Loading ...Marchex Launches Next-Generation Local Advertising Platform
By Libby Waldo | July 30, 2008
SEATTLE, WA - July 30, 2008 - Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHX, MCHXP) a local search and advertising company, today announced that it has launched Marchex Connect 2.0, its next-generation local advertising platform. Marchex Connect 2.0 integrates three important advertising products: online advertising, call-based advertising and Business Profile Pages, which are fully trackable branded Web pages that give advertisers an immediate local online presence.Marchex Connect serves national advertisers who want to target locally and large businesses, such as Yellow Pages and media companies, who want to sell local advertising under their own brand to their customers. In addition, the company has formed the Marchex Digital Platform Group, uniting Marchex’s voice services, interactive marketing and platform development teams to better provide integrated local advertising products, services and analytics for its customers.
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Industry News - July 23, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 23, 2008
7 deadly myths of behavioral targeting
Targeting is the backbone of advertising — online and offline. It guides decisions throughout the entire campaign life cycle, from creative development to media placements and strategic planning to the overall marketing mix. Combining the tracking capabilities of the internet with the demographic data we all know and love, behavioral targeting is destined for stardom. It is a technique that everyone wants to master, and few have maximized.
Behavioral targeting gives marketers the ability to serve pertinent ads to predetermined user segments — not wasting resources on the rest. With so many potential consumers online, behavioral targeting was inevitable. With an overcrowded online space, endless browsing options and advancements in tracking abilities, the reassurance that behavioral targeting gives online advertisers by serving ads to those who exhibit a preference for a product/service is unbeatable. Using this technique, marketers can cater advertisements to users based on how they actually behave, not just on what demographic buckets theorize on how they do.
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Industry News: July 22, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 22, 2008
Google Maps Walking Directions Now Live
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Industry News - July 19 to July 21
By Libby Waldo | July 21, 2008
Social Responsibility and the Small Business
Marchex Announces Regular Quarterly Dividend for Common Stock
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Social Responsibility and the Small Business
In the profit-centered business, customer happiness is merely a means to an end: maximizing profits. In the customer-centered business, customer happiness is an end in itself, and will be pursued with greater interest, passion, and empathy than the profit-centered business is capable of.
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Marchex Announces Regular Quarterly Dividend for Common Stock
SEATTLE, Jul 18, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Marchex, Inc. (MCHX: MCHXP 0.01, 0.00, 0.0%) , a local search and advertising company, today announced that the company’s Board of Directors has declared a regular quarterly dividend in the amount of $0.02 per share on its common stock. Marchex will pay these dividends on August 15, 2008, to the holders of record as of the close of business on August 4, 2008. As of July 17, 2008, 10,959,216 shares of Class A common stock and 28,388,088 shares of Class B common stock are outstanding.
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Industry News - July 17, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 17, 2008
What Role will IYPs Play in Next Generation Mobile Search?
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Connecting the Dots (Again)
I’ve have tried to argue for several years that “local” is the most important thing happening online — because it’s all about driving buyers to the point of sale offline. But one of the big, historical challenges in validating that argument and propsition has been tracking the influence of online to the point of sale. Lots of surveys and studies have been done (mostly by comScore) to try and document the connection. And they have documented it.
So if people have seen that the Internet is primarily a marketing platform that increasingly influences local sales, why isn’t the money flowing quickly online in recognition of that fact? Enter the panel I moderated at the ShopLocal Summit in Chicago yesterday. Among the panelists were my former colleague from The Kelsey Group, Peter Krasilovsky, as well as Centro’s Shawn Riegsecker, Starcom’s Sam Wehrs, speakers from Toys R Us, Target and NSA Media. (It’s a very interesting event overall that addresses the “product side” of local vs. the services side, which always get the attention.)
The reasons given by panelists for the failure to shift more budget from traditional media online were many and varied: inertia, organizational culture and politics, the fact that online is still novel for many traditional marketers and the inability to show direct ROI in many cases. Most of us have heard some or all of these explanations before. But it’s kind of amazing that things are still moving relatively slowly, despite some high profile exceptions such as GM.
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What Role will IYPs Play in Next Generation Mobile Search?
Now that the 3G iPhone and App Store have arrived, the iPhone is decidedly more appealing and user friendly for both mainstream users, and for companies of all sizes to create and deliver mobile apps. The previous post explored how local search on the device is shaping up to have clear social elements.
But what role will IYPs play? Given directory publishers’ role as longstanding “owners” of local, does the new mobile environment represent an opportunity to get in early and avoid losing ground to pure-plays, as happened in the online local search world over the past 5 years?
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Industry News: July 16, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 16, 2008
The Offline Connection to Online Marketing
YPMobile Enjoying Early Success
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Looking for a way to boost your online marketing results? Take a look at the offline experiences your customers talk about, the experiences that form the basis of what your potential customers consider when evaluating competing options. The experiences you create in the actual delivery of your product or service drive the online conversations that are increasingly a factor in purchase decisions.
Case in point: Last week we flew into Providence, RI, for our annual summer trip to Cape Ann, Massachusetts. We arrived in Providence and headed for the Hertz counter to rent a vehicle. We were promptly given the keys to our car and headed off to throw the bags in and travel to the beach house. Walking over to the car, I noticed a dent in the side. Hmmm. As an ex-insurance guy (I was a product manager at Progressive Insurance for a number of years), I always do the walk-around before putting our luggage in the car. The dent wasn’t bad, but I don’t drive a car with a dent in it at home, so why would I while on vacation? It wasn’t like I’d chosen Rent-A-Wreck. I looked closer. When opening the car door, all I could smell was stale cigarette smoke. With an hour and a half drive coming up, I really didn’t want to start the vacation this way. I’m a pretty easygoing consumer and, to be fair, understand that mistakes happen. No one expects — though we all strive to deliver — perfection at every turn. At the same time, we clearly had a situation here.
I took the keys back to the counter. The gentleman at the counter apologized, gave me an alternate car, and asked me to check it out. The substitute was a clean car but was about the size of a golf cart. This was an airport, we are a family, and families have luggage. Luggage calls for real trunk space. This car didn’t have a trunk. Not wanting to choose between taking my family or our luggage to the beach house, I went back to the counter. No cars in the class we’d rented would be ready anytime soon…
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YPMobile Enjoying Early Success
YellowPages.com’s YPMobile iPhone application (with events content from Zvents) is doing well on the list of free downloads. It’s number 21 out of 100 on the list:
Among “local search” apps, it’s only trumped by Where and Google. Interestingly it’s (so far) beating out local apps from Yelp, Eventful, Loopt and others. There is one other “yellow pages” application currently (not in the top 100), though more are on the way…
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Industry News - July 15, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 16, 2008
The X Factor: Should you go after the long tail?
The long tail has been the mantra of online marketing, but is it really the right paradigm? Find out why the prevailing wisdom may be flawed.
Spend a minute with anyone working in interactive and you’re bound to hear at least a vague reference to the long tail — a theory put forward by Chris Anderson in his book by the same name. But for all the talk, interactive is still grappling with two fundamental questions: What does the long tail really mean, and is it something that you should be pursuing?
The long tail has different meanings whether you are in manufacturing or advertising. But it basically refers to the idea that a small group of product offerings or keyword lists covers the majority of the market opportunity. It’s really the 80/20 rule. If you only have to make a certain number of products to cover 80 percent of the market, it would require a lot more effort to go after that remaining 20 percent. Often that 20 percent is too much to justify the costs, begging the question: is it worth it?
The same holds true for keywords. It’s likely that a small number of keywords bring in 80 percent of your traffic or sales. But what about the remaining 20 percent?
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Industry News: Saturday July 12 to Monday July 14
By Libby Waldo | July 16, 2008
More Key Emerging Media Trends
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More Key Emerging Media Trends
The digital lifestyle is changing marketing. New technologies are creating new opportunities, releasing digital marketing from the confines of the personal computer. Last time, we looked at two related trends: the ubiquitous Web and digital out of home. Today, we’ll look at two more trends: personalization and widgets.
Trend: The Return of Personalization
Perhaps I have an overly generous definition of personalization: any kind of change to Web content that’s based on what the content delivery mechanism knows about the person viewing it. The change could be triggered by information that is either actively shared by a user (e.g., by establishing a profile) or passively shared (e.g., behavioral targeting).
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TechBiz Connection Presents Panel Discussion on Marketing and Promoting Companies with a Small Budget
Irvine, CA, July 12, 2008 –(PR.com)– According to Jack Bicer, TechBiz Connection president, the holy grail of success for the small business is the ability to market and promote itself on a very limited budget. TechBiz Connection attendees will learn how to efficiently and effectively reach a target market while gaining an understanding of the wide range of the tools and methods available, from PR to search engine optimization, as well as the wide range of advertising and promotional options.
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These days it’s pretty smooth sailing for VoIP in the enterprise marketplace. VoIP has proved itself and reached the technical viability and reliability of the PSTN. The benefits of VoIP are undeniable; the adoption rate rapid, in 2007 IP phone deployments surpassed that of digital phones in the enterprise. But, it’s a different matter in the small and medium size business (SMB) marketplace where the only thing businesses have in common is that they are all unique. In other words, they have very little in common. There are similarities among SMBs within vertical markets but in the end nearly every business requires some degree of customization in a VoIP solution. This extreme diversity has added a few more variables to the VoIP value proposition for SMBs.
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Industry News: July 10, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 10, 2008
Online video: how to work it for your brand
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Online video: how to work it for your brand
Deciding to have video on your website is just the beginning. Use this quick guide on purposes, placements and filming techniques to put your company’s benefits into clear focus.
The explosive popularity and recent growth of video on the web has been well documented. In a 2007 study conducted by Advertising.com, 62 percent of consumers said they regularly view streaming video content online, and according to the Online Publishers Association (OPA), 44 percent of consumers have taken some action as a result of viewing an online video ad.
My closest friends have often told me I’m the smartest dumb person they know. It’s not that I’m book smart without street smarts or vice versa. Rather, I have a few traits that sometimes make them question my IQ.
For instance, while traveling in a moving vehicle, and sometimes even just walking, I can’t be trusted to give accurate directions. It’s not that I don’t know that
In a recent interview, Tom Henriksson, the director of interactive at Nokia, referenced the importance of Madison Avenue in the overall growth of the mobile industry: “Advertising will help fuel mobile Web development. Publishers know that if they are going to attract advertisers, they need to attract eyeballs. They certainly are not going to build audiences with dull, text-based content.”
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Industry News - July 9, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 9, 2008
Search Volume Comes To Google Keyword Tool & Live Search Updates
Yahoo’s Yang Rips Microsoft and Icahn
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Search Volume Comes To Google Keyword Tool & Live Search Updates
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has added search volume numbers to the external keyword tool. The volume numbers are approximations, and I would guess are from the same sources Google obtains data for Google Ad Planner and Google Trends for Websites. Here is a screen capture of a keyword research search on [seo]:
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Yahoo’s Yang Rips Microsoft and Icahn | msyahoosplit.jpg
CEO Jerry Yang accused Microsoft of trying to destabilize Yahoo without intending to complete a deal, according to the Wall St. Journal. Yang also fired back at billionaire investor Carl Icahn and his selection of a new Yahoo board.
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