Contextual Video advertising - YuMe Launches video ad network

Sam, over at costpernews just blogged about ScanScout - a service that, unlike other video advertising networks out there, displayes contextual ads in videos. Apparently, clickable ads are displayed at the bottom of the video player on the basis of spoken keywords and tags .

As I was reading the costpernews post, The RSS reader popped up a story on GigaOM about the launch of another contextual video ad network - YuMe. Which is probably the only competition to ScanScout as of now.

Unlike ScanScout, however, YuMe targets ads based on tags and metadata and this is not entirely automated - YuMe Staff actually screens user generated video before placing ads in there to ensure “Brand safety”.

Another very interesting feature they are boasting about is geo-targeting, advertisers can select exactly where there ads will be seen and can show different versions of the ad in different zip codes.

Online video advertising (and monetization) is getting real huge real quick, and IMO these two companies - ScanScout and YuMe have come up with some fantastic innovation.

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PayPerPost launches “Review my post” affiliate program

PayPerPost, one of the preferred revenue sources for many bloggers now has an affiliate program, and it’s kind of unique how they plan to implement it.

If you are a ‘Postie’ or a PPP member, you can make $7.50 for every blogger who signs up with them via your referral, but there is a slight difference in how you do this.

Bloggers who plan to promote PayPerPost via the new affiliate program will be required to place a ‘Review My Post’ button on the bottom of their posts. Any non-postie blogger can click on button, join PPP and write a review of your post on their own blog - and get paid $7.50 for doing so. On the other hand, the postie who’s post is reviewed also gets $7.50 as referral commission.

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Do you accept cash on your online store?

Oakland, CA based Retail Expansion Network recently launched a new service called Paid By Cash, a new service using which, e-retailers can now accept “cash” on their online stores.

The trick is, when you sign up with paid by cash, and let your customers know that you are now accepting cash - by displaying the paidbycash logo, all they need to do is drive down to a nearby store, pay cash for a virtual master-card number, drive back to the computer they where shopping on, use the brand new master card number on your e-retail store and buy.
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Google Introduces Knowledge Center for Retailers

Google Recently introduced the “Retail Knowledge Center“, a set of webpages where e-retailers who advertise (or plan to advertise) on Google Adwords, can get the latest industry news, learn how to set up and optimize their adwords campaigns, participate in a discussion forum meant specially for e-retailers, read case studies, etc. , according to an announcement on the Adwords blog.

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Attentio - a way to track your buzz marketing campaigns

Belgium based Attentio, has created and just launched version 2.0 of a potentially fantastic product called the Brand Dashboard.

Brand Dashboard lets marketers track how much buzz a brand is generating around the blogosphere and in various social media.

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New Google Checkout badge on Adwords ads

Google is once again trying to force e-retailers to use their payment processing service - the mighty Google Checkout. This time, with an all new badge on adwords ads. The badge is also going live on all Adsense ads.

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The Politician’s very own affiliate network

Stumbled upon a very interesting blog post earlier today via a post on ABW about how politicians can benefit from affiliate marketing.

and I quote:

A campaign manager is paid, so why couldn’t a supporter of Obama get a small fee for every legitimate email address she or he refers to signup to the Obama mailing list? Or a 10% cut of any donation money she refers? It might blur the line between knowing if your friend really believes in Obama’s ideas, or is just doing it for money, but in some ways it’s just about getting people to learn more about the candidate and make their own decisions.

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SearchAdvisor - paid search marketing for e-retailers on autopilot.

Clickz reported earlier today that ChannelAdvisor recently launched a new service called SearchAdvisor, that allows online advertisers to manage paid search campaigns on Yahoo!, Google, MSN, and Ask.com with a single interface.

Built with e-retailers in mind, searchadvisor has some very interesting features, some of which are:

Search Marketing Analytics
lets you keep a check on ROI of individual keywords by monitoring campaign performance by order, products sold or revenue generated.

Bulk Campaign Upload
Lets you submit your campaign to all supported search engines in one go.

Automated Bid Management
This one is cool - you can set rules to automatically manage your bids. For example, lowest ROI keywords can automatically go into the “spend very little on this” zone.

Landing Page Optimization
Track conversions and compare landing pages based on combined revenue, expense, conversion rates and ROI.

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YPN program policies update - only 3 ads per page please

The Yahoo! publisher network announced a revised set of program policies on their blog earlier today.

The most major change being that they will be emulating the Adsense policy of not allowing any more than three ad-units per page. This is in order to “encourage best practices” according to Yahoo. A good move, in theory. Something that never really did any help to Google Adsense in stopping spam.

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Ask3 - New customer survey widget launched

Justaskthem.com - on online customer satisfaction survey company today launched ASK3 - an alternative to the bizrate popup on your checkout success page.

ASK3 employs an inline method of delivering survey questions to website visitors; a full length survey presents only 3 questions at a time. with no popups or any other surprises. As the customer answers, the ASK3 box simply changes to a “Thank You” message. Customers never leave your online shop.
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