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Many have emailed me regading my posting about Schoolpop declaring bankruptcy. Here is a letter that was sent to me by one of our readers / fans, they received the following from Katie Scott, Schoolpop's Director of Sales and Service:
I apologize for the confusion that has occurred as to the status of Schoolpop. Here is a recap of the events that have occurred since Labor Day: On September 13th, Schoolpop did in fact file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and at that time, all of the employees, myself included were let go. Last week, the trustee handling the case contacted myself and a few others asking us to begin to communicate again with our Champions and Supporters regarding the now evident potential sale that is pending. Comments (19) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics
Blink ›
Internert Ad Revenues are UpINTERNET AD REVENUES FOR THE first half of this year surged to $5.8 billion--a 26 percent increase from the same period in 2004, according to a report released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers Monday. Online ad revenue for this year's second quarter totaled just under $3 billion, also marking a 26 percent increase over the second quarter of last year, as well as an increase of approximately 7 percent over the first three months of the year. Search and display ads represented the bulk of online ad spending, with search accounting for 40 percent of total spending, and display ads pulling in 20 percent. Happy 7th Birthday Google!
Today marks Google's 7th year of operation. What a long way to come in 7 years! With a Market Cap of 87.6 Billion, that's building at 12.5 Billion per year! Not to shabby. In Goyami tradition, here are some of their Birthday logos, I couldn't find 1st, 2nd or 3rd. If you have them, please send them.
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (1) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News September 26, 2005Microsoft adCenter - PPC Ads on MSN Coming Soon!
Goyami was named after Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in anticipation that Microsoft would enter the market in a big way, creating the big three in pay-per-click advertising. Today, the mainstream media is all buzzing about Microsoft unveiling Adcenter to the public: My own personal experience with Microsoft is that they told me last week they had a queue of advertisers that are lined up and that they would get me on the list. Then when they are ready to get my ads online, I could submit a text file of my ads and keywords and they would try to get them up and running. They said ads would start running in October, and that I could probably get online towards the end of November. They also were not sure when any kind of live interface would be available to monitor and modify keywords, bid prices, etc... I think they are working hard to get a piece of the Q4 PPC revenues, but that their system just isn't ready for prime time yet. I am not sure if the current flurry of press is anything solid or just more Microsoft PR build up to get advertisers online manually. If and when Microsoft does open an online version of AdCeneter, you will be able at advertising.msn.com/searchadv Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing September 22, 2005eComXpo Free Pass
eComExpo is an online convention for affiliate marketers and merchants. The upcoming event on October 6-8 is the second time the event has taken place. Here is a Free Exhibit Hall and Keynote Pass. It's worth a look. The last show took place in February of 2005. You can see a screen shot on my post from that time: eComXpo - Online Tradeshow for Affiliate Marketing. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Industry Events September 21, 2005Goyami CJU Schwag Awards
Welcome to the Goyami CJU Schwag Awards Post In honor of this year's first expo at CJU. The CJU expo consisted of mostly merchants with postage stamp size tables where they could meet and great and market their programs and services during the lunch break at the end of the conference. With any expo comes the Schwag, so here are the awards for 2005. Best Schwag Best Schwag for the Kids Best Publisher Schwag Best Merchant Branding Schwag Congratulations! Please note, we can only rate the stuff we get, so if you missed a good one, sorry, give us more stuff next year! Late mail in entries will be graciously accepted and reviewed. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Industry Events September 20, 2005Google to buy AOL?
Google can't afford to allow Microsoft to buy AOL from Time Warner. The Google AOL partnership currently provides $380 million dollars a year for Google. The recent stories of the Microsoft / AOL dealings have to scare Google. The length of the initial AOL-Google deal was never announced, but it was renewed 17 months later, in October 2003. Assuming that deal was for 2 or 3 years, it's time for renewal either one month from now, or one year from now. Having this inside knowledge of what was about to happen in the landscape of search suggests why now was the right time for Google to do a $4 billion secondary offering at $295 a share. Picking up AOL at this time seems like a necessary step to secure Google's advertising growth. They simply can't afford to let Microsoft steal AOL from their grasp. A Microsoft Purchase of AOL will have significant regulatory hurdles with in the Instant Messaging Space. This would be a difficult path for Time Warner, and ultimatly might not be approved. The AOL culture has an ingrained hatred of Microsoft from the early days, although the culture has changed signficantly as the old guard has been purged from AOL, I think the culture clash would be signfigant. I think it's clear that Google should, will, and must acquire AOL at this time. We look forward to welcoming Google to Northern Virginia. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics September 19, 2005John Battelle at CJU 2005
This morning's highlight at Commission Junction University has been a great presentation from John Battelle on his view of the publishing industry and the transition from what he calls Web1.0 to Web2.0 where the old publishing model crumbles and is replaced by new content providers / blogs. One of my favorite comments was that Adsense is "Beer Money for Bloggers." John has a long history in the media world from Wired, Hotwired, and the Industry Standard. His latest efforts include his book, "The Search", his Web2.0 Conference, and he is working on building FMPublishing. We have highlighted John's blog for some time, and consider him one of the industry's leading thinkers. Everyone at CJU received a copy of his book, I'll let you know what I think when I finish it. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Industry Events September 18, 2005Commission Junction University (CJU) 2005 Starts
CJU 2005 Started today in Santa Barbara. Lara Lemmond and Ziggy Kopetti from Commission Junction gave a brief skit showing stereotypes of the merchant publisher relationship and then provided to give a decent recap of the core elements for merchants to running a good program. Slides and content were similar to last years presentation, so presumably there are a lot of first time merchants in attendance this year. I guess the big question I want to pose to our readers, those in attendance and not, what the heck is this supposed to be in the front of the room?
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Industry Events Managing Affiliate Programs to EPC
An interesting question was posed at the opening session at CJU today. In talking about "optimizing their program" one of the merchants asked what they should do with Publishers (CJ speak for Affiliate) who are driving A LOT of traffic, but only a small portion of the traffic is converting into sales. Their issue is that although they are making money with this publisher, it is driving down their CJ Network EPC rankings. I guess my feelings from a top affiliate / publisher perspective here is that EPC is only one indicator of a merchant's performance in the CJU interface. I think a company should focus on profitability first and foremost. If the publisher is driving profit, then it's profitable business. If your in a very competitive category and you think EPC is going to make the difference of top affiliates marketing you or not marketing you, then perhaps you should consider 2 programs in CJ, one for high EPC publishers and one for low, but profitable EPC publishers. If you focus on running a profitable business, the rest should take care of itself. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Industry Events September 16, 2005DentalPlans.com Affiliate Program
Since Google's change of URL policies, some companies have been helping their affiliates by full page / full site creative for their affiliates. DentalPlans.com is one of the companies that has been doing a great job with this. They have published full site templates in their In-House Program as well as on Commission Junction. For an example of one of their templates, see Low-Cost-Dental-Plan.com. Just buy a domain name, implement their code, and start marketing. It couldn't get much easier. DentalPlans.com has agreed to offer Goyami readers an extra $5 per lead if they sign up for their In-House program via the following Dental Plans Affiliate Program link. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Affiliate Marketing September 14, 2005Affiliate Summit 2006 - Conference Scheduled
Affiliate Summit 2006 will be held on January 9-10th, 2006 in Las Vegas at the Bally's Las Vegas. Early Bird Registration will open soon. There will be optional workships on Jan 8th as well, including a workshop by Joel Comm of WorldVillage.com about making money with Google AdSense. Speaker Proposals are due by September 30th. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Industry Events Keyword Trademark Issues Continued
After my recent entry about Geico suing competitors for bidding on their trademark as keywords, Hendry Lee of Marketingloop.com took issue with my analogy of a customer going to BestBuy and "searching" for Sony TVs. His issue was that this is an apples to oranges comparison because of the offline vs online world, and that BestBuy's sales people have an obligation to sell as best they can for the company. While I agree that this is offline, I think the main issue here and in the case of trademark violations in general is if it is causing customer confusion and or dilution of the trademark. While, I too am not a lawyer, I find it hard to believe that if someone does a search for the keyword "Geico" and sees and ad for Screentrade Car Insurance. It's clearly a competitor. I am not sure how the courts will fall on this issue, but my gut tells me that bidding on a keyword should be considered fair use, so long as the ad doesn't cause confusion as to who the ad is for. It would appear, at least in the US, that Google agrees, as this is their current policy. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics September 13, 2005Geico Continues Trademark Keyword Battle
After settling their case with Google, Geico has decided to start going after companies buying their trademarked keywords. Apparently, if they can't get Google and Overture to block competitors from buying their keyword terms, they feel they will have better luck going after their competitors. I just ran a search for Geico, and came up with only one ad under their trademark: Car Insurance Free Quote I guess QuoteServ.com will be getting a cease and desist letter soon. It's an interesting argument; does someone seeing the ad above think this is a Geico ad? I am not sure there is confusion. If I walk into BestBuy and tell them I want to see their Sony TV's, will I not see Zenith TV's right next to them? I was clearly searching for Sony TV's, yet I see the Zenith, and am not confused that it's a Sony. Why are keyword searches any different? If I typed in Geico as a keyword, and the ad said Geico Car Insurance, and I clicked on the ad an went to a competitor that would be a clear violation and confusion, but running a competitive ad when someone searches for a competitor's name, seems fair game. It will be interesting to see if any of these cases actually make it to judgment. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics September 12, 2005Internet Calling Moving Forward
eBay announced today that it will purchase Skype for $4.1 Billion. Skype is a rapidly growing free internet phone service. With this announcement and Google latest push into voice over IP with their Google Talk program we are starting to see a trend that could have significant impact on how people conduct business on the Internet. With Google and eBay firmly behind these technologies, it won't be long before single click options appear on pages to allow customers to "call" companies for free over the Internet. Virtual call centers for accepting Skype and Google Talk calls will start popping up and orders that might need some extra hand-holding will begin to move from traditional phones to internet phones, saving customers and companies significant money. I am sure eBay will be quick to add features that allow bidders to contact sellers in this fashion. For the affiliate industry, it becomes even more imperative for merchants to come up with ways to track affiliate commissions from the click to the phone order no matter if it ends up on traditional land lines or VOIP. It will be interesting to watch and see how fast these technologies become mainstream for internet merchants and customers... Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics Halloween Sites
Halloween is a great time for affiliate marketers. It's one of the few times in the year where everyone is buying the same type of merchandise: Costumes for Kids, Costumes for Adults, and Halloween Party Supplies. So it's time for affiliate marketers to build Halloween Costume Sale sites and publish their Halloween Coupon Codes and Deals provided by their merchant partners. Here are some of the top merchants with Halloween Merchandise: The Halloween season also marks the beginning of the 4th quarter holiday shopping season, a great time for affiliate marketers. Have a Happy Halloween, and a profitable 4th Quarter! P.S. Be careful how much candy you eat, or you will be looking for a Low Cost Dental Plan.. :-) Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Affiliate Marketing September 8, 2005Google and Geico Settle Suit
Google and Geico have agreed to settle the lawsuit brought by Geico claming that Google infringed on their trademarks by allowing people to bid on the term Geico. Terms of the agreement were not released. In December, a federal judge ruled in Google's favor indicating that bidding on competitive trademark terms alone was not a violation. This spurred Google's change in their trademark policies, in the US, to stop disallowing trademark keywords, but instead focus on disallowing trademarks in advertising copy. Google will still disallow some trademark terms on ads that are run in other countries (or set to run globally). Since Google already had a ruling against it, a settlement at this time, indicates that Google probably had appealed the case, and both sides have decided to stop paying the lawyers at this time. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics September 7, 2005Schoolpop plans to file for Bankruptcy this week
Management at Schoolpop has informed it's employees that they plan to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy this week. The schoolpop website is likely to be down within the next week or so, and management is attempting to sell Schoolpop's business units during the bankruptcy process. Schoolpop was a loyalty program that let's people shop to earn cash for their children's school's. Schoolpop had long been touted in the affiliate industry as a shining star and an example of combining social good with affiliate marketing. Comments (2) + TrackBacks (1) | Category: ! Hot Topics September 6, 2005Linkshare Sold to Rakutten of Japan
Japan's largest online shopping mall operator, Rakutten, has agreed to buy Linkshare for $425 Million. Rakutten plans to take Linkshare into more overseas markets. In Japan, Rakuten runs top-ranked sites for online shopping, travel, golf reservations, community and greeting cards. The acquisition, Rakuten's largest yet, is expected to close next month. This is the Tokyo-based company's first expansion in the United States, though the company hinted that it expects to make more. Linkshare had recently opened up Linkshare Japan, and was pushing hard on expansion in that area. Stephen Messer, LinkShare's chairman and CEO, and Heidi Messer, president and COO, were also LinkShare's largest shareholders, with a 40-percent stake. Venture capital firm ICG held a 35-percent stake, with Mitsui & Co. and Comcast holding the remaining shares. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Affiliate Marketing September 2, 2005Google Adwords Glitch
After informing it's customers that they had 30 days to re-activate any disabled keywords in their account, Google has confirmed that they had a technical glitch in the past few days that caused many previously disabled terms to be labeled again as disabled, even after they had been deleted and re-added. Although Google claims that the problem has been fixed so it no longer occurs, this still negates a lot of the work that we all have been doing over the past few weeks as SEO firms and Adwords clients with many keywords have been scrambling to re-enable disabled keywords in their accounts and those of their clients. Google should at a minimum extend the time frame in which disabled keywords will be purged from accounts. Additionally, they should offer significant monetary credits to clients who have been spending so much time trying to get their terms re-enabled. Finally, this issue has gone unreported by Google. They should immediately email all clients and let them know what they are going to do to help resolve the issue. I would be really upset if I was a client who had re-enabled all my terms only to find them purged without notice. What do you think Google should do? Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Pay Per Click Management Tools September 1, 2005Web Effects of Hurricane Katrina
Source: comScore Networks Not surprisingly, the devastation caused by Katrina brought a virtual halt to online connectivity in cities hit by the storm. - On the average weekday in the week preceding the storm, approximately 700,000 people used the Internet in New Orleans. On Monday, August 29, that number dropped more than 80 percent below that level. By the following day that decline had reached 90 percent. - In the Biloxi-Gulfport area, Internet traffic exceeded 160,000 users on the average weekday during the preceding week. On August 29, that number fell by more than 75 percent, and by the following day online activity had fallen below reportable levels. - The number of Americans offering a helping hand is evidenced by soaring traffic to RedCross.org. On August 31, nearly 1 million people visited the site, more than 32 times the average number of daily visitors from August 22-26. - Americans turned to the Internet for the latest weather information as the storm approached. WeatherBug drew more than 9.9 million visitors on August 29th, while The Weather Channel (weather.com) saw 9 million visitors on August 29. - More than 1.7 million online searches were conducted on August 29 containing the words "Hurricane" and/or "Katrina," a more than tenfold increase over the daily average of 143,000 searches during the five days ending August 26, 2005. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics Help Red Cross Relief Efforts for Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina has caused havoc in New Orleans and surrounding areas. You can help do your part to support the Red Cross' relief effort by posting ads (like the ones bellow) to your web sites. They have ads available in many sizes, and you can get your ads from the following site: http://www.redcross.org/psa/bannerorder/all/
Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics Yahoo accepts URL Lists
In June, I wrote an article about Google Sitemaps and how Google would allow you to submit a list of URLs for their spider to index. Yahoo has taken a similar step by allowing lists of urls to be submitted to their free submission tool at http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request. These two services should help companies with dynamically generated content pages to get more of their site indexed by the top two search engines. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Organic Search Engine Marketing & Optimization (SEO) Google Sells Print Ads
In an unsuspected move yesterday, Google took a leap into the offline world by starting to sell print ads to some of its top adwords clients. Google took out full page ads in PC Magazine and Maximum PC magazine, and divided the space up among several of its advertising clients who wanted to reach this market. Google has graciously setup a few sites to take advantage of all this PR about their foray into Print advertising, and displays what the ad pages look like, with clickable urls to the advertisers of course: You will also notice that clicks on the page go through their Adwords network so Google can extract per-click fees. Google's advertisers have always loved more targeted and cheaper advertising opportunities. Google believes this move will help them leverage they advertisers thirst for advertising bargains into the offline print world. PC Magazine typically charges $72,485 for a full-page ad. I am sure Google was able to lock in some discounts with longer term deals. The ad in PC magazine was split among 5 participating advertisers at a rate of $2,200 each. That's a lot less than 1/5 of the typical cost which would come to roughly $14,500. Although neither side is talking about the specifics of the deal, my guess is that Google may have offered Ziff Davis, publisher of PC Magazine, some online advertising in lieu of payments. Swapping ads like this could be a big win-win for Google and their offline advertising partners. We expect that similar deals will be cut with other offline print advertisers, and Google may come up with a way to sell these ads on a pay per call basis. Let the deals begin... Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing
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Adam Viener
