Google's new product: DoubleClick Ad Exchange

In a recent blog post, Google unveiled its latest product called DoubleClick Ad Exchange to compete in the market of display advertisement on the Internet. Google bought DoubleClick in March 2008 for more than $3 billion.

You may have noticed that nowadays, online ads are evolving from static to dynamic. You see video ads more often than before. These types of ads help advertisers sell their products and services.

Google has not been very successful in display ads market compared to Yahoo which leads the market by 12.5 percent market share. Google only owns 2 percent share.

According to Google, with this new system, they aim to improve display advertising in three ways:

1. Simplify - Google hopes to simplify the system of display advertising so that publishers can buy ads from publishers easily. Google recognizes that due to so many options, sometimes it can be really hard to buy ads from publishers.
2. Detailed Reports - What good is marketing if you cannot monitor it properly? Through DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Google will make monitoring campaigns easier.
3. "Open up the ecosystem" - Google wants to make display advertising accessible to everyone. A lot of businesses have still not tried their hands on display advertising.
   

With its new service, Google is ready to challenge Yahoo in the display advertisement market.

Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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Top 4 social networking sites to get traffic from!

Setting up a website is not a very difficult process but getting traffic to that site requires time and knowledge. How do you convince people to keep visiting your site? How do you even tell them that your site even exists? There are several ways to accomplish that. Some are more time consuming while others show quick progress. Some are difficult and require advanced knowledge of marketing while others can be understood by kids. To narrow the list down, I am going to focus on social networking sites today and talk about how you can drive traffic to your websites from these types of sites.

Social Networking Sites

First of all, what are social networking sites? Here is a definition that I am sure you will find helpful:

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

- Wikipedia

Enough talking! Let's start with the list. Here are top 4 social networking sites that you should definitely use to drive traffic to your website.

1. Facebook - It is one of the most famous social networking sites and has millions of users. You probably use it already to communicate with your friends. Why not use it for marketing? I am not asking you to go to your friends' walls and start posting links. But you can use the "share" feature to post any link that you like on your own profile page. Once it is public, you friends will get to see the link and will visit it if they like it. Share links from your site and see the traffic increase!
2. Twitter - This site is like a mini version of facebook. Through twitter you can let your followers know what you are doing. The best thing is that you can use links in your status updates! Create a profile for your website on Twitter and then put a link on your site so that people can follow you on twitter. Then, whenever you write a new article, just let your followers know through Twitter.
3. Forums - There are several forums that you can use to get traffic and that's why I didn't specify any particular forum. Choose a forum related to the niche of your site and use it for traffic. How? First, be active at the forum and get to know other members. Place a link to your website in your signature. If someone wants to learn about something and you just wrote an article on that topic few days ago, let the person know about your article!
4. Social Bookmarking Sites - Again, there are so many social bookmarking sites that it is hard to just pick one. Also, some bookmarking sites work better for one site than another. For example, StumbleUpon works more for me than Reddit. Just like with forums, you should try to get to know the community at these bookmarking sites. Only then you will be able to get noticable traffic.
   

I hope you liked my list and got some ideas about how to promote your site for free! Leave a comment if you have any questions or just want to leave some feedback.

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Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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Using Twitter To Drive Traffic To Your Blogs

I had been hearing a lot about Twitter for the past few months but I was simply not interested in it. What good is a service that lets you post updates about your status? My Facebook account lets me do that, so why should I join Twitter? Well it turns out that Twitter is more than just about updating status. You can easily use it to drive traffic to your websites and blogs. You will probably not get too much traffic but it is definitely worth a try.

So How Does It Work?
Twitter does not have a lot of features. In fact, it has very minimum features. At Twitter, users are only allowed to update their status and send each other messages. That's it! Now you can choose to follow other members and get notified about their status changes. But before you start getting their updates, you need to start following them. Following a user basically means that you want to know about that users updates. It's like adding that user as your buddy on a networking site. Similarly, your followers will receive notifications about your updates.



How Do You Start?

1. Get an account at Twitter - Signing up for an account is a very easy process and will not take more than few minutes.
2. Start following - You need to start following as many people as possible on Twitter. It would be probably better to follow the people that have websites on the same topic as yours. However, there is no limit to how many people you can follow so just go ahead and start adding people. One good way to do this would be to find the profile of a famous blogger like Darren from ProBlogger and then just start following all of his followers.
3. People will follow you - Now that you have started following people, they will start following you as well. However, not all the people you are following will do that. I am following 850 people and only 129 of them are following me. Nonetheless, it's worth it and as time passes, you will eventually start getting more followers.
4. Update your status - Once you have a good number of followers, it is time for you to start posting your updates. Let other people know about your blog, latest blog posts and projects. The best thing about Twitter is that you can post URLs. Thus, when your followers see your updates, they will click on the URL.

Every time you write a new post or start working on a new project, just post an update on Twitter with the URL and you will get some nice traffic. Remember, Twitter will not be able to drive a lot of traffic to your blog or website but it will drive some traffic which can be very helpful at times.

I have an account at Twitter as well. If you would like to follow me and stay up to date with my blogs then check out my profile.

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Japan's Unique Tissue-pack Marketing Method

For a business to be successful, it needs to employ some great marketing strategies and methods to attract potential customers. However, one needs to be careful when selecting which marketing method to use since some methods work better for certain niches than others. Marketing process is not easy and requires creativity and imagination. Most companies need a market research consultant to help them out.

Recently I found out about an interesting type of marketing method called Tissue-pack marketing. It is a common and very successful type of guerrilla marketing method used in Japan. Basically, Japanese companies hire some people to stand outside crowded places such as subway stations and hand out tissue-paper packets for free with a small advertisement inside. It is said that approximately 4 billion tissue packets are give for free annually and around ¥75 billion are generated by companies through sales.


Benefits
Tissue-pack marketing has a bunch of benefits compared to other forms of marketing such as handing out flyers. While flyers are commonly discarded and ignored by people, tissue-packs are easily accepted because they can be used for personal use.

Some benefits of this marketing method are:

1. Ads go directly to consumer - Instead of having a poster on a wall, you are directly giving the advertisement to the consumers.
   


2. Prompts consumers to look at the ad - Since most people are going to use the tissues, they will also end up reading the advertisement.
   


3. The ad has a long time effect - People will not use all the tissues in few minutes and thus will keep the packet for a long time. Thus, they will be looking at the ad everytime they use those tissues.
   

Influence
Now tissue-pack marketing method is not only used in Japan but also in other countries such as America. A company introduced this method in US in 2005. Another company started using this method in Paris this year (2008).

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Some Useful Links:
Google in your language - Google Blog
Search quality, continued - Google Blog
More Transparency in Customized Search Results - Google Blog
A picture isn't always worth a thousand words - Inside Adsense

Explode your traffic with EntreCard

After searching for a good exchange links website, I found EntreCard.
EntreCard is the best and will drive traffic. By registering only, other people from EntreCard will visit your site.
From this only I get about 12 visitors daily. But no this is not the aim of this program.
The aim that you publish a card and if visitors click it, you get credit that will help you publish your own.
Disadvantges of EntreCard: People click their card and then you can get not real visitors.
Although still a good program. You may try it here www.entrecard.com