Category Archive: Business

Asking about what would complement someone best — what a nice and effective way to discuss someone’s less strong areas.

“In social networks, on the other hand, users show up to find friends; ads are, at best, irrelevant to that goal.” Byran Urstadt, Tech Review

Dell’s direct marketing has always been impressive, but this recent full page branding ad in the New Yorker left me befuddled.

Looking at our agency’s client base in aggregate, last month Google received 79% of our clients’ ad dollars. Yahoo received 17%. Microsoft received 5%.

“But one thing that struck me is that I just found out today that the way AdSense works is we don’t actually know how much of a cut we’re getting. We just take their ads and run them on our site and they send us a check at the end of the month, and we trust them to give us a fair amount of whatever they were paid, though there’s no actual way to determine what a fair amount might be.” - FJY

Keywords, bids, and matchtypes — those are the big levers of paid search. To get your PPC programs generating maximum profit, focus there first.

Measuring new customer acquisitions and lifetime value calculations applies not only to traditional marketing, but paid search too.

May 2008 search engine share results aggregated across RKG clients: steady, no big change. Google at 81%.

“The only way to grow your business long-term is through this process of turning your customers into your sales force.”
- Fred Reichheld

Like glancing at page one headlines of the newspaper, Addictomatic gives a one page summary for your specific search term, right now, across 18 leading sites.

Online retailers seeking more agility in their web development should give “Getting Real” by 37Signals a thoughtful read.

USPS direct mail usually leaves me befuddled, and the environmailist [sic] mailing doesn’t disappoint.

NYT reports online display advertising having a tougher time than paid search in weak economy. “The new advertisers are more cautious about requiring some sort of proof or evidence that something is working,” reports GM of WeatherChannel.

More thoughts on Microsoft Jellyfish CashBack.

Microsoft will offer cash back to users who make purchases after using Live search. IMHO, you can’t buy user loyalty.

Two thumbs up for the Amazon Kindle. Excellent UI.

Will defaulting automatic match to “on” help or hurt the bulk of Google advertisers?

For the first time, Google nudges Yahoo out of the top spot as most popular US site.

Focus your efforts on merchandising the first twenty pages of your catalog, your website home page, and website top-level product category pages with order starters.

A small mathematical model to help understand the relationship between never-mails and the bottom line.

Two really interesting interviews with Chris Anderson and Michael Arrington on Charlie Rose back in March.

ProQuo is a venture-backed company hoping to profit from consumer opt-outs and opt-ins.

I’m honored to be invited back to MIT to speak on “The Business And Mathematics of Pay-Per-Click Bidding” May 30, 2008, at MIT’s Tang Center.

I have a post on SEL hattipping the titans of direct mail for insight into paid search.

Providing searchers what they really want also gets retailers what they really want: more sales.