Luke Hubbard

Luke Hubbard: I’m very proud to have been quoted in Business Week regarding Google’s display ad sales.

The article in Business Week projects that Google’s display ad sales will top $1 billion this year with Youtube contributing to the majority of the revenues. Additionally, Business Week notes that TV and print ad dollars are shifting to online advertising.

Business Week continues to state that Google helps advertisers measure the effectiveness of display ads with their Campaign Insights tool. I said, “We knew that effect was there before, but now we are able to quantify it.”

The article ends with a quick comparison to Yahoo’s strength in selling display advertising.

-Luke Hubbard

Google acquires AdMob to catch up with Microsoft and Yahoo. Admob is a mobile display ad provider and Google handed over $750 million for the company. The following image is from Google’s official posting about the acquisition and it provides a clear example of where Google was in the mobile space and where they will be going with the AdMob technology.

The Wall Street Journal speculates that the recent deal between Yahoo and Microsoft gives Google an opportunity to “…refine its technology and craft a counter strategy….”

I absolutely agree.

Google works at the speed of light. Considering that both Yahoo and Microsoft have proven to struggle with fast roll-outs and technology updates, Google will have two solid years to progress and gain market share before Microhoo launches. The partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo will slow down the company’s research and development as their main focus will be on the partnership. Fusing the Microsoft and Yahoo technologies will be quite the project over the next two years.

I expect that the already well oiled Google machine will leave the others so far behind that they will never be able to catch up.

Do I want this to happen? Of course not. While I love Google, I do think competition in the market place is better for consumers and shareholders. I worry that Microsoft + Yahoo will turn into one of the largest messes we’ve seen thus far in the dot com world. I hope instead that the companies work well together and create solid competition for Google.

-Luke Hubbard

Today, I read a great article on the advantages of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing:  Google VS Bing User Centric Eye Tracking Study.

The main advantage that Bing has over Google is its 3 column format. Because the first column on the left contains useful information, users tend to notice the sister column on the right, the ads. Here’s the eye tracking study image, which shows Bing on the left and Google on the right…
 

Specifically, notice the right side of both images. Bing (left) had more users reading the ads than Google (right).

All in all, I think eye tracking studies have limited purpose. Yes, they show the movement of the eyes, but they fail to take into account what the user is actually thinking. For instance, even if users always notice Bing ads, it doesn’t mean that those users will find them helpful. In fact, users may only be noticing the ads because Bing is new and they are trying to figure it all out. If Bing fails to provide a solid user experience and quality search results, then it will not gain any traction against the other search engines.

Microsoft is spending considerable advertising dollars on promoting Bing.com, and they hope it will be a Google killer. Unfortunately, I just don’t see it happening as the search engine doesn’t seem to have any huge advantage over Google or Yahoo. Also, I don’t see any better results than what MSN or Live.com provided.

So far, I see no improvement in Microsoft’s search algorithm. If I want to find information, and find it fast, I will continue to use Google and Yahoo.

Last week, I attended Ad:tech in San Francisco. Ad:tech is for media, marketing, and technology professionals, which essentially means it’s a big conference for online people. I recommend Ad:tech over just about every other online conference since almost every major online vendor attends. I do like the NYC conference better than San Fran, however.

While at the conference, on April 21st, I was invited to have lunch at Google’s San Fran office. This office houses the Google agency teams, and I am fortunate enough to have many friends there. I must say that the view of the Bay Bridge from their superb dining hall is really unbelievable. Here are some pictures I found online of the Google San Fran office. The coolest feature is a fun slide that was installed into one of the stairways.

Yes, it’s true, Yahoo has a keyword match type that may as well be a mystery to most of the SEM world. It’s called the canonical match.

Princeton defines canonical as: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality.

Canonical mapping is what differentiates Yahoo’s standard match type from Google and MSN’s exact keyword match. Yahoo’s standard match type includes the keyword in your account plus all of the canonical forms of that word.

Canonical versions of the keyword include basic misspells, plurals, and the keyword + noise words like “a” or “the.” Google and MSN’s exact keyword match type include only one form of the keyword advertised. To show for plurals or misspells under Google and MSN’s exact match, you must upload every single version of the keyword that you want.

Consider the following example for the keyword “tool.”

Google’s exact match maps to: tool

Yahoo’s standard match maps to: tool, tools, the tool, a tool, for tool, about tool… and possibly many other versions of the keyword and misspells

Therefore, Yahoo’s standard match is actually more like Google and MSN’s phrase match type, and Yahoo really doesn’t offer an exact match type at all!

On a side note, Yahoo’s advanced match type is very much like Google and MSN’s broad match, which includes the keyword plus anything the system thinks is closely related to the keyword. For instance, the keyword “tool” might map to: tool, keyword tool, Google tool, SEM tool, and many other relevant versions of the keyword.

There is no way to turn the canonical mapping off and unfortunately, Yahoo doesn’t allow advertisers any exposure into the canonical mapping technology before keywords are uploaded.

The basic problem, however, with the canonical mapping is that you can unknowingly upload keyword duplicates into your account several times via different adgroups. For instance, if you upload the keyword “tool” into one adgroup, but upload “tools” into another adgroup, you will in result have the keyword duplicated in your account. This may not seem like a huge issue at first glance, but if you are trying to account for the exact ROI of a keyword or ensure accurate budgets for each campaign, the canonical match can start to pose major problems.

For instance, let’s say you’re trying to figure out your top 10 keywords in order to develop a sophisticated bidding strategy. You may have no idea which keyword is actually doing best, but according to your reports, it appears that the keywords have very different performance. To you, the words appear to have different statistics and you think they have different ROIs. To the Yahoo system, the words appear to be the same and the advertising platform shows results based on what it thinks is the higher quality keyword.

My advice is to have your Yahoo account representative “dedup” or “deduplicate” your entire keyword list before uploading it into your account.

Back when Yahoo used Overture as their advertising platform, the canonical match was considered a competitive advantage since it was a more sophisticated way of thinking about keyword mapping. Now, Yahoo is discretely tearing apart canonical mapping in order to make their system more like Google and MSN.

Here’s the most important part of this article: Watch out for your Yahoo account keyword volume! If you lose significant volume off of a keyword that was formerly driving impressions & clicks, it may be because Yahoo has unmapped keywords from its former canonical match. You may need to create a keyword expansion to gain your volume back. (And let’s keep our fingers crossed that advanced match is helping cover what could be lost volume).

Yahoo appears to be quietly implementing a fix before advertisers begin to notice the flaw in their Panama system. Let’s hope this blog posting doesn’t reach too many people for their sake.

Google Latitude is a service for mobile phones and Google maps that allows you to see where your friends are located. Additionally, your friends can see your own whereabouts.

Some are worried that Google Latitude infringes on user privacy, but I don’t see this as an issue since users must opt-in for the service.

Here’s Google’s official video for Latitude… 

Google recently started a new series of blog posts about Analytics and Adwords…

Inside AdWords: Analytics and AdWords tips – Part 1 of 4.

Here are the videos from the first post on the topic. Expect three more posts at the on the same topic at the Adword Blog.

I recommend you watch all the following videos, especially if you’re a beginner.

Find the Best Keywords

Location Targeting

Find Poor Performing Campaigns and Keywords

Placement Targeting

Identifying High Spenders

Conversion Funnels (My favorite of the group)

Tracking Ecommerce

Search Engine Optimization, often called SEO, is the art of gaining high rankings in search engine results. Search engines rank results based on three basic principles: linking, content, and architecture.

Linking is by far the most important aspect of SEO. Gaining a link is a statement that your site provides value and someone finds it useful. If your site gets a lot of quality links, then it shows the search engines that others find your site relevant and useful. Note that a link from a high-quality website will make more of an impact on your rank than tons of links from trash sites. Also, relevancy from the linking website is also considered. For instance, since my website is generally about Internet marketing & advertising, a link from AdAge would probably impact my search engine ranking more than a link from icanhascheezburger.com.

Content is the actual text, images, videos, or whatever else that’s on the site. Obviously, strong content provides value and thus will gain links. it is important to keep content focused on an overall theme in order for robots and humans to understand what your site is about and to find it useful.

Architecture is becoming a less important part of SEO as technology evolves as it concerns both web masters and search engines. Web masters have better tools to keep their sites clean and well constructed. The search engines are becoming smarter and overcoming obstacles that used to give them problems such as identifying and reading inline frames.

One way to see how Google views the value on your site is to check its page rank, an algorithm that assigns a number value between 1-10 to web pages. You can check a website’s page rank using the tool below.

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

Remember, a “10″ is a perfect score and Google doesn’t give out many of them. Check out the ranks for Google, MSN, Apple, NewYorkTimes.com, and PerezHilton.com for fun.

Google Apps for business is an excellent program to use for your small business’s email, shared calendar, and shared documents.

I use Google apps for my domain and absolutely love it. The coolest part is that it allows you to have your domain email address like: luke@lukehubbard.com

And unlike most basic email services that are free with your domain name purchase, Google apps take email to a new level with its Gmail format and functionality. 

If you’re thinking about spending a significant amount on Microsoft Exchange for your small business, think again! Google Apps is free and offers upgrades to follow you as your business grows. If you’re a small business, cut some costs and go with Google Apps excellent services, which I like better than the services for purchase anyway.

Most impressive, Google Apps will work on your SmartPhone, Blackberry, iPhone, etc!

-Luke