Alex Porter provides a recap of Making Digital Work, the two-day intensive workshop at Boulder Digital Works in Boulder, Colorado. Alex went old school at the workshop, using a notebook and pen to take notes from the speakers. In this video, Alex flips through his notebook, translating his notes and sharing the insights he gained at the event about digital marketing.

If Apple’s acquisition of Quattro didn’t firm up the idea that mobile is important to the computer giant, perhaps the new iPad will. This newest revolution in computing power will affect everything from display ads to e-commerce. With a large, interactive touch screen built on a portable mobile web platform, marketers can build a richer mobile experience through traditional outlets including search, email, and display as well as non-traditional outlets such as e-book readers and mobile applications.

Google came to the court prepared. A new Gmail interface built specifically for the iPad will allow users a two-pane view with conversations on the left and messages on the right. A You-Tube application comes built in allowing users to view videos in HD while reading and making comments. Local advertising will benefit from having an enhanced maps application using new high resolution imagery including a new terrain view. Users can search for local businesses and get directions on the spot.

Interested in paid search marketing? Because the iPad runs on a mobile platform, advertisers can target all mobile devices which will include iPad. Google developers are working on a solution to target the iPad only and will appear in the coming days when you want to “target only selected mobile devices.” Display advertising will see new ad units, however, because the iPad can’t run flash, display make take a step backwards.

So, it’s fancy but is it enough to revolutionize mobile? In our opinion, the iPad does have the capability of changing the face of mobile marketing. Even though you can’t make phone calls on the tablet, users can consume data and information on the go, increasing access and capability. Users can easily access the web and their favorite mobile applications to accomplish exactly what they want, when they want – and on a larger, easier-to-read screen.

What does this mean for marketers? With mobile, you could reach your audience on the go. With the iPad, you can do an even better job of it. This tablet brings local search to a whole new level – combining interactive, portable information with rich compelling media. Marketers will be able to think outside of the text ad or banner and start using books, movies, music and much, much more.

Recently I suggested to a long term client that they should run a YouTube Promoted Video campaign as they already had a substantial library of videos on their channel and offered it as a way to drive traffic to the channel and perhaps get one or two conversions per month along the way. So far this month we have seen two conversions with a cost per lead of $12.00 (which is significantly less than the goal CPL).

The beauty of YouTube promoted videos is that it is based on search keywords which cost a fraction of normal Google search bids and, as it is set up from your Adwords interface, it’s very easy to manage.

YouTube Promoted Videos Results

Setting Your Campaign Up
From the web interface create a new CPC Campaign – I see no point in creating it in the Editor, unless you are creating quite a few ad groups at once, as the ad creation process needs to be done from the web interface.

There is no special targeting required as the type of ad you create will determine the placement on YouTube’s search results.

Create Your Ad Groups.
As Promoted Video campaigns seem to ignore the Quality Score you don’t need to set up too many ad groups unless your client is all over the shop when it comes to topics covered by their videos. For example, a pet store may have videos of cats, dogs, fish, bunnies, kittens, puppies, reptiles and anything else they stock. So perhaps you may like to run a specific ad for each of those, therefore you would create an ad group for each type of pet.

My clients have only one or two offerings so I run only one or two ad groups.

Set your default search bids. This involves a little bit of trial and error. One of my clients has a normal Google search bid average of around $15 (oh yes), but for YouTube I started them on 0.25c and have since bumped them up to 0.55c.

Add Your Keywords
Promoted Videos requires a departure from your normal keyword selection. Terms have to be very broad and there should be no long tail keyword phrases. For example you may have a client that offers luxury Bahama vacations, but in this case you would simply bid on the keywords bahamas, caribbean, bahama hotels etc.

Your pet store ad groups would use keywords like kitten, cat, funny cats, funny kittens, dog, puppy, puppies etc.

Remember you a catering to a different type of search user who will probably try to find the genre of videos through one or two words.

Create Your Ad
From the Ads tab in each ad group on the web interface select “New Ad” and “Display ad builder”. On the right hand side of the screen that opens you can select from a range of Categories. Choose “Audio and Video”.

YouTube Promoted Videos will be the first of four choices displayed. Click “Choose” and a new dialogue screen will open.

1. Name your ad (if you know which video you are going to use from the YouTube Channel then use it’s title)
2. Headline, Description 1 and Description 2 follow the same formatting of a standard Google text ad. I generally use the text that converts the best from my normal search campaign. Remember you can always A/B test.
3. Select your video from the YouTube Channel you are promoting (basically you need to search for it and it will show which videos are available). As you are appealing to an audience looking for a visual cue, choose a video where one of the frames selected … well, appeals (i.e. a kitten’s face rather than a kitten’s bum).
4. As mentioned in the previous point you can select from 4 frames to display in your ad. (again, face v bum)
5. You then can select whether the viewer, who clicks on the ad, watches it on the standard YouTube watch page or the Channel page that you are promoting.
6. Click Save.
7. You can then preview the ad from the Ads tab interface.

Select a YouTube Video

Promoted Videos Preview

Play around with your search bids, it’s not hard to make it to the top of the promoted video list with a 5c or 10c change in bids.

Don’t expect many conversions. A YouTube searcher typically does not set out to find information about a particular company or product. They seem to want to hear and see the stories of other people. If those stories are compelling then they may, as a bi-product, search out more information about your company. Fortunately the current low cost of Promoted Videos allows for this.

The day has finally arrived. In July last year, we first announced the imminent Microsoft and Yahoo! merger. Today, antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe cleared Microsoft to take over Yahoo!’s search business, without any imposing restrictions on the partnership. This MSFT / Yahoo! partnership has been named “Search Alliance”.

In our opinion, this is a great opportunity for our clients as it will level out the playing field, and finally presents a challenge for Google. We have been disappointed with Yahoo!’s differences in understanding standard industry terms when they decided to go with advanced and standard match, instead of broad, phrase and exact match. Microsoft AdCenter remains consistent with industry standard definitions, which will certainly help our paid advertisers. We feel clients will benefit from additional volume, relevance, quality and increased conversions due to more robust control on the backend and increased transparency. Microsoft, after all, is a technology company.

How will this impact the content network for these two partners? Between the two of them, they have the largest trafficked content networks on the web. Separately, they have both failed in being able to offer a solid product to advertisers. I am hoping that this combined effort will increase the opportunity in that area.

How will this impact SEO? Will they hold more weight now? What are your thoughts?