Ever wonder what search engine terms are used the most? I know I do, and search terms also tell a little bit about what is going on in the world around us. According to dmconfidential, eBay gets the award for the top terms (eBay and eBay.com)in the month of August. People trying to find bargains, or sell items they have I would say is partially responsible for this. Home depot was the next highest term used, followed by mapquest. The shopping/office supplies category received 43.15% of all paid search traffic. The fortunate thing is that this is an 8% increase from July’s 39.81%. Maybe people are staying home and doing more of their shopping online to try and get the best deal, without driving store to store. Business telecommunications and pharmaceutical & medical traffic was slightly up. However, travel and business/legal traffic was down for the month of August.
Another interesting fact, yet not surprising, is that Google accounted for 71% of all US searches in the month of August. In a distant second place was Yahoo with 18.26% followed by MSN (5.32%) and Ask (3.45%).
To truly be effective with lead generation, knowing this kind of information and detailed information about the verticals you are promoting is key to being successful. For instance, someone who is doing PPC for payday loan will loose a lot of money if they are not first aware of everything there is to know about payday loans, and also if they do not understand search engines.
Here at Leadpile, I am going to do everything I can to help publishers know what buyers are maybe looking for in a particular lead type. This helps with how the traffic is driven to the website and ultimately helps with conversions and payouts. Communication with your affiliate manager or account manger is key to running a successful lead generation campaign.

In an effort to stay competitive with Microsoft, Google will be rolling out a new browser, according to MSNBC yesterday. Microsoft has the Internet Explorer and just rolled out it’s newest version- IE7. Google has just about everything else, but not a web browser. Soon this will be changing with Google rolling out “Google Chrome”.
Google Chrome is said to be able to handle more video-rich applications, unlike current browsers that were designed with a focus on text and graphics, according to the Guardian yesterday.
When and “if” this new web browser is released, this will add to the many choices consumers can choose from. Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and now potentially Google Chrome. Do we need as many choices as we already have? Being someone that works for an internet company and that is on the internet all day long, I would have to say there are positive features to each of the major web browsers. Why can’t we just get one that takes a little bit from each of the top web browsers?
What else will Google get into? Google is on it’s way to rule the world.. become a monopoly?

Publishers are spending a lot of money on PPC campaigns through Google AdWords.  Have you ever researched the cost of producing a real time quality lead? Depending on the vertical, it can get really expensive, especially if you are looking for quality and genuine interest.

Capturing a name, number, email, address, best time to call, can get really expensive. If you want to target geographically, by zip or state, it will increase your price and lower the amount of traffic you are getting. A lead can be really inexpensive, if you are just capturing email address, and you incentivize it, but if you are looking to attract customers that are genuinely interested in your service, its not going to be .20 cents or .50 cents, it will be way more expensive. You can expect prices as these if you are looking for lists, but why would you do that when you have the Yellow Pages and costs you nothing. You can definitely get leads for such a price, but those will be leads that are generated from the yellow pages, or aged data (lists) of consumers that showed an interest in your service years ago.  So what is the price for a good, real time, exclusive leads? It depends, it can be very expensive, depending how competitive is your vertical.  You will get what you are paying for. In other words, you are going to be happy with the return on your investment (ROI).

Advertisers have to consider that publishers or lead exchanges are eating the cost of any leads that are invalid.  Paying anywhere between .25 to $1.50 per click, or even $15, does not guarantee a conversion. Even if we get a conversion, it will not necessarily mean that you, as a buyer, will accept the lead. If you are a Debt Settlement buyer, you might want only want $15,000 and above in Unsecured Debt, which will significantly increase the price to produce that lead. 

Lead exchanges welcome advertisers to join the marketplace to HOST their offers. Paying the right price for the lead, working with the lead exchange to optimize your campaign and filter the lead sources, will ensure a successful campaign for you, as a buyer, and for the Lead Exchange and its publishers. 

Think of it this way, lets say you need to travel to a different state.  Would you rather rent a bike or a car? By renting a bike, you will save money on gas and get in a better shape If you are concerned about the time you need to get to your destination, this will not work too well for you, and renting a car might be more suited for you. Time is money, and we all know it very well.

Make great choices and you will see more money coming into your business! Buy quality, real time exclusive leads, and you can be assured that Leadpile will be on your side from start to end! Pay the price that they are worth and you will get the satisfaction that you are searching for!

Leadpile’s Motto: “Good is the Enemy of Great!” - Jim Collins, Good to Great

The deal with Microsoft has been going on for months (Jan 31 to May 3), and it looks like both companies blame each other for the failure of this deal. “Right from the beginning we were open to doing a deal,” said Mr. Bostock, the Yahoo chairman. “It was simply a matter of getting the right price and getting the deal terms negotiated. They started backing off early on in the process.”

Microsoft sees it differently. “Microsoft diligently pursued a proposed acquisition from the day we made our offer on Jan. 31 to the day we withdrew it on May 3,” Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said by e-mail. But Yahoo’s management and board failed to engage in meaningful negotiations for weeks, Mr. Smith added. 

If we go back and re-evaluate Yahoo’s approach on Advertising, we might find few things that many of Yahoo’s shareholders are looking at and they should actually look closer. 

Yahoo has purchased Overture in 2003, search engine that was launched in 1998 (known as GoTo). Overture brought to the Internet Advertising the PPC (pay-per-click) model, and they key of their success was when Overture decided not to bring traffic to their site, but to offer its paid listings to other search engines. It was a very smart move, which made us all happy, as we could really bring more leads into our business, just by using one source - Overture. 

Once Overture became Yahoo Search Marketing, our PPC experience with this company took a drastic turn, and I wouldn’t say a positive one - I remember how all the campaigns were changed so it reflects the Google AdWords structure. I am sure that all of us spent days to re-organize the campaigns and get our level of production to the same level. I would have to say that now, in certain cases I prefer them against AdWords, not because they are better, they are slower, so the most patient Advertiser wins, so as the competition struggles, the prices go down. I am sure these are not good news for the shareholders. 

The Content Network has been inexistent in the beginning, and when it got started … gosh, watching it constantly wasn’t enough. It took another week to clean the mess. More updates and changes into Yahoo Search Marketing system, seemed to be like a Deja-Vu, for following Google’s steps and for another, getting again into the same struggles as before. 

Yahoo’s plan… we will wait and see, Microsoft is probably going to make a move, most likely they are going over their Search, but apparently Mr. Yang is for all or nothing. Is it going to be a $33 a share or $37? My guess is that if this comes to a deal, it will be for less than $33. They lost the boat once again, but it will come around. We’ll see if Steve Jobs’ interview to 300 vice presidents, held last September, was fruitful at all. Mr. Jobs spoke about the ingredients of his recipe for reviving Apple in 1996 - painful cuts and the reserve of “dry powder” - to be able to seize new opportunities (as Apple did with the iPod). 

The Lead Generation is going to keep an eye on their progress. The Lead Exchanges are part of Yahoo’s business - we are all connected in so many levels. 

We know that Google is pretty much out and the latest news are confirming the “no go” in Google-Yahoo deal: 

“I am writing to urge you to direct your office to take quick and decisive action by launching a formal investigation into the proposed business transaction between Google and Yahoo’s search-advertising business,” Joel Anderson, a Republican assemblyman from San Diego, said in a letter to California Attorney General Jerry Brown released this week. Google controls already  70% of search-related advertising market. This coalition could give Google even more power towards consumers browsing habits and choices. 

Google, since the acquisition of  DoubleClick, has been adding new features to it’s Adwords platform, meant to bring more value and why not “options” to their Advertisers. With their release of “Google Affiliate Network” at the end of August, we will see some interesting developments when it comes to CPA offers. Even though we know that everything comes down to an impression, click and conversions, by actually giving the option to the Buyers (Advertisers) to pay per lead (or action), you give more quality control, which can be relative to the traffic as well. 

You will be still looking at competing with the CPC Advertisers and from what Google says, you will set your CPA goal and the conversion optimizer will automatically adjust the CPC to reach that goal. 

One thing is for sure, Google is helping us the industry and more and more Advertisers will learn about CVR and how to use their advertising dollars efficiently. Bidding in a Lead Exchange is not too different than bidding on Adwords, your CVR and the actual rank you have in the distribution will affect your results. There is also the network and the traffic you are getting, based on your price you attract better traffic, better publishers and your CVR will increase. 

Well, some past Google employees have gotten together and started a new search engine. Obviously, this is no easy task, and nobody has yet successfully put a dent into Google’s dominance. The site is www.cuil.com. Cuil, pronounced “cool” is backed by $33 million in venture capital, and comes from the Gaelic word for “knowledge” and “hazel”. They claim to index over 120 billion Web pages. It will be interesting to see if they can carve out any type of success, and hopefully, it will be “cool” to use Cuil.

By the way, “Leadpile” displays very nicely in Cuil… please take a peek…

Ok, I promise this will be my last Google-related post for the rest of the week. You may have heard that Google stock took a pretty good hit late yesterday after they announced their Q2 results. What amazes me is that they ONLY made $1.25 billion during the quarter, and a lot of people thought they underperformed. In this economy, I believe just about any company would be thrilled with a $1.25 billion profit, but because Google is so dominant, many expected even more. One of the expenses mentioned that was higher than expected were legal fees, which has been touched on here in earlier posts. Google admitted there was softness in some sectors, but also added that their core business will be fine unless “people stop searching for things.” With mobile search growing, perhaps Google will ONLY make $1.5 billion this quarter. There are definitely benefits to being dominant in your field.

Have you ever gone on a road trip and you just could not remember the name of that monument you were going to see? How about what temperature is it in Denver where your child is visiting her father? How about where is the nearest Taco Bell? Any question you want to know there is an answer at your fingertips… literally!

Something innovative you have to know about… the website Chacha. This website was created as a tool for people that need a question answered while on the go. It’s simple: dial 1-800-2cha cha, state your question, and within just a couple minutes the answer to your question is sent to you via a text message.

Those questions you ask are being answered by real people set up as “expert guides” to answer these questions for Cha-cha. The great thing is there is no limit on what sort of questions you can ask. There could even be questions that are asked that are non emergency situations, maybe someone is in a real bind and needs some help.
Today, the technology that is available to us is amazing and so innovative. Companies like Chacha, Leadpile Lead Exchange, Apple and other companies that remain one step ahead of everyone else, will thrive in future years! I have to say this innovative idea to use your cell phone for something more than talking on it is great. Even payday loan lead generators are bringing in high lead volume through text messaging. Not everyone has an Apple iPhone and can “google” something on the go.
It’s not WHAT you know as a company… it’s what NEW and INNOVATIVE practices can the company come up with, before the next guy.
What will people think of next?????

What if television was like search engines? Let’s say you have basic cable with 46 channels… can you imagine the reaction and the uproar if everyone was watching only four of those channels? What if they were really only watching one channel with a few (crazy?) people watching the other three channels. Well, this could be the old Soviet Union or the current situation with today’s search engines.

Surprisingly, little is said about just how dominant Google is in this very important part of everyday life. The Hitwise numbers for the end of June are out and Google’s control of the search activity continues to GROW. They are up 8% over last year, and almost 7 of every 10 searches are done on Google. It’s even worse in Australia and the UK where Google almost accounts for 9 of 10 searches. Can it possibly be good that one company has such huge market share?

There has been a lot of talk about Yahoo and Microsoft combining their search efforts. Well, those two giants combined account for 25.08% of recent search activity. (Yahoo - 19.62% and MSN - 5.46%) The fourth channel, I mean search engine, is ask.com accounting for 4.17% of the searches.

We do have at least 42 other search engine options…sadly, only 1.7% of all searches were done on these other sites. Search engines are the primary way that people navigate the internet, and Google continues to dominate and even grow their market share. How is it that we are presented with more options in most facets of everyday life, but the emerging internet presents us so few options. Can this domination be good for anyone other than Google shareholders?

This is a question that should be asked if you are spending any money with Google and specifically with AdWords. Quietly, last week Google was sued by a Boston attorney who purchased search ads and alleges that they yielded clicks, but no clients. The attorney complains that his pay-per-click search ads were placed on parked domains and “error” sites. He believes that Google is misleading advertisers by including these sites, since no actual searches occur on these pages. The clicks generated from these sites accounted for 15% of his budget and resulted in no conversions.

The attorney is seeking a refund (so far denied by Google) for the clicks from the parked domains program and the “AdSense for errors” program. He is also asking for Google to make it easier to opt out of the parked domains and error programs. The attorney is being represented by a firm that believes an entire class of Google’s advertisers are similarly being defrauded, thus a class-action lawsuit has been filed.

Google is no stranger to lawsuits, but this one may have some teeth. In the least, companies should now pay more attention to where their ads are being placed. Wouldn’t leads coming from a proven marketplace and exchange make more sense? Leadpile does not use parked domains, nor do we capitalize on errors made by consumers.

UPDATE - Google has had a second fraud lawsuit filed regarding their parked domain program. This time an online retailer complains that they purchased ads without realizing that the ads would appear on parked domains. The company said in it’s lawsuit that it had been charged for clicks from parked domains “that had little relation to its business.”

It will be interesting to see if Google aggressively fights these lawsuits, or if they quietly settle the cases. Of course, that will add to the “legal fees” when future quarterly reports are released.

Is it possible that an age old tradition is going to go extinct? Looks like there might be some truth to this.
According to NBC Nightly News and MSNBC.com, the internet age is/has been taking over the print media world. Is that why there was a large reduction in staff at The Boston Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and some other major newspaper recently? Yes, it is true, that our nation’s major newspapers are having to make some changes. These changes involve laying off staff, but also reorganizing the employees that still work there. For instance, reporters are now becoming online reporters and having to adjust how they report their stories, and how this story is presented online VS seeing it in print.
Believe it or not, this media change is also affecting the sports world and the real estate world for places like Chicago, IL. The Chicago Tribune has already put The Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field up for sale! Yep, America’s favorite pastime is also being affected by this internet craze. Maybe that means the next stadium is going to be called “Google Field”? So what really happened in newspaper world?
Some feel that when they will read something in a newspaper it is not “real-time”. Most Americans have a laptop or personal computer at their fingertips all day long. This makes it easy for someone to just do a search online to find out the latest news. Whereas the newspaper from this morning might have contained some HOT news, but it was HOT 8 hours ago.
Is that how everyone feels? Is everyone addicted to “googling” everything, and putting aside those daily newspapers that Fido chases from the newspaper boy? It appears there really is not much choice. News is keeping with the times, and getting more accessible to consumers is where it HAS to be.
Online media- what has it become? We all eat, drink and sleep the internet. Everything from our banking, purchasing products, searching directions, applying for loans, corresponding with peers at work, to rolling out of bed and opening up the laptop to see what the latest news is. Unfortunately, this brilliant world of the internet has caused some hardships in the newspaper world, however places like Ebay, Leadpile Lead Exchange, auto dealers, advertisers, Craigslist, and news websites have become a major part of the world’s new national pastime (and maybe Fido the dog can enjoy it with us too)!

Yes, correct! In a lead exchange the pricing is market driven.  Payday and Auto Financing are truly the most critical to monitor.  Why?  Simple, the end user, payday companies and auto groups, are looking for exclusive, unique, and qualified leads.  Top tier bidders will get first look and the opportunity to buy leads that are authentic and precise to filters set up.

Many companies use softwares such as CL Verify or Teletrack, that checks for factuality against SS#’s and DOB, and a few other filters.  Software such as these are a benefit to the online verification method that large organizations entitle to run a smooth and prosperous business.  

In a lead exchange, publishers should be alert at the placement of their campaign and the ranking that they hold.  I would never suggest to pay a price that you are not seeing a good ROI on your campaign, but I am suggesting not to be cheap.  You need great qualified leads? That will consist of becoming aggressive.  See when you do the math its pretty simple.  Your cheap, you pay $10 for a payday lead, and you are not converting as many as you like.  Then your upset.  Well lets talk about reality.  You probably have 20 other companies competing for the same lead, bidding more than you, hence, they are buying your leads! Yes, I said your leads!  The more competent and genuine leads that could have been closed by you.

Be at a comfort level that you are seeing a significant amount of conversions.  Larger companies are successful for one reason! They became aggressive and were in a competitive market.  Come straight to the source and pay less for your applicants that need your assistance now!

One more thought to absorb is that in a lead exchange of advertisers and publishers, publishers have the opportunity to set up their minimum price point, just as advertisers can set up the price to pay.  Therefore, if your bid price is too low, you are missing out on some strong potential publishers that are using their marketing revenue in Google AdWords for example, to generate high quality traffic, and its skipping your campaign due to your bargain bid. 

Take this as good advice and monitor your campaigns, you need to be aware that higher tiers will have the chance to accept a lead before you do!