Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Move over old timers, new players are in town. So out with the old and in with the new. Jay Cutler finally performed like the franchise quarterback he has the potential to become last night, beating Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings in a fairly impressive over-time victory. Youth over experience and history prevailed in the leadership spot last night.

The same can be said about the changing advertising landscape. The old timers like newspaper advertising and television advertising are finally starting to feel a more serious threat from the Internet as some of the largest advertisers in the world are making the shift online.  Two weeks back, Pepsi announced that they will not be advertising in next year’s Super Bowl, breaking from a 23 year tradition. Last year, Pepsico was one of the top four advertisers during the game, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

The decision to forgo the 44th Super Bowl comes as Pepsi prepares to launch a new cause-oriented marketing campaign. Pepsi has chosen to give away over $20 million in a social media marketing blitz that it is calling The Pepsi Refresh Project, debuting in 2010. Between1999 and 2009, Pepsi spent over $142 million on Super Bowl Ads. That is a lot of money that looks to be getting redirected. I suspect other businesses will continue to follow Pepsi’s lead as their efforts and various other advertiser’s online initiatives are continually proving successful. The Internet is quickly proving incredibly powerful and valuable to advertisers of all sizes.

While pay-per-click (PPC) advertising may not be the only online marketing solution for Pepsi or any business, the Internet provides advertisers so many different opportunities that there is certainly something that can benefit just about any advertiser. The key is to work with qualified search engine marketing consultants or a PPC Management Agency that will provide reliable and trusted guidance and service.

The Stock Market Crashes: 

The stock market is crashing and it looks like we are smack dab in the middle of a financial crisis. The stock market collapsed this week, fueled by a bankruptcy by Lehman Brothers, the 4th largest bank in the US, in addition to a federal bailout of AIG, the world’s largest insurer. This is on top of ongoing labor concerns, with another 84,000 layoffs reported in August, the eighth straight month of cuts. Plus, that’s on top of the
current housing meltdown we’ve experienced over the past year or so. Not good.

Businesses are likely to put off any new or increased advertising going forward and may even look to scale back in these times of uncertainty. The next 3 months will prove how well online advertising can weather really poor economic conditions.

Another Organization Opposes Google-Yahoo! Deal 

In other news this week, The World Association of Newspapers, which represents over 18,000 newspapers, said the planned Google-Yahoo! deal should not be allowed because of antitrust concerns. This comes after last week’s concern expressed by the ANA, which represents over 400 companies and 9,000 brands. Interestingly, Google’s CEO said that much of the negative publicity aimed at the proposed partnership has been stirred up by Microsoft, saying, “We’re quite certain that Microsoft is busy helping people get upset about things.” The Microsoft, Google War rages on.

Yahoo! Launches Redesigned Homepage: 

Just today, Yahoo! Launched a redesigned homepage, which is the most heavily trafficked site on the Web, but initially made it available to just 1% of its users. It will be slowly rolled out going forward and appears to offer some nice custom features. The new home page allows users to see when new information arrives not just on Yahoo! e-mail or Yahoo! news, but from other desired destinations as well, such as eBay or Gmail. The Yahoo home page attracts more than 100 million U.S. users a month and 300 million worldwide. That’s a lot of users, and that’s all for this week’s PPC Advertising Review.

View Brad’s Profile

By now, just about everyone has heard something about Facebook. So what’s the fuss? Well, for starters, it currently has more than 90 million active users and continues to grow at a rapid pace. According to Comscore, Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world. Though beginning at the university level with college students, Facebook exploded into multiple channels, with more than half of its users coming from outside of colleges. Furthermore, the fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older, representing professionals, specialists, athletes, celebrities, you name it; You’ll find it at Facebook.

Facebook knows a lot about its users and offers fairly impressive targeted PPC advertising opportunities. The traffic is certainly not as targeted as search engine marketing traffic, but is likely comparable to that which is provided by Content Match at Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing. For the right companies, Facebook can potentially target ideal new prospects. For example, one question Facebook asks is about political views. I initially chose “Democratic Party”, which I later changed to blank, as I am actually more undecided. Regardless, as a result, I quickly started seeing ads for a Free Obama Sticker Give-away. I thought that was fairly well targeted.

I then decided to setup an account for JumpFly to get more familiar with the interface and see how it works. I initially targeted advertising and marketing groups as well as business owners. So far, with limited effort, this account is providing about 20,000 impressions & 10 clicks per day for about $5 per day. It certainly provides significant exposure at a very reasonable CPC and CPM. We’ll see if it proves to provide conversions over time.

Facebook also allows you to setup a free page for a business, artist, band or public figure. For example, you can view the page I created for JumpFly, or even Michael Phelps’s page, but you have to be a member. Facebook represents one piece of the increasingly popular social-media-marketing marketplace. Joining is free. See you there.