Search Engine Journal

Comments

11 responses so far ↓

• Eric Odom on Apr 5, 2007 at 11:08 am

  “How do you think social media has changed the online advertising landscape?”

  I think it shifted a lot of focus from search engines to social news/bookmarking sites. Before social media hit the scene, it was all about Google. Now the marketing/advertising realm is extremely diverse and covers a LOT of ground.

  Also, while I think social news helped change online marketing, it will soon fade. It was a great idea in theory, and helped us realize the direction we need to go, but it’s too easy to manipulate and abuse.

  My two cents.

  -Eric Odom

• Mike Bogo on Apr 5, 2007 at 1:03 pm

  How do you think social media has changed the online advertising landscape?

  Most importantly, it’s shifted the focus of the internet. Previously, the web was all about the producer, and people had to conform to the producer of the website.

  With the advent of social media, people began realizing that it was no longer the producers in control, but it is in fact the consumer, and the sites that grew in this atmosphere that realized this and made it easy for the consumer and the producer to become one, and as a result, create a personalized experience on the internet.

  Hundreds of services have popped up to cater to the personalized, consumer-oriented user - digg, stumbleupon, myspace, youtube - the list goes on.

  Perhaps the most notable of all of these Web 2.0-style sites is not something that fl0urished in the 2.0 generation; rather, it came before and revolutionized the online advertising world. I speak, of course, of none other than Google AdSense.

  Google AdSense was one of the first personalized services on the net, and its success showed that the generic flashing “You’re the 12553645th visitor” targeting every person blindly is a dinosaur, driven to almost extinction. Now, it’s all about the personalization, the niche targeting, making advertising into a service rather than a tax we pay for using websites.

  This move online is a result of the flexibility of the internet. For years now, other advertising venus have seen flagging returns despite increased costs - tv commercials being most notable. Their model, too, will change to a more flexible, personalized methodology (possibly even by our favorite advertising behemoth Google), but at a slower pace than its internet brethren.

  The days when a company like Procter & Gamble can throw millions into television and news advertising and create a brand overnight are gone. Targeting niche groups and personalization are the new key strategies to impact the now ad-blind world.

• Peter Davis on Apr 5, 2007 at 1:39 pm

  How do you think social media will change the online advertising landscape?

  Going forward, I think we’re going to see less of the blockbuster hits like Myspace and Youtube. They’re fun at first, especially for the early-adopter types. But, I see people getting bored very quickly. If all you’re using Myspace for is to communicate with your existing group of friends, you’re not rooted very deeply. And, mega sites like Myspace are inefficient in bringing together people who don’t already have a connection.

  So, what I see is a more fragmented landscape. Platforms being built to bring together people for specific purposes, where the purpose becomes the central idea, not the platform. And this will have a profound impact on advertising. We already see glimpses of this, with Adwords for example, which theoretically will show an advertisers text ad only on search results and pages that contain content relevant to the product, and presumably to an audience that was genuinely interested in the subject and that’s why they were searching/visiting in the first place.

  But, what the next generation of social media will bring is for the advertisers to be able to work better with the publishers, and not just through Adwords. There are layers of information and opportunity that Google doesn’t seem to want to let the advertisers to have access to, that next gen social media will.

  Sorry for (slightly) changing your question, hope that doesn’t disqualify me. ;)

  Peter

• Pablo Palatnik on Apr 5, 2007 at 2:57 pm

  How do you think social media has changed the online advertising landscape?

  Without a doubt, social media has changed the way we market our product, service, or information online.

  Social Media serves our online marketing needs for all purposes including:
  *Branding
  *Link Building
  *Traffic
  *Free Exposure
  *Monetizing

  There are two divisions in this field which are broken down to Social Media & Social Bookmarking (under the same umbrella and becoming tied closer together).

  Social Media- Myspace, Friendster, Eons, Dating sites, etc.

  Social Media has opened a new door to businesses, which can promote just about anything by making a simple profile and requesting friends, posting bulletins, and much more. Public Relations is becoming more and more tied closley with the internet and through this channel, becoming the fastest growing media outlet. Almost every celebrity, music group, etc has a Myspace profile while promoting daily, weekly, or monthly news about thier tours, cd releases, and more FOR FREE. A user is more entertained by the fact that a profile is interactive finding more and more relevant information to which they are looking for than a static website.
  

  The Avg Stay is about 27+ minutes!
  

  Social Bookmarking has also changed the way an online marketing campaign should be built. These outlets let us not only advertise a product or business, but again servce as a means of public relations. Social bookmarking sites such as digg, reddit, netscape, and more are becoming more and more important to seo’s and sem’s a like in strategizing thier campaign. Link building and driving traffic have a new best friend now. These sites are growing monthly with more people aware of the power that they can bring to your website if used and strategized correctly.

  These sites have also opened a door to affiliate marketers with many techniques not only to increase CTRs on ad networks like adsense but also promote affiliate offers on thier own sites.

  It is essential I believe to include these channels in your marketing campaigns…these channels are VERY young and will continue to grow and better understood by both marketers and users.

• Vyque on Apr 5, 2007 at 4:18 pm

  Which forms of current online advertising or marketing do you see evolving, fading out or taking a leadership position in the eMarketing mix?

  Obviously social media has made a huge impact in the online space. About every five minutes a new buzzword is coming out, and people rush to Wikipedia to figure out what it means. The result is that attention spans are shrinking; everyone is flying on and then off bandwagons before they even become profitable… *cough* MySpace *cough*
  I believe that social media sites are going to become more niche. Instead of joining a massive network that you don’t have any connection to, you’ll be joining the Under 20 Lesbian Afro Beats & Classical Music Lovers site. People on the site are guaranteed to have something in common, thus a reason to go back and join in on the message board flame wars. Not only will people get more involved in online communities, but advertisers will be able to target more efficiently and have an easier time becoming involved in the communities themselves.
  A current example of this is StyleHive, an online community of compulsive shopaholics – basically an advertiser’s dream. The site has a blog, social bookmarking (like Digg without the technology) and message boards. If an advertiser is involved in the community and proves to be trustworthy, their product could be featured on all three, practically causing their traffic to skyrocket in a day. The days of flashing banner ads are over, and the days of providing actual content to specifically interested parties are here.
  One thing will always stay the same though: companies need to remain honest; there are too many online detectives out there to be able to fool the consumer. And once the trust is broken, no amount of CEO blogs, optimized press releases or online videos will help.

• Thomas on Apr 6, 2007 at 1:15 am

  Evolving: Intext Advertising
  Fading: CPM, Pop-ups
  Leadership Position: PPC Advertising

  Innovating forms: Flash Based Video Advertising

  Social Media: I don’t think social media has changed online advertising landscape hugely. Everything is mostly the same. The work load has certainly decreased as you can get all your exposure by concentrating on smaller subsections.

• Michael Sass on Apr 7, 2007 at 6:22 am

  Thank you for the opportunity to provide a post of current online advertising or marketing that i see evolving.

  I believe by monitoring bookmark activity that will track and identify search behavior will eveolve into the next best targeting tool for marketers.

  I also believe from an seo perspective that bookmarketing in the eyes of a search engine will replace the current value of link authority.

  The value of using bookmark intelligence will provide the behavior and relevance of a searchers “true” interests.

  These interests will be modeled by marketers and then marketers will have the opportunity to create very targeted market segments.

• Hunter Hansley on Apr 9, 2007 at 6:00 pm

  “Which forms of current online advertising or marketing do you see evolving, fading out or taking a leadership position in the eMarketing mix?”

  Online advertising has evolved in itself by producing various forms of online ads over the years. Ads have come in the forms of banners, interstitials, floating, expanding, polite, wallpaper, trick banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, videos, maps, email, and mobile. It is hard to conceive that companies have not covered all facets of reaching a consumer with these types of ads.

  Certainly, only few of these forms of ads will be seen in the future. Even less will be considered the norm of online advertising for the future. Both mobile ads and interstitial ads can be seen as growing to become the norm for online advertising in the future.

  With growing technology, mobile ads will become more commonplace with the advancement of using internet capabilities on cellular phones that seem to “do-it-all” from checking email to simply browsing. As well, interstitial ads provide a happy medium for consumers and advertisers in that consumers will see the ads, while not being annoying or obnoxious to those who view them. Additionally I see advertising spreading to open-sourced applications, such as Google Maps, to reach a broader consumer base through a consumer’s need for the application being used.

  Advertisements like pop-ups, pop-unders, floating, banners, and trick banners will continue to flourish though. It seems that these types of ads have set themselves as a norm that won’t phase out quickly, but will also not advance in complexity. More advanced web browsers will likely be the death of these common forms.

  Most types of ads should have already phased out though. Email clients like Gmail have evolved to block spam email ads from being a problem and programs like SpamGourmet offer alternative solutions to avoid spam and ads. Where as video ads are simply annoying. You never know when to expect them either. Also annoying are expanding ads, but can be rendered useless with options in the Mozilla web browser.

  Some have already phased out like map ads, polite ads, and wallpaper ads that should not even be considered anymore.

  Ads and malware are also of increasing concern to consumers as it hinders performance in their technological lives. Firms or hired data collection agencies should never release content that will be deeply rooted into their consumer’s computers. People are constantly being infected by ads and malware, while a majority of people do not have the knowledge to eliminate the problems that bog down their computer as a result.

• Thomas on Apr 9, 2007 at 11:40 pm

  who is the winner for this contest? You said the results will be announced monday

• Loren Baker, Editor on Apr 16, 2007 at 1:07 pm

  Given that last week was SES New York, we’ll be announcing the winner today. Thanks, Loren

• Simon Heseltine on Apr 25, 2007 at 11:07 am

  Is it today yet? ;)

Leave a Comment