Clicks per view, clicks per acquisition, eyeballs, hits – all quantifiable measurements associated with online advertisements – but always believable? Determining how many people visit a site per a given time period is not an easy task, but a measurable task that many performance based marketing companies utilize in addition to virtually anyone involved in the online tracking of ads. 
 
Considering advertisers spent nearly 17 billion dollars to place their online ads in 2006, accurate numbers are an essential aspect to how much is paid and deriving pricing structures. 
 
Alana Semuel’s research featured in her May 29^th Los Angeles Time’s revealed the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, sfgate.com, received 2.4 million hits from ComScore, 3.7 million hits from Nielsen/NetRatings, while the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported 7.6 million hits – all in a single month.
 
Those three companies, all major players in monitoring web traffic, rely on sample groups and software to predict traffic patterns – methods that are not always reliable. 
 
One of the biggest complaints in the industry is that panels tend to ignore or undercount ‘diverse populations’.  Situations when individuals view sites multiple times in a day, or are able to delete their viewing history, are often overlooked by panels and software.

Whether you’re an individual sending out e-vites to your buds, or a top notch performance based marketer, your honest emailing efforts can be potentially blacklisted.  Email blacklisting is a growing concern, stifling legitimate marketing strategies and personal correspondence. 

Most email accounts allow individual users to set up blacklist accounts, or spam blockers. For many performance based marketing companies, open-relay and open-proxy lists are subject to blacklisting.  Servers recognize high-volumes of SPAM in messages that are sent via open ports (where unauthorized information delivered). 

While there’s no questioning spams ability to protect people from unwanted email, its ‘guilty by association’ feature can be a problem and result in lost dollars.  Due to the high volumes of existing spam, even the most sophisticated I.S.P’s can’t detect the good from the bad.  Essentially, if your IP address is similar to one on an existing spam list, the intended server may not be able to differentiate and block the email. 

Just how valuable is the online ad world to business?  According to Microsoft, about $6 billion.  Not a shabby number.  Where Google paid less than $2 billion for YouTube and Rupert Murdoch fronted less than $600 million for MySpace.com, Microsoft spent substantially more for the online ad company, AQuantive.  Gates and co. were perhaps motivated by losing a bid on another well known online ad company, doubleclick (Google was the victor, payiing $3.1 billion).  Where the merit of the doubleclick purchase is still debated, analysts assess the motives behind the purchase and why now.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer summed it up when he said, “The advertising industry is evolving and growing at an incredible pace, moving increasingly toward online and IP-served platforms, which dramatically increases the importance of software for this industry.”

AQuantive is Microsoft’s new link to an established and growing digital marketing powerhouse.  Their objective: Bring value to any interaction in the digital marketplace.  Microsoft’s objective - turn a profit on a $6 billion dollar value!

Email lists are the bread and butter for many affiliate marketers.  Why waste your time building new sites if there’s no one to share them with?  In terms of profits and losses, a strong, steady, and superlong email list can result in greater click through rates. 
List marketing (like newsletters for example) provide timely information and often lead to participation in the form of subscriptions

Some tips on expanding your list include keeping emails and newsletters in control (this means keep the content specific and targeted to your receivers - people will consume information that they’re already interested in.) Readability is key as well.  We live in an age of sound bites and momentary flashes of visual imagery.  Especially when it comes to viewing online content, simple, uncomplicated, and modern are all good things to keep in mind when it comes to design. 

Once your list is established, it’s imperative to have autoresponder software to monitor reply and follow up for future sales.  Think of an autoresponder as the ice cream on the cake.  You’ve done the work to build your list with opt-in options on blogs and other mediums.  And like maintaining any relationship, continued communication is key, and incredibly easy if it’s done automatically.     

AdTech San Francisco featured a number of highly informative discussion panels featuring marketing industry experts from Yahoo!, Sprint, Wells Fargo, and many more.  Marketing trends dominated the event’s presentations and introduced new ways to reach customers and break into new markets.  One particular speaker suggested the following: customer service is the “new” and most effective marketing and also branding strategies. 

In an age where outsourcing and sophisticated answering services lead customers into voice mail hell, customer service often seems thrown by the wayside.  While many companies cut costs by cutting out viable customer service methods, some are focusing on their internal duty to current and prospective customers to reach new customers - often by word of mouth.

For example  -New York Times blogger, David Pogue described an experience as an EX -Netflix customer.  While a Netflix member, Pogue lost a DVD, and was charged a one-time $20 fee by Netflix.  Netflix’s policy states that if a lost item is found, the money paid will be reimbursed.  Pogue eventually found the DVD, but was no longer a Netflix member.  No matter!  One phone call later, Pogue had his $20 back and Netflix now has as a great PR piece in the New York times and many subsequent blogs. 

Southwest Airlines is another example of how great customer service, especially online customer service, can parlay to new customers and increased profits.  SWA created a site especially for business travelers (www.swabiz.com).  It features corporate booking tools, tips on lowering business travel costs, and a company travel manager page that allows businesses to track travel expenditures online.  Not only does SWA drive traffic to its site with online deals and specials, but it keeps consumers coming back with an array of online business products designed to save the boss a big bucks. 

Online companies can easily enhance and grow their level customer service by simply adding a few features.  Simplify! Check out volkswagon relaunched site (www.vw.com) and you’ll find a clean, controlled page with its own search engine feature.  Live chat features work well too and your customers will be thrilled they don’t have to deal with a voice-automated system.  Even a “thank you” email can lead to new customers and purchases.  Remember:

“A satisfied customer will tell five people about their experience, a dissatisified customer will tell twenty-five!”

Ubiquitous community sites like MySpace and YouTube are goldmines in terms of advertising opportunities and online networking.  When approaching these sites with green colored glasses, one must walk a fine line.  Take Craigslist.org for example - the site is maintains it’s free online classified stance and has done a good job of policing those who try and turn a quick profit.  Many who use Craiglist and share the same fervent ideals in terms of maintaining a non-consumer environment take it upon themselves to rat out the monetary opportunists.  An online citizens arrest if you will.

A similar story ran in the Los Angeles Times, describing a situation involving YouTube and what can be perceived as ’Lonelygirl15 Part II’.  Only this time YouTube’s community, who had been duped in the past by Loneygirl15 and her theatrical endeavors, are quick to jump on anything suspect. 

In the YouTube case, an attractive college-aged girl attending Utah State introduced herself as newcomer to YouTube, under the psuedonym, GreenTeaGirlie.  The name - derived from her part-time position as a green tea vendor who sold her product from a cart.  The introductory video, titled, ”I’m New” received an extraordinary 170,000 hits in its first 2 days on the site.  The suspicous emails began to poor in, most accusing GreenTeaGirlie of misrepresentation.  Several wanted to know what product she was trying to move, if she was related to Lonleygirl15 and mainly, who was she really. 

The article, (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/newmedia/la-et-greenteaweb4may04,1,7339305.story) revealed several pieces to the online puzzle.  The most important pieces of the puzzle being centered around the domain names associated with the YouTube vidoes and GreenTeaGirlie herself.  Miss GreenTea missed out on on the opportunity to purchase www.greenteagirlie.com, which when clicked on, lead to an unknowing tea store in Seattle (Dragonwater) and also, and more importantly to Vidstars.net - a marketing site claiming it could advertise a site to 4 million YouTube visitors a day. 

Continued online detective work revealed GreenTeaGirlie was quite possibly a student at UC Santa Barbara, and had a good friend who was a student at Utah State, and also happened to be involved with the YouTube video’s rise to prominece.   When finally interviewed though, it was revealed that Kallie (aka GreenTeaGirlie) was actually a student in Utah and unaware of any product pushing, viral marketing going on behind the scenes.  Vidstars.net. was responsible for that aspect. 

Vidstars.net, as described in the article, impersonates popular YouTube people for profit, and usually, without the person’s knowledge.  While Vidstars.net admits to using online identities for advertising dollars, it’s all business.