Google Checkout Widget Coming?
Problogger has a post on an interesting new AdSense format being tested with pictures. This definitely puts the widget marketing world in a precarious situation if a Checkout widget does roll out…
There’s been lots of testing of new ad formats going on at AdSense recently - but this one is really interesting - it’s a much more interactive looking AdSense unit that looks and functions a lot like Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks units.It seems to be called the ‘Google Checkout Gadget’.
New Interactive AdSense Unit with Pictures Spotted
Kyte.tv Gets Funding, Distribution and Celebrities
Video blogging site Kyte.tv has announced a round of funding, added distribution and it looks as if they are adding more celebrities to compliment the popular 50 Cent channel.
Soon-to-announce-a-career-move Robert Scoble is a huge fan of Kyte.tv (and one has to wonder if this will lure him over to the video blog startup or if he’ll go with the rumor and sign FastCompany. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, he’ll be announcing around the 15th of January). He broke the news on his blog:
Kyte just announced a B-round of funding from Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and DFJ of $15 million, adding on to an earlier round of $2.25 million. Whew, the video space is really heating up.
But more significant than the money is the distribution. Telefonica has 230 million users. DoCoMo has 52 million. Nokia has 39% of the cell phone market share. If the Kyte player is embedded on these three it brings a HUGE audience to Kyte.
Also, they showed me a channel that rapper 50 Cent is doing. It has, within a few weeks, passed my Kyte.tv channel to gain the #1 spot on Kyte. More celebrity deals are in the offing, CEO Daniel Graf told me. They also shipped a new iPhone version and demonstrated an even more feature rich version coming in January.
Kyte is interesting in that it functions as a place to live blog, interact with commentors and aggregate content. Perhaps the most compelling feature is the emphasis on mobile blogging via video (which I still think is going to be a breakaway hit in 2008).
So, we’ll see if this news (especially the celebrity additions) add to Kyte.tv’s share in the growing micro-blogging/video/mobile space that is seeing a convergence revolution.
Squidoo Takes on Knol
Squidoo strikes back against Google with an interesting front end for a Squidoo lens creator called SquidKnol:
We built a new front door that makes it easy for you to build a scholarly page, filled with details, facts and more on Squidoo. And of course it will be indexed all over the web…
Pretty smart (and funny at the same time) from Seth Godin and the Squidoo team if you ask me. Should be fun to watch how much attention this brings back to Squidoo since the topic of Knols is hot conversation in the online tech and marketing world at the moment.
Seth’s Blog: For scholars who just can’t wait
What is an API?
Matt Dickman has an excellent (and concise) post/video on MarketingProfs explaining what an API is and what it does.
Whether you’re a marketing geek or just someone interested in improving your web marketing, you need to at least have a conversational understanding of API’s in this web2.0 mashup world. Matt provides a good place to start.
Matt is doing a series of these posts on important terms or concepts that marketers need to understand or grasp in order to exist and survive in the current and emerging tech landscape, so keep an eye on the RSS feed there.
TweeterBoard is Bad and Stunts Growth of Conversations (as Do All “Lists”)
My pal Marshall Kirkpatrick made a post on Read/WriteWeb concerning the fascinating new TweeterBoard site:
On Tweeterboard you’ll find not only a list of the top 100 most influential users on Twitter - you can also look up any of almost 2000 users and see who they are conversing with and get some idea how much influence they carry in the Twitter ecosystem. Only a small portion of Twitter users are being tracked so far - but if indexing can be automated (!) then this could become a very important service.
Tweetboard is fascinating but it’s inherently bad for the type of organic and fluid conversation that happens on Twitter everyday.
If Twitter is going to make it to the mainstream and really start pushing the envelope of personal content production by non-tech gods and goddesses, we’ve got to get over the silly notion of “rank” and “importance” that these types of things measure.
Why?
Because sites like Technorati and Techmeme (though utilitarian for some) have stunted (or at least perverted) the blogosphere by introducing concepts of ranking and opened the floodgates to spammer-and-gamer SEO’s and affiliates (those are adjectives for some, not for all) and created a class system of blogging that is not easily overcomed.
Let’s level the playing field with Twitter and not repeat the same mistakes that caused for the creation of A Lists, B Lists and Z Lists. Otherwise, Twitter and micro-blogging in general will suffer.
[Update] After I posted this, fellow Twitter user Mike Krigsman (someone I follow) and ZD Net blogger posted this:
@samharrelson Absolutely agree core value of Twitter is leveling the field. Diminishment of that attribute will limit it’s value. Think Digg
Exactly.
Shopping.com or Shogging.com?
Interesting post (and discussion in the comments) from ComparisonEngine on Pepperjam’s shogging.com site:
In a search for Ugg boots, I found the following ad:
I thought I was clicking on a Shopping.com ad. Instead, I arrived at Shogging.com, which is owned by the Pepperjam Network.
Kris Jones has also posted about Brian’s ComparisonEngine post on the PepperJam blog . Should be fun to see how the comments and conversation play out and what people think of the PPC marketing strategy behind this (and to see how many affiliates or agencies are doing similar things).
Google Goes Useful: Easily Check Flight Status
While seemingly mundane, this is killer for those of us with an already large part of our digital life wrapped up in the Google cloud. Sure there are sites that already do this, but Google has earned my trust for essential info like a flight status:
For the latest information on a flight’s status, simply search for an airline and flight number, and the first result will tell you whether your flight is on time or delayed as well as the estimated departure and arrival times.
Better Flight Stats Results from Google
Sitemap Videos for Google Indexing
Google continues its foray into video with the announcement of sitemaps for video:
In our effort to help users search all the world’s public videos, the Google Video team joined the Sitemaps folks to introduce Video Sitemaps—an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search. By submitting this video-specific Sitemap in addition to your standard Sitemap, you can specify all the video files on your site, along with relevant metadata.
Here’s an example (emphasis mine):
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.0">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>
<video:title>My funny video</video:title>
<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
</video:video>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_other_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/videos/video1.mpg</video:content_loc>
<video:description>A really awesome video</video:description>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>
This will facilitate Google’s indexing of video based around relevant data. Of course, this also helps Google to properly categorize videos in order to display relevant contextual ads via AdSense.
For small to medium publishers, this could be a good chance to increase AdSense commissions if your videos are properly indexed early and often. As seen in the
example above, Google’s spiders will be looking for keyword descriptions.
You can get going with video sitemaps through the Google Webmaster Tools page.
AdMob and the Coming Mobile Marketing Revolution
AdMob is an advertising network aimed at the mobile market. They interact with publishers and advertisers much in the same way as a Commission Junction or Linkshare or ShareASale, but focus on mobile ads, creatives and deliveries.
They have just released their November stats (report available here):
It is our pleasure to send you our third monthly AdMob Mobile Metrics with November data. We have appreciated your feedback and continue to add to the report. This month we have added month-over-month change calculations to make it easier to observe trends in geographic regions, manufacturers and individual handset models.
Some observations from the November data:
- AdMob Network impressions were up 4.5% November over October to 1,722,213,245. The growth was driven by Western Europe and North America.
- Apple iPhone share continued to grow and we saw a strong first full month of iPhone traffic in the UK.
- Nokia N Series devices showed strong growth in November.
The trends here are interesting to observe and digest considering the impact that mobile marketing is poised to make in the general marketing industry in 2008. Companies like AdMob are paving the way and will surely be either competitors or acquisitions of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo.
Digital River Shares Slip: Affiliate Future for Games?
Barron’s is reporting that Digital River, the parent company of affiliate network oneNetworkDirect, is seeing its stock price slide today in light of lower revenue from key client Symantec resulting in a lower valuation:
Zorovic says that he now expects the software-downloading service company’s revenue from key customer Symantec (SYMC) to be down 5% year-over-year in the current quarter, rather than flat as previously expected. “As Symantec continues to focus on its costs in 2008, we anticipate it continues on setting a high performance/price hurdle for Digital River, as it did with subscriptions in 2007,” he writes. Zorovic adds that he expects ongoing investment in R&D and sales and marketing as the company develops its games offerings. He now sees operating margins next year flat versus 2007, rather than the 240 basis point he had been projecting.
I’m eager to see how the gaming offerings mentioned play into oneNetworkDirect. That is a segment of consumer culture that affiliate marketing hasn’t particularly done well (or much) with in the past. Since gaming (both console and online) continue to explode in users and revenues every quarter, it’s time that a network figured out how to leverage the affiliate channel to promote games.
