Monthly Archives: January 2010

Rubicon Q4 2009 Market Intelligence Report

Posted on by
Reply

The Rubicon Project Market Intelligence report can be found here at the Rubicon Project. As Rubicon aggregates advertising networks to optimize publishers revenue they have unique insight to the online advertising market. Each quarter they release a report. It is free for the exchange of your name and email.

It is a 25 page report that is worth reading. Of note is their Rubicon 20 Index which tracks the CPM rates across 20 of the top publishers. They noted a 34 percent increase from Q3 of 2009 to Q4 of 2009. Here is a snapshot of their Rubicon 20 Index.

About their report in their words:

Our quarterly Market Reports offer insights and intelligence around emerging trends in online advertising. This latest Market Report examines our Q4 findings and trends for the year ahead, including the ongoing evolution in the ad network market; the importance of optimizing inventory through pricing; and advertisers push for greater control and transparency.

Take a look at the Rubicon Project and get a copy. By the way, the picture is of Rubicon CEO Frank Addante.

Companies Using Social Media

Posted on by
3

There is an interesting article about a company using Social Media. The writer is Ryan Waggoner and he is speaking to Aaron Burcell, VP of Marketing for SmartyCard. You can read the full article here entitled Real Companies Using Social Media: How SmartyCard Makes Kids Smarter. For those wondering what other companies do and what a VP of Marketing (really a CMO as we know Aaron personally) should be responsible for an implementing as part of their marketing plan.

SmartyCard happens to be a client of ours at Phase One Accelerators and here is a blurb we appreciate.

Interviewer Question: What software tools or web apps do you use in your social media efforts?

Answer: Phase One Accelerators built a custom media tracking and promotions engine for SmartyCard ……. this is why we went with POA and the custom integration….With POA’s custom development helping us understand conversion, we can use a myriad of tools in combination to understand how and where customers are entering our sites.

The full article is here.

Mobile Credit Card Payment Acceptance

Posted on by
Reply

If you have ever decided to accept credit cards you know the issues. Essentially you are bound by old school regimes which make you sign a long term contract with them, purchase or lease equipment and more. It was about time someone made a simple to use device and removed the painful activation process to dis-intermediate the market.

So along comes Square which is perfectly named due to their device being a square apparatus. This device allows you to accept payment anywhere. I ran across the company when I noticed Square Inc received funding. One of the investors was Kevin Rose and he recently posted a video about it. You can read the site for more detailed information, however this video is a nice short explanation of how it works and the unique features.







Plug In Swipe Device -”Square”
paymentTake a look at the image on the right. Their device is really that elegant. you simply plug it into your phone and launch their application. As Kevin mentions, example in the video, you could have all your amazing stuff (crap) in your driveway for a Saturday sale. Then when someone does not have enough cash to buy that incredible stain filled couch of yours you can accept their credit card. It allows you to swipe their card, have them sign, and provide a receipt. You can also take a picture of the item sold as well as the person using the card. It will email them a receipt and also through the GPS of the device record the location. What great fraud protection features.



In my opinion this is quite a game changer for credit card processing. Well done.

Top Ad Networks for Dec 2009

Posted on by
Reply

The December 2009 Ad Network report was released from comScore. They provide statistics on the top 15 ad networks based on their reach. The sample size is decided from U.S. Internet users in December 2009.

You can see from the chart below that AOL Advertising had the largest reach. The reach is defined as unique visitors during the month. They also provided a percent change from the same month the previous year. The largest percentage change from the previous year was Collective Network.

See the full press release here.

AdSense Tied to Analytics

Posted on by
1

Once you have AdSense and Analytics tied together you can gleen invaluable information. By tying these two google tools together you are able to dig into site revenue via google adsense.

Here is an example of the statistics and revenue information you can find. See the screen shot on the right. First note that you can obtain these statistics in aggregate for the site and on a page by page basis. Each page will show the revenue generated. The typical google analytic filters apply, such as the time frame of viewing a day, week, month, or other specific date range. The amount of revenue is shown as well as an estimate of the CPM. CPM is the revenue per thousand, more typically called the cost per thousand but can be described as revenue. More stats are shown.

This information can be invaluable in determining the value of specific areas of the site as well as pages. Here is a previous article to assist in the linking of google analytics to google adsense.

New WordPress Stats

Posted on by
Reply

WordPress announced two new statistic features in the Site Stats. Here is the official WordPress post.


Home Page Stats
You may not have realized but the statistics did not show your home page in the past. In other words the front page of your site was not listed in the statistics. Therefore you would not know, other than through a statistics provider such as Google analytics, how your home page performed.

Posts On Which Day
If you host your blog on WordPress.com you will also, as you move your mouse on the statistics, see which posts were created on each day. A nice feature, however you can obviously also find this by simply looking within the posts which are sorted by date.

Add a Facebook Fan Page Widget

Posted on by
Reply

You may know that you can create what is known as a Facebook fan page. An example is the fan page for this site here. The benefits of a fan page are many. As Facebook is the largest social site online you have access to the biggest possible audience. Obviously it is easier to go where the people are then to attempt to bring them all to you.

Facebook Fan Page
Many people prefer to get their information through their favorite sites such as Facebook. Therefore take your site and information to them through a Facebook Fan Page. Other benefits are the features the Fan page provides such as a discussion area and more. Individuals find your page within Facebook, however what if they come to your site? Preferably you want to retain visitors and this is done by offering them your content via an RSS feed, email newsletter and why not have them join your Fan page. To do this placing a Fan widget on your site is an easy excellent way to accomplish it.

Facebook Fan Page Widget
To understand what a Fan Page Widget is, see the sidebar on the right of this site. You will see a square box with a small image, the name of the page in facebook “Online Business” and a group of 10 fans. Those images are individuals that have become fans of this site on Facebook and their Facebook images.

How to Add the Facebook Fan Page Widget
Once you have a Fan page and are logged into Facebook simply go to this link here. You will see two simple steps.

First you choose your Fan page name from the drop down box. If you only have one page you will only see one page. Next you can choose to include the stream which is the most recent information shared on the page and the fans which are the images of your fans. The widget on the right on this site has the fans only.

Second step, you choose they type of site you have to add the code to. Unless you have Blogger or Typepad you simply click the other button. There is code to copy and paste. You paste the code where you want the widget to appear. The default settings are just as you see on this site. It is a width of 300 pixels and it shows 10 people. If you use WordPress you can edit the sidebar.php file to add it to your sidebar or many simply use the widgets. If you use the widgets in WordPress then add a text widget and paste the code there.

Modifying the Fan Box Widget
The most popular items to modify are the width and the number of fans to show. The height will automatically be adjusted based on the number of fans you choose to show. To adjust the width you will see this in the code you paste width=”300″, if after you paste the code it does not fit in your sidebar you can change the width to be smaller or larger. You can also modify the number of fans to appear by modifying this connections=”10″. Play with the number to add more or less. There are additional options to modify such as the font size and you can find more modification details here on the Facebook wiki.