LONDON – The OFT’s guidance, revised and published for consultation on 14th June, finds Google and Twitter “inappropriate” for debt management companies. The guidance proposes to impose restrictions on the use of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and social networking. The industry was given until September 6th to respond.

Andrew Smith, director of marketing and external affairs for ClearDebt and spokesperson for The Debt Resolution Forum (DRF), commented: “The DRF believes that, as long as a licensee’s search engine marketing is legal, that intellectual property and defamation laws are enough to ensure its proper use and any further restrictions would be a restraint of trade.”

This OFT document represents draft guidance for all licensees actively practising debt counselling and debt adjustment.

The guidance also extends to cover involvement in forums and blogs, and the use of contextual advertising (targeted advertisements based on the content of websites on which the adverts appear).

The document states “The OFT considers that search engine sponsored links and online messaging forums which limit the number of characters are unlikely to be an appropriate means of providing consumers with sufficiently balanced and adequate information.” Preventing organisations from using advertising platforms could raise objections to restraints being placed on commercial freedom.

The guidelines that have been issued to the debt market could soon be applied to the credit industry, which is currently under government review. ‘Credit’ is the 5th most expensive term to bid for on Google, at $47.12 per click. Text ads appearing in the Google search results were responsible for 97 percent of the Google’s revenue over the past year.

Andrew Smith, of ClearDebt and the Debt Resolution Forum, comments: “It seems to DRF that as long as profiles within social applications and content of linked pages are compliant, that there should be no reason to restrict licensee’s use of these media. Enforcing this restriction would leave commercial licensees without a legitimate right of rebuttal or being able to defend company reputation.”

“The DRF also believes that to impose the requirement that any content on social networks should be identified, as a promotional statement would be inaccurate, unfair and a restraint of reasonable commercial freedoms and business practices.”

“It is understood that statements made by a licensee should be compliant wherever they appear, but content on Facebook/Twitter and other social networking is not necessarily only marketing communication. It can also be conversational, informational or campaigning. We agree paid-for content should be distinguished as such and, on the internet, should link to pages that are fully compliant. We believe a clear distinction needs to be drawn between paid-for social media and ordinary day-to-day use of social media by licensees.”

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – ReachLocal, Inc. (NASDAQ:RLOC), a leader in local online marketing solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Google that designates ReachLocal as a global premier Google AdWords™ partner.

The strategic partnership is intended to accelerate the delivery of Google’s AdWords advertising program to local businesses internationally by combining ReachLocal’s feet-on-the-street sales model and SMB-focused search engine marketing platform with Google’s existing worldwide AdWords™ marketing and partnership support organizations. The partnership is designed to drive both growth in existing markets and expansion into new international markets over the next three years. ReachLocal already has a presence in four international markets, including Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and Germany.

“This new partnership builds on a long-standing relationship ReachLocal has had with Google throughout our expansion into 50 local markets over the last seven years,” said Zorik Gordon, co-founder and CEO of ReachLocal. “International markets now represent more than 20 percent of ReachLocal’s business, and accelerating our international growth is a strategic priority for us. We strongly believe that having the support and backing of Google’s global AdWords team and brand, together with financial incentives, will be a significant contributor as we execute against that strategy.”

“Since 2004, ReachLocal and Google have worked together to drive the adoption of Google AdWords to SMBs in both domestic and international markets,” said Todd Rowe, Google’s Head of Global Channel Sales. “We believe this partnership will give SMBs around the world an additional opportunity to use Google AdWords to drive awareness and new business. Our partners are carefully vetted for their ability to effectively serve SMBs. They provide professional, full service AdWords account management, from account setup and activation to ongoing campaign monitoring, optimization, and quality customer support.”

ReachSearch™, ReachLocal’s proprietary search engine marketing solution, allows SMBs to drive customer leads from Google and other search engines to their phone with a scalable, automated and transparent Internet advertising platform. ReachLocal’s international feet-on-the-street sales force of Internet Marketing Consultants (IMCs) helps educate and support SMBs in their online marketing efforts.

Google AdWords is a cost effective, efficient way for businesses of all sizes to advertise online by delivering relevant ads when users search for specific products and services on Google properties and/or the Google Display Network. With Google AdWords, advertisers can find new customers online and better connect with them at the precise moment they are searching for specific products and services on their desktop or mobile devices. Google Display Network is comprised of hundreds of thousands of high quality websites and allows advertisers to choose how to communicate their marketing message using text, video and image ads.

About ReachLocal

ReachLocal, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: RLOC) mission is to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) acquire, maintain and retain customers via the Internet. ReachLocal offers a comprehensive suite of online marketing solutions, including search engine marketing (ReachSearch™), Web presence (ReachCast™), display advertising (ReachDisplay™) and remarketing, online marketing analytics (TotalTrack®), and our out-of-the-box assisted chat service (TotalLiveChat™), each targeted to the SMB market. ReachLocal delivers this suite of services to SMBs through a combination of its proprietary technology platform and its direct, “feet-on-the-street” sales force of Internet Marketing Consultants and select third party agencies and resellers. Bizzy™, a personalized local business recommendation engine, and DealOn™, a deal commerce company, are wholly owned subsidiaries of ReachLocal. ReachLocal is headquartered in Woodland Hills, CA, with offices throughout North America and in Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

IRVINE, Calif. – Small businesses achieved more in search in the fourth quarter of 2010 by increasing their keyword portfolios and diversifying ad spending across the major search engines, according to a report released by WebVisible (www.WebVisible.com), which tracks small business search advertising trends.

“Looking ahead, we believe successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together, which is what WebVisible does best.”

The average small business advertiser spent $2,126 in the fourth quarter of 2010, while average keyword counts reached an all-time high of 87 root keywords, a 30 percent year-over-year increase from the last quarter of 2009. Small-business advertisers also took advantage of the slow migration in October of Yahoo advertisers to the new Bing adCenter platform and shifted their spending away from Google – a strategy that appears to have at least temporarily bolstered both click-through rates and clicks leading to phone calls.

Costs-per-click were 23 percent lower on Yahoo-Bing than on Google in November and 29 percent lower in December. At the same time, click-through rates for advertisers with ad programs on the Yahoo-Bing platform were 10 percent higher than those on Google during December, according to the report, while the percentage of clicks resulting in phone calls rose from 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 6.1 percent in the final quarter of 2010 – a dramatic 56 percent increase.

“We’re pleased to see that our robust technology and years of experience are clearly helping small business advertisers achieve greater efficiency and conversion rates, and they’re achieving these results with manageable ad budgets,” said WebVisible CEO Ron Burr. “Looking ahead, we believe successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together, which is what WebVisible does best.”

These results and others are included in The WebVisible Report: State of Small Business Online Advertising, which examines trends among WebVisible advertisers from Q4 2009 through Q4 2010 and represents more than $54 million in U.S. small business advertiser spending by more than 10,000 individual advertisers during that period.

The report, which each quarter provides the definitive snapshot of how small businesses are deploying search and online marketing tools, revealed that Google’s share of total search ad spending among WebVisible clients dropped from 56 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to less than 38 percent of total spending in November before climbing back to 52 percent in December.

Home Page Video Usage Continues to Grow

The fourth quarter results continued to show that small business advertisers consider video to be an important component of their online advertising presence. Twenty-six percent of advertisers used video on their landing pages in the fourth quarter, up from 19 percent in the previous year’s fourth quarter. Video views increased 85 percent year over year, rising from 3.7 percent of landing page actions a year ago to 6.7 percent in the final quarter of 2010.

The Q4 2010 report, as well as reports from previous quarters, is available by request here: http://www.webvisible.com/wvreport. Members of the media may also contact info@edgecommunications.com or call (818) 990-5001.

About WebVisible, Inc.

WebVisible has been the leading provider of local online marketing software and services since 2001. WebVisible was among the first to pioneer the use of search as a reliable, measurable avenue to connect directly with a buyer’s needs, providing solutions through some of the world’s largest Interactive Yellow Page companies, directories and other media vendors. The company has served over 100,000 customers from 4,000 industries in 14 countries. The company also delivers solutions directly to small businesses throughout the United States. WebVisible is based in Irvine, California with offices in Los Angeles, Charlotte and Mumbai. For more information, visit www.webvisible.com or call 949-255-9677.

NEW YORK – Responding to marketers’ call for better brand safety and enhanced transparency online, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced that 16 member companies are the first to commit to comprehensive self-certification against the IAB “Networks & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines.” Released in June of this year, the guidelines are part of a far-reaching industry initiative lead by the IAB to increase buyer control over the placement and context of advertising on ad networks and exchanges. The announcement was made at ClickZ Connected Marketing Week in San Francisco, where the IAB Networks & Exchanges Committee programmed a one-day forum on ad networks and exchanges.

The first 16 IAB member companies that will self-certify in early 2011 are:

24/7 Real Media

Fox Audience Network

Adify

Google

AOL/Advertising.com

ScanScout

AudienceScience

Specific Media

Burst Media

Traffic Marketplace

Casale Media

Tremor Media

ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange

Yahoo!

CPX Interactive

ValueClick Media

“We applaud the efforts of these ad networks and exchanges to be the first to commit to the standards and practices covered by ‘Networks & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines,’” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “It is no small task to undergo the self-certification process and, once compliant, these organizations will provide marketers the highest level of brand safety. Every agency and marketer should consider compliance with these guidelines as a buying standard and we invite additional ad networks and exchanges to join the program.”

“The IAB Quality Assurance Guidelines demonstrate to marketers and agencies that we put brand safety first,” said Jay Sears, General Manager of ContextWeb, Inc.’s ADSDAQ Exchange, and Co-Chair of the IAB Networks & Exchanges Committee. “These 16 companies that have raised their hand must now engage in a full-scale implementation that will require extensive training and investment—it shows a true commitment to control, transparency and simplifying the buying of digital media.”

“The certification program we designed is a way to provide marketers and agencies a standardized approach that will make buying advertising easier and give increased control over where ads are placed,” said David Jacobs, Senior Vice President, Advertising.com, and Co-Chair of the IAB N&E Ad Certification Working Group. “We anticipate broad adoption of these guidelines by parties participating in the self certification process.”

The rigorous self-certification process requires the participating companies to:

Attend IAB training sessions developed to guide compliance officers through the proper implementations of the guidelines
Conduct quarterly internal audits to test compliance with the guidelines
Submit forms to the IAB from both the compliance officer and business unit leader attesting to adherence to the guidelines
“Networks & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines” can be found on the IAB website at: http://www.iab.net/ne_guidelines.

About the IAB’s Networks & Exchanges Committee:

The IAB Networks and Exchanges Committee is comprised of senior leaders of ad networks and ad exchanges that are general member companies. The committee is dedicated to furthering the interests of ad networks and ad exchanges in today’s complex ad marketplace. Committee objectives are to foster the highest standards of professionalism and accountability in relationships with publishers, advertisers and the agency community, to develop programs that enable revenue growth, and to create best practices that protect consumers and the industry. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/networks_and_exchanges_committee.

About the IAB:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 460 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

NEW YORK – American Express OPEN launched SearchManager, a new product for small business owners that simplifies search engine advertising, an increasingly important way to find new customers and drive sales. SearchManager streamlines the way business owners can manage their online advertising and is powered by Clickable, an award-winning developer of online advertising solutions.

SearchManager provides immediate, single-point access to all major search engines, including Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter – even Facebook Ads. By eliminating the hassle of multiple logins and interfaces, SearchManager enables business owners to more effectively manage their campaigns, which can help drive greater efficiency and ROI on their advertising investments.

“Our research has found that many entrepreneurs have yet to tap the power of search, as nearly three-quarters are not spending money on search engine marketing,” said Rob Ciccone, vice president, American Express OPEN. “We listened closely to business owners when developing SearchManager and designed it to address their need for a trusted, fully transparent partner that helps them market to prospective customers in an economical, more efficient way.”

Search engines are an increasingly influential resource for customers looking for products and services, and marketers are responding by reallocating budgets. According to Forrester Research’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast, search advertising leads the pack among interactive marketing tactics and is expected to grow 15 percent per year for then next four years.

But technical barriers, time constraints, and the perception that search advertising is too expensive and complex has kept many small businesses from exploring the opportunity and utilizing search management technologies to improve their listings on Google and other major search engines. SearchManager’s set of straightforward tools helps take the complexities out of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and provides small businesses easy management across ad networks.

SearchManager includes the following features and benefits:

- Tiered-solutions for customized assistance.
- SearchManager Pro is a self-managed solution for small business marketers who are currently doing search advertising, but are looking for a simple and more efficient bid management experience via a centralized dashboard.
- SearchManager Assist includes the same benefits as Pro, but also helps small business owners fully outsource or jumpstart their online marketing with the help of a dedicated PPC consultant to manage their campaign.
- Easy and intuitive. In one view, small businesses have a summary of campaigns via a straightforward dashboard, key metrics, and summary actions, with an analysis of results and advice on potential improvements;
- Ongoing campaign analysis. SearchManager provides users with continual feedback and analysis of campaigns with prioritized actions and alerts. This includes information about bids, budgeting, and even advice on optimizing ad copy;
- Full reporting capabilities. Small businesses know exactly where they stand each time they make changes to campaigns with full reporting of all key metrics and custom reports;
- Phone, online and in-person assistance. SearchManager offers users help via phone, live chat, and in-person assistance.

To introduce small businesses to SearchManager’s capabilities, American Express OPEN is offering a 30-day free trial, which includes full access to all features.

American Express OPEN is more than just card products

“OPEN has been extremely successful in providing helpful news, information and connections through OPEN Forum, our award-winning small business community. Now, we’re focused on leveraging the Internet in new ways to deliver new products and services that will help entrepreneurs run their companies,” said Ciccone.

SearchManager is the latest offering in a suite of comprehensive online business tools that complement OPEN’s card products for small businesses. Today, the OPEN business suite includes:

AcceptPay – A web-based tool that allows small business owners to accept online payments and electronically invoice customers – all in one place;
InsuranceEdge – An online portal that offers small business owners real-time, competitive quotes from some of the nation’s leading insurance carriers;
FX International Payments from American Express – A service that allows businesses to make international wire transfers;
SearchManager – An online solution that allows business owners to easily manage paid search campaigns across all major search ad networks, including Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter, and even Facebook Ads – via a centralized dashboard.

About American Express OPEN®

American Express OPEN is the leading payment card issuer for small businesses in the United States and supports business owners with products and services to help them run and grow their businesses. This includes business charge and credit cards that deliver purchasing power, flexibility, rewards, savings on business services from an expanded lineup of partners and online tools and services designed to help improve profitability. Learn more at www.OPEN.com and connect with us at openforum.com and twitter.com/openforum.

American Express is a global services company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Learn more at www.americanexpress.com and connect with us on www.facebook.com/americanexpress, www.twitter.com/americanexpress and www.youtube.com/americanexpress.

About Clickable

Clickable is a platform that makes online advertising simple, instant and profitableTM. It empowers beginners through professionals to maximize their advertising investment. Clickable makes you more efficient, effective, and confident. That’s why customers often say: “Clickable is like having a trusted advisor by your side ensuring success.” To learn more, visit www.Clickable.com.

ATLANTA – U.S. paid search spend increased 11% in Q1 2010 from Q1 2009, marking the strongest quarter for paid search since the fourth quarter of 2008. In addition, search marketing was flat quarter-over-quarter (-0.5%), a metric that typically shows declines in Q1 due to decreased marketing spend following the holidays. These findings come from a report released today by SearchIgnite, a leading provider of search optimization and online media attribution solutions managing more than $450 million in PPC spend annually.

Other notable findings in the report include:

Retail and travel sectors driving growth. Retail and travel marketers drove much of the growth in paid search, with spend from these verticals up 26% and 9% year-over-year (YoY) respectively. For retailers, this marked the fifth straight quarter of YoY PPC spend increases since SearchIgnite began tracking this metric
Bing grows YoY, yet dips in Q1 due to reliance on retailers. Spend on Microsoft’s Bing increased 22% YoY as the engine continued to take share from Yahoo!. However, Bing saw the most declines of all engines quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) due to a decline in retail search spend following the holidays, a vertical which continues to be a key driver of growth for the engine.
“We saw some indication that the impact of the recession on the digital economy was waning towards the end of last year,” said Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite. “The strong paid search growth in Q1 is another hopeful sign that the worst of the storm is over and that the search market is poised for a solid year ahead.”

This report is the latest in a series of SearchIgnite white papers reviewing trends across the search landscape. These white papers can be downloaded at: http://about.searchignite.com/en/about/research-white-papers.html.

About SearchIgnite

SearchIgnite is the leading provider of search optimization and digital media attribution solutions that help major marketers achieve their search marketing goals quicker and spend their advertising budgets smarter. The company’s media management technology offers an advanced suite of tools to manage, optimize and report on paid search campaigns in one central dashboard, as well as gather insights into the relationship between media channels including PPC, SEO and display. Some of the world’s leading brands and advertising agencies depend on SearchIgnite to power their search campaigns and improve their online media ROI.

SearchIgnite is part of Innovation Interactive, a digital marketing services company. For more information, please visit http://www.searchignite.com/.

SEATTLE – BrandVerity (www.brandverity.com) announced that PoachMark, BrandVerity’s pay-per-click (PPC) ad monitoring service, now monitors PPC ads run on the AdSense network.

PoachMark’s monitoring agents now monitor a number of high-traffic websites that display AdSense ads. Advertisements that meet criteria specified by PoachMark customers are flagged, filtered and alerted on. While AdSense monitoring has been available to select PoachMark subscribers for several months, it is now available to new accounts.

“As our clients have driven unauthorized affiliates out of the major search engines, we have seen the same affiliates resurface purchasing AdSense ads instead,” said David Naffziger, BrandVerity CEO. “This addition to PoachMark greatly enhances brand owners’ ability to monitor and manage unauthorized affiliate activity.”

AdSense monitoring is included with paid PoachMark subscriptions at no additional cost. For more information about BrandVerity and a free trial of the PoachMark service, go to www.brandverity.com.

BrandVerity provides technology solutions to brand owners to combat trademark abuse and advertising fraud. The company’s first product, PoachMark, provides unparalled insight into the search activity of affiliate marketers, giving brand owners a tool to ensure compliance with their search policies and recover fraudulent commissions. BrandVerity was founded in 2008 and is based in Seattle, Washington. For more information, visit www.brandverity.com.

On February 9, 2010, Google, Inc. announced a new service to its existing Gmail service that would permit users additional social networking functionality. Providing functionality in many ways similar to Facebook, Twitter, and other web-based services, Buzz was hyped as a “Killer” of more-established social networking platforms.

Google’s approach to Buzz was to address the question: how do you know if you’re following the best people? The underlying premise of Buzz’ approach was that if your friends are discussing a specific link or trend, you might be interested in it as well. To that end Buzz would provide you with a recommendation based upon your contact lists and communication patterns.

This report discusses the social networking functionality of Google Buzz as of its release, disclosed plans for future functionality, and compares it to Facebook and Twitter’s functionality for both online and mobile (e.g., iPhone) versions. Commercial growth and revenue markets are also discussed More about the Report

Google Buzz has met with widespread criticism regarding user privacy. Google had thoroughly integrated Buzz with its Gmail, Google Reader, Flickr and other social platforms, without the users’ knowledge, permission, or capability of quickly and easily turning the service off. Suddenly users found that their personal connections to reader items, friends, and friends of friends were very, very public. Critics were quick to point out the unintended consequences, as unauthorized (or unapproved) “followers” could trace back social connections; a goldmine of information for anyone from dictatorial governments seeking dissenters to abusive spouses stalking their exes.

Within hours of its initiation, Google began making changes to the Buzz service, and has continued to make changes to provide a more secure user experience. While the immediate concern for user privacy became the breaking news about the service, Google’s Buzz service was by no means a failure: within the first five days there were over 9 million Buzzes.

The obvious questions arise: if there were such concerns about privacy, why did it become so heavily used? If there are services like Facebook and Twitter (as well as others), why would someone use Buzz?

The answers to these questions come from a multitude of variables addressed in this report. In order to understand the significance of Buzz’ entry into the social media marketplace, it becomes important to understand that there are different types of social media.

Up until recently, social media and social networks have been relegated to a specific destination; that is, the requirements for success involve the pro-active step of user intent to “go to” a specific location. These digital social “places” have been the key structure around which social media strategies are implemented. The limitations are obvious: it requires the user to not only choose that destination, but also be a member of those social groups. Alternatively, there is another type of social network, one that provides integration of social networks. This changes the metaphor of the key “node” from a location or social “place” to the individual who is doing the communicating. Google Buzz takes this approach, and as a result becomes the key differentiator.

By taking the individual user as the focal point of the communication metaphor, Google has radically changed the game with respect to providing businesses – both small and large – tremendous reach into targeted audience groups. As a result, Google is less concerned about “killing” services like Twitter and Facebook, and more about generating ROI for both itself and its advertising customers.

This report evaluates the working aspects of social networking, both as it relates to destinations and integrators, as well as discussing some of the functionality and controversy surrounding the Google Buzz services. An in-depth analysis of Buzz’ market reach, ROI potential, and recent patent awards and filing show a longitudinal picture of what Google Buzz’ entry truly means, and its significance to businesses and end users.

Key Topics Covered:

Abstract
Scope of Report
Overview of global and social networking
Social Networking
Understanding Social Media Types
Communication Destination
Communication Integration
Google Buzz
Controversy
User interface
Face-off: Google vs. Facebook and Twitter
Privacy
Buzz Controversy
Facebook Controversy
Business Applications
Market Analysis
User Communication
Contextual Advertising
ROI Tracking
Advertising Impact
Google
Advertisers
Bottom Line/Conclusion
Appendix A: FAQ about Google Buzz
Appendix B: Comparison Chart
Appendix C: References & Additional Resources
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/4dc9dc/google_buzz

Trada boosts search engine pay-per-click (PPC) advertising results by mobilizing a crowd of experts to collaboratively build and manage an advertiser’s campaign across search engines. It currently supports Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Support for Microsoft AdCenter is scheduled for later this year.

Trada customers spending thousands per month on search advertising experienced scale and results that rivaled large brand advertisers spending millions per month. Average results to date include the following:

25 PPC experts per campaign
6,500 keywords per campaigns
110 ad copy combinations per campaign
3.6% conversion rate (compared to roughly 2% industry average).
Advertisers use Trada to enter information about a campaign and a target price for a click or an action such as entering an email or making a purchase. Experts — who must be AdWords or SEMPO certified and pass Trada certification — use the site to find campaigns and submit keywords, ad copy and bid prices across the search engines. They also use Trada to track and optimize campaigns across the ad networks.

Since August, YouRenew, a company that pays people to recycle electronics, dropped its average new customer acquisition cost 26 percent. It also increased its new customer growth rate from online advertising 27 percent by participating in the Trada marketplace.

“Trada brings a level of expertise and scale to the campaign that we simply couldn’t achieve with our in-house marketing team,” said Rich Littlehale, co-founder and chief strategy officer of YouRenew.

For PPC experts, Trada provides a way to make their skills pay without the overhead costs of finding and managing new clients. Experts earn money when they generate clicks or other actions for less than the advertiser’s target price. During the beta program, top performers earned hundreds, even thousands of dollars per month.

“As a Trada expert, I put my paid search experience to work for dozens of advertisers and make money doing something I’m good at and enjoy,” said Ben Castelli, a search expert based in Boulder, Colo.

Trada was founded by Niel Robertson, who also founded Newmerix and Service Metrics, which sold to Exodus for $280 million in 1999. Robertson dreamed up Trada after growing frustrated managing his own $8,000-a-month paid search campaign. Realizing that paid search campaigns are best left to experts, he set out to build an online marketplace that would attract PPC experts and be simple enough for small business owners to use.

“Our goal is to make it ridiculously easy to succeed with paid search. We knew there was a way to let advertisers work from business goals and reward experts for delivering against those goals,” said Robertson.

Trada received $2.2 million from Foundry Group — which invested in community- powered sites including Zynga and StickTwits — and angel investors Alan Warms, Carlos Cashman, Dan Murray, James Crouthamel, Stuart Larkins and Robert Wolfe.

“Trada has the potential to remake paid search to work for small advertisers, not just big ones,” said Seth Levine, managing partner of the Foundry Group in Boulder, Colo. “It’s exciting to see experts come together to solve a multibillion-dollar problem.”

About Trada

Trada boosts paid search campaigns by employing a crowd of pay-per-click experts to leverage their collective knowledge to deliver results. For more information, visit http://trada.com.

Highlights of the Q4 2009 Search Advertising Report

- Fourth quarter is traditionally strong for Google and we expect this to be the case again this year.
- Not surprisingly, the Retail industry was particularly robust. We measured a 12.5% Q/Q increase in ad spend. Winning categories included traditional retailers, clothing, shoes, and furniture. Consumer electronics, office products, and home decor were down substantially in terms of ad spend.

Perhaps because of this strong growth, Google permanently suspended more than 30,000 low-quality advertisers in early December. AdGooroo also measured a corresponding decrease in overall ad coverage during this time.

This seven page report includes additional discussion and a number of other informative charts and tables.

Download link:
http://succeed.adgooroo.com/Q409_Search_Advertising_Report.html

“Google had a strong fourth quarter, with 17% year over year revenue growth,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year. Our performance in 2009 underscored the strength of our management team, the resilience of our business model and the pace of innovation within our product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn. As we enter 2010, we remain hugely optimistic about the internet and are continuing to invest heavily in technological innovation for the benefit not only of our users and customers, but also the wider web.”

Q4 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2009, an increase of 17% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the fourth quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.72 billion, or 27% of advertising revenues.

Google reports operating income, operating margin, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures in the accompanying financial tables.

GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $2.48 billion, or 37% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.86 billion, or 33% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $2.76 billion, or 41% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $2.15 billion, or 38% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2008.
GAAP net income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $1.97 billion, compared to $382 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $2.19 billion, compared to $1.62 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.
GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $6.13 on 322 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $1.21 in the fourth quarter of 2008 on 317 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $6.79, compared to $5.10 in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin exclude the expenses related to stock-based compensation (SBC). Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude the expenses related to SBC and, in the fourth quarter of 2008, the non-cash impairment charges primarily related to our investments in AOL and Clearwire, and the related tax benefits. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the charge related to SBC was $276 million, compared to $286 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. The tax benefit related to SBC was $62 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 and $65 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. In the fourth quarter of 2008, we recognized $1.09 billion in asset impairment charges related primarily to our investments in AOL and Clearwire. The tax benefit related to the impairment charges was $82 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP operating income, operating margin, net income, and EPS are included at the end of this release.

Q4 Financial Highlights

Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC.

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $4.42 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2009. This represents a 16% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $3.81 billion.

Google Network Revenues - Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.04 billion, or 31% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2009. This represents a 21% increase from fourth quarter 2008 network revenues of $1.69 billion.

International Revenues – Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $3.52 billion, representing 53% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 53% in the third quarter of 2009 and 50% in the fourth quarter of 2008. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the third quarter of 2009 through the fourth quarter of 2009, our revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009 would have been $112 million lower. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the fourth quarter of 2008 through the fourth quarter of 2009, our revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009 would have been $196 million lower.

Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $772 million, representing 12% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 12% in the fourth quarter of 2008.
In the fourth quarter of 2009, we recognized a benefit of $8 million to revenues through our foreign exchange risk management program, compared to $129 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 13% over the fourth quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 9% over the third quarter of 2009.

Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 5% over the fourth quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 2% over the third quarter of 2009.

TAC - Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.72 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to TAC of $1.48 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 27% in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to 27% in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The majority of TAC is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $1.47 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009. TAC also includes amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totaled $250 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Other Cost of Revenues – Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, amortization of intangible assets, content acquisition costs as well as credit card processing charges, decreased to $688 million, or 10% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to $707 million, or 12% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Operating Expenses – Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $1.78 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, or 27% of revenues, compared to $1.65 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, or 29% of revenues.

Stock-Based Compensation (SBC) – In the fourth quarter of 2009, the total charge related to SBC was $276 million, compared to $286 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

We currently estimate SBC charges for grants to employees prior to January 1, 2010 to be approximately $1.2 billion for 2010. This estimate does not include expenses to be recognized related to employee stock awards that are granted after December 31, 2009 or non-employee stock awards that have been or may be granted.

Operating Income – GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $2.48 billion, or 37% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.86 billion, or 33% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $2.76 billion, or 41% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $2.15 billion, or 38% of revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Interest Income and Other, Net – Interest income and other, net increased to $88 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to $70 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Income Taxes – Our effective tax rate was 23% for the fourth quarter of 2009.

Net Income – GAAP net income in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $1.97 billion, compared to $382 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income was $2.19 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to $1.62 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $6.13 on 322 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $1.21 in the fourth quarter of 2008 on 317 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the fourth quarter of 2009 was $6.79, compared to $5.10 in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures – Net cash provided by operating activities in the fourth quarter of 2009 totaled $2.73 billion, compared to $2.12 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. In the fourth quarter of 2009, capital expenditures were $221 million, the majority of which was related to IT infrastructure investments, including data centers, servers, and networking equipment. Free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, is defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. In the fourth quarter of 2009, free cash flow was $2.51 billion.

We expect to continue to make significant capital expenditures.

A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the GAAP measure of liquidity, is included at the end of this release.

Cash – As of December 31, 2009, cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities were $24.5 billion.

On a worldwide basis, Google employed 19,835 full-time employees as of December 31, 2009, up from 19,665 full-time employees as of September 30, 2009.

WEBCAST AND CONFERENCE CALL INFORMATION

A live audio webcast of Google’s fourth quarter 2009 earnings release call will be available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html. The call begins today at 1:30 PM (PT) / 4:30 PM (ET). This press release, the financial tables, as well as other supplemental information including the reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures to their nearest comparable GAAP measures, are also available on that site.

Following the earnings conference call, Google will host an additional question-and-answer session to provide an opportunity for financial analysts to ask more detailed product and financial questions. This follow-up call will begin today at 3:00 PM (PT) / 6:00 PM (ET) and will also be webcast and available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html.

CHICAGO – AdGooroo (www.adgooroo.com), a leading provider of online marketing competitive intelligence and keyword tools, released its latest quarterly Search Engine Advertiser Update. The report’s findings demonstrate a near 13 percent increase in ad spend for the top 80 US retailers on Google, despite a 5 percent decrease in active advertisers.

“While this typically signals a negative impact on revenues, AdGooroo also tracked increased competition for ad placement, resulting in higher ad prices for Google and unusually high clickthrough rates. Google seems to be taking advantage of a strong Q4 to make some quality improvements.”

The report contains seven pages of data, graphs and analysis on the performance of Google, Yahoo! and Bing during Q4 2009 and once again lists the top US advertisers by search engine and most expensive keywords by search engine. New to the report this quarter is a breakdown of search spending by retail category.

“Google experienced a quality purge this quarter and banned what we believe to be more than 30,000 advertisers, accounting for about 5.3 percent of its active advertiser base,” said AdGooroo Founder and CEO Rich Stokes. “While this typically signals a negative impact on revenues, AdGooroo also tracked increased competition for ad placement, resulting in higher ad prices for Google and unusually high clickthrough rates. Google seems to be taking advantage of a strong Q4 to make some quality improvements.”

In the report, Stokes sites data to show that while the overall retail category was up in Q4, consumer electronics, office products, children’s goods and home décor experienced significant decreases. Clothing, shoes, furniture and auctions were particularly strong in Q4, however.

Those interested in learning more can view and download a complimentary copy of the report, “Search Engine Advertising Update – Q409” at http://succeed.adgooroo.com/Q409_Search_Advertising_Report.html.

About AdGooroo

AdGooroo provides online marketers and agencies actionable, on demand competitive intelligence tools that proactively monitor an industry’s advertising landscape to help them build a long-term competitive advantage. Based in Chicago, AdGooroo provides competitive intelligence to Internet marketers through its suite of products, including SEM Insight, Display Insight, Trademark Insight and Link Insight. AdGooroo tools leverage access and automation to provide advertisers with lists of competitors’ top keywords, ad copy, campaign statistics and more. Top agencies and brand advertisers leverage AdGooroo competitive intelligence tools. For more information, visit AdGooroo.com.

NEW YORK – To help fuel growth in a challenging economic environment, marketers are investing more in performance-based search advertising. As a result, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are growing increasingly complex. To simplify marketers’ lives while delivering greater return on investment, Clickable introduced Version 2.2 of its Pro search-management solution.

Clickable Pro is a simple solution that makes it easier than ever to manage performance across all major advertising networks, like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. With Version 2.2, Pro now has more powerful reporting, more flexible keyword management tools, and map-based location targeting.

“Marketers today are often managing hundreds of campaigns, thousands of ad groups and huge keywords sets,” said Vernon Steward, Clickable vice president of product management. “With Version 2.2 of Clickable Pro, managing complex accounts becomes easier and more profitable than ever before.”

Clickable Pro activates instantly and helps marketers survive and thrive. Clickable Pro’s ActEngine™ delivers critical quantitative and qualitative recommendations to maximize profitability. Clickable Conversion Tracking, bulk keyword editing and elegant reporting enable advertising professionals to achieve their goals in less time.

Clickable Pro 2.2 New Features:

Improved Location (Geo) Targeting: Clickable’s map-based solution simplifies location targeting while giving marketers more ways to reach their audience. Users can add standard locations, create custom radius targets, or exclude negative targets – all in one consistent interface.
Reporting Enhancements: Pro’s PDF and Excel reports now are more powerful, with custom reporting groups, flexible data views and the ability to handle large and complex data sets.
Improved Keyword Bulk Edit Tool: Clickable’s Keyword Bulk Edit tool now handles even larger data sets and introduces several interface improvements, including custom date filters and more flexible dcustomization of columns.

Clickable Assist And Certification

Clickable is a marketer’s trusted advisor, with world-class customer support via email, live chat and phone – and an extensive community of advertisers and marketing professionals. For marketers and agencies that need extra help getting started, Clickable Assist delivers tiered packages of managed services to ensure immediate success. Clickable also recently launched its Pro Certification program, which covers fundamental best practices like geo-targeting, copywriting and bid management, as well as Clickable Pro features and functionality.

About Clickable

Clickable is a platform that makes online advertising simple, instant and profitable. It empowers beginners through professionals to maximize their advertising investment. Clickable makes you more efficient, effective and confident. That’s why customers often say: “Clickable is like having a trusted advisor always by your side ensuring success.” To learn more, visit www.clickable.com, or follow @clickable on Twitter.

SALT LAKE CITY – ZAGG Inc. (OTCBB: ZAGG), a leading producer of electronics accessories for protecting and enhancing the mobile experience, including the popular invisibleSHIELD™ and ZAGGaudio™ brands, announces they have been named a winner of Google TV Ads’ “TV For All Contest.” As one of three winners, ZAGG will receive $25,000 of national TV advertising on Google TV Ads.

ZAGG’s advertisement for the invisibleSHIELD titled “Undercover Secret Spies” was initially chosen by Google TV Ads as a finalist for the contest, and then voted on by viewers. As a winner, ZAGG has been awarded $25,000 of national advertising on cable channels such as CNBC, Hallmark, and Bravo. The advertisement can be seen on YouTube at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZAGGTV#p/u/18/eaIEek2Jw-8.

“ZAGG is known for innovative promotion and advertising, and the Google TV Ads program is a perfect fit for us,” said Brian Packer, VP of Marketing of ZAGG. “We are thrilled to win this contest, and look forward to the boost the advertising should bring.”

ZAGG was spotlighted with the other contest winners on the Official Google Blog, which is read by nearly 500,000 people daily: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/three-contest-winners-making-their-way.html.

“Winning this contest validates the time, talent and effort we put into our projects. Our team did an amazing job with limited resources,” said Robert G. Pedersen II, President and CEO of ZAGG.

To see more videos from ZAGG, please visit the ZAGGtv YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/ZAGGTV. For information about ZAGG or any of their product lines, please visit www.ZAGG.com.

About ZAGG Inc.:

ZAGG is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the mobile experience. ZAGG designs, manufactures, and distributes protective clear coverings and accessories for consumer electronic and hand-held devices, worldwide under the brand names invisibleSHIELD™ and ZAGGaudio™. ZAGG has also introduced beta testing of AppSpace.com, an online destination for the fast-growing mobile app market, combined with the networking power of social media. The invisibleSHIELD is a protective, high-tech patented film covering, designed for iPods, laptops, cell phones, digital cameras, PDAs, watch faces, GPS systems, gaming devices, and other items. The patent-pending invisibleSHIELD application of clear protective film covering a device is the first scratch protection solution of its kind on the market, and has sold millions of units. Currently, ZAGG offers over 4,000 precision pre-cut designs with a lifetime replacement warranty through online channels, major retailers like Best Buy and RadioShack, resellers, college bookstores, Mac stores and mall kiosks. The company continues to increase its product lines to offer additional electronic accessories and services to its tech-savvy customer base. For more product or investor information please visit the company’s web site at www.ZAGG.com.

SAN MATEO, Calif. – Yield Software (http://www.yieldsoftware.com/) announced the launch of the Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies and the introduction of a range of new services at ad:tech New York 2009 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

By combining and automating the three key elements of search marketing – paid search, natural search and landing page optimization – within a single, secure system, the Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies enables agencies to lower costs, increase efficiency and improve margins.

The system addresses the unique needs of digital, new media and interactive agencies, enabling them to optimize search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns across Google, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Bing. For agencies offering services for just one of the three elements of SEM – pay-per-click (PPC) campaign management for instance – the Yield Web Marketing Suite for Agencies enables them to expand their offering to include search engine optimization (SEO) and landing page optimization (LPO) with little or no staffing consequences.

“As a small agency, we know that every single minute counts,” said Dan Kaplan, principal at PeriscopeUp, a search engine marketing agency serving small and medium-size businesses. “By automating much of the day-to-day minutiae associated with SEM through the Yield Web Marketing Suite, I’ve been able to maintain maximum control over my clients’ PPC and SEO campaigns – and deliver the results they need – while keeping our agency lean, efficient and profitable.”

In addition, Yield Software announced the introduction of a full range of services. These services include Yield JumpStart and Yield Managed Services packages designed to meet both the one-time and longer-term needs of businesses and agencies short on time or resources.

“Since our launch last spring, we’ve been very responsive to the input and needs of our customers,” said Matt Malden, founder and CEO of Yield Software. “Our new product for agencies and service packages each have been designed with this input in mind.”

Yield Software offers new subscribers a free 15-day trial. No downloads or systems integration work are required. Following the trial period, pricing starts as low as $129 per month. For more information or to subscribe to the free 15-day trial, visit www.yieldsoftware.com.

About Yield Software, Inc.

Yield Software develops powerful technology that automates, simplifies and integrates key Web marketing strategies. The Yield Web Marketing Suite is a secure, cloud-based system that relies on advanced algorithms and a simple, intuitive interface to optimize paid search, natural search, and landing pages for improved return on Web marketing investment. www.yieldsoftware.com – Web Marketing Made Easy.

CHICAGO – AdGooroo (www.adgooroo.com), a leading provider of online marketing competitive intelligence and keyword tools, released its latest quarterly Search Engine Advertiser Update. The report contains eight pages of data, graphs and analysis on the performance of Google, Yahoo! and Bing during Q3 2009 and incorporates a new set of information not available in AdGooroo’s previous quarterly reports, the Most Expensive Keywords by Search Engine table.

AdGooroo tracked an eight percent reduction in Bing’s first page advertisers, but active Google and Yahoo! advertisers remained essentially unchanged from the second quarter. The latest report also included information on some of the highest priced keywords from each of the three search engines. At least one keyword sold for more than $99 per click through Google, $60 per click through Yahoo! and $55 through Bing.

“Many of the report’s readers look for changes in top advertisers by search engine and each engine’s overall growth and reduction in advertisers, and I hope others find the new pricing data valuable,” said AdGooroo Founder and CEO Rich Stokes. “Personally, in analyzing the data, Q3 struck me as a quarter of maturation for the industry. Each of the engines seems to be developing its own niche within the industry, and it will be interesting to see how they continue to evolve in the coming quarters and years ahead.”

In the report, Stokes argues that the industry has moved into a new stage of decelerated growth, where new advertisers are harder to acquire. He asserts that Google has become “the premium supplier of high-volume search traffic,” despite lagging behind Yahoo! and Bing when it comes to conversions. Yahoo! offers lower click volume but better conversion rates, and Bing provides “an excellent choice for unbranded, direct response types of sites with lower budgets,” according to the latest report.

Those interested in learning more can view and download a complimentary copy of the report, “Search Engine Advertising Update – Q309” in the AdGooroo Research Library: http://www.adgooroo.com/adgooroo_research_library.php.

About AdGooroo

AdGooroo provides online marketers and agencies actionable, on demand competitive intelligence tools that proactively monitor an industry’s advertising landscape to help them build a long-term competitive advantage. Based in Chicago, AdGooroo provides competitive intelligence to search engine marketers through its tool suite, including AdGooroo Express, SEM Insight and Trademark Insight. AdGooroo tools leverage access and automation to provide advertisers with lists of competitors’ top keywords, ad copy, campaign statistics and more. Top agencies and brand advertisers leverage AdGooroo competitive intelligence tools. For more information, visit AdGooroo.com.

“Google had a strong quarter — we saw 7% year-over-year revenue growth despite the tough economic conditions,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “While there is a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future.”

Q3 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $5.94 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2009, an increase of 7% compared to the third quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the third quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.56 billion, or 27% of advertising revenues.

Google reports operating income, operating margin, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures in the accompanying financial tables.

• GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2009 was $2.07 billion, or 35% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.65 billion, or 30% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2009 was $2.39 billion, or 40% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $2.02 billion, or 37% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008.
• GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2009 was $1.64 billion, compared to $1.29 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2009 was $1.88 billion, compared to $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2008.
• GAAP EPS in the third quarter of 2009 was $5.13 on 320 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $4.06 in the third quarter of 2008 on 318 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the third quarter of 2009 was $5.89, compared to $4.92 in the third quarter of 2008.
• Non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin exclude the expenses related to stock-based compensation (SBC) and, in the third quarter of 2008, the settlement agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP). Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude the expenses related to SBC and, in the third quarter of 2008, the settlement agreement with the Authors Guild and the AAP, and the related tax benefits. In the third quarter of 2009, the charge related to SBC was $318 million, compared to $280 million in the third quarter of 2008. The tax benefit related to SBC was $73 million in the third quarter of 2009 and $63 million in the third quarter of 2008. In the third quarter of 2008, we recognized $95 million of expense related to the settlement agreement with the Authors Guild and the AAP. The tax benefit related to the settlement agreement was $39 million in the third quarter of 2008. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP operating income, operating margin, net income, and EPS are included at the end of this release.

Q3 Financial Highlights

Revenues – Google reported revenues of $5.94 billion in the third quarter of 2009, representing a 7% increase over third quarter 2008 revenues of $5.54 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC.

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $3.96 billion, or 67% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2009. This represents an 8% increase over third quarter 2008 revenues of $3.67 billion.

Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.80 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2009. This represents a 7% increase from third quarter 2008 network revenues of $1.68 billion.

International Revenues – Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $3.14 billion, representing 53% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2009, compared to 53% in the second quarter of 2009 and 51% in the third quarter of 2008. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the second quarter of 2009 through the third quarter of 2009, our revenues in the third quarter of 2009 would have been $166 million lower. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009, our revenues in the third quarter of 2009 would have been $297 million higher.

Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $765 million, representing 13% of revenues in the third quarter of 2009, compared to 14% in the third quarter of 2008.

In the third quarter of 2009, we recognized a benefit of $39 million to revenues through our foreign exchange risk management program.

Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 14% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2009.

Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, decreased approximately 6% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 5% over the second quarter of 2009.

TAC – Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2009, compared to TAC of $1.50 billion in the third quarter of 2008. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 27% in the third quarter of 2009, compared to 28% in the third quarter of 2008.

The majority of TAC is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $1.33 billion in the third quarter of 2009. TAC also includes amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totaled $229 million in the third quarter of 2009.

Other Cost of Revenues – Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, amortization of intangible assets, content acquisition costs as well as credit card processing charges, decreased to $667 million, or 11% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2009, compared to $678 million, or 12% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008.

Operating Expenses – Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $1.64 billion in the third quarter of 2009, or 28% of revenues, compared to $1.72 billion in the third quarter of 2008, or 31% of revenues.

Stock-Based Compensation (SBC) – In the third quarter of 2009, the total charge related to SBC was $318 million, compared to $280 million in the third quarter of 2008.

We currently estimate SBC charges for grants to employees prior to October 1, 2009 to be approximately $1.2 billion for 2009. This estimate does not include expenses to be recognized related to employee stock awards that are granted after September 30, 2009 or non-employee stock awards that have been or may be granted.

Operating Income – GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2009 was $2.07 billion, or 35% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.65 billion, or 30% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2009 was $2.39 billion, or 40% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $2.02 billion, or 37% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008.

Interest and Other Income (Expense), Net – Interest and other income (expense), net decreased to an expense of $7 million in the third quarter of 2009, compared to an income of $21 million in the third quarter of 2008.

Income Taxes – Our effective tax rate was 21% for the third quarter of 2009.

Net Income – GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2009 was $1.64 billion, compared to $1.29 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income was $1.88 billion in the third quarter of 2009, compared to $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2008. GAAP EPS in the third quarter of 2009 was $5.13 on 320 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $4.06 in the third quarter of 2008 on 318 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the third quarter of 2009 was $5.89, compared to $4.92 in the third quarter of 2008.

Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures – Net cash provided by operating activities in the third quarter of 2009 totaled $2.73 billion, compared to $2.18 billion in the third quarter of 2008. In the third quarter of 2009, capital expenditures were $186 million, the majority of which was related to IT infrastructure investments, including data centers, servers, and networking equipment. Free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, is defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. In the third quarter of 2009, free cash flow was $2.54 billion.

We expect to continue to make significant capital expenditures.

A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the GAAP measure of liquidity, is included at the end of this release.

Cash – As of September 30, 2009, cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities were $22.0 billion.

On a worldwide basis, Google employed 19,665 full-time employees as of September 30, 2009, down from 19,786 full-time employees as of June 30, 2009.

Google announced that it is opening the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time marketplace for display advertising space.

By establishing an open marketplace where prices are set in a real-time auction, the Ad Exchange enables display ad space to be allocated much more efficiently and easily across the web.

“Better technology can help make display advertising work better for all involved,” said Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management at Google. “We’re focused on growing the display advertising pie for everyone. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a major part of that goal.”

The new DoubleClick Ad Exchange has been rebuilt using Google’s technology and infrastructure. It contains a wide variety of key features that will help improve returns for advertisers and enable publishers to get the most value out of their online content.

On the “sell side”, participation in the new Ad Exchange is designed for major online publishers. It already includes a wide variety of large premium publishers including newspapers, large portals, entertainment and branded sites. In addition, ad space on Google’s third party AdSense publisher sites, representing over 76% of U.S. online audiences and 73% of global online audiences1, is being made available through the new Ad Exchange. This will increase the volume of quality display advertisers available to Google’s AdSense publishers.

On the “buy side”, the new Ad Exchange is designed for ad networks and agency networks – companies that connect web sites with advertisers. It already includes over 40 ad networks across North America and Europe, including most of the 25 largest ad networks in the US2, with more now to be added. Additionally, AdWords advertisers will be able to run ads on sites in the Ad Exchange, using their existing AdWords interface.

Features of the new Ad Exchange include a completely new interface; a “real-time bidding” feature to allow ad networks to use their own technology to bid on an impression-by-impression basis; a “dynamic allocation” system, which automatically generates online publishers the highest return for every impression by allocating ads to the highest-paying sales channel, based on real time data; more granular publisher and advertiser controls; payments and clearing managed by Google; and a new API to allow ad networks to extend the functionality of the Ad Exchange.

Key benefits for sellers include:

* Real-time dynamic allocation to maximize yield. Publishers can automatically generate the highest return for every impression, using real-time data and bids to allocate ad space to the sales channel that pays the most at that second.
* Access to many more advertisers. The Ad Exchange offers publishers access to new buyers, including AdWords advertisers, bringing higher quality ads and more competition for ad space on their sites.
* Hassle-free payments managed by Google. We manage the billing and payments from networks so publishers get one monthly payment and minimize having to manage multiple relationships.
* Greater controls. Publishers can decide what advertisers, networks, ad formats, and bid types to allow.
* New easy to use interface with enhanced reporting. We use the simplicity of Google’s user design principles to help publishers easily find out how their sites are performing, to help them make the right decisions about their ad space.

Key benefits for buyers include:

* Access to more publishers and more ad space. Hundreds of thousands of AdSense publisher sites are now available on the Ad Exchange to Google-certified ad networks. And as more publishers join the Ad Exchange to take advantage of its yield management capabilities, more high quality inventory is being added all the time.
* Real-time bidder. The Ad Exchange has a new real-time bidder feature that allows buyers to use their own data, optimization and ad serving technologies to bid on their desired inventory on an impression-by-impression basis, choosing only the sites, audiences, or particular type of ad space they want to reach.
* New easy to use interface with enhanced buyer reporting capabilities. Redesigned reports are simple to use and understand, so buyers can easily see how their campaigns are performing to help them make the right decisions.
* More control and precision. Buyers control where their ads appear and don’t appear. They can use frequency capping, pacing and other features to precisely control ad delivery.
* Centralized clearing system. Google makes all payments to publishers, reducing complexity with a single billing and payment point. Buyers benefit from managing one business relationship instead of many.
* A new API – Ad networks and agency networks will have access to an API which enables them to integrate their own functionality and systems when working with the Ad Exchange.

For the coming quarters, there is good news and bad news. The bad news first: Given the 2Q09 numbers and the outlook provided by media companies such as Yahoo!, IDC expects U.S. advertisers to decrease their online spending quarter over quarter in 3Q09 by about the same amount as they did in the first and second quarters of 2009. The good news: It seems like things are not going to get any worse in the Internet ad industry.

“We think the industry will continue to see losses in the third and fourth quarters, but the growth rates – or the loss rates, if you will – will eventually begin to improve. However, we also believe the industry may have to wait until mid-2010 until it sees real growth again,” said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment at IDC.

IDC’s report, Worldwide and U.S. Internet Ad Spend Report 2Q09 (forthcoming), models worldwide and regional ad spending trends, and monitors the U.S. market in detail. The study reports the total volume and growth rate of the worldwide, regional, and U.S. Internet advertising spending for 2Q09. It also reports the top U.S. new media companies’ quarterly domestic ad sales, growth rates, and market shares, as well as the spending on major ad formats and their growth rates and market shares.

About IDC

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. For more than 45 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

After this weekend’s maintenance downtime, Google’s AdSense contextual advertising platform completed the roll-out of a new feature to publishers – the ad category filtering. It’s been a long time wait for AdSense publishers, who were in much need to have a better control over the ads that populate their sites.

Firstly, Google introduced the Ad Review Center a while back, allowing publishers to have a say with regard to the site-targeted ads their sites attracted. Ads are placed on hold for 24 hours for the publisher to block them or allow them to run; if no action is taken in 24 hours, ads will start serving.

Now, Google introduced the ad category filtering capability, where publishers can block up to 5 ad categories in their AdSense account. If you haven’t checked your account yet, below is a screenshot of how the new feature works.

All good and fine, more power to the publishers who were the very overlooked folks of an online advertising world that primarily caters for the needs of advertisers.

However, a closer look at how the ad category filtering functionality was implemented uncovers major, if not fatal, flaws:

- account wide ad filtering, making it impossible to filter out certain categories for one site you’re monetizing with AdSense, and a different set of categories for another site. With the current options, you can only eliminate categories across all sites you may have in your portfolio. For example, under no circumstance would I want weight loss ads on this very site, but I surely want them on my health & beauty blog. With AdSense, you cannot do this – it’s all or nothing, across your whole account. Ironically enough, AdSense policies prohibit publishers from owning more than one AdSense accounts, on the grounds that you can monetize through one account as many sites as you want – this policy is constantly contradicted by the how AdSense features are enabled at account level, and not at site level (URL filtering works the same way).

- inciting to mistargeting, since data offered with regard to category filtering discloses % of earnings and % of ad impressions. Guess what that ratio translates to? eCPMs! For example, if I wished to indulge in a little eCPM and revenue manipulation, I would read the table above as “Jesus pays”. See how ads in the “Religion” category appear to have generated 16.5% of recent earnings, while eating up only 5.6% of recent ad impressions? This means their eCPM is higher than ads in all other categories – how many publishers will now try to calculate revenue / ad impressions ratios and attempt to mistarget their AdSense ads to whatever category appears to pay best?

- failure to target ads, as this new feature candidly shows how completely inappropriate, mistargeted ads served on your unsuspecting site(s). I was really thrown off to find out that 1% of my recent ad impressions were assigned by Google AdSense to sexually suggestive or sexual health ads. I assure you, none of the sites in my portfolio warrant the presence of such ads – they’re supposedly contextually relevant ads and not one of my sites has pages with content that could have legitimately trigger these sex ads. Why were they served, then, and how come Google choose to let me know? Furthermore, one more issue is flagged here: supposedly sex(y) ads are only allowed to run on search, and not on content. These ads, while approved in the AdWords campaigns of the advertisers, should have not been allowed to run on the AdSense content network where only family safe ads are supposed to run.

That’s it, in a nutshell, Google AdSense’s new ad category filtering. Enjoy trying to figure out if and what should you filter from your account!

SAN MATEO, Calif. – SearchForce announced that it’s the first search engine marketing and bid optimization company to add support for content-rich image ads. SearchForce’s intelligent SEM management platform now allows users to dictate specific placement of image ads within Google’s network, as well as bid optimization, conversion tracking and reporting on these ads. The addition of image ads allows SearchForce to offer advertisers and brands the most complete set of tools to manage their contextual and search advertising programs.

To date, image ads have fallen largely unused by savvy search marketers due to lack of visibility and awareness of placement whereabouts, as well as the inability to clearly associate ROI with spend.

“Using image ads has been a very important part of our advertising services,” said Miles Olson, Director of Search Marketing, Apogee Search. “This new feature from SearchForce now makes it easier for us to manage and optimize these image ads and ultimately enables us to capture a more targeted audience and accurately track results.”

SearchForce’s proprietary, web-based platform provides the highest level of intuitive SEM analytics and bid-optimization. The company recognizes that every client campaign is unique, and accordingly, its bid optimization and campaign management platform is flexible, scalable and customizable.

Inclusive of image ads, SearchForce’s bid optimization boasts the ability to segment keywords by performance. Each segment can be managed by highly customizable bid strategies or user defined rules that run on a specified schedule. Beyond bid optimization, SearchForce’s dynamic keyword feature gives clients the ability to construct and automate their multiple programs with a high level of precision and control.

In May, the company further strengthened its bid optimization platform with a new profit algorithm enabling advertisers to adapt and react to unique market dynamics, adjusting bids based on quality, seasonality and day of the week patterns. As a result, advertisers can attract more qualified prospects. The company also incorporated Intra-day bidding to help clients ensure competitive position with maximum visibility.

About SearchForce

Founded in 2004, SearchForce provides a sophisticated, highly customizable technology platform for agencies, brands and buyers looking for a competitive edge in bid optimization, campaign management and reporting. Developed for strategic marketers, SearchForce is the only company offering a truly customizable and seamlessly scalable bid optimization and campaign management platform to meet specific SEM needs and objectives. SearchForce’s platform allows customers to effectively manage large-scale, paid search marketing campaigns across Google, Yahoo!, MSN to deliver higher returns at a lower cost, and with less work.

The company’s software is used by some of the largest online advertisers, advertising agencies, and corporations around the globe. For more information, call 650-235-8800 or visit searchforce.com.

“Google had a very good quarter, especially given the continued macro-economic downturn. While most of the world’s largest economies shrank, Google’s year-over-year revenues were up 3%. These results highlight the enduring strength of our business model and our responsible efforts to manage expenses in a way that puts us in a good position for the economic upturn, when it occurs,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “We remain focused on investing in technical innovation to drive growth in our core and new businesses.”

Q2 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $5.52 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2009, an increase of 3% compared to the second quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the second quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.45 billion, or 27% of advertising revenues.

Google reports operating income, operating margin, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures in the accompanying financial tables.
GAAP operating income for the second quarter of 2009 was $1.87 billion, or 34% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.58 billion, or 29% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the second quarter of 2009 was $2.17 billion, or 39% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $1.85 billion, or 34% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008.
GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2009 was $1.48 billion as compared to $1.25 billion in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the second quarter of 2009 was $1.71 billion, compared to $1.47 billion in the second quarter of 2008.
GAAP EPS for the second quarter of 2009 was $4.66 on 319 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $3.92 for the second quarter of 2008 on 318 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the second quarter of 2009 was $5.36, compared to $4.63 in the second quarter of 2008.
Non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin exclude the expenses related to stock-based compensation (SBC). Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS exclude the expenses related to SBC and the related tax benefits. In the second quarter of 2009, the charge related to SBC was $293 million as compared to $273 million in the second quarter of 2008. The tax benefit related to SBC was $69 million in the second quarter of 2009 and $48 million in the second quarter of 2008. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP operating income, operating margin, net income, and EPS are included at the end of this release.

Q2 Financial Highlights

Revenues – Google reported revenues of $5.52 billion in the second quarter of 2009, representing a 3% increase over second quarter 2008 revenues of $5.37 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC.

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $3.65 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the second quarter of 2009. This represents a 3% increase over second quarter 2008 revenues of $3.53 billion.

Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.68 billion, or 31% of total revenues, in the second quarter of 2009. This represents a 2% increase from second quarter 2008 network revenues of $1.66 billion.

International Revenues - Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $2.91 billion, representing 53% of total revenues in the second quarter of 2009, compared to 52% in the first quarter of 2009 and second quarter of 2008. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the first quarter of 2009 through the second quarter of 2009, our revenues in the second quarter of 2009 would have been $44 million lower. Excluding gains related to our foreign exchange risk management program, had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the second quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, our revenues in the second quarter of 2009 would have been $497 million higher.

Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $715 million, representing 13% of revenues in the second quarter of 2009, compared to 14% in the second quarter of 2008.

In the second quarter of 2009, we recognized a benefit of $124 million to revenues through our foreign exchange risk management program.

Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 15% over the second quarter of 2008 and decreased approximately 2% over the first quarter of 2009.

Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, decreased approximately 13% over the second quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 5% over the first quarter of 2009.

TAC – Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, decreased to $1.45 billion in the second quarter of 2009, compared to TAC of $1.47 billion in the second quarter of 2008. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 27% in the second quarter of 2009, compared to 28% in the second quarter of 2008.

The majority of TAC is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $1.24 billion in the second quarter of 2009. TAC also includes amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totaled $218 million in the second quarter of 2009.

Other Cost of Revenues – Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, amortization of intangible assets, content acquisition costs as well as credit card processing charges, decreased to $655 million, or 12% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2009, compared to $674 million, or 13% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008.

Operating Expenses – Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $1.54 billion in the second quarter of 2009, or 28% of revenues, compared to $1.64 billion in the second quarter of 2008, or 31% of revenues.

Stock-Based Compensation (SBC) – In the second quarter of 2009, the total charge related to SBC was $293 million as compared to $273 million in the second quarter of 2008.

We currently estimate SBC charges for grants to employees prior to July 1, 2009 to be approximately $1.1 billion for 2009. This estimate does not include expenses to be recognized related to employee stock awards that are granted after June 30, 2009 or non-employee stock awards that have been or may be granted.

Operating Income – GAAP operating income in the second quarter of 2009 was $1.87 billion, or 34% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.58 billion, or 29% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the second quarter of 2009 was $2.17 billion, or 39% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $1.85 billion, or 34% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008.

Interest and Other Income (Expense), Net – Interest and other income (expense), net decreased to an expense of $18 million in the second quarter of 2009, compared to an income of $58 million in the second quarter of 2008.

Income Taxes – Our effective tax rate was 20% for the second quarter of 2009.

Net Income – GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2009 was $1.48 billion as compared to $1.25 billion in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income was $1.71 billion in the second quarter of 2009, compared to $1.47 billion in the second quarter of 2008. GAAP EPS for the second quarter of 2009 was $4.66 on 319 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $3.92 for the second quarter of 2008, on 318 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS for the second quarter of 2009 was $5.36, compared to $4.63 in the second quarter of 2008.

Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures – Net cash provided by operating activities for the second quarter of 2009 totaled $1.61 billion as compared to $1.77 billion for the second quarter of 2008. In the second quarter of 2009, capital expenditures were $139 million, the majority of which was related to IT infrastructure investments, including data centers, servers, and networking equipment. Free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, is defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. In the second quarter of 2009, free cash flow was $1.47 billion.

We expect to continue to make significant capital expenditures.

A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the GAAP measure of liquidity, is included at the end of this release.

Cash – As of June 30, 2009, cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities were $19.3 billion.

On a worldwide basis, Google employed 19,786 full-time employees as of June 30, 2009, down from 20,164 full-time employees as of March 31, 2009.

This unusual combination may come as a surprise but it’s all held together by the “power” of online advertising. A wacky one, if I may add… pun intended.

I finally stopped trying to run away from the flood of news items related to Michael Jackson’s death (by the way, does anyone else feel there’s way too much information running around these days?), and went to CNN.com to check the news. The headline item was (well, still is at the time I’m writing this) titled “Jacksons rely on strength of family” and it’s permalink is http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/27/jackson.family/index.html .  After some mildly-worded paragraphs on how Jackson’s father was a “rough taskmaker” and the shocking information that there was some “intrafamily bickering” going on, the article sweetly ends by quoting Jermaine on what a great job his parents did. Oh well… I’m not here to debate that.

What I would like to discuss, though, is how ad networks, publishers and advertisers never fail to let me down and even exceed my expectations. Ever since the story broke, I was sure that somewhere, somehow, inappropriate ads would find their way onto unsuspecting web pages and sit there undisturbed. What I did not expect was to find them on CNN’s very own site. Right underneath the article, there was an ad slot serving Google ads, and the very first ad said:

Micheal Jackson Tickets
Buy Tickets Now For Jacko Huge- Shows In The o2 – Don’t Miss Out!
MJackson.Bookmarks.Excite.co.uk

Brilliant! I am not even going to bother discussing what a crappy text creative it is, what’s mindblowing is how the ad network (Google), the advertiser (Excite, I suppose?) and the publisher (CNN.com) have all failed at what is a rather simple task:

- Google had more than enough time to cease serving ads for Michael Jackson tickets – why are these ads still active?

- Excite (assuming it’s them who advertise) also had more than enough time to “remember” taking down the ads on their own initiative, or perhaps proactively managing the ad campaigns is not something explicitly written in the job specs of whoever is in charge of doing so.

- CNN, ultimately, is the one displaying these ads. Has no editor actually read the page??? Even if Google failed at controlling what runs in their network and the advertiser doesn’t mind running outdated ads, CNN could have very easily blocked these ads themselves. Why it hasn’t been done it’s quite a mystery. The funny (or “offending”, depends on what is your type of humor) ad is still there, half hour after I have sent CNN a message about it.

Come on, at least correct the name, please! For the curious ones, below is a screenshot of the article and the Google ad slot.

Based on a six-month panel dataset of several hundred keywords collected from a large nationwide retailer that advertises on Google, Professors Ghose and Yang found:

* The value-per-click to an advertiser decreases with each position down the search engine results page, meaning that clicks from more prominent positions are more valuable than clicks from lower positions, because conversion rates also decrease.
* Even though the more prominent positions on the search engine results page experience higher click-through or conversion rates, they are not always the most profitable ones. In fact, profits are often lower in the top positions than those in the middle positions due to the aggressive nature of bidding that increases the total advertisement costs (given the high click-through rates).
* Search engines are accounting for both the current period’s bid price as well as prior click-through rates of the keywords before deciding the final rank of an advertisement in the current period, but the current bid price has a larger role to play in determining the final rank than ‘Quality Score’-related factors like prior click-through rates.
* An increase in the landing page quality score of the advertiser by one unit is associated with an increase in conversion rates by as much as 22.5 percent and a decrease in advertiser cost-per-click.

The paper is forthcoming in Management Science and the full working paper is available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1022467.

Professor Ghose is an expert in Web 2.0, user-generated content, online advertising and e-commerce, and Professor Yang’s research focuses on understanding household purchase behavior and market competition.

To speak with Professor Ghose, contact him directly at 212-998-0807, aghose@stern.nyu.edu (e-mail is best); or contact Jenny Owen in NYU Stern’s Office of Public Affairs at 212-998-0561, jenny.owen@stern.nyu.edu.

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world today reported the top 25 ad networks based on their reach among U.S. Internet users in April 2009. The ranking showed that AOL’s Platform-A remains the top ad network, reaching nearly 176.5 million U.S. Internet users, or 91.5 percent of the total audience, followed by Yahoo! Network (167.1 million) and Google Ad Network (164.5 million). New ad network FOX Audience Network ranked sixth, reaching 149.2 million people. Several ad networks in the top 25 achieved double-digit growth during the past year, led by Turn Inc. (up 121 percent), CPX Interactive (up 88 percent) and 24/7 Real Media (up 48 percent).

______________________________________________________________________________
Top 25 Ad Networks

April 2009 vs. April 2008

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Media Metrix

Total Unique Visitors (000)
Apr-2008        Apr-2009       % Change

Total Internet: Total Audience          190,728         192,875           1

Platform-A                              170,508         176,455           3
Yahoo! Network                          160,206         167,129           4
Google Ad Network                       155,882         164,518           6
ValueClick Networks                     140,930         160,307          14
Specific Media                          144,773         158,012           9
FOX Audience Network                        N/A         149,249         N/A
24/7 Real Media                          99,959         147,668          48
Traffic Marketplace                     114,682         143,519          25
Microsoft Media Network US              119,595         139,674          17
Tribal Fusion                           135,113         138,274           2
Casale Media – MediaNet                 127,184         137,884           8
interCLICK                              107,961         134,834          25
Turn, Inc                                60,617         134,028         121
Adconion Media Group                    117,965         133,498          13
CPX Interactive                          69,178         130,370          88
Collective Network by Collective Media   88,279         129,808          47
ADSDAQ by ContextWeb                     93,815         123,534          32
AudienceScience (formerly Revenue Science)  N/A         121,001         N/A
Burst Media                              89,670         116,727          30
Undertone Networks                       72,940          97,053          33
AdBrite                                  81,838          91,033          11
Pulse 360                                   N/A          82,574         N/A
Vibrant Media                            72,351          80,779          12
Adify                                       N/A          73,467         N/A
Kontera                                  52,159          72,870          40
______________________________________________________________________________

“Underscoring the growing importance of ad networks to the digital advertising economy, each of the top 25 ad networks has expanded its reach during the past year,” commented Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “It almost seems that new ad networks are emerging every day, each aimed at helping advertisers achieve their campaign objectives, whether it’s to deliver reach and frequency or to target a specific audience segment.”

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Google AdWords advertisers have been offered a tool to build display ads for quite some time – the template directory counts more than 80 designs at the moment. Advertisers can customize the text, colors and even upload their own images, using Google’s basic yet useful display ad creation tool.

The newly launched templates follow a finance-related theme and are expected to support a large influx of display ads targeted at Google Finance pages. Samples of how such ads would look are included below.

Surely, this doesn’t come as a big surprise… if anything, these are the times when financial companies and institutions are facing major retention and acquisition problems. As we’ve seen in an earlier post, advertising does build confidence for financial brand in crisis (Nielsen IAG study), and there’s a risk in not being seen advertising: consumer confidence in the long-term health of these companies is dramatically influenced by advertising and marketing efforts.

A question is still left unanswered: with such generic ads, I believe it’s virtually impossible not to diminish – greatly – the value of a brand. These display ads served through AdWords will be likely used in CPM-based, branding campaigns – their efficiency will greatly be reduced by using templates. Would like to hears success stories if you have any already, so feel free to share.

Sample templates:

ad template for Google Finance pages

ad template for Google Finance pages

- Lamar Advertising Company Announces Proposed Private Offering of Senior Notes
Lamar Advertising Company (Nasdaq: LAMR) announced that it is seeking to raise approximately $250 million of gross proceeds through an institutional private placement of senior notes due 2014 by its wholly owned subsidiary, Lamar Media Corp.

- Google’s Head of North American Sales Moves to AOL

Tim Armstrong, Google’s now former head of sales for North America, and the developer behind Google’s AdSense and AdWords advertising products, is heading to AOL. As Brand Republic puts it, the move is caused by the “managerial shake-up” in Google. Armstrong will serve as chief executive at AOL and will be the driving force behind AOL’s presence in the online advertising arena.

- Razorfish Launches scatter|gather Blog

The new blog from Razorfish “covers the intersection of pop culture, consumer behavior & digital content”. Contributors are all practicing Content Strategists: Adam Gottlieb, Bob Maynard, Dawn Bovasso, Doug Bolin, Jared Keleher, Ruth Kaufman, Robert Stribley, Rachel Lovinger, Michael Barnwell, Matt Geraghty, Mary S. Butler, Lynn Leitte

Claiming to “driving monetization with ads that reach the right audience“, here’s what the official announcement says:

“Over the next few months we’ll start offering interest-based advertising to a limited number of advertisers as part of a beta, and expand the offering later in 2009. Whether the advertiser’s goal is to drive brand awareness or increase responses to their ads, these capabilities can help expand the success of their campaigns and should increase your earnings as advertiser participation increases.”

All’s good and well, only, as with many other Google initiatives that fall into the gray area of privacy intrusion, this is an opt-out feature. That means that the aforementioned users will be subjected to behavioral targeting of the Google ads they may bump into any given site – and yes, I do realize the irony of having a certain ad slot right here – unless they proactively seek a way out of it.

Here’s how it works: “To develop interest categories, we’ll recognize the types of webpages users visit across the AdSense network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we’ll add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category. You can visit the Help Center to learn more about how interest categories will be developed and your associated account settings. [...] by visiting the new Ads Preferences Manager, users can see what interest categories we think they fall into, or add and remove categories themselves. The Ads Preferences Manager can be found by clicking on most “Ads by Google” links you see on Google ads throughout the web.”

Going back a little while, do you remember the roll-out of the “web search history” across Google accounts? Again, this was an opt-out feature – that has, privacy wise, the same approach as the current rolling of behavioral targeting. One would hope that, having already opted out of it (“No, I most certainly don’t want you to observe and store the URLs I visit!“), common sense would prevent future invasions from happening. Clearly not the case: behavioral targeting is active even if you surf while logged into a Google account with web history deactivated.

While it’s quite obvious what drove this initiative to life in the first place, I really dislike the approach: nobody should be subjected to tracking and behavioral targeting unless they have specifically agreed to it! While you, readers, may be knowledgeable enough to avoid this and stay updated on the online ad industry news and practices, the average internet user is not. Considering the extremely wide reach of Google’s content network, one’s chances to come across sites carrying Google ads – and be tracked and targeted – are very, very high.

Google calls this “privacy innovations“. I call it “deception“. What do you call it?

*http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/03/driving-monetization-with-ads-that.html

NEW YORK – TradeComet.com LLC filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, a complaint asserting Google violates antitrust laws by eliminating competition and choice. TradeComet was forced to file the lawsuit when Google refused to stop engaging in predatory conduct to block search traffic by imposing massive, unjustified price increases. Google’s anticompetitive conduct eliminated TradeComet as a competitor. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, LLP, one of the world’s leading international law firms, will represent TradeComet.com.

SourceTool.com, a subsidiary of TradeComet.com, operated a thriving global business-to-business (B2B) search engine enabling buyers of industrial products to easily connect with suppliers. SourceTool.com focused on a specialized type of industrial search, which it positioned as a competitor to Google’s general purpose search engine. Due to SourceTool’s utility for buyers, sellers and advertisers, the site took off—within months reaching 650,000 visits per day. SourceTool.com also was named a ‘2006 Rising Star of Specialized Search’ by InfoCommerce and the ‘Second Fastest Growing Internet Site in the World’ by Comscore.

Google initially embraced its relationship with SourceTool.com, naming them Google’s ‘Site of the Week’; SourceTool.com was reinvesting approximately 80 percent of its revenue by purchasing $500,000 per month or more in Google keywords.

In its complaint, TradeComet.com provides details of how Google subsequently identified SourceTool.com as a competitive threat and then engaged in illegal conduct to diminish and ultimately extinguish SourceTool.com’s platform.

“SourceTool.com offered a valuable service and TradeComet.com had a thriving business before Google decided to eliminate them as a competitor,” said Rick Rule, Chair of Antitrust for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, LLP, and former head of the United States Justice Department Antitrust Division. “We believe this complaint has strong merit and represents a serious antitrust violation.”

“With no notice, Google changed from cheerleader to tyrant when it realized we were a competitive threat,” said Dan Savage, founder and CEO of SourceTool.com and TradeComet.com. “For example, Google raised my prices by 10,000 percent, which strangled our business, virtually overnight. Citing an ambiguous quality score determined by a secretive algorithm to justify the price increase, Google refused to consider reductions even after SourceTool.com invested the company’s savings to make the changes that Google said would rectify the supposed problems. As a result of Google flexing its monopolistic muscle, SourceTool.com currently averages about one percent of the traffic it previously had and is no longer a competitively viable business.”

TradeComet.com aims to recover damages caused when Google’s anticompetitive conduct eliminated SourceTool.com’s primary source of search traffic.

About TradeComet.com

TradeComet.com LLC is based in New York, NY and is the parent company of SourceTool.com, (www.SourceTool.com). Formed in September, 2005, TradeComet.com seeks to be the leader in the global sourcing marketplace employing Internet-based technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the supplier discover process.

About SourceTool.com

SourceTool (www.sourcetool.com) links professional buyers with qualified business suppliers around the world. Developed exclusively for the business-to-business market, SourceTool indexes and organizes nearly 500,000 business suppliers around the world according to UNSPSC®, a product classification system developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and managed by GS1 US. The UNSPSC® (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code) classification system uses a hierarchical structure that organizes commodity product types according to business segments, families, and classes.

MIAMI – Google and CTT Corporation, a leader in talent development services for information and communication technology professionals, announced that the recently launched Google Business Education Center (GOOBEC), will now offer an even wider range of educational services, including expert assistance and tools that allow professionals to deliver more efficient online advertising solutions to companies in Latin America. Specialized know-how for Google marketing and advertising solutions will be available in the region starting March 2009 with the introduction of GAP Test Preparation and Google AdWords™ Advanced courses.

“Online advertising has demonstrated consistent growth in Latin America as companies address the online needs of their clients in order to compete effectively in today’s global marketplace,” said Hermann Gomez, President of CTT. “GOOBEC provides advertising professionals access to unique know-how that will enable them to perform online advertising in more simplistic and effective ways than ever before.”

Since its launch in April 2008 more than 450 professionals in Latin America have been trained and certified with online marketing technology and advertising solutions from GOOBEC. GOOBEC offers professionals advanced tools based on AdWords™, Google’s path to executing ads with multiple formats: text, images and video. These tools are available through CTT’s course portfolio and educational centers located throughout Latin America, focusing on developing talent specialized in online advertising.

“GOOBEC’s fast acceptance rate confirms that more and more users and companies are looking for specialization in online marketing and advertising through practical and effective tools,” said Alfonso Luna, Marketing Director for Google Latin America. “We are confident that our partnership with CTT is key to reaching more users in the region and offering the world-class services needed to compete strategically while increasing the ROI for companies that develop their marketing campaigns via the Internet.”

The initial courses offered included Google AdWords™ Fundamentals, designed for current users of Google AdWords™ and Corporate Assistance Services, which covers consulting, design, optimization, support and strategy for companies doing business online. The two new courses, GAP Test Preparation and Google AdWords™ Advanced, provide more in depth knowledge in Google marketing and advertising solutions.

GOOBEC’s education portfolio includes curriculum in Portuguese and Spanish for local professionals, marketing and advertising experts, and individuals certified by Google in AdWords™. GOOBEC courses are available in a number of countries in the region, including: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Central America, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Additional information regarding GOOBEC’s educational portfolio can be found at: www.goobec.com.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About CTT

Founded in 1990, CTT, an eLandia company (OTCBB:ELAN), is a pioneer in supporting professional training required by individuals and companies that rely on information and communications technologies. The company maintains offices in 11 countries in Latin America and has 175 full-time employees. CTT designs curriculums focused on talent development and technical certifications from key technology companies from around the world. The company collaborates with local business partners and academic entities to develop transformational knowledge programs, best practices and innovative learning solutions. For more information, visit www.ctteducation.com.

Google and AdWords are registered brands of Google Inc. All other names of companies and products may be registered brands of companies with which they are associated.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — SpotMixer (www.SpotMixer.com) an innovative online video advertising service of One True Media, Inc., announced it has been named an authorized reseller for the Google AdWords(TM) online advertising program. By enhancing its distribution offerings via Google AdWords, SpotMixer now provides small and medium businesses with unparalleled distribution capabilities for their online video ad campaigns, offering them a comprehensive, low-cost solution to manage their ads from creation through distribution.

SpotMixer offers marketers the ability to cost-effectively create, target and manage online video ad campaigns in a self-serve environment. With SpotMixer, businesses now have the option to create and produce their own ads, oversee their ad campaigns, and closely manage distribution of those ads, both online and on television. As a Google AdWords Authorized Reseller, SpotMixer customers will be able to take advantage of the impressive reach of the AdWords online ad platform and content network to help local businesses create high-impact online video advertisements.

SpotMixer’s tools are based on One True Media’s groundbreaking self-service video creation and distribution platform, an innovative video editing site used by millions of consumers to produce and share professional-quality online videos. The tools are so intuitive that any business can produce professional-quality video ads, using its own videos and photos, and distribute them to targeted audiences with just a few clicks. Designed specifically for small- and medium-sized businesses, SpotMixer eliminates the barriers to online video advertising by making it affordable, approachable, and measurable.

“As a Google AdWords Authorized Reseller, SpotMixer provides advertisers the impressive reach of Google and the Google content network to build their brand and business through video ads,” said John Love, One True Media’s co-founder and CEO. “Just as SpotMixer revolutionized video creation—making it easy and affordable—SpotMixer has simplified the process of distributing video ads, delivering a simple and cost-effective self-service option for any business.”

About SpotMixer and One True Media

SpotMixer, a service of One True Media, Inc., helps small- and medium-sized businesses join the online video marketing revolution by offering templates and tools for easy-to-use yet sophisticated video ad creation, distribution and analytics. The first and most respected name in Web-based video creation for consumers, One True Media has leveraged its technology and marketing expertise into SpotMixer, enabling businesses to have an elegant yet affordable solution for creating and managing their online advertising. SpotMixer is a Google AdWords Authorized Reseller for video. Founded in 2005, the company is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures and NTT Finance, and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA. For more information about SpotMixer, please visit www.SpotMixer.com.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — January 07, 2009—One True Media (www.onetruemedia.com) a pioneer in easy and affordable online video creation, announced it has closed $9 million in Series B funding, raising capital from both existing and new investors. The new funds will allow the company to continue to rapidly expand its innovative online video advertising service, www.SpotMixer.com, which enables marketers to cost-effectively create, target and manage online video ad campaigns. This news coincides with SpotMixer’s announcement today that SpotMixer has been selected as a Google AdWords Authorized Reseller for video.

The Series B round of funding includes a new lead investor, DAG Ventures, a strategic investment from NTT Finance, and follow-on funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, One True Media’s Series A lead investor. Young Chung, a managing director of DAG, will join the board of One True Media.

“While the market opportunity for video advertising remains well-defined, smaller businesses are more concerned than ever about how to most cost-effectively spend their limited advertising dollars,” said Chung. “We believe strongly in SpotMixer’s comprehensive, low-cost business model, so it was a clear choice for DAG to lead this round of funding. SpotMixer has quickly established itself as one of the most innovative and thoughtful solutions that will accelerate growth around this major advertising trend.”

The SpotMixer platform for business is based on One True Media’s groundbreaking self-service video creation and distribution technology—the leading online video creation software used by millions of consumers to produce and share professional-quality online video. With SpotMixer, any business can produce, target and manage distribution of its own professional-quality ads in an easy-to-use environment. Designed for the needs of businesses without large advertising budgets, SpotMixer is the answer for companies that want to take advantage of this more effective means of reaching consumers online.

Said John Love, One True Media’s co-founder and CEO: “SpotMixer delivers exactly what small- and medium-sized businesses are looking for in self-serve video advertising: cost-effective, comprehensive and relevant solutions that enable them to more effectively target customers and market their businesses. We are delighted to have DAG on the One True Media team. Their experience and expertise will allow us to continue to drive our business model and leadership position.”

About SpotMixer and One True Media

SpotMixer, a service of One True Media, Inc., helps small- and medium-sized businesses join the online video marketing revolution by offering templates and tools for easy-to-use yet sophisticated video ad creation, distribution and analytics. The first and most respected name in Web-based video creation for consumers, One True Media has leveraged its technology and marketing expertise into SpotMixer, enabling businesses to have an elegant yet affordable solution for creating and managing their online advertising. SpotMixer is a Google AdWords Authorized Reseller for video. Founded in 2005, the company is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures and NTT Finance, and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA. For more information about SpotMixer, please visit www.SpotMixer.com.

LONDON – Greenlight’s brand defense platform, SearchSentry™, has been highly commended at the inaugural E-consultancy Innovation Awards 2008. The product was entered into the Innovation in Paid Search and PPC category.

Specialist search marketing agency Greenlight developed SearchSentry™ in May 2008 in response to Google’s decision to allow UK and Ireland advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. The platform works to protect brands online by monitoring competitor and affiliate activity by providing brand managers with detailed information on who is bidding on their brands. It then mines the data collected so that a plan of action can be drawn up to help brand managers defend and control their brand.

This most recent success is the latest in a string of awards for the agency. Last month, Greenlight was ranked 14th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50, which lists the fastest growing technology companies in the UK. In addition, Greenlight came 21st in The Sunday Times Technology Track 100 2008 and came 88th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA.

Greenlight works with over 50 of the UK’s leading brands, providing specialist SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) services, for the likes of Asda Walmart, Lastminute.com and Alliance & Leicester. Recent wins include NatMags and ghd.

Warren Cowan, CEO and founder of Greenlight said: “SearchSentry™ has been an incredibly successful tool. All of Greenlight’s technologies are developed in-house and we are really proud to add this one to our growing portfolio. It is great to be recognized in this way, especially when it is by a well regarded digital resource like E-consultancy.”

About Greenlight

Greenlight is an award winning, specialist search engine marketing agency providing targeted and accountable organic and paid search solutions. The agency has helped numerous companies to succeed in search marketing over the years by improving its clients’ positioning and website visibility in the top search engines, and driving traffic to their websites.

Greenlight provides a full range of search marketing services from offices in London and New York, including search engine optimisation, pay per click management, link building, consultancy and SEM training.

Clients include FTSE, NASDAQ and NYSE listed companies as well as charitable organisations and government bodies. Greenlight works with SMEs, global brands and top interactive agencies across vertical markets as diverse as publishing, financial services, retail, travel, hospitality, property and entertainment.

Aimed at consultants, site designers, website owners, in-house marketing professionals, among others, this in-depth training occurs in a small class setting so that instructors are readily accessible for informal one-on-one or small group discussions.

“Regardless of skill level in SEO and SEM, people will come away from this intensive training with techniques that they can immediately implement,” said Matt McGowan, Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, including Search Engine Strategies, SearchEngineWatch.com and the ClickZ Network. “Expert search engine marketers Jennifer Laycock, Matt Bailey, Debra Mastaler, Greg Jarboe, Amanda Watlington Brad Geddes and Shari Thurow who are leading the sessions live and breathe SEO and SEM. They’ll ensure that participants leave with the latest knowledge and action plans for real-world applications.”

Training sessions include:

* Search & Analytics Workshop: Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness — Analytics are a gold mine of information, just waiting to be uncovered. The results of campaigns, effectiveness of the website, and the efficiency of your rankings can all be measured with a good analytics program. Unfortunately, many site managers do not make changes to the website without prior measurement, nor do they measure after the changes. As a result, there are many changes to sites that are not based on facts, merely assumptions. Similarly, if changes are not analyzed, then there can be no clear understanding of whether or not improvements made a difference on the site or to the bottom line.
* Viral Marketing & Link Baiting — Attendees will gain a better understanding of the concepts, ideas and implementations that are required to launch a viral marketing or link baiting campaign. They will learn why the Internet has created a unique environment that allows for rapid, inexpensive word of mouth marketing and how they can harness that environment to promote their own products and services. The workshop will give real life examples of both good and bad viral marketing campaigns and will share insight on how your business can capitalize on your competitor’s viral disasters. This workshop will also focus on how you can make use of consumer generated media environments like social media outlets, blog marketing, discussion forums and more to both monitor and expand your company’s online persona. Consumer generated media (the very core of viral marketing) is the fastest growing form of media online today. It’s only a matter of time until someone online talks about your business. This course will not only help prepare you in the ways to respond to the conversation, it will help you learn how to shape that conversation to your advantage.
* Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques — Need links? In order to rank well and successfully promote your online business, you need an effective link building program as part of your overall SEO strategy. This link building workshop will help you to better understand and manage your link building campaigns by providing you with the knowledge to create proven, practical and creative link marketing campaigns. You’ll walk away understanding why you need certain links, how to find them, and how to effectively use links to promote your brand and your search engines rankings.
* Advanced AdWords — This session is broken down into two sections. The first section examines how to effectively use keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and the search and content networks to effectively reach your target audience based upon where consumers are in the buying cycle. The second section will examine different bidding strategies you can employ to maximize your campaign’s goals.
* Search Engine Optimization Workshop — A search-engine friendly Web site is a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers. In order for a site to be search-engine friendly, it must meet the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask, etc). Additionally, the site must satisfy the needs of site visitors. Ultimately, the site must be profitable for the Web site owner. Can a single site satisfy all of these groups? This workshop will demonstrate that these skills are essential for building a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.
* Optimizing for Universal Search — Universal search changes everything! The advent of Google’s Universal Search has been called “the most radical change to its search results ever.” So, how do you take advantage of Google’s new approach that blends listings from news, maps, video, and image search among those it gathers from web search? This training session will help you get found in all the right places.

SES SEM Training can be taken in addition to the SES Chicago conference or independently, as workshops are on the Friday following the event. The full-day training session is $1,345 and half-day is $745. Register for SES SEM Training at http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/training.html.

To register for the SES Chicago conference or for more information, see http://searchenginestrategies.com/chicago. SES Chicago Expo-only passes are free in advance.

About SES

Incisive Media’s Search Engine Strategies is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include the ClickZ network for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

About Incisive Media

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, LegalTech, Post, Real Estate Forum, Risk, Search Engine Strategies and The American Lawyer. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Hallmark Channel and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced a strategic agreement to offer advertisers access to high-quality family-friendly programming through the Google TV Ads program. Advertisers will now be able to reach even more viewers by using Google TV Ads platform to place ads on both Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel.

In November, Hallmark Channel was seen in 86 million homes across the U.S. and over the past year has consistently ranked in the top ten prime time ratings. The network will air in 2009 more than 30 original movies – its largest-ever slate. Hallmark Movie Channel broadcasts a mix of classic theatrical films, presentations from the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame library, Hallmark Channel original movies and special events. Using the Google TV Ads platform, advertisers, starting in early 2009, will be able to access both networks’ national audiences and receive viewership data at an unprecedented scale. Google TV Ads advertisers – many of them new to the television medium – can then better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaigns to maximize return-on-investment.

“Partnering with Google is a milestone for Hallmark Channel’s continued advertising success,” said Bill Abbott, Executive Vice President, Ad Sales, Hallmark Channel. “The Google TV Ads platform will allow more advertisers to access the network’s acclaimed roster of family-friendly programming – entertainment that audiences cherish during the holidays.”

Google TV Ads offers greater accountability and relevancy in advertising. With Google’s innovative targeting tools and auction-based pricing system, advertisers can find the right context and audience for their advertising message, only pay for impressions delivered to their ads, and receive digital reporting within 24 hours. Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel join Google TV Ads’ growing list of inventory partners, which also includes six networks from the NBC Universal family — Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller — along with Bloomberg Television and 96 networks through DISH Network.

“Hallmark Channel’s strong family-friendly brand and programming attracts an important viewer demographic that Google TV Ads’ advertisers can now access,” said John Saroff, Manager of Strategic Partner Development for Google TV Ads. “Combined with our platform’s measurement technology, this collaboration signifies an important step towards making television advertising more accountable for advertisers and more relevant for viewers.”

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About Hallmark Channel

Hallmark Channel, owned and operated by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., is a 24-hour basic cable network that provides a diverse slate of high-quality entertainment programming to a national audience of 86 million subscribers. The top tier program service is distributed through more than 5,450 cable systems and communities as well as direct-to-home satellite services across the country. Hallmark Channel consistently ranks among the top 10 ad-supported cable networks in Prime Time and Total Day household ratings and is the nation’s leading network in providing quality family programming. Crown Media also operates a second 24-hour linear channel which plays the greatest family movies of all time, Hallmark Movie Channel, and launched Hallmark Movie Channel HD in April, 2008. For more information, visit http://www.hallmarkchannelpress.com.

Google and Google TV Ads are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

Source: Nielsen Media Research estimates that from October 27 through November 30, 2008, Hallmark Channel was available in over 85 million homes across the U.S. and during the period from December 31, 2007 to November 23, 2008, ranked in the top ten prime time household coverage area ratings.

Google content network, one of two Google network components, is made up of many hundreds of thousands of Internet sites, web pages and blogs which have joined the AdSense Google network in order to be able to display contextual advertising. Now certified by Google, Smart AdServer is among the first European Adservers to meet the technical requirements implemented by Google.

By offering the possibility of advertising on YouTube and on the Google network, Smart AdServer enables advertisers and agencies to extend the marketing outreach of their advertising campaigns by reaching a larger targeted audience, and using innovative formats such as overlay. “This is an important stage in Smart AdServer’s development and we are delighted to enable our clients to advertise and track advertising campaigns on this network and site” explains Cyrille Geffray, Smart AdServer’ General Manager.

Smart AdServer develops and promotes an advertisement campaign management tool for agencies, advertisers, advertising companies and editors. A new generation Adserver created in 2001, Smart AdServer has rapidly progressed to the point where today it is a leader on the French and European markets, with more than 130 clients and 1,200 sites.

About Smart AdServer

Smart AdServer SAS develops and markets one of the main adserving technologies for the management of online campaigns for media agencies and publishers. Created in 2001, the company Smart AdServer has soon become a key player in France, posting the fastest growth in Europe in terms of customers compared with its competitors, thanks to the innovative and unique functionalities offered by its product, and its ease of use. Smart AdServer has 130 customers for 1200 sites spanning four continents.

Among its clients are large media agencies such as Zed digital, Starcom, Mindshare, Mediacom, Mediaedge:cia, Universal McCann, Brilliant Media … as well as a large number of sites and companies, including PIXmania, Reed Business, Axel Springer Hungary, Radio Canada, MSD Global, Wolters Kluwer, La Vanguardia, Medioonet, Curse Gaming, Amiado…

www.smartadserver.com

However… history repeats: as with the opening of Ad Manager, when the system has just become unavailable, Ad Planner too seems to have gone wild and appears to be either down or having serious issues. Many report to have tried to sign up, but are facing a blank page instead.

Until the issues resolve, read below the official announcement and list of features:

“Google Ad Planner: new features, available to everyone
Since we launched Google Ad Planner a few months ago, you’ve suggested more ways we could help improve your media planning process. First, we’re excited to announce that Ad Planner is now accessible to anyone with a Google account. Second, we’ve released a number of new features that we built based on your direct input.

Define your audience by keywords and geography
In response to your requests for more audience definition options, we’ve enhanced Google Ad Planner to support search queries and geo-targeting. For example, now you can find video game enthusiasts based on their likeliness to search for keywords such as “video games” or “video game codes.” You can also drill-down to specific states or metros (region or cities in geographies outside the US).

Manage your site results
With three new site ranking methods, you can decide how you want your site results ranked and displayed. You can choose between sites most likely to attract your target audience, larger known sites to increase your campaign scale, or a balance between the two. By applying other site filters, you can narrow your search to only sites that accept ads, sites in specific categories like “Video Games,” or sites that end with a particular domain suffix like “.edu.”

Analyze your media plan
With Google Ad Planner’s new interactive bubble chart, you can compare sites in your media plan by demographics, frequency, traffic, and unique visitors. [...]

International demographic data
We’ve expanded demographic audience data to include France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. We look forward to continuing to expand the number of countries Ad Planner covers.”

Source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/google-ad-planner-new-features.html

While the implementation of the services agreement with Google would have enabled Yahoo! to accelerate its investments in its top business priorities through an infusion of additional operating cash flow, this deal was incremental to Yahoo!’s product roadmap and does not change Yahoo!’s commitment to innovation and growth in search. The fundamental building blocks of a stronger Yahoo! in both sponsored and algorithmic search were put in place independent of the agreement.

Yahoo! continually optimizes its algorithmic and sponsored search, and we have, in 2008 alone, developed and launched hundreds of improvements all designed to enhance search quality and deliver a more relevant search experience to the company’s users. To that end, Yahoo! has benefited from strong revenue per search (RPS) gains in the U.S. as discussed on the Q3 earnings call. Furthermore, Yahoo! continues to make substantial progress against its Open Strategy and in the deployment of its game changing APT from Yahoo! display advertising platform.

Going forward, Yahoo! plans to continue to provide the cutting-edge advances in products, platforms and services that the industry needs and expects, and intends to be the destination of choice for advertisers and publishers who want to reach one of the largest and most engaged populations of consumers on the web.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com.

AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics™, Inc. released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the third quarter 2008 from the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index™ (www.ClickFraudIndex.com).

Now in its third year, the Click Fraud Index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network™, which more than 4,500 online advertisers and agencies have joined. The Click Fraud Network provides statistically significant industry PPC data collected from online advertising campaigns for both large and small companies across all the leading search engines. Key findings from data reported for Q3 2008 include:

The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.0 percent for Q3 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.2 percent rate reported for both Q2 2008 and Q3 2007.
The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.1 percent. That’s down from the 27.6 percent rate reported for Q2 2008 and the 28.1 percent average click fraud rate reported for Q3 2007.
Traffic from botnets was responsible for 27.6 percent of all click fraud traffic in Q3 2008. That’s up from 25.2 percent for Q2 2008.
In Q3 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from Russia (4.9 percent), France (4.8 percent) and the U.K. (3.5 percent).
“For the past two quarters the industry average click fraud rates seem to be hovering around the 16 percent level,” said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. “Gains are being made by advertisers taking more action to proactively filter out fraud before it affects online campaigns. However, the growth in click fraud traffic from botnets continues to rise and it should be one of the top areas advertisers and the industry should monitor closely.”

The Click Fraud Index publishes data collected from the Click Fraud Network (www.ClickFraudNetwork.com), the industry’s first independent third-party click fraud detection service dedicated to helping companies more accurately monitor their online advertising campaigns for pay-per-click fraud. Click fraud data is tracked and published on a quarterly basis for specific search providers, industries and trends. The service is unique in that it monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and the advertisers’ own web sites – providing the industry’s most accurate view of click fraud to date.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics is the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides traffic quality management solutions for online advertisers, publishers, and ad networks. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index™, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Forensics, Click Fraud Index and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

LOS ANGELES – Built specifically for search marketers and agencies running Google AdWords campaigns, magnify360 (www.magnify360.com), a leading provider of conversion optimization solutions, today unveiled a new tool, called the Google Cost Optimizer. The new tool provides unmatched visibility into the performance of campaigns, allowing for unprecedented end-to-end performance management and rapid optimization of landing pages. magnify360 will launch comparable tools for other advertising and affiliate networks, all of which will eventually feed into a single interface on the magnify360 Platform.

Google Cost Optimizer synchronizes in real-time to clients’ Adwords accounts and automatically responds to campaign changes, including bids, Ad groups, keywords and more. This synchronization enables the tool to calculate campaign performance metrics in clients’ actual dollar values:

- Individual keyword phrase return on investment (ROI) in real-time

- Cost per click in real-time

- Revenue per click in real-time

- Conversion rate in real-time

- Dollar value lead scoring in real-time

- Campaign ROI in real-time

With this level of granularity into individual keyword and visitor ROI and cost per acquisition (CPA), search marketers can easily manage the performance of their campaigns. magnify360’s Google Cost Optimizer provides the ability for marketers to quickly tie individual leads and/or customers to the exact keyword phrase that generated their click and conversion, indicating which keywords to bolster and which to abandon. This is also possible at the visitor segment or profile level.

“In order for businesses to survive this recession, marketing must be more efficient,” said Olivier Chaine, ceo and founder of magnify360. “We built Google Cost Optimizer so that our search marketing clients can quickly and easily optimize every single penny.”

The data delivered through Google Cost Optimizer’s reporting also communicates the most effective landing page design and content for each keyword and associated visitor segment or profile. Because this information is available in real-time, optimized landing pages for specific keywords and profiles can be deployed much more rapidly.

For clients looking for turn-key landing page optimization, magnify360 offers complete services from creative to html and optimization that rely on the magnify360 Platform and its Google Cost Optimizer tool. Clients can launch optimization with magnify360 in as little as 48 hours. magnify360 plans to launch comparable campaign management tools to the magnify360 Platform for Yahoo!, MSN, Commission Junction (ValueClick), and Atlas this Quarter.

magnify360 brings the reality of 1-to-1 personalization to the online user experience. Based in Los Angeles, CA, magnify360 provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, called the magnify360 Platform, that optimizes the performance of websites, microsites and landing pages through dynamic content personalization. The magnify360 Platform combines behavioral targeting, multivariate testing and predictive modeling to maximize the performance of online marketing. Enterprise businesses including Intuit, Citrix Systems, HSBC Bank and 123InkJets trust magnify360 to improve visitor engagement and conversion rates while reducing their customer acquisition costs.

Visit magnify360 at Booth #19 during the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, October 20-23, 2008 in Washington DC.

For more information on magnify360, please visit www.magnify360.com or call 866.861.8878

“We had a good third quarter with strong traffic and revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business. The measurability and ROI of search-based advertising remain key assets for Google,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “While we are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, we will continue to manage Google for the long term, driving improvements to search and ads, while also investing in future growth areas such as enterprise, mobile, and display.”

Q3 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $5.54 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2008, an increase of 31% compared to the third quarter of 2007 and an increase of 3% compared to the second quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the third quarter of 2008, TAC totaled $1.50 billion, or 28% of advertising revenues.

Google reports operating income, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures in the accompanying financial tables.

- GAAP operating income for the third quarter of 2008 was $1.74 billion, or 31% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.58 billion, or 29% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2008 was $2.02 billion, or 37% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $1.85 billion, or 34% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008.
- GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2008 was $1.35 billion as compared to $1.25 billion in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2008 was $1.56 billion, compared to $1.47 billion in the second quarter of 2008.
- GAAP EPS for the third quarter of 2008 was $4.24 on 318 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $3.92 for the second quarter of 2008 on 318 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS in the third quarter of 2008 was $4.92, compared to $4.63 in the second quarter of 2008.
- Non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP net income, and non-GAAP EPS are computed net of stock-based compensation (SBC). In the third quarter of 2008, the charge related to SBC was $280 million as compared to $273 million in the second quarter of 2008. Tax benefits related to SBC have also been excluded from non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP EPS. The tax benefit related to SBC was $63 million in the third quarter of 2008 and $48 million in the second quarter of 2008. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP operating income, operating margin, net income, and EPS are included at the end of this release.

Q3 Financial Highlights

Revenues – Google reported revenues of $5.54 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2008, representing a 31% increase over third quarter 2007 revenues of $4.23 billion and a 3% increase over second quarter 2008 revenues of $5.37 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC.

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $3.67 billion, or 67% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2008. This represents a 34% increase over third quarter 2007 revenues of $2.73 billion and a 4% increase over second quarter 2008 revenues of $3.53 billion.

Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.68 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2008. This represents a 15% increase over network revenues of $1.45 billion generated in the third quarter of 2007 and a 1% increase over second quarter 2008 revenues of $1.66 billion.

International Revenues – Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $2.85 billion, representing 51% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2008, compared to 48% in the third quarter of 2007 and 52% in the second quarter of 2008. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the second quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2008, our revenues in the third quarter of 2008 would have been $59 million higher. Had foreign exchange rates remained constant from the third quarter of 2007 through the third quarter of 2008, our revenues in the third quarter of 2008 would have been $168 million lower.

In the third quarter, we recognized a benefit of $34 million to revenue through our foreign exchange risk management program.

Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $776 million, representing 14% of revenue in the third quarter of 2008, compared to 16% in the third quarter of 2007 and 14% in the second quarter of 2008.

Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 18% over the third quarter of 2007 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2008.

TAC – Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.50 billion in the third quarter of 2008. This compares to TAC of $1.47 billion in the second quarter of 2008. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 28% in the third quarter, compared to 28% in the second quarter of 2008.

The majority of TAC expense is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $1.33 billion in the third quarter of 2008. TAC is also related to amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totaled $167 million in the third quarter of 2008.

Other Cost of Revenues – Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, amortization of intangible assets, content acquisition costs as well as credit card processing charges, increased to $678 million, or 12% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2008, compared to $674 million, or 13% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008.

Operating Expenses – Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $1.63 billion in the third quarter of 2008, or 29% of revenues, compared to $1.64 billion in the second quarter of 2008, or 31% of revenues. The operating expenses in the third quarter of 2008 included $859 million in payroll-related and facilities expenses, compared to $810 million in the second quarter of 2008.

Stock-Based Compensation (SBC) – In the third quarter of 2008, the total charge related to SBC was $280 million as compared to $273 million in the second quarter of 2008.

We currently estimate stock-based compensation charges for grants to employees prior to October 1, 2008 to be approximately $1.1 billion for 2008. This does not include expenses to be recognized related to employee stock awards that are granted after October 1, 2008 or non-employee stock awards that have been or may be granted.

Operating Income – GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2008 was $1.74 billion, or 31% of revenues. This compares to GAAP operating income of $1.58 billion, or 29% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2008 was $2.02 billion, or 37% of revenues. This compares to non-GAAP operating income of $1.85 billion, or 34% of revenues, in the second quarter of 2008.

Interest Income and Other, Net – Interest income and other was $21 million in the third quarter of 2008, compared with $58 million in the second quarter of 2008. The decrease was primarily related to an increase in expenses substantially due to more activity under our foreign exchange risk management program. The cost of the options used to manage our foreign exchange risk is amortized on a mark-to-market basis. As a result, the amount of amortization expense we recognize in any particular quarter is impacted by how much the option moves into or out of the money, as well as the underlying currency’s volatility.

Net Income – GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2008 was $1.35 billion as compared to $1.25 billion in the second quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income was $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2008, compared to $1.47 billion in the second quarter of 2008. GAAP EPS for the third quarter of 2008 was $4.24 on 318 million diluted shares outstanding, compared to $3.92 for the second quarter of 2008, on 318 million diluted shares outstanding. Non-GAAP EPS for the third quarter of 2008 was $4.92, compared to $4.63 in the second quarter of 2008.

Income Taxes – Our effective tax rate was 24% for the third quarter of 2008.

Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures – Net cash provided by operating activities for the third quarter of 2008 totaled $2.18 billion as compared to $1.77 billion for the second quarter of 2008. In the third quarter of 2008, capital expenditures were $452 million, the majority of which was related to IT infrastructure investments, including data centers, servers, and networking equipment. Free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, is defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. In the third quarter of 2008, free cash flow was $1.73 billion.

We expect to continue to make significant capital expenditures.

A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the GAAP measure of liquidity, is included at the end of this release.

Cash – As of September 30, 2008, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $14.4 billion.

On a worldwide basis, Google employed 20,123 full-time employees as of September 30, 2008, up from 19,604 full-time employees as of June 30, 2008.

WEBCAST AND CONFERENCE CALL INFORMATION

A live audio webcast of Google’s third quarter 2008 earnings release call will be available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html. The call begins today at 1:30 PM (PT) / 4:30 PM (ET). This press release, the financial tables, as well as other supplemental information including the reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures to their nearest comparable GAAP measures, are also available at that site. A replay of the call will be available beginning at 7:30 PM (ET) today through midnight Thursday, October 23, 2008 by calling 888-203-1112 in the United States or 719-457-0820 for calls from outside the United States. The required confirmation code for the replay is 6417802.

NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Continuing efforts to make television advertising more relevant, accountable and measurable, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced today that the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® network will make national cable advertising time in the U.S. available through the Google TV Ads™ platform. By offering self-service buying opportunities through Google TV Ads, the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION network will expand its reach to a wider range of advertisers, including those that are new to the medium.

With the addition of BLOOMBERG TELEVISION inventory, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can not only reach the high-net-worth BLOOMBERG TELEVISION U.S. audience but can also gain access to viewership data at an unprecedented scale. Google’s TV Ads platform can report second-by-second data from millions of anonymized set-top-boxes, allowing advertisers to measure viewership of their ads more precisely than ever before. With this data, advertisers can better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaigns to maximize the return on their TV ad investments. Google’s digital platform also makes it easier for advertisers to find relevant programming through its keyword search functionality.

“We’re pleased to be partnering with BLOOMBERG TELEVISION to continue to make TV advertising more relevant and measurable,” said Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads. “We will now be able to give advertisers, many of whom have never tried TV advertising before, access to the desirable BLOOMBERG TELEVISION demographic.”

“The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION audience is the wealthiest and most powerful in cable television,” said Trevor Fellows, head of advertising sales at Bloomberg. “As high net worth viewers are extremely difficult to quantify using traditional methods, we believe that involvement with Google TV Ads from an early stage will help us and our advertisers learn more about our audience.”

Google TV Ads offers greater accountability in advertising. With Google’s auction-based pricing system, advertisers only pay for impressions delivered to their ads, and they can receive integrated digital reporting within 24 hours. The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION network joins Google TV Ads’ growing list of inventory, which also includes NBC Universal and DISH Network.

“We’re very happy with the progress of Google TV Ads,” said Michael Kelly, executive vice president for DISH Network, Google TV Ads’ current inventory partner. “Google TV Ads has brought more accurate, accessible, and up-to-date viewer measurement to the industry, enhancing value to our advertisers.”

The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION service is the only 24/7 business and financial news television network. BLOOMBERG TELEVISION content is created exclusively by the global BLOOMBERG NEWS® service, with 143 bureaus in 69 countries. BLOOMBERG TELEVISION programming offers viewers a snapshot of the markets with fast, accurate reporting of world indexes, currencies, U.S. Treasuries, commodities futures, agricultural futures, and exchange traded funds, as well as special features, insight and analysis, and proprietary coverage of leading stocks and industry sectors. The worldwide service broadcasts in seven languages.

About Google, Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

The partnership also includes collaboration on custom research projects to help drive new insights into TV advertising, raising a few question marks:

- will there be any user targeting?
- if so, what would it be based on?
- what metrics are used and how is the data collected?

Get the whole press release after the bump.

NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – As part of its continuing effort to offer innovative advertising solutions to its clients, NBC Universal (NBCU) will join forces with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) to form a strategic multi-year advertising, research and technology partnership. The two companies will work together to develop more effective advertising metrics, attract non-traditional advertising partners to NBCU and incorporate self-service buying opportunities through the Google TV Ads™ advertising platform.

The announcement was made today by Mike Pilot, President, NBC Universal Sales and Marketing and Tim Armstrong, Google’s President of Advertising and Commerce, North America.

On the national level, NBCU will offer advertising time from several of its cable networks to Google’s TV Ads platform. Inventory from Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller will be made available to Google in the coming months, with potential to expand onto other NBCU properties in the future. With the addition of NBC Universal inventory, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can reach NBCU Cable’s national audience and gain access to viewership data at an unprecedented scale. With this data, advertisers can better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaign to maximize their ROI.

“We’re extremely pleased to join forces with Google on this effort, which will help us develop better accountability and ROI metrics for our advertisers and attract an entirely new group of clients to television advertising,” said Pilot. “This is another step in our commitment to trying innovative advertising approaches and testing new technologies that can help benefit our clients.”

“The Google TV Ads platform is making television advertising more accountable and measurable and we’re pleased with our progress to date,” said Armstrong. “Our partnership with NBCU will help us bring the power of television to a broader set of advertisers as well as give our current advertisers increased reach through our system.”

On the local level, NBCU and Google have also agreed to work jointly on adapting the Google TV Ads platform for local market use.

“This is a great way to reach clients who are interested in buying television advertising but may not have previously had the resources or ability to do so,” said Frank Comerford, President, Platform Development and Commercial Operations, NBC Local Media. “A self-service ad platform will be a great complement to our existing sales efforts and help us further connect our clients to their customers.”

As part of the agreement, NBC Universal will maintain its direct relationships with agencies and advertisers and can set parameters around the purchase of the available ad time. NBCU will also gain access to the large base of advertisers using Google’s AdWords™ online advertising program, many of whom are not currently television advertisers. The two companies will share in all ad revenue and explore innovative ways to expand the partnership in the future, including adapting the platform to add local inventory.

As part of their effort to help drive value for advertisers, NBCU and Google will also collaborate on a series of custom marketing and research projects using the Google TV Ads platform. Through its partnership with DISH Network, the Google TV Ads platform can report second-by-second set top box data allowing advertisers to measure viewership of their ads more precisely than ever before. The two companies will also take advantage of joint research that will help advertisers and agencies better understand their media mix and optimize their ad campaigns.

“We’re pleased that NBCU will make some of its inventory available on Google’s TV Ads platform,” said Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group. “The partnership will generate real value for our clients by providing us with a more measurable–and actionable–understanding of how consumers engage with content.”

About Google

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About NBC Universal

NBC Universal is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and 20% owned by Vivendi.

Still, Google Chrome in itself is not what I wanted to bring your attention to: it’s the window (pun intended!) of opportunity it opens for Google in regard to gathering even more data on users and their behavior. In today’s ever tightening world of online advertising, with rapidly dropping CPM levels and advertisers pressuring for accurate targeting, the ones able to fine-tune ad targeting will be the winners. Google has already enough information coming from all those using Google accounts and applications such as the toolbar – with Chrome, they have just taken a bigger bite from the pie and one step forward in user targeting.

The Google Chrome privacy policy states that it will log the IP addresses of whoever downloads the browser and all URLs or other queries typed into Chrome’s address bar will be sent to Google, which will use that information to make suggestions to users.

The browser will also retrieve and process information received from its users but doesn’t specify if it will retain the data or for how long: “Information that Google receives when you use Google Chrome is processed in order to operate and improve Google Chrome and other Google services,” the policy states. Since Google AdWords, AdSense, Ad Manager and DoubleClick are all providing “Google services” now, it’s really not difficult to see how this browser may greatly leverage Google’s advertising capabilities. Fair or not? Let’s sit back and see reactions from the market – I’m sure it won’t take long before we hear back!

For your reading pleasure, see below the full press release for Chrome’s launch.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (September 2, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today launched Google ChromeTM, a new open source browser intended to create a better web experience for users around the world. Available in beta in more than 40 languages, Google Chrome is a new approach to the browser that’s based on the simplicity and power that users have come to expect from Google products.

In the early days of the Internet, web pages were frequently little more than text. But today the web has evolved into a powerful platform that enables users to collaborate with friends and coAd Operations Online › Create New Post — WordPresslleagues through email and other web applications, edit documents, watch videos, listen to music, manage finances and much more. Google Chrome was built for today’s web and for the applications of tomorrow.

“We think of the browser as the window to the web – it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience,” said Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, Google Inc. “Just like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome has a simple user interface with a sophisticated core to enable the modern web.”

Making the web experience better for users
Google Chrome was designed to make it easy for users to search and navigate the web for the content they’re looking for.

* A combined search and address bar quickly takes users where they want to go, often in just a few keystrokes.
* When users open a new tab in Google Chrome, they’ll see a page that includes snapshots of their most-visited sites, recent searches and bookmarks, making it even easier to navigate the web.

Google Chrome was engineered to deliver a seamless web experience for users. At its core is a multi-process platform that helps provide users with enhanced stability and security.

* Each browser tab operates as a separate process; by isolating tabs, should one tab crash or misbehave, others remain stable and responsive, and users can continue working without having to restart Google Chrome.
* Google also built a new JavaScript engine, V8, which not only speeds up today’s web applications, but enables a whole new class of web applications that couldn’t exist on today’s browsers.

Contributing to the innovation of browsers through openness
“While we see this as a fundamental shift in the way people think about browsers, we realize that we couldn’t have created Google Chrome on our own,” said Linus Upson, Director of Engineering, Google Inc. “Google Chrome was built upon other open source projects that are making significant contributions to browser technology and have helped to spur competition and innovation.”

To further advance the openness of the web, Google Chrome is being released as an open source project under the name Chromium. The intent is that Google will help make future browsers better by contributing the underlying technology in Google Chrome to the market, while continuing to develop additional features.

How to get Google Chrome
Google Chrome can be downloaded at www.google.com/chrome. It is being released in beta for Windows in over 100 countries in the following languages: Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Turkish, English (US), English (UK), Arabic, Czech, Danish, Hebrew, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Indonesian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Estonian.

Google Chrome for Mac and Linux users will be available in the coming months. For more information on the open source project, Chromium, visit www.chromium.org.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For screen shots or b-roll, visit www.google.com/chrome/press.

About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Richard Stokes, AdGooroo founder and chief gooroo, reveals successful search marketing tactics known only by a small amount of search advertising’s elite in his new book, Mastering Search Advertising – How the Top 3% of Search Advertisers Dominate Google AdWords.

“Mastering Search Advertising conveys a ton of insights that go well beyond well-trodden AdWords knowledge. It puts hard numbers on a lot of things that I’ve believed but been unable to prove, about what makes the top 3 percent dominate the search engines,” says Perry Marshall, author of Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords. “…Those who want to prevail in hyper-competitive markets need this book.”

In the book, Stokes not only describes the basics of launching a pay-per-click campaign but also dissects the complex practice into a step-by-step process focused on achieving outstanding marketing strategy for any business. With more than 15 years experience in the industry, Stokes offers readers graphic representations and case studies, as well as his own real-life examples, based on years of competitive intelligence data from AdGooroo, the same data utilized by top search agencies and brand marketers.

“Readily available marketing tips and tutorials, accessible on the Internet and other public forums, tend to be outdated or incorrect, while the techniques that really deliver results are kept close to the chest of those in the dominating minority,” explains Stokes. “This doesn’t have to be the case, and the book provides the majority of search marketers with the tools and insights they need to improve their performance and level the playing field.”

Mastering Search Advertising – How the Top 3% of Search Advertisers Dominate Google AdWords is available through Amazon.com and all major book stores. More information and complimentary sample chapters are available on AdGooroo’s Web site at http://www.adgooroo.com/mastering_search_advertising.php.

About Richard Stokes

Richard Stokes, AdGooroo’s founder and chief gooroo, is a successful entrepreneur, general manager and Internet marketer, with 15 years experience in high-profile technology and marketing roles. Stokes graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering. He received his MBA in marketing, entrepreneurship & technology management from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

About AdGooroo

AdGooroo provides online marketers and agencies actionable, on demand competitive intelligence tools that proactively monitor an industry’s advertising landscape to help them build a long-term competitive advantage. Based in Chicago, AdGooroo provides competitive intelligence to search engine marketers through its tool suite, including AdGooroo Express, SEM Insight and Trademark Insight. AdGooroo tools leverage access and automation to provide advertisers with lists of competitors’ top keywords, ad copy, campaign statistics and more. Top agencies and brand advertisers leverage AdGooroo competitive intelligence tools. For more information, visit AdGooroo.com.

If you don’t believe me, check out the screenshot below:

Seriously, some people should be kept away from keyword insertion tools This is just one example in tons more – eBay certainly used to lead the pack in regard to keyword insertion gone wacky!

The document, a .doc file, is available from the NY Times site. See below a screenshot of the search results featuring the document:

The document seems to have been written by a certain ‘gregsi’ and the company associated with it is… Microsoft, according to the .doc file properties.

These are the suggested remedies “that address harm to competition that will result should the merger be allowed to close”.

1. Divest DART for Publisher (DFP) businesses to an independent and viable purchaser
2. Open access for competing ad networks
3. Open Access to AdSense/AdWords for competing tool vendors
4. Elimination of restrictive API practices and “fair” access to AdWords
5. Prohibit exclusive dealings, the “tying” of AdSense and DFP/DFA, and the tying of any Google products as a condition to obtaining its dominant AdWords package for advertisers
6. Erect firewalls and other safeguards so that the Google commercial organization cannot see or use competitively sensitive flowing through DoubleClick’s ad-serving tools.

These are, as expected, in line with remedies required by other organizations (such as the EPIC letter to the FTC), only much clearer in explaining the facts.

We all know what came of the merger and, as you can see from a previous post of mine, Google is now stronger than ever in terms of access to quality placements.

Still, what’s this document doing on the NY Times server? Could I just point out the irony in it, as NY Times is a premium Google AdSense publisher?

I got to think more about this deal and it surely makes sense now… Microsoft wanted Yahoo, but only if it came as a bargain. It didn’t. They were in discussions with YuMe all this time and it seems that what they were really after was a large chunk of the video advertising pie. They got it not only through the YuMe deal that’s supposed to monetize their video inventory, but also through the acquisition of Navic, for TV ads. Google is way behind in the video ads game and finding ways to monetize video content – Microsoft just took a good leap with its recent moves.

I guess we’ll soon witness Google speeding up on their video advertising efforts, opening their currently closed programs (Google In-video, for example, consisting of text overlays) and be more aggressive in their approach to monetize TV (AdWords for TV, where they even reimburse advertisers some of the costs to produce TV creatives but the program is still far from being a success).