Online Marketing Blog

Link posts are few and far between but there’s plenty to link to today with all the announcements at ad:tech and on the SEM web in general.

Monetizing the Conversation. BuzzLogic has announced their “Conversation Targeting” service, which enables the keyword driven monitoring of interlinking between blogs and other social media sites to uncover emerging “communities”. Once the “influencers” have been identified, you can use BuzzLogic’s interface via the Google API to place contextual or display ads on the sites of influence. There’s also a whole set of influencer management tools that allow you to conduct blogger relations and manage other outreach tasks.

Earlier today Yahoo Search Marketing announced they will now provide free, open access to the “Panama” search marketing application program interfaces (APIs) through the launch of the Commercial API Program. Commercial clients (big agencies) will also be offered optional fee-based, value-added services that come in three flavors: basic, advanced and elite.

Yahoo’s been busy today, because this evening I got the heads up Y!SM is rolling out quality based pricing across it’s paid search and contextual advertising networks.

Here’s the lowdown on quality based pricing from Yahoo:

Yahoo! has announced that on Feb 5th, they will be introducing a quality score to the Yahoo Search Marketing ad system, “Panama”. To date, placement of ads on Yahoo and their network have been based on bid price alone. From the press release:

“The quality of an ad will be determined by its historical performance in the new system and its expected performance relative to other ads displayed at the same time. Ads of higher quality will generally receive better placement on the results page.”

Spotlight on Search: Interview with John Slade of Yahoo!

There has been quite a bit of buzz on the paid search marketing front with the launch of the new Yahoo! Search Advertising platform aka “Panama”. At the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo! announced the launch during a sponsored lunch. Dan Zarrella did a good a review of that session here.

Yahoo Search Marketing sent out an email today announcing changes. Some of the manage bids information will be removed and replaced with “Estimated Average Position” and “Bid Range for Top Positions”.

Here are the details from the email:

In early December 2006, some of the information on the Manage Bids page will no longer be available. We will be removing the “Top 5 Max Bids,” “Position” and “Your Cost” columns from the current account interface. The View Bids tool will also be removed.

These columns will be replaced with two new columns of data:

Yahoo has launched a snappy new blog today for Yahoo Search Marketing. Call me crazy, but purple is my favorite color after all and the look/feel of this blog is consistent with many of the newer and more progressive blog designs coming out.

With the launch of Yahoo’s new platform (Panama) it makes sense to offer a communication channel specific to Yahoo advertising options. I am very interested in the media side of this:

Yes dear friends, I’ve said it. Paid search can be a pain in the rear. But no worries, search engine marketing guru Andrew Goodman of Traffick and Page Zero Media promises to shed some light on the subject in conjunction with a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) seminar next week.

Goodman’s presentation, “IT’S NOT JUST YOU: PAY-PER-CLICK CAN BE A REAL BEAST” will cover examples of Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing challenges, SEM relations, click fraud, CPOs vs. market share growth, data privacy, auctions and more.

Yahoo advertisers received an email recently announcing up and coming enhancements including instant ads & geotargeting to the program. I know a lot of complaints I hear from clients about Yahoo Search Marketing/Oveture has to do with the length of time it takes for the editorial process. This is a step in the right direction. The addition of geotargeting will also be a nice addition and help local search advertisers.

It looks like even more changes are in store: