No doubt most online marketers didn’t lose much sleep when they heard that the Supreme Court was going to hear a case called Leegin Creative Leather Products v. Kay’s Kloset. Today’s decision, however – overruling legal precedence that has stood for almost 100 years – should wake some marketers from their slumber. Let me explain why. Prior to today’s Leegin ruling, the concept of “minimum advertised prices” or “MAP” was illegal under US anti-trust law. In other words, Sony couldn’t send a letter to all of its vendors … Continue reading →

I’m really sick and tired of the so-called ‘leading’ online marketing blogs that don’t seem to be anything more than a combination of Google press releases and links to news stories. There was a time when the most popular online marketing blogs truly deserved their readership; they were written by marketing experts who really explored the strategy and science behind online marketing. As blogging has gone mainstream, however, the innovators were either pushed out, or simply decided that it was easier to maintain their popularity by spewing out … Continue reading →

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Google’s very smart decision to provide more transparency into their listings. In that post, I wrote Google has led the charge toward PPC transparency. They make it easy to bundle Google Analytics with your paid search campaign, they offer conversion tracking, negative keywords, site exclusion, and most recently “search query” and “placement” results (so you can block bad AdSense publishers and bad broad-match keyword extensions).This is not Google’s attempt at advertiser altruism – it’s a smart, calculated business … Continue reading →

Man does Google have a lot of products. From mapping the surface of Mars to selling radio ads, Google is everywhere. And with the stock price currently hovering around $515, I guess all of these products that they keep rolling out must driving a lot of revenue, right? Well, some do, but others can only be classified as fun engineering projects that are a long ways away from every generating a cent for the Big G. I figured it would be fun to grade Google’s various products and … Continue reading →

For a long time, I’ve used Jerry Yang and David Filo as the models of smart Internet founders. What impressed me so much about these guys is that they had the confidence to push forward with their idea, despite the many naysayers who said it couldn’t be done. But more importantly, they also had the smarts to know when to let go of the reins. Once Yahoo started to become a “real” company, they took a backseat and let seasoned business leaders take charge This is really a … Continue reading →