Just like all businesses in tough economic times, Google is finding ways to increase the online advertising opportunities for marketers.  Google has been offering new areas on several of their products for marketers to place online ads.  Interestingly, they aren’t making it outwardly known to marketers where this new ads real estate is.  But, if you do some research, you’ll start to find new online ads displayed in areas once not possible.  I’ll explore some advertising opportunities that are new for you to consider.  

I was recently on youtube.com searching for a new song I had heard, and in doing so, noticed a new category called “promoted videos”.  I hadn’t seen this before, and wondered to myself, how long has this been here?  Did I just notice this?   So, as any online marketer would do, I started to research how videos are populated in this new category.  I found out that Google has made a cost per click program for video content, and it works similarly to that of an AdWords campaign.  I think it’s a great idea.   There are thousands of videos being posted to youtube.com on a daily basis, making it a challenge to ensure that your video content stays in the top listings. Given this challenge, this is a wonderful solution to have your video show up during relevant searches.  If you post videos on youtube.com, I would definitely look into this new online advertising opportunity. 

I also noticed recently that on another Google Product, Google Images (www.google.com/images), that they are now offering sponsored listings.   This is another area previously not possible to advertise.  Since this listing is image based, it is particularly ideal for e-commerce sites to place online ads.  The number of sponsored listings they are offering is pretty limited. So far I’ve only seen 2 sponsored listings per page for any particular search query.  However, since this is so new, there isn’t much competition yet.  If you are looking for another great way to advertise online, this is definitely another great avenue to look into.

I am sure most of you know by now that Google Maps has been starting to offer sponsored listings. This isn’t as new, but just as important to highlight. For those of you who haven’t already done so, your business should have a listing in Google Maps.  There is good reason why, too! By having your business listed in Google Maps, you have the ability to be placed in two of Google’s most popular products. Google.com pulls in relevant Google Map listings, and then of course, you get your listing on the actual Google Maps product. Now, take this strategy a step further and add a sponsored listing on Google Maps.  The result is having 3 places that you’re ads are appearing, increasing your exposure, and boosting your brand awareness.  I’d say this is a pretty good bang for your buck!  If you’re looking to make sure you’re efficiently spending your online advertising budgets, this should be a no-brainer.

These ideas will help you to start doing some exploration on Google’s products and find where the different online advertising opportunities are, beyond the traditional AdWords campaigns.  Google has many products and many advertising opportunities on each of them.  The associated costs are lower, since not as many marketers are taking advantage of them yet.  I would encourage you to look into incorporating these strategies into you online advertising campaigns.

This past week, Google unveiled its latest product; Google Chrome. Google Chrome is a web browser that was designed to “add value for users, and at the same time, help drive innovation on the web,” according to an official Google announcement.

There’s no doubt that Google dominates the internet with a 60% share of all web searches. So it is only natural for Google to make its way into the web browser arena. Google chrome is going up against some pretty tough competition, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (the main competitors). Currently, Internet explorer is the leading browser capturing approximately 73% of all browsing activity. In second place is Mozilla Firefox powering the browsers of about 18% of internet users. Will Google Chrome, make a dent on the browser market share? It is a little too soon to tell, but the early feedback on chrome seems to be positive.

Here are some cool features that stand out:

Speed Dial:
One of my favorite features is the home page display. When you open Chrome, your 9 most requested web pages are displayed as small thumbnail screen shots; making it simple to navigate to your favorite pages.

Auto Completion:
In Chrome’s search and address bar, there is a feature called omnibox.  Omnibox offers search suggestions, you’re most visited web pages, and pages you don’t visit but are highly viewed by other web surfers.

Load time:
The browser loads super quickly. Double click and boom, there it is!

Tabs:
Yes, all browsers now have tab features. Google switched it up a bit and put the tabs on top of the address bar. So it appears like each page has its own address bar, as opposed to one for all tabs.

Incognito:
Incognito is Google’s new “privacy mode.” Incognito allows you to surf on a “secret” window that does not log any of your browsing activity on your computer. Google cited an example use of this for keeping a surprise gift secret.

Keeping Your Computer Healthy:
Google Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites to protect you against malware and phishing attempts. If you try and visit one of these sites, Chrome will flash a warning and advise against visiting the page.

This is just a short list of features. Visit the official Google Chrome page to learn more. Keep in mind, Google Chrome is still in beta. There are many more features to come and many things to be improved upon. Stay tuned and in the meantime happy surfing!

If you haven’t been on Google.com in the past couple of days, you have yet to see their new tool, Google Suggest. This addition is aimed to give searchers recommendations of what keywords to search upon. Results are determined based on algorithms that can ascertain query predictions. For example, when I go to Google, attempting to search for “Orlando Hotels,” I only have to type four letters until I see my desired keyword:

So what does all this mean for Search Engine Marketing? Easy… you can now pretty much rule out bidding on and paying for any misspelled keywords. In addition, you can get a very good grasp on how competitive a search keyword will be based on the results provided in green. For example, understanding how popular a given keyword is on the World Wide Web can help in determining its potential competitiveness and, therefore, picking the minimum and maximum Cost per Click (CPC) amount. Lastly, Google Suggest acts almost as a keyword research tool, providing anyone building a campaign with additional keyword recommendations, based on what other terms show up in the Suggest drop-down.