I continue to keep my eye on the recovery of my 401K and Roth IRA.  I realize it can only happen if we chip away at our nation’s unemployment rate.  I had a chance to listen to our President’s speech and learn how he envisioned the recovery in jobs in the near term as well as long term guidance.  He made it clear that primary and secondary education and affordable college education are the keys to our nation’s future job growth.  So for all the teenagers keep studying math and science, and for mom and dad you will see tax breaks for paying for juniors’ college.  Your children’s college professors will also be happy to know that grant money is once again flowing.  You can bet it will be targeted to alternative green energy research in order to catch and surpass China, India and other nations that have heavily subsidized green energy.

The other Jobs in the news announced the iPad, and demonstrated how Apples’ latest creation can enhance how we experience the web and other multimedia.  Mobile advertising has been in a wait and see pattern since deployment of 3G, WiMax and WiFi networks, the prerequisites for mobile advertising.  Now Apple and Google are in a battle for mobile advertising dominance.  I’m pretty sure Nexus One from Google and the iPhone/iPad from Apple are the initial troop deployments in this battle.  Quattro from Apple and AdMob from Google, both newly acquired due to their leadership in the mobile advertising platform are ready for deployment.

Web sites must be ready and have their ducks in a row if they want to participate in the growth in this market segment.  Do you have a mobile version of your website, if not you should make this a high priority for 2010.  Going mobile alone may be out of your comfort zone; we are here to assistance in this complex process.  Once you have your mobile site, you have eliminated a prerequisite and are in a position to quickly participate in the second generation of mobile ads.  We are watching the evolution of mobile advertising and anticipate Google has plans for their $750 million acquisition of AdMob, and hear that they too will have an announcement this week concerning a launch of a new type of mobile ad.  It will be an eventful year and one we hope brings prosperity and returns on your on-line advertising initiatives.  Call us and let us explain how we can assist you.

Google announced on Monday Jan 4th that their “Click to Call” program will be rolling out this month.  In an email sent to AdWords Advertisers, “…your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”  I really like this concept and think it is great for local advertisers.

Here’s how it will work: an advertiser’s local business number and address will appear as additional lines of ad text, based on the searchers geographic location.  While this program will only work for searchers using Smartphones (mobile devices with the ability to view full HTML via the phone’s browser) there is still a huge potential audience for this strategy.  According to Forrester Research, U.S. subscribers owning Smartphones jumped to 17% last year from 11% in 2008 and 7% in 2007.  That’s phenomenal growth in a year where businesses struggled alongside the economy.  Before you can use this program, campaigns must be targeted to high-end mobile devices with the phone number and local business address saved in your campaign settings.

If you are a local business and want to reach out to an ever growing audience ready to call your line when they search for you, then this program is right up your alley.  I have said in many blog posts before, that the early adopters to new search marketing strategies usually get the most from their investment because of the lack of competition.  I see this program being a staple in any online marketing program for businesses looking to grab a larger share of their local market.  The companies who get in early usually grab that market share first and at a lower acquisition cost due to the lower competition.

Google recently launched a new beta feature for sponsored search, called Ad Sitelinks. Ad Sitelinks allows advertisers to add extra links within their paid search ads.  This new feature enhances your text ads by adding up to four additional landing pages below your ads.  Ad Sitelinks are similar to site links in the organic search engine results, which link to deeper content beyond the main landing page. 

Ad Sitelinks is intended to make additional website information, such as special offers, promotions, and store locators more easily accessible to users without them having to search once they get to a website. In addition, the feature offers brand markets a new way to engage customers by making choices more interesting or relevant.

This new feature is not available to all advertisers.  It is only available for ads that meet a high quality threshold and for ads that mainly show up in the top position. Ad Sitelinks are set at the campaign level and you can change them as often as you want. You don’t even have to change your existing ad copy. Currently there is no reporting, but you can always code the destination url to see results in your analytics platform.

In a day and age when real estate on the search engine results page (SERP) is critical, especially for branding, Ad Sitelinks is another tool to gain that extra inch of space.