Brand Marketing

Google & Yahoo Appeal for More Online Drug Advertising

Executives from Google, Yahoo, and dozens of pharmaceutical companies are in Washington DC today appealing to the Food and Drug Administration to expand online drug advertising. Although drug companies spend huge sums of money on marketing and advertising in media outlets such as television and print, they hardly spend money online.

According to a Yahoo Finance article where this news was reported, pharmaceutical companies “spent more than $4.3 billion on patient-targeted advertisements last year, though online marketing represented about 3 percent of that amount.”

If their budgets for online marketing grew to the same percentage as most other advertisers, this would be a boon to web publishers who would be able to display drug-related advertisements with their Adsense accounts, and parked domain names could have more competitive PPC bids.

Don’t get your hopes up yet though. According to experts, the FDA isn’t expected to make policy changes until 2011.

Elephant Traffic Unveils Interface for Advertisers to Capture Direct Nav Traffic

One of the few new companies I learned about at Traffic New York was Elephant Traffic, and I just saw the press release below announcing the launch of their platform. The company has a large presence at Ad:Tech New York this week, and I think it’s good to see domain portfolio holding company reaching out at a mainstream event. The company is officially launching this week, and they’re holding a launch party tonight in the City.

Here’s the press release:

Elephant Traffic announced today the official U.S. launch of its new web-based interface to drive targeted search traffic to users’ domains. The service is designed to help advertisers optimize online spend by offering a steady traffic stream that is 50% more likely to convert and 40% cheaper than that of pay-per-click ads. Elephant Traffic provides real-time reporting and unprecedented transparency.

Elephant Traffic and its partners have a vast portfolio of domains with high traffic that results from direct navigation searches, which entails searching by URL such as laptops.com or mexicovacations.com as opposed to using search terms in a search engine. That traffic, which can be grouped by vertical and geography, can be directed to the buyer’s site of preference using the Elephant Traffic’s web-based interface found at http://Elephant-Traffic.com. Advertisers select streams of traffic from available domains and redirects can be set-up with a few clicks of the mouse with real-time monitoring. Elephant Traffic is the only provider of transparent direct navigation traffic, which allows you to choose the exact domains from which you would like to receive traffic.

Wei-Hai Chu, Elephant Traffic’s CEO, explains, “Not many people are aware direct navigation search amounts to 14% of all online searches and that only 11.5% of this traffic is being captured by traditional online advertising. Elephant Traffic gives advertisers the ability to capture this highly targeted yet untapped traffic quickly and easily using a streamlined interface.”

Discussing the direct benefits for advertisers, Commercial Director Daniel Goris says, “We’re able to give advertisers direct access to consumers who are twice as likely to complete an online purchase. Direct navigation search traffic has been neglected till now but our research has shown that it delivers up to 50% higher conversions rates than standard PPC advertising. What we’ve put together offers advertisers a great tool to diversify their online budgets and boost conversion rates.”

Elephant Traffic is pleased to launch in the U.S. at ad:tech New York and will host an official launch party on Nov. 4th at 1OAK on W. 17th St. between 9th and 10th Avenue from 7-11pm. The event is by invitation only but to register for more information, please visit http://Elephant-Traffic.com/adtech.

Elephant Traffic specializes in providing advertisers with high-quality targeted redirects originating from direct navigation search traffic. Elephant Traffic is part of Elephant Orchestra, a Prague-based company dedicated to innovation within the world of domains and traffic monetization. For more information please contact Jeremy Lopez at +420 725 060 188 or email jlopez@elephant-traffic.com or visit http://www.elephant-traffic.com.

Special Blog Advertising Opportunity to Help The Water School

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During the Traffic conference, I learned quite a bit about The Water School, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “provide simple, safe, strategic, and sustainable clean water solutions to the developing world.” A number of prominent domain investors have been actively supporting the project, and a special domain investor climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro is planned for March, with the proceeds being donated to The Water School.

I think this organization’s goals are very worthy, and I want to help in my own small way. Above each post, and at the top of the index page on my blog, I have space for a 468×60 banner. A DN Forum banner currently occupies the top of the main index page, and the four color on hover banners are on the top of individual post pages.

From November 15 through the end of the year, I am offering this top spot to one company, and the proceeds will be donated by me to The Water School. If your company is interested in this advertising opportunity that will benefit The Water School, drop me an email and I will discuss rates/traffic with you. This is available to one company from November 15 – December 31, 2009 and it’s on a first come, first served basis.

Domain Suprise During English Premier League Game

Growing up, I loved playing soccer, and I played on organized teams through high school. I never really enjoyed watching soccer on television, because I didn’t follow any teams or players. Lately, I’ve been watching English Premier League football games when I catch them on tv here in the US. This morning, I tuned in to the Arsenal vs. Tottenham game on ESPN2 and was surprised about the domain names I saw advertised.

When I was in the UK (and other European cities), I saw many more ccTLD domain names advertised than anything else. In the UK especially, I saw mostly .co.uk domain names used by advertisers. This morning, I didn’t see a single .co.uk domain name used in the stadium signage or uniforms, and I was very surprised. I know the Premier League is global, but I would have thought there would be more local advertising at the stadium.

Some of the domain names I saw advertised were Arsenal.com, Emirates.com, BarclaysTicketOffice.com (forwards to Barclays.co.uk), NikeFootball.com, PaddyPower.com, and Mansion.com.

I am sure that advertising at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is very costly, and probably too much for most local companies. However, it was still surprising to see the urls that were used. I would have been less surprised if this was a World Cup game, because those will be truly global, but since it was a EPL game, I was surprised.

Unique Ad Buy – Bloomberg on Twitter

Bloomberg on TwitterI was going through my spam email message folder this morning, when I found an email from a colleague asking for an opinion on Twitter user names. I don’t know why it got marked as spam, but it was in there. As you may or may not be aware, Google monetizes all Gmail emails with sponsored links, and I found one that was very interesting when reading this Twitter-related email.

As you can see in the image above, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is encouraging people to follow his account on Twitter. Not only was Gmail detecting my location via IP address (New York City), but it could also tell that the email was related to Twitter, and it placed a targeted advertisement on top of the spam email.

Over the past several months, my wife an I have received a significant amount of mail from Bloomberg, who is looking to become elected for his third term. He has also taken to the airwaves, bought space in print media, and now is advertising on Adwords to encourage people to follow him on Twitter.

Although I find political advertising to be quite annoying, I think it’s cool to see this integrated marketing campaign.

Does Microsoft Need to Watch Out for AOL?

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I missed the article in TechCrunch on Tuesday until just now, but AOL’s Sphere, the self-dubbed “next phase in the evolution of AOL News,” is undergoing a rebranding effort. The new name of the brand will be Surphace, and the company will use Surphace.com as its domain name.

Of course, when people tell their buddies to check out “Surphace.com,” many of their friends will inevitably head to Surface.com instead, which happens to be a domain name owned by Microsoft, which redirects to the Microsoft website.

With AOL currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Advertise.com for trademark infringement, one can amusingly ask if AOL will believe that they deserve the Surface.com domain name to go along with their renamed brand. It surely would be a head scratcher, but I wouldn’t exactly be shocked. I wonder what Microsoft thinks of this.

On another note, I still don’t understand why some companies – especially large companies – still create brand names that are difficult to spell. This can only lead to brand confusion, lost traffic, and potentially even litigation. One would think they could find another brand name and buy the .com if they think it’s worthwhile.

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