For all you fledgling internet barons out there – your real estate is about to increase in value (and cost). Starting July 1, pricing on .NET and .COM extensions are increasing. Reasoning is hard to come buy. VeriSign, the organization who manages the registry for those extensions merely announced that prices are increasing (so get over it).

Before you get too bent out of shape – the effects are minimal, 10% increase for .NET, 7% increase for .COM – keeping both likely within the $10 range for new domains. The best plan for beating the spike is obviously to renew any domains you plan on keeping now – and maybe decide to snatch up the ones you have been considering.

Techbargains.com compiled a handy little list of coupons for registering cheaply before the hike:

• GoDaddy $7.49 .COM ($2.50 off) Renewals Work! Coupon Code: OYH10 (Exp 6/30)
• GoDaddy 10% off Sitewide Coupon Code: PODCAST10 (Exp 6/30)
• GoDaddy 25% off $75+ Orders Coupon Code: gdd5013g (Exp 6/30)
• 1and1 .COM Domain Registration FREE for one yr, .info $0.99, .net $6.99 Coupon (Exp 6/30)
• dotster Free Domain Registration w/Hosting Coupon Code: FREEDOM9 (Exp 6/30)
• dotster Transfer now and get your .COM domain 1 year for FREE (Exp 6/30)
• dotster Transfer your domain + get 1yr renewal for $6.99 (best for non .COM domains; Exp 6/30)
• Network Solutions $25 off $150+ Coupon Code: GCXXX02978 (New customers only; Exp 6/30)
• Network Solutions $50 off any $250 purchase Coupon Code: GCXXX02902 (New customers only; Exp 6/30)
• Network Solutions 20% off new domains (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name, and .us) Coupon Code: PCXXX02980 (Exp 6/30)

Today’s tip is simple folks. If you are not advertising in the mobile space, you should be. Now.

• Get your toes wet by turning on your mobile placements for your “regular” paid search efforts. Be sure that your landing pages are mobile friendly!
• Once you are comfortable with that campaign performance, explore the exciting world of mobile display. People are spending a ridiculous amount of time on their phones, browsing web and playing with apps. Didn’t you learn day one to advertise where your customers are?
• Ramp up the creativity. SMS campaigns, Jagtags, branded applications, Stickybits…the possibility for engaging and integrated campaigns are endless.

Tell us what you are working on, or contact us to hear more about how we can help you make a splash with mobile marketing.

We all know the “bread and butter” targeting options available in the online advertising arena (ok, really, these basics apply to all marketing mediums). I of course am referring to geographic and demographic targeting. You learned it in Marketing 101 – how do I get the right message in front of the right people…and at the right time? With today’s technologies, advertisers are better equipped to make this happen.

So what are the new-fangled targeting options that are getting us closer to the perfect storm of advertising online? Several options abound, but for this blog post, I’d like to focus on the concept of user retargeting.

Site Retargeting
Not a new concept by any means, I mention to establish differentiation between other retargeting options. For those that aren’t familiar, in a nutshell, site retargeting cookies users that have come to your site and failed to convert – thus allowing you to serve ads to this subset of your customers. The upside is that you are serving ads to customers that have expressed interest in your product or service. However, be sure to target them with relevant creative and different landing pages. (Since what you did the first time, clearly didn’t work!)

Google Remarketing
Similar to site retargeting…but with a Google flavor of course! A relatively new offering available only on the Google Content Network, Google Remarketing is different in that it goes a step further than “standard” retargeting by allowing you to create audience profiles to retarget to. You could segment profiles based on pages visited (i.e. “Interested in trips to New York, prices are going up, book now!) or where users left the sales funnel (i.e. “There was only one more step, finish your order today). In Google AdWords fashion, remarketing is self serve and self implemented.

Yahoo! Search Retargeting
The only retargeting mentioned here that doesn’t require a user to have visited your site. Search retargeting is set up by providing Yahoo! a keyword list. When a user searches one of your keywords within Yahoo! they are immediately shown a sponsored text result; and then, within 15 minutes, they begin to be served with your display ads on the Yahoo! network. We have seen some great performance from these efforts in the past, however it can take some time to build up your user base.

Anything I missed? Do you have any insights or tips to share?

Admittedly – I am just not ‘that into’ social media. Whoawhoa – hold it with the stone throwing! Stay with me here. Yes, I absolutely agree the concept as a whole is invaluable across many facets of life. The ability to create a network of friends and like-minded people without the limitation of geography is amazing. To be able to communicate and share your personal voice and opinions across the globe is mind-blowing. …but I’m starting to feel like: SO WHAT?! – all anybody does is waste time! 98% of people are using social media to talk about something completely inane! (not an actual statistic) “Ooh I scored three rutabagas in Farmville!  I took the What New Moon character are you – I’m Jacob! Here’s a photo of my breakfast!”

Full disclosure – I don’t technically have a Facebook. My cat does. Why him? Because he doesn’t have any embarrassing junior high photos, and then I have a fall back when that gotta-do-it-via-Facebook need arrives. Yes, even though I loathe Facebook, I am finding myself often shunned for not having a profile. People ask me why, and I think the best reason is…I just don’t want one!

However, apparently, I’m not alone in my feelings that social media is just…stupid. I came across this article from a fellow self-proclaimed heretic: Why I Hate Social Media by Matt Jones. Matt seems to feel as annoyed and bothered as I do. Are we over emphasizing the importance of social media, when we should be coming to the realization that we simply are using it as a new (and cheaper) medium to emphasize strategies that have always worked? As Matt puts it:

“The question for us all right now (and I include my own agency) is: What would happen if we acted on the implications of social media, rather than just use it as cheap media? What if we recognized that social media is really only shorthand for the multi-channel, hyper-connected, user-generated, co-created, always-on world we now live in — a world where the good gets what it deserves and so does the bad? What if we stopped getting all hot and heavy over the latest new media success stories du jour, and starting realizing that the real triumph of, say, the Obama campaign was the product and the story, not the channel used for storytelling? What if we took the social media “revolution” as our cue to stop creating tactical campaigns focused on amplifying our same-same stories and start creating better stuff and better stories to tell? What if we got really bold, and focused on creating products and services so inspired that “social” media does all our storytelling for us?”

Beautiful. Couldn’t have said it better myself (no really, I tried all day yesterday).

So maybe we should all just shut up about ‘social media’ and remember real marketing. The idea should always be that no matter the medium, you should be creating user-focused campaigns that create a holistic brand experience; in turn driving brand evangelism and natural positive conversation about your brand.

What are your thoughts? Am I overreacting? Is it weird and silly that I have a Twitter account but won’t bring myself to create a Facebook profile? …and just for reassurance, I am not a part of our social media team.

As things get keep busier and busier here at Location3 Media, I’m finding myself getting constantly pulled in seven directions, and failing to stay on task. Not that I’m wasting time – I just feel as if I am hopping from one thing to the next as someone ‘pops-by’ and needs something that I know I can give them in a moment. (Just now I find myself tearing away from this blog post to answer to someone calling my name across the room – bad!)

So. In hopes that I’m not alone – I decided to cover some tips for staying focused at work for my tip of the week. Being my profession, I took to Google and found some GREAT tips from a blogger/software engineer/entrepreneur Dave Cheong. He has two great posts “18 Ways to Stay Focused at Work” and “11 Ways of Staying Focused“

Here were some of my faves (including stuff I already do) and those I hope to move on quickly:

1. Write out a daily task list - a classic that I have sort of lost the habit on. Better start with this one.
2. Allocate time slots colleagues can interrupt you – wow. I can’t even imagine how this one would work around here. I’m putting this on my list just so I can work towards allowing less interruptions – however I’m pretty guilty of this one, so maybe I should start with how much I barge in on my coworkers.
3. Having well defined goals – an important one that many of the other suggestions build on. I find that having goals and initiatives (that are formulated from top management down) helps me prioritize tasks for day to day activities as well as track progress, which ultimately helps people stay on task as well as provide motivation to see things through.
   
4. Common Sense – I’m not finding myself tripped up on things like personal email or calls, a messy desk, hunger, thirst, shopping websites, Digg, Facebook, etc. – but those things are common intruders on your day that can easily be closed and saved for lunch or winding down after work. As Dave says, “What seems to work for me is making the distractions difficult or inconvenient to access. Because it takes too much effort to indulge in the distraction, I find it less likely for me to give in.” I know it’s hard when we get placed in front of the magic box that can provide limitless entertainment – but you’re a big kid, you can do it.
5. Focus on results, and reward yourself when warranted – Lastly, Dave reminds us to keep the end in mind. The task you are working on this moment may seem mundane and pointless, but remember the big picture (your well defined goal) to keep motivation. As well, when you are feeling particularly restless and lost – remember how far you have come, and when it makes sense, reward yourself for staying on task and completing your goals.

What are some of your tried and true methods of staying on task and avoiding distractions?

After revamping several dozen PPC landing pages for one of our clients, Crystal and I have turned our attention to re-creating the pages in the mobile space. While she dives into the actual work, I thought I would take a moment to review some best practices for mobile sites and landing pages.

I came across this great document a while ago, published by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Published in July of 2008, the document guidelines everything you could possibly imagine from use of large graphics, to style sheet size, to the default input mode. If you do decide to create a mobile website “from scratch” so-to speak, I would recommend sharing the entire document (ok, at least the free standing summary) with your web developer. (Or hey, did we mention we do web design and development?)

Some highlights:
•    Provide minimal (and consistent) navigation
•    Use clear and simple language
•    Limit scrolling to one direction
•    Ensure that information conveyed with color is also available without color
•    Do not use frames – avoid tables unless the device is known to support them
•    Don’t rely on cookies being available

Just like “traditional” web design, you should bear in mind the limitations of the devices where your site will be served. The W3C suggests catering to the Default Delivery Context, defined as “the minimum delivery context specification necessary for a reasonable experience of the Web” and is outlined as follows:
•    Usable screen width = 120 pixels, minimum
•    Markup Language Support = XHTML Basic 1.1
•    Character Encoding = UTF-8
•    Image Format Support = JPEG, GIF 89a
•    Maximum Total Page Weight = 20 kilobytes
•    Colors = 256 Colors, minimum
•    Style Sheet Support = CSS Level 1
•    HTTP = HTTP 1.0 or 1.1
•    Script = No support for client side scripting

However, the W3C wants to stress “many devices exceed the capabilities defined by the DDC. Content providers are encouraged not to diminish the user experience on those devices by developing only to the DDC specification, and are encouraged to adapt their content, where appropriate, to exploit the capabilities of the actual device.”

Bottom line, mobile web design is still tricky. A variety of platforms, sizes and browser access make it hard to pin point a common denominator. Therefore, my final recommendation is to design both a WAP-friendly site and a smart phone site…and test, test, test!

In a continued effort to control the world, Google has added another weapon to the arsenal. (I kid, I kid!) Using what Google refers to as “chump change” the search engine and web advertising juggernaut purchased mobile display and top in-application ad serving network AdMob yesterday. Not only does the move validate the growing importance of mobile advertising, but it is also pretty exciting to us mobile marketing enthusiasts.

Mike Wehrs, president/CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, could barely contain himself! “We’ve been talking about the awesome opportunity that mobile marketing brings to the world. Some people understand that, and this deal shows that the largest and best-known advertising company—Google—understands the awesomeness of the opportunity, and they understand where this is going.” We agree Mike. Awesome.

Joking aside, this is quite an exciting move by Google. AdMob is specialized in areas of mobile advertising that Google isn’t, and is currently one of the top companies in the country offering mobile display ads and in-application ads (read: millions of iPhone users). However, this deal really should come as no surprise considering AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft have made similar acquisitions in the past couple years.

So what will it all mean? According to a great post on Mobile Marketer about the acquisition,  Google feels the deal will “bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising and will lead to more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ad formats.” And in the “real world”? Only time can tell, but as someone who has been researching mobile ad networks and ad serving platforms, I feel that the greatest benefit has to be availability of new placements and sites. The biggest drawback to most networks is that only some publishers offer mobile content placements, and those that do, have most likely chosen an ‘exclusive partner.’ Thereby I am hopeful that Google’s connections and influence will lead to an expanded offering and “one-stop-shop” convenience.

…And for the user? Well. Google has you on every screen now. Muhwhahaha!

After dealing with our agency domains for about six months now, I am still learning about the wonderful world of domain management. I came across a great ‘tidbit’ of information today (complete with visual chart!), that while simple, is still great fodder for our tip of the week.

As you probably are aware, when you buy a domain, you don’t actually ‘own’ it. You are essentially just leasing your little chunk of internet property for a pre-determined amount of time (generally a year or two). As your ‘lease’ runs out, the domain approaches expiration.

Image found at snapnames.com

After the domain reaches the expiration date, you have a grace period of up to 40 days to renew. Generally, during this time, you will be able to renew for your regular price; the snag is that your website will not be active at this time. Following the grace period, your domain will then enter the redemption period. For an additional 30 days, you will be able to contact your registrar and for an additional fee, you will be able to retrieve your domain.

Now things get a little serious. If you still haven’t renewed in this two months time frame, the domain goes into pending delete status (bum bum bummm). For five days, the domain is locked and can’t be registered or renewed by anyone. After this, the domain is released onto the open market and the sharks begin circling.

Bottom line? Stay on top of your valuable internet real estate! You know what they say…location, location, location!

As we here at Location3 ramp up into an increased role in our client’s online media buying campaigns, we have been seeking an ad serving partner to suit our needs. I spent a few weeks last month wading through the options out there. So I thought I would take a few minutes to discuss some key points of differentiation between the top dogs, and things you should ask yourself before hitting the mean streets and choosing your own. (Or save time, energy and heart break, and let us manage your campaign for you!)

Let me start by saying that my knowledge of ad serving platforms came from months of struggling with and cursing at DFA 5. For those traffic managers that have dealt with DFA 5 – I’m sure you feel my pain. There exists a myriad of glitches and weird user functionality that cause a giant headache, (not to mention dizziness and profuse sweating if you try to use the ehhem “help” section). Things as simple as you can’t hit ‘back’ on your browser, you can only run the interface in Internet Explorer, and daily reports arrive as late as 5pm.

All that being said, I still included DFA 6 in my consideration of ad platforms. Being the major player in the market, the brand I was familiar with, (and owned by Google), I figured they were a good yard stick by which to measure. I also closely reviewed and demoed Mojo, AdTech and ZEDO. (A fellow coworker had already ruled out Atlas and Eyeblaster).
The key features I reviewed were:

• Usability
• Support
• Availability of advanced reporting
• Price
• Contract length

In the end, Mojo beat out the other services. I think it was expressed best by my colleague Sarah; she said that Samantha and I lit up like first time home buyers walking into ‘THE place.’ It offered the usability and reporting that were the biggest points for us. They were also able to offer additional bells and whistles like bi-weekly webinars and behavioral targeting.

How third party ad serving works. Image found at www.liesdamnedlies.com

Although Mojo was the best solution for our needs, you should make sure you determine yours by gut-checking a few of these points:

1. What type of campaigns will you be running? Make sure your ad platform can keep up with your mobile, rich media and video plans.
2. Can they offer reporting that will track your display campaign performance along with your other marketing efforts?
3. What is the contract length? What if you don’t like the interface, or the support you are receiving?
4. How established are they with most major publishers and networks?
5. What support do they offer, does it fit your regular office hours? Your extreme office hours?

What are your experiences? Any tips?

Remember the Time the internet crashed? It was Bad. You probably wanted to just grab your keyboard and Beat It.

The tragic loss of an amazing performer, arguably the best of all time, brought the internet to a screeching halt the day of his death, June 25th 2009. The spike in searches from 2pm PDT to 3pm was so severe that Google News mistook it for an attack and for about a half hour, many searches ran into this error page:

Google News wasn’t the only one to run into trouble. TMZ, the celebrity news site that was the first to report that the King of Pop had passed, and several others including The Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, CNET and CBS began to experience outages and slowdowns almost immediately. Akamai reported that Internet traffic was 11% higher than normal in the 3pm hour that day. 11%!

Other web users may have noticed the crunch on social sites and services such as AIM, Twitter and Wikipedia. I personally only experienced the ‘fail whale’ once, but found it amazing to watch the news break in real time. Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder) reported that there was an instant doubling of tweets, and nearly 5,000 Jackson-related tweets per minute on that fateful Thursday afternoon. Traditional news outlets were not to be ignored however; CNN.com experienced 20 million page views in that same hour – second only to coverage of President Obama’s inauguration.

Yahoo News had arguably the best search engine coverage of his passing (while it was still just a TMZ fueled rumor) as discussed in this post by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal. Mediaweek reported that Yahoo experienced 16.4 million visitors that day – 4 million of those in the 3 pm PDT hour. The front page story “Michael Jackson Rushed to Hospital’ reportedly received 800,000 clicks in just 10 minutes!

“Michael Jackson Is Over Capacity” by Raul Orozco, based on the legendary Fail Whale illustration by Yiying Lu.

So is this an isolated event? Or, as more people begin to get their news through online outlets will we experience more of the same? CNET writers Tom Krazit and Declan McCullagh held this debate in a blog post titled Can the Internet handle big breaking news? Krazit wonders how much we can rely on “any system that doesn’t work precisely when people need it the most…[how can the web] be considered the future of communications?” He points out that when many people couldn’t get the breaking news they were seeking, they turned to old faithful – the television.

McCullagh counters that the effects were really just a microcosm on a few select sites, that most of the Internet was working fine, and for the rare incidents that a major news story is breaking, perhaps news organizations should purchase overflow capacity. However he concedes, “Because radio and TV are broadcast, they’ll always be more efficient at reaching hundreds of millions of people at once. So maybe CNN.com can’t compete with CNN Headline News right now. But if the worst that happens is major news Web sites get a little slow for some 30 minutes a year, I’m not going to worry about The Death Of Online News.”

What are your thoughts? Should Internet news providers be like the Boy Scouts – always prepared? The additional cost for overflow capacity may lead to fee based subscriptions, sort of ruining the point of news online in the first place.

Whatever your take, I think we can all agree that there is a very clear trend evolving of people seeking information on the net first – and as people evolve and change habits so too will the tools we use.