Radiohead Takes Advantage of Digital Downloads

Radiohead, one of the largest alternative bands in the world, released their new studio album “In Rainbows” via their website. The entire album can be downloaded for as little as $.90 or as much as you decide to pay for it. Although we all know that the majority of people are going to download the album for the minimum price, Radiohead is turning their album into a promotional tool to gain visibility, build fan loyalty, increase merchandise sales, and increase concert ticket sales.

For example, Google searches for “Radiohead” increased ten fold since the announcement of their downloadable album, website traffic increase 11 fold according to HitWise and news coverage of the band has increased dramatically in recent days. Although the knife is being turned that was stabled into hearts of major labels years ago by Napster, Radiohead is gracefully leading the progression of the music industry into the digital era. In the last few days, bands like Oasis and Jamiroquai have expressed interest in following suite with Radiohead.

Google and DoubleClick to Merge?

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Google’s purchase of advertising company DoubleClick is likely to be approved by regulators — despite fierce objections from Google’s chief rivals, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Some argue that the merger of two advertising giants has troubling antitrust and privacy implications.

At the same time, many experts point out that Internet advertising is a huge and largely untapped market that is ripe for new entrants, even if mergers like the Google-DoubleClick deal are approved.

Google’s $3.1 billion buyout of DoubleClick, if approved, is just one sign of a larger trend — the rapid consolidation of the lucrative Internet advertising industry. Though Microsoft and Yahoo are objecting to Google’s intention to acquire DoubleClick, they have made their own acquisitions as well. Microsoft Corp bought aQuantive Inc — the largest interactive ad agency — for $6 billion; Yahoo purchased BlueLithium for $300 million. Both of these deals were approved by U.S. regulators.

Because the online ad market is constantly evolving, incredibly dynamic, and difficult to define, it’s difficult to say whether the Google-DoubleClick deal would really represent an antitrust violation. The online ad market is currently expanding 15 to 20 percent a year worldwide. The global ad market, in contrast, is growing only 2 to 3 percent a year. Similarly, online advertising revenue surged to nearly $10 billion in the first half of 2007.

Because the online ad market is so huge and still surging, experts argue, it is possible for many more players to burst onto the scene and carve out their own segment of the market, even if Google and DoubleClick do merge. Online ad prices, some say, are highly unlikely to rise as a result of the deal.

Google Yourself!

Have you ever Googled yourself? A friend or family member? A job applicant or new potential boss? Try it!

As more and more of the worlds information is being indexed by the search engines, it is becoming increasingly important to monitor your “online profile.” As I am sure everyone went and searched their name after reading the first line; what did you come up with? Was there anything that you would prefer was not showing up or some content you wished appeared higher in the results?

This concept of “online reputation management” is becoming a must for every business whether they have a web presence or not. Reviews, ratings, testimonials, videos, and more, are becoming common place within the search engine results. There are numerous tips and tricks that can be implemented to help improve your online reputation, but the first step is to take a look. A large amount of companies and individuals seem to forget about it and are losing money, potential clients, and brand reputation because of it.

Does your business effectively monitor your reputation online???

Is Google’s Stock Too High?

Google’s stock hit $610, yesterday! Are investors getting a little crazy again?!? Now I am one of Google’s biggest fans (even though I do not own any stock), but this price certainly made me question investors’ sensibilities regarding this tech stock (seems like I have heard that comment in the past…). Yes, Google has created one of the greatest cash generating machines of our century with Adwords and Adsense, but can they sustain this growth?

For the past several years, Google has made forays into many new areas outside of search, including Print Ads, Audio Ads, Video, TV Ads, Checkout and YouTube. Not one of these efforts has added significant revenue to their bottom line. How can their stock price possibly be sustainable if all of their efforts to grow beyond search have failed? The acquisition of DoubleClick may help sustain the growth if it happens, but that acquisition looks tenuous at best with all of the reviews from the FCC to Congress.

If the Google stock bubble pops, it will certainly be felt throughout the industry. While there are certainly more online businesses with viable business models than in 2000/01, any Google price crash will be tough on the industry. So, we will all be watching to see if Google’s stock is really too high.

Yahoo! Going Universal

With Google Universal Search dazzling searchers around the globe, it’s no surprise that Yahoo! has rolled out a similar service — the New Yahoo! Search, which integrates event listings, photos, videos, and other multimedia into formerly text-reliant search results.

Shining in this new Yahoo! search can be a little tricky, though.

First, gaining visibility in a universal search model like this one — which may put a Flickr image next to a news article next to a plain old site listing — is not just about simple organic success. In this brave new world of search, site owners jostling for top spots need to really embrace social and media hosting online.

What does this mean? Two examples — video and images — will give you an idea.

Yahoo! Video: The new Yahoo Search will pull videos from Yahoo! Videos as well as YouTube. To upload your videos to Yahoo Videos, login using a Yahoo! ID and include important search terms in your listings — not only in the video’s title and description, but in tags.

If you have existing content on YouTube, you’re ahead of the game because YouTube videos are set to appear in Yahoo! search results. With YouTube videos as well, make the most of keyword-rich titles, descriptions and tags.

Flickr Photos and Yahoo! Images: Because Yahoo! owns Flickr, and Flickr is currently the market leader in photo-sharing services, it’s a no-brainer that the new Yahoo Search will pull images from this popular service.

Just like Yahoo! Video, you can logon to Flickr using any Yahoo! ID. Successfully listing photos in Flickr is simple — use keyword-rich titles, description and tags, and organize your photos by theme or subject and organize them into descriptive photo sets (digital photo albums). Following these simple steps will help your photos appear in the New Yahoo! Search.

In addition, the new Yahoo! Search is going to integrate many other elements: Hotels, local businesses, events, restaurants, maps, movies, health, and more. Videos and pictures just scratch the surface, but they are a favorite among users, and an attractive, properly labeled video or image is extremely enticing to users. So get optimizing!

Google’s Adword Placement Change – Just a Tweak

There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about the latest change Google announced for the top placement of paid search ads. Some SEMs are claiming it is selling out to the highest bidder or that this will be the end of SEO. Hold on a minute! Did you actually read the Google announcement on this? This is a tweak, not a major change.

Let’s take a quick look at what this change really means. A good place to start is exactly what Google announced. Here is my summary of the announcement:

Top placement (i.e, moving from the right-hand side to above the organic results) will no longer be reliant on the actual CPC you are paying. Your maximum bid will be taken into account instead. The Quality Score will still be the primary factor of whether your ad is eligible for the top spot.

Who will this affect?

Let’s start with who it will not affect. For competitive markets, this is unlikely to have any change. Bids are high enough that even under the old model, the three spots above the organic rankings were already filled if the Quality Score is high enough.

For keywords where there is less competition, such as long-tail terms, advertisers can more readily get into the top spot regardless of what the competition is bidding, if your Quality Score is high enough. Being able to garner the position above the organic results could dramatically improve your click through rate, and could dramatically increase your monthly spend for that keyword (now we see what Google’s motivation is…).

From an SEO perspective, this could have an affect for keywords where there was rarely a paid search ad above the organic results. The likely result would be lower traffic to the organic positions. This affect is likely to be limited, because the vast majority of clicks are on organic results, even when there is a paid ad in the spot or spots above the organic results.

How does this affect ad relevance for searchers?

The top spot is still not open to the highest bidder. Google is too concerned with relevance to make that type of change. If anything, this should help relevance for searchers, because relevant advertisers can more readily get into the top spot regardless of what your competition is bidding (as long as their Quality Score is high enough).

Watch Adword Spends Carefully

While this tweak is unlikely to have a big effect across a whole campaign, it will remain important to keep an eye on spends. If a campaign sees a lot of its long-tail keyword ads moved from the right-hand side to the top stop, the cumulative effect could be a big jump in spending for the month. So, keep an eye on spends and overall, I expect that this will be a positive change for advertisers and searchers.

Online Advertising, Offline Purchases

Here at Geary, we like to explore the synergy that can occur when your various marketing methods are tightly aligned, and how several parts of your marketing mix can interact in curious and unexpected ways. Two recent studies reveal just how online marketing efforts can affect offline buying habits.

As reported by SearchEngineWatch, the studies came from comScore and were commissioned by Yahoo! and local search agency TMP Directional Marketing. The first study examined the shopping behavior of 175,000 consumers, comparing the purchasing behavior of people exposed to online exposure to those who had not been exposure but were behaviorally and demographically identical.

The researchers found that those exposed to online search and display advertising tended to ‘pre-shop’ online prior to making a purchase, and this behavior boosted in-store sales. In the study, those who pre-shopped online spent 41 percent more money in-store compared to those who were not exposed to online ads.

In the study commissioned by TMPDM, 3,000 consumers were surveyed about their local searching behavior. A full 83 percent of local searchers followed up offline with a phone call, purchase, or in-store visit. Of those who followed up, 61 percent made purchases.

In addition, the study’s findings underscore the importance of optimizing local search results. Of searchers surveyed, 60 percent said that when looking for local businesses, they viewed the top results as the most relevant. A quarter of respondents didn’t want to scroll down to view more results.

These studies’ results corroborate the findings of earlier studies, such as an Accenture report that found, for example, that 67 percent of searchers prefer to buy in physical store, 69 percent research product features online, and 68 percent comparison-shop online. Lastly, comScore reported last year that 63 percent of purchases related to search occur offline!

These studies are a good reminder that the success of online marketing extends way beyond online sales. Especially when it comes to large purchases, the Internet is a common starting point, but the purchases tend to be made offline. Thus, when measuring the success of an online campaign, marketers need to track the effect online advertising has on in-store purchases.

Universal Goes Nuts over “Let’s Go Crazy”

As if the music industry needs any more negative publicity, Universal Music Group demanded a video be pulled from YouTube citing copyright infringement. The short, video depicts a baby dancing to the Prince tune “Let’s Go Crazy” and was uploaded to YouTube by the girl’s mother, Stephanize Lenz, to share with friend and family. As the firestorm surrounding the popular video has heated up, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped in to defend Lenz and filed suit against Universal.

In an era where companies are jostling for visibility on YouTube, Universal Music Group has clearly lost its way. Many companies would kill to have their products prominently featured on the most popular video-sharing site, and savvy marketers are pouring big bucks into viral campaigns on YouTube and other sites. Universal’s bullish tactics have only brought negative publicity their way, and turned the YouTube community against them.

After all, Universal set off the entire controversy by fighting someone who enjoys one of their products. Alienating your customer base is never a good idea.

Whether Universal is on the right side of the law is beside the point. Though they may win in court, they are losing among their customer base because their actions appear heavy-handed and misguided.

In addition, the implications of this legal battle could be huge for YouTube. The site features hundreds of videos of talent shows, lip-synching, and other videos that involve copyrighted music. Do these videos represent free product placement for record companies, or egregious copyright violations? Universal has publicized its view. What’s yours?

SearchWikia to Challenge Google

Over the weekend, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales provided further insight into his company’s community-developed, open source search engine. Wikia purchased a web crawler platform called Grub and released it under an open source license.

According to Wales, the combination of wiki and open-source web crawler will provide an even better search experience than current search engines. His aim is no less than to unseat both Google and Yahoo.

The real challenge is that a user-driven search engine will be a constant target for spammers and search engine optimization hackers looking to improve their results. Both Google and Yahoo are constantly tweaking their search engines to keep search spammers from being able to achieve rankings that are not relevant to searchers. It is not clear how SearchWikia will deal with this issue.

Mr Wales has commented that, in contrast to Google and Yahoo, open and transparent searches are the “model of the future”. That seems like a bold statement, but only time will tell if Mr. Wales can deliver again.

A public version of this search engine is slated to launch by the end of the year.

What is Ambient Findability?

A new book has become must read in the world of search

Many of us already deal with information overload, and the trend clearly is pointing to even more of the same. So, how do we filter constant streams of complex data to be able to pull out that which is relevant to each of us? Peter Morville’s new book Ambient Findability begins to address this issue. It examines the convergence of information and connectivity and how things are “findable” to us now (think Google) and how will we find them in the future.

We often assume that search engines in their current form are final manifestation of online search. Morville shows us that it is just the beginning. Ambient Findability doesn’t pretend to know all the answers, but presents and supports some novel ideas. The book also puts SEM into a broader context and provides deeper insights into human behavior.

So, if you are interested in how Search will impact us in the not-to-distant future, I would recommend that you take a look at Morville’s book and see how the evolution of findability will impact your world.