This was the year of Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg was named person of the year by Time, The Social Network movie was a huge hit and is probably the odds-on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture, the site passed 500 million users, and rumors have it that the company also made more than $2 billion in revenue. Not too shabby. Amazingly, however, building a great advertising platform is noticeably absent from Facebook’s impressive list of accomplishments. Facebook’s user interface (UI) for advertising is sub-standard to say the … Continue reading →

Ah AdWords testing . . . I love it when placeholders inadvertently go live . . .  

Mobile: Android, AdMob, and iPad, Oh My! I’ve been hearing about how important mobile is to businesses since 2000! Every year, some industry pundit predicts that “m-commerce” is going to explode. I think we’re finally at a point when the pundits might actually be correct. In my mind, there’s a convergence of three factors that will make mobile important in 2011. First, there’s Android, Google’s operating system (OS) that is now a serious competitor to the iPhone. Google is allegedly shipping 300,000 Android phones a day, and folks … Continue reading →

Editor’s Note: I sent an 18 page letter to PPC Associates clients earlier this year. This seven part series is basically that letter. Enjoy (and become a client and get it a month earlier next year!) A year is a long time in “Internet time.” Companies and concepts that weren’t even a footnote to 2009 were major players in 2010 (e.g., Groupon, FourSquare, AdMob, and DSPs). Below are my “big seven” trends from online marketing in 2010. PPC: The Fall of Text, The Non-Rise Of MicroHoo. While AdWords … Continue reading →

I’m always surprised to discover that anyone other that Steve in Des Moines, Chris in Palo Alto, Terry in SF, and Jeremy in Chicago actually reads my blog, so imagine my surprise when I got an email from Danny Sullivan at SMX contesting some of the points I’d made in my last post about SEM conferences. For those of you (um, like Steve in Des Moines) who aren’t deep into the world of SEM, Danny Sullivan is a living legend. I’m not saying that to be sycophantic, he … Continue reading →