Pheedo, an ad network focused on weblogs and syndicated content feeds has reported on the results of their recent study on RSS advertising. Pheedo has found that standalone RSS ads (where the ad is the entire post) draws far higher click rates (7.99%)
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Nielsen Netratings, Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Harris Interactive have released online purchasing data in their joint Holiday eSpending Report.

The report states that consumers spent in excess of 18 billion dollars on online purchases, excluding travel, from October 29 to December 9 2005
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I love novel ideas that generate “buzz”. The “buzz” factor, executed correctly can drive a stack of people to your online business.

Buzz marketing tactics don’t necessarily have to be complex, they just need to capture the imagination of your target audience. I slap my forehead at least once a day when I see ideas that others have had. Why didn’t I think of that? I really need to exercise my left brain some more.
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Ok, sure it’s a challenge for some web masters to get past Wikipedia in search engine rankings for specific terms, and the information isn’t always spot on.. heck, sometimes it’s totally incorrect; but I’ve found it to be a really valuable resource. It’s a shame to see a class action being brought against
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What do you get the person who has everything? Gift certificates!

According to Hitwise, the number of U.S. Internet searches containing the term “gift card” was up 32 percent for the week ending December 10, 2005 over
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While I’m a little late in reporting this, I still felt it was worth a mention. In November, Doubleclick released their Q3 Search Advertising Trend Report, focusing on pay per click.

Amongst the key findings (and bear in mind that holiday season factors aren’t taken into consideration)

- Cost per Keyword has risen, as did Cost Per Click

- Keyword rank distribution is changing; competition may have played a role, but DoubleClick states it’s more likely due to changes made by the search engines. Given that Google’s Jagger update really set the cat amongst the pigeons after this survey, it will be interesting to see the next report.

- There appears to be increased value for lower-ranked keywords. My own guess on this one is that with the more popular keywords in competitive markets now only available to marketing execs with cash to burn, it’s left the rest of us squabbling over what’s left.

.. and the really interesting bit:

- Performance on keywords that generally aren’t as popular is improving; this has been most apparent in high ranking keywords, but not the number 1 slot.

Read the DoubleClick Q3 Search Advertising Trend Report

Learn more about pay per click

Learn how to minimize your pay per click costs.

PPC fraud - detection and prevention strategies

I’ve been tussling with the issue of a blog for ages.. up until now, I’ve just been posting news and research via FrontPage and using FeedEdit for RSS syndication, but there was just no escaping the inevitability of having to switch to a fully-fledged blogging software solution.

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