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Grassroots Convergence - The Changing Web
11/24/2006 6:52:31 AM
Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

    Grassroots Convergence - The Changing Web
    By Jim Hedger (c) 2006

    The first two weeks of November saw me traveling from the west
    coast to New York, and back to the coast before heading down to
    Las Vegas. I had the privilege of attending two of the most
    important annual search and Internet marketing conferences,
    ad:Tech NYC and Pubcon Las Vegas. As a writer in this space, my
    goal was to try to speak with as many people as possible in
    order to figure out where the industry is going in the coming
    years. Road-weary and exhausted as I am, I feel enlightened and
    exhilarated. The state of search marketing is stronger than
    ever. It is however, going to change radically in the coming
    year.

    The first thing webmasters need to understand is how Web2.0 has
    raised the intensity of information sharing. The concept of
    using mass or micro-interest communities to basically inform
    themselves, has transformed the businesses of the smartest
    search marketers. An important facet of effective website
    optimization is the inclusion of RSS feeds and social networking
    tags to relevant documents housed in relation to the site.
    Similarly, new website marketing campaigns often include MySpace
    profiles, Flickr photosharing and blogcasts of some sort or
    another.

    The days of the brochure website as an effective marketing tool
    are long over. While it is ok to carve a quaint niche in your own
    quiet location on the web, chances are that location will remain
    quiet unless you use social media tools to attract visitors
    along with the standard search listings and paid advertisements.

    The second thing webmasters should concentrate on is the
    production of marketing materials that bring radio and video
    formats to the web. Online marketing is no longer confined to
    what has traditionally been considered the online space. Web
    enabled cell phones, iPods and handheld devices like
    Blackberries are as important today as desktop or laptop
    computers were in previous years.

    Text and graphic based advertising preceded audio advertising as
    the radio preceded TV's promotion of video advertising. It's
    sort of like the circle of life in an electronic world repeating
    itself again. Video trumps text again. It's only natural after
    all.

    The very first press conference at ad:Tech was held early Monday
    morning and I was one of four reporters to attend. That's too
    bad because many missed a good story that is based in common
    sense.

    If video advertising works, as we all know it does, interactive
    video advertising likely works better. That's the bet many
    marketing professionals are making going into 2007 as the
    annual ad-spend on online video is projected to grow by 89% next
    year.

    According to eMarketer CEO, Geoff Ramsey, the new online media
    is rapidly replacing traditional advertising channels as younger
    viewers search the Internet for entertainment. Ramsey suggests by
    the end of the decade, traditional advertising will be a third
    as effective as online advertising, citing a March 2006 American
    Marketing Association Study that says 78% percent of leading
    advertisers agree that effectiveness of TV ads has diminished in
    the last few years.

    In other words, those expensive ads that drove the development
    of television are not working as well anymore. TV production
    values begin to slip and eventually the viewers look away. With
    YouTube, MySpace and the general history of user inspired mayhem
    of the web, more than a few generations are growing up looking
    online. The older medium is slowly starting to starve while a
    bountiful new media ad-spend eats TV's lunch for breakfast.

    Money is now trickling down to the grassroots in the online
    advertising marketplace. While programs such as Google AdSense
    and Y!SM have provided modest incomes for webmasters for a few
    years, a very real sense of monetization is present for
    independent webmasters. There is simply not enough advertising
    space for the absurd inventory of willing advertisers out there.

    Internet users should expect to see a change in the way
    independent webmasters relate to the products they create and
    offer for public consumption. Though there are a growing number
    of highly creative webmasters trying to produce interesting and
    stimulating content, the major monetization model of many
    independent webmasters is to make a number of made-for-(Google)
    AdSense sites and placing as many ads by Google as possible, or
    to create parked domain sites populated with paid-advertising.

    Along with an increasing amount of user-made content given and
    shared freely on the Internet, many are starting to look to the
    professional content and support offered by major entities such
    as the Yahoo Publisher Network or, in the case of professional
    content creators, successful experiments like John Battelle's
    Federated Media. Extraordinary content tends to find its way to
    the top and over time the coordination and presentation of
    extraordinary content is expected to attract far higher viewers
    and correspondingly stronger advertising revenues.

    Populating any Internet site, regardless of its format, with
    extraordinary content requires mechanical assistance, the type
    easily provided by the growing number of information feeds
    available for webmasters to use and share with others. As most
    webmasters working in any sector want their websites to be
    consistent traffic attractors many are finding and making use of
    relevant, off-site feeds covering items such as weather
    conditions, news, accommodation references, or general
    information. This cross-pollination of content is used to both
    attract and drive web traffic to highly sophisticated landing
    pages designed to motivate revenue-generating clicks.

    Every page is thus thought of as a landing page. Each is treated
    in that spiritual-scientific Zen-space extraordinary search
    marketers find when examining a document. One of the companies I
    stumbled across, Optimost.com, exemplifies how the bar has been
    raised on what is considered effective, revenue-generating
    website design. Calling themselves a website optimization
    service, Optimost works with clients ranging from Time-Life and
    Overstock.com to clients of smaller SEO firms to focus visitor
    attention and present advertising options in an optimal layout.
    Using an on-the-fly multivariate testing process, Optimost
    selects the page or document layout selected by a majority of
    site visitors themselves.

    Serious advertising money is not only on the table; it is
    spilling off the sides. The effect of that amount of money
    spread through the web design, online advertising and search
    marketing communities is going to make a major difference in the
    coming years. Production values are as high as revenue
    expectations and those expectations are rising every day. The
    market is on the verge of maturing, past its awkward adolescence
    and well on its way to figuring out what it wants to do for fun;
    and profit.
    ================================================================
    Search marketing expert Jim Hedger is one of the most prolific
    writers in the search sector with articles appearing in numerous
    search related websites and newsletters, including SiteProNews,
    Search Engine Journal, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.

    He is currently Executive Editor for the Jayde Online news sources
    SEO-News (http://www.seo-news.com) and SiteProNews
    (http://www.sitepronews.com). You can also find additional tips
    and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Jim at the SiteProNews
    blog (http://blog.sitepronews.com/).
    ================================================================

    Copyright © 2006 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

    SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.


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