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.

Within the last 3 years Social Networks have taken the internet by storm. Startups have created enormous communities bringing millions of people together through user-friendly interfaces and applications. User’s can create profiles and share pictures, music, friends, comments, personal information, favorite sites, and much more. Social Networks like Myspace.com, and Facebook.com have grown at exponential rates and continue to grow.

In the past 10 years traditional forms of advertising have become a little more obsolete, and social networks have become an alternative route for reaching the masses. Large advertising agencies have turned to social networks as new marketing outlets because they have the ability to reach a large user base.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is a term used to describe a network which gives you the ability to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. Users can bookmark their favorite articles, websites, online tools, software, and much more at the click of a button. Social bookmarking users can easily share their bookmarks with designated friends and groups, making these networks very powerful. User’s with large numbers of followers can refer hundreds, or even thousands of new visitors to a website.

Social bookmarking sites use ranking systems to sort these bookmarked websites by relevance, placing the most important bookmarks on the front page. If you get your article or bookmark on the front page of the top social bookmarking websites, you could receive significant traffic, anywhere from 100 to 35,000 unique visitors in one day. Get involved with these social bookmarking networks and utilize them as a way to market your business, blog, or website. Social Bookmarking can provide great exposure for your company accross the web, and help you grow to achieve your goals.

Below I have provided a list of the top 10 Social Bookmarking websites listed by relevance. This relevance is determined by the following factors: Alexa ranking, google page rank, number of inbound links, and estimated monthly visitors by Compete.com and Quantcast.com.

Definitions of Terms:

• Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website that provides information on web traffic to other websites.
• Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.
• Inbound links are hyperlinks which transmit domains. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO).
• Monthly visitors refers to the amount of unique visitors a website receives on a global scale within one calender month. The details of your visitors can be tracked by using Google Analytics, which allows you to sort traffic by keywords, demographics, search engine, referring sites, and more. Please contact your webmaster for details on implimenting this system.

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Digg.com | Alexa Rank: 113 | PageRank: 8
11,600,000 - Inbound Links | 23,943,224 - Compete Monthly Visitors
25,833,069 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Technorati.com | Alexa Rank: 468| PageRank: 8
19,800,000 - Inbound Links | 2,005,153 - Compete Monthly Visitors
3,400,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Del.icio.us | Alexa Rank: 1141 | PageRank: 8
71,400 - Inbound Links | 1,224,479 - Compete Monthly Visitors
700,714 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Propeller.com | Alexa Rank: 1095 | PageRank: 7
2,810,000 - Inbound Links | 1,415,960 - Compete Monthly Visitors
3,400,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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StumbleUpon.com | Alexa Rank: 355| PageRank: 8
46,200,000 - Inbound Links | 2,737,810 - Compete Monthly Visitors
3,400,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Reddit.com | Alexa Rank: 3772 | PageRank: 8
948,000 - Inbound Links | 2,223,023 - Compete Monthly Visitors
997,375 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Fark.com | Alexa Rank: 1953 | PageRank: 5
1,440,000 - Inbound Links | 293,920 - Compete Monthly Visitors
2,283,674 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Newsvine.com | Alexa Rank: 8,896 | PageRank: 8
27,800,000 - Inbound Links | 430,234 - Compete Monthly Visitors
1,066,865 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Slashdot.org | Alexa Rank: 4122 | PageRank: 9
552,000 - Inbound Links | 753,572 - Compete Monthly Visitors
843,653 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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Mybloglog.com | Alexa Rank: 2145 | PageRank: 8
1,850,000 - Inbound Links | 977,714 - Compete Monthly Visitors
123,205 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | Updated 05/09/2008

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You’ve spent weeks getting your new website up and running. The content is good, the links work, and the site looks great. Now, how are you going to get people to visit? As far as online marketing goes, your two major options are Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and “organic” or “natural” search engine optimization (SEO). Each provides a unique list of advantages that can be leveraged to improve your site’s visibility and popularity on the web, depending on what stage your website is in.

The problem is that too often, PPC and organic SEO are viewed with an “either/or” mentality, rather than a cooperative one. In fact, most information regarding PPC and organic SEO on the web presents the techniques in opposing, comparative, or “versus” viewpoints.

According to some, choosing PPC as your online marketing platform means you must sacrifice the positives that organic SEO can bring (and vice versa). But why can’t you have your cake and eat it too? Well, if you play your cards (and plan your budget) right, you can. By implementing both PPC and organic SEO tactics to their online marketing campaigns, many website owners have found a winning combination.

Here are a few of the advantages that each online marketing technique can bring to the table:

PPC

• Instant Gratification- your ads appear instantly and bring traffic to site quickly
• Easy to Set-Up and Implement- getting a PPC campaign started takes a short amount of time and is a simple step-by-step process
• Easy to Track- PPC allows you to see how many clicks each keyword is receiving, where clicks are coming from, and how much each click is costing you

Organic SEO

• Provides Long Term Stability- investing in organic SEO ensures that your site will receive quality traffic over a longer period of time
• Its Free- unlike PPC, where you pay for each person who clicks on your ad, organic visitors cost you nothing
• Trusted More By Users- because organic listings are gathered and organized by search engines based on relevance, users are more likely to trust these listings over PPC advertisements.

By looking at the advantages that each technique provides, it is not difficult to see how using both can be beneficial to your site. The ease-of-use and immediate impact that a PPC campaign can provide is perfect for getting traffic to your site now. It can also act as a testing ground for keywords which can later be included in your organic SEO campaign.

While your PPC campaign is bringing your site instant traffic, you can also begin building the foundation of your organic SEO campaign. Although it takes time to build your site’s organic rankings, you will eventually be able to spend less on your PPC campaign for certain keywords that you are ranking for organically. The continuous stream of quality traffic that you can get through organic SEO will be well worth the wait.