Say hello to Yahoo! SmartAds

Yesterday, Yahoo! launched their SmartAds application which, according to a SearchEngineLand.com source, will “deliver display ads to people across the web based on their demographic and geographic profiles, plus search and web browsing behaviors.”

This new form of web advertising, which apparently received positive feedback in its test stage, is expected to expand to reach all areas of the Yahoo! network pending continued success.

SmartAds appears to have a lot of potential in the advertising community; the application will allow advertisers to contact browsers based on demographic, location, or web behavior— or advertisers can mix all three elements until they target the ideal audience.

What makes SmartAds so revolutionary is the “creative assembly platform” which will “take "templates" of advertiser-generated creative (e.g., copy, logos, graphics) and assemble those elements dynamically depending on the targeting opportunity.”

You may be thinking, “Gee, presenting relevant ads is great, but tracking my “web browsing behavior” sounds a little Big Brother-esque.” At least that was my first impression. But Yahoo! representatives assure that “users are grouped into categories and subcategories… not individually targeted.”

So there you have it—Yahoo! SmartAds are taking us into the future of interactive advertising on the web. My guess is it’s only a matter of time before other search engines (*cough* Google) take up a spot in the competition.

For more coverage, click here.

Psst! "Hide and Speak" meets more success

If you haven't read my posts on Jennifer Laycock's "Hide and Speak" project, do it now! Just kidding, but check them out, or else the following won't make much sense.

The numbers are in! The Bento Yum site, which is being promoted solely through word of mouth, blogs, and social networking sites, continues to improve its Alexa rank. Over the weekend, the rank fell (in a good way) by nearly 100,000, coming in at an impressive 426, 538.

Keep up the good work, Jennifer!

Buying e-Business feedback: the 411 on ReviewMe.com

Hey small e-Business owners— here’s another online resource you can utilize to help generate website traffic, exposure, and hopefully, sales.


ReviewMe.com offers advertisers a chance to have e-Business product/service reviews posted in a relevant, quality blog. The benefits are two-fold. First, e-Business product/service reviews are a great way to generate honest and constructive feedback for your e-Business (which helps you modify accordingly); secondly, having e-Business product/service reviews in a popular blog can drive traffic to your site and by extension, boost sales.

ReviewMe.com has an impressive Alexa rank (3,480) and a Google PR of 6/10. This site provides advertisers with two distinct approaches towards marketing their e-Business:

Option A: “Create Offers for Our Blogger Marketplace”

• Create a list of categories relevant to your target audience
• Submit this campaign to the Blogger Marketplace
• Bloggers browse through campaigns and contact advertisers
• Starting one-time fee is $10.00 per review

Option B: “Order Reviews Direct from Specific Top Blogs”

• Browse through lists of relevant, quality bloggers
• Contact blogger directly with review request
• Bloggers choose whether or not they want to do the review
• Starting one-time fee is $40 per review

The buying process for Option B is very similar to the process for buying text link ads. ReviewMe.com offers a list of popular tags (blog categories) and a specific search for target keywords. Blogs are indexed according to title (with a brief description), rank, and price. A mini-shopping cart (on screen) displays items, prices and grand totals.

Purchasing terms and conditions were very straight-forward and reasonable:

I understand that this blogger will give my site an objective review, which may include positive and / or negative feedback. I understand that the blogger has 48 hours to accept or reject the offer to review my site. If they accept the offer, they then have 48 hours to post a review. Once the review is accepted and then posted by the reviewer, I will be charged.

As with any e-Marketing strategy, there are setbacks with ReviewMe.com (but mostly they are ways to avoid sponsored-blogging controversy). If reviewed, advertisers must pay the full price, even if the result is a negative review. Also, Bloggers must include in the post that it is a paid review.

Most advertisers seem satisfied with ReviewMe.com, providing their review is positive. But the only way to get a good review is to offer a good product or service. Consider ways to improve your e-Business product/service so that it reaches its potential before you have it reviewed. Then, try out ReviewMe.com to find a blog that fits your niche and can provide beneficial e-Business product/service reviews. Good luck!

Yahoo! Directory costs cast dark cloud over small e-Businesses

For any growing e-Business, link popularity is a surefire way to increase traffic, and the more reputable the site that links to you, the better. Let’s consider Yahoo! as an inbound link. Very impressive. One way to obtain an inbound link from Yahoo! is to submit your site to Yahoo! Directory listings. But with all the fees and lack of guarantees, is it the best bet for everyone?

Here at Hudson Horizons, we were wondering the same thing. We did a little research on the benefits and setbacks of submitting our site to Yahoo! Directory listings. The Yahoo! Directory URL submission site alone seems draped in a futile connotation. Could it be that the silver lining is just hidden beneath the myriad disclaimers?

Despite the initial $299 fee for review, Yahoo! maintains that “Use of the Yahoo! Express program does not ensure that your submission will be accepted for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory.” Bummer. If it is included, “a listing in the Yahoo! Directory does not guarantee your site will be listed in search results for any particular query,” and that listing would cost $299 annually.

Many experts and webmasters assert that even if your site does not rank high in the Yahoo! Directory listings, having that inbound link is well worth the yearly fee. Others e-Businesses (who have tight budgets as is) are less than impressed by the expensive process that lacks any assurance; they turn instead to reputable directories that offer free submission and listing (such as DMOZ and Jayde).

So are Yahoo! Directory listings really worth it? It all depends on your e-Business objectives, target audience, and if you’re willing to shell out $300 bucks a year if you get accepted for inclusion. (Oh yeah, and if you host an “adult” site, that $300 just became $600!)

Interested in reading more about Yahoo! Directory listings? Check out this forum post for different webmaster’s opinions on the topic.

Attention small e-Businesses: Google is so last season

In the name of all small e-Business owners, Jennifer Laycock, editor of Search Engine Guide, is charting an unknown course. Her mission: to successfully market an e-Business without the help of Google or any other major search engine. Her chief experiment: Bento Yum. Jennifer is inviting all interested e-Business owners to track her progress—her marketing successes and downfalls— through an article series she will post online. She writes, “I've dubbed this new series ‘Hide and Speak’ because we'll be keeping the site hidden from search engine spiders and will seek to market it by ‘speaking’ to customers via links, blogs and communities.”

This new approach to e-Marketing most likely has great appeal to small e-Business owners, who have grown irritated by the heavy dependency on search engines for success. With the “Hide and Speak” method, she plans to show us that “those four engines (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and Ask) are not the only sources of search traffic.”

Jennifer’s goal is “to build the type of content and link foundations that will help the site quickly rise to the top” without Google PR or any help from search engines at all. In fact, she will only reveal Bento Yum to major search engines once it has independently achieved ideal popularity.

Jennifer’s plan to “market via community” rather than through search engines truly represents a break from the traditional form of e-Business marketing. But could it work? According to Jennifer, Bento Yum has already showed signs of great success. So watch out, Google, e-Businesses might not need you after all!

(Note: this is a revised copy.)

Today: local e-Market; tomorrow: the world

This year’s Search Engine Strategies China conference, held in the city of Xiamen, generated some interesting theories for the future of the international e-Market. The author of this article, Chris Sherman, not only attended the SES China conference, but formally spoke alongside several of the CEOs and chair people he interviewed. From these discussions, Sherman sensibly deduced that “sometime in 2007 China will become the world leader in numbers of online users, and will likely become one of the most significant online marketplaces…”

What does this mean for small or mid-sized American e-Businesses? Sherman believes that this potential shift of dominance within the international e-Market is quite relevant to local e-Businesses interested in continuously expanding their user population; “[it is] an important consideration for search marketers wanting to reach the widest possible audience,” he writes. To ensure survival, e-Market competitors will have to expand their visions of what customers want and need. But unlike the past, tactics will have to be culturally tailored and amplified in order to successfully reach the “four corners” of the world and its international e-Market.