advertising

WordPress, a popular open source blogging tool and publishing platform, launched today its own advertising initiative conveniently dubbed WordAds. Just to make sure everyone is on the same page here, the company began a post on its official blog by saying its users “deserve better than AdSense”. Ouch! In another nod at Google’s AdSense, the WordPress team explained why it took them so long to roll out adverts on their platform:

We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad.

They are teaming up with Federated Media, which connects top blogs and web sites with leading brand marketers. If you run a WordPress blog, feel free to apply here to begin making money from WordAds. Many established media outlets entrust their online publishing operations to the WordPress engine, including the CNN and Fortune blogs and this site. Yes, Google absolutely dominates the online advertising game, but WordPress is no ordinary company either.

In addition to being the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress powers over 14.7 percent of top one million web sites, according to Alexa, and was found on 22 percent of all new websites as of August 2011, up from 8.5 percent. Also important, 22 out of every hundred active new domains in the United States use the WordPress CMS engine and more than 50,000 WordPress-powered blogs come online every day.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVf3UaZePC8]

Google has posted a nice new promo clip for Google+ to their YouTube channel, just in time for the official start of the holiday shopping season. Surprisingly, it isn’t about discounts or deals as Google opted for a different approach.

It’s entitled “Circles Love Story” and illustrates vividly “new ways of sharing the right things with the right people”. So, a guy meets this girl and puts her in the “Love of my Life” circle on Google+. Ring a bell?. She returns the favor by putting him in the Creepers circle, but soon changes her mind and moves him around a bit until he ends up in…

Just watch the clip above. Google also polished up the original Google+ advert and introduced a new tagline. Both the original and new advert are right after the break. Speaking of holidays, have you seen a Thanksgiving Google Doodle that lets you customize a virtual turkey?

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According to a report from WSJ, Google is currently in talks with private-equity firms regarding potentially providing assistance in the purchase of Yahoo Inc.

The report mentions the possibility Google is simply trying to bid up the purchase price to make it a less attractive deal for other potential buyers including Microsoft. Yahoo is currently in talks with Microsoft and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners as well as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board regarding a possible deal. Although, there are reasons Google might find owning a piece of Yahoo’s 700 million plus unique monthly visitors beneficial.

The most obvious is advertising. According to the report, “Google wants to help sell the ad space across Yahoo sites as Yahoo has struggled to get good prices for it”. WSJ mentions the ability to push Google+ on the Yahoo community, but more importantly, a deal would provide Google with access to ads displayed in content from ABC News and other current premium content partners of Yahoo. According to the source, Google is interested in “having deeper business relationships with such publishers”.

Citing a “person familiar with the matter”, WSJ’s sources claim that Google has talked with two undisclosed private-equity firms, and while no deal has been struck, many are already discussing potential antitrust investigations. Forbes just published a story focusing on the antitrust issues of a potential Yahoo purchase, outlining the obvious predicament:

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(Not an ad, The +1 button and recommendations will appear at the bottom of display ads.)

In October, Google will make the ability for AdSense publishers to incorporate +1 buttons into display ads public. For example, if someone sees an ad that offers something they enjoy, they can click the +1 button to share with their friends they like it. If their friends and contacts are logged in, they will see their friends who have +1 the ad (as seen above).

This new addition to advertising is bound to spark much more relevance in ads, and actually make them more enjoyable for users. Users can see what their friends enjoy, and in the end they will probably like it too. As always, if AdSense publishers don’t want a +1 button on their ad, they can opt out.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKGptWtzeaU]

Google has posted their first Google Wallet ad on their YouTube page, featuring Seinfeld’s George Constanza. Constanaza and his exploding wallet have found out why they need the new payment service. But seriously Google, when’s this going to launch? (via TechCrunch)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j_2srh7o3M]

Google is anything but the dominant force in Asia, where local search engine Baidu is number one. Also, Asia, the world’s largest and most populous continent with the population of 3.88 billion people, is just beginning to discover Android, but the continent is poised to become the next gold mine for Google as smartphones become more affordable to the mass consumer. One exemption that proves the rule: Korea, a poster child for the latest tech.

People wield the latest gadgets there and use them more often and in ways that put to shame their counterparts from the Western world. Google’s mobile ad team went out into the streets of Seoul to ask smartphone users how they use their devices. The professionally produced footage is, of course, yet another showcase of the numerous ongoing marketing activities meant to convince people to stay under the Google fold.

In this case, Google wants potential advertisers to place adverts on web sites and inject them inside mobile apps using their technology. By the way, notice a bunch of Galaxy S phones everywhere (to our Apple readers: iPhone 4 spotting on mark 1:15).

But who could blame the Internet’s #1 search company for promoting the use of smartphones? With a whopping 97 percent of Google’s revenues coming from advertising, no wonder they did not spare any expense producing this testimonial. Still, worth your time so sit back, relax and enjoy the three and a half minute ride. Also, go past the fold for interesting takeaways from a Google survey in collaboration with Ipsos of over a thousand South Korean smartphone users…

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Call it a mobile platform heat map of sorts, but we love it. Mobile ad firm Jumptap is out with their July 2011 report analyzing ad-tracking data of about 83 million users on its ad network. The above info graphic immediately captured our attention (via GigaOM) because it tells the story of the iOS vs. Android war in an electoral manner that evening newscasters had trained us to get. As you can see, iOS is doing pretty well in the Northeast and Midweast states, while Android leads in the South and Southweast parts (no, we ain’t making any conclusions here).

Also, Hawaii is a state that falls in the iOS camp, and Alaska over-indexes for both Android and iOS. One word of warning: That pretty chart is sourced from a limited selection of people on Jumptap’s ad network rather then actual sales numbers so the usual caveats apply. One other surprising factoid:

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Peter Kafka reports for the All Things D blog that Amazon cut a deal with San Francisco-based Triggit to sell adverts on other people’s sites. Previously, Amazon was only selling ad slots on their own web properties, such as IMDB.com and Amazon.com. In a nutshell, the online retail giant buys ad inventory from other sites and resells it to marketers at a premium because they are using data on their shoppers and probing visitors to target likely prospects. The author explains:

Amazon uses the detailed data it collects on its customers and visitors to create pools of potential marketing targets. Amazon tells Triggit to hunt down particular Web surfers after they’ve left the site, using tracking “cookies”; once the startup finds them it purchases ad inventory those users are looking at. Amazon uses that ad space to serve up an ad for the marketer it’s working with, and charges them for the impression.

Granted, this isn’t an ad network per se because Amazon is essentially re-selling other people’s inventory. But looking at the big picture, it’s another sign giving away that Amazon is slowly putting the remaining pieces of a puzzle in place in order to create a comprehensive end-to-end ecosystem designed to efficiently monetize users with physical products, digital media content, apps, advertising and devices. After all, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt included Amazon in the “gang of four” for a good reason.

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Hot on the heels of a plethora of yesterday’s Android announcements, Google has launched a new site aimed at app developers. In a nod at “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, a sci-fi comedy series by Douglas Adams, the company named it “The Guide to the App Galaxy by Google”.

Available here, this useful new place is meant to “help app developers, regardless of platform, build a business on mobile – whether they’ve just launcher their first app or are looking for additional tips as they grow their portfolio“, Google says. Resources include Google’s AdMob network to promote apps via paid campaigns or cross-promote apps within one’s own portfolio.

It’s all about monetizing lazy users who aren’t keen keen on paying for Android apps as much as their iOS counterparts. In addition to the freemium model, the site notes, developers will benefit from better understanding of the ways to monetize users with in-app adverts and in-app purchases as opposed to one-time paid downloads.

Hint: Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the spaceship through the site.

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