HostingCon 2008 - The Photos.

Setup of the DedicatedNOW booth on Monday.

The DedicatedNOW / Applicure Press Conference.

HostingCon 2008 Show Givaways.

Meeting with The Press.

Booth Teardown.

Big changes are brewing in the SEO/SEM space. My last article was focused on M&A activity in the SEO space - the Microsoft acquisition of facebook.com. Google has acquired YouTube.com and Yahoo! has launched the beta version of it’s own Digg-like social networking website and has already acquired Flickr and del.icio.us.

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Rumor on Wallstreet this week is that Microsoft is bidding on a 5% stake in the social networking platform, facebook.com. According to the Wall Street Journal, the $300-$500M bid would value Facebook at $10B. The rumor, which by the way, seems to have started on the exact day of Microsoft’s release of Halo3, is reported to have been started by Facebook, not Microsoft. There is little doubt to this, as Microsoft wants all eyes on its much anticipated release. (more…)

If you listen to the chatter regarding global markets today, the two power-houses to watch are (drum roll, please), India and China. Although e-commerce is still booming in the US and Europe, year over year growth will, at some point subside and match other ‘brick and mortar’ industries. Internet penetration (i.e. the percentage of users with Internet access) in the US is nearing 70%, followed closely by Australia and Europe. What really fuels the growth of Internet sales now is a shift from retail sales to online sales. So, savvy marketers have their sights set on new game, with the same potential for growth that the US and Europe had nearly a decade ago. (more…)

For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that you, the reader, know nothing or very little about online marketing in general. With that in mind, I’d like to share common means of advertising online.

Planning
The first key to marketing, whether it be online or not, is planning your campaign. If you don’t have a business plan now, you need to write one and come back to this article. Joe Kennedy has written a terrific guide on business plan development in his book, The Small Business Owner’s Manual. I highly suggest reading it as you complete your plan. (more…)

Online Advertising sales saw another year of solid growth in 2005, and for good reason: it works.

Why buy contextual online advertising?
As with all advertising, your dollars need to be focused on a clearly defined and targeted market. The world of Internet advertising is getting to this point now, where marketers are starting to wake up and understand that a subtle text message, within the right context, can provide better ROI than a banner that blinks enough to set off a seizure.

What this means is that both the traffic (or distribution) of the website you are advertising on and the site itself need to be considered. Say for example, your product is women’s apparel. Simple logic dictates that your money is better spent adverising on a site like the female targeted oxygen.com than on something unrelated such as ESPN.com. (more…)