Online Marketing: Hey Music Business – Learn How to Market Online Already!
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 19, 2008 | Share This
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Ah the record business. For a group of people who thrive on being hip, they just don’t get the Internet. Now the typical music mogul will say that they get it just fine, mostly in the rear. The Internet is where people go to steal money from them. Instead of whining like little babies perhaps they should look at their own sales and revenue figures. Even better they should try to apply some of the marketing lessons from search and social media.
According to the Record Industry Association of America’s own figures, more people than ever before are downloading singles and albums as well as ringtones and other items on the Internet. The online segment that in 2005 accounted for less than 10% of industry revenue counted for 23% in 2007.
Yes, but revenue is down overall they might say. True dat, but can this really be laid at the feet of file sharers, Muxtape, and CD burning? There are two things happening: First, a whole generation has grown up without reverence for the album format. They like a song, they download the song. The shift to single tracks from albums is actually a return to the record landscape that predominated until the late 1960s when the album began to dominate. The margin on albums is higher than on single tracks so the labels would prefer a return to the old days.
Topics: Advertising: Offline, Advertising: Online, Blogging, ECommerce, Google, Legal Issues, Music, MySpace, Online Video, SEM: Paid Search, Social Media | No Comments »
Search News: SearchViews Announces Support For Google’s Free the Airwaves Campaign and Petition
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 18, 2008 | Share This
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We are joining with Google, Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP, Philips Electronics and many other companies in calling on the FCC to rule that the spectrum which television broadcasters will be relinquishing in 2009 be used for universal wireless broadband online access. Our belief is that this is key to online innovation, competitiveness, and the continued growth of new technology in the United States.
We acknowledge that as search marketers we stand to gain from increased Internet usage and penetration but this is a case where society gains as well. We believe in the Internet as a great leveler where an individual has the ability to be heard loud and clear on the same level as the mightiest corporation or government entity. Opening up access to people who have been underserved is adding more voices to the great marketplace of ideas and goods. It’s a plus for knowledge, for commerce, and even for democracy.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Google, Legal Issues, Media Convergence, Microsoft, Online Video, Reprise Media, Search: News, Technology | No Comments »
Weekly Search Roundup: This Week’s Search Stories Slapped on Their Sunburned Shoulders for Your Amusement
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 15, 2008 | Share This
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Olympics fever continued to lay much of the nation low as the dog days of Summer stagger through mid-August. Will tomorrow’s children ask about 9-year old Chinese girls competing in gymnastics, or Russian tanks rolling into Georgia, or that election stuff with that old guy and that celebrity guy when they look back at this week in their history Kindles? I think it’s more likely they’ll want to know where Grandma was when Gmail and Netflix were down. To the ticker!
Ad Planner Favors Google? Gambling in Casablanca? Shocked I tell you…
John Battelle decided to see what would happen when he replaced users regular coffee with Folger’s. Oh I’m sorry, I mean Comscore’s monetized reporting with Google’s Ad Planner free product. The result? Ad Planner had a tendency to favor sites that served Google AdSense. Hard to believe…
Topics: Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Online, ECommerce, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Search: News, Social Media, Week in Review | No Comments »
Online Advertising: Grasping an Ad Network’s Reach
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 14, 2008 | Share This
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One of the great things about search advertising is that there is a wealth of hard data out there that can tell you how many people are searching for a particular keyword before you bid on it. When you serve advertising on a search engine results page you reach people who are searching in order to take an action either now or later.
On the other hand, advertising on publishing sites more closely resembles other forms of traditional print and television and share with those mediums a degree of uncertainty over whether the people seeing your ad are actually intereste din your message. The uncertainty grows when dealing with ad networks which can claim, as one former ad network employee tells me, to “reach 90 percent of the Internet” — an astounding and meaningless figure.
Topics: Advertising: Distribution, Advertising: Online, Publishing | No Comments »
Media Convergence: Broadband in Every Household? Not so Fast…
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 13, 2008 | Share This
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If you hear broadband partisans tell it, in a few years everyone will be sitting at home watching Wall-E vs. Batman on their home theater/computer/portal systems while downloading season 29 of The Simpsons to the family hard drive. Is this really the future for most families or even most internet users, or is this the stuff of moonbeams and applesauce, like jetpacks and airship mooring masts?
Don’t get me wrong, I love my broadband connection, I couldn’t imagine going back to dial-up. If you want to take it away you’ll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. My wife found this out when we moved in together. She had lived without home internet access and cable television prior to then, quite happily. When she saw the first bill for cable plus broadband she was floored.
Topics: Advertising: Online, ECommerce, Media Convergence, Online Video | 1 Comment »
SEM: Using Google Insights to Explore Old Media’s Geographic Reach
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 12, 2008 | Share This
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Newspapers by their nature tend to be local. Their location is even part of their name in most cases. Even so, certain newspapers are so influential that their reach extends beyond their location to other parts of the country and even the world. I thought it would be interesting to see how this might be reflected in Google’s dandy new toy, Insights for Search.
I picked four of the best know daily papers in the United States, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Miami Herald. As a ringer I added USA Today to see if a paper that bills itself as a national one really has national scope online. The timeframe was calendar year 2007.
Topics: Google, Publishing, SEM: Bid Management, SEM: Keyword Generation, SEO, Search: Local, Web Analytics | No Comments »
Search Engine News: Turn On, Log in, Opt Out - The Politics of Online Targeting
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 11, 2008 | Share This
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With Yahoo’s very public and Google’s characteristically more sly announcements that they are going to an “opt out” model for targeted ads, the continued legislative scrutiny of the search advertising and marketing industry ought to be addressed. During these dog days of summer it’s not surprising to find the political class in Washington DC casting about for an issue or to two to ride on home with and give the appearance of having done some actual work.
Topics: Advertising: Behavioral, Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Online, Google, Legal Issues, Reprise Media, SEM: Paid Search, Search: News, Web Analytics | No Comments »
Weekly Search Roundup: This Week’s Search News Fully Vetted for Counter Governmental Rhetoric – Now Go Watch The Olympics
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 8, 2008 | Share This
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The glorious Olympics games are here! Everybody enjoy the sweet-smelling fog that has enveloped Beijing – it is all natural and not in any way related to industrial activity. Kindly remove the insulting facemask and enjoy the following news. Or else.
Girls Gone Wild Yahoo Style
Forrest Gump once mused that “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get…” Less nauseating but still chocolate boxey, automated tagging within articles can produce a similar “Surprise! You just bit into coconut!” effect. Automated tagging is when you drag your mouse over a word in an article online and it opens a box (not of chocolates) that directs you to more information on that topic – often sponsored. This is all well and good until the phrase is “underage girls.”
Topics: Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Online, Facebook, Google, Publishing, SEO, Search: News, Social Media, Week in Review | No Comments »
Social Media: A Comment on Commenting, or, Would You Like Spam on That Post?
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 7, 2008 | Share This
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Today’s Washington Post has an article detailing the John McCain presidential campaign’s new frequent flyer model for online commenting. Here’s how it’s described by reporter Paul Farhi:
“On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (”John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.”
What do the little McCainiacs get for their trouble?
“People who sign up for McCain’s program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain’s webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.”
On the face of it this Astroturf (so named by Farhi because of its faux grass-roots quality) is an innovative and powerful way to harness social media sites to promote McCain’s candidacy.
Topics: Blogging, Facebook, Social Media | 3 Comments »
SEO & SEM: Google Puts Another Bullet in the Chamber with Insights for Search
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 6, 2008 | Share This
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The latest, Insights for Search (I4S to the kids?) is already a hit around the Reprise Media offices – allowing for quick and easy keyword research by geography and comparative volume. That being said, it’s not an adequate replacement for most of the popular keyword research tools for sale – yet. The difference lies in how far you are able to drill down to hard numbers and demographic data.
Topics: Advertising: Online, ECommerce, Google, Google: AdWords, SEM: Keyword Generation, SEO, Search: How-To, Search: Innovations, Search: News, Technology, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »