Internet Ad Revenues Reach Record High
For anyone working on an online brand marketing campaign, there’s no better time than the present for this advertising effort.
In 2007, the revenues brought in by Internet advertising reached an all-time high with more than $21 billion. And there’s no place to go but up. The Internet is quickly becoming the best way to advertise your brand or get your message to the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.
Last year’s figures show a dramatic increase over the figures from 2006, with a 25-percent increase from the previous year’s $17 billion. In 2006, the numbers showed a 35-percent increase over 2005.
Some analysts believe the relative slowdown in traditional advertising reflects the fact that the Internet commands a larger share of the advertising dollars. When businesses or companies advertise online, they typically forego advertising in other mediums, like newspapers and radio. As such, the Internet takes money away from those advertising forms
As of right now, however, the Internet only makes up about 10 percent of advertising dollars in the United States. That leaves room for a large amount of growth. But some companies are still skeptical about the power of online ads and the number of people they can reach.
If you’re looking for ways to reach more people and get your brand “out there,” look to the Internet. It really is the future of nearly everything.
Five Tips for Increasing Subscribers to Your Blog
In a great post written for Skelliewag.org, the blogger mentions several ways to increase the number of subscribers to your blog. If you have a blog for the purposes of online brand marketing, gaining more subscribers is one of the best ways to attract more attention and push your message in a more effective method. Here are some tips from that post and other sources to help your efforts.
• Quality is better than quantity. AlthoughGoogle and other spiders like frequently-updated content, readers might unsubscribe if your daily blogs sound more like “content for content’s sake” rather than a meaningful and useful post. Of course, an equal share of quality and quantity makes for ideal posts.
• Focus on your audience rather than topics. You’re writing for people. If you focus on the people you’re trying to reach, the topics will fall right into place.
• Make your blog’s purpose clear for new visitors.
• Narrow your blog’s focus. If you write about personal finance, narrow your focus to something like “debt relief,” “thrifty spending” or “saving for retirement” instead of the broad focus of “personal finance.” Readers can go to thousands of other websites to read about personal finance, but the narrower the topic, the fewer blogs there are from which to choose.
• Promote your blog through links and social media websites. When other blogs link to yours, your page ranks higher. Marketing your blog on social media sites exposes it to potential readers more often.
Maximizing Success with Adwords Demographics
If you’ve got a website that caters specifically to a certain age group or target audience, your advertisements may be wasted on Internet users that don’t match your goals.
That’s why Google Adwords is offering something called “demographic bidding.” With this new system, your online marketing strategies can reach new and exciting goals. With demographic bidding, you can enable more attention-grabbing product placements for your Adsense ads to increase their impact on viewers. That way, your target audience is more likely to see the products meant for them.
Think of it this way: You are wasting your advertising dollars if you are paying for Adwords to display ads about the latest video game system if the only people seeing it are senior citizens.
The new system works because Google will receive the specific demographic data from various social networks. Myspace, Facebook and others often ask for users’ ages and other information when they sign up for accounts. Google will then use that information and display your Adwords ads to your target groups on those websites. Or the company can simply prevent your ads from displaying to groups outside of your target audience.
Google outlines three steps for those interested in this new program:
1. Sign up with Google Adwords and create a campaign.
2. Wait for the campaign to run for a week to gather demographic information and assess the impact of the campaign.
3. Increase your bids for groups with good values or hide the ads from groups with poor responses.
