Thread Title: Global Ad Campaign Measurement & Audit Guidelines: 2004 Thread Url: http://www.iab.net/standards/measurement.asp Thread Description:

The International Advertising Bureau have published a definition and standard for measuring online ad impressions.

The standard is backed by the majority of major online publishers and ad server technologies. This from the official press release:

Today, a global consortium of leading bodies within the advertising agency, advertiser, media and research disciplines issued a new detailed definition and standard for global online ad impression measurement. This initiative marks the first time any medium has launched a global measurement standard that has been accepted by all the key industry stakeholder organizations. Other media vehicles (such as television, radio and magazines) use different measuring techniques depending on country and region. For the United States, the guidelines also include industry-driven certification and auditing recommendations. Already underway in the United States, wide implementation of the guidelines is expected by the end of 2005.

Story via Adverblog

Thread Title: What exactly does "Theme" mean to google? Thread Url: http://forums.seochat.com/t18401/s.html Thread Description:

SEOChat member nagual brings up the ever popular speculative discussion on theming. Like almost all such threads this one is mostly speculation and wishful thinking masquerading as fact but there are some sensible thoughts and comments in there to. Although much of it's pure speculative chit chat it's a good thread nonetheless, this post from larrysart made me smile in particular..

Does anyone here actually know that any major search engine has the capability to theme anything at all.

Theming has always sounded a little futuristic to me. The remarks on this thread sounds like theming is a rumor that got started, and has taken on a life of its own.

Thread Title: Love it or hate it the event is kicking off Thread Url: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum19/2296.htm Thread Description:

A few attendees have already arrived and ThomasB claims the event has started. In true DaveN style this is declared a false start...

"pubcon does not start till the real seo's get there"

I'm sure we have a fair few TW members there, just remember to bring back the gossip.

Thread Title: Tacoda's AudienceMatch Network Launches Thread Url: http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2004/11/15/tacodas_audiencematch_network_launches/index.php?rss1 Thread Description:

Tacoda.com launches AudienceMatch - a behaviorally targetted ad network - expansion of the program to follow.

Tacoda finally launched its behaviorally-targeted ad network, providing wide reach initially through more than 60 sites for categories of people exhibiting certain types of advertiser-desired behaviors. The AudienceMatch service reportedly avoids collecting any personally-identifiable information, which Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan says he hopes will prevent any brouhaha over privacy issues.

Clickz also just ran this story on Tacoda's launch of AudienceMatch (AMN)

Ads served through AMN can target users anywhere on participating sites, making it possible for publishers to charge higher rates for run-of-site positions. Ads are sold in a self-serve auction market, modeled after paid search. Revenues are split between Tacoda and participating sites, taking into account factors such as who sold the ad, where it runs, and which audience segments it targets

More here thanks to John

Thread Title: has anyone worked with PhpAds? Thread Url: http://www.v7n.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14498 Thread Description:

PHPAdsNew is put through it's paces and given a jolly good grilling by the V7N boys and girls. The software is an open source banner rotation system - though that's selling it extremely short. Take a look at the features list.

digitman kicks the thread off and there are varying opinions of the package with a reasonable consensus being reached that for small sites it's overkill but for larger ones it rocks. Here's a couple of quotes from the thread:

fishfreak

I use the script and have installed it for a few others. I love it. The script has so many features that you could use if you wanted to like geolocating and serving ads based upon the visitors geolocation. You can schedule when ads display as well as limit how frequently they display.

I use it because I sell sponsorship and guarintee a specific number of impressions per month. Most ad scripts just display the banner and maybe give you some stats as to # of views and clicks but phpadsnew will allow you to set how many times you want a banner to appear over a given period and then will automaticly adjust the banner display % based upon the # of impressions left and the timeframe to get those impressions in.

thebassman

It's not that clear on the site, but is it possible to install and run and use phpadsnew from one site, and use it as a "homebase" to distribute ads to other sites. For example, I set up and install phpadsnew on site A, which is really just an unused domain name (that I own and have hosting for), and serve ads to site B, C & D? - the one line answer that followed was "Yes"

I must say it looks good. The thread started about a month ago and is still going and provides a fair account of the ups and downs of the system from what I can see. Well worth a peek if you're looking at ad management programs.

Thread Title: The Bootstrapper's Bible Thread Url: http://www.changethis.com/8.BootstrappersBible Thread Description:

Seth Godin is offering The Bootstrappers Bible which used to come free with a copy of Purple Cow as a free pdf download for two weeks.

This is a better formatted, limited edition ebook edition of The Bootstrapper's Bible, which used to come free when you bought a copy of Purple Cow.

Thread Title: Beware Hotel Booking Hijinks! Thread Url: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum20/3337.htm Thread Description:

The original poster was concerned the HotelClub - which is in fact owned by the conglomerate Cendant (they own Budget, Avis, Ramada, Travelodge, Howard Johnson, etc as well as Lodging.com) - was stopping him getting more than one commission from a user that clicked through to the Hotel Club site. In other words, his user went to HotelClub, became a member there and in future, no matter where they came from, no commission was given by HotelClub.

Fairly heavy moderating, cut much of the stuff that would have been useful - though you can get it from the original poster. I am convinced that he was correct in his interpretation of the emails sent to him by HotelClub

The affiliate manager has now arrived on the scene at WMW. I am unsure if they have changed their policy as a result of this thread. I suspect they have.

This week was of course dominated by MSN launching their BETA engine. Thus, a quieter week than usual for quality material. The threads and sources below are of highest calibre though and represent the best of the best of what we found out there. Much of the action here at Threadwatch was in the mayhem section - You'll have to sift through those as they are mostly filtered out of the weekly roundup along with news items. Hope you all had a cracking weekend :-) Follow the title link above for the full list.

Thread Title: Search Marketing Association EU - Public Blog goes Live Today Thread Url: http://www.sma-eu.org/blog/ Thread Description:

SMA-EU have launched a blog, a good start regarding member communications and hopefully an indication of the kind of commitment to members and interested parties one would hope for in light of sempo's shameful attitude to such issues.

Mikkel deMib Svendsen

There are many ways to communicate with members of an organization like SMA – blogging is one of the fastest and least intrusive ones. We will be sending out news on the mailing list too and probably host a local forum too when time is ready for that but to speed up communication we decided a blog would be a good start. This is an easy way for the working group to keep coming members up-to-date on what we do and not the least provide members with tool to comment it all.

Andy Atkins-Krüger

An association that represents its membership needs excellent communication - and communication is a TWO-WAY process. Blogs and forums are especially good at that so this is the first of those.!

Thread Title: has Google got the right to display my website? Thread Url: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=31605 Thread Description:

This is always a topic of some contention: Does an SE have the legal right to copy, cache or just list links to a website. This WPW thread is frought with silly replies that totally miss the OP's point but amongst the garbage there are a few sensible comments on the legalities of SE's and copyrights.

thecat starts out with what to me is a pretty simple question:

Why has Google or any other SE got the right to display my website on its search engine? does it own the web?

if I took someone elses content or title and keywords and put the information on my site i'd be in trouble, so why can google or other SE's?

This is followed by a truck load of nonsense posts along the lines of "robots.txt", "because they can", "it's just how it works!". It's not untill quite late in the thread that PikoTech finally breaks the stranglehold of silliness and adds this to the fray:

Google labs actually have on their terms and conditions page that "You also agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automated device, or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Site." (http://labs.google.com/labsterms.html)

Yet although they do have a robots.txt file for labs.google.com Yahoo! do have the Google labs website in their index. And I'm doubting very much that they wrote to Google to get written permission to add it to their index.

Does that mean Yahoo! should be prosecuted by Google? Also does that mean Yahoo! ignores robots.txt

after minstrel says point blank that SE's have the right to copy content the OP (thecat) asks "So if they have the right, do we?" and oh my, i just cant bring myself to repeat what follows lol! Go check it out, its a very, very funny thread.

Getting Down to Business

As far as i can tell, publishing links and snippets as descriptions would all be covered under "fair use" - this has been stated many times by many people. It's when you start talking about the idea of anyone displaying your entire web page (as in an SE cache) that the boundaries of fair use start to blur and we get to the real debate.

Thread Title: Will Google Ban Trade in Trademarks? Thread Url: http://battellemedia.com/archives/001034.php Thread Description:

John Battelle has a nice write up and some commentary on the rumour first aired over at wmw that Google may phase out Adword Trademarks bids. It would seem that the gravy train many affiliates have been riding for some time may come grinding to a halt. Though it is only rumour as of yet:

The implications are significant here - the affiliate industry, which makes a lot f money arbitraging trademarked keywords, would be dramatically impacted. And Google stands to lose what may well be a significant revenue stream. But I sense there may be more at work here than merely "improving users' experience."

The UK information may be unfounded rumor, but the fact is, Google (and Overture) face a very serious threat from lawsuits over trademarked terms. In short, Geico (yup, owned by Google hero Warren Buffet) and American Blinds both have very serious complaints pending against Google, and both litigants are not going to go away. The cases are winding their way toward what could be a very public and very unpleasant discovery period.

Thread Title: Firefox plugins...what do you use? Thread Url: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2732 Thread Description:

grnidone at SEW asks about FireFox extensions. Search and Web Dev boys and girls are listing their favorites.

Some i knew about like the excellent Switchproxy and UserAgent Switcher but there are a few in there that are new to me. A young thread as yet but already useful. Cheers guys!

Thread Title: My concerns Thread Url: http://resource-zone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27230 Thread Description:

This just came in via cre8 now removed

He's posted the entire resource zone thread at cre8 so they'll probably have to nuke it, but if you're around this saturday morning the actual threadlink above is amazing.... but im sure the dmoz boys'll nuke that too if they have any sense.

I've never been to resource zone, are the editors always like that when someone makes a complaint? - Sheesh, check out hutcheson, if this were face to face he'd have knuckle dusters on and be wearing a ski mask...

Sorry, we don't offer what you want, but we won't be offended if you seek your needs elsewhere. There are millions of sites that offer instant website promotion services: we don't feel there is a need for yet another one, and so we aren't yet another one. (as you may have noticed.)

So a site that offered what you want wouldn't be a replacement for the ODP. It would be something else, and ... you're welcome to start it right now. We'll send all the unhappy webmasters to you tomorrow; we'll even license all our work to you for free.

You may, if you wish, hire all our editors who are on perpetual slowdown strike and only work to union rules.

You may set up your system so that one obnoxious editor can keep a site from getting listed. We don't have such a thing, and we don't think it would be useful in our endeavor: but you are free to set up your site along whatever lines you wish.

The OP's clearly a bit whiney about not being listed, even a pain in the arse sure, but...

Thread Title: How well do companies do web marketing? Thread Url: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=18035 Thread Description:

The general consensus in this cre8 thread started by bwelford seems to be that companies fail at web marketing through a lack of understanding and communication. Mainly that the marketing and sales departments of many firms just dont consider the company website as being in their territory, or being part of their responsibility. Worse, some still dont consider it a worthwhile investment of budget resources.

Often, these companies wrongly place the responsibility for web marketing and site building on the IT department. Sounds ludicrous to a web dev right? Of course it does, but many outfits just dont get it.

This from Black_knight:

It is usually the fact that too many Marketing directors, and their underlings, simply offload anything web-related as "Oh, that's something for the IT guys to do" and not as part of their responsibilities. Marketers are dismissive or fearful of technology, and want too little to do with the control and delivery of marketing messages through a technical medium.

Too often in the past I have gone in to a session with a client to be met by the web-dev team, with not a single person from the marketing or sales departments deigning to attend. As a result, there's often little input as to the deeper marketing message and positioning that is required. Sometimes those present are unable to convey the marketing objectives, never mind have the authority to make important marketing policy decisions.

and from ellecim

When trying to ensure success online there are so many elements to be taken care of that it is like lining up a hundred dominos – with each element having a knock on effect – if one element is not positioned properly the flow stops. Have great content but a lousy design – you’ll lose credibility, have a great design but terrible content you won’t convert, have great design, great content, but poor usability and customers will leave. Get everything right with the website but have poor visibility online and you have a beautiful white elephant.

Thread Title: SearchKing: No longer a search engine/portal network? Thread Url: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2611&page=1&pp=20 Thread Description:

Bob Massa is the owner of SearchKing. He wanted to create a collection of human reviewed data which gave him access to a ton of valuable data and put him at the center of a huge ad network. He sold the network idea to many webmasters who use SearchKing to power their portals.

SearchKing was penalized by Google (I believe for selling PageRank). Recent hosting at SearchKing has been less than stellar and there has been no easy or responsive communication channel between disgruntaled portal owners and SearchKing. Some people probably made good money from the SearchKing idea. Others gave a ton to help build that network, and feel that in one way or another they got burned.

from the thread Lots0:

I agree that Bob is very eloquent in his written responses and I can say from personal experience that he is just as well spoken, at least over the phone. But whenever I speak to Bob I never forget one thing, he is first and foremost (by his own admission) a salesman.

Later in the same post...

I tell friends, NOT to do business SearchKing. I tell them this based on my personal experience and the experience of others that I have personal knowledge of...

Whenever SearchKing comes out into the light, it always reminds me of a very important tip for any beginner; If you are building a directory or opt-in mailing lists of any kind, anywhere, keep control of your own data. Do not let your hard earned data become “part of a network” because once your data joins a “network” all of that data you laboriously collected is no longer under your control and is in fact no longer just “your data”, the data also belongs to the “network” and is controlled by whoever controls the “network”, maybe that is why some “networks” offer free stuff like hosting and software...

Later Bob talks about building SearchKing and what he sees going forward...including:

The big idea

Thread Title: they're still on the waiting list for the chip implant Thread Url: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/gizmodo-vr-blogging-025535.php Thread Description:

Hey! Aren't those official WmW t-shirts?

Thread Title: Search wars - which is the best? Thread Url: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4003193.stm Thread Description:

Via http://www.searchguild.com/tpage16869-0.html

"As Microsoft enters the internet search engine market, users find themselves overwhelmed with options. We compare the big players on five key areas."

Thread Title: Google to advertise Froogle? Thread Url: http://barnako.typepad.com/barnakocom/2004/11/google_to_adver.html Thread Description:

Frank Banarko of MarketWatch is talking about Google spending a "boat load of money" on advertsing. The Search war seems to be scaling up nicely doesnt it?

Meanwhile, rumblings in the radio business report Google is about to spend a boatload of money on advertising. Has Google ever advertised before?

And what will it promote? Well, it's the holidays, right? AOL has rolled out a new standalone shopping service, In-Store.com. Microsoft's MSN Shopping is promoting discounts all month. What's Google got? Froogle.com. My two cents are on Google trying to get a piece of holiday shopping.