Andrew R H Girdwood

PPC bids by Wau

2012-02-10T12:19:00.001Z

It's decided. The next time I find myself enjoying being pitched to by a bid management platform, by an ad-exchange or Facebook API bot I'm going to ask them about Wau. I want to be able to adjust my bids by Wau.

In fact, let's take it further - I suspect I'm going to have to start to record my time in units of Wau in the timesheet at the end of the day.

You too could benefit from Wau.

Advancements in the world of 3D printing

2012-02-08T20:18:00.000Z

I wrote about 3D printing on this blog back in 2011 when I speculated about 3D printing and copyright. Hmm. Okay. So the issue hasn't set the world aflame yet - but I still believe it'll be an issue.

This post is lighter in nature. I just wanted to revisit 3D printing and show where the technology has gotten too. It's gone pretty fair. Already. This video shows a model plane created via a 3D printer. It also shows this model plane taking off and flying.

There's more information over at New Scientist.

Here's the catch; The New Scientist posted this story back in July 2011. I can only speculate as to how advanced 3D printing actually is today.

Is Google getting aggressive with the Charles Dickens doodle?

2012-02-07T09:29:00.000Z

It's good practice to predict the Google Doodles.

They create one of the largest possible search surges, create enough natural traffic to make or break sites (breaking sites as servers crash under the load) and play merry havoc with quality score and click through ratios - not to mention clicks and costs.

Today's Charles Dickens was a sure-in. It's the Victorian writer's 200th birthday today. It's been on my calendar for a Google Doodle for months.

So, what's happened? Is the Doodle the traffic boss we had predicted?

The Doodle for web search results links to Google's book search. Is this the same as linking to Google's own property?

Certainly every result on the first page is a books.google result. There's also a PPC ad in pole position - for Android. Of course, this could be the Android team being caught out and will have to cope with the sudden rush of traffic, no-clicks and the effect that will have on their quality score. Alternatively, this could just be free traffic for Android.

The mobile results are even stranger. There are no click through results (not in the UK, at least) when a mobile search clicks through the logo. The URL produced by the Doodle click is http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en&gl=uk&fpdoodle=1.

Does this mean it's Google or nothing?

Google is freaking me out - a response

2012-02-01T18:55:00.003Z

I don't always agree with Google. Just last night I was reading why Nelson Minar was breaking up with Google. I've followed Minar as a thought leader for years. His post makes a lot of sense.

The drama around the privacy policy is a drama I don't get. It's more like the horror people some people felt when they were told Gmail would have adverts in it that were targeted to the contents of their emails. It's less like the usual howls of protest that rise up in alarm whenever Facebook makes a change because Google users won't see a change.

I'm certainly not much of a fan of the robotic voice of Xtranormal Movies. That said; this "presentation" seems to make the case clearly as to why some people are freaking out about the privacy policy and what a normal, logical, and sane response to those concerns would be.

The World's Ugliest Music - music without repetition is hard

2012-01-30T14:55:00.000Z

I would be a better person if I was better at maths. I'm not sure I regret finding a loophole in the university system in order to duck out of the tough math class and into the easy one - only never to show up again until exam day was a success or a failure.

This TEDx video reminds me why maths is worthy of attention more often than not.

Scott Rickard oozes degrees. He's a smart man. In this talk he sets us up to listen to the World's Ugliest Music. Music, you see, makes use of repetition. The question what would music that did not use any repetition sound like turns out to be an interesting maths challenge.

Focus on the User: The real winners and losers of Don't Be Evil

2012-01-25T13:27:00.000Z

Engineers from Twitter and Facebook got together to hack out a bookmarklet called “Don’t Be Evil”. You can grab it from a site called Focus on the User. These engineers are being pretty direct with their choice of names.

The goal of the bookmarklet is to show that Google could have done Search+ differently. Twitter and Facebook say that Search+ is not fair. They say Google are using their search market share to bully their way into social.

If you read this blog then I’m sure you’re already familiar with the bookmarket but, just in case, here’s the video.

As it happens, Focus on the User also shares the code to the bookmarklet and this reveals there are a simple whitelist of social networks which “qualify”.

When Google rolled out Search+ they only qualified Google+ for special promotion. Twitter and Facebook complained. I do think the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet has been a big PR win for Twitter and Facebook but, for me, it opens a can of worms. If you want Google to include other social networks in Search+ then which other social networks should be included and who decides this?

The Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet “favours” the following networks. These are the winners.

Crunchbase
Facebook
Flickr
Foursquare
FriendFeed
GitHub
LinkedIn
MySpace
Google+
Quora
Stackoverflow
Tumblr
Twitter
YouTube

That’s a pretty good list and some other Google properties in there as well.

There are some sites that are missing, though, and I accept “missing” is subjective. Here are the losers:

Bebo
About.me
Cyworld
Delicious
Foursquare
Fotoblog
GetGlue
LiveJournal
Orkut
Plurk
Renren
Xing
Posterous

There will be some technical reasons why some of these sites weren't easily included. There will certainly be some geographical reasons too – Xing, for example, is far bigger than LinkedIn in places like Germany but were these American engineers to know that? The fact there are reasons why some sites weren't included in "Don't Be Evil" only serves Google's point, I think, rather than Twitter and Facebook.

If Twitter and Facebook wanted into Search+’s new promotional areas – an understandable wish – then they also need to tackle suggesting ways by which Google could make these decisions.

I don’t think it’s arrogant of Twitter and Facebook to expect to be in Search plus Your World’s special zones but there are other social networks out there. If Search+ isn’t exclusively for Google properties then it’ll be a huge challenge to work out who else qualifies. Would social networks expect Google to publish requirements for Search+ inclusion?

Google's new privacy changes and tracking are a good thing

2012-01-24T22:13:00.002Z

Google has announced a new simple and connected privacy policy. We already have large sites like the Washington Post writing on this and wheeling out concerned experts. Had Apple not announced amazing financial details at the exact same time Google just happened to publish this news then it would surely have been a bigger story.

Gosh. Fancy that.

Putting my cynicism aside; I actually support the changes.

I buy the story. That helps. There are too many Google privacy variants and I welcome a single and easier to understand one.

Do I worry about Google’s cross site tracking? No. I welcome it. I do believe it’ll improve the service.

I’m pretty sure it’s the cross site tracking that Google is really after here. The improvements to privacy transparency is a sugar coating for both internal Google consumption as well as external.

I accept there are some risks in putting more eggs in a single basket but this feels more secure than the sort of behind the scenes deals Facebook signs with the like of Yelp for instant personalisation.

I look forward to some of the products that Google could make with the result of this tweak. The video above teases us over the possibility of adding geo-data to Calendar alerts. There are a lot more. For example, what about Google News giving me prompts or alerts for areas I’m due to travel into – if Google knows I’m flying from Heathrow on Friday then I’ve no problem with Google Alerts for potential travel tips for Friday. Alternatively, if Google knows I like to try and catch viral videos on YouTube before they go viral then I have no problem with their creators being recommended as Google+ connections or surfaced in search.

Users can't opt out? Of course not. How could it work if users could pick and choose the T&Cs of sites they use? I don't see a two tier privacy system being a good thing - one, simple, set of privacy rules for most people and yet Google serving up complex and separate rules for each of their sites for a small percentage of users? The opt out is a red herring.

Google's new games promo brings fully fledged ads to Google+

2012-01-23T11:41:00.000Z

Games have been part of Google+ for a while. They were not a launch feature but Google understands how important social gaming is and was quick to introduce them to their must-succeed platform.

It's also been the case that Google has been happy to promote individual games too. Games have traditionally lived in the sidebar to the left and Google+ would know to remind you of those games you've already looked at or even tried.

File this as "new to me" but the most recent games promotion on Google+ is different. We're talking about banner promotions here and left to speculate how games score this prime slice of real estate. Does Google get paid for this? Is this an editorial choice?

The new game promotion lives in the sidebar to the right. That's the same column that Google typically reserves for calls to action - such as Circle suggestions and prompts to send Google+ invitations to your friends.

Why Wikipedia is using JavaScript for the blackout

2012-01-18T10:16:00.000Z

Today Wikipedia is supposed to be "offline" with a blackout to support the protests against SOPA and PIPA. Buzzfeed already has a collection of angry students who can't do their homework due to the content being unavailable.

There's a catch.

Wikipedia's content is still there and it's easy to get at. Just disable your JavaScript. Wikipedia are simply using JavaScript to open a layer over the main content. If you disable JavaScript, that layer does not render and you can navigate and read Wikipedia as usual.

I don't think this a weak protest. The type of people in favour of SOPA, for example, are unlikely to figure the 'hack' out.

It does raise a question; why are Wikipedia using this blackout tactic?

One answer is loud and clear to anyone with experience in search marketing. This approach should not impact Wikipedia's awesome SEO. There are no redirects here. No 404s, 503s or other server side rejections. Google can still index the full page of content.

Caution! This does not mean you can copy Wikipedia. Google is unlikely to let other sites away with this - it's not good form to have too a high percentage of a page's content accessible to spiders and not immediately visible to users. You risk falling into the 'hidden text' trap which has been part of Google's guidelines for years.

There's a second reason why the Wikipedia charity has adopted the JavaScript approach. JavaScript is a client-side script. In other words; it runs on your PC (or tablet, smartphone, etc) rather than Wikipedia's own servers.

Wikipedia is hugely popular and not cash rich. They make heavy use of caching in order to serve up their pages (millions of which go untouched for days). The beauty of the JavaScript blackout approach is that it will not corrupt Wikipedia's content cache with lots of black pages. This approach helps ensure that the blackout only lasts for a day and that we're not discovering protest pages on Wikpedia for days to come.

Searching by similar image, repeat nearly 3000 times

2012-01-15T15:05:00.003Z

This video shows what happens if you start witha 400x225px blank and transparent PNG and use Google's search to find a similar image. That similar image and use Google's image search to find a similar image.

Rise and repeat that cycle some 2,951 times and put those images into an animation that runs at 12fps. What do you get? You get this! Surreal.

This bit of insightful insanity comes to us from Sebastian Schmieg, in The Netherlands, who put this together in December 2011.

Always on ambient social connections and hardware

2012-01-09T14:05:00.000Z

This design by Kairi Eguchi caught my eye. It won the LG Mobile Design competition last year. LG, of course, are now dabbling with Google TV.

In essence the "Finestra" is a charging cradle for a smartphone. Just as the Motorola Atrix (also now Google-y) is designed to be plugged into a keyboard and screen so is the Finestra more than just a power charger.

Once the smartphone is in the wall mounted Finestra the system turns into a rather nice ambient display for your social activity. It can also interact via the laser keyboard. Laser keyboards have been available for years.

I'm rather reminded of the work Dentsu did with Berg on media surfaces and incidental media.

Google+ images dominates SERPs

2012-01-05T14:18:00.001Z

I noticed that many of the 2012 predictions for SEO agreed that Google+ would be important. We also know that Google+ Pages for businesses and brands have started to appear in the search results pages.

This, however, is a new (for me) way to incorporate Google+ content in the web results and it utterly dominates the SERPs. Look at just how much of the screen those images take up. Clicks take you to the Google+ page and not the URL you can clearly see associated with the post.

Geek Tyrant is also an especially interesting Google+ Page for Brands as with just over 500 followers it is one of the smallest I know that has qualified for Google Direct.

To get this result I searched for [geektyrant].

An insanely dangerous path? Google, accidental and incidental links

2012-01-04T10:54:00.000Z

I find myself deeply worried by yesterday’s drama over incidental links.

The SEO echo chamber thought they had spotted Google buying links. They hadn’t.

They had spotted a campaign to promote a video and, as a result of that and against the quality guidelines put in place by the people running the video campaign, one link was generated that accidently missed out the nofollow value on the relationship attribute. One single link. Just one.

Google has responded. Matt Cutts, head of web spam and who is technically on holiday, explains on his Google+ page that the Chrome page will receive a penality.

Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either.

However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos--not link to Google--and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines, which you can find at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3.

In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days.

In some ways this is a very smart move by Google.

They’re showing that their intentions are that no one, not even big brands, are above their own quality guidelines. This is designed to silence critics who suggest that Google too often turns a blind eye to dodgy links when it suits them or when the brand is big enough.

In fact, I’d argue that if you were to dissect the motivation of some of the SEO echo chamber then you’ll find the intent to embarrass Google in the weird hope that the engine would somehow abandon its current position on paid links.

Fears for the future

In some ways this is a very worrying move by Google.

A web page has been penalised because just one link was created as the result of a media campaign even though the intent was never about links.

What does this mean?

I worry that that what is acceptable and not acceptable is now horribly blurred. I worry that many genuine and common place forms of media buying could result in accidental and incidental links.

I’ll try and articulate these concerns through some questions and scenarios.

Does this mean if you pay for and run an advert on TV and that, as a result of this advert, bloggers discuss your brand and link to you – that you have committed a similar mistake?

Perhaps Google’s problem was that individual bloggers had been approached and offered money and a media asset to promote?

Would that mean if the same outreach had been attempted without the financial incentive that the “nofollow” value would not have been necessary on any links produced? If that’s the case then blogger outreach and relationship building will soar in popularity.

Of course, the latter would still allow for paid-for video seeding. The goal would be (as it always has been) is to use the paid media to ignite the fires of interest and inspire many other bloggers to re-use the video and discuss your brand.

On the other hand, if you invite bloggers to your conference, giving them free tickets as part of a social media campaign – and, as a result, your conference is written about, with links, have you committed the same mistake?

Google, via Matt Cutts, used to say that if you had no intention of generating links then any links that the engagement created where safely incidental. Intent mattered. The company frequently gives away Android phones to developers and bloggers for review.

It’s a scary world if a single, accidental, link created off the back of a digital marketing campaign can result in a penalty.

Best practice for the future

In November, for Econsultancy, I speculated on four ways the SEO industry could rule the world and suggested that SEO is your digital strategy.

If this incident is illustrative of the digital direction for 2012 then I may be right.

This means that all your branded content, social media and PR, all your asset creation must take oversight and direction from search savvy digital marketers.

I’m not suggesting the SEO boutiques must be the lead agency on digital work. I’m suggesting that digital work is led by strategists with expertise in the digital media landscape.

I fear I’m also suggesting that almost all digital marketing work, pre and post-campaign, will need to be checked by people with enough SEO skill to ensure that nothing accidental has been triggered by the work that might have included a PageRank passing link. I can tell you now that that the world is full of brands and agencies, busy with effective digital marketing campaigns, who don’t have the expertise or organisational structure to do that.

What do you think? Is this incident just a one off? Or does it herald a new and somewhat scary future?

Is Google really breaking their own link buying rules with sponsored posts?

2012-01-03T06:36:00.001Z

Image via CrunchBase

Search Engine Land has a good piece of news out that hit the web late yesterday that asks if Google is buying links or working with thin content. Danny Sullivan wrote the piece himself.

There are some poor blog posts that contain the phrase "This post is sponsored by Google". These posts, most of them, also contain video ads that have come via Unruly Media.

Danny writes a balanced article on the discovery and points out the concerns;

"The campaign is odd in two major ways. For one, it potentially violates Google’s guidelines against paid links.

The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, has been quite vocal that sponsored posts shouldn’t be a way for people to gain links in response for payment, that any links in such posts should use the nofollow attribute to prevent them from passing credit to Google’s ranking algorithm."

I don't have any inside knowledge on this one but I have worked with Unruly Media in the past. They've never asked me for a link and always ask for suitable disclosure - hence the "This post is sponsored by Google" cropping up in these posts. If we tweet about a video we're asked to include #spon or #ad in the tweet too. The tweet request is more strict than current ASA/CAP rules suggest (since they don't give us the text to tweet) but probably wise given the indications coming out of the OFT.

If this is a standard Unruly Media campaign then the media asset being promoted here is the video. That's what Unruly do. It's also most likely that that's what Google's ad agency wanted to achieve.

If, as an SEO or a blogger, you had a video that you were paid on a view-to-earn basis then wouldn't you write some content to post the video along side and publish the two together? Or would you just blog a video without any context? That would look odd. Or would you just blog the video without any traffic driving text content to go with it? Wouldn't that be pointless?

My hunch is that individual bloggers have written editorials for their sponsored video (which is just a CPA ad - like so many others, just like any affiliate deal) and put a link naturally into that text.

There are certainly times when editorials are encouraged for videos. After all, the best viral candidate videos tend to get to success by building up some buzz. It's certainly known for video seeding companies to push for this - but they never ask for links.

There's one exception; ebuzzing. Ebuzzing demands links, gives you the links to use and then checks the links are in place before your article is validated. I have experience of ebuzzing UK and can tell you that they nofollow those links and redirect them through a tracker.

I hope I'm not wrong. This will be a big story as TechCrunch has picked it up but unless Unruly Media US is very different from the core of Unruly then I doubt these posts were about links.

Sadly, I could be wrong. It's all too easy to imagine an ad agency putting pressure on some rookie Unruly Media account manager to ask bloggers to go that extra step and put in a link - but let's hope not. If so then it's an argument as to why all ad agencies need to blend SEO expertise into every part of their digital activities. Branded content is a media activity.

I really doubt Google's ad agency decided to promote Chrome, by brand, in search by asking bloggers to include links and videos in their posts. If they had wanted to spam they'd just have dropped the video requirement.

Google have done this before

It's also worth noting that Google have used other viral video platforms before. I've taken part. Over on Geek Native I wrote about a video ad from Google about their Science Fair project. Many other bloggers did too.

Google's Science Fair video came to bloggers via the AOL owned GoViral. Bloggers got paid for each play of the video they achieved.

In my case I wrote some text to showcase the video. I even included a link to the Science Fair page on Google - but I didn't have to and wasn't asked too. It's an editorial link.

The one eyebrow arch for my own post is GoViral's video player. I could have sworn the wrapper for the player included a statement about the video being an ad - the standard disclaimer mention. That's why there's no additional reference to it at the foot of the blog post. It could be the case that once the video ad expires on GoViral and it's no longer bought media that the player transforms into a more discreet unit. That, however, has nothing to do with links, Google or Unruly. That'll be an AOL idea.

To consider...

The real issue here, I think, is whether the blogs caught up in this stormy teacup count as thin content, spam, made-for-ads or good enough for advertisers. Let's just ditch "made-for-ads" as a concept in any way similar to "made-for-adsense" right now. Many blogs are commercial. That's not a crime.

I bet Unruly will be wondering whether their screening processes are good enough - although given that it's a CPA deal you could argue that the system is self-correcting.

I've not checked out all the blogs that have been surfaced by today's drama but some are certainly pretty poor. Hopefully Panda will keep that sort of content away from our eyes.

Lastly, there's a debate about exposing dodgy SEO here. I'm very happy to point out when some one's cheating. I think it's good for the industry as a whole (read: it'll save SEO from itself) and a valid business tactic. However, some people in this exposé are supposed to be strongly against "outing". They've done themselves no favours on that front.

I'm sure it was one of Google's agencies that have done this - and either spam SEO has been outed, in part, by the no-outing brigade or some of the no-outing brigade have cried wolf on this one.

Ironically, perhaps they're right and I'm wrong - perhaps outing is bad because unless you can be certain you know what's going on then you have no business slapping on labels and spotlights on your terms?

Digital marketing predictions for 2012

2011-12-22T14:38:00.000Z

Image via Wikipedia

Last year I talked about the rise of legislation, the growth of mobile devices, connected TV, HTML and the blending of social media into a far flung range of departments like HR.

I could have done better. I think, though, I did fairly well. The weakest prediction may have been the rise of the connected TV as we’ve actually seen some chipset makers back out of that for now. Equally, we did see Microsoft’s Kinect go from strength to strength.

As always predicting digital marketing for the year ahead is a bit of a fool’s game. I’ve been doing this long enough to know year ahead predictions are about as stable as Europe’s economy. After all, bonus points to anyone who predicted a Spotify app store and did so 12 months ago? Who would have predicted that Apple’s attack lawyers would come sniffing around this post just because I used the phrase “app store” in a generic sense.

I am a fool. I’m going to have a bash at predicting digital marketing trends for 2012.

Loyalty

My headline prediction for 2012 is the almost desperate need to drag ourselves out of the discount culture.

It’s a nightmare and we’ve done it to ourselves.

I don’t buy anything from my local shopping centre unless I’ve a discount code or a deal. It’s easy for me to shop like that because it’s so easy to get discount codes and deals – and if one isn’t available this week then I just need to wait until next week, perhaps a little longer, for one to appear.

We need to move to a loyalty culture.

I know loyalty schemes do not always create loyal customers but on a purely business model level they make more sense. Rather than discounting to reward a disloyal customer, a loyalty scheme discounts only once the life-time value of the customer warrants it.

Loyal customers are the goal. The blending of social across the channels; especially offline, is perhaps the most direct way brands have to achieve this. After all, it’s better to have a community base who buy from and support you than a fickle customer based who judge you.

Cross-platform and real-time Display

Display has gone from being very ungeeky to being uber-cool (yes, in my world geek = cool). The number of cocktail lunches in which RoS Display media deals are bartered is on the steady decline. Good. On the rise are ad exchanges, demand side platforms and real-time bidding. The PPC skill set is rescuing Display.

We’ll see more of this in 2012 and I predict the growth will be in cross-platform display technology. Sticking with the trend I cited in 2011 the fragmentation of devices (especially the rise of the tablet) will mean that Display solutions will go cross-platform in other to thrive.

I’m going to be cheeky and tuck in a note about PPC in here – the gap between PPC and Display will narrow dramatically in 2012. It may close. Job titles like “Head of Biddable Media” will be handed out.

More legal woes

Image via Wikipedia

Europe, America and pretty much every government will tinker more with the workings of the Internet. Whether it’s SOPA , the ePrivacy Directive (different in each country) or some new horror unleashed by the Luddites – we will have to deal with it.

Video

I think video will roar in 2012. Video chat will certainly be one to watch. We can thank Google+ Hangouts for this, the Kinect, improvements to Skype and Facebook as well as the rise of smart phones that make video calling easy and desirable. Hello Facetime.

I think there’s already inequality in the supply and demand of video ad inventory. I think this will become an issue in 2012 – but it might also be solved in 2012. There’s an opportunity there for a clever platform or three.

The last sub-prediction for video is that we’ll see it used more often in corporate responses. If there’s a brand disaster or some other event – it’s easier and makes more sense for brands to use video to address the issue. Video is more emotive than some dull PR statement and, increasingly, it’s easier to amplify.

Voice and gesture

Will keyboards decline? Some say so – but I find it hard to imagine an open plan office in which everyone is trying to shout at their computers. We can’t all pretend we work in a stock exchange.

At home and on mobile devices, however, I predict we’ll see a rise in both voice control and spatial/gesture based interactions. This will impact everything from the concept of “keywords” through to the battle for the living room as the big players jostle for control.

HTML 5

Okay, I predicted HTML 5 last year and although it did surface on some occasions – most notable on mobile apps, especially those looking to get around certain draconian app store rules – I think it was understated. HTML 5 didn’t even official mature this year.

Even if the W3 aren’t bold (sorry; strong) enough to rubber stamp HTML 5 in 2012 I’m certain that more marketing managers will be aware of it and very aware of the possible drawbacks to launching a three year, HTML 4, build project in 2012.

Internet. Everywhere.

I’m not going to predict even more smart phones and tablets. That’s a given. I also think connected TVs will surge in 2012 – certainly overtaking the ill-fated 3D TV family.

I think the trend will go further. It’s the Internet. Everywhere.

For example, one 3D trend that may well take off in 2012 is 3D printing. I think 3D printers will become cheaper, more easy to get hold of and I think we’ll see more devices like Berg’s Little Printer and utilities like the Twine will continue to develop impressively.

The Twine, after all, needed to raise some $35,000 via Kickstarter. The project isn’t over yet and more than x10s that amount is safely in the bank.

Signal SEO

SEO will become far more resource intensive. In order to move the needle at all SEO campaigns need to work harder and address more quality signals than ever before.

I talked to Econsultancy about the impact of social signals. That’s just one collection of signals. Google has patents out on behavioural understanding, real-time and freshness are certainly important and given the predictions above we’ll see more value been given to portable content –ie, content that works well on desktop, mobile and other connected devices.

This may challenge some agencies and in-house teams. In order to address all these new signals SEO campaigns need to be more detailed. If we look to the hip trilogy of “earned media, owned media and paid media” – successful SEO campaigns have to score critical hits in all three of those categories and does not tidily live in either one.

SEOs care about creative work. They’ve done so long before Matt Cutts coined the term linkbait years ago – and they certainly cared about creative work afterwards. In 2012 creatives will care about SEO.

A good year for affiliates and performance marketing

Affiliates will have a good year.

Not all of them - some will be Pandead. The others, however, will find that CPAs remain robust, the cost to advertise will fall and there will be brands very happy to push the risk of spend elsewhere.

That said, I think there will be some squeeze of overrides and other network based fees as more technology based alternatives move in to lower the cost of running affiliate programs.

Equally, digital agencies will have to work hard in order to show the value they bring to a campaign. Some of that value will certainly come from blending solutions and services - such as intelligent blogger outreach that empowers bloggers with effective and legal ways to earn money and acts as an important blogger recruitment method for merchants. PR agencies, already fighting off social media agencies, may well find affiliate agencies are busy setting up events and wooing bloggers as well.

Can silent browser updates save us from the EU’s ePrivacy Directive?

2011-12-16T11:50:00.000Z

Image via Wikipedia

I’m not a fan of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive. It seems to have been penned by people who are out of touch with the internet. I also smell the faint whiff of anti-American sentiment. That’s a shame. As the anti-SOPA protestors remind us all; there’s a difference between one country and the global web.

Here in the UK we were schooled by the ICO that site owners "must try harder" on compliance. Come May 2012 they’ll start chasing and punishing website owners who fail to get explicit opt-in permission before dropping any non-essential cookies. To be clear; the authorities consider tracking and analytics to be non-essential.

This is a frustrating time. The UK authorities accept that browser settings could be used to control this opt-in process. This would be great news because it means not having to design sites with annoying but necessary permission seeking layers and would, hopefully, not lead to too much in the way of a decline in vital analytics data. Why is that frustrating? The same authorities say that browser settings are not yet sophisticated enough.

Browsers need to get better.

Chrome is great. Whenever there’s an improvement to Chrome that improvement silently rolls out to all Chrome users. This means if that Chrome puts whatever additional effort into the opt-in cookie settings is required to please the authorities that, in no small amount of time, Chrome users will have it.

Firefox isn’t a slacker either. Firefox introduced silent updates at the end of September this year. Mozilla’s browser is moving from a yearly update cycle to a series of rolling improvements every 6 weeks.

So, what about Internet Explorer? Actually, and somewhat surprisingly, good news on that front too. Microsoft has announced mass upgrades of IE that will be triggered automatically.

Okay, the Microsoft news has plenty of holes in it – these automatic upgrades are only triggered for people who’ve asked for automatic upgrades or who haven’t refused the latest IE before and they can be opted out of. But it’s a start.

In many ways it looks like silent updates can pave a road to ePrivacy Directive compliance.

There’s a final pit trap on this road to salvation, though. There’s no such thing as an “EU cookie law”. The ePrivacy Directive is a set of directions from Brussels that countries can interpret differently – and have already done so. In theory both Ireland and the Netherlands have already adopted the full recommendations whereas the UK is giving site owners to May next year.

Countries can go further than the EU directive too. In the Netherlands, for example, there are political forces trying to ensure all types of cookies receive separate and explicit agreement and that this agreement from the user is renewed/validated every year.

A fragmented set of privacy policies across Europe will certainly make it harder for browser settings to resolve the ePrivacy Directive headache.

Video montage: best of the web 2011

2011-12-09T16:10:00.001Z

Just a quick post to share this fantastic video. This is a compilation of some of the viral video successes - intentional or otherwise - for the year. I'm sure there will be some strong last minute contenders as we draw even closer to Hogmanay but this montage will take some effort to beat.

Is the PS Vita good enough to bring Augmented Reality mainstream?

2011-11-28T13:39:00.001Z

I rather quickly wrote off the PlayStation Vita when I first heard about it. Why? It's just another handheld gaming console and I really do believe they face almost impossible odds against mobile phones.

You even have mobile phones that are gaming consoles - like the Xperia.

However, I'll also admit whenever I see any demo (or even trailer footage) for the PS Vita I raise my opinion of it. It's far more powerful than mobile phones are today and it doesn't have quite the same pocket sized concerns.

I've written about augmented reality before on this blog because I see it as a way of bringing the goodness of the internet to the real world. It's something that I watch in my role as Media Innovations Director at bigmouthmedia. In fact, it was only late October that Volkswagen Canda caught my eye with an impressive Beetle AR ad.

Companies like Layar and Blippar are worthy of the interest they attract.

AR is not yet mainstream, though, and it feels like there is a long way to go.

Take a look at this new trailer for the PS Vita and pause to ponder the impact it could have on "casual AR". I would suggest that anything you might see happening down the pub or friends mucking around with together has the potential to go mainstream. Games like FlickBall certainly look like that'll get people playing.

The PS Vita will need more than power in order to perusade people to play AR games. The games themselves will need to be fun. It's certainly a development I look forward to.

"Get a Chromebook for the holidays" - Google dribbles the ads in

2011-11-23T20:44:00.001Z

Google started promoting their Chromebooks via the Chrome browser dial screen a few days ago - but I've only just seen the message arrive in the UK.

It's both an obvious thing for Google to do - promote their hardware; as the promotion is needed - and a surprising one. After all, I think Google is busy trying to persuade people they don't use their platform to promote their products (well, perhaps that debate only applies to search).

The link goes to this page which shows off a range of Chromebooks. The buy button to a landing page that kicks off with Amazon, PC World and John Lewis buttons. It's the sort of landing page Google would give an awfully poor Quality Score to if someone pointed a PPC ad at.

As Google would have expected the results of the "ad" appearing aren't always pleasing. There is already a help thread of people asking how to remove it and at least one user has uninstalled Chrome, the browser, as a result.

Google Music is barely blocked in the UK

2011-11-23T14:00:00.001Z

I was pretty disappointed to discover that Google Music launched with only United States access. Google can be annoyingly slow in acting like a global media company at times - Google Voice still isn't over here. Despite my disappointment I understood why Google Music wasn't available in the UK.

Damn those licensing rights. This is what took Pandora out of the UK and kept Spotify from the US.

That's why I've been surprised to see Google Music in my Google+ stream. American users can share snippets of what they are listening too. Teasers. These aren't geo-targeted at all. Not only do people in the UK see these teasers but they can listen to the sample too.

What does that mean for the licensing rights?

If you're curious - you can geo-target your status updates in Facebook. Maybe this needs to come to Google+.

Google drives Search and Social together

2011-11-22T14:31:00.001Z

For a long time now Google News optimisation has been one of my favourite areas and I've been lucky enough to do work for companies like the FT, Trinity Mirror and Telegraph. Not to mention that bigmouthmedia is also in Google News.

As a result I've been able to see just how powerful Google News can be. In Google Web search people need to search for you. They need to know to search. They need to find the time to do it. With Google News that's not true. Google News suggests content to people. It's not just about all the traffic Google News can generate (lots and lots) it is about Google News' ability to put your content under the noses of people with a high propensity to link and share.

Today, Google's announced more powerful +1s on Google News. There's a new feature on Google News for anyone signed in - I have it already. The established "Spotlight" feature has been expanded so that it shows you what your friends (Gmail contacts and Circles) are +1'ing.

The homepage "widget" works as Google describes. You can see it in the screen grab with this blog post.

You can click on the Spotlight header, though, and if you do you'll wind up on a page like this. That's interesting. At a glance I can't decide whether that's content generated from +1s or not. I certainly not see any connections or recommendations annotations. That's a bit of a shame as that Spotlight page has an RSS. I'd love an RSS feed of my friends recommendations.

The title of this blog post is about driving Search and Social together.

Modern SEO needs to look at a large number of signals; not just titles, h1 tags and links and more than just adding social signals in there too. It's very clear that social signals are impactful. SEO campaigns are at their best when they can show content worthy of sharing to people with a tendency to share.

This is exactly what the +1 progress is doing here. It's ever more important to produce content that people want to +1 publicly.

This Google News integration also show cases how simple collections of sock puppets won't successfully game Google. Sock puppets won't read Google News and react to shares from their Circles. Only real people will do that.

Using IFTTT to cope with @breakingnewsuk

2011-11-18T10:07:00.000Z

Last night the famous Twitter account @breakingnews (circa 3,300,000 followers) launched in the UK.

This is Breaking News' first international expansion. The local (London) team are @Journodave (Dave Wyllie) and @TomMcArthur (Tom McArthur). They will both trebble their Twitter followers in 3, 2, 1 ...

Interestingly, Breaking News UK has launched in partnership with MSN and you can see the BreakingNews.com scrollbox on their UK site.

This gives me a challenge. I'm addicted to news. I follow too many people on Twitter to be sure to get the BreakingNewsUK tweets at the speed I would need to get the news while it was still super hot and Twitter breaking.

Should I set up SMS alerts? Each Tweet the account gives - I could get an SMS. I wouldn't miss much then. Only Edinburgh Airport has that relationship with me so far. A glance at BreakingNewsUK makes it clear that SMS is not the way forward. It's too active. My phone would buzz too often.

I turned to IFTTT. I love that site. If that happens then this. A rule based response to the internet.

I've created a rule that feeds each tweet from BreakingNewsUK to me via a Google Talk message.

The output of that rule depends on whether I'm looking at Gmail or Google+ or not. If I have a tab open with one of those two then I'll get an alert message.

If they're offline then I'll get an email summary.

So, okay, I'm not geting the breaking news at Twitter speed all the time - just when I'm ready for it. Let's see how the experiement goes!

Beyond the Search Box

2011-11-17T12:12:00.001Z

Last week Criteo ran a fantastic event in London that looked at the evolving Display landscape and how the media mix was changing.

The opening note came from Russell Davies, Head of Planning at R/GA London, and was fantastic. He ran through a handful of thoughtful examples of the expanding connectivity the world offers.

In particular, I found the colour stealing robots in the window of Uniqlo to be charmingly cute in their theft. Those robots feature in a 4 minute video from Dentsu London. Hmm, okay, perhaps some of this video is rather deadpan in presentation but I think the whole thing is worth a watch (the Uniqlo bots are towards the end).

I've put my own collection of slides up on Slideshare. Not sure how much sense they make without heavy notes but I think the overall suggestion of a vision is there! I was asked to talk about search beyond the search box and how to get more value from your search campaign if your own efforts had started to plateau.

Criteo: Beyond the search box

The future digital agency: Catvertising

2011-11-12T21:21:00.000Z

I write about the future of digital advertising on this blog. Sometimes I write about search, sometimes about affiliate marketing, display, TV, AR or something else new and shiny. There's nothing newer and more shiny than catvertising.

I can walk you through the stats myself but this video - which features and Cannes Lion - does a much better job than I ever could.

Ask yourself; does carvertising feature in your marketing mix? No? You've done it wrong.

Some of my favourite stills from that video are:

The new face of PPC

2011-11-12T12:41:00.001Z

I was testing to see whether Google+ Pages create annotations in Google's search results.

They do.

The screen grab I'm including in this blog post starts with a geeky blog entry I wrote about a cake that looks like a NES. You can see my author markup all around it. Below that you can see that Geek Native shared the post. That annotation shows up despite the fact that the post comes from the blog associated with the Google+ Page in the first place. You could argue the annotation is redundant. Does this mean that just having a G+P can positively impact your clickthrough rates?

That's not the reason for this blog post, though. There's still plenty of testing to do with G+Ps. The reason for this blog post is the presence and position of the PPC ads. There are three of them for this SERP.

None of the PPC ads appear at the top of the page. None of the PPC ads appear at the side of the page.

All of the PPC ads for this search appear at the bottom of the page. Wow. Isn't this a very different Google?

What's the logic here? None of these ads are good enough to show on the side but Google will squeeze them in at the bottom of the page anyway? Are their bidding software out there who think they've got ads in positions #1, #2 and #3? They're in for a shock.