There was a time when people bought from those people who knew them.

You went to the local butcher or baker, and he knew your name, and your kids names. Personal interaction was a valuable sales and marketing tool.

We can apply this strategy to the web, too.

Interaction Marketing

Interaction marketing, as the name suggests, is about the marketing benefit that can be had from engaging with a visitor in a more personalized way.

It works well in an environment of anonymous, me-too sameness, because people still crave uniqueness and personal attention. This strategy isn’t limited to commerce, either. It applies to all kinds of sites, including blogs.
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Google and NBC Universal announced a partnership yesterday that would help form a strategic multi-year advertising, research and technology partnership.

The announcement was made on Monday by Mike Pilot, President, NBC Universal Sales and Marketing and Tim Armstrong, Google’s President of Advertising and Commerce, North America.

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Large online advertisers will waste as much as $4.5 billion on paid search advertising in 2008, estimates WebTrends Inc., a leading provider of web analytics and online marketing solutions.

WebTrends bases this estimate on results of its new service, WebTrends Ad Director, which formally debuted at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in San Jose, California. WebTrends Ad Director utilizes self-learning technology to optimize millions of combinations of keywords, landing pages and ads across the major search networks to achieve maximum results. Companies using the solution have seen their return on ad spend increase an average of 44 percent.

“Search engine marketing is one of the most critical acquisition channels for many companies, but it is clear that a significant portion of these investments are being wasted or underutilized,” said Kevin Ryan, vice president and global content director of Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. “As search marketing becomes even more competitive, marketers would be smart to investigate automated methods for increasing SEM returns.”

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In the month of June we had reported that, Google and Yahoo! had finally entered into a non-exclusive search partnership.

Now according to Yahoo! News, Google and Yahoo! have finally lifted the curtain and have revealed substantial information about some aspects of the non-exclusive search partnership. The disclosure comes in the wake of a filing, that was submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, that includes some details about the governing of the partnership. However, relevant details such as financial terms and revenue split have not been disclosed yet.

According to yahoo! News, “Under the deal, due to take effect after a waiting period meant to help smooth regulatory approval, Google would supply Yahoo with advertising services to run alongside Yahoo’s own Web search system. Yahoo runs the Web’s second most popular search service.

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Google has now fully launched its competitor to Wikipedia. Knol has been open in Beta format since December with only a certain number of authors allowed to contribute. Perhaps the most graphic explanation of what it is all about is provided by its Plain old bag o’ knols, which appears ‘below the fold’ on the screen. Clearly many of its Beta authors were medical doctors who could write pharmaceutical knols, which will support a great deal of AdWords advertising. If such a knol attracts the searcher’s click, then they will move from a search report page with AdWords to an explanatory page with AdWords.

With Google so dominant in search they are formidable competitors in the advertising field. However Internet advertising is so lucrative that competitors will certainly be offering attractive advertising packages that should be seriously considered. One such is Performancing (thanks to Donna Fontenot for the heads up).

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Pheedo, pioneering distributed media monetization, now measures news feed (RSS) user behavior for advertisers distributing content through social media properties including facebook and MySpace; websites of many top publishers and high ranking blogs. The FeedPowered Analytics Dashboard™ delivers comprehensive intelligence about where an advertiser’s content is consumed, active user analysis including user engagement levels, and pass-along rates. The technology provides advertisers with a deep inside look at the behavior trends of active users consuming news feeds; creating a standard in Social Media analytics and measurable ROI on advertising spend.

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Just last month Google and Yahoo! had reached a landmark non-exclusive search partnership deal, where Google advertisements will be visible on Yahoo! Search results.

However, the big question that has been doing rounds in the search marketing arena is that, where would Yahoo! place these advertisements and when will Yahoo! start displaying Google advertisements in its search results?

Now, TechCrunch has posted a slide-show that was used during Yahoo’s presentation to shareholders about the Google-Yahoo! deal. On the slide no.14 of this presentation, Yahoo! shows the potential position of the Google advertisements.

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Last year I wrote extensively about major online players Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL using Behavioral Targeting. Microsoft and Yahoo have been very open about it but Google has not admitted openly about engaging in Behavioral Targeting.

I speculated about Google entering Behavioral Targeting, you can read my past blog posts at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/search/label/google). Recently, Google Analytics Data Sharing option reconfirmed my belief about Google entering Behavioral Targeting and using all the data it collects via Google Analytics (and other applications) to better target the ads.

A recent survey by SEMP.org (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) found that four out of five advertisers are willing to increase their online advertising budget in order to add behavioral targeting to their pay-per-click campaigns.

The survey also found that

Considering these stats and all the things that I have observed (see my past blog posts), I won’t be surprised if Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and ASK soon start offering behavioral targeting to it’s Paid Search (PPC) advertisers. To get the most of out of behavioral targeting, they won’t limit the behavioral data to search only, they will most likely use every data point they collect about visitors in various places including browser toolbars.

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Online advertising in general is fairing well in a slow economy. However, display advertising revenue, especially for bigger websites, is not doing as well. (Marketing Pilgrim runs display ads - Andy how are they doing - notice any downturn?).

Web sites, newspaper publishers, and news media companies like CBS make money by selling display ads. Remember all the new ad networks that have popped up in the last few years? Publishers are getting less for the ads they run through those networks.

PubMatic’s online pricing index showed that the price for ads purchased through an ad network dropped 23 percent from March to April. It’s worst for the largest sites - the prices for that segment dropped 52 percent. Ad networks are responding by more precise targeting of ads.

The New York Times Company saw quarterly revenue for Internet ads, but not as much as last year. Revenues increased 16 percent compared to 20 percent last year.

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As each day passes, we’re presented with new information that documents the decline of traditional media in favor of online counterparts and new media competitors. It seems that newspapers are among the hardest hit with circulation and print advertising down - forcing layoffs across the country.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) recently released a study showing newspaper Web sites attracted an average of about 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter, up about 12 percent over the same period a year ago.

The problem for publishers has been turning that online traffic growth into revenues. Online advertising at newspapers grew 18.8 percent last year, according to NAA figures, but that wasn’t enough to offset a 9.4 percent decline in print advertising. Total newspaper advertising last year, print and online, declined 7.9 percent.

Is Social Media to blame for the erosion in traditional media consumption and advertising revenues? Is the appeal of participating in news and relevant stories or the prospect of content creation more attractive to the thin attention span of today’s Web-savvy consumer?

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