Internet Marketing Blog

YouTube Delivers Demographical Insight

July 18, 2008 – 10:06 pm

One of the things we love about the Internet is it’s ability to create new opportunities. Uploading and optimizing videos on YouTube to market products and services is now the norm in the leading Interactive Marketing Agencies.

Over 170 video sharing sites have made video more than a strategy; shooting videos for popularity has become more than fun because there’s money involved. It seemed to start with the Coke / Mentos geyser videos.

According to the Digital Inspiration blog,

The duo uploaded their creation on Revver which shares advertising revenue with the content creator. The video was a viral hit and viewed about 2.5 million times on Revver.com and generated $30,000 in advertising - $15,000 for Revver and $15,000 for its creators.

According to Red Herring,

Video-sharing service Revver on Thursday said that in its first year of operation the company doled out $1 million to people who create and share videos through the site.

Now YouTube is helping bring the profession into sharper focus by improving their analytical insight. Things need to be measurable for them to be valuable. At least that’s what our clients tell us. That is exactly why YouTube is improving their analytics. They realize as marketing professionals, we need to prove the value for any marketing or promotion we involve our clients with.

What you need to know about YouTube analytics is simple. You can view specific information about your viewers like,

• Views - How many times has this video been watched?
• Popularity - How the views for this video compare to all other videos.
• Discovery - How are people finding this video?
• Demographics - Who is watching this video? Age ranges by gender.

The secret path to getting to this information begins behind the “Account” link at the top of the page. Click the “My Videos” link to see your videos, where you’ll also find the “Insights” link and then the four tabs mentioned above. Again, you can do this while looking at “your” videos not all videos.

Be sure to click on the graphs and pie charts, they’re interactive. There’s also a great date-range selector at the top right of the page. Use the “Statistics and Data” link under every video on the site to learn details such as who is linking to this video.

If you’re one of the people out there hoping to make it big on YouTube we wish you luck. Now that the metrics are more qualitative and quantitative, we’re sure we’ll be seeing more of your work. However, in case you didn’t read the entire Red Herring article,

…the Coke-Mentos explosion is a standout in more than one way, and only a handful of videos have broken the $10,000 mark. The company (Revver) said it pays approximately 1,000 creators and video sharers each month. Overall it’s paid a total of 25,000 individuals.

When we divide one million dollars doled out so far, by 25,000 total money recipients, the number quickly shrinks to $40 bucks. Not exactly a great month in video but it’s a start.

Our success relies on our remaining focused on the metrics and the value propostion to our clients. As a full service, Interactive Marketing Agency, keeping the intent on delivering measurable value to our clients is the bottom line.

Posted by Blueliner Marketing Team
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Online Advertising, Video Sharing | No Comments »
Tags: analysis, demographics, statistics, video, YouTube

5 Critical Online Marketing Agency Trends

July 15, 2008 – 4:30 pm

This year alone, Blueliner has experienced several partnership requests from traditional ad agencies. As an online marketing agency, the opportunity to increase our project flow by partnering with traditional agencies is exceptional. On the flip side, we’ve noticed how anxious traditional agencies are in outsourcing this work, for fear of losing their clients. The agency-to-agency relationship is a tricky one, but can be successful with the right balance of trust, collaboration and communication.

As digital economies and online advertising budgets increase, it’s only a matter of time before traditional agencies expand their interactive divisions, or become interactive entirely.

Today we’ll discuss a few trends or key indicators that help interactive agencies provide the best service to their clients. Traditional agencies, take notes!

Mobile - The next ubiquitous platform is mobile. Google Mobile, Microsoft Live Search, higher levels of usability and customer focus are driving mobile application adoption and development. Gen x and Y are already using mobile / web 2.0 apps to stay connected with their friends and progress socially. Mobile is more than a trend. It’s a direction and a disrupter. It’s a mandate for user-centered design. We all deserve to be able to leave the laptop behind once in a while. But we can seldom roam without our phones. Successful marketing agencies have adopted mobile as a platform and standards that insure device independence.

Wisdom of Crowds / Ratings - Initially popularized by millions of visitors to Amazon.com, ratings, comments and voting are now the norm. Transparency in sales and marketing is driving “community” on client websites to help them become thought leaders. Clients are responding to interactive marketing agencies that provide opportunities to interact with their customers in new ways. Interactive agencies are proving the need to engage visitors by allowing the visitor to be involved earlier and later in the sales process.

Social Media - inclusive, viral, connecting, sharing and rich media are all terms used in discussion of this meta trend. Agencies that understand the complexities of online social awareness are being rewarded. Interactive applications and websites are increasing “time on site” and social awareness. How many “friends” you have and how many visits your profiles have received are new traffic counters. Thought leaders are differentiated based on the level of community they facilitate online. Social media has as many perspectives as web 2.0 and will continue to grow by definition and implementation. We seem to have a need to learn and understand our world and social media is helping.

Visitor Engagement - The days of website intros are waning. Introductions are making way to interactions with your company while improving the “brand experience.” This critical sales or awareness process is not being overlooked by the top interactive agencies. The importance of grabbing your visitors attention remains but the need to interact with the visitor has become the new critical first step. Maintaining your visitor’s attention and their “time on your site (pdf)” has become the defacto standard in analytics and measurement.

Number 5 is you - Refocusing on “you” continues to be an important meta-trend. Let’s hope we all remain the most important fibers in the fabric of web. Just as you are the most important person in the online sales process, you have also remained a key indicator of a marketing agency’s success. As the Interactive Marketing Agency continues to adapt their offerings, we all benefit from a web that provides us all with a place to share.

So how do we continue to adapt? We increase out awareness of our visitor and client needs while learning the best tools and techniques that convert those needs into measurable results. Staying on top of the trends will help everyone adapt. Experience promises the shortest distance between adaptation and interactive marketing success.

Posted by Blueliner Marketing Team
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Online Advertising | No Comments »
Tags: "wisdom of crowds", interactive, mobile, ratings, social media

Geo-tagging on YouTube Effects

July 14, 2008 – 11:25 am

Web 3.0 has been called the semantic web. As the content we’ve been tossing online gets properly tagged, we’ll continue mashing the data into more useful applications. One of those more useful apps is the advanced search tab on Youtube. I would have to guess that capturing even a small percentage of their 74 million users with your geo-tagged video could evoke smiles.

Insuring that your videos are tagged properly for local content is key. It’s like making sure your zip code is easy for the Google bots to find on your pages. The flip-side of this is the Google Earth YouTube layer.

With the Google Earth YouTube layer visible, users will see all the videos tagged for an area in that particular spot on the map. Imagine your video being the only one sitting on top of your town’s most popular landmark. Okay, that’s probably not going to happen in New York, LA or SF but it just might be possible for your clients where you promote your services. Searching videos might already be a part of your SEO strategy or it might be time to give it some thought. Searching for specific videos isn’t always an easy task as noted by Stephanie Olsen on CNET.

Localized ads will also play a large role as Google brings in more video advertising. Don’t forget web accessibility and the most important aspect of any video, the story. The semantic web also needs compelling stories as much as a bunch of geo-tagged, rich content. It’s totally okay if you’re the only one that can find your homemade high school prom video.

Posted by Dali Singh
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing | No Comments »
Tags: earth, geo-tagging, google, video, video marketing, web 3.0, YouTube

Good News Designers! Google Improves Indexing of Flash Pages

July 9, 2008 – 8:00 am

Is there anything that Google can’t do? It seems like there is big news coming out of the Google camp every week. The announcement last week that Google has improved its ability to crawl Flash websites is significant for web designers and business owners. So what exactly does this mean for you, and how should this news impact your approach to web design? Good question.

Below, I am giving my two cents, plus a quote from Google Software Engineers who work on the indexing team. It will be interesting to see how businesses react to the announcement, in terms of web design strategy. This issue has always been the knock against Flash sites.

• There is nothing major for you to do for this to take effect on your current Flash site/s, as the new Google algorithm will index most Flash content on your site that is not called in via javascript and other external files.
• If you are building site/s in Flash, consider breaking out the flash to multiple URLs, so that more of your Flash pages can be indexed. If your Flash site is one big Flash file (i.e. the URL does not change as you navigate the site), then you will lose big SEO opportunities, since Google will now look for URLs embedded within Flash files.
• Google’s Flash-indexing ability includes textual content in many types of SWF files, including Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, and self-contained Flash websites.
• According to Ron Adler and Janis Stipins—software engineers on Google’s indexing team, Google’s new Flash algorithm remembers “all of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.”

Overall, this is very positive news, that gives web developers and marketers more flexibility when it comes to planning website upgrades and new site development. The fact that Google is working closely with Adobe to make these enhancements shows the insight and prudence of both companies to bring two excellent web products in sync. Personally, I will be meeting with my project managers, web designers and clients to discuss how this announcement and ongoing improvements to Google’s new Flash algorithm will impact our approach to web design strategy.

To read more on this topic, you can check out the announcement from Google about improvements in Flash indexing. Otherwise, let’s keep this in everyone’s radar, and report back on some actual case studies that show how the new algorithm is starting to work for Flash websites.

Posted by Arman Rousta
Posted in Flash, Interactive Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, web development | No Comments »
Tags: Flash and SEO, Google indexing, optimizing Flash websites for Google, Search Engine Optimization, web design

Blueliner Launches Seekadventure.com for IZOD Fragrance - along with a Facebook Marketing Strategy

July 2, 2008 – 12:42 am

Hi Everyone. Part case study, part call to arms in this post here. I just wrapped up phase one of a killer web development project, as some of you know through our DMA Webinar Series articles. Blueliner was tapped to conceive, develop, launch and handle marketing for IZOD’s first foray into fragrance, which they undertook in conjunction with an industry leader, Gemini Cosmetics. The goal was to develop an adventure social network, in order to engage people who fall within the “Active Lifestyle” 18-34 demographic. The result is SeekAdventure.com, a social network for adventure, extreme sport, and thrill seekers, to share videos and stories. This is a men’s fragrance, but since IZOD may follow with a women’s line, and women are the top purchasers of men’s cologne for gifts, we want to draw both sexes to seekadventure.com. We have also launched a Facebook Group, which I hope you all with Facebook accounts can join.

Since the launch of SeekAdventure.com in May 2008, the website has generated –

• Over 300,000 page views and;
• Over 2,000 members signed up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Arman Rousta
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, Website Design, web development | 2 Comments »
Tags: arman rousta, facebook, izod fragrance, men's fragrance, podcasts, pvh, social media, video site, web design, web development

Web Design Trends 2008 Series (Part 2)

June 28, 2008 – 1:51 am

Following up on my DMA Webinar last week and Part 1 of this series, today we’ll look at three more sites that I like, and discuss why from a high-level. I suggest that you browse through each site on your own, to get the full experience of what I believe makes them some of the standards for great web design in 2008. After several more posts where I will present 3-5 quality sites in the same way, I’ll start delving in deeper, dissecting one site at a time, in a more in-depth website audit.

On this note, before moving forward, I want to ask you - when is the last time you performed a website audit? Do you see the value in hiring someone from outside your company to come in and provide a professional analysis of what would make your site function better? I am curious to hear back from readers about this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Arman Rousta
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Website Design | 3 Comments »
Tags: web, web awards, Website Design, website design in 2008, Website Development

Web Design Trends 2008: A Snapshot from our DMA Seminar

June 11, 2008 – 5:04 pm

I want to thank all the participants that joined Arman Rousta, CEO of Blueliner, in the DMA Virtual Seminar he conducted yesterday on Popular Web Design Trends of 2008! I’d also like to give a big shout out to Ashley Joseph, Product Manager at DMA, for giving us the opportunity to present on this exciting topic.

The presentation was really in-depth and rich with statistical data, content, visuals and case studies. I couldn’t cram it all into this blog entry but took some of the key points and highlighted them down below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dali Singh
Posted in Online Advertising | 8 Comments »

Using Web Analytics to Build a Visionary Company

June 5, 2008 – 6:58 pm

It’s interesting how businesses, specifically small ones, continue to pump thousands of dollars each month into multiple marketing campaigns, yet still don’t know which are generating ROI. As a business owner myself, it seems that sometimes we get so caught up in the grind of executing tasks, managing projects, interfacing with customers and so forth, that we forget to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

It’s one thing to set up web analytics for your website, it’s another to apply this data to your company’s overall marketing plan and spot trends over extended periods of time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dali Singh
Posted in Online Advertising | 3 Comments »

Google and Yahoo Local Search - Big Returns, Little Spend

May 28, 2008 – 2:10 pm

I reviewed the analytics reports this week from several client campaigns and was impressed by the significant amount of leads that were generated from Google and Yahoo’s Local Search listings. The best part about it is that we didn’t have to spend a dime to get our clients listed in Google’s Local Business Center! As for Yahoo, it also offers free listings, but to see any real traffic (and conversion) results, I would highly recommend signing up for the Enhanced or Featured listing, which would be located in the following spots:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dali Singh
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Online Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business | 6 Comments »
Tags: google local search, local search, local search advertising, yahoo local search

Get Cashback from Live Search!

May 23, 2008 – 8:04 am

Microsoft has received a similar amount of encouragement and flak from its soon to be released Live Search Cash Back program, wherein Microsoft promises to pay users for using Live Search when searching for products that they would eventually buy. Search engine purists see the new program as Microsoft’s desperate measure to match up with Google’s success in the web search market. Some industry players view the program as a good move on Microsoft’s part which may not translate into monetary returns, but might actually snag some valuable numbers on Google’s share of the search market.

Let’s leave the SEO purists’ perspectives and take a deeper look into the Live Search Cash Back program from the point of view of the ecommerce practitioners.

How does it work?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Arman Rousta
Posted in Online Advertising | 2 Comments »
Tags: Microsoft, search engines