I seem to be hearing from everyone these days that High Fructose Corn Syrup is extremely bad for you.  But not from from Corn manufacturers - who would have guessed?  Below is a screen shot of a banner I recently noticed on Yahoo:

I was thinking this might be a bait and switch advertisement or even a co-reg path offer.  Instead it is a marketing campaign from the Corn Refiners Association and it’s purpose is to inform consumers that High Fructose Corn Syrup is not unhealthy for you.  Below is one of the questions in the quiz:

This website claims that under the US Food and Drug Administration HFCS is “natural”.  What is “natural” you might ask?  Whenever I see a word in quotations, or when someone makes that gesture with their hands, I always know something is amiss.  I dont know if High Fructose Corn Syrup is healthy for you or not.  I do know marketing - and it seems like the corn manufactuers in this country are worried they are going to lose out on profits if they don’t educate the junk food eating masses about how “natural” High Fructose Corn Syrup is.

I leave you with Mark Bittman from the New York Times:

If you are a corporation looking to develop an online marketing campaign and interactive website like Sweet Surprise.  Please contact us and we would be happy to help you create a campaign that is not blatantly full of bullshit like Sweet Surprise. If you have comments about High Fructose Corn Syrup or the Corn Refiners Association I would be interested to hear what they are.

The above website, NY Girl Of My Dreams, is a great example of a non-commercial message that went viral online.  I was suspicious of this website and story when I first read it on Yahoo:

I figured it was a lead in to Yahoo Personals, but it was a news story from Reuters.   Quite a way to find love in today’s chaotic and internet age.  The website is a simple html page with what looks to be a hand drawing.  Anyone can create a website like this, but how do you make it go viral?  How did this tall skinny-dork and subway rider get his website out to millions of people in New York, the US, and now the world?  Did he start with craigslist?

Please leave your comments on how you believe this tall skinny dork was able to viralize his romantic campaign.

I was surprised to find that scammers are now attempting to break into your Google Adwords account.  Below are the screen shots verifying this:

It seems hard to believe that someone would break into another persons Adwords account.  In today’s sophisticated criminal world it’s a rather ingenious way to steal.  The original account holder gets hurt because it ruins their account and possibly eliminates their chances of using Adwords in the future.  Google gets hurt the most because they face credit card charge backs from the original account holders after the damage is done.

I assume that some malicious affiliates or online marketers are behind some of these account break-ins; possibly and most likely some Russians (as that seems to be the stereotype).  If you don’t have to foot the bill - why not just blow through daily budgets and advertise affiliates offers?  Google can track this however by finding out the affiliate ID’s of these malicious hackers.  Therefore, it is imperative that Google be able to “back-up” the accounts of affected users in order to deter these phishing schemes and protect the Adwords advertising system.

Are you a major corporation looking to make a dent in your online marketing initiative? Well I hope so. YouTube can help your corporation take its brand to the next level. I would argue that YouTube offers one of the best branding and direct response opportunities on the web today. Youtube is the #7 website in the world and has tremendous analytical tools and budgeting capabilities to help you meet your advertising needs. You can check out YouTube’s branding and media kit to help you determine whether YouTube and its publisher partner network will help your corporate branding and advertising strategy.

I prefer to see our clients invest their advertising dollars in YouTube instead of Facebook Advertising. It seems like Facebook is dead right now. Their “ppc” advertising system is great for performance based marketers. But it has severely hurt their large corporate clients looking for unique branding opportunities. Facebook offers some interesting integrated advertising opportunities at an expensive price tag. I have only seen a few large corporate clients actually purchase the sponsored profile pages. Youtube on the other hand is being embraced by major corporations in a big way. Banner Blindness is partners with Buck Hollywood - one of the top YouTube channels - and we see how much is being spent on partnered YouTube advertising buys. Quite a bit is spent on CPC Youtube advertising. Michael Buckley is interested in more private label advertising deals for his blog if you are interested - please contact us. I’m confident that major corporations can cost effectivley make a huge impact by doing large branding campaigns across the YouTube partner network.

When conducting a branding campaign on YouTube advertisers don’t have to pay CPM rates. Since you don’t have to pay CPM rates you can easily gauge the effectiveness of your advertising campaign by determining your revenue per click. A typical click on YouTube from premium publishers will cost you around $.40 cents I believe; but of course it varies. You also have to realize that for $.40 per click, if this is more then what you typically pay for CPC advertising, you are getting a whole lot more. Our partner Michael Buckley was receiving Red Stripe beer advertisements on his latest YouTube broadcast. Red Stripe beer company is not paying for these ads to be shown - they are paying for these ads to be clicked on.

Notice in the advertisements above that Red Stripe is encouraging their audience to get involved. Beer companies, tobacco companies, auto companies, consumer product manufacturers, etc… realize that showing advertisements are not enough, you need to get your audience involved. How can you get your audience involved? Through user generated media! If you offer prize money and a platform for users to generate media, you will have more then what you know what to do with. Some of it is so good that you can actually put it on TV and have a kick-ass commercial.

If your corporation is interested in finding out how Banner Blindness Inc. can help you carry out an effective You Tube advertising campaign. Please call 843-425-3566 or email Support@BannerBlindness.com

Steve Balmer is widely recognized as the insane CEO who repeatedly chanted: “Developers, developers, developers, developers.” This mantra would bode well for Yahoo, and a Micro-Hoo base company. I have been doing online marketing and advertising for nearly 10 years, and it seems like Yahoo just doesn’t spend time developing their advertising platform. It appears that they spend time managing it, but not improving or advancing their advertising platform. Shame on you Yahoo, you let Google get the best of you. I’m not sure why, but I have some guesses.For nearly a decade Yahoo inflated their earnings by charging a minimum of 10 cents a click. It wasn’t till recently did Yahoo finally change this policy, but from reports from other online marketing blogs; little seems to have changed. A lot of talk, but no action Yahoo - typical Yahoo.

Yahoo is like a spoiled little boy that loses interest in his toys, only wanting new ones to satisfy his ego. Purchases like Right Media, Blue Lithium, etc… have cost billions, and will take a decade or more to recoup those investments. It would have made more sense for Yahoo to develop their content network, instead of letting just a handful of employees take years to finally bring it out of beta (ooops, is it still in beta?) Why the 10 cents minimum cost for advertisers still on the network? Why not unleash the gates of publishing and allow more publishers into the network? Quality control? I think not. Lack of employee empowerment, I think so.

Yahoo spends more time thinking about what it’s going to do next, then doing anything at all. For over 3 months Microsoft and Yahoo have been going back and forth about a price tag. Yahoo wants more money so senior execs and large shareholders can make as much as possible. Microsoft isn’t stupid, their not going to pay through the teeth and screw themselves over in the process. Yahoo executives are busy spending their time saving their jobs and their asses; not improving their search technology or advertising platform.

Yahoo has fleeced advertisers for years, delivering shitty, overpriced results that generally result in negative ROI’s for their advertisers. Super affiliates/marketers took the Yahoo publishing network for millions of dollars. Just look at the impressive checks these wise-asses post on their blogs. How were they doing it? They were web masters of online arcade websites and blended YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) advertisements into their website. The YPN control panel allowed publishers to choose what niche their advertisements were. So why not display realestate development or legal advertisements? They were blended so well, that users of these websites had no idea what they were clicking. Sort of the bizzaro world of “banner blindness”

Yahoo needs to stop fucking around and immediately take action to improve business performance and return shareholder value. Getting rid of Terry Semel was the first step. The second step is to focus on your core competencies. If Microsoft is going to aggressively pursue a purchase of Yahoo by buying up shares on the open market, so be it; and it might cost Microsoft even more then $31-$33 a share. Stop buying display advertising networks. There are only so many publishers, and they already work with all the majors. Start-up display advertising networks are being overvalued. Now that Yahoo has the components to compete with Google; start competing with them! Don’t let your platform continue to languish, COPY GOOGLE ADWORDS. Sorry to say it Yahoo, but there is no shame in copying Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is integrating the entire advertising agency in one simple platform. After just a week of using Google Adwords nearly anyone can figure out how to use it. Empower your users Yahoo! Why cause first time advertisers frustration by requiring them to have certain spend limits before upgrading their upload capabilities? I quote Steve Balmer again Yahoo, “Developers, developers, developers, developers!”

I would like to feature a project we have recently completed and discuss direct response marketing, and how to get your product on TV.  We recently completed the website, infomercial, and marketing for the following direct response product:

www.ElectronicLicensePlate.com

We hope the product will be a big seller - so our clients are happy and we are happy (of course).  Lets discuss some important components of a successful direct response online marketing campaign:

• Sex sells, be certain to use beautiful women and men in your marketing pieces.  BASICALLY: If your not using sexy women or men, your not marketing correctly.
• Testimonials, Testimonials, Testimonials….You need testimonials (video, pictures, and write-ups).
• Performance based marketing - Call us at 843-425-3566 or email Support@BannerBlindness.com to discuss how we can get your product on a CPA basis with major display advertising networks.  This type of advertising costs you nothing unless they sell one of your items.  Companies like BlueLthium recently acquired by Yahoo will advertise your products for FREE so long as they sell and you can offer them a competitive CPA (cost per action).
• Blogs - use a blog!  Blogs are dynamic websites that are easy to update and utilize in a guerilla marketing campaign.  So if you want other blogs and user generated media sites to link to you, you need to get them to you, and this is really only possible with a blog - thats because you blog about something that makes other blogs want to link to you (because you baited them).  This is a basic marketing (not advertising) principle - but very difficult to visualize and achieve.

Some marketing mistakes that direct response marketers make:

• They don’t use attractive males or females to push their products in videos and pictures.
• They don’t use testimonials, but an in-effective and unknown infomercial actor.
• They purchase CPM advertising without the use of an adserver and lose thousands.  Advertise on a PERFORMANCE basis and have a good tracking system in place to prevent advertising agency scrubs.
• Make it difficult to purchase an item.  So that means, offer your product for $4.95 - customer only has to purchase the shipping, and if not returned, you get billed the full amount.  But you can make people aware of the full shipping price by making them check of a terms and conditions box.  To see examples of this look at colon cleaning pills and weight loss patches/pills.

If you need a direct response marketing campaign and website created please call 843-425-3566 or email Support@BannerBlindness.com

I would prefer if you emailed myself and my staff will be traveling in India to meet with our outsourced employees and independent providers.

The home page of any major website (AOL, Yahoo, eBay, MySpace, etc…) is a great place to do advertising and marketing research - as these are companies spending small fortunes trying to market their products or services. I recently came across Rozerem on the front page of Yahoo! Screen shots of the banners are below:

When displaying banner ads you only have a fraction of an actual second to attract a viewers eyes - otherwise Banner Blindness occurs and your banner is never seen. The above banners are very attractive, creative, but fail to get people to click. I don’t have the CTR numbers or the number of impressions Rozerem purchased on Yahoo (as this company is not a client of ours) - but I can determine from experience that the CTR is probably very very low, and Rozerem is not happy with the performance of their campaign. The very first image in a gif or flash banner should immediately get the users attention. In the example above you have to watch the banner ad for 6 seconds to find out what is being advertised. They did do a good job of including a call to action and that probably helps CTR - but it should be displayed in the beginning, not the end. If I were to have created the banners and the website for Rozerem we would have done the following:

• The banner would have included the words FREE, Sleeping Pills, Get a good nights sleep!, etc…
• The landing page would immediately gather visitor data by sending users to a lead gen form to receive free pills
• Instead of using boring images from old tv shows, we would have used images of attractive females in sexy silk lingerie sleeping peacefully and dreaming of a hunky boy toy

The current Rozerem website makes it too difficult for users to request a free trial of the sleeping pills. And once again, the banners are probably performing terribly and costing this pharmaceutical company an arm and a leg.

Ask.com receives 1-4% of US search traffic and is finding it impossible to increase that number. Chances are, Ask.com will never be able to increase that number to a reasonable rate. So what is Ask.com doing to possibly increase those numbers? Not a whole lot: they are firing 40 non-producing employees and “focusing on married women looking to manage their lives.” I could care less what Ask.com does to increase their traffic and revenue numbers - because I don’t use it for search purposes or advertising purposes. We recently tested out some offers that would be perfect for “married women looking to manage their lives” and they performed horribly. The content network is filled with click-bots and will rob you blind. In our opinion, if Ask.com wanted to make a serious move, they would return to their origins and re-brand Ask.com as AskJeeves.com again. Yeah, all their re-branding dollars they spent on Ask.com would go to waste, but people still think AskJeeves, not Ask. Case in point: Howard Schultz closed Starbucks for an hour and had the whole country talking about it. Accept defeat, re-brand-brand, and move forward.

One of Yahoo’s greatest competitive weaknesses, in comparison to Google, is their contextual advertising platform - though they are still ahead of Microsoft.  AdSense (Google’s contextual advertising system) is hand’s down the most powerful contextual advertising system on the Internet.  With Google’s recent acquisition of Double Click they can now utilize the AdSense contextual network to display CPM priced banners - enhancing their CPM advertising distribution to an unbelievable amount.  Google is the worlds largest display advertising company - bigger than Specific Media, 24/7 Real Media, Platform A (AOL), and any other competitors.  Google has been slowly rolling out their display advertising efforts through the AdSense contextual network.  On this website, as well as other online properties that we own, we have seen these ads and they pay very little.  So we have been forced to turn off image advertisements, and only show text display ads; as CPM payout is worthless.  Back to Yahoo contextual network, it sucks, oh I already mentioned that.  I’m sure many of you have seen these ads before:

They are a perfect example of Yahoo’s terrible contextual network.  There is no revenue optimization system in place - which is clearly evident otherwise Yahoo would be constantly rotating competing ads in order to determine the highest revenue per click advertisements.  I’m certain that the advertisers shown above have a contract with Yahoo for a static price per click, and in return they get premium placement - but this is to the detriment of Yahoo and Yahoo shareholders.  Wake up Yahoo, there is no shame in duplicating Google’s contextual network; what are you waiting for?

I was amazed at the incredible number of worthless tools to be found at Microsoft’s Ad Center Labs - there wasn’t one useful tool that a PPC marketer could use (please comment if you beg to differ).  Clearly Microsoft doesn’t get search engine marketing; hence the Yahoo purchase.  However, if Yahoo gets gobbled up by Microsoft doesn’t that mean they will be destroying one already deficient product, eating it, and pooping out an even more deformed product.  Sorry for the human digestive analogy; another good analogy I heard on TheStreet.com: “Microsoft buying Yahoo is like taking two people in a race that are weak runners and tying their legs together.  They still aren’t going to beat the third runner, because the third runner is faster and stronger.”  Check out the screen shots below for Microsoft’s Ad Center “labs”.  If you can find anything that is valuable to an online marketer, please let me know.

The following blog Cinematical had a top 50 list of what was hot in the movies. I read one of the comments on the first page and the writer said, “This was a great post - but why 50 pages? You guys suck at the internet.” I was impressed with this site visitors understanding of online marketing; he hated the fact that they put 1 page of content on 50 pages - the publisher wanted to get 50x as many banner impressions. From a website owner perspective pretty damn smart, but from an advertisers perspective it sucks. It sucks for advertisers because users are experiencing 100% banner blindness in conditions like this. The advertisements being displayed most regularly were:

Cloverfield (a sci-fi shoot’em up) and Tom Cat’s crappy movie about Mad Money - shouldn’t Kramer Sue?  If I have to see another preview with Katie Holmes bouncing to hip-hop in overalls my head may shatter into small Tom Cruise aliens. Could this girl have screwed her career up any worse? Marrying Tom Cruise has gotten her into one of the worst looking movies I have ever seen. Shouldn’t he have been able to hook her up? Especially since he is the number two alien progenerate on the planet known as Earth.  I digress into Hollywood, I’m sorry.  Lets talk about making money through crap like this - because consumers love crap, thats what they are literally full of.

I’m sure movie studios are finding the internet to be the most effective place to do mass marketing in 2008 - as well as ALL businesses both traditional and non-traditional. However, it is a limited audience and television/previews are still the number one advertising methodology.  Movie previews are actually a good example or pre-cursor to re-targeting through display advertising. Let’s take a deeper look at advertising movies across display advertising networks like Specific Media, 24/7 Real Media, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc…

• A movie has a cost per action of an average dollar amount near $14 (that includes movie and food/beverage)
• An average movie has a budget of around 20 million dollars
• Online advertising costs a movie studio $250K on average to run a successful online display advertising campaign. Even more depending on the budget of the film, and how well the production studio believes it will do. Bigger the star, the better the brand, the bigger the budget.
• The ROI for a $250K display advertising purchase is probably around 4x or $1 million dollars. I would have figured it to be much more, but why throw money down the drain if you cant measure it?

Don’t ask me how I came up with these numbers - because they aren’t meant to be accurate, rather; insightful into how major movie studios determine how much to spend in display advertising. However, how the hell can a movie studio determine whether or not a display ad resulted in a movie-goer? Well there are a few different ways:

• Sell tickets online through the ads themselves. However, I get the feeling that only a few hundred tickets a movie are sold this way and have very little overall impact on sales. So this isn’t much help.
• 
• Have customers fill out a short survey when entering or leaving the movie theatre. This can be either digital (which it should be) or tallied from survey cards and manually entered. This could be a great reporting business for a Nielsen type company to develop. But, this doesn’t exist either.
• Have customers play with a little computer on their armrests and give up customer information (email, address, movie interests, favorite actors/actresses, etc…) Then use this data to do targeted marketing - for example, if someone likes Westerns and a majority of male actors: Then they should have received an email to go to “There Will Be Blood.” Aghhh!  This doesn’t exist either. So how the hell does a movie studio know how much to spend on online display advertising?

They don’t.

I’m sure there are other ways that movie studios and movie theatres could work together to increase visitors and thus sales. The purpose of this post is to inform movie studios of online marketing methods that can result in more visitors to movie theatres, and less in display advertising costs:

Movie Studious: stop paying for display advertising. Run online marketing campaigns that are performance based. Let Tacoda, Blue Lithium, Specific Media, etc… take your business but only on a performance basis. So this might mean the number of tickets sold, number of leads generated (contact information, demographics, and user preference data), click throughs, number of times a preview is watched, etc…. If you continue to run on expensive CPM pricing, you will continue to lose money and be featured on sites that effectively make your ads “Blind” to users because they want to rape you for as much as possible - if you don’t believe me, just look at the site above.

BannerBlindness.com marketing professionals can help your movie studio craft an online marketing campaign that is cost effective, measurable, and profitable! Contact an online marketing professional at Banner Blindness today!