by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 31, 2:27 PM
Holiday shoppers purchase from a retailer they don't typically shop from, giving brand marketers an interesting opportunity to reach new customers. On the other hand, it could become a bit more difficult because those potentially new customers are gift givers who are not often in the market for things you sell.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 30, 1:38 PM
Google plans to revolutionize photography through image and video enhancements and stabilization techniques to support the mounds of photos and movies being uploaded to Google+. During a presentation Tuesday, Vic Gundotra, Google's social lead, said Google+ supports 300 million monthly active users -- up from 190 million in May. People upload about 1.5 billion photos weekly, and in the two years since the social site launched, Google has seen video uploadeds rise 2-times more
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 29, 11:32 AM
Video will change search engine marketing. We will see it more in map apps, product listing ads (PLAs), and in the next generation of paid search and native advertising. The media will support the future sale of Google Glass, but also brand channels on YouTube.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 28, 1:26 PM
A new form of native advertising has become available to search engine marketers. Linking content to CAPTCHAs, the brand can tie in the Completely Automated Public Turing tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart verification function. At least one start-up has taken advantage of that connection. Detroit-based Are You A Human, which specializes in game verification systems, doesn't view its CAPTCHA service as a native ad unit, but it does consider PlayThru game ad unit an alternative to the string of distorted squiggly letters that Web sites use to prove a person is human.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 25, 3:30 PM
Marketers at more than half of U.S. companies believe phone calls remain a resource for high-quality leads. When I need to find information at a local store, it has become so much easier to pick up my mobile device, bring up Google voice search, and say "Home Depot, Huntington Beach, Store hours." In response, the voice assistant tells me "here are the store hours for the Home Depot store in Huntington Beach." Underneath that listing, a "Call" tab provides a click-to-call direct line to the store.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 24, 2:40 PM
Arkady Borkovsky, CTO at Yandex Labs, and I met at a MediaPost OMMA event in San Francisco several years ago. He participated in a panel on global search. That's when I knew the Russian search market would never be the same.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 23, 2:29 PM
The holidays bring a slew of enticing benefits tied to customer experience, but no matter how engaging the search, the social or the display campaigns, for me customer service provides the number one draw to online and brick-and-mortar stores. Service builds an emotional tie between the brand and consumer.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 22, 4:38 PM
Retailers using video to drive sales, direct-response sales and brand awareness continue to pick up on YouTube. Steve Arthur, head of industry for retail at Google, provides some tips for those who want to ramp up their brand channel for the holiday season. "Search marketers have become more valuable," he says. Here's why.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 21, 1:49 PM
See the headline? For generations, many have believed that machines can do things better than people. How many times will you see a search ad before getting disgusted and thinking enough is enough? There are checks and balances for search, but they don't seem to always work. Automation continues to play a bigger role. Marin Software, through its newly created Labs unit, this morning introduced a tool that senses shifts in ad position and increases or decreases bids to keep the paid-search campaign in the top spot.
by Laurie Sullivan on Oct 18, 1:16 PM
A decline in the aggregated cost per click for paid-search ads in Q3 2013, enticed marketers to purchase more ads from Google during the quarter, increasing the company's aggregate revenue. Investors bought in to the uptick, pushing the stock price per share to more than $1,000 by Friday morning after the company reported third-quarter results Thursday.