Consumers Like Relevant Advertising, Dislike Data Mining

A study from TNS Global finds most people aren't comfortable with having their online behavior tracked for ad delivery purposes, reports ClickZ.

The research reflected broad awareness among consumers that third parties collect information about their online activities: 71 percent said they knew they were being virtually watched, though only 40 percent were familiar with the term "behavioral targeting."

57 percent were uncomfortable with having their browser cookies analyzed for ad delivery. This held true even if respondents believed their personal information was protected from fraud or other forms of identity abuse.

(For more findings, including tables, from the study, see coverage by MarketingCharts.)

Proponents of behavioral advertising argue that data-mining practices help the consumer, which as a result sees less, and more relevant, advertising in exchange for free content.

Oddly, most consumers surveyed did express a desire for highly targeted, relevant ads; 55 percent said they would be willing to fill out an anonymous survey to get them.

TRUSTe's VP of communications Carolyn Hodge says education on behavioral targeting can help overcome the qualms people have about it. She cited Amazon, which gathers data to share relevant products with users, as one example where behavioral consumer profiles make everyone a winner.

A recent survey by MarketingSherpa found that among marketers, behavioral advertising was among the best ROI deliverers online. To balance practitioner enthusiasm, the FTC released some behavioral ad targeting guidelines late last year.

http://www.marketingvox.com/consumers-like-relevant-advertising-dislike-data-mining-037717/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

Newspaper Online Advertising Spending Jumps 19%, Print Ads Down 9%

Advertising expenditures for newspaper websites in 2007 increased 18.8%, to $3.2 billion - accounting for 7.5% of all newspaper ad spending last year (up from 5.7% in 2006), according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America.

Print ad exenditures were down 9.4% in the same period, however, and total (combined print and online) newspaper ad expenditures were down 7.9% for the year.

The following table breaks down online and print newspaper ad expenditures, by quarter, for 2007 and 2006:

In the fourth quarter of 2007, advertising expenditures for newspaper websites increased to $847 million, up 13.6% compared with the same period a year earlier.

That was the thirteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for online newspaper advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

Advertising expenditures at newspapers and their websites, combined, totaled $12.6 billion for the fourth quarter; spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $11.7 billion.

Those figures are down from the fourth quarter of 2006, when total advertising expenditures were $14 billion, and print ad spend was $13.2 billion.

The following table breaks down newspaper print ad expenditures, by segment and quarter, for 2007 and 2006:

About the data: The NAA website has quarterly and annual ad spending numbers in their entirety.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/print/newspaper-online-advertising-spending-jumps-19-print-ads-down-9-4024/?camp=newsletter&src=mc&type=textlink

How-To: 9 Basic SEO Tips

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), one component of search engine marketing (SEM), is the process of fortifying a website so it is more likely to appear in a high position when users conduct a search with keywords related to the website's offerings.

Here are a few basic SEO tricks:

1. Find out how well you rank online. You can do this at Alexa.com, which will tell you what position your website holds against all others. The goal will be to make that number lower.

It may be helpful to download the Google Toolbar, which gives you the "PageRank" score for websites. Pages are scored on a scale of 1 to 10. The goal will be to make this number higher on your website.

You can also check the Google PageRank Checker, which provides Google PR, visitor figures and numbers on related links.

2. Submit your site to search engines. Do it personally; avoid "submission services" or software. You only need to do it once. Here is Google's submission page.

3. Place relevant keywords in the title tag so search spiders will know what your page is about. The title tag is the text that appears at the top of the browser when a webpage loads. MarketingVOX's title tag is "MarketingVOX - The voice of online marketing."

Avoid stuffing the title tag with too many keywords, or making it too long. A good rule of thumb: ensure title tag text also appears in the body of the page.

4. Use your archives. When you update your site, link back to relevant stories from the past, using equally relevant anchor text. Don't go overboard; the trick is to give users more information, not overwhelm them with hyperlinks.

Anchor text — the hyperlinked words that point to another page — are a way of telling search engines that page is about those words. The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms.

5. Cultivate relationships with quality websites in your industry. When well-ranked websites link to you (with hopefully relevant anchor text!), this tells spiders your page is important to users seeking information about your area of expertise.

6. Avoid relationships with link farms, people who offer to pay for links to their websites, or other sites that you don't want associated with your own. Google conducts occasional sweeps and penalizes destinations of ill repute by tanking their ranking.

7. Use alt tags on images to "tell" search engine spiders what the images are. This will help them index your pictures and better serve readers with text-only web browsers.

8. Got a big site? Build a site map. A site map can help spiders crawl pages more quickly. The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on your website, the better. Small site? Use a nav bar.

9. Occasionally embolden useful terms on a page. Once or twice is fine; too much bold can irritate readers. Worse still, it might look to Google like keyword abuse.

10. Focus on the customer. The best sites for users, and consequently for search engines, are full of oft-updated, useful information about a given service, product, topic or discipline. Avoid cutting corners or exploring "black-hat" SEO options, which could result in lower rankings over time or even a site ban from search engines.

Updating often, making content readable and easy to find, and developing productive online relationships are enough to improve destination relevance significantly over time.

http://www.marketingvox.com/how-to-9-basic-seo-tips-037438/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink