| My Soul, and 10 Other Things that Google Owns
Following the purchase of FeedBurner, Ostrow now reckons Google owns his readers: "how many of them there are, where they come from, and how they access my content." Most of the other things are familiar: Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Blogger etc. The most interesting one is "My paycheck". If you're a blogger or webmaster, you may well get some or even most of your money from Google AdSense. The concerns are real, of course, but not so threatening because there are plenty of alternative products that are superior to Google's offerings. Not many people use Google's Orkut social network instead of MySpace or FaceBook, or use Gtalk instead of messaging products from Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. Lots of people use Flickr to share photos, and there are plenty of alternatives to Blogger.
AdSense Goes Glam
Glam Media has let it be known they've inked a multi-year deal with Google. The deal feels so glamorous, in fact, that announcement dominates the home page of the women's lifestyle site. Could this mean Google's now a fashion accessory in addition to everything else? Google will become Glam's exclusive Web search provider, as well as deliver contextual AdSense ads to the property. “Our strategy is to provide our audiences and advertisers with the most integrated and contextual entertainment experience possible, and our collaboration with Google provides additional and different contextual ad opportunities for advertisers," said Glam Media Chairman and CEO Samir Arora in a statement. The #2 women's property after iVillage, Glam claims 12 million unique monthly visitors.
Internet Marketing Long Tail Bashes the "80:20" Rule
Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson (also the editor of "The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More") was in Singapore last week for the Media Leaders Series and his Long Tail theory has put paid to Vilfredo Pareto’s 80:20 rule. An except from the Long Tail reveals how pervasive the Long Tail is, and how it put the 80:20 rule on its head. Meeting Ecast CEO Robbie Vann-Adib, Anderson is asked what percent of the top selling 10,000 digital music tracks are sold or rented at least once a month. According to Pareto’s original principle, 20% of Italy’s population controls 80% of it’s wealth. In today’s context, 80% of car accidents might be caused by 20% of car drivers. 80% of a computer’s resources might be used by 20% of the applications, 80% if your online income might come from 20% of your efforts.
Free vs. Paid Website Analytics
Unlike offline marketing, we can track and analyze ROIs from our online marketing campaign results quickly and accurately over the Internet. There is no medium that allows tracking like the Internet does, yet in hospitality, we didn’t adopt these tracking technologies as soon as they were available. Instead we relied on cheap or free analytical tools to provide us with the information that management uses to make decisions. As a result, we are often basing important marketing decisions on inferior information. We consistently receive numerous questions from hoteliers concerning how to most efficiently track and measure the ROI of online marketing efforts down to the reservation process. What metrics should hoteliers measure and pay attention to? What are the best practices in measuring ROI from the hotel’s marketing efforts? Or ROI from the hotel website? What are the best analytical tools out there? Metrics That Matter In today’s dynamic market where occupancy rates and ADRs depend on how well hoteliers utilize Internet marketing, it is no longer sufficient to measure basic website traffic stats like visitors, page views, or campaign stats like banner click-through rates and PPC clicks.
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