Twitter is exploding at the moment and everyone is climbing on the bandwagon, blogging about its benefits etc, and you could be forgiven for thinking that this was the new easy way to online success.

In the real world, clients want to talk about search engines, search engine optimization or search engine marketing (Google Adwords / Pay-Per-Click).

Why? The current economic downturn is having an impact on businesses and with the majority of people now using Google (mainly) to find information on an all subjects across the board, many organizations are re-evaluating their online marketing and website strategy. It’s an area that clients in every market are asking for advice on.

Many are now concerned by their visibility to prospective customers. Businesses that previously saw a website as an online brochure are waking up to the fact that online they’re completely invisible to those searching online for the products and services that they offer. Not a good place to be at the best of times, but a business killer in a recession. (more…)

I just recieved a spoof email from some douchebag in Canada. It’s a very sophisticated request for me to login to my Google adwords account. The email starts with the subject line;

Your AdWords Google Account is stoped.

Thats the first indication, a spelling mistake in the subject. Those PhDs at G are smarter than that. The email then says;

Dear Advertiser,
———————————-
We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your payment information.
————————
Please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your payment information.
————————————————-
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.
———————————–
The Google AdWords Team

The interesting thing is the email address is actually on the Google domain, which is another more sophisticated technique, so I followed the link, which is included above but may not be working for very long. Below is a screen capture of the landing page;

It’s pretty darn sophisticated isn’t it. I wonder how many people have gone there and logged in, thus giving the perp their adwords account login. Pretty serious stuff eh? I always forward the email to spoof@google.com, and I usually get an email back from them within a few days…

 

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I’ve just been reading an interesting article in Forbes magazine about YouTube. Apparently advertising rates for display ads on pages with user generated content has collapsed with rates on FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube having fallen 45% since Febuary this year… Forbes state the cost is now 18cents per 1000 page views… hmmm much cheaper than Google! But whats the problem here?

Well, it may have something to do with the fact that the conversion rates for those 1000 page views are extremely low. They can’t be very well targetted at all, so you just stick your ad up there and hope for the best. Just like a lot of people to with magazine ads or the Yellow book…

Apparently YouTube has done a lot of experimenting with ad formats and found some (Forbes says surprising) results.

Get this: Pre-roll video ads prior to the main video cause the viwer to click away 70% of the time. Surprising? I don’t think so. Those pre-roll, pre-view ads are abnoxious. Theres an example of advertisers thinking ‘we’ve got you by the short hairs so you just be a good girl and sit and watch our advertising dross for 20 seconds before we give you what you’re really looking for’… 70% say ‘F*&% you!’ and click away… go figure…

Short banners that pop-up from the bottom of the video window are better, with people clicking those ads 8 times as often as standard display ads next to the video… means you gotta get your ad integrated with the content, bet thats pricey :). These pop-up or roll-over ads are more effective if they appear 15 seconds into the video. So what that tells me is 15 seconds is all you got before the viewers attantion span has waned and they are looking to move on, ‘oh look, a banner has appeared, lets click on it aimlessley…’ yehaaw, the miracle of the internet as an advertising media.

When the roll-over is run in tandem with a display ad next to the video the chance of someone clicking can be 46 times as good, whew.