind of obvious, really, if you look at this way: for about 15 percent of the company's 1.5 billion in revenue last year (which should be near 2.5 billion next year), Google has effectively rid itself of all click-fraud-related issues in the past four years. Oh, and by the way, Google will be repaying those advertisers through advertising credits, not cash, and thus reinvesting in its own system. The same experts are telling ClickZ that it's …

Hollywood big-wigs agree: digital cinema is the future of their medium, but it's just not ready for widespread deployment. With digital technology taking over media, we ask: what's the point of going to the cinema when the home theater experience is comparable in quality and much better in terms of comfort? Not only that, but producers make most of their money from DVD sales anyway, so really, what's the point? Well, executives from industry organizations, movie studios and technology companies met last week at the University of Southern California to discuss cinema's digital future, looking for answers as to how …

Online incentive marketing has emerged as a legitimate and lucrative marketing channel, with FreeiPods.com as its poster child. Incentive marketers work with customer-acquisition agencies and direct marketers in a pay-for-performance model that grossed more than $20 million last year for Gratis Internet, parent to the popular iPod giveaway site. How do you get a free iPod? Well, you purchase a vacation, a car, credit cards, bank accounts, magazine subscriptions, etc. It's a brilliant idea, really: marketers tack on a free iPod in exchange for receiving new customers. It's a marketing expense and a sexy added incentive for consumers to buy …

In a new study of more than 4,000 e-mail marketers, e-mail service provider ExactTarget finds that the bigger the e-mail list, the lower the open and click-through rate. Marketers with lists of 100,000 or more names experienced an average open rate of 18.2 percent, and click throughs of 3.6 percent, according to the findings, the worst performing group of the study. Those with between 101 and 1000 names on their list, the best-performing group of marketers, received an average open rate of 42.1 percent and a click-through rate of 6.8 percent. Lists with between 1,001 and 10,000 names received an …

Accoona may be a much less cool name than Google, but that won't stop the Jersey City-based search engine from going after the top spot in search. The new search player has $65 million in funding it plans to use to market itself to the unknowing world, starting with a campaign that includes TV, print, and word of mouth. But, once people know about it, why would they want to switch? Accoona says its search technology doesn't just use keywords and page ranking to come up with results, it can also deliver relevant pages that don't mention the keyword …

Yesterday DFC Intelligence told us to expect worldwide online gaming subscription revenue to reach nearly $7 billion by 2011, more than tripling the size of that market in the next five years. As Business Week points out, subscription revenue is only part of online gaming's business equation; greater subscriber numbers will also enhance digital distribution and advertising. That said, these worldwide figures can be a bit deceiving, since more than 50 percent of subscription revenue in 2005 came from Asia, most notably China, Taiwan, and South Korea. While online gaming has been successful in North America for the likes …

Google may have hedged its risk a bit by setting-up a $90 million dollar credit following a recent class-action settlement with its advertisers, who complained they had been unfairly charged for advertising that was hijacked by competitors. Following the settlement, experts say click fraud won't be going away anytime soon. In click fraud, ads are repeatedly clicked on by automated software bots deployed by competitors seeking to drive up the advertiser's costs. Google advertisers who believe they are victims of click fraud can apply to receive a portion of the $90 million credit the company has set up as part …

Amazon is set to unveil a movie and TV download service that lets users purchase content for a fee and then burn it onto a DVD. According to The New York Times, the online retailer is in "advanced" talks with three Hollywood studios. A download service would position Amazon against Apple Computer' iTunes, the leader in digital content distribution. Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers are said to be engaged in the talks, said one of three unnamed sources cited by the Times. The proposed move comes as the media and retail worlds converge on the Web. Amazon is the Web's …