There is simply no doubt that Facebook is one of the hottest places to be involved in for online advertiser and small business. The community is growing fast and offers opportunities not available through other channels. Facebook was responsible for 23% of display ad impressions in the previous quarter. That beats Yahoo!’s numbers by a mile. According to a report released by Comscore, Facebook produced 297 billion online display ad impressions last quarter, out of the total 1.3 trillion impressions. Microsoft and Yahoo are still big players but they were just blown away by Facebook. So why is Facebook so successful?

The ability to buy specific audiences is enabling a greater number of display ads to be delivered on target, display formats are improving at a rapid rate, and the quality of creative is getting better every day. As publishers prove the value of online display ad campaigns, digital should continue to carve out a bigger piece of the advertising pie, (more…)

For Google, training its advertisers means more revenue for the company. The more people it can get on board with all its advertising services, the better off the company will be over the long run. Of course, Google does not mind people making more sales and converting more. Those all mean advertisers will come back for more. Mobile advertising is on the rise and Google wants you to be involved. That’s why the company is hosting an interactive training session to train its advertisers. Here are the details per Google: (more…)

If you have worked as an affiliate marketer or just a webmaster trying to push a product online, you have probably seen the issues that you may have with bidding on branded terms on Google. Let’s say you have a site about Macbooks, and you want to put an ad up and get folks to your site. Unfortunately, Google does not allow you to put the word Mac in your ads. What that means that your ads won’t be emboldened when somebody searches for the word Macbook. A lot of expert consider that to be a deal breaker as your ad going against branded ads can be a mismatch.

In reality, you should never give up trying to push branded terms in your ads. You can use “@” (e.g M@cbook) to get your ads approved under the radar. But some companies don’t even forbid folks bidding on their brands, so you should not just assume anything. Your ads may not show up in bold, but folks who are searching for a brand are targeted and more likely to convert. Think about it. Who’s more likely to buy: someone who is searching for a  laptop or a Macbook. The latter is not super targeted as “15 inch 2GB Ram Macbook” but it’s still pretty good. With a lot of other products, you can bid on the exact term and gain access to a stream of super-targeted visitors. Now that’s worth a lot.

At the end of the day, you shouldn’t be shy about doing things on Google and other engines. What have you got to lose? As long as you are not cloaking and doing sneaky things, Google won’t ban you for playing with your keyword terms. So just keep plugging away!