Brand Lift with Google TV ads and PPC

1:50 AM    
Free webcast: Measuring Brand Lift With Google TV Ads and PPC:
Lenovo Case Study in Online-Offline Attribution

Thursday March 24

1 PM EDT (10AM PDT)


Participants:
  • Craig Macdonald, CMO, Covario (moderator)
  • Gary Milner, Global Marketing Director, Lenovo
Learn:
  • What metrics were used?
  • How was the attribution ascertained?
  • How is that information used to drive improved, integrated overall media performance?
Register for Free Webinar


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Dallas, Houston and Austin are populated by Millennial Generation

11:59 PM    
Ad Age has a cool new tool called Market Finder. They decided to look for millennials (18-34 years old), with emphasis on the older end of the spectrum, the 25- to 34-year-olds.

Where the Millennials Are | Ad Age Stat - Advertising Age
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston have the most millennials, which makes sense as they are the five of the six largest metro areas in the U.S.
Metropolitan Area: Dallas
Number of Millennials: 1,620,281
Millennials Index: 107
Late Millennials Index: 118

Metropolitan Area: Houston
Number of Millennials: 1,440,634
Millennials Index: 105
Late Millennials Index: 115

Metropolitan Area: Austin
Number of Millennials: 499,713
Millennials Index: 125
Late Millennials Index: 140

**Austin led the pack for late Millennials.

Millennials in the U.S. comprise about 23 percent of the population. Roughly 14 percent of Late Millennials have finished college and are starting to spend their own money. However, the Association of Realtors study found 13.4 percent of all Millennials still live with their parents!!(AUGHHHHH- cry of a mother of a 20-year-old and 23-year-old, both living at home).
The highest index metros for millennials are all college towns or near military bases that don't have otherwise large, diverse population centers like "college towns" such as Boston.
College towns that index high for all millennials were found to index low for the late millennials. Once they graduate and find a job, they are gone. The others live with their parents (God help me)!

This Market Find tool is great. Next, Ad Age will profile big-spending married couples with children. (I hope they can find some.) For information on all findings and to hear a lot less whining, please see the article here.

Have a wonderful Sunday and do not forget to set the clock ahead one hour. (I will miss that hour for a week!)


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Another Google Algorithm Update

1:42 PM    
We knew that Google had made a minor change to their algorithm at the end of January. We were told it was to penalize content farms and websites that recycle content. Somehow, Google neglected to tell us about the Panda Update, a major update to their main ranking algorithm.

So how does this new algorithm distinguish good sites from bad? Comparing sites known for original content with sites that contain duplicate, low-quality or irrelevant content. Google also had help from external testers who reviewed a number of sites.

Some site owners have complained of a sudden drop in their positioning and loss of traffic up to 40 percent within 24 hours of the new algorithm implementation.

This update will reduce the ranking of sites that do not contain useful content, so here is a checklist of what your site must include:
  • Original content
  • Authoritative information
  • Added value
  • Significant user engagement with links and social sharing
  • Valuable content across the entire site
If you think your site meets the guidelines above and has been penalized unfairly, Google has started a thread in their webmaster discussion forum where you can provide them with more details on your specific situation. However . . .
Note that as this is an algorithmic change we are unable to make manual exceptions, but in cases of high quality content we can pass the examples along to the engineers who will look at them as they work on future iterations and improvements to the algorithm.
Sources:

Google Farmer Update: Quest for Quality - SEO-Blog
Google Panda Update Causes 40% Traffic Loss for Websites. Have You Been Impacted? | ineedhits



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Google Hopes to Make Results More Relevant

7:03 PM    
Google changed the algorithm again. The algorithm change was rolled out in the U.S. only and Google is asking for feedback. This will reduce rankings for low-quality sites. I have already noticed the SERPs for shopping terms are much more relevant. Some of the major stores had an ad that would display their store no matter what search term used. I will never forget "shop Amazon for Travel Trailers!"

What is really nice about this change to the Google algorithm is that the page rank of most blogs were not affected. It was predicted that content farms, like Demand Media, would take a hit. However, while Larry Fitzgibbon from Demand Media acknowledged the algorithm change, he indicated the company was not impacted. However, I have noticed that eHow has been movedown the page for "how to ..." queries. This is good. The eHow answers are not alway ds correct and the content is often scraped from other sites (like mine).

From the Google blog:
Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries . . .

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