“With cost-per-click ads, spammers create bogus pages where confused consumers click on ads in an effort to escape.

But with CPA ads, clicking is not enough. The game is now to manipulate consumers not only to click, but to take some further action. And I don’t use the word ‘manipulate’ arbitrarily.

This is about turning the web into one big pile of junk mail, aimed at getting you to sign up, buy, or commit to something that you hadn’t necessarily wanted.”

Scott Karp
Publishing 2.0

Learn more about Google’s move into Cost Per Action advertising by tuning into Weekly Insight.  This week’s show can be streamed or downloaded below.

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“Brands still matter on the Internet.  Most of your profits come from buying your own brand name.”

It is a “profound mistake by all of us to think we’ve figured out how to measure ROI on search.  We’re in stage one.”

Jeffrey Glueck
Chief Marketing Officer
Travelocity.com

“Yahoo seized back paid search market share during February 2007 across our client base…

In January 2006, our agency was spending about 38 cents on Yahoo for every dollar spent on Google running paid search for our clients.  This percentage fell steadily during 2006, reflecting Yahoo’s loss of share to Google. Relative to Google, our agency increased our Yahoo spend during December ‘07 and January ‘07. We surmised that this uptick had to do with how Yahoo prioritized ad serving during the DTC-XML—Panama transition. 

In February, Yahoo aggressively took back share from Google, returning to Jan 2006 levels.  We believe this change was driven by the rollout of Quality Based Bidding on February 5.”

While commenting on Yahoo’s (YHOO) pay-per-click Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and its competitive stance against Google’s (GOOG) AdSense network…

“MyBlogLog (a recent Yahoo acquisition) is also tracking information on Google AdSense — how many clicks Google AdSense ads are receiving (on webpages that have both MyBlogLog and AdSense installed), the ad unit size, and what webpage those clicks occurred.  Yahoo doesn’t know the CPC for each of Google’s ads, but they do know the click-through rate (CTR)—and can specifically target high CTR publishers first, with their YPN offering.”

- Steve Poland

In response to Borrell Associates recent release of a report revealing newspaper sites grossed $81 million in local video advertising in 2006, compared to $32 million for local TV sites.

“Just consider for a moment that local TV has been at the forefront of video innovation for decades—until now, when we’re facing the greatest revolution in video to date.  Portals (and other pure plays), network/cable sites, newspapers and even video blogs are beating local TV sites in video innovation and revenue generation. 

But it’s not the traditional :15 pre-roll that will generate most of the revenue, but long-form advertorial video that’s associated with key verticals such as real estate, health and automotive.  Isn’t it interesting in the history of business that companies that believe they have the most expertise in something are the most likely to fall behind in times of tremendous change?  Let’s hope local TV wakes up to the fact that we need to take large, aggressive steps to catch up in online video, from technology to original content to sales.”

-- Cory Bergman

“The Lifetime Value of a Customer Driven by Paid Search maybe Lower than You Think.

Search engine marketing gets a large share of marketer’s spend because it often results in an immediate transaction and is easily measurable.  But is a customer driven from SEM, as valuable as customers driven through other channels?  I believe not. 

When advertisers begin to segment their customers by originating channel, they will find that search engine marketing, like coupons, promotions, and incentives, results in less loyal customers relative to other channels. 

Search is a tool to find stuff, and when that stuff happens to be products, search is often used as a tool to find the best deal.  Deal seekers are the same no matter the channel, and they tend to be less loyal customers.”

Craig Swerdloff
VP & GM
Postmaster Direct