I have to say I am loving the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics on their website.  I have long been a lover of their live text commentary used for the cricket and the casual, informal language used and their use of this for the olympics has again made it more entertaining.  On top of this, the live text and email feed from viewers adds some interaction and allows for a large amount of sarcastic comedy based on the live unfolding of the games.  Take a bow BBC for producing some live streaming coverage which allows you to flisk between events, view highlights, and doesnt involve stuttering, jerky images.

Here is a classic example of how mis-management of PPC affiliates can cost a brand dearly.  The screenshot below shows listings on the search term bet365.  All of the first page PPC listings are taken up by (presumably one) rogue affiliate who has registered a load of domains containing bet365 and will be earning commissions on the back of all sign ups.  Not only does this mean bet365 will be losing out on cheap sales through their brand it also gives a very bad brand experience for the searcher and could confuse the uneducated Googler.  I know bet365 are hot on their affiliate scheme and so I cant imagine the affiliate in question will ever see any of the commissions they were expecting but it still isn’t good to see this sort of thing going on.  The industry has a bad enough name in some circles and this sort of thing doesn’t help.  what it does highlight however is the need to have stringent programme guidelines in place and a solid affiliate management process to allow you greater control.

Following hot on the heals of the rumours of TV advertising through Adwords, it is reported that Google may introduce the ability to buy in game advertising through their online portal.  Dubbed Adsense for games, it is reported that Google “has developed an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games.”  Whilst there are a large number of other providers offering in game advertising, most notably Microsoft through the acquisition of Massive Incorporated, this would make Google the first to simplify the process and increase its viability for inclusion in a standard media plan and their purchase of Adscape in February of 2007 certainly gives them the expertise.

If all the rumours and news stories are true about Google’s plans, coupled with the recently launched Adplanner tool, Adwords could be on its way to becoming the holy grail of advertising platforms, incorporating online offline and in game into one web based portal.  Whether they can pull it off or not remains to be seen but they seem to be putting a lot of effort into achieving the same dominance in other media that they have in search.

The creators of Facebook have given it a facelift!  I have just logged into the new version for the first time and so have probably not seen the full extent of the changes but thought Id post my initial findings.  On logging in for the first time you are displayed a message from Facebook explaining the changes to their interface, nothing  mentioned but I have posted the message below.  Apparently the three goals of the facelift were:

1. make everything clean and easy to use, reduce the clutter.
2. give the user more control over their profile (what, you mean make it more like myspace?)
3. show the most recent and relevant content

Apparently this is all based upon recommendations made by Facebook users although Im sure I was never asked my opinion!  Anyway to the initial observations.  The main change appears to be the introduction of tabs on the pages, both profile and home page.  On the homepage they have separated out top stories, status updates, photos and posted items.  Obviously aimed at objectives 1 and 3.  On initial use I actually think this works really well.  I do agree that peoples profiles were getting far too cluttered and this enables you to see more easily the information you want.  The first page is the wall and minifeed, and expansion on the original minifeed which includes photos and actual wall postings rather than just notifications.  This will satisfy the avid facebook user who wants a snapshot of what everybody is up to and in a way brings Facebook and the status updates function closer to the Twitter concept.

The page layout has also changed slightly, with a reduction of content in the left hand margin whilst keeping the 3 column format.  They remove this in the photos tab though and you get more of a full album view which makes photo browsing easier.  It is also removed when viewing group and fan pages and the navigation which was once on the left has now moved to the header bar.

If I notice anything else interesting I will be sure to post it but the initial observation is that the objective of clean, clear, uncluttered layout has been achieved.  I just hope to god that the point about profile control isnt going to lead to the flourescent flashing profile pages that make Myspace so annoying.

WPP owned 24/7 Real Media has been suspended by the IASH for failing to comply with an a audit of ad placement in July.  This news follows hot in the footsteps of recent evidence of ad misplacement by networks, the most high profile advertiser being Orange. 

Ad misplacement is a key issue when considering the use of blind networks as part of a display advertising programme.  Although these networks offer certain “guarantees” with their placements and you can select to appear on certain channels, by the very nature of the channel, you can never be 100% sure that misplacement isn’t occurring.  You have to rely on the regulatory bodies like the IASH conducting regular audits and clamping down hard on any offenders, which thankfully they appear to be starting to do.

The temptation is always there, due to the rock bottom CPMs, to utilise a network within your media plan but cost is not always the best way to plan display advertising.  After all, the primary aim of any display campaign should be to build brand awareness within your target customer base.  Blind media buys achieve neither of these objectives as you open yourself up to the risk of negative brand association with unsuitable sites, and you don’t know who is seeing your ads. 

Blind networks are becoming a thing of the past as companies expect more from their online advertising and this can only strengthen the position of intelligent media planning agencies.  My advice is to avoid them when planning other than in extreme circumstances.  Get you lower cost impressions and clicks from paid search and focus your display advertising on reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.

Yahoo sent out an email last week to its partners announcing some changes to the way it will be mapping keywords from July 29th.  In the past Yahoo has mapped certain keywords to others within its paid search listings much in the same way as Google broad match works.  As a former pay per click campaign manager this often caused me head aches as their mapping, which was supposedly done to improve the quality of their search results, seemed to penalise the professionals willing to spend the time building high quality keyword lists.  Funnily enough, it also had the affect of reducing the keywords available in their market by mapping low cost keywords to higher cost ones, hence making them more money.  Strange that isn’t it.

The other issue with their system was that they just weren’t very good at accurately mapping keywords together.  One specific example I vividly remember is when they decided to map all the listings from the keyword “home loan” to the keyword “mortgage”On the face of it these may sound like pretty similar words, but in the finance market a home loan is another way of describing a loan secured against you existing property, not a mortgage to buy a property.  What this meant for advertisers (I was working on secured loans campaigns at the time) was that overnight, you started to receive a large amount of costly, irrelevant clicks and aso ended up displayed irrelevant ad text.  There was no warning with these changes and at the time went they were gong through this mapping process it was a case of keeping a very close eye on keyword level spending to understand when a change may have been made.

It seems that no Yahoo has seen the error of its ways and is unmapping an initial list of 772 keywords, although they havent disclosed how many this leaves still mapped.  This is good news for professional PPC managers as it makes the job more complex which brings more need for their services.  It is easy for an advertiser to manage a keyword list of maybe 100 keywords but if this keyword list becomes 1000 or even 10000, with targeted ad text needed for all, it becomes a lot harder. 

A fill list of the keywords to be unmapped can be found here

Over the coming months it is safe to assume many advertisers will be tightening their belts and reducing or even halting their media spend.  When times are hard it is often the marketing budgets which are the first to go, with companies focussing on maintaining, rather than growing their operations.

However, when affiliate marketing is done correctly, it should be guaranteed return on investment, with zero risk to the merchant company.  So if you were a marketer, looking for the best place to spend your budget in a time of uncertainty and increasing pressure to perform, where would you turn?

The volume of business is never going to be on the same scale as other media channels but when you are just looking to cut costs and keep a business ticking over that isn’t necessarily going to be your biggest concern.  So maybe affiliate marketing is going to see a bumper period as the recession continues.  It is certainly a good time to be pushing the “no risk” message that only really affiliate marketing can truly tout.  Before jumping in feet first however you must ensure you have a sound affiliate strategy and the correct quality assurance system in place to ensure you avoid some of the common pitfalls associated with affiliate marketing.

Google has this week launched into closed beta testing its new media planning and buying tool, to be know as Google Adplanner.  The web based software enables media planners and buyers to build schedule’s for their clients using Google’s placement network.  The functionality looks pretty neat with the ability to filter the sites based on demographic and geographic factors and the ability to see all the volume information currently available through the adwords interface.  In itself the adplanner tool is only useful for the placement network and so has limited use to the every day media planner.  But you have to assume that somewhere along the line this functionality will be rolled out across non google sites, and if incorporated with double click adserving technology, will transform Google into an adserving and media planning provider.  One to look out for as Google tries to strengthen its grip on non search related markets.

Google’s long awaited entry into the virtual world has taken place in the last week with the launch of their competitor to Second Life, lively.com.  According to the Google blog the initial idea came as they “looked around the social web and wished that it could be less static”.  I’m not quite buying that seen as Second Life has been around for a while now but that
doesn’t mean it isn’t an interesting entrant.  Much like in Second Life you create an avatar for yourself although in Lively.com this is in more of a cartoon vein and in more of a Sims fashion.  You can also create your own rooms within the world and customise their look and decoration.  You can then hang out with your friends in the rooms you create, which brings in the social element.    The interesting part comes with how and where you engage with lively.com.   The system enables you to embed your room into your blog or website, and interact with it directly without the need to visit lively.com.  Whether this is enough of a selling point I am not sure but lively.com will certainly appeal to the youth market more than Second Life and lets face it, the younger generation are much more likely to spend ours chatting to friends online, even more so if they create a cool avatar for themselves in the process.  I was never a big fan of Sims, and never really got into Second Life, so I don’t think Ill be rushing along to set my account up.  But if the Alexa rankings below are anything to go by lively.com could create a bit of a stir in the world of social media.