Posted on February 20th, 2007 by Dhirender
In one of the most innovative uses of Google Earth for online advertisng, Saturn is looking to roll out a nationwide version of an online ad for its new Aura sedan built on Google Earth technology this spring. To view the advertisement, web users would not be required to download the mapping software; they can just sit back and watch as the screen zooms all the way down from space into the nearest Saturn dealership - located by their IP address - where a salesman offers them a test-drive.
A beta version of the ad, targeted at just six U.S. cities, received millions of click-throughs, according to Gokul Rajaram, product management director for Google AdSense. (View this 3-d ad here.)
It also resulted in more than 1,000 requests for a test-drive - which prompted Saturn’s ad agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, to start inventing campaigns for its other clients using Google Earth. “Every retail chain will eventually do this,” says Jeff Goodby, co-founder of the San Francisco-based agency.
“Consumers who are using this are much more engaged with it than with a contextual ad they see while surfing the Internet,” says Henry Hall, senior product manager for Virtual Earth 3D. “This is the wave of the ad future.” Given Madison Avenue’s crisis about engaging a younger, more tech-savvy audience, that wave can’t come fast enough.
Read the complete article.
Filed under: Web Marketing | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 19th, 2007 by Dhirender
Acunetix, a vendor of web application security solutions, today revealed that on average 70% of websites are at serious and immediate risk of being hacked.
Since January 2006, Acunetix has been offering a free automated web scan for qualifying websites. Out of a total of 10,000 applications, Acunetix has scanned 3,200 sites belonging to either businesses or non-commercial entities.
70% of the websites scanned were found to contain high or medium vulnerabilities. There is an extremely high probability of these vulnerabilities being discovered and manipulated by hackers to steal the sensitive data these organizations store.
Download the report or apply for a free security audit.
Filed under: Everything else | No Comments »
Posted on February 15th, 2007 by Dhirender
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN encourage webmasters to submit their sitemaps in various format to ensure that all their pages are indexed by the search engine. Create an account in Google Webmaster Tools to upload your sitemap for Google, and add your site to Yahoo! Search Site Explorer to submit to Yahoo!
One easy way to create a free XML sitemap is at XML-Sitemaps.com. The free version indexes upto 500 pages and generates sitemaps in multiple formats (xml, text and HTML) but if you have a site where content is updated frequently, you could opt for the paid version which would automate the XML generation, and also submit it to Google and Yahoo! once the sitemap is updated.
I recently tried generating a sitemap for the Octopus Labs Blog, and it works fine.
Similarly, creating a sitemap on your own site also helps search engines index all pages on your site, apart from allowing visitors an alternative mens of navigation.
ROR (Resources of a Resource) is a rapidly growing independant XML format which generated sitemaps that can be read by all search engines, including Google. You can get a free ror sitemap for upto 1000 links here, or download the desktop version which will index upto 5,000 pages.
Filed under: SEO | No Comments »
Posted on February 13th, 2007 by Dhirender
Among the most tedious jobs is to submit your URL or RSS feed to all the search engines on the web. While Google and Yahoo would cover most of the searches, and a submission to Dmoz would cover most of the other serach engines, there is still some value in submitting your URL/ RSS feed to search engine.
One website which helps to take the grunt work out for free is FreeWebSubmission.com. Use their free feature to submit your URL to over 20 search engines including Alexa in one shot.
There is a small price however - a subscription to their weekly newsletter on Search Engine Placement and Optimization.
Filed under: SEO | No Comments »
Posted on February 13th, 2007 by Dhirender
The effort to create more personalised visitor segmentation is leading vendors like Kefta to build solutions structured around site behaviour, prior behavioral information such as purchases or products of interest, search queries, geo-targeting, etc. Based on these, decision making information such as Paid and Organic Keywords, Affiliate and Link Tracking Codes, Banner and Email Promotional Codes could be presented.
Thus, an online marketer ends up with a a best-message/ best-time/ best-channel tool that lets marketers differentiate themselves with the best, most relevant user experience. This in turn leads to long-term customers and higher conversion rates, as the website MyWeddingFavours discovered.
As an example, a visitor coming to a travel website from London (as shown by Geo Trageting via IP) and reading articles on Australia, could be shown banners giving a special rate on a London-Australia flight.
Similarly, a customer who bought hiking shows from an online store, could be sent an email with a special offer on other hiking gear or even hiking packages, or books on hiking trails.
Personalisation of a mass media as only the Internet can offer.
Other reads:
Kefta Lets Customers Self Serve
E-Mail Blasts Kill Channel’s Reputation
Beyond Behavioral
Filed under: Web Marketing | No Comments »
Posted on February 11th, 2007 by Dhirender
This tool lets you preview Which Google AdWords will initially be shown on your web page. Enter the page that you would like a report on, select the size that you want displayed, and click on the “Show Me” button.
This will give you the google ads that are most like to be displayed. Based on the results, you could decide to tweak your content using a keyword suggestion tool, to deliver more relevant google ads, and maximise your revenue.
I found this tool to be quite accurate in the ads that it threw up for one of my other sites (WildBlueSkies.com) where I do have Adwords.
The site also has a page on tips to maximise your revenue using Google Adwords.
Filed under: SEM | 1 Comment »