We have had a parade of new web advertising concepts lately: Yahoo’s (YHOO) Smart Ads, Google’s (GOOG) Gadget Ads. Now we have Facebook’s SocialAds.

Just as people are throwing around absurd valuations on Google, we now have some bloggers doing the same with Facebook, that’s how important they are interpreting SocialAds to be. In keeping with the current silly season regarding all things Facebook, a $100 billion valuation has been projected for the company based on this development.

Background

SocialAds will take advantage of all the profile data that users enter in Facebook. Knowing a user’s age, location and interests will allow precise ad targeting. It’s a no brainer for Facebook to use profile data for ads served on the Facebook site and, indeed, they are already trying this out with their Facebook Flyers initiative. (more…)

Hulu, the much-anticipated video-streaming service from News Corp. and NBC, opened in private beta today. By focusing on network content and eschewing user-generated clips, the service could have an edge in attracting advertisers.

The programming roster ranges from vintage classics like “Kojak” to hot new series including “Friday Night Lights” and “Damages,” as well as clips and a few feature films.

In addition to Hulu.com, all content can be viewed via distribution partner Web sites — AOL, Comcast’s Fancast.com, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo — but not Google’s YouTube. According to the New York Times, for each show streamed online, Hulu splits the ad revenue with the content creator and distribution partners.

Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Digital Media, said Hulu.com is the cornerstone of Fox’s digital strategy. “We think our content will be available broadly, and hopefully monetized in a fashion that makes money for us and makes it a good experience for viewers.” (more…)

As though straight out of some biblical parable, for whatever reason, a percentage of those engaging in an activity will do it the good way while a percentage will do it the bad way. In sports or academics, they call it cheating. In our industry, they call it fraud, and despite that it can lead to a loss of revenue, relationships, even jail, it still exists. And, no amount of lamenting or commenting that these wonderful misguided souls could do so much good if they just chose to apply their efforts to more accepted and law abiding forms of productivity, it won’t go way.

Worst perhaps, it only continues to evolve and become more sophisticated, just as their counterparts in the less dark arts continue to improve their services. Take spyware for example. Those behind one of the newest strains have the skill to excel just about anywhere; they could have gone to Google, had their food, dry cleaning, and options. Instead, they seem content to earn millions by letting everyone know indiscriminately of their gender or age that their male genitalia need enhancement, and continue to innovate new ways of spelling that would confound even those in charge of naming Web 2.0 companies. While our space and particular brand of direct / affiliate marketing tends not to deal with promoting oral enhancements, we certainly can’t escape the impact, perhaps wrath of those engaging in fraud. I know I wouldn’t want to run a click based business, and much of the fraud in our space focuses on those perpetrating against click based businesses. Given that our industry revolves around actions, not clicks, it has always felt that we had less exposure to the dark side, and to some extent I think that holds true. Unfortunately, we see now that this doesn’t quite hold true, as a new type of fraud has begun to rear its head. It’s being called the Indy virus, a somewhat politically incorrect name based on the role that those in India inadvertently or perhaps knowingly play.

If you wanted to make some relatively easy money, unethically, it unfortunately doesn’t take much. (more…)

The federal financial regulatory agencies issued final rules yesterday that provide consumers with an opportunity to “opt out” before a financial institution uses information provided by an affiliated company to market its products and services to the consumer. The final rules (see final rules document) on affiliate marketing implement section 214 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, which amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

The final rules generally prohibit a financial institution from using certain information received from an affiliate to make a solicitation to a consumer unless the consumer is given notice and a reasonable opportunity to opt out of such solicitations, and the consumer does not opt out. The final rules apply to information obtained from the consumer’s transactions or account relationships with an affiliate, any application the consumer submitted to an affiliate, and third-party sources, such as credit reports, if the information is to be used to send marketing solicitations. Nothing in the final rules supersedes or amends a consumer’s existing right to opt out of the sharing of non-transaction or experience information under section 603(d) of the FCRA. (more…)

According to the Inside AdSense blog better management tools for AdSense users are on the way. The new tools will allow you to manage your ad units from within your AdSense account, meaning that setting such as colors and channels will be saved in your AdSense account every time you generate ad code.

What this means, practically, is that you will no longer have to manually replace ad code on all your pages every time you want to make any changes. Want to change all the borders of one size ad from red to blue? No problem, with just a couple of mouse clicks it will be done. (more…)

The travel industry is capitalising on the advertising opportunities presented by affiliate marketing techniques, according to a recent study.

Figures compiled by E-consultancy show that travel marketers spend an average of around 16 per cent of their overall online budgets on affiliate marketing and 71 per cent of travel firms have increased the amounts spent on advertising in this way over the past two years.

Moreover, the latest data shows that 18 per cent of travel sector sales are generated through affiliate marketing and more than half of companies using these techniques considered them to be “cost effective”. (more…)

	SAN FRANCISCO–Google Inc. says its third-quarter profit soared 46 per cent, hurdling the enormous expectations that have elevated the Internet search leader’s share price more than $100 (U.S.) in the past month. The California-based company earned $1.07 billion, or $3.38 per share, for the three months ended in September, up from $733.4 million, or $2.36, at the same time last year.

If not for the cost of awarding shares to the steadily expanding workforce, Google would have earned $3.91 per share, the company said. That topped the average estimate of $3.78 among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Revenue totalled $4.23 billion, up 57 per cent from $2.67 billion, while cost cuts exceeded forecasts.

After subtracting commissions paid to thousands of advertising partners, Google’s revenue stood at $3.01 billion, about $70 million more than the average analyst estimate. (more…)

Blogging for money isn’t for everyone. Most people who set out to blog for profit quickly become aware that it takes more than slapping up a few banner ads to earn money blogging. In fact, the majority of bloggers don’t earn more than $50 per month — at least, not at first. If you think blogging for money is the road to easy street, reconsider. Blogging takes time, effort, and — let’s face it — work.

It takes time to drive traffic to your blog. It takes a whole lot of traffic to make your blog profitable. Not every visitor will click on your pay-per-click ads. Not every visitor will be interested in the affiliate products you promote. In fact, most people surfing the web are so programmed to seeing advertisements that they don’t even notice them anymore. So, you’ll have to attract a big crowd to realize even a small profit. If you want immediate gratification, blogging for money is probably not for you. (more…)

Google Inc. has started a validation period for a new system of calculating how online publishers are paid for displaying its referral ads. Publishers of Web sites make money when visitors to their sites click the ads that Google places on their sites through its AdSense program. The ads that Google places on the publishers’ sites are for products or services related to the content of the sites.

Google now wants to ensure that the conversions generated from referral ads are valid — meaning that the people who click on the ads are actual customers — according Eva Woo, of AdSense product marketing, in an announcement on Google’s AdSense blog. And that means that publishers who display the referral ads may not make as much money as they thought they would be making. (more…)

Keyword research is one of the most fundamental SEO (define) activities, but it’s also one of the least talked about. Yes, personalized search, social media, and SEO for Flash are all very exciting, but without the right keywords, SEO efforts will go astray.

Keywords are the building blocks of SEO. Although the days of the keyword meta tag being the golden ticket to top rankings are undoubtedly over, keywords themselves are still one of the most important aspects of good SEO. Just their application has changed. It’s not about stuffing a hundred keywords into meta tags or your copy to get rankings. It’s about uncovering the keywords that make the most sense for your business and using them in a way that drives targeted, qualified traffic to your site.

A bunch of links point to your site from reputable, authoritative, and relevant sites. But without the right anchor text, how much are those links really worth? Do you ensure your site is designed and developed in a way that’s intrinsically search-engine-friendly? If your pages don’t contain the keywords you want to optimize for, how will spiders know to return them for those queries?

You get the point: keywords are important. Let’s talk about finding the right ones. (more…)