For search marketers augmenting campaigns with display targeting, the ad world became a little smaller on Tuesday. ValueClick announced it would acquire Dotomi and make it a wholly owned subsidiary. Privately held Dotomi provides ad display data for about 100 retail brands. Under the terms, ValueClick will acquire outstanding equity interests in Dotomi for $295 million, about 55% in cash and 45% in ValueClick common stock. In addition, ValueClick will assume unvested Dotomi restricted stock and options that will vest between one and three years. Dotomi management will receive the majority of their consideration in ValueClick common stock, which they …

Education, reputation, and conversion rate optimization are essential. These are three of the top 10 things Alex Cohen learned while working at a search startup. For example, don't forget the offline campaigns, especially in business-to-business marketing. He specifically mentions events and trade shows. He also gives us a timeline that took him from Commerce360 to ClickEquations to Channel Intelligence before jumping into the role of director of marketing at H.Bloom.

Keyword match-type strategies vary depending on the goal marketers want to achieve. Broad, phrase, exact, negative, embedded, and modified broad all offer their respective benefits. Bryan Watson defines each and provides a list of benefits, how to properly use each one, and drawback when not used properly. For example, negative keywords disqualify a search from serving up an ad. Retailers selling "red shoes" may not want to show the ad for searches on "red boots." In this case the marketer would add the negative keyword "-boots" to the campaign.

Yahoo issued a letter to search marketers stating that the organic search transition in Europe will begin on August 3, 2011, affecting European properties in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Paid search will not make the same transition at this time. The transition comes on the news of Microsoft earnings that show a $2.6 billion loss in the latest fiscal year for the division running Bing.

The CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency) Foundation announced Monday that Google will sponsor the NASA Centennial Challenge flight competition, also known as the Green Flight Challenge (GFC). NASA will fund the $1.65 million purse, making it the largest prize for aviation. The event will be held Sept. 25 through Oct. 2, 2011 at Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport. The idea is to prove that emission-free flights are not only practical, but possible.

A detailed infographic provides a guide outlining the things marketers should test and optimize regularly including paid search, media buys, landing pages, and email campaigns. Don't test everything at once, but rather begin with marketing activities that produce the highest return on investment and then work your way down. For starters, it's important to test landing pages, colors, the call to action, and path to purchase.

Marketers looking for options to pay lower click rates for paid-search keywords should consider running a few campaigns on Microsoft Bing. The company's Webmaster Tools recently received an update. Vanilla Coke describes changes in the dashboard, Traffic Summary tab, Page Traffic report, Crawl details, site maps, and more. The detailed descriptions come with screen shots to confirm the tasks.

eMarketer estimates more than 91 million U.S. consumers will use the Internet through a mobile device at least once monthly this year. The data points to research that shows a 34% year-over-year increase of searches for people on the go, along with what consumers seek and why. The numbers suggest the need for local businesses to reach mobile users when they are nearby.

After a Google survey revealed that 68% of tablet users spend at least one hour per day on their tablet, the search engine set out to build a better experience on the device. Tablet users now have an optimized version of Google Search designed to for easy touch navigation. They also will find an updated look for search ads including the number that appear in query results. Surojit Chatterjee explains the new features.

Novelists build characters before writing a book. They know the characters inside and out, their likes and dislikes and the words they would use in any situation. Ironically, search engine marketers need to do something similar before building a campaign. They need to know the likes and dislikes of their audience, along with keywords they might search on to find products or services. Erez Barak gives us five steps to build a search persona for running an SEO campaign.