Stuck like Glue

Right, well, Yahoo users in the US might have glimpsed the new offering, Glue.

At the moment, it’s only running as a trial and has a small amount of content available, but looks pretty cool. Think Google’s Universal Search, but displayed a bit more aesthetically… It pulls together search content content from all over the internet onto one single page, including image results, Youtube videos, news and blogs.

As I said, it’s fairly limited at the moment, with only a handful of topics available to users – ranging from Kylie Minogue, through to Cupcake Recipies. Suprisingly, it’s been previously tested in India, so go figure. Perhaps the orders for this came from Mr Yang – people in power always go a little nuts – which is why he finally quit?

Who knows, but I do sincerely hope we’ll soon be seeing Glue up and running in full – despite the fact that Yahoo really shouldn’t be playing too much with search and needs to focus on a different business model.

Natural Search

Confusion time! PPC is can be more natural than SEO.

I’m completely putting this on a random idea that crossed my mind whilst wandering the fruit ‘n veg aisles of my supermarket:
PPC (PAID search) is exactly like cress, the most wonderfuly natural thing in the world.

Reasons for this?

Think back to science class, when you grew cress in a variety of conditions: One lot of cress in the dark, one lot without water, one lot without soil etc.

If you imagine PPC as the cress seeds:
Budget/bids are sunlight
Decent account management is water
Keyword and adgroup structures are soil
Strategy is warmth

If you get the mix right, then the campaign will grow and grow and grow, like a box of cress. Then you can plant more and do it all over again.

Just an obscure thought.

Economic Highs, Not Lows

The wonderful thing about the digital world is that everything can be recorded. Inevitably, the usual privacy/infringement issues arise, but for marketing-men (and women) , this is brilliant. By recording user information, patterns, online data etc. almost instantly, advertisers can see if a campaign is working or not. Following the entire process from start to finish in such detail, they can indentify where users become disinterested or excited, they can tell how users react to specific offers, products, services and websites, they can collect and assess and conclude data like you wouldn’t believe.

Actually, that’s the theory. I’ve seen quite a lot of poorly-run campaigns over time (I’m not the only one); doesn’t matter what they are: PPC, Affiliate, SEO, Display… You could have the best campaign idea ever, but if the strategy isn’t right, I can assure you that it won’t achieve it’s full potential. Digital is about quick response – in this sense, it’s direct marketing at it’s finest: Ads targeted at relevent users, responses that can be traced and assessed, strategies that can be tweaked and fine-tuned for maximum effect. Because of this, it’s a total no-brainer that whilst the economy is down, digital is on the up.

From a marketing perspective, digital is inexpensive, trackable, changeable and direct. Far cheaper than TV, Radio, Press or Outdoor, in the current economic climate, it will practically guarantee money well-spent and yeild a return on investment. (Providing any campaign is well-run). It even enables SME’s to successfully compete with bigger players (all the more important right now). From a user’s perspective, the internet can provide more services, information and products than they would find offline – usually at cheap, comparable prices.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone and, with the slump we’re seeing offline, where people are opting to try and save money, it’s no suprise that the digital world has grown enormously these past few months. I’m seeing it everyday and I imagine that it’ll soon be pretty apparent to even the most digital-shy technophobes.

As an addendum, I found this. It pretty much proves my point.