Find hundreds of mobile phone savings at DotCells.com’s Friends and Family Sale.

Want to wow your site’s viewers, draw a ‘whoo’ hoo, and enrapture them with total amazement?  Why not add a widget?  Facebook’s fabulous Srabulous widget draws 600,000,000 pageviews a day according to Advertising.com.  These mini-applications are stickier than a glue-based mousetrap and can spread like jelly via word of mouth (especially on social networking sites where they thrive). 

 Performance-wise, how do you get your widget to work its wonders?  First, select what type of widget will work best for your site.

Choose from a desktop widget that can be downloaded onto user’s desktops.  Common desktop widgets include the Yahoo! weather widget, election political tickers, and stock quotes.  Or, if you want to expand the widget’s reach, you can post it on a personal webpage.   Last year Google renamed its personal homepage iGoogle, which includes a widget-happy interface that allows users to post YouTube videos, personal photo albums, games, and lots more. Finally, the widgets with the most exposure are known as public web widgets can be installed on multiple sites. 

By design, widgets are meant to by dynamic, interactive and fresh.  People are information hungry and a stale application is doomed like moldy bread.  Image and interaction are key factors to sustaining a working widget.   A widget’s best quality is arguably its ease of use.   Applications can showcase video, text, images, links, and more; providing several monetizing opportunities.  Proponents will say that a crafty widget will draw more traffic to their site than any search engine.  Widgets are effective branding, advertising, and marketing tools.  They’re seen daily, constantly updated with information, and perceived as credible as they’re chosen by the user.   

To conclude, widgets are wise and when carefully calculated to reinforce a company’s product or brand, can work wonderfully.

Affiliate Summit West is just around the corner.  Well, actually it starts in two days meaning you may already be in your car, sitting uncomfortably in a discount carrier, or flying high in your own private jet on your way to Las Vegas.  If so  - you’re in for a few days of non-stop networking, training, interacting at the Palms, and even catching a bit of live Gospel music along the way.  Really - the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association is hosting a Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues Mandalay Bay Sunday morning. 

Quite frankly, it’s a lot to consume in three days.  Considering most in attendance will be hoarse and in need of a podiatry appointment upon return, how can participants be sure their time spent at Affiliate Summit is profitable on some level or another?

Tip #1: Check the Show’s Agenda Ahead of Time

This may sound fairly obvious, but industry vets know most days are jam packed leaving little time to preplan just about anything.  Plus - if you’ve attended enough events, you find you navigate one you can navigate them all.  While this may get you by, it’s not making the most of what a show has to offer. 

Take Affiliate Summit West for example.  At any given point during the day you can attend online marketing workshops hosted by industry experts, hob knob with new acquaintances, and listen to keynote speaker and founder of Mahalo.com, Jason Calacanis.  The trouble with doing things on the fly though is that you may not know ahead of time that the top five activities on your list are all scheduled at the same time.  Take your PDA and schedule workshops and activities ahead of time.  Just remember not to overbook yourself and allow room for spontaneous encounters and impromptu meetings. 

Tip #2: Network - Several Days Before the Show Starts

Peruse the list of attendees and make a point to contact companies of interest ahead of time to at least put your company on the map.  Even if nothing comes of it, the phone time will at least put word out that your company will be at the show. 

Talking to other attendees beforehand can also save you a ton of time at the actual event.  Pre-event conversations may reveal the business relationship is not worth pursuing for either party.  The opposite can occur as well where your initial conversation sparks interest from the other company who’s reps can meet you person with a clear idea of how the two companies can work together.

Tip #3: Market Yourself

We’ve all done it - forgotten to bring our business cards to the biggest networking event of the year.  Luckily technology gives us some leeway should we forget to stash that box of 500 cards in our suitcases.  Your iPhone, Blackberry or even that standard free cell phone that comes with a new plan can serve as a notepad to exchange info.  A scrap of paper and “borrowed” hotel pen works fine too - functionally anyways.  If there’s any convention where a business card stands out - it’s a tech related one.  Companies are now passing out CDs and even USBs in lieu of the traditional business card.  There are also several online companies that will print and deliver new business cards in a day. 

 
Three pre-show tips are manageable, as you’ll have enough to think about upon setting foot in Las Vegas - especially if you’ve just realized you left the office without your business cards. 

The definition of the term guerrilla is defined in many ways depending on the context.  In the military, guerrilla refers to operations carried on by independent or semi-independent forces.  Business-wise, guerrilla refers to a form of marketing that is low budget and against the grain of traditional marketing practices.  In the online world, guerrilla marketing conjures a number of definitions and leaving many to wonder exactly how does online guerrilla marketing applies to campaigns?

From the source…

In the 1984 book, Guerilla Marketing, author and GM creator Jay Conrad Levinson further explains guerrilla marketing tactics in his 1984 book,  as ones that, “rely on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets.”

In its basic form, guerrilla marketing is designed to break through the mess of traditional marketing and hit an audience unexpectedly.  Messages are attention grabbing and intended to capture individual interest rather than an entire demographic. 

Sound like a pop-up ad?

Online marketing does incorporate several forms of guerrilla marketing.  In fact, there are a number of sites that offer tutorials, tips by the hundreds, and even boot camps that will teach online marketers the secrets to delivering ads to that unknowing, yet, ultimately willing customer.   

Current online marketing trends thrive on demographic data, yet technology has enabled marketers to deliver highly segmented ads by tracking individual user actions.  This results in calculated pop-ups, highly segmented banner ads, and a slew of targeted emails in consumer inboxes.  Despite this pinpointed delivery, these ads reach consumers by surprise in what is usually a captive setting.  Plus, several online marketers employ low-budget, yet highly effective marketing strategies including blogs, article archives, and free offers.  A guerrilla marketer would refer to these strategies as ‘weapons,’ while traditional marketers would look at them as - well, traditional marketing tactics designed to promote brand recognition and customer retention. 

If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that online marketing tactics take on new forms by the campaign.  Information is instant and often ignites a viral response no matter the marketer’s original intentions. 

Microsoft Corp. may have made an offer Yahoo! simply can’t refuse.  An offer of $44.6 billion dollars to be exact.  Even combined, the Microsoft/Yahoo combo wouldn’t edge Google from its estimated 60% market share.  What Yahoo! does have though - a built in audience - one of the largest out there.  Plus, approximately 27% of the search engine market share. That’s at least enough to make Google nervous. 

The motive: Well, Microsoft’s motivation isn’t anything new.  The company’s been trying to purchase Yahoo! for the past few years, to no avail.  This time though, they’re hitting Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang up with some serious stock options.  Microsoft is currently offering a 62% premium bid on Yahoo’s closing stock. 

The forecast: Online advertising.  Despite Google’s falling stock value, the future for online advertising looks bright.  So bright analysts are expecting online ad dollars to double from $40 billion to $80 billion by 2010.   

Yahoo’s in peril, but is it bad enough to shut the doors?  Financial losses have been stark for Yahoo, with stock prices dropping to a four year low in January.  And what about Yahoo’s devoted fan base?  Well - a quick perusal of Yahoo Ask didn’t reveal much in the way of people inquiring about the buyout.   It may be too soon to get a sense of a collected sentiment from Yahoo regulars and whether or not they’ll venture over to MSN.com if the buyout occurs. 

While Yahoo execs have yet to respond, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is adament the purchase will go through. The courts will also have at it, determining whether or not anti-trust laws are being violated.  In any event, time will tell if Microsoft will win with its fiscal fists, or if Ballmer and co. are simply California Dreaming. 

T minus two hundred and eighty-four days till election day is here, and while talks of tax breaks, primaries, and Fed interest rate cuts still dominate the media headlines, there’s no time like the present for candidates and their camps to step up their online campaigns.

Online advertising is critical to political campaigns. Exposure through banner ads, blogs, and keyword searches to name a few don’t make or break an election, but are effective ways of reaching out to current and prospective supporters, and sustaining a steady campaign buzz. Political advertisements reach widespread audiences throughout the world who receive controlled campaign messages via savvy online strategists. It’s political branding at its best (or worst) and feeds an endless stream of content to fair-weather and fully committed viewers alike.

Political reports spread like wildfire the very moment candidates utter something even slightly offbeat. Just think what would’ve happened to Lyndon B. Johnson’s controversial ‘Daisy’ advertisement (the one that begins by showing a young girl counting flower petals in a meadow with the last scene ending in nuclear explosion) if his campaign team had access to YouTube, RSS feeds, blogospheres, and more?

While the internet is inundated with political content and countless pages of propaganda, how does a candidate effectively stand out from the others? Given the fact that the internet invites anyone and everyone to pick apart online political advertisements frame by frame, word by word, and pixel by pixel, designers have a bevy of challenges. As with any ad, all components must point to the overriding objective of getting the candidate elected.

Unlike more traditional forms of advertising however, online ads open the door for tremendous viral response - both good and bad. The online audience is basically a candidate’s test audience.

The internet has become the preeminent political advertising front. Before the Iowa caucus began, ValueClick Media reserved 300 million online advertising impressions to last candidates till the February 5th primary. On the opposite end, political analysis firms such as the Rimm-Kaufman Group found candidates underutilize ppc strategies. The firm claims a more focused ppc campaign would connect candidate messages, in the form of ads, to all name searches.

Political strategy is alive and kicking on the internet. It’s no accident a Google search of the name ‘Hillary’ returned an entire page of positive, campagin controlled, Hillary Clinton sites and ads. No other medium offers even close to the same amount of candidate information as the internet.

The point of using a significant portion of business dollars is to earn a return wherever it’s invested.  Sometimes this is tangible, meaning advertising and marketing campaigns can be tracked by the penny.  Other times, the much sought after ROI is attained via exposure and brand penetration.  While small businesses may spend more time tracking ads dollar for dollar, what about the big corporations with huge spending budgets?

We can assume companies that advertise on Super Bowl Sunday aren’t your average start-up. While employees, consultants, and stat trackers alike will be glued to their computer screens come Feb. 3rd, do companies pay this close of attention year round?

Are big companies tracking their ROI dime for dime, or only when a whopper of an ad hits the big time - or goes bust like the Golden Globes?  The answer appears to be yes.

Web 2.0 quickly took online ads from slightly sticky to dynamic sponges that absorb every last drop of attainable user information.  However, with big companies, the people tracking the effectiveness of these ads usually aren’t employed in-house.  Companies like Allstate, American Express, and IBM use advertising giant, Ogilvy, to create, run, and well as analyze every last bit of web induced data available.

According to Paul Slogan’s article in Business 2.0, “Ogilvy’s in-house optimizer runs 5,000 to 10,000 calculations each time it evaluates the performance of an ad campaign.  The optimizer collects data on scores or even thousands of ads and analyzes which ones are working, and why, on the fly.”(excerpted from an article previously posted on www.cnnmoney.com).

As our media devices grow and change (they may all be featured at MacWorld this week) it will become even more difficult to track the successess and failures of each individual campaign.  Software will catch up however, and soon data from every portal will be seamlessly synced and ready to, well, determine if it made any money or not.    

Despite the notion that Cyber Monday isn’t really a day at all and more people make online purchases say on December 21st versus the Monday following Black Friday - retailers used the day send out millions of promotional emails to online consumers hungry for the best deal.

According to DMNews.com, 55% more retailers used emails to advertise store incentives this year than they did in 2006. 

The fluctuating economy is one cause of the dramatic increase in the wave of consumer driven emails.  Timing and the ability to piggyback on the frenzy that goes along with Black Friday is another factor that propels comapnies to hit ’send’ by the thousands the following Monday.

And it doesn’t stop there!  Echo Mondays describes the two or three Mondays that follow Cyber Monday up until Christmas day.  Retailers unleash the real advertising push the Mondays after Cyber Monday, sending out more emails, discounts, and ultimately reasons to buy online.  Sam’s Club went so far as to start a Cyber Monday club that keeps members in the loop of extra savings and incentives.  

Judging by the massive lines, in-store brawls, and frenzy that occurs for single items, Black Friday was alive and kicking.  But what about Cyber Monday?  According to comScore Networks, Cyber Monday revenues increased a mere 9% from the prior Tuesday.  Furthermore, Nielsen/NetRatings cited a 25% rise in online shopping at work the Saturday following Black Friday - a number not matched a few days later on Monday.   

Ultimately, according to research by comScore, online retailers made $733 million on Cyber Monday, which is 20% more than what was made in 2006.  The mass emails laden with discounts eventually hurt retailers however, as the average dollar spend per buyer dropped 12%. 

Large lead generation firms including ValueClick and possibly 12 others as of this year have been monitored by the vigilant eyes of the Federal Trade Commission, which is on a perceived mission to cease all illegal and unethical lead generation practices. 

ValueClick in particular was investigated for its possible violations of CAN-SPAM practices.  According to the FTC, the CAN-SPAM Act, “establishes requirements for those who send commercial mail, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them,” (www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm.)

The FTC’s investigation of ValueClick focused on their emailing practices.  According to ValueClick reports, the FTC inquiry alone caused a significant publisher fallout and a loss of 10 million dollars in Q3 earnings.

Incentive-based leads are one of the major reasons why lead generators, and online marketers in general, have come under recent fire.  Incentive-based leads, especially ones of of high value (”Free iPod!” for example), are under fire due to their ability to garner personally identifiable information (or PII), which is then sold to lead buyers without the customer knowing.

There are several lead generation organizations that strive to promote ethical lead practices emphasizing both the presence and continued need for standardization.  One such organization, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) created the Online Lead Generation Best Practices, a set of ethical practices intended for all online marketers.  The recommended practices cover data transfer processes (indicating that processes should be singular and straightforward and not sent to third parties without permission), a standarization of operational formats that ensure data is encrypted, to educating advertisers and publishers to make certain they provide detailed information to consumers that explains how their information will be used. 

Meanwhile, the FTC threatens to remove all PII incentive based leads, which would result in an estimated 40% loss in revenue - a major hit to online marketers everywhere.  ValueClick continues to do business as usual, however, as with any potential industry chokehold, new, inventive ways of doing business always come about.  

We’ve done it to telemarketers and internet advertisers are next.  The Federal Trade Commission’s ”do not call” campaign has taken a new life in the form of a proposed “do not track” initiative, which if passed, will allow people to block internet advertisers from tracking their online activity.  Online advertising is a multibillion dollar industry and consumer data is the lifeblood that sustains it.  Advertising giants to niche affiliate networks track consumer patterns meticulously and use the data to tailor ads per the consumer’s online habits.  This is known as behavioral advertising and something the privacy group that created the propsoal, the Center for Democracy and Technology, believes violates individual privacy.

The proposed “opt-out” list would work like this: advertisers that set cookies on consumers’ computers would have to give the FTC all domain names on servers used to place the consumer(s).   Advertisers would not be allowed to collect personal or financial information and if allowed to track ads, have to notify the consumer of the behavioral tracking procedures and allow for consent.  Third party auditors would see to it that these standards are met. 

The Center for Democracy and Technology submitted the proposal to the FTC earlier this week with talks currently underway.  The following excerpt comes directly from the proposal.

“The online tracking and targeting of consumers - both in its current form and as it may develop in the future - needs to be limited so that consumers can exercise meaningful, granular preferences based on timely and contextual disclosures that are understandable on whichever devices consumers choose to use.”

What does this mean to the thousands of advertisers and affiliate networks that rely on ad tracking to determine what ads go where and are sent to whom? For now - analysts believe the big engines will be hit first - Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft.  Remember however, this is a $14 billion dollar industry, with billions more spent on online advertising acquisitions.  Proponents of online ad tracking claim consumers receive targeted ads they actually want to see versus random banners, pop-ups, welcome screens and more that they have no interest in. 

143 million people have opted out of the ‘no call’ registry.  It’s unknown at this point what the repercussions would be should something similar occur with the internet.