Viral Campaign Allows For Virtual College Campus Visits

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Don’t have time to visit colleges in person? CollegeClickTv.com might just be the answer to your problem. The recently launched site allows prospective students to download videos featuring popular college campuses, as well as interviews with students, professors, and even local businesses.

“The videos give viewers an idea of what the full experience is on that campus, “ Pere Partnership agency head Glenn Pere told DMNews recently.

Pere added that he created the site after observing that his golf partner did not have time to drive his college-aged daughter to prospective schools in person and still maintain his golf game.

Thanks to an early viral marketing campaign, the site has a YouTube page, a Facebook presence and more than 30,000 professionally produced videos from more than 200 universities across the country.

Recent studies show that viral marketing is quickly becoming a popular choice for many businesses as more people begin to realize the effectiveness of these so called “word of mouth campaigns.”

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More Small To Mid-Sized Businesses Finding Value In SEM

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Online Retailers To Offer Deeper Discounts, More Sales, This Holiday Season

Trends In Green Marketing Methods Pave The Way For Increased Internet Marketing Spend

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

A recent survey, conducted by Nielsen Online and Eloqua, Inc revealed that 60% of marketers will be making the transition from paper-based to online-based ad and marketing campaigns.

This trend is due in part increased awareness of the importance of Internet marketing, including SEO and SEM methods, as well as the growing trend of “green” or environmentally friendly practices.

“What’s good for the environment can also be great for businesses,” says Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer at Eloqua.

The same study also revealed that, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, 90% of marketers support a more environmentally friendly marketing industry, and an overall decline in the amount of paper-based marketing materials, i.e. brochures, fliers and physical catalogues is also expected to decrease over the course of the next year.

Increase In Mom Bloggers Shows Power Of Social Media Marketing

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According to Mom Central Consulting, over 78% of mom bloggers regularly review products and 96% of mothers also consider these reviews to be valuable when making purchasing decisions.

“There’s a perception that moms aren’t tech-savvy, when in reality, they’re being very proactive and going online to get information on products and recommendations from other moms” Tracey Hope-Ross, VP of research for Mom Central, told ComputerWorld.

Many companies are now targeting mothers through not only traditional advertising methods, but through blogs as well, specifically, blog networks that group like minded bloggers (and readers) together.

Review-oriented blogs run by moms are expected to increase in importance as the holiday season approaches, and consumers begin scouring the web for the best toys and other child-oriented gift items.

“Many companies are cutting back their marketing budgets, so they’re realizing they really need to be targeting the person who is actually spending the money,”

said Maria Bailey, CEO and founder of BSM Media in a recent statement. “This is important because it really takes a lot of time to get to know these mom mavens and develop a strong relationship.”

Google Online Advertising Company Acquisition Blocked

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Since July, Google, Inc has been planning the purchase of Zao Begun, a search and contextual video and text advertising business, owned by Russian based Rambler Media.

“We are very disappointed to hear that FAS has come to this decision,” said Google in a statement. “We strongly believe that this acquisition will enable us to significantly improve opportunities for Russian users,advertisers, and publishers, as well as the entire industry.”

Zao Begun currently has a network with 40,000 advertisers covering 143,000 Russian language Web sites.

In related news, the U.S. Department of Justice is currentlyinvestigating a deal made by Google and Yahoo that would allowYahoo to show Google search ads. This program had been slated to start this month, but has been delayed pending the DOJ review.

Yahoo! Releases Beta Test Version Of Yahoo! Profiles – Social Networking

In an effort to further its new Open Strategy, Yahoo! released a beta test version of Yahoo Profiles! last Thursday.

Profiles is a control panel that allows users to manage all of their Yahoo activities and social connections and, according to Yahoo, the full version will also include management of interests, activities, and social connections across the Web.

“This new profile is not intended to be a new social destination on Yahoo,” Jim Stoneham, Yahoo’s vice president of communities, said in a recent blog post. “Rather, our plan is to integrate social as a central dimension into the services you use every day.

Yahoo is also testing a new home page that will allow users to track their friend’s actions across the web, and the latest versions of Yahoo Messenger allow users to see the Yahoo Buzz and Twitter updates of their friends as status messages.

“Ultimately,” Stoneham added, “our goal is to unify our social experience and connections not only on Yahoo, but anywhere you travel across the web.” 

Polls Show That SEO is Top Recession Marketing Method

A poll conducted by TopRank places SEO ahead of both PPC and
blogging as the top marketing strategy that companies are
expected to pay the most attention to over the next six months.

According to the poll, businesses will also concentrate on
social marketing, affiliate marketing, and video marketing
strategies, moving towards the new year.

A related study conducted by analytics firm Covari recently
showed a growth of 51% in search marketing spending over the
past year.

McCain Campaign Videos Removed From YouTube

Presidential candidate John McCain is protesting what he feels is an unwarranted removal of several of his Presidential campaign videos from the popular social media and video sharing site, YouTube.

YouTube LLC removed the videos last week in response to several take-down requests claiming violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (DMCA) According to ComputerWorld.com, a letter sent to the company by the McCain campaign Monday called for a special review process to examine the legal merit of take-down requests specifically associated with presidential candidates and their campaigns.

“Overreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech,” says the McCain campaign in the YouTube letter,

…which goes on to say that the short clips of news broadcast segments contained within the campaign videos are under ten seconds and are noncommercial uses of the material, and therefore do not violate the DMCA.

YouTube LLC responded via a letter sent to the McCain campaign yesterday saying that it is not a “viable solution to perform a substantial legal review of every DMCA take-down notice.”

MySpace Announces Launch Of MyAds – Important For You?

   MySpace, Inc has released a beta version of a new do-it-yourself
   advertising platform that allows small businesses and individual
   users to create their own customized banner advertisements,
   specifically targeted at certain types of MySpace users using
   MySpace’s HyperTargeting Technology.

   “MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s
   dream—providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible,
   personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the
   market,” Jeff Berman, President of Myspace sales and
   marketing said in a recent statement. “We’re giving
   businesses better ROI ASAP and in today’s economy,
   that’s a must-have.”

   Ads are reviewed to ensure that they meet the MySpace terms of
   service, and once they go live, advertisers are only charged
   when users click on the ad, instead of the traditional method of
   charging when an ad is served to a user.