A couple of weeks ago Spot Runner contacted us by phone stating that the following post “Google TV vs. Spot Runner” contained inaccurate information about their company. They asked that we either remove the post or correct the inaccurate info.

We have corrected the inaccurate info in the original post and we are posting their official responses (below) to our previous statements. We have also provided a link from the original post pointing here for updates.

Here’s the exact response to our points that Spot Runner submitted to us in it’s entirety.  I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this info but I’d love to hear what you all have to say about their services.

The items marked in bold are the original descriptions written by Best Rank from our previous post. Directly below Best Rank’s description is Spot Runner’s revisions:

1. BestRank: Customers can select from a huge video library, Spot Runner charges a modest fee of around $500 to personalize your video.

1. Spot Runner customers can select from an extensive library of professional, high-quality ads which will then be customized with a customer’s images, messages and a new voiceover for as low as $499 depending on the level of customization. Spot Runner can also produce a completely custom ad from scratch, and can deploy the Spot Runner Production Network to any business in the United States to capture on-site footage of our clients’ businesses – such as images of their storefronts, customer testimonials, employees at work, product demonstrations and local landmarks. A customer can also use an ad they have created themselves.

2. BestRank: Spot Runner owns and controls your ads.

2. If a customer already has an ad, they can bring it to Spot Runner for placement and they retain ownership of the ad. When using a Spot Runner library ad, Spot Runner retains ownership of the template; however that ad is reserved for the customer’s exclusive use in the selected geographic area for the duration of their campaign and for a period afterwards.

3. BestRank: The minimum amount for a television schedule is $1000 per day

3. Spot Runner does not have established minimum buys. Based on its extensive experience in this space, Spot Runner works with clients to determine the minimum budget necessary for a campaign to be effective, especially relating to a client’s geographic target and campaign type.

4. BestRank: Spot Runner manages your ads according to your budget and preferences, you don’t have control on any negotiations.

4. Spot Runner’s media planning division works closely with a client to define their target audiences and locations to develop a media plan. Spot Runner then negotiates the buy on behalf of its clients.

5. BestRank: Spot Runner controls when and where your ad will show. You can see where the ad was shown only after the ad was aired

5. Spot Runner relieves their customers of the complex issues of buying airtime themselves and provides every customer with the services of an expert media planning team. After working with the customer to define their targets and the goal of their campaign, Spot Runner’s media buying team places the ad buys accordingly. Customers are well aware of what channels their ad will be running on as well as the daypart.

6. BestRank: You are not allowed to control your ad on any shows

6. Customers work closely with Spot Runner to define the best channels to advertise on to reach their target consumer. Spot Runner can also negotiate advertising during specific programming.

7. BestRank: You can buy local and National, the company is going after National Advertisers

7. With Spot Runner you can purchase local, regional and national advertising. Spot Runner’s proprietary geo-targeting technology allows customers to target down to individual neighborhoods. Spot Runner focuses both on local and national advertisers.

8. BestRank: You are allowed to run political ads

8. Spot Runner recently launched its Political Advertising Program catering specifically to the needs of candidates and causes. With this program, Spot Runner aims to leverage the internet and new technologies to open the door for candidates and cause-related initiatives to run highly targeted ads on TV, radio and online.

9. BestRank: You do not have the ability choose specific TV programs

9. Spot Runner can negotiate advertising during specific programs.

10: BestRank: Spot Runner controls when and where your ads will show

10. Spot Runner builds an airtime schedule to reach a customer’s target consumer on the channels they watch in their area of operation, providing detailed reports after the ad airs so they can track their results and grow their business.

11. BestRank: Spot Runner cannot tell you when your ad will air ahead of time

11. Spot Runner provides clients with information on when and where their ads are going to air.

12. BestRank: Greater Broadcast with mostly cable providers which provide a bigger coverage. Dish Network and other direct broadcast combined reach less than 17% of U.S. households, according to Nielsen Media Research (source Spot Runner FAQ section).

12. Spot Runner’s reach includes national and local broadcast and cable networks, a significantly larger portion of U.S. households than what is reached by satellite direct broadcast alone which, all providers combined, reaches less than 17% of U.S. households. Not only does Spot Runner have a geographical reach throughout the U.S. but it also has the proprietary technology to geo-target down to individual neighborhoods.

We still believe that Google TV has a more friendly service, which is easier to integrate with other marketing efforts. But we apologize for any inaccuracies in the original post. Sorry Spot Runner, no hard feelings.

I just had to write this post about the explosive growth in the online advertising space. It seems our market is growing very fast even in these times of uncertainty.

I subscribe to email blasts from a company called Mediapost. I get several emails each day with cool stats about the online industry including search and social media. Sometimes I just delete the emails based on the title, and sometimes I glance through the emails and try to glean some good nuggets of info. A couple of days ago I got an email that was titled: “Web #2 Ad Medium in 5 Years” Hmmm…that piqued my interest, so I opened it.

Recently the IDC (not sure what IDC stands for) released a study that forecasts and analyzes US Internet advertising for 2008-2012. Overall, the Internet advertising revenue is expected to roughly double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.

There are some very interesting little tidbits in this study, which happens to cost about $4500 to purchase. I’m not crazy enough to purchase the entire study (Click Here if You Are), but the excerpts seem promising…here is the Cliff’s notes version:

Essentially they are stating that the Internet will rise from the number 5 advertising medium up to the number 2 medium by the end of 2012. This will make advertising revenue larger than cable TV, newspapers, and broadcast TV. Direct marketing will remain in the top spot, according to the study.

It seems that video advertising will be responsible for the single biggest revenue percentage gain; it is anticipated that video advertising on the Internet will grow sevenfold from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012, which gives it an annual compounded growth rate of 49.4%. As any good rapper would say…”Unhhh…how you like me now?” A sevenfold increase in 5 years…all I can say is WOW…that is an industry that I want to be a part of. Just slice me off a little piece of that revenue and I’ll be happy. The IDC study also anticipates that brand advertisers will shift significants amounts of their budgets into video commercials; mainly taking away from their current efforts on both broadcast and cable TV.

What’s the reasoning behind this massive growth in the online video advertising space?? I think it’s because advertisers are starting to realize that people are sick of being told what to watch and when to watch it. The Internet allows people the freedom to choose what they want to watch and when…so why not cater to that desire?

Some other conclusions that the IDC study came to are:

- Search will still remain the king. Search ads hit $10.4 billion in 2007 and is expected to grow to almost $18 billion in 2012. However, search advertising as a percentage of Internet advertising is expected to go down from 41% of the market share last year to about 34% in 2012.
- As stated previously, online video will explode over the next 4 years and it will expand its Internet advertising share from 2% to 7.4%.
- Another big mover in this space will be referral and lead-generation services. These services will see the second largest market share gain and will grow from $2.3 billion in 2007 to $5.9 billion in 2012.
- Surprisingly, the IDC forecasts mobile advertising to only grow to “just shy” of 1 percent of the overall market share. Although this is a fast growing market, I expected mobile advertising to be a little stronger.

As you can see, lots of good news in our industry. I’m excited about the prospects and the growth rate. This study just helps solidify my decision to operate a business in this industry…let’s just hope that the study is accurate.

At the beginning of May, Google announced the release of their new TV Ads Service. Spot Runner has been running a very similar program for over a year with great success. Here are some of the key differences between the two services:

Click Here for Spot Runner’s Official Response to This Post

GOOGLE TV ADs	SPOT RUNNER TV ADs
Customers can select videos from many qualified ad creators; outside vendors will customize your video from as low as $500 and up.	Customers can select from a huge video library, Spot Runner charges a modest fee of $499 to personalize your video
You own the ad, you can make future modifications.	Spot Runner owns and controls your ads unless you bring an ad into the network. Update.
The minimum amount for a television schedule is $250 per day.	There is no minimum amount.
Google will place your ad according to a bid process. The ad spots are sold in online auctions 24 hours before airtime.	Spot Runner manages your ads according to your budget and preferences and they negotiate on your behalf. Update
You can buy your own airtime.	Spot Runner controls when and where your ad will show. You will be made aware of what channel your ad is showing on and of the dayparting info. Update
You can block shows that you would not like to advertise.	You can work with Spot Runner to determine the appropriate channels and they can negotiate specific shows on your behalf.
You can buy local and nationwide ads, the local ads are only offered in a few selective areas.	You can buy local and national ads.(see article)
Cannot run any political ads	You are allowed to run political ads
Ability to choose specific TV program.	You do not have the ability choose specific TV programs, however Spot Runner can negotiate specific programs on your behalf.
Monitor in advance when your ad will air ahead of time.	Spot Runner controls when and where your ads will show. Update
You can control when and where each TV ad will show	Clients are made aware of when and where their ad will air in advance.
Ads air only in 125 DISH Network™ channels, the fastest-growing pay-TV provider in the country since 2000 and currently serves more than 13.1 million satellite TV customers. (see details)	Greater broadcast than Google, with mostly cable providers which provide larger coverage. **Dish Network and other direct broadcast combined reach less than 17% of U.S. households, according to Nielsen Media Research (source Spot Runner FAQ section).

Google seems to have a very affordable solution when it comes to placing, controlling and tracking your TV campaign performance, however they do not have the user-friendly video production capabilities of Spot Runner.

On the other hand you might say that, Google, acting only as an efficient broker on the video creation process, will begin gobbling up Spot Runner’s market share in the long run so long as nothing changes between the two - After all, Google’s specialty is to provide a user friendly interface to manage and control your Internet (and TV) marketing efforts, not to directly create or produce websites or TV ads. Spot Runner seems like they try to do-it-all.

Google TV allows many small to medium size companies to enter the TV media with a limited budget. Unlike Spot Runner, the management and control for TV commercials is also fully integrated with other Internet marketing campaigns through Adwords, so a professional Search Engine Marketing firm can measure and control the effectiveness of your TV ads sending potential buyers to an online website, and further track in greater details your total return on investment.

Read Spot Runner’s Official Response to This Post.

I ran across a great little article (link to article below) today written by William Flaiz, the President of SEO over at Avenue A | Razorfish. William very succinctly, and intuitively, wrapped up the hottest trends for 2007 and explained their impact on search marketers. Social Media and Universal Search were huge in 2007 and will continue to grow in popularity, and use, through 2008.

William also touches on a point in his article that is one of my pet-peeves; the insistence by more and more companies to have a flash based website.  I understand that companies want the latest and greatest website and that they want their websites to stand-out from the competition.  But, if you don’t implement proper SEO planning into the DESIGN phase, then you will waste a lot of money on a site that cannot be indexed properly by the search engines.  It really could not be more simple…you have to plan properly, which means implementing an SEO expert early into the design phase to work along side the site designer.

Ok..enough of the rant.  Take a couple of minutes and check out William’s article titled: New Search Engine Trends, Old SEO Troubles in 2007.

Here’s to a great 2008!!!

Today I came across a quote that caught my eye:

“If you can create stories that re-enforce the values of others, then that makes it easier for people to spread your story.” - SEO BOOK

What a great, fundamental marketing concept. As an SEO, we want people to spread our client’s stories, their web content - usually via links. This is why I read Aaron Wall’s Blog every day when I wake up: in his post, he talks about how the concept of public relations (PR) is used to control human behavior on a macro and micro scale via networks. He then goes on to show how PR can be used in the work of search marketing.

Good public relations campaigns spread so well because they make the target want to share the story, by making them feel important, sharing their bias, and/or giving them some incentive to spread the story.

Incentive! That’s the key here, if we can write something that gives people a reason to spread our idea then we have won and our optimization efforts have been that much more efficient. What’s really going on here is that if we can control human behavior, having others want to spread our ideas (i.e. linking and referencing back to us), then we can ultimately control search listings - and this is good SEO.

Here is a quick video on the benefits of PR and SEO:

Why is public relations effective? Good PR is hard to duplicate. For example, if you saw a news story on the front page of the New York Times by author “A” and then saw the exact same story by author “B” on a competing newspaper a few days later, who do you think will get the most credibility? Author A That’s why news stations always want to break information as-it-becomes-available, they want to be the first to talk about it because that brings them credibility, it brings them more viewers and it ultimately brings then more commercial advertising dollars (because of higher TV ratings).

Lets take another example, “Top 10 lists”. You see these all the time on places like Digg or other social media web sites. Why do people like them so much? Because lists appeal to people’s biases, i.e. watch the Late Show with David Letterman and he’ll have a top 10 count down of something like “Top 10 ways to kill your mother in-law without anyone knowing”, playing on just about anyone’s love for laughs and hatred of those who despise their in-laws, which is often mind you for those who watch Letterman (kidding, but you get the point).

If you have the time, make sure to listen to Aaron Wall talk about PR in his video:

Today on Buzzle I found a great little article that talks about why landing pages on your website are critical to online-marketing success. Essentially, you have your website and you somehow generate traffic to your website. You could be getting traffic from an SEO campaign or via paid text ads such as Google Adwords. But getting traffic to your site is not enough - if you’re not funneling you’re website traffic to the correct portions of your website, you could be losing potential sales:

Let’s say you’re an online hardware store that sells a range of different products, including hammers, saws, power tools and axes… and you have a website where people can buy them from. You pay for targeted keywords, such as ‘buy hammer’ and ‘buy power tools’ and send all the traffic to the home page of your website.

If the person that typed in ‘buy hammer’ doesn’t see a hammer on the first page they are redirected to after they click on the ad, there is a much lower chance that they will convert to a sale. If, on the other hand, they click on the ad and are then taken to a page where they buy a hammer, there will be a much higher chance of them buying the hammer… leading to higher conversions and lower cost per customer acquisition.

A landing page is a single page dedicated to a single product or service, providing the visitor everything they need to know to make a decision to buy the product immediately.

Landing pages are very important for your businesses if you attract customers looking to find something specific for sale among a list of service or product offerings. As we have seen here, using Adwords in conjunction with your web site’s landing pages (not necessarily your home page) of your website can really pay off. Making higher sales via your site is not always about how much traffic you get but how you use that traffic, how you streamline a browsing customer’s time when they are looking for specific offerings on your site.

Page Rank or “PageRank“, is a term that describes a link analysis algorithm, created by the founders of Google (back in 1995 as part of a research project at Stanford, with a finished prototype in 1998), which helps to determine a web page’s search engine rankings for a particular keyword search. PageRank is just one of many factors that Google relies on to rank results in their index, but is worth noting as important because Google uses this as the basis for all their online search tools/offerings.

Essentially, PageRank (PR) is a number, anywhere from 0 to 10, assigned to and spread out among a set of web documents. For example, if you have a website with 5 pages, your index (home) web page might have a PageRank of 6, while your sub pages may have a lesser PR of 3 or 4 (being a little less popular / less in-bound links). Some documents on your site may not even have page rank at all. Again, PR is spread out amongst the pages on your web site to help Google’s search spiders and index know which pages are the most important pages (on your site) to show in their search results for key word searches. PR helps to show which pages are the most relevant and which ones are not.

How do I check my site’s PageRank? You can download the “Google Toolbar” and install it into either your Internet Explorer or Firefox web browser. The Google Toolbar has a PageRank meter that you can check whenever you browse to a particular URL, very handy.

How is PageRank assigned on your website? PageRank relies on the democratic nature of the world wide web in that links to a given web page count as “votes” for that webpage, the more votes you get, the higher the PageRank and the better your chances of ranking high. So if web pages “B” and “C” both link to page “A” then page”A” has 2 votes. Likewise if page “A” points to page “B” then page “B” now has a vote from page “A”. It is thought that links from other web sites pointing at your web page are generally weighted more than links from your own internal web pages pointing back at your web site. Again, the more links you have pointing to your web page, generally a higher PageRank number is assigned to that web page. Google also takes into account the quality of the incoming links to your pages (links that are coming from web sites /web pages that have similar content and or theme as your web page) and not just the quantity.

PageRank is also thought to be based on a logarithmic scale of somewhere between a base 5 or 6, so your PageRank goes up when you reach a certain link level/threshold. If you are not familiar with logs don’t worry, here is a tutorial, and I will try to spoon-feed this to you For example: if PR was using a logarithmic base of 5, your web page will reach a PageRank of 3 when you have X number of links at or greater than 125 and less than 625 (125 <= X < 625). In this case the lower limit of 125 comes from 5^3 = 125 links, while the upper limit 625 comes from 5^4 = 625 links. Do you see how having your X number of links between 125 and 625 will always result in a logarithmic value of no less than 3 but no greater than 3? Another example, if you had 300 back-links to your web page, then obviously 125 <= 300 < 625, so the log base 5 of 300 will give you a number of something like 3.5439 (rounded off), which is no less than 3 but no greater than 3. But what if your link count gets bumped up at equal to or greater than 625, say at 626? Then it is thought your PageRank will increase from 3 to 4, since the number 626 gives a logarithmic result of exactly 4.0009933414339, which is no less than 4 and no greater than 4 while using a base of 5

The NoFollow hyperlink tag attribute is a new industry standard recently adopted by all major search engines to help people redistribute PageRank within their websites, i.e. stoping PageRank leaks from important pages to less important pages. It was also created to combat spam within blogs to help stop PageRank from being injected into third party sites that aren’t relevant, such as spam blog commentators who leave their web site URLs on blog entries in hopes of creating instant back-links, and ultimatley higher PageRank, to their web sites.

Also of note: there are web pages that rank higher in search results than other web pages that have a much higher PageRank - so PR is not an end all solution to where your web page ranks on a particular key word query. Besides, it wouldn’t make sense to base search results on one factor or one majority factor alone, people could game the system with ease by creating many spam back-links, resulting in spam search results = no good. PR just happens to be a single factor in the grand ranking scheme that Google has laid out.

If you remember only one thing about this article, remember this: PR can be used to tell the search engines which pages on your site are more important than others, depending on the keyword search context given. Read up more about how to tweak your web site’s PageRank to your benefit.

Quality website content is still second to none. This is not a new theory, nor is it the panacea for all your website ills. It is, however, the backbone of any good website. The current state of the internet has empowered consumers more than ever. People have the power to switch to whatever site they want with a simple flick of the wrist. People don’t want to see a website stuffed with ads, they don’t want to see a bunch of pop-ups, and they sure as hell don’t want to give their e-mail address in exchange for accessing website information. Consumers don’t seek out webpages chock full of advertisements or useless content, they seek out webpages with the information that they are looking for. If they don’t find it on one page, then you can rest assured that they will find it on a competitors site.

What is it that people want? They want good, well written, quality information! As a website owner, you must think like a consumer and you must be a marketer. You have to ask yourself, what would the consumer want to see/read before they make the decision to purchase? Then, you give it to them! Give it all to them! For free! That’s right…give them the information they are craving and don’t ask for a thing in return. If this is done correctly, then the probability that they will purchase from you goes up exponentially.

John Reese wrote a great paper on this topic, click here for full article. He poses a new theory that if your website is not making the lives of those people visiting it better, then the site is not doing an adequate job. So, ask yourself, does my website make anyone’s life better? If not, then you need to adjust your website strategy. John goes on further to hypothesize that content in no longer King, but now it is Kong. What that means, I’m not quite sure, but it’s a powerful message because I think Kong could kick the crap out of King.

In an article, written by Mark Jackson, ‘The Golden Rule of SEO: Content is King’, he gives three reasons why well written content is important.

* It engages the reader
* It increases search engine rankings and traffic
* It promotes the likelihood of quality links from other sites

These reasons should really come as no surprise. But it never hurts to remember the reasons why we need to spend so much time and effort on quality content.

So, which is it…King or Kong? I think content is King Kong and the internet is the Empire State Building. Content is the 8000 lb. gorilla hanging from the rafters and swatting down bi-planes like mosquitoes. All hail the great King Kong….he won’t be dethroned anytime soon.

I found an old article on the Top Techno Brands of 2004. This was right before Google went public with their stock offering, “GOOG”. Near the end of the article I noticed a funny little blurb:

If Google make the top 10, this will be a major lesson for the “traditional marketers” and ad company of are really slow to admit the Web and viral marketing campaign can be really effective without big budget in other media!

As we’ve now seen, Google’s stock and market position have sky-rocketed as some people couldn’t have predicted. Viral marketing on the web can have it’s benefits, especially for Google who is still considered a start up company (less than 10 years old), and churns up billions in revenue/cash each year. Have you ever seen an advertisement for Google products (i.e., search, maps, gmail…etc) outside of the web, on TV or in other traditional marketing channels? I have not. This can be a good lesson for those who wish to bypass traditional media channels when considering where to advertise.

You may have heard the phrase “people love to hate” before, so how is this relevant to search marketing? Hate can be a powerful tool and can help strengthen the bond between reader and writer.

Specifically, I’m talking about picking a group of people, an idea, entity, player or some “thing” in your respective field that you are able to bash on or hate, for a logical reason, such that chances are your readers now have the ability to connect on an emotional level with what you’re writing about and can relate to your content, i.e. they dig your bashing because they enjoy bashing about the same stuff too. This means more interest, references and eventually, inbound links to your page(s). Just another way to apply viral marketing techniques.

If you haven’t found yourself an enemy yet, then you may want to consider doing so. Not to say you can just start blindly bashing on any given thing, so be careful. Remember to target the right enemy and make sure that your readers aren’t necessarily in favor of your bashing subject. It’s usually best to present attacks, if any, in a problem-solution example or scenario. Try not to “dwell” or spend too much time on the problem as you want to offer some kind of elegant method for resolution such that your readers can take the lesson home with them.