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5 Trends to Watch at AdTech New York

Bob Angus — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:13:41 +0000

The advertising and online marketing world will gather next week at AdTech 2011 in New York. Three days of engaging speaking sessions, tchotchkes and giveaways from exhibits, and many meet-and-greet party opportunities. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend this year (maybe in San Francisco in 2012). But here are 5 trends to watch if you are there.

1. Mobile marketing is everything

Mobile marketing, mobile commerce, mobile advertising, iPhone and Android apps… it is the buzz. Mobile is the most important discussion taking place right now. Why? It is the new frontier to make a lot of money. Think back to the tectonic shift that Google created with its search engine. Mobile is a similar game-changer but likely even bigger. To tap into the mobile trend make sure to check out the AdTech Mobile session series.

If you can attend only one session, the mobile marketing session not to miss looks like Tablet Marketing: How We Really Use Them.

2. Google is still about search, not social

There is a Google + session in the social track (Getting Closer to Your Customers on Google+ with Christian Oestlien of Google). I think that Google+ and the +1 button are valuable in social marketing. However, AdTech is an advertising conference first and foremost. Google + has not integrated their ad network. Yet that is. So until they do, stick to making money using what Google does have and does very well. PPC and SEO are still massive. Make sure you spend your time finding out about the latest on the search marketing front more than how to use Google+.

3. True innovation in mashing mobile, local, shopping, and social

I have seen a lot of incredible innovation coming from the companies that eBay has recently acquired – from Where.com local mobile ad network to RedLaser mobile shopping apps to Zong mobile social payments. The mashup of mobile, local, shopping, and social is where the technical innovations are becoming mainstream solutions. Make sure to check out the exhibits from the companies that are listed in AdTech’s special Exhibitor Zones. The zones include Innovation Alley, Mobile Marketing, and Social-Loco specializations.

4. Small advertising networks are not going away

If you browse the Ad Tech exhibitor list, you will see a ton of small advertising and CPA networks. They exist because they can help you make a lot of money online. Find out what they offer and which can boost your revenues. Figure out who can be trusted and who is too good to be true.

5. Agencies – you still need them

You may not be big enough for massive ad agencies like BBDO or McCann. However, agencies should be a key partner in your success. They can get you great results, free up your time and help you scale. To get all that you need to understand how to best work with an agency. Check out the Media Agency session track.

Have fun in New York!

Photos courtesy of Ad:Tech

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AdTech, advertising, events, Google, mobile marketing, search engine marketing, social networks, viral marketing, web 2.0

Prime Angus Filets: Links this Week 2-1-2008

Bob Angus — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:34:36 +0000

Demo 08 was held this week in Palm Desert, CA. For those that do not know about DEMO, it is the high powered gathering where startups can demo to venture capitalists, press, and other influential technology elite.

Since my fortunes are used for mundane things like a mortgage and not angel funding, I simply watched the demonstrations online. Here are some of the companies that I will be doing further research on or using this year:(...)
Read the rest of Prime Angus Filets: Links this Week 2-1-2008

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, business models, Links of the Week, social networks, web 2.0

Using Twitter as an Effective Business Tool

Bob Angus — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:05:23 +0000

I have missed the Twitter train for long enough. One of my January objectives is to make Twitter an effective part of my suite of business tools. Until now, the extent of my tweets have been random oddities through my Facebook profile, like “Teaching my kid to appreciate the Ramones.” I want to use Twitter as a communication tool to add value to my business relationships and improve results through those connections.

I have bookmarked a ton of posts related to Twitter and how to it can be used to help develop business connections. Of those posts, I highly recommend reading Caroline Middlebrook’s Big Juicy Twitter Guide. In particular, Section 2 delves into the benefits that Twitter can deliver for your business.

It is well known that the more contact you make with a customer, the more likely you are to make a sale. These days it is much more â€˜in vogueâ€™ to sell by not selling, rather than doing the hard-push sales pitch. Twitter is a way of doing that. With Twitter you can chat to people in a friendly way and give them nudges and hints about what youâ€™re doing in your world. Look at the benefits:

It reminds them that you exist

It shows them that you are human

It allows you to mention new offers immediately

It allows you to form a more casual relationship

Also, Dan Zarrella just did a guest post on Read/Write Web called 10 Ways Twitter Can Boost Your Social News Profile. More than just trying to boost the size of your connections (which is something that anyone can game), the article offers several valuable tips that increase the value of those relationships. The most important… Ask questions. While Dan focuses on asking questions as a form of “Twitter-jacking,” I see the questions as the core to relationship building. Find out what your customers and connections want by asking. Then give it to them.

There is much to learn about Twitter. If you have a post that you have found insightful or if you want to let me know what your favorite Ramones song is, give me a tweet.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: results, social networks, web 2.0

I Built My Own Social Network in 1 Hour

Bob Angus — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:38:18 +0000

If you are into first person shooter video games like Halo, Doom, or Quake, you have to join Shoot First. Shoot First is social networking for FPS game fans that I built using Ning. As part of Ning’s free service, I easily created a full-featured social network and customized it to look the way I desired. I like to think of their platform as doing to social networking what Googleâ€™s Blogspot did for bloggingâ€¦ but with much more flexibility.

Yes, it took me only 60 minutes to use Ningâ€™s wizard-based platform to create a basic social network. Hereâ€™s the time line:

Draft a quick marketing plan (15 minutes)
Do some basic keyword research (10 minutes)
Create my Ning account (1 minute)
Create the Shoot First using the 4 step wizard (10 minutes)
Grab some images, videos and content to add to the site (15 minutes)
Update the site (5 minutes)
Update my personal profile (3 minutes)
Behold my own social network (1 minute)

I found Ning incredibly easy to setup, comparable to WordPress or Blogspot for blogging. Less than 20 minutes of the setup time was actually using the Ning interface to modify my site. It contains all of the fundamental social networking features â€“ user profiles, groups, invitations, discussion boards, and blogging. Plus, they offer services that allow direct integration in with Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. However, the services offered are not quite as polished as a Facebook or MySpace. For example, the invitation process does not allow folks to import names from existing contact lists like Yahoo, AIM, Hotmail or gmail.

From the standpoint of managing a social network, I have control over the site with moderation tools and adult content filtering. More importantly, I also have a lot of power to customize. Ning makes it easy to do a complete overhaul of the template UIs using CSS. Additionally, I can plug in my own external widgets and tap into their developer community for custom services that others have built.

For anyone who wants to monetize their social network, they have to pay the $19.95 per month fee from their a la carte menu of premium services. Ouch. Worse yet, you have to pay for that service if you want to remove their Google AdSense ads. I can understand that Ning needs its own revenue, but this is too much. Nobody serious can make the math work by posting Google AdSense ad blocks like Ning suggests. Or if your social network becomes big enough to use an ad network or sell your own ad space, then you probably have the resources and technical ability to build the site yourself.

Unfortunately, the other premium services that are available through Ning for Businesses also offer little value for the price. For example, the ability to use your own domain name is a nice option for anyone who wants to build their own brand and does not want Ning as part of the domain name. However, paying $4.95/month for simple domain control (and the site is still hosted by Ning) is way too expensive.

Overall, I give Ning an B grade from my first impressions. The platform shows a lot of potential and I will keep building out Shoot First to see how the community develops. If you are big into Facebook and have dreams of creating your own social network, then I definitely recommend giving Ning a shot. If you want to build your own community for the purpose of making money online through affiliate marketing or placing your own ads, then you may want to wait and see how the business services and advertising flexibility evolve.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: reviews, social networks, video games, web 2.0

MySpace Opens the Door to Developers

Bob Angus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:16:18 +0000

MySpace is set to formally announce their open application interface, MySpace Platform, sometime next week. This programming platform enables developers to create applications using a set of APIs that tie directly into MySpaceâ€™s social networking infrastructure. For more info, check out Techcrunchâ€™s comments.

One key element that MySpace got right in their developer program is allowing developers to monetize their apps by controlling their own advertising. Until now, the online marketing community has primarily focused on social media optimization and driving traffic to their websites. Now with the ability to create direct revenue streams that tap into the massive social networking population, I can see entrepreneurial developers creating applications that are similar to what has come out of affiliate marketing web services.

MySpace is not the first to venture into opening their platform. Facebook has had huge success in adding new and retaining members and attracting commercial dollars as direct result of their developer platform efforts. Of course, other social networks are joining the application bandwagon, namely Google. Googleâ€™s Orkut social network and iGoogle personal homepage service are announcing their APIs in early November. It will be very interesting to see how the big social networks continue to square off on this front.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: API, business models, social networks, web 2.0, web services

Digg-style Voting for Video Game Downloads

Bob Angus — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:39:55 +0000

I love to download and play a demo of the latest video games so that I can see what is worth buying. Besides demos, there are important post-release patches that I need and some amazing mods that extend the life of classic games like Doom and Half Life.

The problem is that the demo files are usually around 1GB in size. The Bioshock demo weighed in at 1.93GB (well worth it though). Plus, the official servers can be brutally slow. Try telling your kid that they canâ€™t play on Club Penguin because Daddy is downloading the Hitman: Blood Money demo.

The solution for the download crazy gamer has been to slog it out for the better part of a day on official distribution sites. Or one can go to classic forum-based communities, where you have to weed through tons of listings and have to pray that you donâ€™t spend 2 hours downloading a broken file… or worse.

Until now that is. FileRadar has melded the social voting model of Digg with the power of an open community for file distribution. I found FileRadar a few weeks ago thanks to a Techcrunch post and I’ve been hooked ever since. The result for me is less time downloading, less time searching, and the fun of giving my opinion to help the community. Plus, I love to see voting systems and social bookmarking concepts applied to a niche.

Hereâ€™s how it works. You, fellow gamers and other distribution sites submit links to the demo, mod or patch for a particular video game. Then that adoring, yet equally flame-ready community of video game fanatics votes up the game file content with a â€œblipâ€. Then for each link submission, the community votes on your individual download quality and can make comments.

To find the recently released free, full version of Far Cry from a quality source, all I had to do was check the “blips” and quality ratings and then start downloading. FileRadar also helps you find what you want through an array of great sorting options, classic search functions, and a series of leaderboards.

If you are interested in social voting and bookmarking and how to apply it to a niche, I definitely recommend seeing what FileRadar has done. If you want a World of Warcraft mod while you are there, then you are in the right spot.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: social bookmarking, social networks, video games, web 2.0

Community love with MyBlogLog and BUMPzee

Bob Angus — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:56:06 +0000

I have been incredibly slow to build out my community connections and social bookmarking here on my blog. If you are going to have a successful blog, you must actively participate in a relevant, engaged community. So I’ve been joining everyone of the many social networking sites and social bookmarking services. Soon I will be updating the Marketing page with a complete list of these sites. For now, I am making several posts reviewing my favorites. First up are two popular communities for bloggers: MyBlogLog and BUMPzee.

Know what your visitors want with MyBlogLog

Yahooâ€™s recently acquired MyBlogLog is one of the most widely used community for bloggers. I have simply added their widget into the sidebar here and have done the basics within the account setup. The community participation is huge. I instantly had 5 truly relevant groups where I knew I would be a daily participant. However, MyBlogLog offers a lot more than just community. The biggest benefit is that I know what my visitors are interested in and where they went after leaving my site. Armed with that information, I can focus on making more posts on what you want to read. Great concept, huh?

My traffic numbers are getting a BUMP

BUMPzee takes a lot of what MyBlogLog does well in building communities and then adds the powerful element of social bookmarking. Iâ€™ve not only added the sidebar widget that shows who has visited bobangus.com recently, but Iâ€™ve added their “BUMP it” bookmarking widget for all of my posts. Plus, this bookmarking is perfectly integrated in with the sidebar widget by promoting the top bumped articles in addition to who has recently visited. BUMPzee is a the perfect blend of networking and relevant bookmarking.

Of course, my personal desire for the added traffic and the stickiness of participating in an active community (especially in affiliate marketing groups) is my biggest benefit. I just had my highest traffic day yesterday thanks to direct traffic from BUMPzee and getting 3 Bumps for my CJ Product User Group Post.

Join these communities and add me as a friend

I’ve already seen an instant boost in traffic coming from both Bumpzee and MyBlogLog, even though my number of connections is still pretty low. I really am looking forward to see what happens as I build out my friend lists. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you setup an account and take the extra steps of adding a ton of related tags, joining some related communities, and reaching out to make contacts. In fact, make sure to let me know who you are and Iâ€™ll add you to my connections.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, social networks, traffic, web 2.0

Web Services Review – eBay’s New Shopping APIs

Bob Angus — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:32:56 +0000

eBay launched their developer program many, many years ago with APIs that allow developers to create applications for the two key parties of their auction platform â€“ buyers and sellers. Frankly, most of the emphasis has been on the seller side because sellers were the businesses and buzz around â€œhow to make money on eBay.â€ Until recently, the buyer side applications were primarily in the shadow of seller applications â€“ with the exception of sniping tools (which violates the developer terms and conditions).

At eBay Devcon 2007, there was a separate affiliate and buyer tools track. Several of the sessions focused on eBayâ€™s newly released Shopping APIs. These are different from the more extensive Trading APIs that provided access to the entire auction lifecycle. The new Shopping APIs focus only on querying and presenting data relevant to potential buyers â€“ find an auction item they want, provide information about that auction, and provide information about the seller.

The benefits of these web services are that they are lightweight, have faster response times (up to 4x faster than the Trading APIs), and allow for token-less authentication (no private data is being shared). The Shopping APIs support SOAP, JSON, Name Value pairs, and HTTP/GET via Javascript and ActionScript toolkits.

The idea is to create and propagate applications that promote specific eBay auctions where the buyers are â€“ namely browsing websites. The best part is that developers and/or users of these applications can make money when someone uses these applications. As a developer, you simply apply tracking code through eBayâ€™s affiliate program, which is a part of the Commission Junction network.

Here is a really cool, visually compelling example widget. In the first example, the widget displays a current auction based on my desired keywords â€“ Don Drysdale.

In a second example, a skyscraper widget displays several auctions based on Sandy Koufax as my keywords. Notice that they present a BidNow button which really entices a potential buyer to check out the auction.

You can also configure the widget to display auctions based on a specific seller ID or an individual auction ID â€“ HINT HINT â€“ your auctions. Configure your own version of the widget and get the code by visiting the Javascript example site.

Here is a link to the eBay Devcon presentation on their Shopping APIs and all of the presentations from this yearâ€™s developer conference. For more information, on the Shopping APIs, check out the eBay Shopping Web Services developer site.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate marketing, API, Commission Junction, eBay, reviews, web 2.0, web services

Claiming my blog on Technorati

Bob Angus — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:09:52 +0000

I spent a lot of time this weekend researching what makes a great blog, strategizing about this blog, and building my master plan. The researching and learning portion led me to some incredible information on blogging best practices. In fact, my next few posts will be delving into the articles and posts that I read and I will provide some great resource lists.

But this post is all about one of a flurry of tasks that I will be diving into this week. This post is about setting up my Technorati Profile. Technorati is a great way for me to track how my blog is doing and at some point to help drive traffic here. Woo hoo! Here we go!

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, social bookmarking, web 2.0

Search Engine Journal – 2006 Search Blog Awards

Bob Angus — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:32:28 +0000

Search Engine Journal has just announced the finalists for their 2006 Search Blog Awards. If you havenâ€™t voted already, head over to their site and make your picks.

I voted for the blogs that I read on a regular basis. I also didnâ€™t know a lot of the blogs that were listed. So I will be checking those out and will definitely be adding to my daily reading. What makes a good blog to me? I want to learn from the posts and comments. Plus, I want gain actionable information and ideas. For example, the Super Affiliate Marketing Blog is a great resource because I pick up tidbits of information and great ideas that I can actively use on my sites. Additionally, Jon states that â€œIâ€™m doing this project as a means to give back to the community.â€ Thatâ€™s a refreshing attitude.

Here is a list of the blogs that I voted for:
SEO Book – SEO Blog of the Year
ShoeMoney – Best Search Marketing/Contextual Ad Blog
Super Affiliate – Best Affiliate Marketing Blog
TechCrunch – Best Web 2.0 Blog
SEO Chat – Best Search Engine Marketing Community

One parting question/thought: Why give an award to sites promoting black hat SEO techniques? You can probably guess that I am against further enabling and enticing those who spread get rich quick by any means necessary schemes. To me, it is a black and white issue. One of the things that continues to hold back huge spending by advertisers is publishers who continue to take a renegade, self-serving approach to internet marketing.

© Bob Angus for bobangus.com, 2006. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: affiliate marketing, blogging, search engine marketing, web 2.0