Today, Kevin Lee will look at the broader interactive marketing ecosystem, the competition between Google and Microsoft, and how this competition may affect the future of targeted PPC (and CPM or CPA) advertising. Someday soon, the SERP will be the smallest part of your digitally targeted media buy. That's why the broader battle between Microsoft and Google matters.

Microsoft still leads in productivity software for consumers and information workers, as well as in desktop operating systems. Recently, there's been lots of buzz in the press about Google and its foray into Google Apps, which provides free Web-based apps (they eventually may be ad supported) that compete with the Microsoft Office suite. While Google's applications are usable, they won't be a significant threat to Microsoft unless Google also starts delivering the functionality in downloadable client-side software, due to the limitations of SAAS.

However, Google could decide to emulate the alternative desktop office suite providers, such as Corel, with its Office Suite, or private-label a free version of the open-source OpenOffice. Then it would indeed be going head-to-head with Microsoft's software-plus-services strategy, which envisions a world of software where you can be equally productive running applications and accessing data on desktop software or via Web services and the "cloud" (meaning the Internet).

The software-plus-services program is application and file interoperability and a set of applications that are agnostic as to whether you're working on your desktop or via a Web browser. The name, though, is an unfortunate selection because many sophisticated techies don't assume it describes Web services but professional services. This holds true even within the Microsoft partner community, which I had a chance to interact with at a recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). Even some Microsoft employees don't seem to know what the Web services are and are therefore confused as well.

To minimize this confusion, Microsoft should consider coining -- and therefore owning -- a completely new phrase for applications delivered seamlessly, locally, and across networks while being device-agnostic (i.e., working seamlessly with PC, mobile, game console, and set-top box platforms). Trademark and rights issues aside (money solves these), I suggest the following terms (listed in order of personal preference) to communicate Microsoft's flexible vision of the future, along with their current trademark/domain owners:

*Anyware (owned by Secuware in Madrid)

*Flexware (unused domain; the company may be dead)

*Flexiware (owned by a domain speculator)

Microsoft won't likely choose a clearer descriptor to illustrate this evolution in software to a multidevice, multilocation paradigm but will instead spend billions in media to educate the masses and its partners about software plus services. Kevin found WPC to be quite instructive. It reminded me that while I might be considered geeky in the media world, there's a whole other world of technologists that keep the computers humming, the software stable, and the data flowing behind the scenes in every kind of business you can imagine. Those Microsoft partners help determine what business data is available within their client organizations and how it's stored.

My key takeaway from the conference was there's a massive shift in the way consumers interact with software, content, entertainment, and information, as well as how they communicate with each other. In this new ecosystem, data are the key that enables marketers to target consumers as they use their many devices. With data comes complexity, and success in the marketing arena will be earned by those who best manage complexity and are able to focus on proper execution over the next several years.

Thomas Edison once said, "Vision without execution is hallucination." Microsoft COO Kevin Turner modified this slightly: "Strategy without execution is hallucination" (and not for the first time). This reminder of what might seem obvious is very relevant to search engine marketers, as well as to the portals. There are lots of great ideas, tactics, and strategies out there, but prioritizing the ones that make a difference then executing them is critical for success.

Source: clickz.com by Kevin Lee

Merchants often tells, they're using PPC search temporarily, just until they can get their organic listings high enough in the rankings to get free traffic. These merchants seem to think it's a good strategy to declare themselves "PPC search independent." But independence from PPC search isn't a good thing for most marketers. Nor is overdependence on either paid or on pure organic search campaigns, both of which are likely to be provide suboptimal results.

In this column, Kevin Lee will discuss ways you can help determine the right level of PPC search independence and how to think about search strategically when it comes to media mix decisions.

EBay, in an "experiment" over the last month (and at least partially to punish Google for aggressively promoting Google Checkout to eBay merchants), shut down its entire U.S. Google AdWords campaign. After 10 days, eBay returned, but reportedly not at the same spend level as before. Perhaps eBay learned something from its experiment. Scott Wingo, who runs ChannelAdvisor Blog, monitors eBay sales through his customer base. He reports while the mix of sales changed, "when we look at our overall GMV [gross merchandise volume], there are enough sellers that came up during the same time that it washed out overall. (For example, consumer-electronic businesses did well in the week)."

Wingo and others have concluded eBay used other media more heavily during the period when the Google campaign was turned off, therefore changing the mix of visitors and, subsequently, buyers. Overall sales volume wasn't dramatically affected, yet some eBay sellers were likely impacted in both directions as the mix changed from the long tail to listings promoting general merchandise. EBay similarly stopped advertising in Yahoo search results during Q4 2006 for about five days, according to published reports. While this was also termed an "experiment," I wouldn't be surprised if it was caused by a technology or accounting glitch.

EBay's experiment proves several things. First, there are several ways it can drive traffic and sales for its business. We don't know the relative efficiency of PPC search compared to other media, but when evaluated in a silo, obviously the two forms of tested media bring in a different type of customer. Second, there must have been something about at least some of the search visitors that worked well, as eBay has resumed PPC search spending on Google.

If I were at eBay now, I'd be looking at constructing a test that best measures the interaction effect between other online (and offline) media and PPC search. Through analysis and use of some proprietary tools, we've come to some interesting conclusions, some of which have been duplicated by others in the marketplace and others that are still used only by my team (I hesitate to share too many details on these). But our data support the basic idea that you probably don't want to declare full PPC search independence for the following reasons:

* Online media drives search behavior, particularly toolbar-driven search behavior. Curious consumers engage in search, but you can't guarantee they'll search for your brand or for a term for which you have a high organic position. Failure to be in the SERP (define) when you're spending on media elsewhere means you're missing significant opportunities. Even worse, you're handing those opportunities to your competition.

* Your competition's media (online in particular) drives search activity. You have an opportunity to be in the SERP, piggybacking on their media dollars. If you have the ability to track your competition's media spending and can determine how this spending will stimulate search or your campaign management systems are set up to monitor sudden spikes in search behavior, you can go heavily into search when your competition goes heavily into media.

When a client has high organic position and PPC search is layered on top, nearly every test we've conducted has resulted in a positive incremental ROI (define), particularly when messaging is different.

If you're under pressure to declare PPC independence, do what eBay did: an experiment. You don't need to turn off your entire campaign, nor do you need to simultaneously ramp up other media as you test the relative effectiveness of PPC search. Doing so may even skew results as you drive searches on your brand terms (for which you have high organic positions).

Source: clickz.com by Kevin Lee

Yahoo representatives responded this afternoon to our requests for comment on alleged outages that were reported by multiple readers. The company has said that it was not actual downtime, but that sites like Yahoo News and Flickr were delayed by network carrier issues.

In the statement e-mailed to CNET News.com, Yahoo's corporate communications representatives said, "For a brief period early this morning, some Yahoo users may have experienced delays in accessing Yahoo services in the U.S. due to network carrier-related issues. The problem has since been identified and corrected by our network vendor. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience, and we apologize to our users who might have been affected."

Source: news.com.com

Of the original seven wonders of the ancient world (man-made) only the pyramids of Giza are still standing. A web site called New Seven Wonders held a vote during the last several months in which many millions of people voted out of 21 different sites to select the next seven wonders. The winners were announced, appropriately enough, on 7/7/7. Here is a Google Earth file which shows the new seven wonders of the world (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=941572). The best tip is to turn on the Geographic Web layer so you can see many photos taken of each site available from Panoramio. There are also 3D models available of some of the locations.

Here's a quick list of the new seven wonders:

1. Ancient City of Petra
2. Machu Picchu
3. The Great Wall of China
4. Taj Mahal
5. Christ Redeemer, Rio
6. The Roman Colloseum
7. Chichén Itzá

Source: gearthblog.com