It was opening day this past weekend for Little League baseball here in Boca Raton, FL, the weather cooperated and we had a great weekend of games.  We were treated to a very close hard fought game with lots of strike outs on each side.  A few of the pre-season practices had to be cancelled due to weather, so I was not surprised by the high number of strikeouts.  As the teams get more at bats, the hits will begin to ramp up as the strikeouts decrease. I thought it was interesting that a parent was utilizing an iPhone app to perform the score keeping for the home team, no more worries if you break your pencil lead. Smart phones and their apps are everywhere and as they continue to grow in number so too will the advertising opportunities.

Mobile advertising will also be ramping up rapidly and 2010 should be the year you begin laying your foundation by getting a .mobi or using a sub-domain for your mobile friendly site. We here at MoreVisibility have the experts and experience to accomplish this task, freeing you up to manage your day to day schedule, visit our “going mobile” content today if you need assistance. The reason we will experience rapid advances in mobile advertising is due to the advances in network speed and infrastructure, the cloud and the maturity of the devices and their adoption in our daily lives. Smart phones are a very personal piece of ones life and store loads of information; we have all our contacts and our appointments as well as pictures and music in them and we always have them with us. The location of your phone is also known and available to the mobile advertisers, which will better aid them in providing the correct content at the right time.

We know Google is putting resources and emphasis toward mobile advertising via Eric Schmidt’s comments from Mobile World Congress 2010 keynote speech this past February, where he proclaimed “Mobile first”. Google will be assisting the mobile consumers to locate goods or services, via voice recognized search and image search, Google Goggles . The potential for success with your mobile advertising dollars has never looked better.

It’s happened time and time again. A company produces a product and pays online affiliates to sell their product with the promise that they will receive a commission.
The online affiliates begin to sell the product and end up selling more than the actual company. Then the age old question occurs, why are my online affiliates selling more than me? This seems to be a problem for ecommerce companies who sell their goods online and use online affiliates to help. There are many reason why online affiliates outsell company’s on their products, but the main two that we will focus on are price and incentives.

One of the primary drivers of consumer purchases is price. Everyone should know that consumers have become “shop around” savvy. It’s no longer the “buy because I want it and forget price.” Instead it has become “let’s shop around on the internet for the best price,” and this isn’t hard for consumers to do with shopping engines and comparison shopping sites springing up on the internet daily. If a company is selling a product online and they want it to generate more revenue than online affiliates, they need to make sure that they have the best price possible. A perfect example would be my recent purchase of a cell phone. I bought my cell phone from a third party vendor instead of my cell phone service provider. The third party vendor had a better price; they included a car charger, a leather carrying case, and didn’t require that I extend my cell phone contract. If I had bought my phone from my service provider I would have spent at least $40 to $60 more, plus I would have had to pay an upgrade fee. The third party vendor offered better incentives than my actual cell phone service provider.

Incentives to buy a product are also important factors to help a company outsell their affiliates. Let’s say that your company and your affiliates are selling product “x” for $40. This puts you on the same playing field as your affiliates, but what happens when your online affiliates adds incentives. The affiliates offer free shipping on orders over $25 for example. Guess who’s actually gaining a new customer? Correct, the affiliate. Incentives such as free shipping, a free gift, and discounts can influence consumers to buy from an online affiliate instead of the manufacturer. What’s the purpose of selling a product on your site if a consumer can go to reputable online affiliates and buy it cheaper, with better incentives?

Many online companies need to sit down and be honest with themselves about their online affiliate strategy. Online affiliates are supposed to increase company revenue not take away from it. If all of your customers are going to online affiliates, then you have to pay out more commissions. The whole purpose of online affiliates is to help your company generate more revenue by reaching consumers that normally wouldn’t know or come to your site. There’s a delicate balance that must be kept between online affiliates and companies, otherwise the online affiliate becomes a paid competitor.  If you’re going to sell your product online and use an online affiliate marketing program, make sure that your website has the best price and the best incentives. Otherwise, you should let the online affiliates sell the product and focus your attention elsewhere.

Online advertisers are forever searching to get ‘a leg up’ on the competition.  While interesting and captivating ad copy is a way to get searcher attention; there now is another way. 

Recently, Yahoo has released a new function which allows an advertiser’s favicon to appear next to display URLs within the branded ads.  Typically, a favicon is an icon or brand logo that appears within the web browser.  Having a favicon appear within the branded ad not only draws attention, but best of all, it’s completely free.  Unfortunately, as of now, favicons are only available to appear on branded ads and keywords.

In order to have your favicon displayed within your branded ads a 16X16 pixel image and simple coding needs to be placed on the backend of your homepage.  Even amidst the new partnership with MSN; this new element is only available through the Yahoo Search Marketing platform.  Leave a last impression on searchers and establish brand credibility by participating in this program.  Since this feature is new you may want to reach out to your Yahoo representative to ensure proper implementation of this element within your Yahoo Search Marketing campaign.