So the first campaign I decided to run is on Facebook. I have been having a rough time getting it launched in that Facebook tends to be very vague with their guidelines and why an ad was rejected. Being a guy who has spent his life working in search and online media one may ask why I chose Facebook to start running campaigns. First off, it seems tons of other people are having much sucess with Facebook. Check out Jonathan Volk’s post here on Shoemoney. Seriously 100K running on Facebook? Somehow I am not surprised in that it seems Facebook is killing its numbers and went profitable a year ahead of schedule.
But honestly there are distinct reasons to run display ads on Facebook. For one: TARGETING! We are talking about a huge pool of people and you can target down to the city, age, gender, you name it. The trick is finding an offer that converts to a certain population and scaling out your campaigns. Also, talk about easy. Its a matter of creating a title and description, uploading an image and simply inputing your landing page or affiliate link. Its that easy!
The other key here is whether to go CPC or CPM. I recommend CPM all the way for 2 reasons. One, it is in Facebook’s best interest to post and display your CPM based ad vs. CPC. Reason is that a lot of these ads never get clicked so to run them and get no clicks means Faceobook faces an opportunity cost to display your ad risking making nothing off of it. From the advertsier side, a CPM deal one, ensures you can get viewed and two, if your ad is coverting well you end up paying much less. Think about it, say you pay .20 CPM and get a 1% CTR. That equates to 10 clicks for $2.00 or a .2 CPC. On the CPC side an ad costing .20CPM would likely need a .5 CPC to get listed and thus for 10 clicks you are looking at $5.00. Easy math.
One caution however, do not put all your eggs in this basket. I ran an ad for 5 days which was doing fine only to have it taken down post approval. Seems someone at Facebook changed their mind. I think at this point I have it down and will see how this converts once it passes inspection. Stay tuned for more….
Posted in Display, Facebook, Online Marketing | 2 Comments »
So first off I have to disclose that I work for Microsoft. That said, I had to cover the new Visual Search product from a viewer’s perspective. So MSFT has decided to test out a new feature called Visual Search. We saw it demo’d at our company meeting and it blew away the audience. Here is one very cool application for it, the top iPhone Aps: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Top+iPhone+apps&g=iphone_apps&FORM=Z9GE62.
How cool is that? The question that this raises is, “ok so this is cool, but what do I do with it?” Not in the sense of the user, the user gets another way to look for a product and link that to a search result and find a product not just by model name or number but by narrowing down their feature list thus producing a truly targeted search result. In this case, the user does not even need to know the model they are looking for. All they need is to know what they want in say a camera: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Digital+cameras&g=digital_cameras&FORM=Z9GE
From this page the user can simply customize the results by feature and thus target what they specfically want.
The issue is from the MSFT side, the question is, “how do we monetize this?” Paid inclusion? Standard CPC? I can say that these questions are being asked but I cannot talk about the plan. What is clear though is that MSFT is shaking up the search game more than people are giving credit for. You will see more enhancements to the Bing product before January so stay tuned. In the interim, play with the new tool here: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch
Maybe you want to learn some new yoga poses: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Yoga+poses&g=yoga_poses&FORM=Z9GE76
Or maybe research what type of dog you want: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?q=Dog+breeds&g=dog_breeds&FORM=Z9GE2
This is an interesting first step in what will be a game changing year in search.
Posted in Bing, PPC, Search | 1 Comment »
OK so calling this the “official” blog might be a stretch. I’m not exactly famous (yet). However, this blog is the tool where I intend to post updates on me, my work (Microsoft), my industry, and more importantly my business . Not much there to see right now but it will be growing soon. So a little about me: I am currently 36 years old and live in Kirkland, WA. I moved up here to work for Microsoft although I grew up here most of my life. Was living in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years prior to moving up here. I work at Microsoft as the leader of the US Business Analysis team for MSFT Advertising. I have to keep details of my work brief due to security policies etc.
In my career I have worked at Yahoo, LATimes.com, Kelley Blue Book, and a few others. I have work in Search Marketing operations, finance, you name it and have also done extensive work in Business Intelligence and Web Analytics.
However, ultimately the one conclusion I have come to in all this time is that I am just not someone who is built to work for other people. That is not to say I don’t work hard or have focus but I have a tendency to have a short runway of patience when it comes to bad decisions. And lets face it, big corporations make them all the time. I am better suited to work for myself and I intent to use this blog to chronicle that work as well as of course personal updates etc.
Speaking of, my wife Jenny and I have an 8 month old girl named Lorelei who is a ton of fun but can also be a handful. Check her out:
Idn’t she cute?
Stay tuned for more updates as I press on with my new endeavor and move on through life.
As for now I am placing a stake in the ground. My goal: Stop working for others and be a full-fledged entrepreneur within 4 years. IOW, before I hit 40. Follow along and see if I can do it.
DG
Tags: career, life, Me, personal
Posted in Me | 1 Comment »
