Leadpile’s Blog

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.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw this article on Yahoo. According to the Associated Press, a Michigan home sold to a women for $1.75 on Ebay. There were 8 others that had a bid on this home, however this Chicago women won out with her under $2.00 bid. It appears there is some work to be done on the home and some back taxes, however no matter how you look at it, it is a GREAT deal.
The sad thing in all this is that someone lived in this home and unfortunately lost their home. The women that purchased the home has not even seen the home, and has no intentions on living there. With what is happening in today’s economy, this is bound to be happening more. At one point or another hopefully Ebay will be more known for it’s bid environment on products, not homes. Time shall tell.
Leadpile Lead Exchange is also a bid environment where we match the buyers and sellers of leads. Fortunately, we will not be matching up someone who lost their home to a buyer for $1.75.

How many of you have been approached to get a life insurance quote from your insurance agent? Let me guess, you said I am too young to buy life insurance. Any successful life insurance sales person will tell you the key to life insurance is really “understanding” it. There are a lot of misconceptions out there regarding life insurance. There really are a lot of specific reasons consumers take out a life insurance policy, besides just to “be covered” when they pass away.

1. Business owners can take out policies to take care of their key employees, so the business can run smoothly if the business owner passes away. Is the deceased person’s spouse really going to be able to run the business if they passed away? Probably not.
2. Spouses take out a policy to cover their spouse so they can try and maintain a similar lifestyle, if their spouse passes away.
3. Some take out policies for a short period of time to cover loved ones, because they took out some extra debt and they want their beneficiaries to not incur this debt if they pass away.
4. Some take out a life insurance policy because they want to have their loved ones to not have to take care of paying for their burial expenses.

Overall, there are so many reasons why a person has to consider taking out a life insurance policy. The most common types of life insurance policies are whole life and term life.
Whole life insurance generally is more expensive because it generates cash value, and it remains with you till you pass away. However, term insurance is an insurance policy that generally lasts for 10,20, or maybe even 30 years only. These policies expire at the end of their designated time frame. Unfortunately, if you take out a policy and then cancel it or don’t pay, it can expire and if you wanted another one, you then will be rated on the age you are now. Buying life insurance at a younger age can have some long term benefits for individuals, because life insurance premiums are based on your age (and health condition too).
According to Yahoo.com, 94% of life insurance that is sold is sold over the kitchen table. This means that most consumers who get life insurance have chosen to get it while meeting face to face with their insurance agent. 4% of consumers feel comfortable getting a life insurance policy over the internet. This is where Leadpile Lead Exchange comes in.
We work with some of the best publishers out there, and they are ready to embark on generating more insurance leads. Not only will we want our publishers to bring in auto and home insurance, we will ask them to bring in life insurance. This is a very important lead type that is a very important insurance for every American. We ALL need life insurance at some level. Just like in any loan you take out… do your research with life insurance. Ask a lot of questions.

In recent years, more and more people are going to college and taking out student loans. These loans were once looked at as “good debt”, however there are students that are graduating with $100,000+ in debt. This is equating to $500-$1,000/month in payments for students. Good debt? ALOT of debt!
The excitement of graduating from college is overshadowed by the idea that within 6 months of graduating, you will begin paying back these debts. How can you really get excited about the fact that you have spent the last 4-6 years going to school, and to be finally done?
According to Yahoo, there are students graduating and becoming affected by the high level of stress, because they know that they are going to have to pay this money back. The first stress should be finding that job that they have been going to school for, however with the outstanding debt, it is hard to really focus on getting that “right” job.
This is a very common type of situation that is happening around the country. This makes me wonder if maybe student loan debt should be somehow waived by the government, or some other options being available? Taking on student loan debt is not the same as going out to the department store and charging up credit card debt. Something to think about… any other way to potentially handle student loan debt? We want young adults to WANT to go to college.
On a final note, student loans/student loan consolidation lead type is minimal in our Leadpile Lead exchange. However, I do know there are a lot of students that are out there wanting to consolidate their student loan debt, because of the exact reason of the payments being out of control.

According to DMNews last week, recent correspondence sent out by some lawmakers, internet and broadband companies will be taking a look at the advertising they are doing. For example, internet companies track what websites and other details of what their customers are doing online. This information is then used by the internet companies to provide some targeted advertising. Depending on what websites the customer goes to, the internet companies will send out target ads that they think the consumers will be interested in.
Should internet service providers be able to capture all the websites you visit on a daily basis, and use that information to then target specific advertising? Is this considered going too far in order for them to do their advertising?
Yahoo is now allowing you to make that decision and choose to opt-out of them doing this sort of “information gathering”. Maybe other internet service providers will follow in their foot steps. There has to at some point some guidelines that should be followed in order to have some level or privacy, in this BIG BIG internet world.

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. 

Yahoo is expected to announce the results of a major staff reorg this week. It needs to reassure investors and staff that it can improve its performance and competitiveness.

Last week saw the departure of two exec’s. Yahoo’s shares have fallen in value by more than 20% in the past month, but are still higher than in January – just before Microsoft made its $47.5bn takeover offer.

Here is the deal on Yahoo….It seams like everyone is counting them out….I wouldn’t! They will make the right move, even if ther hand is forced….

Many of our clients come to us because it has become too expensive to advertise or do any type of SEO on Google and the other major search engines. How dominant is Google in this area? Well, in the month of May, Google accounted for over 68% of the search activity in the U.S. Yahoo was second with just under 20% of the search activity. MSN and Ask.com combined for 10% of the search activity. (Yes, if you are good at math, that leaves less than 2% of all searches for all the other search engines) By the way, if you think Google dominates here, you should look “across the pond” where Google accounted for 87% of the U.K. search activity in May. So, if you are frustrated with dealing with the dominant players, please let us do the “heavy lifting” and we will continue providing great leads in our marketplace.