Just read the following article from MediaPost.com on Kumo and the Microsoft Search initiative.  Check it out at:  http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101335

I like the whole concept, and think they will impress us.  How can this Marketing book, (yes, we sell it on Amazon occassionally that is for $9.95) and blogging expert, “Moi” be so confident?  If you know your Microsoft history, you would realize that they are the masters on evolutionary innovation.  What is evolutionary innovation, they keep making things better and better until they dominate.  Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Outlook etc. are just a few examples where Microsoft initially did not have a leading solution.  But, they kept on pushing and pushing for innovation and now dominate all those markets. 

So if you want to listen to this marketing guy, Kumo.com and Microsoft search will come on Google’s tale at some point.  It might take them a few years, but never ever count the Redmond Giant out of any game.  Here is an excerpt from the article:  Microsoft is conducting an internal test of Kumo, the rebranded version of Live Search, and is looking to its employees for feedback, according to an email sent late Monday afternoon.   Here is the lengthy excerpt: 

“Microsoft is conducting an internal test of Kumo, the rebranded version of Live Search, and is looking to its employees for feedback, according to an email sent late Monday afternoon.

Satya Nadella, senior vice president of research and development for Microsoft’s online services division, invited company staffers to begin testing the new search engine. “Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days,” Nadella wrote.

Kumo, which means “cloud” or “spider” in Japanese, is the codename for the internal test and it’s not clear from the email whether the name will be retained. The service is not yet available outside the company and the email did not detail when it will go live externally.

“In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes,” Nadella wrote. “These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don’t find what they need from search today. We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks.”

Features of Kumo vary by country, but results are organized in a way that saves time, according to the email. An explorer pane on the left side of results pages gives access to tools that help with tasks. Other features like single session history and hover preview help accomplish more in search sessions.

Yahoo just made a bold move to add video and image ads in their search advertising results.  I think it’s a brilliant and bold move for them to stay fresh.  I also believe that Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo, is an interesting and confident woman who is wonderful choice for Yahoo.  Here is the link to article from NY Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/companies/19yahoo.html?_r=2&ref=technology

As we all know that for marketing to effective, marketers have to stand out.  And video and image ads are a wonderful way for the big national advertisers to do so.  You can learn this and other smart and free Internet marketing advice in our marketing book.  We not only cover how you should be blogging on a free blogs platform, but do smart SEM and internet marketing including Social Networking and social media marketing.  Enjoy!

We write a lot here about SEO, Search, and Social marketing.  And, this is all in the field of Internet marketing, and our marketing book always focuses from a perspective of blogs and how they help businesses promote themselves on line.  We all know that if you can get your self ranked high via SEO, that is the best thing you can do, but if not you have to advertise.  And if you can figure out a positive ROAS return on ad spend, you should do more of it.  So if you selling a product and make $10 net profit on each product, there is nothing wrong with you spending $0-$5 in my mind or in my marketing book to increase your sales, in fact, I don’t talk as much about internet Advertising in my marketing book as I should, but Advertising is essentially how most companies market their products.  My focus is Blogs and social marketing for internet marketing. 

There are many different forms of advertising and Search Marketing or buying keywords is the best by most people’s standards.  I also write in my marketing book that MSN  Ad Center is a great way to have lower cost for clicks, so all SEM experts usually utilize that avenue, obviously Google as a ton more traffic.  But don’t forget about AdCenter.  SEO, and blogs are free and can be great, but in Internet Marketing Content Ads or Contextual Ads are a great way to market your products and have lower cost of clicks.  Most people (newbies) don’t understand what they are.  So here is a quick overview and why they can be better than Search Keyword advertising.

Content Ads or Contextual Advertising is advertising on non-search result pages.  It is using keywords to target advertisement on everything but search results; such as blogs, emagazines, news articles, basically anything that is a content page.  And, almost always they are matched contextually by keywords.  So you can advertise on 200,000 sites in the Google ad sense network or on all MSN pages or Yahoo pages via the content ads feature of their SEM ad buying tools. 

Content Ads or Contextual ads are usually not as good for conversion, and therefore usually have lower CPC (cost per click), this is not always the case but usually.  And, this is because most advertisers who advertise on Search engines tend to not advertise on Content Ads part of those SEM tools.  So less the competition the lower your bids and more your ads can have a high ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).  Search engines also know this, and the impression volume is usually much higher, so if you are trying to build and use your brand name, this is a great way to build a brand too. 

It’s a much cheaper way to build a brand and get some conversions so in my humble opinon, Content Ads if done right are a better tool for your internet marketing.  Don’t be afraid to buy our marketing book on Amazon if you like what I am writing.  I am also giving away the marketing book for free so you will do that.  But, I do work as a consultant full time at one of the top Internet companies in the world.  Yes, you can guess it if you read my blogs enough or know where we live.  Best of all, this article was incepted with the smart content from a panel at SES from SEOMoz.  Enjoy here is the link to the great article on Content Ads;  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-traffic-from-contextual-ads-ses-san-jose

For those of you wonderting why we don’t blog as much as before.  We are simply too busy with our full time jobs and raising our family.  Thanks and best wishes!

Behavior Targeting was considered one of the many hot trends of 2008, especially for Display Advertising.  But this was also the year that saw privacy groups and the government challenge the Internet Advertising industry.  My personal opinion is that no matter how valuable BT is for conversion, if it has a perception issue it won’t work.  And, BT certainly has consumer perception issues, as most of you know through our SEO and SEM talks that consumer is always king.  I give credit to the Display Advertising industry to work on different types of targeting to increase conversions and performance.  But, BT is just too controversial.  To make matters worse, most Internet Advertising companies follow the self regulatory body set up by the industry, and it’s head is leaving to focus on privacy issues.  I find that very interesting.  Here is the full article announcing his departure and the full Behavioral Target dilemna:

BT Self-Regulatory Group Exec Gives Notice

J. Trevor Hughes, executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative, a self-regulatory group for behavioral targeting companies, will depart at the end of the year. The Network Advertising Initiative has not yet named a successor for Hughes, who became the group’s first executive director in 2001. In one of the last initiatives under Hughes’ watch, the organization intends to release updated privacy principles next month, marking the first overhaul since the NAI formed eight years ago. Hughes also is departing the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, where he was executive director. He said he intends to work full-time at another group, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), where he also serves as executive director. “It was becoming more and more challenging to provide the level of leadership necessary for all three organizations,” Hughes said. “The IAPP is really a great success story and I’m delighted to focus my efforts there,” he said. He added that IAPP–which boasts board members from major corporations like Procter & Gamble and Walt Disney–has grown to include nearly 6,000 corporate and individual members in 34 countries since its launch in 2000. Hughes’ exit from the Network Advertising Initiative comes at the end of an intense time of scrutiny in Washington about online advertising and privacy. Lawmakers this year held at least three hearings about whether some online ad techniques violate Web users’ privacy. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission has been investigating whether behavioral targeting–or tracking users as they surf the Web and then serving them targeted ads–compromises users’ privacy. See Full Article by clicking here…

So we have not covered the traditional Internet Advertising much in our Marketing book or in this SEO blog.  Inherently we just focused on SEO, and little on SEM (which is Search Engine Marketing–which includes Pay Per Click internet Advertising), so we do cover a little of Internet Advertising.  But there is this huge part called Display Advertising, and it’s been making way to small businesses.  So I will start to write a little bit more about Display Advertising in our blogs and will cover a chapter of it in our Internet Marketing book.   But basically display advertising is anything other than on search page results.  So all of the sponsors of content buttons and banner ads, those are your traditional display ads.

As you know we talk a lot about blogs, free blogs and create a blog tools, because we created a blogging community at MyTypes.com main page.  Attached is an an Excerpt of an article form Imediaconnection.com, Here is the text.  The link is below it, but to be frank I am shocked by how small advertising is for blogs, and blogging site.  It will get bigger, but for now blogs are not really considered full fledged journalists, and the new media just doesn’t get the dollars the traditional media does.  See article excerpt below and follow link:  Navigate the blogsophere’s biggest Ad Networks. 

“Millions of consumers read blogs, including your target audience. Make the most of this growing marketing opportunity with the right niche ad network.

If there’s one buzzword that has spread like wildfire through the entire media business in the last five years, it is blogs.

Universal McCann’s global “Power to the People” Social Media Tracker study says that “blogs are a mainstream media worldwide and as a collective rival any traditional media,” with 73 percent of respondents saying they have read a blog.

The majority of the 184 million blogs worldwide are of the personal nature, according to Universal McCann’s study, and a recent eMarketer report states that there are 25 million bloggers in the U.S. alone.

The eMarketer study says that 67 percent of the U.S. online population — 104 million people — reads blogs, showing that blogging has become a truly mass media. The number of blog readers will continue to grow to 145 million by 2012.

The growth in readership reflects the consumer’s desire to participate with information, not just consume it. Younger consumers especially seek edgier and more personal sources of content than what is offered by the formal approach of mass media.

While blog readership has exploded, advertising investment represented only 1.34 percent of online spending in 2007, and eMarketer estimates it will grow to 1.46 percent by 2012.  According to that estimate, U.S. blog advertising will increase from $283 million in 2007 to $746 million in 2012.

Today, corporate marketers are asking “do we need a corporate blog?” and “how do we participate in the conversation?” Look at any major media brand’s website, and you will almost always find featured blogs as a way to update the brand’s online persona.

As marketers become increasingly interested in participating in the conversation of the blogosphere and pro actively focusing their customer service efforts on what is being said about the brand online, a number of blog advertising networks have emerged. These networks offer marketers scale and control in advertising on blogs and social media sites, and have succeeded by quickly growing revenues in recent years.

The following is an overview of major blog networks including BlogAds, Gawker Media, Technorati, Federated Media, Google, Forbes’ Business Blog Network and Izea, owner of two blog advertising services: SocialSpark and Pay Per Post.”

Thanks for all of your support, and don’t be afraid to buy our Marketing book, and if you want us to high light your content, we will be more than willing to help you.  We also want to support some of our SEO clients such as for VRBO: RentExpert.com, Web Design St. Louis: ArtWorksDesign.com, marketing book: by MyTypes.com, and Free Blog: MyTypes.com.  We will soon be launching a how to blog software tutorials, look out for those coming out this fall.