PPC & Adwords Campaigns for New Movie Releases

Posted on September 9, 2011 by darothschild
Pay-per-click campaigns, and more specifically Google Adwords campaigns, are continually becoming utilized in more industries to garner attention for upcoming products.  One industry that appears to be catching on to usefulness of Adwords lately is Hollywood.   I recently searched for the MMA movie ‘Warrior’ (made by Lionsgate) and was greeted with a well-made Adwords ad front and center:

It’s a sure thing that the Lionsgate online marketing team realized that a large portion of their ‘Warrior’ audience would be fans of mixed martial arts, which has a well known demographic between the ages of 16-35.  That is also the type of audience that would be searching for most of their information online – which provokes good reason to utilize Google Adwords to capture that demographic.

Adwords is the perfect addition to a standard Hollywood marketing campaign: it enables an adept PPC management team to launch an effective online campaign in a matter of days while a film is in its pre / early stages of release.   Whether a potential movie-goer is searching for movie times, trailers, reviews, actors or general information about the film, they will have the potential to getting exposed to the Google ad.

Another reason why a PPC campaign can be an effective release tool for movie-makers is due to it’s ability to provide control in an otherwise unstable search engine landscape.  A movie release can be peppered with professional critiques, user reviews, mash up videos and other forms of bad press that could potentially deter people from going to see the film.  Although none of these forms of content are ‘official,’ they could potentially reach a customer’s eyes prior to branded materials.  An Adwords ad shows up on top of a search results page (SERP), and if created in an attractive manner, will direct a user to a film studio’s landing page of choice (official movie site, trailer page, fandango, etc.).  Having this type of movie advertising control is essential to a successful release.

An Adwords campaign also allows a great deal of user targeting for a movie studio.  Let’s take the upcoming film ‘The Hunger Games,’ made by Lionsgate.  The studio  might want to send specific users interested in different actors within the film to different web pages that are tailored to fans of those actors.  Those typing ‘Jennifer Lawrence Hunger Games’ would get a different ad / landing page combination than those searching for ‘Elizabeth Banks Hunger Games.’  These ads would likely perform and convert much higher than standard ‘Hunger Games’ ads because of the specific fan demographic.

Insight Forge is experienced in marketing films through online distribution channels, specifically Adwords and Facebook PPC campaigns.  For more information, feel free to get in touch with us at contact@insightforge.com.
Posted in Adwords, Google, Movie Adwords, Movie Marketing, ppc | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Google Buys Motorola Mobility: Pros and Cons

Posted on August 15, 2011 by darothschild
Google just announced the huge purchase of Motorola’s Mobility division, the makers of popular mobile phones like the ‘Droid’ series, for $12.5 billion.  This acquisition represents Google’s largest yet, and is being labeled as a strategic move to solidify the place of Google’s Android mobile OS as well as acquire thousands of mobile-related patents in Motorola’s portfolio.

The massive purchase has already set off a series of pro and anti-Google sentiments from consumers, techies, and Google’s competitors.  Here’s a recap of some of the pros and cons of the Motorola Mobility purchase.

PRO: Motorola Phones Will Get Better Now that Google has thrown itself into the pot of mobile hardware makers, it will benefit it’s Android experience in a number of ways.  First, Google will be able to have complete control over Motorola phones: preventing the current practice of clogging a new release with bloatware and pushing towards more of a pure, unlocked Android experience.  This has got to be good for the consumer experience, especially those that are purchasing Motorola phones.

PRO: Competitive Bar Will Be Raised for Android Manufactures This will also drastically effect the competitive sphere within hardware manufacturers on the Android OS.  There’s no doubt that Google will be creating high performing Motorola phones that leverage the full power of Android with very little gimmicks.  This will push other Android manufacturers like HTC and Samsung to raise their bar for performance and take full advantage of the OS.

CON: Other Android Hardware Manufacturers Can’t Be Happy Companies like HTC and Samsung can’t be happy with this purchase; after all, they are building their devices on Google’s Mobile OS.  Although Google has said that they will run Motorola Mobility as a ‘separate company,’ other mobile manufactures will probably take that statement with a grain of salt.  How can Google truthfully say they won’t gain a competitive advantage over other companies that are running hardware on their own operating system?

PRO: The Purchase Could Help Even Out The Ongoing Patent Wars Over the past several months, it has become clear that Microsoft, Apple and Oracle are waging a war to keep the Android OS from continuing to gain market share.  This has been done by them buying a range of patents from Nortell and Novell that were directly related to the mobile / cell radio spectrum.  This has been seen by some as an anti-competitive strategy, as the sole reason of the purchase has been to keep the patents out of Google’s hands.

In addition, some of these patents would even force handset makers to pay license fees to Microsoft.  With Google’s acquisition of Motorola, they gain thousands of mobile-related patents that will help them even the playing ground and continue the expansion of the open (and competitive) Android ecosystem.

CON: Patent Litigation Will Continue as Always Litigation will likely continue between Google, Microsoft and Apple in the mobile sphere despite Google’s patent purchase.  Motorola Mobility was already facing patent litigation prior to the Google purchase, so those problems will continue along with the new ones that the competition is bound to dust up over the next several months.

In addition, although Google has deemed their competitor’s hoarding of patents as ‘anti-competitive,’ the FCC and other companies are likely to see Google’s recent actions with a similar suspicious eye.
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Brand Page Battle: Google+ vs Facebook Business Pages

Posted on August 12, 2011 by darothschild
We are  all becoming fairly familiar with the ubiquitous Facebook Brand Page.  Just to recap:  Facebook Profiles are for individuals, wheras Pages are for businesses, celebrities and other ‘entities.’   In a standard Facebook profile an individual acquires ‘friends,’ but a Facebook Page acquires ‘fans.’  All those personalized ads you see popping up in your Facebook side bar? Those are often directed to a company’s customized Facebook Page, where they can promote deals, savings and general marketing campaigns.  Facebook even allow for a bit of HTML customization for companies and developers that want their own unique look and feel.

Attempting to match Facebook in every social aspect possible, Google+ is also launching their own version of the brand page.  So how will the two competing social branding platforms match up?  Here’s our take:

Google Is  Separating Profiles & Pages from the Start Google+ has specifically told businesses to not create profiles yet  in anticipation of their customized company pages.  This pre-launch strategy (communication) is already a step ahead of what Facebook did; thousands of companies created FB profiles before the page format was available, resulting in a current strange and confusing mix of profiles and pages for small and large businesses.  Google is getting it right by setting the standard from the starting line.

Google Has the Business Experience with Places Google is also a step ahead of Facebook with Google+ Business Pages because they already have a wealth of experience working with local businesses through their Google Places listings.  Previously known as Google local, Google Place listings have evolved over the past several years to have better authentication, search visibility and advertising options.

Google has Adwords & Analyticss Google+ Business Pages can also take advantage of Google’s primary revenue source, Adwords & Adsense, to seamlessly integrate with the listings.  Advertising from Google search to Google+ Pages will garner a higher click-through-rate and quality score than Facebook pages, and will easily sync with any oncoming advertising features Google plans to launch.  In addition, Google+ Brand Pages are also likely to get the full power of Google Analytics behind them, which will enable tracking users to be easy and informative.

Google+ Brand Pages Beat Facebook Pages on the SEO Front Google+ Pages are almost also definitely going to get ranked higher than FB pages in organic search.  This will be good cause for a company’s SEO team or firm to opt for Google+ when deciding on a social branding strategy.  Although businesses are likely to set up both, they usually end up putting more time and updates into one or the other.  It will make sense from an SEO standpoint to invest time with the Google+ Brand Pages.

In the End, It all Depends on Usage All in all, although Facebook already has more businesses and celebrities signed onto their pages, this is one place where Google+ will overtake them through the draw of their existing platforms.  That being said, if not as many actual people end up using Google+ for social chatter, their business pages won’t be as effective.

Posted in Adwords, Facebook Pages, Google, Google+ Brand Pages, SEO, San Francisco SEO, Social Media Marketing, google places | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Can Google Real-Time Search Compete without Twitter?

Posted on August 4, 2011 by darothschild


You might have noticed over the last few months that you haven’t been able to access Google’s real-time search features (it was on the left hand-column of the search navigation panel – the ‘updates’ button’).  For a while, this feature allowed Google’s users to access live search results that were mostly comprised of updates from Twitter.   This was an extremely helpful feature for users who were not yet acquainted with Twitter, or others that simply were too lazy to check both Twitter & Google.  Google real time search was extremely helpful: from checking if you just felt an earthquake in san francisco (#SFEarthquake) to getting the live updates from the floor of CES.



However, Google was forced to remove the Twitter results due to a failed contract with Twitter (i.e. they didn’t make a big enough offer.)   This essentially rendered real time search useless which Google soon realized and responded by removing the feature all together.

Now Google is saying real-time is back, this time with integrated Google+ results.  The question is: will Google+ be enough?  If I search for #SFEarthquake will I get a plethora of updates confirming my quake-paranoia?  If not, there isn’t much of a point to using the feature.  Google needs to make sure they have enough momentum with Google+ to make the real time search a compelling product.

As a business proposition, real-time search is a must have for Google to compete with Twitter and Facebook.  Internet users are becoming more ‘in the now,’ and are constantly scrounging the web for live events, political chatter, tv show results and social updates.  If Google loses out in this battle, they potentially lose the battle for search all together.  Although they still are the most reliable source to find information and knowledge, so was Encyclopedia Britannica.

Not only does real-time keep Google at the head of the search game, but it also is a huge potential money-maker through Google Adwords.  It provides the ability for Google to serve relevant and real-time advertising.  Adwords advertisers can suddenly become something akin to day traders, constantly monitoring real-time search feeds and inputting relevant advertising alongside the feeds on a micro-scale.  Although this type of real-time advertising will require more monitoring and upkeep, ads like this also will likely foster a much higher bidding price (as well as click-through and conversion rates).

Google hasn’t played off real-time search as being a make or break feature, however it is very closely tied to Google+ (which they have been pushing in some shape or form for quite a while now).  Google+ by itself is pretty much another variety of social network and doesn’t provide much more than Facebook.  However, when Google+ and real-time search are combined with enough chatter, they make a formidable product that is sure to make Mark Zukerberg sweat.

Posted in Adwords, Google, facebook, real time SEO, real time search, twitter | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Search Engine Marketing on the Rise

Posted on April 13, 2011 by darothschild
The Search Engine Marketing Professional organization just released a report that shows the search marketing industry will grow 16% this year, bringing the industry to account for about $19.3 billion total.

Not only does this statistic reflect the recovering economy as well as the recent hiring boom in Silicon Valley, but it shows the underlying need for outsourced search engine professionals as the field becomes more diverse.  The report highlights a number of interesting statistics on what search engine marketing clients are looking for: 84% are using Facebook, 75% Twitter and 52% Linkedin.

Social media pathways are becoming another necessity for a company to get their brand out there as well as a method to create a feedback mechanism with their customers.   In addition, search engine optimization itself has recently undergone a plethora of changes, most prominently the rising importance of Google Places listings and Page Speed.  Not only does the constantly evolving SEO landscape make it difficult for average users to understand, but it also makes it hard for a company (that isn’t specialized in the field) to keep up.

Posted in Page Speed, SEM, SEO, google places, social media | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Really Matters for SEO: Page Speed, Not Page Rank.

Posted on March 15, 2011 by darothschild
Many SEO experts used to preach about Google’s infamous ‘Page Rank’ (named after Larry Page) – which provides a 0-10 metric to determine your webpage’s online clout.   They would say that Page Rank directly correlated to where a webpage would show up in Google’s search results; a high page rank meant a webpage would more likely show up towards the top of the 1st page, and a low page rank would cast out a webpage  to aimlessly float in the untouched search engine wastelands.

Today, Page Rank (which you can determine through various online page rank checker tools) simply doesn’t mean much at all.  Take the Google search ‘San Francisco Web Design‘: 2 of the 3 top results have a 0 Page Rank, and most of the top results on the 1st page don’t break a PR of 5.   Clearly Google is taking factors other than Page Rank into play when determining the order  of these results.

So with the changing SEO times, what does really matter to Google now?  Beyond getting the SEO Basics like targeting industry keywords and updating a page with fresh content, what seems to really matter is page load time – or Page Speed.  Google’s quest to bolster the speed of the entire internet is underway, and part of them achieving this goal means they want to reward sites that load faster by ranking them higher.  Technology Review Magazine recently published an eye-opening article that sources several studies on user interaction based on website load time.  Some of the figures are revealing, such as the the percentage of lost conversions jumping from 22% with a 3 second load time to 46% with a 10 second load time.  A minuscule 1 second page load delay leads to 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction, and 7% lost conversions.  That’s only 1 second!

It’s clearly in the benefit of Google, users and all website owners to speed up the internet as a whole.  So what should you do?  Webmasters should be utilizing all the tools at their disposal, including the ones Google provides, to speed up their sites.  Page Speed (which could also be named after Larry Page) is here to stay folks, and it matters for SEO on a number of levels, especially because Google ‘says so.’  Stay tuned for a step-by-step guide on increasing your website’s Page Speed.

Posted in Google, Page Speed, SEO, SEO Basics, page rank | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

JCPenny.com SEO Damage Control: Hire a Whitehat!

Posted on February 17, 2011 by darothschild
The news is abuzz with articles about JCPenny.com and how they used black-hat SEO techniques to scam Google and innocent online consumers.  This is a sensational story because JC Penny is a large company and they were utilizing a massive amount of irrelevant back-links to push their placement for a plethora of lucrative keywords.  So, to start: ‘Bad JC Penny’ for hiring a black-hat SEO company and not knowing what you were getting into.

However, JC Penny can still make do by hiring a white hat SEO firm and getting ranked the right way (and showing the public they are doing so).   First of all, JC Penny: your SEO 101 sucks.  That means you aren’t doing the basic SEO techniques to get your site ranked.  A quick overview of the big categories in your site shows that you’ve done almost nothing to optimize your site for organic results.   Let’s take the example of ‘men’s t-shirts.’

The #1 Google Result for men’s t-shirts is Gap.com, who does a fantastic clean SEO job with their website.  Let’s compare the men’s t-shirts page on Gap.com to the same page on JCPenny.com:

Gap.com: provides keyword-strong, front-loaded title tags: “Men’s T-Shirts’ | Gap – Free Shipping for $50

JCPenny.com:  title tags seem to be built ‘breadcrumb’ style and aren’t always clear: JCPenney: men: t shirts

Gap.com: provides great H1, H2 and H3 tags that are all loaded with relevant keywords: H1 = Men’s T-Shirts

JCPenny.com: has no H-tags whatsoever.

These are just a few examples of how JCPenny.com has done no basic SEO work to get their site ranked, which kind of makes sense as far as why they were looking for a shortcut to search engine glory.  Title tag optimization and H-tags are just the start: there are quite a few other basic SEO modifications that could get a page rank 6 site like JCPenny.com on the fast track to page one again.

So, JC Penny: get on the path to SEO righteousness again by hiring a white hat seo company to start over from square one.

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Google Algorithm Evolves to Target Spam Content

Posted on January 28, 2011 by darothschild
For years, spam and duplicate content has been in a battle with Google’s search algorithm.  The obvious point of Google search is to find the most relevant and most original content related to your search query.  For example, if you search for “San Francisco bars” you want all the web page results to be the original websites for bars in San Francisco, not some spam page that is trying to make money off advertising alongside relevant keywords that has nothing to do with what you’re looking for.

Luckily, Google has continually developed safeguards to distinguish original, relevant content, from spamy duplicate content.  Google is able to determine with some certainty an ‘original’ source and place less weight on anything other than the original.  Google’s entire page rank equation takes a number of factors such as incoming links to determine a pages’ relevance.

Google has also recently taken steps that allows publishers to mark their content as original through page meta data.  A partner organization that then reuses the content (like anyone using an AP story) can mark their duplicate version as ‘syndicated’ to place less importance on it.  This strategy, of course, only works for those publishers that decide to play by the rules.  The original content tag could easily be manipulated by spammers.

One of Google’s principle engineers and head of the web spam team, Matt Cutts, recently shed some light on new changes to the algorithm that will further prevent webspam: “we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”

Hopefully, these new changes to Google’s search algorithm will continue to place more importance on original content.  In the end, if Google can more accurately locate original content, the technology as a whole will be far more useful to the billion or so people performing s

earches every day.
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Is Keyword Related Search Going Away?

Posted on December 8, 2010 by darothschild
“Contextual Discovery” is a new Google search term coined by Google VP of Local Places Marissa Meyer.   Essentially, contextual discovery refers to utilizing a individual’s location across a number of Google products, including Places, Latitude, Google Maps and Google Earth to provide relevant results.

In a recent interview, Meyer stressed the future importance that local will have on all of Google search: “The idea is to push information to people. It’s location in context. Inside the browser and a toolbar, can we look at where people have been going on the web — then we deliver it. But it’s a big UI challenge. In the browser it might be a panel on the right or bottom that complements your browsing. On the mobile phone, it’s where you are in the physical world. We can figure out where the next most useful information is. In a restaurant maybe it’s a menu. Or maybe it’s a social menu. It’s about explicit and implicit location.”

The recent integration of Google Place results into the mainframe of organic results already underscores the fact that the way results are served is evolving, and it’s happening at a rapid rate.  As contextual discovery becomes more important, keyword related searches could start to lose importance (as would standardized keyword-based SEO tactics).

For example, if you are looking for bars in Union Square of San Francisco, instead of typing ‘Union Square San Francisco Bars’ into a Google search box, you might already be served results based on the fact that you are standing in Union Square.  Much like how Adsense serves contextual ads based on what sites you are on, Google’s contextual discovery algorithm will serve ads based on your location and other relevant queues.

In the case of San Francisco Union Square bars, the SEO tactics to optimize a website for contextual discovery might be quite different than keyword related title tags, content, etc.  Geographic and social queues might start to be weighed more heavily and would become all the more important for local and small business search engine optimization.

Posted in Google, San Francisco SEO, google places | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Celebrity Age vs. Search Traffic – America’s Keyword Report

Posted on November 19, 2010 by darothschild
This edition of America’s Keyword Report checks out the US monthly Google search volume on all those celebrities you hear so often about.  While creating the report, I found a really interesting trend that correlates younger celebrity age to more Google traffic.  While this seems fairly logical because of the news and media coverage of young celebrities, it also speaks to how much the younger fan-base must be searching and using the internet in general.

The graph image below expands if you click it:


Celebrity Age vs. Search Volume Chart




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