IDC Report: The Future Is About Online Advertising

We may well call this the “Internet advertising” era, if we look at IDC’s latest report on the U.S. market: online advertising is expected to double from $25.5 billion last year to $51.1 billion in 2012, the market research firm predicted on Friday.

Within the next four years, online advertising is expected to become second after direct advertising, from the fifth place it occupies today. According to IDC, the online video advertising will also increase in popularity in the United States.

Furthermore, the revenue from video advertising is expected to grow sevenfold from $500 million now to $3.8 billion within four years. We are now looking at a tendency to shift from cable TV and broadcast television classic advertising to online video advertising, IDC says.

And it’s all because of the consumers, Kirsten Weide, program director for IDC’s digital media and entertainment unit explained: consumers have begun to realize that as opposed to the TV, internet video allows them to watch what they want, when they want, how many times they want.

The forecast for the United States shows a significant growth in online advertising revenue, despite more pessimistic reports that showed stagnation over the past two years in this business.

Earlier this month, an Interactive Advertising Bureau report for the United States unveiled that search advertising accounted for 41 percent of the overall online spending last year, up 1 percent from 2006.

Search advertising appears to keep the secret to online advertising, remaining the dominating form on the market, and led by Google with 70 percent.

As online advertising began developing and will continue to do that in the years to come, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are expected to make bigger efforts to take a piece of Google’s pie.

Source: Click Here

Where To Get Content For Your Blog

Blogs and websites that have rich content are always going to do better than those that don’t. I am sure you wondered where these blogs get their ideas, views and opinions. It is easy to write about something you are passionate about- but to do that most days of the week is extremely hard, since you would probably run out of things to talk about or you simply don’t have the time. So how do they do it? Where do they get their ideas? Do they get help from tools and other sources available on the Internet?

The best way would be to provide the content yourself, and this is of utmost importance if your goal is to try to create traffic to an affiliated link. You’ll definitely want to sell the idea about the services and products beforehand. What that will do is set the stage or the “mood” and give your recommendations authenticity.

Expounding on the uses of a particular service or product, with your own likes and dislikes, achieves this naturally. With an affiliate program, it is a good idea to have a personal anecdote that goes hand in hand with the product or service.

Using private label articles is a viable alternative. PL articles abound in the Internet and you can always buy some that are connected to your central topic and then place them in your blog. One way of maximizing a purchased PLA is to cut it down into several pieces, thereby maximizing its content.

Utilizing RSS feeds to post on blogs is becoming very popular, although not everyone is familiar or willing to learn about RSS feeds. The advantage to an RSS feed is that your blog is automatically updated with fresh news and content. The disadvantage is that it is not unique content and that anybody interested in the feed will likely click out on a story that appeals to them.

Putting in your very own content is the best way to go. One way to find fresh ideas is to look for an appealing news article and then do a summary write-up based on it. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but you and your readers will find it the most rewarding way. If you feel that you just don’t cut it as a writer or you genuinely don’t have the time, then hire someone else to do it for you. There are many services out there who provide a “blog service” which includes daily posts of unique, engaging content and you can instruct these content writers as to where you want the links in your blog pointing to- so that any burden of cost in terms of hiring them should be offset by the gains in your increased visitor base, the marketing of your other websites and earnings from your affiliate programs.

These are the best ways to generate content for your blog. It is advisable not to be going with the automated path. If you do decide to do that, you will probably have plenty of content- but the substance of the text is unlikely to increase traffic for you. Putting in some good, old-fashioned content work will yield better results for you. As the expression goes- “you get out what you put in….”!!

Source: Click Here

Google finally pushes the PR Export!

After so many months of speculations on Google PR updates and the doubts that Google will discontinue the PR export in order to fight link sales, today we’ve finally saw the change in the green bar on all websites. Thank you G.

Today’s Google PR Export or Update (its not actually update because Google updates it dynamically every day but only exports the results in few month or sometimes a bit more) was as always one really interesting event. The one of the things that we can quickly realize is that all web directories are will lower page rank than before, but unique content websites are with a bit low amount of links scored higher pagerank than others. This most probably means that the duplicate content algo is somehow modified to capture much more spam than ever before (which is something rather expected)

Also another really interesting and also expected outcome was that due to the progressive expanding of the web, all page rank values require more and more links to be achieved. Now for pr 3 you need more than 2.5k link popularity, pr 4 more than 5 to 20k links and pr 6 > 150k. Note that this is LINK POPULARITY not links only which is relatively the number of actual links since most search engines don’t show the real value.

I’ll update this post as soon as I get more info on the topic as see what my buddies are saying about it.

Source: Click Here

Test Your High Value Pages

Trying to optimize a large website for conversion can be a daunting task if you don't have a plan. The most important pages to test are those that have the biggest impact on your site's success. By using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer together, you can identify these high value pages and set up experiments that will eliminate the guesswork from their design.

Your high value landing pages

In his talk on the Web Analytics panel at SES, Avinash Kaushik recounted his experience searching for a new faucet. The top paid ad took him to a page focused on sinks rather than faucets; he was immediately turned off and bounced from the site.

What's the lesson here? Landing pages are key pages to optimize because they are your visitors' first (and often last) impression of your website. If a visitor lands on a page that doesn't provide the information she's looking for, she'll probably leave without clicking any further. For high-traffic landing pages, this can add up to a lot of lost visitors.

That's why it's so important to find, and fix, high-traffic landing pages that lose a high percentage of visitors. Look at the "Top Landing Pages" report within the Content section of Google Analytics. Pages that have both a high Bounce Rate (the percentage of visits that resulted in the visitor immediately leaving the site) and large number of Entrances need to be redesigned.


The Google Analytics Landing Pages report (Content Section) shows a list of top landing pages ordered by the number of entrances on the left. On the right, the Bounce Rate compared to site average is graphically displayed. Pages with a high number of Entrances and a high Bounce Rate (red bar), are good candidates for optimization.

Don't forget about funnel pages

Other high value pages are those that lead visitors to your goal pages. Visitors reach a goal page once they have have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download. In Google Analytics, you can specify up to ten pages in a defined funnel representing the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to the goal page (conversion!). A page that is part of a goal funnel is another great place to focus website optimization efforts.

The "Funnel Visualization" report within the Goals section of Google Analytics shows you how many visitors exit the funnel at each step in the path towards the goal page. In the funnel visualization below, you can see that most visitors in this funnel are lost in the transition from the "View Shopping Cart" step to the "Login" step. Only 7% of visitors move past this step, but of those who do, many go on to make a complete an order! Limiting steps in paths to a goal, like the "View Shopping Cart" step below, is another great place to begin your website optimization experiments.

The Google Analytics Funnel Visualization report (Goals Section) shows the pages where visitors abandon a goal path. Pages that lose a high percentage of traffic on the path towards a website goal are good candidates for optimization.

You know which pages to test...

A little competition can get your team excited about content experimentation. Try asking a couple of your co-workers and perhaps your boss for suggestions on alternate variations of a high value page. Label each of the suggested variations in Website Optimizer with the contributor's name. Then, ask another set of co-workers to predict which variation will emerge victorious. You can monitor the progress each day to see how everyone's suggestions and predictions are stacking up. Keep in mind that it usually takes at least one or two weeks for the definitive winner to emerge. Once Website Optimizer has determined the winning page, you'll not only have a better performing page, but if you're lucky, you'll have bragging rights in your office.

Source: Click Here

Demographics now available in YouTube Insight

When we first announced YouTube Insight, our free video analytics tool for YouTube, we were excited to see just how users, partners, and advertisers might creatively use information about the viewing trends of their videos. We've since learned that some users and partners are modifying their upload schedules based on when they know their audience is tuning in, and advertisers are studying geographic traffic patterns to assess the effectiveness of regional ad campaigns.

Today we've added some new features to Insight. One is a new demographics tab that displays view count information broken down by age group (such as ages 18-24), gender, or a combination of the two, to help you get a better understanding of the makeup of your YouTube audience. We show you general information about your viewers in anonymous and aggregate form, based on the birth date and gender information that users share with us when they create YouTube accounts. This means that individual users can't be personally identified.

Insight now also displays statistics based on the combined total views of all the videos you've uploaded. Just as you can explore the view counts and popularity of individual videos, with this feature you can see your account's total number of views, and your relative popularity on YouTube compared to other users, based on geographic location.

As with Insight's other features, we hope this new information helps you learn how to create more compelling content that best engages the audiences you want to reach. You can find these new metrics under the "Demographics" tab within the Insight dashboard.

Source: Click Here

Get more traffics from Stumbleupon

I know many of you have registered with Stumbleupon. I also already have the account. You can see my Stumbleupon page at http://cypherhackz.stumbleupon.com. I am not a good stumbler but I use Stumbleupon just to find interesting websites which have been stumbled by other Stumbleupon members.

But do you know how many traffic you will get if your post got stumbled by someone? One of my post was once stumbled and the traffics I got was very extremely high. Over 5000 hits I received on that day. It was the first time I got 5000 traffics just in one day.

How to get stumbled?

Good content. Yes, that is the answer for that simple question. Write a good content and your post might get stumbled by someone who likes your post.

But how good is a good content is? It is depend on the way the reader see your writing. Some might look your writing is dull and not interesting but some might think that your post is very helpful. Very informative and energetic. Therefore, you need to write something that is far way better and unique than the others.

Is there is another way to get stumbled?

Yes, it is. You can stumble your own post if you want but here is another way to do it. When you joined into Stumbleupon community, you can invite others to be your friends. At the time I writing this article, I only have 42 friends in my list (Hope I will get more friends after this). But some of my Stumbleupon friends have more than hundreds. Maybe they are popular and that is why they have many friends. But why do we need friends in Stumbleupon? Why do we need many friends?

Other than building a blogger network, you can send the post that you want to get stumbled to them. It can be done via Stumbleupon toolbar. JohnTP has wrote about it in his article, Increase Web Traffic using Stumbleupon. For me, it is likely spamming others but it will help you getting more stumbles and traffics to your website when your friends stumble it.

Although I did it twice but I don’t think what I did was the right thing. I misuse the Stumbleupon toolbar. It is like begging someone to stumble your post so you will get high traffics. The “Send to” function is use for sharing quality and interesting website with others and not to show your post to your friends and ask them to stumble and get high traffics from it. That is totally wrong.

So, which one is the best way?

Just write your post as usual. Make a valuable post. Make it interesting and not too dull with words. Put your emotions when you type. People will stumble your post if they see the value it contains. Keep in mind that, although your website is not popular, your writing is suck like me, but one day, people will recognise you. People will know who you are, what your website is about and how interesting your website is.

As time goes by, you will learn a lot of these things. You will know that write a good content is the best way to get traffics. For me, the traditional way is always the best. After all, I wish you good luck in blogging. Hope you will get the high traffics you want.

Source: www.cypherhackz.net

Lack of posting will decrease website traffics

Is it true lack of posting will decrease our website traffics? Some people say that they need to update their website everyday so the traffics will steady. Well, I can say it is 50% right and 50% it is wrong. Why?

It is true that your traffics will decrease if you don’t update your website. But this only applies to a new website. New website does not has many contents and only some of the contents win the top rank in Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Or maybe completely lost from the competition. If your website is new and you are so lazy to update your website, you need to focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You need to do a lot of research, implement what you found, and see how it is perform.

And it is wrong if your website is popular and well known by all people around the World (or at least people who looking for something in search engines). Some popular websites does not has new update for about a week or so but the traffics they got are stable. And even sometimes they get higher traffics. This is because many of the traffics coming from the search engines and from referral links. They have many contents and the website gets popular because of they win the keyword competition. Let say if someone search for “the grabber” a tool to download Rapidshare files (Rapidshare has changed the code so it does not work anymore), what do you expect from the result? See and find out yourself.

The main point that I want to share here is you need to know SEO. Learn it and implement it on your website. It is some sort of a little bit confusing at the first place but after you do a lot of reading, experiments, and it will be easier later on.

This is just my opinion. I am not an expert in driving traffics or SEO but I have some experiences and do observations among websites.

Source: www.cypherhackz.net

Google News now available on your iPhone and iPod Touch

As we sat in our offices in Trondheim staring off at the fjord -- we're Norwegians, that's what we do -- a thought occurred to us: wouldn't it be nice to make Google News accessible to readers on their iPod Touch or iPhone? The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, we're happy to announce that Google News is now available to iPhone and iPod Touch users in over 30 countries. This means that you'll see a full-fledged version of Google News on these devices, improved Google News results and, where available, relevant YouTube videos embedded with news stories.



There are a few ways to get to Google News using your iPhone or iPod Touch:

• Go to www.google.com, click on the "more" tab and follow the link to Google News
  
• Go to www.google.com and do a search, then click on the News link at the top of the screen
  
• Go directly to Google News at http://news.google.com in your browser
  

We hope you enjoy this new feature. We haven't been able to take our eyes off it yet, not even to look at the fjord!

Source: www.google.com

Yahoo To Rewire for Social Network with Open Strategy

Yahoo plans to rewire itself to bring a latent social network to the surface using an Open Strategy announced at the Web 2.0 conference. Yahoo said an app written for one Yahoo property will be able to integrate with other properties and with the extended social network. Yahoo already supports the OpenSocial standards for sharing with other sites.

Yahoo may resemble islands of Web properties, but the company is launching a renovation that could turn it into one huge platform. On Thursday, Yahoo announced its Open Strategy at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

"Imagine a world where you can write code that will meaningfully reach millions of users in a single bound," wrote Yahoo's Neal Sample on the company's Yodel Anecdotal blog.

'Latent Social Network'

Open Strategy invites developers to use Yahoo's huge scale, he added, "to write applications that build on our existing properties," such as Mail, Sports, Search, the front page, mobile, My Yahoo, and others. Yahoo-owned properties also include the photo-sharing site Flickr, the bookmarking site Del.icio.us, and the social-calendar site Upcoming.

Sample also noted that, with 500 million unique users spending 235 billion minutes each month on its sites, and with 10 billion relationships in buddy lists and Yahoo address books, the company has "a massive, latent social network." The new initiative, he added, will "bring it to the surface."

In other words, he told news media, Yahoo is not building another social network, but "building social into everything we do."

He described it as a "rewiring" of Yahoo by building structures that change how its pieces work together. He said developers will be able to take advantage of the "vitality" that will exist within this unified platform. An application written for a Yahoo property will be able to integrate with other properties and with the extended social network.

Example: Search Monkey

An example is Yahoo's Search Monkey, where developers can blend other data with search results so that, for instance, an Italian restaurant could have reviews and ratings along with the link to its Web site. Search Monkey officially launches in mid-May.

Charlene Li, an analyst with industry research firm Forrester, wrote on her blog that Yahoo's rewiring "is a significant step forward in the next phase of social networks and the social Web."

Social networks, she said, will at some point become "like air," with no boundaries between friends or work colleagues, regardless of where their personal network is based.

In March, Yahoo announced support for OpenSocial standards so that applications created by developers for Yahoo will also work on MySpace, Google and other sites accepting OpenSocial.

Li wrote that she does not see Open Strategy as a "Hail Mary pass" from Yahoo to counter Microsoft's efforts to acquire the company. She added that it's only a matter of time before Google, Facebook and other sites respond to the huge social environment and social driver that Yahoo can become.

"Open" has had a major emphasis by Yahoo recently. Earlier this month, for instance, it released an online advertising-management platform for businesses that includes an open set of application-programming interfaces, or APIs.

Also this month, Yahoo released a new version of its oneSearch technology for mobile devices, which it described as "an open technology platform."

Source: www.newsfactor.com

Google Vows Broader Open Wireless Access Fight

Though it didn't win any licenses in the Federal Communications Commission's recent multi-billion-dollar spectrum auction, Google said it is pleased with the results -- and vows to continue pressing for greater network openness.

The comments come as the first from the online giant following the end of a federally mandated quiet period that now leaves participants in the FCC's 700MHz spectrum auction free to dish on the their bidding strategies and future plans.

For Google, (NASDAQ: GOOG) those plans involve working with regulators as the FCC decides how to address issues lingering in the wake of the largest spectrum sell-off in history.

"The end of the auction certainly doesn't mark the end of our efforts toward greater wireless choice and innovation," Richard Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel, and Joseph Farber, Google's corporate counsel, wrote yesterday in a company blog post.

While Verizon Wireless walked away the winning bidder in the spectrum's premium C Block, Google's participation proved instrumental. The company's bidding helped to trigger rules requiring the block's winner to open the network they create to all types of devices and applications.

Fiercely resisted by Verizon, the FCC's open-access requirements were a key victory for Google, which is working to build support for its Android mobile application platform through the Open Handset Alliance.

While Google remained tight-lipped on its intentions heading into the auction, many observers believed the company's motivations were less about spending billions on licenses to build a nationwide wireless network, and more about forcing open access.

Whitt and Farber this week confirmed those suspicions.

"Google's top priority heading into the auction was to make sure that bidding on the so-called 'C Block' reached the $4.6 billion reserve price that would trigger the important 'open applications' and 'open handsets' license conditions," they wrote.

To ensure C Block bidding hit the necessarily price, Google raised its bid in 10 rounds of the auction even when it was faced no opposing bidders, Whit and Farber wrote.

They added that Google had been prepared to shell out for the licenses in the event that no one topped its bids.

The open-access game

As it begins the next phase of its network build-out, all eyes now will be on Verizon to ensure that the wireless provider adheres to the openness provisions stipulated in the auction's rules.

Speaking earlier this week at the CTIA Wireless 2008 conference in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he would recommend that his fellow commissioners reject a petition to regulate open access. The petition had been submitted by Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (define) provider Skype.

Martin said the incumbent carriers had signaled that they were moving toward openness on their own accord, so adding new regulations would be unnecessary.

Verizon Wireless, for instance, reversed its position on open access late last year, first abandoning its legal challenge to the FCC's auction rules, then pledging to support open device access on its current wireless network in advance of the auction.

Source: www.internetnews.com