aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Inside AdWords, Google’s official source for information about AdWords, has been trumpeting the arrival of Click-to-play video ads for AdWords. Yippy Skippy I woke up this morning to find the new video ad serving features in our AdWords client manager account interface!

Video (and image) ads now appear on a high number of Google content match affiliate sites and for goods in the Google Network. Google video ads do not appear in organic SERPS (at least for now). Content provider affiliate websites must opt-in to the image ads program and only then are site’s eligible for video ads. Affiliate content providers are provided with tools to choose preset display formats for ad sizes and shapes to display. It’s only a question of time before these ads are served to cable networks, hotel rooms, satellite TV, and other broadcast streams.

What are Video Ads?
Video ads are first displayed as a static display picture. When a customer clicks the play button (or the placeholder image), the video starts to play by one of two methods:Read the rest of this entry »

For years prescient industry pundits and sages have been forecasting this happy day of convergence. Google audio radio ads are here and guess what-SEM firms are the new radio media buyers. Yippy Skippy! Tonight I stumbled upon Google Audio’s mass launch of Google Audio Ads in the dashboard of a Minneapolis client’s account.

In April Google announced a multi-year deal delegating them to cut up and sell a guaranteed inventory of 30-second radio spots on more than 675 Clear Channel AM/FM radio stations. Now it’s reality.

SEM Firms are the New Radio Buyers.
The deal makes it possible for Google search marketing platform Internet media buyers (like aimClear) to reach audiences at designated times in geo-targeted areas. Search marketers are now directly in the brick broadcast buying mix with Google radio Ads even here in Duluth, Minnesota.

Since the interface is within the Google online ad platform, creating and deploying radio advertising campaigns is now in the sphere of search engine marketing firms who have been learning to leverage online media buys in this environment for years. For goodness sakes, after the radio ads run Google even offers reports online to provide marketers with real-time recordings of ads as they were originally played.

Why Google Radio?
Radio and Internet together reach 83% of people ages 18-54*. Each day radio and Internet in aggregate reach approximately 83% of folks between the ages of 18-54 which is comparable to the daily reach of television. Also greater than 90% of the population still listens to radio and 21% of people are listening while online. 57% of people listening to the radio while on the Internet actually look up items in their browser after hearing product commercials. *Source: The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), 2007.Read the rest of this entry »

NAB 1997
It was about 10 years ago or so that I was walking the floor at NAB. Everywhere the word “convergence” was being tossed around faster than the poker chips over at Caesars. Back then, no one was fully aware of what it meant. Somehow, technologies were going to seamlessly merge and create a utopian world for the user. Trouble was everyone had a different idea of how that world would look and feel and more importantly, how it would be accessed.

Some thought it would come through to your eyes on the good old TV. Some thought the PC was going to morph into the new electronic hearth. Now bring cell phones, game consoles, and portable video devices into the mix making the combo platters of content delivery endless and globally available. Will the delivery of content be a convergence or a collision?Read the rest of this entry »

I am pleased to announce a new series of articles regarding the convergence and consolidation of media channels. Since traditional channels like broadcast, print, and cable are folding into the Internet at an ever increasing rate this topic has become incredibly relevant. Like everyone else in my age group (don’t ask don’t tell) most of my associates come from a different era of marketing, public relations, PR, advertising and we’re all reacting from our unique personal and professional vantage points. We have similar questions which range from theoretical debate to matters of survival or forced obsolescence.

SEM and “Traditional” Television Can Learn From Each Other.
Anyway among my associates I have a dialog going with the good folks at Charter Communications. Peter Provost, Sales Manager of Charter Communications in Duluth, Minnesota, has been educating me about the daily authority blogs he reads in the broadcast and cable television world. He’s turned me on to publications which are not common fodder in the SEM universe like MediaPost Raw and Online Spin. In turn I have been channeling Peter the authority blogs I read every day like Search Engine Land and SEO Roundtable. I like the exchange of ideas from different perspectives from media players speeding towards the same destination from opposite directions.Read the rest of this entry »