Search Marketing in 2010 Panel

The Search Marketing in 2010 session included the following panelists (left to right):

• Martin Stoddart, Senior Product Manager at Bing
• Vanessa Wynn-Williams, Associate Marketing Manager at Yahoo! Canada
• Ryan Kelly, Founder and CEO at Pear Analytics

The first question posed by the moderator, Rajan Sodhi, VP Marketing at Peer 1: “What is happening with Bing and Yahoo?”

Martin, from Bing, told us CPC results will be provided by Bing, but as implementation is just being started not much has happended yet. He also suggests we go to SearchAlliance.com to get the most up-to-date information.

Rajan moves on to the second question: What’s with all the acronyms? SEM, SEO, PPC?

Ryan ran down the list:

SEM: Search Engine Marketing (Paid + Organic)
SEO: Search Engine Optimization (Organic)
PPC: Pay Per Click (Paying a certain amount to a publisher based on per click)
SMO: Social Media Optimization (Social media activity with the intent of attracting unique visitors)

Vanessa told us Canadians search a total of five times per day on average.
Ryan then told us 80% of all purchases start from an online search.
Finally Martin added, 60% of people say they are using search to make bigger decisions in their life.

Third Question: Why is banner advertising going down in adaption and search is going up?

Vanessa responds that the nature of search is direct response, although she believes some banners can provide this as well.

Fourth Question: Where should SEO Start?

Ryan tells us to start by looking at if from a technical standpoint, to simply not hinder the bots. Then after that he suggests content development and suggests the Wordpress theme Thesis for $100 because it has such great tools already implemented.

Fifth Question: Do major search engines crawl differently?

Vanessa tells us all search engines have their own “secret sauce” but generally speaking they are all looking for the same thing–the most relevant information. She tells us if you do SEO right it should help you with all engines.

Sixth Question: How does SMO effect SEO?

Ryan tells us  that by signing up for accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. they will make sure someone who steals your name doesn’t show up before you in Search Engines. As these sites rank very high with your branded name, you can rank high for your branded name.

Martin tells us that web of objects all become relevant in delivering results and that is why the results page for Bing is evolving. More visual content, social media content and this evolution will continue to happen. He tells us that though the algorithem is important it is just one part.

Seventh Question: PPC first or SEO?

Vanessa says,  SEO will be hard but it is good for the long term, while PPC is more of an add-on. She tells us a user is 24% more likely to click on your site if they see your listing on both the paid and organic results because it increases brand trust. She also tells us that while PPC does not increase your SEO the gained traffic from your PPC will.

Then they define other areas such as Black Hat, long tail keywords… blah blah blah nothing new.

Final Question: What is the future of search?

Martin tells us there will be a bluring of lines between banner and text in search results. Vanessa tells us Dynamic keyword insertion for very relevant PPC, but mostly find your key audience and talk to them.

All-in-all it was a good session; the moderator should have known his stuff a bit more, and Vanessa brought interesting stats to the conversation, and thus lead the topic with her excellent understanding.

On a side note, I have been to a number of search conferences and it seems the majority of the time Yahoo!’s representatives are female. Is this intentional, perhaps a way to deferentiate themselves from the boys over at Microsoft and Google?  I donno, but I like it!

Related posts:

1. F5 Expo: Cloud Computing Session
2. Vancouver’s F5 Expo: Refreshing Business Stratagies
3. How to Prepare for the Future of Search

• Howie Wu, Co-Founder and CEO at LayerBoom Systems
• Mark Cunningham, Co-Founder and CEO at Indicee
• Ryan Storgaard, Director of Cloud Computing Services Strategy at Microsoft  - no link required

Howie Wu, Co-Founder & CEO at LayerBoom Systems

The first question posed by the moderator, Rajan Sodhi, VP Marketing at Peer 1, was “What is cloud computing?”

Howie suggests we view the Youtube video on Water Vapour. He then gives us one of the best cloud computing definitions I have ever heard. He explains that it is the 3^rd generation of computing. The first generation was mainframe computing – one computer, many users and everyone shares resources. The second generation was personal computing – one computer, one user. The third generation is cloud computing – network storing, a shift caused by the internet with such sites as Flickr and Gmail.

Mark agrees with Howie’s definition and elaborates by saying businesses benefit because of the scalability; they don’t care about how it works, as long as it works. He refers to cloud computer as a “black box”.

Ryan says he struggles to define the cloud. He says he is more concerned with what does it mean our businesses. Which he says is not being locked into a long term contract.

Howie tells us cloud computing turns your fixed costs into your variable costs.

The second question is around security concerns around the cloud.

Howie tells us your virtual machine is as secure as your local machine. He uses the example of Salesforce and how much of your customers personal information you store with them in cloud and the success they have had.

He uses the analogy of having a server is like having a kid–you have to feed it and pay to keep it around–virtual server takes this risk away.

Ryan Storgaard - Director of Cloud Services Strategy, Microsoft Canada

Mark says he uses the amazon cloud, then places their applications on-top of it. So his system has two levels of security: their application security and Amazon’s. He mentions that in the later we are really talking about one of the most powerful data centre’s that has “fort knox” type security compared to the one in your basement.

The third and final question from the moderator was: Data Failure in Clouds – how can we avoid this?

Ryan starts off by suggesting your service level agreement mentions up-time. He also mentions that Microsoft has set up the cloud system so that if you hate the experience you can easily go back.

Howie suggests you look at the cost of putting together your own infustrucure and see if that outweighs the risk cost. He mentions with a cloud computing solution you will still need to maintain your system, just all the old fixed costs will become variable costs. Howie clarifies that the companies like his are really just cloud enablers, mentioning that people don’t realize they are already using cloud services like Flickr. Howie feels that the move to the cloud is inevitable. That people will eventually get used to the concept because of the accessibility and affordability and just like when we used to have issues putting our credit card online we will get over these insecurities.

Mark believes that the consumer world will drive where the business world goes. New generations expect the software to work (Serena note: this is true based on work done by Gord Hotckiss in the Buyershere Project), not the cryptic stuff that we are dealing with now as their are lots of issues to be deal with.

Ryan also mentions the “millennial generation” and the questions they have about Sharepoint: ”so you are trying to make this like the Facebook of the company?”

The panel wraps up pretty quickly. I thought the session was very interesting and well put together. It might have been nice to have someone on the panel with an opposing view, but overall worth the time.opposing view — but overall worth the time.

Related posts:

1. Vancouver’s F5 Expo: Refreshing Business Stratagies
2. F5 Expo: Search Marketing in 2010 Session

Malcolm Gladwell's Fro on a Mini

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the F5 expo in Vancouver. The event is produced by Lindsay Smith, the CEO and founder of Massive Media Inc. A company usually synonymous with fun tech socials in Vancouver. The conceptual inspiration of expo is a play on “F5 key”, thus dubbed: Refreshing Business Strategies. Lindsay has always had a knack for smart marketing and she has definitely kept her track record strong with this event–if not adding to her portfolio of successful events.

Headlined by Malcolm Gladwell, it would be a hard to have any sort of involvement in the Vancouver tech scene and not have seen the ads with his huge fro plastered throughout town.

I arrived a little late to Lindsay’s keynote Wednesday. The room was so full by the time I got there we just hung out and got some coffee and explored the expo hall next store. Unfortunately the second speaker was in the same room and with no other events going on anywhere else everyone just stayed in the same room – same issue, too many people – stood in the hallway.

By the time the third session started we were more eager to see some action. Our choice of topics included a Cloud Computing Session and one on The Metrics of Social Media. Being in the middle of a Cloud transition at work we opted for the Cloud Session. The panel consisted of two local Cloud Company executives and one representative from Microsoft for the Enterprise representation. View the full review of the Cloud Computing Session.

Yahoo! Booth at F5 Expo

After we headed over to the Panel on Search titled: Search Marketing in 2010 . I am often hesitant to attend panel’s on this topic if the event is not search focus the topic seems to just be thrown in as a hot topic and generally speaking quite low level. In this Search Session I would say this was about 80% true. However as a newbie listening to the panel I think I would have been impressed with the amount of information they packed into the session as well as how honest the panel was. The panel, similar to the Cloud Computing session had a good mix, including a representative from Yahoo!, Bing and a local SEO. View the full review of the Search Marketing in 2010 session.

Overall the event was one of the better ones I have attended in the Vancouver area. There were lots of good representation from industry leaders and participation of local enthusiasts.

Here are my highlights and low-lights:

Highlights

• The Branding of the Event
• Inclusion of Industry leaders
• Strong Local Representation
• Lunch

Low-lights

• Keynote and conference kick off accessibility
• No Internet??

Related posts:

1. F5 Expo: Search Marketing in 2010 Session
2. F5 Expo: Cloud Computing Session
3. Top 3 Resources for Internet Marketing News

We live in a com­plex world, one full of inequities and won­der­ful things. Our fel­lows in the First World have been con­cerned for a while with us hav­ing the major share of the bad­ness, so we thought, why don’t we pay back? After all, their life isn’t problem-free either. And that’s where this com­pe­ti­tion starts.

Check it out:  http://designforthefirstworld.com

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Dear Mr. Norman,

The Design of Everyday Things - AKA The Psychology of Everyday Things etc.

Judging from the fact that Amazon.com offered the two as a set, I bet they didn’t know, either, that The Design of Everyday Things is the same book as The Psychology of Everyday Things.

When I first picked up the books, presents for me since I had asked my son to get them for me in the U.S., I noticed puzzling similarities. It was only when I read the preface to The Design that I realized the two were identical. The statement about the identities is on the cover of The Design, but not large enough to really catch the average buyers’ eye.
(Original Review)

Happy Redesigning. (…)

It made me chuckle -  Artificial Intelligence at it’s finest.

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The session was taught by Michael “STUCK BY LIGHTENING TWICE” Straker, a very upbeat and knowledgeable  Usability Analyst at VKI Studios. I have to say I was very impressed by Michael’s knowledge both inside and outside of the topic.  In one instance while fielding a question he jumped directly into B2B concepts and provided a clear and concise response.

During the morning Micheal led us through a powerpoint presentation outlining the various persuasion methods, including:

• Trust
• Persuasion
• Logic vs Emotion
• The Contrast Principle
• Decide-o-Phobia
• Social Proof
• Scarcity
• Diffusion of Responsibility
• Rule of Reciprocation
• Obedience of Authority
• Disrupt then Reframe
• The Power of People we Like

After reviewing the concepts we spent the afternoon looking at everyone’s website and brainstormed ways we could use our new arsenal of persuasion to improve conversion/usability.

Session Highlights:

• #1 for me was the quality of the presentation. A concept was presented, references for the concept were then provided from trusted academic and professional sources, then examples were given and finally an engaging question to really make you think how you can use the concept.  Excellent.
• The printed packages were a nice touch – I didn’t have to waste my time taking notes on the slides instead I could just jot thoughts I had on how I could implement them on my website.
• Overall the atmosphere was relaxed and inviting –thanks to smiling guys at the front for throwing out my Timmy’s Garbage for me.
• The small size of the group really gave us the opportunity to talk in length about examples specific to us and remain engaged the entire time.
• I had the pleasure to meet some interesting people in the industry: @ShermanHu.
• Overall VKI Studios really focused on quality in every aspect of the training session, and it showed.

Session Letdowns:

• Wish there was more info on VKI Studios website about this event and other upcoming events (update: I found the page via a Google search: Internet Marketing Training).
• I couldn’t get the Contact Us Map to work on my iPhone when I was trying to find the place (this might have been just me).
• I didn’t really understand if the workshop started exactly at 9 or if we were to just show up at 9. For future reference just show up at 9.

As mentioned above VKI studios is doing 3 other sessions that if are anything like the first, will be well worth the cash. Topics include: Search Engine Optimization, Google Analytics & Google Website Optimizer Bootcamp & Pay Per Click Marketing

More information on VKI’s Internet Markeing Training Sessions

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The application is built in Processing and is a usability video game with the goal of teaching the user basic web usability (yeah it’s a little tongue-in-cheek). All the concepts are based on Jakob Nielsen’s past research and the game is sort of a Galaga/Centipede mash-up.

I did perform two usability tests on the portal with UserTesting.com; if you are interested in checking those out they are located here.

If you are looking for a more in depth outline of the project you can access the research paper for it here.

P.S. Please excuse my nerdyness…

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Since it was the holiday season, I quickly found out poinsettias would yield me the most experience and money, and so it began…

After 12 hours I caught myself  subconsciously whistling the FarmVille theme in the locker room before I played hockey.

After 24 hours I yelled at my friend at hockey when she got a penalty “2 minutes for having such a nice farm” (Krista you really do have a nice farm).

After 7 days  I went to my mom’s in the rural part of Vancouver and started to notice everything that was like  FarmVille: The farm’s in Ladner with their red barns; My mom’s toilet paper holder with a chicken on it; The found cat at the doctors office that mysteriously looks like that grey tabby…

After 10 days I called my friend in a drunken stupor asking if she could harvest my crops because I was stuck at a bar. All I remember is yelling at her, “But they will wilt!”

Tom the turkey suddenly remembered why he shouldn't eat cabbage--especially with the economic situation affecting the size of the pen as it had.

Today, day 13, I bought a bumper sticker and mug with Farmville characters on it.

There is only one thing that could make Farmville better–besides not being in flash–if it stopped freezing–and having an iPhone app–if I could make a living virtually farming.

What if you took FarmVille, opened an online marketplace where farmers could trade real money for FarmVille dollars and gold? FarmVille could take a cut; they could easily reach Twitter media attention levels; participation would skyrocket and they could make more money then they already are now! Think about the possible headlines: “Economy sucks, but not on the e-Farm!”

Of course then we would have to evolve as an e-farmer and create bots to build and harvest for us. (Until we finally realize we are not actually creating anything). Then we will hear a tree fall in the woods even though we are not around and utopia will be formed and…

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One of my final project ideas for my Artificial Intelligence class was to recreate expensive and cumbersome human eye tracking with Artificial Intelligence, specifically a Neural Network. Much to my chagrin, with a little Googling I find out it has already been done and done quite well:

The eye tracking video’s on YouTube claim that the application uses over 100,000 training samples. Also if you peruse through the developer’s video’s you can see examples of the computer generated results compared to real human eye tracking tests as well as being used in different mediums (ex. tv, web).

In my conversation with Dzmitry, the applications developer, he was understandably a little hesitant to reveal details on how the application works. But I sent him some more questions, namingly if he used a neural network or not. I will update the post if he responds.

Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

Hi Serena,

Thanks for your interest. … Please have a look at selected examples for www (early demos) here http://www.youtube.com/adstapler or retail and ad industry (more mature demos) http://www.youtube.com/shopperlabs. …

Best Regards,
Dzmitry

Below is my favourite example. Alright I might be a little web biaist. The results are great, considering all good PPC marketers know getting the third spot on the right hand for Adsense is ideal.

Note: I also did look at Feng-GUI’s similar application but found it nowhere near the accuracy as Dzmitry’s. For example, another blogger points out some accuracy issues here.

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He doesn’t identify if he suggests we should use cloning to pass on only desirable traits in order to speed up the evolutionary process or just clone whomever. In fact he doesn’t really identify anything more than just “cloning could be a good thing.” The article is disappointingly short and factually shallow, especially by normal Wired standards. In fact it didn’t get me thinking that much at all — that is until my class today.

Guest speaker, Jeffrey Ventrella – infiltrated my AI class to discuss Genetic Algorithms. Ventrella is a veteran at developing virtual worlds and is a visiting professor at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver BC (plus a whole bunch of other cool crazy stuff).

Jeffrey shares with us a couple of JAVA applets he has built with Genetic Algorithms. One of them is GenePool, here’s the “30 second elevator pitch”:

It’s a computer simulation where hundreds of virtual organisms evolve swimming skills. These organisms are called “swimbots”. You can set mate preference criteria and thus influence what the swimbots consider as attractive qualities in potential mates. The most attractive swimbots get chosen most often to have little babies, and so their genetic building blocks propogate to future generations. Eventually, swimbots get better at pursuing each other, competing for food, and becoming babes to other swimbots. Local gene pools emerge which compete for sex and food (for energy to have more sex). Eventually a dominant sub-population takes over. (http://www.swimbots.com/About.html)

But the best part is you could actually see the effects on the organisms when you mess around with natural selection or alter the ecosystem. In fact, Jeffrey even mentions how the applet could be useful for evolutionary experiments.

Gene Pool is best appreciated as a virtual Darwinian aquarium in which you initiate a primordial soup, and then occasionally check up on what Virtual Mother Nature is up to – about every fifteen minutes (or every few days, if you are interested in long-term evolutionary experiments!)… In Gene Pool you can “Tweak Ecology”… (http://www.swimbots.com/About.html)

In the application not only can you apply random mutations, change sexual selection criteria and create organisms, but you can also clone. If we clone organisms with a high fitness function does it speed up the pools evolution? If we clone organisms with low fitness function how would that alter evolution?

I have to admit the best suggestion for testing different scenarios within the Gene Pool is Jeffrey’s:  “What happens when swimbots give (ALL) of their energy to their offspring when they mate? Here’s a hint: They die.”

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