Earlier this year we were pleased to inform you that Clicky Media had qualified to become a Google AdWords Certified Partner (previously AdWords Qualified Company Status).

Since then we are proud to announce that we are now fully qualified in all areas Google AdWords offers. This includes:

• AdWords Fundamentals,
• AdWords Advanced Display Advertising,
• AdWords Advanced Search Advertising,
• AdWords Advanced Analysis and Reporting.

For all of these we have been fully tried and tested, and have passed with flying colours!

To find out more about our Google AdWords Certified Partner status, click here >>

According to Google, this new feature will “increase the choice and relevancy in search ads.” Essentially Ad Sitelinks allow advertisers to incorporate additional and deep links within paid results, much like you find in organic listings.

In the post written by Dan Friedman of the Inside AdWords crew on the official Google Adwords blog, he also commented, “Early participants in Ad Sitelinks, like Priceline.com, found that presenting multiple link options made it easier to direct users to relevant information on their sites, driving them deeper into the conversion funnel.”

Sources: Search Engine Land & Google Adwords Blog

Speculation continues to spread within Search Marketing circles as to whether or not Yahoo and Microsoft are planning to work together in some capacity. Even following the collapse of Microsoft’s efforts to acquire Yahoo for a massive $44 billion over a year ago rumours have reignited about the two companies working together following the recent launch of microsoft’s latest Search/Decision Engine Bing. This has been further fuelled by comments made from executives from both companies.

It is now thought the pair are looking to combine to create a more effective rival to search engine giants Google. Bing is said to be set to become the search provider on Yahoo.com allowing the two companies to compete for further market share and inventory.

A recent report from AdAge suggests that a deal is likely to be announced this week and could potentially give Microsoft up to a 30% share of the international search market. According to the report the deal would be structured as below:

“Yahoo would be allowed to sell search ads on Bing.com as well as its own site, giving it more search inventory to sell and making it a bigger player in the search sales front. It would also immediately be able to save millions by not having to maintain its own search infrastructure. The latest terms of the deal underscore Microsoft’s devotion to developing and owning technology vs. selling media.”

Basically, the idea behind this would be to cut Yahoo’s costs whilst opening a much larger revenue stream. In addition, the deal would allow Microsoft the opportunity to become a bigger player in the search market.

However, this deal is far from secured and until both parties can happily agree on way to effectively work together in may take time for this arrangement to be hugely positive for the businesses. Remember, both Yahoo and Microsoft have desperately struggled to organically improve market share by any meaningful percentages over the past few years and a deal between the two is unlikely to change this insantly.

Microsoft still have to ensure that Bing is a much much better product than Google for any significant changes yet.

Source: Mashable

Recent reports show that online advertising spend is holding up much better than previously predicted.

A new report from ZenithOptimedia suggests that global internet advertising will grow by 10% in 2009 and also forecasts online adspend to achieve a 15.1% share of world wide advert expenditure by 2011.

The predictions from the Publicis Groupe-owned media agency are up 1.5% from previous estimations in April of a 8.6% growth in 2009. Furthermore, by 2011 online advertising is projected to make up 15.1% of overall advertising spend, an additional increase in forecasts from 2008 when it online ad spend was predicted to make up 10.5% of overall.

The growth is predicted across in various online portals but particularly in search marketing, where a 20% increase in forecasted. In addition, display advertising is predicted to grow 3% and an online classified growth of 1.8%.

The recent launch of Microsoft’s search engine Bing and the ever increasing usage of Google are suggested to spur further expenditure in search marketing spend.

ZenithOptimedia also forecasts that offline media such as newspapers will continue to decrease. The newspaper ad market is suggested to continue to shrink, it said, every year over its forecast period, falling to 22.7% below its 2007 peak in 2011.

Source: Brand Republic

The combination of display advertising and search marketing is a highly discussed topic, particularly how they affect one another. Many online marketers are highly skeptical about how display fits into the overall online marketing mix and how effective it truly is.

This may soon change following a report from OPA which outlined the value of Display Advertising to overall online marketing strategies. The study called “The Silent Click: Building Brands Online”, compares the behaviors of consumers exposed to online display advertising vs. those in a control group.

The study analysed consumer behaviors of those Internet users who were exposed to online display advertising and from there began measuring three key consumer actions: 1) searches conducted related to the advertisers’ brands; 2) site visitation, the traffic driven to the advertisers’ site and 3) consumer spending, the e-commerce transactions related to the advertisers’ brands.” The main results from this are as follows:

• Twenty percent conduct related searches and one in three visit the brands’ sites after viewing a display ad

• These users spent over 50% more time than the average visitor to these sites and consumed many more pages

• 10% more money was spent by these users online overall, with spending significantly higher on product categories related to the advertised brands

The vast majority of those exposed to display advertising in the study may not have clicked on the display ads but later performed activities, such as searches for the advertisers brand or trademark and site visits, that indicated they had in fact been influenced to some degree by the display ads:

The users ecposed to the display ads were found to also be considerably more engaged than people in the control group:

At Clicky Media were provide display advertising services targeting your precise target demographic. Our profile senstive advertising platforms allows clients to feature on websites most relevant to their target market. For more information email info@clickymedia or call 0845 257 1225.

Study: OPA PDF

Source: Search Engine Land

Click Telecom the UK’s fasted growing seller of Telecom services has chosen to work with Clicky Media to start promoting their new website.

Click Telecom provide 0800, 0845, 0844, 0871, 0300 along with a range of supporting services are now looking to expose their website to masses through our Search Engine Optimisation & Pay-per-click management services.

The PPC campaign and search engine optimisation strategy is currently being developed in our head office in Chester and we are looking to launch early next week.

We are all looking forward to getting started.

• Find out more about Click Telecom
• Find out more about our PPC and SEO services