The Path To Advertising Nirvana – Smashing Magazine

With advertising, a curious thing happens: most people want its benefits but are rarely willing to put up with its hassles. Those who run websites and applications have enough on their plates without having to worry about handling transactions, putting banners across their website or hearing requests from advertisers. Moreover, users have little to no interest in even looking at advertisements that flank a website’s content, some going so far as to block ads before they’re delivered. So, what’s a website owner to do?

Advertising hasn’t always been this way. Some people even enjoy them. Scary thought, I know, but stay with me. You know those previews shown before movies and those signs outside of gas stations announcing fuel prices? Those are rarely seen as advertisements at all. That’s because people find them informative, helpful and engaging. Heck, some people say they watch the Superbowl for the advertisements themselves. So why are websites any different? What has changed online that people (apparently) find less acceptable than offline? Not much, really… well, not much unless you count that whole “Internet” thing.

As a general rule, when people surf the Web, they’re in control of the experience. If someone wants information about a particular topic, they might query Google or look up an article on Wikipedia. Regardless of what they do, they choose how to obtain the information they want. The traditional advertising model — shout at your audience until it listens (as Groundswell would put it) — is diametrically opposed to this.

So, if advertisers are working against the model, can’t they just leave us alone? The answer is almost universally no; not until we come up with a better solution. Just as user experience designers carefully craft experiences throughout a website, advertisers must pay attention to how they affect the perceived value of the publications in which they appear.

If there are things you would like to see, please share it with us, such as in the Feature Request forum.

As always, continued thanks to all our customers for their patronage.

Technorati Tags: mysimpleads, ads

With all the hubub about personalized and real time search and the potential impact on the SEO work that can influence search visibility, the question about relevance comes to mind when considering books about search engine optimization. Search engines like Google change often (38 new search products in 70 days) so one could argue that a book published in print would become outdated. For those books that outline very specific tactics and even tricks/loopholes, that indeed is the case.

The attackers are taking advantage of a pair of bugs in the OpenX advertising software to login to advertising servers and then place malicious code on ads being served on the sites. On Monday, cartoon syndicator King Features said that it had been hacked last week, because of the OpenX bugs.

In order to have a successful banner ad campaign that incorporates custom flash banners, you should follow some basic design tips.

Technorati Tags: ads, banners

A deeper look at channels: URL channels (Part I of III)
As many of you know, channels are a great tool for tracking the clicks and impressions on your ad units, as well as figuring out which ad placements, sizes, and colors generate the most revenue. With that in mind, three of our very own Mountain View-based AdSense optimization specialists have created videos showcasing best practices for setting up channels within your AdSense account.

AdSense Channels Tutorial, Part I

Creating a successful Internet business is all about bringing in users and turning them into cash. The more of those users you can convert, the more money you’ll make.

Your clickthrough rate – the percentage of users who click on an ad – is a measure of your ability to convert your users. A good website will have a clickthrough rate (or CTR) of around 3 percent.

Or to put it another way, even a good site wastes about 97 percent of its traffic.

Freelance designers are faced with the challenge of constantly finding new work and converting inquiries into paying clients. There are plenty of different ways that you can market your services, but sometimes the most effective ways involve passive marketing.

In this article we will be looking at ten different ways you can passively market your services to potential clients. This includes some methods that involve work up front and then little to no work to continue marketing your services, as well as some methods that are passive in the sense that you are not actively pursuing clients or trying to advertise your services.