A few days ago, a report showed that Internet advertising was up 35% last year, hitting almost $17 billion. It’s been almost a year since we reported, “Web Advertising Spending Too Low,” and it looks like advertisers are starting to close the gap. That’s good news for Web publishers, and not so good news for traditional media. Newpapers have been feeling the pinch already (e.g., Boston Globe Feels Web Squeeze), and broadcast media can’t be far behind. We think the really interesting part of the growth in Web ad dollars will be the competition for compelling content.
May 312007
May 222007
Lee Odden posted What’s Old Is New: Web Site Marketing Tips, and it’s a good read for Web marketers tired of chasing the latest social media trend. Some techniques date to the early years of the Web, but can still be effective if done right. Site announcements, surprisingly, can still generate traffic and links. Odden quotes Eric Ward as saying that the key idea with these isn’t just to blast out a press release but to target individual members of the media as well as non-media influencers and site operators.
May 182007
As you can see in the sidebar, we’re testing the new, interactive rating and review widget from RateItAll.com. This innovative widget is almost better than Web 2.0 – it actually extends the RateItAll community beyond the boundaries of its website. Not only can RateItAll members easily review the site they are visiting, non-members can join the community in an incredibly simple manner – entirely inside the widget! By entering an email address, username, and password, the site visitor is immediately added to the RateItAll community and can review the site they are visiting.
May 152007
There’s a constant drumbeat of pressure on social networking sites like MySpace to implement measures to reduce the possibility of children being targeted by those who might do them harm. Yesterday, news broke that thousands of registered sex offenders apparently had MySpace profiles.
May 082007
At every Pubcon at which I’ve done a community building presentation, master community builder Brett Tabke has emphasized the importance of getting real community content as high on the page as possible. Brett is the architect of WebmasterWorld, the Web’s busiest webmaster community and one of the most successful topical communities on the Web. What he means is that the community’s real content – actual posts by members – should be as high on the page as possible. This means that the space devoted to logos, headers, banner ads, navigation bars, announcements, sticky threads, etc. should be minimized. Brett’s advice is very simple, and very frequently ignored. I was reminded of this by a recent post by search marketing blogger RustyBrick, which takes the Search Engine Watch forum redesign to task for adding more intrusive (and taller) advertisements. He notes that the redesign moves the content from about 400 pixels from the top of the page to 630 pixels. For the relatively low percentage of visitors still stuck with an 800×600 display, that will push the content completely below the fold. In fact, on my late-model Toshiba laptop, when viewing a thread page all that was visible was the name of the poster of the first post – and that was with a couple of the toolbars I often use closed. This inspired me to check a few other sites, and to ask those of you who run communities, “How high is YOUR junk?”
May 012007
Digg’s home page is controlled by the votes of its members. This is very Web 2.0, and it works to keep interesting stories visible most of the time. Garbage that achieved popularity through manipulation usually gets buried quickly. Now, Digg’s decision to remove stories about a DVD hack have caused a large number of users to revolt – a few minutes ago, all Digg.com home page stories were related to the DVD hack.
May 012007
In these days of email marketing, social networking, and other new millennium selling tools, it’s good to see that old fashioned direct marketing still exists. When I retrieved my mail today, I found an intriguing package that looked like a slightly lumpy Express Mail delivery. When one finds something like this amidst the usual dreck of sales circulars, bills, etc., it’s exciting. At least for a second or two. More careful examination of the package shows that it’s Priority Mail. That’s a lot cheaper than Express Mail, and it explains why nobody rang the doorbell with this important delivery. Still, it’s a lumpy envelope… that implies cool stuff inside. And even Priority Mail costs a few bucks, so it can’t be completely worthless, right?