Microsoft just filed a lawsuit in federal counrt against a group it charged with Click Fraud. This is probably just the tip of the iceberg of what might become a huge problem for the PPC industry, including web site owners and search engine companies.

The main difference between internet advertising and traditional media advertising is that on the internet companies can precisely measure how many people not only actually see the ad but are interested enough to take action (click through). Whereas in traditional media ads are priced based on impressions, on the internet the dominant model is more and more pay-per-click (PPC).

But the very characteristic of the internet that makes user behavior measureable also enables cheating of that metric. And if there is money to be made cheating, there is no way to eliminate growing hordes of cheaters. There are two basic situations that invite click fraud.

• Competitor click fraud – In this situation, disreputable marketers (or their agents) use automated programs (or low-cost people) to click through competitors’ ads. The intent is to quickly use up the competitors’ PPC marketing budgets on false clicks so that the ads won’t appear when real users are searching. (This is the situation that Microsoft is currently battling.)
• Self-inflation click fraud – Another, as disreputable, form of click fraud is when marketers have ads on their own sites (banner ads, AdSense ads, etc.) and then use automated programs or low-cost people to click through the ads. (I won’t provide free links to these thieves, but there are numerous web sites that solicit people to sign up to be clicking “mules”.)

This will continue to grow as a problem in the internet marketing world, and there is not much that we can do, other than be vigilant monitoring the metrics coming out of our web sites and placed ads, looking for anything out of the ordinary that might point to fraud. This is one of the activities that Domus provides its interactive customers. For more information, please visit our web site and contact us.

Everyone knows how successful Facebook is, and as such, marketers want to reach that audience. However, the basic problem facing Facebook marketers is the same thing that is attracting them – the demographics of the user community.

Facebook users are by far predominantly young, under-35 (Facebook Demographics), and those users pay far less attention to online ads than other demographics. In fact, it’s not uncommon to hear high school and college-age people saying that they specifically avoid looking at the section of the screen where the ads are located.

What does this mean for advertisers? Not only should you not expect to see too many hits from Facebook ads (Facebook Ad Impressions and Click-Through Rates), don’t assume that a comparable percentage of the “impressions” are actually even seen by the page visitors.

Does this mean that it does not pay to place ads (or apps) on Facebook? No, but be realistic as to what results you will get.

Domus is a full-service advertising agency, PR firm, and interactive marketing agency based in Philadelphia. Please visit our web site to find out more about us.

At Domus, we strongly encourage our clients to incorporate a strong internet presence management program – both in terms of depth and breadth – as part of their strategic marketing efforts. As such, we also try to stay attuned to what other companies are doing in this area. Two examples recently came to our attention.

Over the last few weeks, we had posted blog entries on two topics in two different industries — the auto industry (Ford, Chrysler, and GM) and the search engine industry (Does Bing Change Paid Search? and Bing, Yahoo, and Google, plus a couple of follow-ups.) In both cases, after posting the thoughts on this blog site, I participated in a number of industry-specific and topical news and blog sites over the next week, adding my comments and referencing our post. In the case of the auto industry, I even went on to the auto makers’ web sites and submitted comments (with link-backs) using their on-line forms.

The results? In the case of the auto industry, from the day the blog entry was posted through the next several weeks, there was not a single hit on our blog site from the entire state of Michigan (headquarters of both the UAW and the US auto makers). On the other hand, in the first three days of posts on the search engine industry, we got 4 hits from Sunnydale, California (Yahoo headquarters), 14 hits from Mountain View, California (Google headquarters), and 99 hits from Redmond, Washington (Microsoft headquarters).

This seems indicative of which industries are paying attention to the online community and which industries are not, doesn’t it?

Please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com to find out more about us.

It’s amazing how many people remain so filled with emotion over big, successful companies. “Google is a bully and deserves to be taken apart.” “Microsoft is a bully and deserves to be taken apart.” Etc. Both have achieved their ranks because they have consistently provided great tools and solutions to the rest of us. And it’s great that they’re both battling each other — in each other’s primary turfs. The result can only be better solutions for all of us. (And if that means more profit for both of them, great for them.)

Microsoft is still chasing Google in the Search market with Bing (actually, it is first chasing Yahoo, but make no mistake that after it passes Yahoo it will go after Google). And Google is chasing Microsoft in the areas of email and office applications. The next couple of years should provide a bonanza of great products for us.

In the meantime, those of us who are engaged in paid search and other forms of internet marketing (for ourselves or for our clients) should be paying careful attention to the positionings of each. Budget allocations, demographic targeting, and message creative content all might be affected by the moves these two make.

Domus, Inc. is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. It provides, advertising, public relations, event marketing, internet presence management, strategic consulting, and other services to its clients. Visit our web site and contact us for more information.

Google is by far the dominant search engine. Both numbers two and three (Yahoo and Microsoft) have much smaller shares of the market than Google. So why would Google pay any attention at this point to Microsot? Why would it “ding Bing”? (See Google’s Schmidt dings Bing and Bing and Google Get Testy for more.) Classic marketing principles suggest that a dominant market leader should not publicly attack its competitors, even its number two competitor. (For example, you don’t see Coke spending lots of money comparing themselves to Pepsi.)

On the other hand, I’m sure Microsoft loves the fact that Google employees and executives are talking about Bing. It just gives Bing free publicity, helping it to grow more. Whether or not Bing can give a real challenge to Google at some point in the future is a question no one can answer right now. However, the company to be worried is Yahoo. With all of the continued attention, Microsoft has a good shot at overtaking Yahoo.

In fact, I predict it will happen before the end of 2009.

Domus, Inc. is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. At Domus, we never lose site of classic marketing principles as we strategize how to incorporate the realities of today’s world and technologies into marketing plans for our clients. Looking for a dynamic agency to help you leap past your competition? Visit our web site and then contact us.

“Honesty is the best policy” is a lesson learned very early in our life and often taught to us by our parents. And on many occasions I have found that this really is true and an incredibly worthwhile approach.

In my opinion, advertising agencies for the most part have a problem with this. Now, as an ad professional, I am certainly not calling myself or my colleagues liars.
But then there is the dreaded posturing – the long conversations, the rationalization and the spin. Why? Sometimes because we screwed up or sometimes we are just trying to get our way. From my experience, though, all that does is waste a whole lot of time and make everyone look like idiots.

Domus’ client relationships defy industry average for length of time with us. This is a direct result of our culture of treating our clients and vendors like we would want to be treated – with hbonesty and integrity. We all make mistakes, but early and honest conversations help minimize potential problem and build a level of trust. No one is superhuman, but we must all be passionate about what we do and remain true to our principles, starting with honesty.

First there was the StatCounter story showing Bing surpassing Yahoo! Next, ComScore, HitWise, Nielsen, and CNet all reported that maybe Yahoo! was still beating Bing. (E.g., see: Daily Tech and CNet.)

So what is the reality and what does it mean for marketers? Well, here are a few thoughts:

• It’s amazing how much emotion seems to permeate the online user community when Microsoft is in the news. No other company seems to generate so much passion, whether positive or negative. Serious marketers need to filter all of that out and make decisions based just on the facts.
• As a marketer, should it change my strategies, tactics, or processes if Bing is now number two or (one day later) if Yahoo is still number two? I think the answers are simple – strategies remain the same, (internal) processes remain the same, but tactics might shift. Specifically, our strategies still attempt to maximize the effectiveness of SEM budgets, and our processes still continue to analyze our own web sites and related metrics to adjust allocations. So the only thing that changes is potentially the tactics of how much to allocate to which search engine. But the important point is that I should be allocating my budget based on which search engine provides my sites with the best traffic, not which search engine gets good numbers from StatCounter, Hitwise, Nielsen, or anyone else. Those sites should just provide me information about what aspects of my own traffic I should more closely monitor.
• With all of this said, anyone who discounts Microsoft in this market (or any other) is seriously underestimating them. Microsoft does not usually come out with the first, and very often its first or second or even third attempt is not the best. But Microsoft is persistent. They didn’t become a behemoth by giving up.
• Next, what do I think of Bing? So far I like it. I already gravitate to it more than Yahoo, but I still go to Google first. (However, when searching Blogs, I think Google is still far ahead.)
• By the way, there’s a great experiment on BlindSearch, reported on Mashable.com, where people vote on results from different search engines without knowing which engine delivered the results (to remove prejudices). So far, Bing is beating Yahoo! (but trailing Google). Interesting.

Domus, Inc. is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia with clients throughout the United States. Domus combines classic marketing principles with dynamic and innovative execution, using a unique business service model. Please visit our website at http://www.domusinc.com to find out more.

The StatCounter monitoring service just release statistics showing that Microsoft’s new search site, Bing might have overtaken Yahoo! as the number two search engine in the U.S. Although it’s too early to tell whether or not this is just a new launch blip or a long-term trend, the indications are that the search engine marketing game (paid search in particular) is changing.

Most companies and advertising agencies such as Domus spread their paid search budgets across the major search engines, generally proportioned according to their relative market shares. Now that Bing might be overtaking Yahoo!, agencies and other marketers need to take a close look at their allocations and resulting traffic to see if they should be adjusted.

Domus, Inc. is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia with clients throughout the United States.

In the current economic conditions, marketing budgets must be leveraged in the most effective and streamlined way possible. Although internet marketing budgets have continued to grow as traditional marketing has experienced cuts, this need for increased effectiveness is still applicable to online initiatives.

Search engine marketing (SEM), composed of SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search/pay-per-click (PPC), amongst other tactics, is one of the strongest and most effective ways of reaching a targeted, qualified audience. Properly executed SEO initiatives can, over weeks and months, improve a site’s rank for strategically important keywords. However, paid search campaigns can be used to increase a site’s visibility for keywords that SEO has not had enough time to affect and for keywords that SEO would be hard-pressed to be successful for, such as broad industry terms and competitor names.

When deciding which keywords to target via paid search and/or SEO, it is important to understand the site in question’s current organic rank for each keyword. While a paid search campaign can consist of any keywords that are relevant to the site and the brand, it is important not to cannibalize your SEO efforts. Brand-specific keywords will usually yield high results within the organic returns, so it may not be necessary to bid on those words in pay-per-click campaigns. Instead, budgets can be better allocated to more generic/general keywords, which usually require a higher cost per click (CPC). Being able to bid more on the generic/general terms will increase ranks, build brand awareness and capture a new audience that may not have been aware of the brand. Additionally, both SEO and paid search can be used to target long-tail keywords, highly specific phrases usually comprised of multiple terms, though PPC will generate more immediate visibility.

In short, know your current strengths within organic returns, and focus paid search campaigns on the keywords whose ranks could be improved upon. For more information regarding internet marketing and traditional marketing, visit Domus’ website.