The Week in Review

Google Unveils Voice Search, Search by Image and Search With Instant Pages

Google may have branched out quite a bit from its humble beginnings as a search engine, but that doesn’t mean the company has forgotten its roots. Yesterday in San Francisco, Google unveiled a few nifty updates to its search platform: Google Voice Search for desktops, Search by Image for desktops and Instant Pages. The first two are fairly straightforward; the third is a new feature that prerenders the top search result as you’re scanning search results pages. Google also introduced a refreshed mobile search application. (Official Google Blog, Search Engine Land)

Busting PPC Myths and Proving Its Viability as a Form of Advertising

A recent Advertising Age article caused some hubbub about whether SEM is advertising. Here’s a breakdown of the misconceptions, including that all PPC ads lack a call to action, SEM doesn’t persuade users to choose you over competitors and PPC loses power without display. (Search Engine Watch)

15 Tips for a Successful Facebook Ads Program

Social media is quickly becoming a prominent digital media channel. "With the demand for social media continuing to skyrocket, it’s critical that we, as advertising professionals, hone our craft to leverage this channel on behalf of our clients." Here’s a list of 15 "secrets" that will boost paid social campaigns, with a focus on Facebook and a bit on LinkedIn. Among them are to segment "bins" and to microtarget, test "friends of connections" targeting, embed your lead-capture form within your Facebook page, and track every path to conversion. (Search Engine Land)

3 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Social Search

Keeping your business relevant online requires a plan of action for tackling social search. The three tactics to employ are: 1) create fresh and original content, 2) share to build social context, and 3) utilize location and time to enhance relevance. (Social Media Examiner)

How to Write a Killer AdWords Ad: Treat it Like a Mini-Landing Page

By default, text ads follow the structure of good landing pages — a headline followed by two lines of text, then the call to action (URL). What sets good landing pages apart from the rest will help you make good text ads. There are four essential elements: 1) a catchy and information headline, 2) text copy and visuals telling visitors that the offer is relevant to them, 3) social proof that chases away fear, and 4) an incentive to act. (Search Engine Journal)

Google Officially Buys AdMeld: Reactions and Analysis

It’s official: Google has purchased AdMeld for an undisclosed amount of money. A Forrester analyst says that buying AdMeld enables Google to "take out a competitor in the business of enabling real-time bidding (RTB) for publishers and gain incremental liquidity and volume in what will become a combined exchange." The question remains: Will AdMeld’s big publishers stick with Google/AdMeld? (AdExchanger.com)

5 Tips for Using Crowdsourced Banner Ad Designs

While most advertisers understand how to get started with Google’s search network, a common pitfall is building out "display" campaigns using Google AdWords, or generating banner ads for display on the content network. "Many times the stumbling block here is more around designing the creative (banner ads) than around the mechanics of creating a structure for your content network campaigns." Here’s a walkthrough on how to create an initial set of banners for use on AdWords using a crowdsourced banner design. (WordStream)

Google Tinkering With Search Results: Website Names Added, URLs Subtracted

Google is at it again — the search giant is apparently testing a new look for search results, "adding the name of popular websites including LinkedIn, Facebook, Apple, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Bing next to the page’s URL. In some cases, Google replaces the URL entirely." (Search Engine Watch)

5 Reasons Why Mobile Advertising is the Best Way to Monetize Apps

The best way to make money with a mobile app is to offer it for free and integrate relevant and targeted in-app ads. There are five reasons for this: 1) ongoing revenue, 2) larger user base, 3) upselling sucks, 4) it’s where the money is and 5) added value. (The inneractive Blog)

3 Types of Facebook Image Ads That Work

Some say images in Facebook ads can make or break a campaign. So which images convert well? In general, happy women, colorful logos and headshots convert well. Here’s a rundown of why each converts well, along with some basics before getting started. (Search Engine Land)

Google Targeting AdMeld for $400 Million

Google appears willing to shell out $400 million for AdMeld to further establish its dominance in display ads. AdMeld is a real-time ad optimization platform that attempts to work on behalf of publishers to get them the best prices for their inventory from a stable of ad networks. “That kind of work is one of the few parts of the ad tech ecosystem where Google didn’t already have a presence, so a deal for AdMeld or one of its peers always seemed inevitable.” Neither company has officially commented. (MediaPost)

Rapportive: Turn Gmail Into a Twitter Client

Rapportive is a Gmail plugin that enables users to see the social networking profiles of people who contact you. It recently added a feature that essentially turns Gmail into a Twitter client. You can reply to people, retweet them and follow them all in the comfort of your Gmail inbox. (The Next Web)

How to Use Personas and Scenarios in SEO

Keyword research tools give you lots of data, but they don’t tell you why a searcher entered a certain query – they don’t provide context. “However, data from usability testing and diary studies, in conjunction with keyword research data, can provide SEO professionals with a clearer picture of web searcher behaviors.” Enter personas and scenarios. (Search Engine Land)

The Case for Two-Tier Affiliate Marketing

The affiliate channel has become a home for price comparison sites, PPC arbitragers, email marketers and retargeting firms, among others. This means it’s time to “re-examine whether this utopian vision of a long tail of content sites is still relevant in today’s increasingly crowded online world.” The gap between large partners and the long tail has grown into a chasm. Consequently, a two-tier approach should be considered. (Econsultancy)

Marketers Are Still Trying to Get a Grip on Tablets

Despite the quick adoption of tablet devices from the likes of Apple, Samsung and RIM, brands remain in an “experimental phase,” according to agencies. Agency executives who gathered at the OMMA Tablet Revolution event in New York City suggested that brands that invest early will be a step ahead as the channel matures. (ClickZ)

How to Get More Twitter Followers

If you’re more concerned about quality than quantity, use a “follower raid.” This is simply “using other existing accounts in your particular niche and mining through the people who follow them.” First, identify your competition in the space and start following the accounts following them. Next, identify related or complementary accounts. Use private lists for all that. Then proceed with some other tactics. (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

Google Panda Update 2.2

Google is set to unleash version 2.2 of the Panda algorithm update. This was confirmed by Matt Cutts during a Q&A session on Tuesday at the SMX Advanced conference. “The next update will target a common webmaster complaint related to the original Panda/Farmer update: sites that scrape and re-publish content and are out-ranking the original source of the content.” (Search Engine Land)

66% of Consumers Say They Rarely Heed Ads on Social Networking Sites

According to research from Mintel, 66 percent of social network users say they rarely pay attention to advertisements on social networking sites. Meanwhile, 56 percent say they don’t like buying products they’ve seen advertised on these sites, “suggesting that brands have to go beyond paid adverts to influence consumer purchasing decisions.” (Mintel)

Promoted Trends: $120,000 Per Day

Promoted Trends on Twitter now cost $120,000 per day, up from $25,000-30,000 when they launched in April of last year, according to Adam Bain, Twitter’s director of revenue. “The company also recently began requiring that advertisers spend a minimum of $15,000 over three months on bid-based Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends offerings.” Bain suggested Twitter advertising trumps display advertising because of the “insane” ROI. (ClickZ)

22% of Small Businesses Buy Facebook Ads

A survey from MerchantCircle found that 66 percent of respondents use Facebook for marketing — 94 percent of them are aware of targeted ad offerings on Facebook, but just 22 percent have actually used them. Of this last group, 65 percent said they’d buy Facebook ads again, while 67 percent of this group commending their ease of use, and 65 percent are happy with the ability to start and stop campaigns. (All Facebook)

Email Marketers Need to Pay Attention to Mobile

If you’re in marketing, you’ve probably had your share of conversations about "mobile." While this can mean many different things, there are several reasons why email marketers should be paying attention to this realm. Among the takeaways of a recent study from Return Path are that a strategy for tablets might be necessary, mobile readership increase during weekends and remember complaints. (MediaPost)

Number of U.S. Mobile Display Advertisers More Than Double in Past 2 Years

According to a report from comScore, in April, 689 advertisers used mobile display ad campaigns to reach consumers, up 128 percent from two years prior. Mobile content and published accounted for 50 percent of mobile ads, while 26 percent were for consumer discretionary goods. (comScore)

The Importance of Repetition

Remember how it always took about five or so reminders from your nagging mom before you completed a chore? Well, as a marketer, there’s a lesson there. In such a cluttered world, being consistent and persistent with your messages is important. A Harvard Business Review study shows the positive impact of redundancy. (Social Media Explorer)

URLs Are Important for Google Search Results

Google’s recent layout changes have emphasized the URL more, suggesting that the URL and brand are becoming more important to people using search results. This is a good reminder that descriptive URLs are better than strings of numbers and letters. (Branded3)

Creative SEO

Social SEO most certainly has an impact on natural search rankings, which begs the question: How can brands get lots of likes, retweets, +1s and links? Here’s a look at two creative examples — one from Expedia and another from Venere.it. "Producing great infographics at the drop of a hat or coding specific Facebook pages might not be easily achievable for a lot of search engine optimizers, but the point is that great creative ideas will almost always go ‘viral,’ and this in turn will always help your link building." (Search Engine Watch)