knofun

So yesterday I was bummed to find that Google is leaving the radio advertising space. This is, in the immortal words of The Dude, a bummer man. We were having a lot of fun promoting sites on traditional radio, so much so I blogged about it. Oh well que cera cera, on to TV advertising.

But then today I get this email from the AdWords team:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

Beginning on May 31st, we will discontinue the current Audio Ads
platform. We have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and
focus our efforts on exploring internet-based solutions that will
deliver relevant online streaming audio ads. Stay tuned for more
information about these initiatives later this year.

What does this change mean for you?
- Campaigns: Your active campaigns will continue to run up until
May 31st, but will no longer run after that date. You will not be
able to create any new Audio Ads campaigns after May 30th.
- Reports: You will continue to be able to access your reports for
all past campaigns up until June 12th. If you would like to keep
records of your campaign data, please run the reports as soon as
possible while the system is still fully operational.
- Billing: You will continue to be able to access your billing
information indefinitely.

We’re sharing this information with you now so that you’ll have
time to make other arrangements for your audio advertising after
May 31st. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us at
audio-support@google.com.

Sincerely,

The AdWords Team

Hey, thanks for the newsflash!

digital media, geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, adwords, google, radio

Well I have been working on a few wordpress plugins for a few days and finally figured one was ready for public consumption. So basically all this thing does is implement ZinText on your wordpress blog with no coding. If you don’t know already, ZinText is in-text ads for eBay affiliates. Check out a demo here, or its on this blog on posts older than 10 days. 

Oh yeah thats another cool feature you can say only display ads on posts older than X days so you have more control over where the ads appear. There’s also a whitelist if we aren’t linking the words you want, and a blacklist if we are linking things you don’t want linked. You still have to have a campaign ID from ePN, but if you are a good affiliate you have one already.

Check out wpZinText here

Please leave feeback here or on the plugin page.

geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, affiliate, ebay, in-text, plugin, wordpress, zintext

I have never really been into PPC. Never had success with it, never could fathom it.. just seemed too tedious and boring, plus I hate to spend money. I do have a Google account, of course, for AdSense and Analytics and whatnot. When Shoemoney posted something about using Adwords to post radio ads promoting fighters.com, I got interested. 

My Dad is in traditional radio, so over the years I have been witness to the massive reach of radio content and advertising. My favorite pet project right now is carsforagrand.com, where you can find a cheap used car for under $1,000. I thought this would be a great fit what with the economy and all, so I used the super easy Ad Creation Marketplace and had Tony Brueski whip up an ad for us - for only $100!

Here’s our commercial

I have been testing it seriously since the beginning of the year and the results have been phenomenal. So much so we are preparing a little TV spot and going to try Google for television advertising.

I see what’s going on here, the big G is desperate to create some additional revenue to compliment its search business. It’s doing a damn good job. There is no way, no WAY I would have just been all “oh hey I’m gonna walk into a clearchannel office and buy some radio space for my website.” So much hassle, have to deal with people, whatever. And producing a commercial? Forget it! Google makes all those headaches go away with their system… its literally like ordering a pizza online, just pick what you want and click go. So in the process, G has sold more radio advertising, converted a new believer, made some sound guy some extra bread for making my commercial, made me some money, and made themselves some in the process. THIS IS THE AMERICAN WAY, we don’t need no stinking bailouts!

geek stuff, ventures, web marketing advertising, adwords, google, radio

AMP! from Yahoo! is more than just a product with a lot of exclamation points. This looks really cool and I can’t wait until they let me give it a try.

geek stuff, web marketing advertising, amp!, yahoo

I have always been a big fan of Google’s AdSense product, and I use it on a bunch of my sites. Early on I used other networks like Burst! or Fastclick/Valueclick, and even flirted with doubleclick for a bit. I always felt like I was kind of a sleazy webmaster by running those ads, you know the blinking ones that say “You have 16 messages waiting” and shit like that. I always preferred adsense because they would display ads that were relative to my content, not some random ad targeted to the lowest common denominator to harvest zip code submits. Sure, advertising like this will always exist because there is a market for it, just like P.T. Barnum told us.

So naturally I was bummed out when I heard about Google’s $3.1 Billion check for Doubleclick. And then I was even more bummed out when I saw this ad today:

For shame. On the good side, this opens the door for a lot of startups in the ad space. Surely someone can do better than this!

web marketing adsense, advertising, affiliate, webmaster