The Week in Review

Google: Search Ads Are Still Necessary

Google updated research from back in July to reaffirm that paid search ads offer an incremental lift in clicks. This time around, researchers found that incremental ad clicks declined by 85 percent if campaigns were paused entirely. “Yes, organic results went up — but not nearly enough to make up for the loss from the paid ads.” (Search Engine Land)

Facebook Ads Are Like Pop Art

Ads on Facebook seem like those odd banner ads on subway trains – or they’re like pop art. “Like Facebook, pop art is about liking things. Facebook advertisements are about liking things. And the more users like an idea, a status update or an image, the more advertisers know about them.” (ReadWriteWeb)

Siri for Mobile Shopping

According to a study from Catapult Marketing, 39 percent of U.S. consumers have used or are interested in using Siri, the iOS personal assistant, to look for coupons or deals. Meanwhile, 35 percent have used or are interested in using Siri for comparing prices at the shelf, while 29 percent are interested in checking inventory at another store. (eMarketer)

Forget Display Ads and Focus on Matching People’s Activities

“Historically the way to drive more ad dollars has been to increase page views, but this practice has invariably made ads less valuable. This style of page-view advertising is becoming a business model of the past.” The most popular sites and apps today don’t generate advertising revenue through page views – they are concerned with the user experience and intertwining brand messages with people’s activities. (AdAge.com)

Social Ads Are Working for Google and Facebook

Social ads work, according to various pieces of research. For instance, ads with a social annotation see a 5-10 percent list in click-through rate, according to Google’s vice president for engineering. (Search Engine Watch)

10 Optimization Secrets to Drive More Mobile Traffic From Facebook

As consumers and businesses think more and more “mobile first” about Facebook, here are 10 tips for optimizing your Facebook page to drive more “likes,” reach and engagement with mobile users. The tips cover mobile organic search and mobile paid search. (Search Engine Land)

Placing Online Ads Above the Fold Boosts CTR by 36%

According to Chitika Insights, ads placed above the fold yield a CTR that’s 36 percent higher than those below the fold. The main reason for this is the attention span of users. (Search Engine Journal)

The Future of Retargeting, Remarketing and Remessaging

First, a primer on why there are three different names for the same concept. Then a walk through the future of Google remarketing, Bing remessaging, instant retargeting, social retargeting, instant retargeting, new kids on the retargeting block, and the distant future of retargeting. (Marketing Land)

Mobile and Video Take a Bigger Share of Digital Ad Budgets

According to ValueClick Media, 65 percent of U.S. marketers will increase spending on mobile ad budgets this year from last year, while 49 percent will increase spending on video ad budgets. Meanwhile, 94 percent of U.S. marketers plan on using standard display ads, followed by 53 percent who will use rich media and 49 percent who will use mobile video. (eMarketer)

Email Marketing: Like a TV Commercial?

In order to create more engaging campaigns, email marketers must think like TV commercial producers and data-driven artists. “Improving the readability and rendering of your email should be a number one priority. Improving content assets with contextually relevant dynamic chunks of content has proven to improve response, engagement, and conversion rates.” (ClickZ)

How Facebook’s New Timeline Brand Pages Affect Email Marketing

Facebook’s new Timeline for brand pages offers opportunities for savvy email marketers. Among the things email marketers can do to increase subscribers and drive cross-channel engagement are incorporating newsletters into Timeline’s chronology, putting a premium on graphics and kill two engagement birds with one stone. (MediaPost)

Managing Googlebot and Your Mobile Sites for Mobile SEO

How should a marketer think about Googlebot, Googlebot-Mobile and their mobile website? Start by considering which devices you’re targeting. Then it’s on to detecting Googlebot-Mobile. (Search Engine Watch)

Facebook Mobile Transitions to 1-Click ‘Like’ Bar

Facebook is introducing a new mobile interface that enables users to “like” or comment on posts with one click, as opposed to the two-click process that was in place before this. This may boost the number of “likes” and feed more information to Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm. (TechCrunch)

Gowalla Shuts Down

Three months after being acquired by Facebook, Gowalla has shuttered its doors. Foursquare is now positioned to make whatever money is up for grabs in this space. (The Next Web)

Why Every Affiliate Needs to Use Sub-Campaign Tracking Codes

How can affiliates know which of their efforts are producing and which aren’t? Sub-campaign tracking codes. “No matter what the sub-campaign tracking code is called, the purpose for all of them is the same. They allow you to attach a unique identifier to each affiliate link you use so that you can tell which affiliate links are actually converting (and which aren’t).” (Marketing Land)

Millennial Media Will List on the NYSE

Mobile ad network Millennial Media will list its offering on the New York Stock Exchange, according to its new S-1 filing. The company is hoping to raise as much as $75 million, and will list under the symbol “MM.” (TechCrunch)

An SEO-Friendly Domain Migration

“Domain migrations are one of those activities that even if in the long-term can represent a benefit for an SEO process… can represent a risk for SEO because of the multiple tasks that should be performed correctly in order to avoid potential non-trivial crawling and indexing problems and consequential lost of rankings and organic traffic.” Here’s a checklist in infographic form. The three steps included are: 1) plan the migration, 2) implement the migration and 3) monitor the migration. (SEOmoz)

3 Rules to Determine if You’re Using the Right Keywords on Your Site

When selecting keywords, the go-to signals and data don’t reveal anything about searcher intent or whether you can convert those keywords into sales. In order to make well-informed keyword-selection decisions, you need to ask yourself these three questions: 1) Is the keyword relevant to your target audience? 2) Will the keyword deliver traffic? 3) Will the traffic sent by the keyword convert? (Search Engine Journal)

A Checklist for Facebook Brand Page Timelines

If you’re running a brand’s profile page on Facebook, here’s a helpful checklist of things you need to be aware of and fix before March 30, when all brand pages will be shifted to the new timeline format. Among the topics covered here are the new guidelines, the cover image, engagement and messaging, loss of landing pages, and the four available tabs. (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

The Internet: Like Real Life, Only With Social Buttons

Which websites are implementing social buttons for optimal results? Here’s a look at some sites that are doing a good job of using social sharing buttons in a way that facilitates easy sharing, liking and subscribing. (Search Engine Land)

Social Ads Generate a 55% Greater Lift in Ad Recall Than Non-Social Ads

According to Nielsen, on average, social ads generate a 55 percent greater lift in ad recall than non-social ads. This can be attributed to the finding that 76 percent of U.S. Internet consumers said they most trusted recommendations from personal acquaintances, while 49 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online. (Nielsen)

Google Is Slipping in China’s Online Ad Market

The online ad market in China continues to expand, and while Alibab and Baidu are thriving in it, Google is losing market share there. Baidu claims 30.5 percent of the revenue, followed by Alibaba with 17.4 percent and Google with 6.5 percent. (Tech in Asia)

5 Reasons Your Content Marketing Must Address Price

Many business websites don’t address questions about pricing. Here are five reasons to discuss pricing: 1) the power of SEO, 2) not every prospect or lead is a good fit for your business, 3) you’re going to have to answer the question anyway, 4) think about how your customers feel, and 5) you’ll gain respect and appreciation from your customers. (Social Media Explorer)

5 Best Practices for Global SEO

Here are five techniques for ensuring your website is optimized from a global SEO perspective: 1) utilize multilingual markup tags, 2) implement geo-specific schema tags, 3) create webmaster accounts for each country, 4) set up Google Places listings and 5) engage in local link building. (ClickZ)

PPC Split Testing: 3 W’s, 1 H

"PPC advertisers face two common problems when they try to tackle split testing: no ideas, or too many ideas." Here’s a framework to help your testing: Who are they? What result do they want? Why do they want it? How do they want it? (Search Engine Watch)