Google is seeking volunteers who want to get paid for sharing their browsing activities. Google is building a new panel of a few thousand people to track more about how everyday people use the Internet.
The panel launched by the web giant is named Screenwise, in which users are being offered up to $25 in gift cards to share with Google the Web sites they visit and how they use them.
Screenwise – is similar to those used by many market research companies. This panel is designed to help us understand web usage better – such as what times of day people browse, how long they stay on websites and what types of sites are popular (or not). As a Screenwise Internet Trends panelist, you’ll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.
Screenwise Participants install a Web browser extension that shares all their browsing activities with Google. In exchange for revealing such information, Google’s panel management partner, Knowledge Networks, will give you a $5 Amazon.com Gift Card code instantly when you become a Screenwise Internet Trends panelist. Then you’ll get additional $5 Amazon.com Gift Card codes every three months for staying with it. It’s Google’s way of saying “Thank you.”
Good SEO services can be both expensive and hard to find as the SEO market is filled with ooportunities and potential pitfalls. Since SEO is increasingly becoming an effective marketing channel, the space is getting polluted by swindlers. The awesome infographic by SEO Book and Lumin Interactive does a great job differentiating between so-called SEO’s and genuine online marketers working hard to build your brand, boost your visibility and grow your business online.
Mobile marketing is growing at an amazing rate and will continue to grow with an increased pace. Mobile search is becoming a trend for customers to do their shopping especially for local products and services. As a result, mobile optimized web design is going to be a necessity for your success. Statistics reveals that 71% of users search after seeing mobile ad, 53% purchase due to mobile search and 90% of mobile search results in action. There are 4 Billion local searches on Google per month, 61% of all local searches result in a purchase, and 55% of consumers use their mobile device to buy local products/services. Have you mobilized yet?
Mobile Advertising Will Correspond To 3.8% Of The Total Global Ad Spend For All Media by 2016
2011
According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, mobile advertising and marketing is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2010 at a compound annual growth rate of 37 percent to $22.5 billion in 2016, which means mobile marketing and advertising market will account to 15.2% of the total online advertsing industry pr 3.8% of the total global ad spend for all media. The report also predicts that mobile marketing and advertising has remained on an experimental stage for several years and on its way for a major boom.
“The popularity of smartphones and the increasing availability of mobile media that can include mobile advertising are the main game changers”, said Rickard Andersson, Telecom Analyst, Berg Insight. A common strategy is to increasingly integrate mobile components in traditional media campaigns. “Brands are now progressively embracing the mobile channel, including the entire range of apps from games and entertainment to utility applications. Also mobile web advertising and opt-in SMS campaigns are popular”, said Mr. Andersson.
As the end of the year approaches, it’s time to start setting budgets for your various marketing channels in 2012. If you’re relatively new to pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, you’ll probably find that PPC budgeting can be a challenge.
Setting budgets for your PPC campaigns is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. In this guide, you’ll learn 10 best practices that would help you to get the most from your PPC budgets in 2012, including:
- How to Determine Your Initial PPC Budget
- Why you shouldn’t arbitrarily cap spend
- Why you should base your budget on profitability
- Why you should optimize instead of slashing budget for unprofitable campaigns
- The effect of seasonality on your PPC budget
- How to maximize different budgetary controls
- How to spend your budget, accelerated or standard
- Why you should break larger budgets into multiple campaigns
Now is the time to get your 2012 PPC budget in order! Download this free guide to get ahead of the pack.
Source: SMN Hosted WhitePaper sponsored by WordStream
Google is excited to share that the new version of Google Analytics will soon be activated in your account. In addition to a redesigned interface that makes it even easier to explore your data, you’ll also notice some significant new features. Here are a few of them:
Google Analytics Real-Time
Real-Time reporting will show you what’s happening on your site – right now! The reports are updated continuously and each pageview is reported seconds after it occurs on your site. You’ll find Real-Time reports in Google Analytics ‘Home’ tab.
SEO makes the biggest impact on lead generation for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketing. Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency conducted State of Digital Marketing survey in September. Over 500 marketing professionals completed the survey.
2011 State of Digital Marketing Report Reveals that:
- 46% of B2B participants say their most important objective is to generate leads.
- 53% of all participants say SEO makes the biggest impact on lead generation, followed by 28% for PPC and 19% for social media.
- 75% of B2C companies are the most active on Facebook, followed by 8% on Twitter and 6% on LinkedIn.
- B2B companies are active more evenly across all three leading networks: 34% Facebook, 26% Twitter, and 25% LinkedIn.
60% of the surveyed marketers said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53% plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40% will increase their PPC budget.
Few statistics, compiled from 2011 Digital Marketing Survey report
For more details, click here to download the report »
Source: 2011 Webmarketing123 State of Digital Marketing Survey
Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed on Twitter that Google is getting more smarter and now can “execute AJAX and JavaScript to index some dynamic comments”.
This gives Google’s spider, GoogleBot, the ability to read comments that are dynamically loaded via AJAX or JavaScript e.g. Facebook comments or Disqus comments. In other words, this means, Google is getting better at crawling the content behind more of your JavaScript or AJAX.
Google has an official blog post up with more details »
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam fighting team, says a big NO that SEO or Search Engine Optimization is Spam. Matt outrightly said,“We don’t consider SEO to be spam,” and added that SEO is “a valid way to represent your webpages in search engines” so that people find what they’re looking for via search engines.” and there is a plenty of white hat SEO techniques that could be done as a search engine optimizer. Read more
By 2016, advertisers will spend $77 billion on interactive marketing — as much as they do on television advertising today. Search marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, email marketing, and social media will grow to 35% of all advertising spend as they are embedded in the marketing mix. Forrester Research Inc. expects this growth to help firms become adaptive, kill off daily deals, re-emphasize marketing’s “p’s,” and turn consumer electronics into audience-targeting tools. – by Shar VanBoskirk with Christine Spivey Overby and Sarah Takvorian, Forrester Research Inc.
Click here to download the full U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 To 2016 report.
