Category: News (page 9 of 1505)

Thu Feb 2, 2012 1:20pm EST

(Reuters) – The New York Times Co, which is grappling with sinking advertising revenue and a recent change in the top management, said it continued to add subscribers for its digital products in the fourth quarter.

The company started 2012 without a CEO or a digital boss as long-term Chief Executive Janet Robinson stepped down last December, and longtime digital leader Martin Nisenholtz retired.

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has taken up the top job in the interim as the company continues its search for a replacement for Robinson.

“As for the CEO search, it is in its early stages, as our board seeks to find the appropriate executive with digital and brand-building experience to help guide this company and its long-term growth strategy,” Sulzberger said in a post-earnings analyst call.

The problems plaguing newspaper companies are well known. Readers have ditched print for digital, causing circulation and advertising revenue to plummet.

The company, which rolled out an online pay system last year for digital subscribers, said paid digital subscribers of The Times and the International Herald Tribune rose 20 percent from the third quarter to about 390,000.

The digital subscription strategy helped circulation revenue to grow 5 percent to $241.6 million in the fourth quarter.

“We are confident that our plan to sustain momentum through the rollout of a series of new features, functions and content will enable us to steadily build our digital progress to date,” Chief Financial Officer James Follo said on the call.

The Boston Globe, another of the company’s newspapers that rolled out online paid content offering last October, has 16,000 subscribers.

AD REVENUE FALLS

Digital advertising revenue fell 5 percent to $95.7 million as higher revenue at the News Media Group were more than offset by declines at the About Group.

About Group revenue fell more than a quarter to $26.1 million as both cost-per-click and display advertising declined.

CFO Follo is now overseeing About.com, which provides short articles, videos and other content that tend to appear high in search queries and sells advertising against those results.

The company expects total advertising revenue trends in the first quarter to be similar to the fourth-quarter levels, and total circulation revenue to increase in the high-single digits.

Total advertising revenue fell 7 percent to $358.5 million.

Fourth-quarter net income fell to $58.9 million, or 39 cents a share, from $67.1 million, or 44 cents a share, a year ago.

Excluding items, it earned 45 cents a share on a continuing basis.

Revenue fell 3 percent to $642.9 million.

Shares of the company, which have gained more than 30 percent in value in the last three months, were flat at $7.64 on Thursday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Unnikrishnan Nair)

Google wants to know what a phone call from a new customer is worth to your business. The internet giant has added a feature to its AdWords program that allows companies to bid on phone calls generated by their ads on Google’s search results. Bid-per-call is a significant addition to Google’s ubiquitous online advertising product, even playing into the algorithms that determine the company’s all-important ad rankings.

Related: Why Google’s Privacy Changes Are Good for Advertisers

How it works: Users set a bid for how much they are willing to pay each time one of their Google text ads inspires a customer to pick up the phone and call the business. Google tracks the call by assigning a forwarding number that patches through to the business’s primary phone. Users set an advertising budget as well as the price they are willing to pay per phone call, and Google charges accordingly. The minimum bid is $1 per call. If no one calls, you pay nothing. If you go over budget, your ads stop running. The service is available only for users in the U.S. and U.K.

Related: Five Tools for a Smarter Business

What rings true: It’s relatively easy to start bidding on calls; apply for a Google forwarding number on the AdWords control panel you already use to manage your various campaigns. There are also some nice built-in analytics: Google tracks details for each call made to your business, including the time placed, length of call, caller area code and the ad that generated the call.

What isn’t so clear: Managing a Google AdWords campaign is rarely easy, and bid-per-call is just another puzzling piece of the online advertising world. Businesses will need to figure out what they can earn from a Google-generated call, how much they’re willing to pay for those calls and, most important, their markup on the deal.

Related: Seven Tips for Improving Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Bottom line: No question, businesses that sell over the phone will appreciate the lead generation–but they’ll face some seriously gnarly number crunching. 

This article was originally published in the February 2012 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Dialed In.

Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) received a number of price target changes and ratings updates during the last week:

Marchex had its price target lowered by analysts at RBC Capital from $10.00 to $6.00. They now have a “sector perform” rating on the stock.

Marchex was downgraded by analysts at B. Riley from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating. They now have a $5.00 price target on the stock.

Marchex had its price target lowered by analysts at Benchmark Co. to $4.00.

Marchex was upgraded by analysts at BMO Capital Markets from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating.

About Marchex, Inc.:

Marchex, Inc. is a performance marketing company. The Company delivers call and click-based advertising products to advertisers. The Company offers products, services and technologies that enable advertisers to reach local consumers across online, mobile and offline sources. Its products and services primarily include pay-per-click advertising and related services, call-based advertising and related services and its publishing network. In addition, the Company provides a line of performance marketing products, including a private-label line of products for small and medium-sized businesses, a network of reseller partners, including Yellow Pages publishers, media and telecommunications companies and vertical marketing service providers. It generates revenue from two primary sources: Local Advertising Services and Publishing Network. During the year ended December 31, 2009, revenue from its Local Advertising Services accounted for approximately 66% of total revenues.

Marchex, Inc. traded up 0.67% on Wednesday, hitting $4.53. Marchex, Inc. has a 1-year low of $4.17 and a 1-year high of $10.87. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $5.56 and a 200-day moving average of $7.80. The company has a market cap of $151.9 million and a price-to-earnings ratio of 64.29.

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Back At You reviews the state of the ad market for small business. Analyzing the effectiveness of Social ads vs banner ads.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) January 31, 2012

Back At You, a social media marketing company focused on creating and executing online marketing strategies for small businesses, reviews the state of online advertising as it pertains to small business and, in particular, the Real Estate industry.

The Real Estate industry is playing catch up when it comes to technology and online marketing. Like most small businesses, Real Estate professionals are focused on marketing methods of the past. These methods are usually highly competitive, expensive and not very effective, especially when compared to when they were first introduced. For example, ads in the local newspaper, at the bus stop or in the grocery cart, these were all very effective when first started. However, like all marketing channels, change is required to maintain an ad’s effectiveness. Unfortunately, these same channels today are exactly the same as they were 30 years ago.

Fast forward to the Internet. Banner ads are the rage of advertising. Real Estate professionals who were the early movers experienced great success with this new way to advertise. As ad networks became smarter with better targeting, banner ads started to replace traditional advertising. Many of the Real Estate professionals who were the early adopters became the industry’s top sellers of property.

Now 15 years or so later, banner ads are being ignored. Consumers have been flooded with ads over the years and have built up immunity. Today, for an ad to be effective, it not only has to have a good call to action and look sleek, but also it takes multiple viewings of an ad before anyone will click. Meaning, you have to spend a lot of money on design and buying ads in bulk. Even then, it’s a tough sell for most.

Today, Social ads are what banner ads were 15 years ago and newspaper ads 30 years ago. Social ads are refreshing, engaging and encourage a call to action by the consumer to engage with your business. According to Wikipedia, Social advertising is the first form of advertising that leverages “offline” dynamics, or social influence. Facebook is a great example of where businesses can leverage a social platform and target people according to their stated interests and actions. Imagine targeting people to “Like” your Page that are interested in real estate, or are following similar businesses as your own, or have stated they are interested in buying a home or investing in real estate. All of this is possible through Social ads. Facebook is the dominant social network allowing for this rich base of data to be mined through targeted Social ads. Real Estate professionals have a significant opportunity to build a targeted base of customers using Social ads and over time, will likely never need to pay for advertising again.

Research conducted by Ignite Social Media looking at the effectiveness of Social ads vs traditional banner ads was quite conclusive. It demonstrated that social ads attracted 5.7x more visitors than display ads, cost per visitor was less expensive, bounce rates were half and customer conversations occurred 4.0x more. Consumers are becoming more savvy and have a shorter attention span than ever. Thus, engagement becomes important when marketing online.

Researched conducted by Pilot, who surveyed over 200 marketing professionals, asked how satisfied they were with their Social advertising. Only 1% said they were not satisfied. Meaning 99% said they were somewhat to very satisfied. These are professional marketers, so Real Estate agents and other small businesses, take note, Social advertising is going to be the greatest marketing channel to build a pipeline of customers for the long term.

Google’s average revenue per click from AdWords’ advertisers dropped for the first time in two years for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2011, according to Reuters. Analysts projected a 3 percent increase in cost-per-click revenue, but Google reported an 8 percent decrease.

As a result, many advertisers are wondering (a) if this is merely a blip or the beginning of a new trend, and (b) if they can lower their pay-per-click advertising costs.

Lower CPC Rates: A Blip or a Trend?

According to Reuters, “Google executives blamed the decline in search ad rates on forex [foreign exchange] fluctuations and ad format changes, but analysts wondered whether mobile advertising — which has lower rates — played a more important role than the company admitted.”

Another interesting theory comes from MarketWatch contributor Nigam Arora, who wrote that “ecosystems built by Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are the reasons behind the big decline in cost-per-click.”

I suspect the answer involves both of those causes. Innovations in mobile marketing, social advertising, and ecommerce marketplace strategies are resulting in more choices for shoppers and online retailers alike.

I envision a dynamic where more shoppers click on mobile ads — which garner lower cost-per-click prices — and online advertisers pay less for AdWords’ clicks as they experiment with alternate sources of revenue, such as new online marketplaces.

I believe last quarter’s drop in cost-per-click rates was indeed a blip. But as shoppers use mobile phones, rely on social media to decide what to buy, and buy through online marketplaces, we’ll see more unpredictable blips like this. Online shopping behavior is changing, and so too will online advertising, as retailers adapt.

How to Reduce CPC Rates

So, how can advertisers take advantage of blips that result from shoppers evaluating new ways to shop online?

The answer is to stay engaged in the management of your pay-per-click campaigns, or to ensure that your pay-per-click managers continue to experiment with new strategies. Google has released many new experiments and enhancements to AdWords — such as “Product listing ads” and “Click-to-Call” — and by experimenting with these new features, advertisers may find sources for cheaper, more profitable clicks.

Fortunately for diligent merchants, most online retailers treat their pay-per-click campaigns as afterthoughts. This produces time-limited opportunities for well-managed campaigns to lower their per-click costs. Here are three examples.

• Mobile segmentation. My firm audits hundreds of PPC campaigns each year. Many retailers still bid for mobile and desktop clicks from within the same campaign. This is usually not ideal.

  First, if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you may be wasting money on the clicks you receive from mobile devices. If that’s the case, turn mobile ads off. Second, if your site is mobile friendly, take advantage of that by establishing a budget and bidding strategy that is optimized specifically for mobile. You can also craft your ad copy to indicate to shoppers that your site will be compatible with their mobile device. Often, you’ll be able to secure a lower cost per click for your mobile ads than your traditional ads.

  In the first case, you’ll be making your campaigns more profitable. In the second, you’ll be targeting mobile buyers more aggressively than many of your competitors as you take advantage of a new source of cheaper clicks.

• Product listing ads. Product listing ads enable you to promote specific products from your site on top of the Google search results page. You pay either a cost per click or a cost per acquisition. A shopper searching for “computer mouses,” for example, might see specific products from your site on the top of the page, as shown in the example below.

  Shoppers like these ad formats, and they click on them at a high rate. That, combined with the likelihood that shoppers will find the landing page on your site highly relevant, can lead to a high quality score. Since ads with high quality scores are eligible for lower per-click costs, you have an opportunity to get more quality clicks at a lower cost per click.

  As more online retailers take advantage of product listing ads, the ability to buy these clicks at a lower cost than standard ads may decrease. For now, however, it’s worth taking advantage of.

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• Click-to-call. If you’re equipped to accept calls from shoppers and convert them into sales, click-to-call could work very well. At first, you pay a capped rate of $1 per click each time a shopper searches Google and clicks to call you from your ad rather than visit your web page. But experimenting with click-to-call makes sense, especially for online retailers that sell high-ticket items. And if the call lasts fewer than 60 seconds, you pay nothing.

Conclusion

Mobile, social, and new online marketplaces will impact how people shop online. Google’s AdWords team continually evolves its products to keep up with these changes. For advertisers, staying abreast of these new products can be daunting. The benefit to experimenting with them, however, is to find time-limited opportunities to get valuable clicks and sales at a much lower per-click cost than your standard campaigns.

Scott Smigler’s profile.

Read More

• For Google AdWords, It Pays to be on Top
• Mobile Pay-per-click Advertising: 5 Ways to Improve Performance
• 5 Tips for Increasing Pay-Per-Click Conversion Rates