Marketing & Advertising
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With an update to Ad Trackers…
Recently we surveyed a number of merchants asking for feedback on recent system upgrades and ideas for future improvements. One issue that was raised concerned using Ad Tracker URLs in text broadcasts.
Ad Tracker URLs were often so long that the links would occasionally be cut in half by some email clients and become useless (worse than useless since a broken link in a business email can have a negative PR value).
As of July 10, 2007 we have implemented a brand new, shorter URL to run our Ad Tracker module. The new URL is: www.on2url.com
All Ad Trackers, whether newly created or previously existing, will now display a new, shorter URL that will look something like:
www.on2url.com/app/adtrack.asp?MerchantID=####&AdID=####
This change also better positions our Ad Tracker module for future updates, so watch for more good things to come.
And don’t worry; there will be no need to update your website because all existing links will continue working the same as always.
On a separate note, we will be sending another exciting upgrade announcement next week that you are not going to want to miss!
I found an interesting service at AttentionMeter today. It’s pretty handy and lets you input up to 5 websites to output Alexa and Quantcast data charts for Site Reach and Traffic Results.
Here’s an example of our URL along with 4 of our competitors (randomly selected from the top 10 results in a Google search for the keyword “Shopping Cart Software”). It’s a little hard to read the small images, but 1ShoppingCart is the top line in each image!
Check out the Alexa and Quantcast rankings for your site today.
Recently, Yahoo upgraded their PPC offering to the new Panama system (we talked about it in January). There’s been a lot of talk about improved relevancy (and difficult transition stories), but no real hard data on the new system so far.
Fortunately a couple decent reports have now been released.
First, Matt Greitzer and Chris Boggs of avenuea-razorfish.com have released a report based on the experiences of their company, 33 Avenue A | Razorfish. What did they find?
- Search Impressions – Up an average of 5%
- Cost Per Click – Down an average of 6%
- Click Rate – Up an average of 10%
- Conversion Rates – Down an average of 5%
- Overall CPA – Up an average of 6%
The second decent report I came across so far, is from Stepforth; who have compiled an article from their experiences, Yahoo Panama - Pros and Cons.
Tell us about your experiences with Yahoo’s changes…
Tomorrow I am going to try and sneak you some information about an upcoming release… maybe screenshots even… but so far I haven’t been able to get my hands on them yet, so today I thought I would answer a couple quick techy questions I hear about our blog regularly…
What blogging software do you use?
Wordpress!! (and love it)
Do you Ping?
Of course. We were tagging and pinging before any marketer created the term to sell an info product.
You could ping manually with one of the following services:
Pingomatic
Pingoat
PingTheEmpire
Or, take advantage of the built-in Wordpress ability to automatically ping for you (a little time consuming when posting) by adding any of the following lists into the Update Services field on the Wordpress Options >> Writing page:
Elliott Backs list of 50+ pings
A List in Warrior Forums
A compiled and organized list of the above sources
What Plugins do you use?
All of the plugins we use can be found on Jim Westergrens excellent blog.
Of course there are no end to useful plugins and I recommend searching for ones that may be useful for you (Search Google for Wordpress Plugins!)
Do you get a lot of traffic?
Oh! Now we’re getting personal 
Actually we do alright, and fluctuate between 1500 and 3000 unique visitors every single day.
In fact, you can see exactly how many people are reading this blog right now, by checking out the ‘Visitors Online’ plugin at the bottom of our menu down the left hand side of the page. Generally we see 20 to 50 people online at any given moment.
Did you submit your blog to directories?
Yes and No. The SEO strategy I’ve used is a longer conversation than I have time for in this post, but yes I’ve submitted to directories in the past.
I HAVEN’T paid for a single submission though. There are too many useful free sources online to worry about paying for any one in particular (this is a general comment & how I have pursued SEO for this blog only… not a strategy written in stone!)
I am more of a linkbait (& Linkbaiting) fan, than a Link Ninja (& Link Ninja v.2) fan although both should be pursued with equal vigor
Did I miss anything? Have any other burning questions?
Just let me know and I will do my best to get them answered!
If you’re paying for ads on Yahoo! Sponsored Search, you need to be aware of changes that are going to take place as of February!
On February 5th, 2007, Yahoo! Sponsored is adopting a system similar to Google Adwords and begin using ad quality and relevancy to determine ad position and bid price.
But how will they be determining ‘Ad Quality’?
According to Yahoo, Ad quality is determined by:
- The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to its position in search results.
- The ad’s expected performance – which is determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time.
More from Yahoo!:
This change, which will impact all advertisers, is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding and more on the quality of your ads. By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and reduced cost for your ads.
They even provided this catchy little image to help explain it:
Some other key changes and considerations to be aware of:
- Review your current max bids. Keep in mind you may be charged up to this amount. Learn More.
- Standard match type ads will no longer receive priority placement over Advanced match type ads. Learn More.
- Fewer Sponsored Search results may now appear at the very top of the page for certain search terms. Learn More.
- Starting on February 5 there will be a transition period during which forecasting tools will accumulate more data about the new ranking model to provide better traffic estimates. Learn More.
This change has been anticipated for some time now, and should mean only good things for the relevancy of search results at Yahoo!. But it may mean a serious amount of work for current users who have to upgrade their account and check & modify all their existing ads.
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