How relevant are (your) online ads in a social media world?


I posted a text about the rise of performance based online advertising a while ago on my personal blog but, given all the recent positive reports about the growth of online display advertising, I am going to post it here in an adapted and more elaborated way.

Because I don’t know if the rise of the online display ad spend and also of performance-based advertising is good or bad news in a social media world. So, please read and comment away.

When the Internet rose as a “commercial” medium, everything was about the ‘almighty click’. At last a medium that was measurable and had an immediate impact. Internet was seen as the new direct marketing. Email was broadcasting, banners were meant to generate traffic, click, click, click.

Later, research companies – not coincidentally often sponsored by online publishers – made lots of effort to prove that online advertising also has a significant impact on a variety of brand parameters. And of course it does. Everything a brand does has an impact on the brand.

Online advertising is mainstream now and new data from, among others IAB and Econsultancy, show that search, PPC and display ad budgets are on the rise.

Read more

Article marketing : an interview with Christopher Knight (Ezinearticles.com)

Christopher Knight from Ezinearticles.com Worldwide Alexa traffic rank: 131. In the US : 58. Number of sites linking in: 33,232. Online: since end 1999. Who are we talking about ? Ezinearticles.com, a website with a design that feels a bit as if Jakob Nielsen designed it (sorry, Jakob, just kidding) but who cares?

Not Christopher Knight, the founder of the website and the number one in article marketing from an Alexa viewpoint, before first competitor Articlesbase.

However, both have another business model and different approach as I’ll explain in later posts. In this post, it’s all about article marketing and Ezinearticles.com since I interviewed Christoper Knight to find out the facts and myths about article marketing and to find out if and why companies should publish or reprint articles from a site such as Ezinearticles.com in their email newsletters, websites, blogs, etc.

Read more