Leadpile's Blog» advertising

Tips for Saving Money

Jolene Phipps — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:39:32 +0000

As the end of December comes around and the beginning of January nears, people in general start re-evaluating their budget. A popular new years resolution is “saving money”. So if this is a common goal why is it so hard to accomplish?

Due to the economic recession many households are making less then before, making it hard to bank extra money. We also live in a society that thrives on promoting or advertising what you must have! The line between need and want often become crossed and we end up overspending for the month.

So how can we save? The answer lies in each one of us. We don’t have to strive for the moon – to overshoot and miss all together. If we take baby steps we can be successful, and if one month you fall down, don’t let it stop you! Get up and start over again. Here are a few money saving tips that can help you get started:

Set up a separate savings account and actually use it to save money.
Split your direct deposit so that $25.00 out of each paycheck goes into your savings account. (out of sight out of mind)
Save any change that you receive after making a cash purchase. (you will be surprised how fast this adds up)
Plan a monthly budget, start with you needs first i.e. Rent/mortgage, electricity, car payments etc. and then budget in an allotted dollar amount for wants and stick to it.
Write out your grocery list before you go shopping and only get what is on the list

If you start implementing even a couple of these suggestion you will be surprised by what you can save!

Happy Savings!

Internet Advertising Continues To Grow

Mohib — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:01:32 +0000

Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently released their Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the full year 2010. The year saw revenues grow by 15% to $26 billion compared to $22.7 billion in 2009 in the U.S. The industry has seen impressive growth since 2002 with revenues increasing the previous year every year except 2009.

(Source: 2010 IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report)

Search advertising accounted for 46% of the revenues in 2010 with display garnering 38% share compared to 35% in 2009. Digital video advertising which is a part of display advertising saw its share increase by 40%. Lead generation accounted for 5% of revenues in 2010.

Another interesting trend is the increasing CPC cost, especially in competitive sectors like Finance. According to Efficient Frontier, CPCs for Finance increased by a whopping 40% in March 2011 compared to March 2010. As the paid search cost continues to rise, more and more companies are turning towards lead marketplaces like LeadPile.com that allows them to select the kind of leads they want and the price they are willing to pay for them. Leads are delivered real-time and the campaigns can be scaled up or down based upon the requirements.

Starbucks Turns 40 & Gets A Facelift

Mari Woods Holt — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:38:07 +0000

One of the biggest brands out there has to be Starbucks. Well they must think so themselves because they are now going to be giving their Starbucks logo a pretty big facelift by removing their name off the logo. The company is about to celebrate it’s 40 year anniversary, and it seems that they find the best way to do that is to make a logo change.
According to the Associated Press, “Starbucks leaders say the changes to the logo are in some ways a metaphor for the company dropping the boundaries of its own business and growing into new areas. Marketing experts agree.” Starbucks is looking at other big name companies who have successfully dropped their name from their logos. Hopefully this new facelift will be as successful for Starbucks as it was for companies like Nike and Apple. You can truly say you have made it as a company if you do not even need to show your name on your company logo or any other advertising. We hope it works Starbucks!

FTC Looking At Implementing “do-not-track” List

Mari Woods Holt — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:18:32 +0000

As we are all now figuring out is that if we visit a website or fill out anything online, a million other people are going to have this information about us. Being in the online lead generation business I know that if you fill out something online you will be someone that most likely will develop a lot of new “friends” that email you. However, visiting certain websites and that being tracked, is something totally different. Should companies be able to track your information online so they can better understand your online behavioral trends? Should this be something that the Federal Trade Commission regulates?
No matter what you think is right or wrong, the FTC is now looking at regulating those that are tracking our online behavioral information. Being in lead generation, we all know that the benefits of lead generation are not the initial requests the consumers are filling out, yet it is the additional remarketing that is the attractive part of capturing the lead information. However, should companies have the right to capture all your internet activity to potentially use to remarket you? Many think the answer is no, therefore this is what is promoting the FTC to look into enacting a new law.
Agree or disagree?

TRUSTe To Begin Targeting Lead Generation Sites

Christina — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:47:15 +0000

Consumer’s fear of sharing personal information is on the rise. Sites selling consumer’s data to irrelevant advertisers who in turn spam or misuse the data often fuel this fear. The TRUSTs seal has become a well-known symbol of verification over the past decade.

Dealix, an auto lead generation site conducted a 90 day test using the seal and saw a 7 percent increase in conversions. Placing the seal at the front end of your funnel helps ensure consumers their data is being protected, especially when a credit card or social security number is required.

TRUSTe requires sites that utilize the seal to have links to their privacy policy and seed TRUSTe to ensure the consumers data is not being mistreated.

It will be interesting to see if the TRUSTe seal is the next trend in the online lead generation space.

YouTube Looking To Pay “Filmmakers”

Mari Woods Holt — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:27:45 +0000

We have all spent a nice amount of time on YouTube enjoying some videos made by people like you and I. Somehow some of these videos make it into the spotlight and get national attention. The good news for these sorts of filmmakers is that they might be eligible to receive cash from the famous video site. News reports are stating there might be some monetary motivation to create some great videos for YouTube. It seems that if your video is “likable”, then the peeps over at YouTube could reach out to you to discuss being paid for your video. This is in an effort to help motivate video makers to create a better quality video for their website. Good move or something that will just create some craziness amongst video makers?

We know YouTube is a great place to market yourself, your company, or simply have fun. Enjoy Leadpile’s YouTube videos!

Yahoo & Zillow Combining Forces…

Natasha Aronov — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:40:23 +0000

Yahoo and Zillow are combining forces to make Zillow the exclusive sales partner to existing home sales advertisers on Yahoo. This partnership will form the largest real estate ad network for existing home advertisers. According to ClickZ, Zillow which currently offers enhanced listings and profile pages for agents, will also be included on Yahoo Real Estate placements. Zillow’s for-sale listings, showcase ads, and featured listings will also be fed to Yahoo’s site. Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow currently rank second and third among top real estate sites, Realtor.com tops the rankings.

The two companies have worked together since 2006, and partnered separately with a large percentage of the same newspaper site publishers.. Bringing their resources together to become one bigger better force will logically be a positive move.

Twitter Trying To Preserve User Experience…

Natasha Aronov — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:13:23 +0000

Twitter has made the decision to ban third-party advertisements on its site in an effort to keep control on the integrity and monetization of the site. According to PCWorld, Twitter is building a firewall that will block out the advertisments that tarnish the coherent “timeline”. As this change may help with the amount of “spam” you receive in your timeline, it also appears that Twitter would prefer to make money with its “Promoted Tweets platform” this change will restrict just anyone from posting their own advertisements.

Twitter has listed these 3 reasons as being behind this decision:

• Preserve Twitter’s unique user experience
• Focus on long-term monetization, rather than the short-term goals of third parties
• Ditch covering all costs of maintaining its network — third parties apparently shoulder little responsibility

Those who will be/will not be affected by this new change:

• Services that do not generate revenue, or do so without advertising (such as subscriptions), will not be affected.
• To pay, groups can establish a revenue split with Twitter or agree to license their data stream. Using Promoted Tweets is encouraged.

The fine details — such as minimum fees and revenue splits — have not been established and Twitter is likely to implement fees on a case-by-case basis.

LeadPile team members all have Twitter pages that can give you information regarding new or exciting offers before anyone else!

To follow us on Twitter:

LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/Leadpile

Mari Holt LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/mari_leadpile
Eugen Ilie LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/Eugen_LeadPile
Natasha Aronov LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/N_LeadPile

Social Media’s New Man In Town- Foursquare?

Mari Woods Holt — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:40:04 +0000

You better stay on your toes when it comes to keeping up with social media and it’s newest players.
This could be great for restaurants, stores, local hangouts and bars if this sort of next generation social media emerges successfully. Businessweek.com broke it down on what this new social media “service” is all about. “Foursquare, a 20-person company that operates out of a crowded loft in New York’s East Village, adds a game-like twist. Its 1 million-plus users earn badges by “checking in” at certain bars, restaurants, and other venues by pressing a button on the app upon arrival. A user can earn a “mayor” icon from a bar if he or she has checked in more than anyone else during the previous 60 days. The business model is simple: Generate as big a user base as possible and sell national brands and local merchants on the possibilities of marketing to people as they congregate—ready to eat, shop, or spend.”
The next thing we know we will have sales people cold calling to these establishments trying to get as many businesses on their “route” for people to go to. This is a great idea and I don’t think I have heard of anything else like it. Negatives to it? If you are someone that does not like people to track your every move…. IE things such as Twitter (as some call legalized stalking), this might not be the thing for you.
Pat on the back to those over at Foursquare for coming up with something truly innovative, and we will see what the next BIG THING will be in this wonderful internet world!

Big Value For Brands With Facebook

Mari Woods Holt — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:07:41 +0000

We are always keeping up on the social media industry, but the one thing that has stood out is how can you really make money with it? Interesting study out by social media management company Virtue, each Facebook fan is valued at $3.60. Those that are looking at utilizing social media need to be conscious of what the true value is of having these fans, and is it really worth the marketing effort to build your fans?

Here’s some interesting Facebook math:

So what this means is that the value of Facebook to companies can be enormous if built up correctly. Instead of thinking how many fans can I have on Facebook as just a competition thing, now maybe companies should start looking at the number of fans they have really equals revenue in their pockets.