Twitter has secured another $20 million in venture capital, bringing its total value to $250 million. The company is in a position to make serious money, but you could be benefiting as well.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that lets users leave short messages (no more than 140 characters) for their followers and anyone interested to read. Currently there are an estimated 5 million active users, with 5 to 10 thousand newcomers signing up every day.

This can become a very powerful tool for hotel marketers. You don’t need a lot of followers to make it work either. Simply using the powerful search function, you can seek out the mention of your brand at any moment in the history of Twitter. If its a negative comment, or the user had a problem, here’s your chance to show personal attention and redress the wrong or mistake made. This absolutely drives customers wild with happiness.

From there, that happy customer, who is plugged into the new media world, will probably have good things to say about you, and link to you, etc… you get the idea.

If you aren’t tweeting yet, what are you waiting for?

For search engine giant Google, Q4 wasn’t bad at all–the company reported an 18% increase in fourth quarter earnings over the same period last year.

Google also reported revenues of $5.7 billion for the quarter, compared to $4.83 billion in the same period last year.

“Google performed well in the fourth quarter, despite an increasingly difficult economic environment,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, during the conference call. “Search query growth was strong, revenues were up in most verticals, and we successfully contained costs.”

Yahoo, on the other hand, doesn’t have quite as much good news. Revenues dipped $1.806 billion, a 1% decrease from the same period last year. Over the entire year, however, Yahoo’s revenues were on the up-side, to the tune of 3% or $7.209 billion.

“Despite the challenging economic environment, Yahoo delivered adjusted operating cash flow above the midpoint of guidance for the fourth quarter,” Carol Bartz, the new Yahoo CEO said. “The company also made important investments while aggressively managing costs, leaving us better positioned to weather the economic downturn and emerge stronger when advertiser spending improves. We have work to do, but I am excited by Yahoo’s opportunities, and encouraged by the tremendous innovation and momentum I’ve seen since joining the company as CEO.”

They may have just cut 5,000 jobs and missed their Wall Street Estimates but Microsoft still seems eager to get a bite of Yahoo Search.

Asked about a deal with Yahoo on search during a conference call with investors early Thursday, Mr. Ballmer said, “We would like to do one.” And Mr. Ballmer sounded more optimistic about the possibility of coming to terms with Yahoo now that Carol Bartz, the former chief executive of Autodesk, replaced Jerry Yang as chief executiveof Yahoo. “I know Carol Bartz well from the Autodesk days and am glad to see her at the helm of Yahoo,” he said. Mr. Ballmer, who met last week with Roy Bostock, the Yahoo chairman, also said he had spoken with Ms. Bartz recently.

- From the NYT.com

Source

With the entire world trimming the fat off of budgets, marketing and pay-per-click cash is being limited in every sector–it doesn’t matter that PPC is often the best ROI of any online marketing tactic.

Here are some tips inspired by Alex Porter on how to squeeze every penny out of what budget is left.

• Diversify — You should be using more than just Google, so take a look at Yahoo, MSN Ask and even some Tier B engines.
• Negative Keywords — Keep an eye on traffic, bounces and irrelevant searches that end up in worthless clicks. You should be using negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up on these bogus searches because you’re paying for nothing.

Keep reading…

Without the flash and dazzle of other internet marketing ploys like video ads and social networking widgets, email campaigns are still proving to be worth their salt.

Many online advertising news stories are talking about a lot of ‘downs’ in terms of conversions, effectiveness, etc, but email remains consistent, according to a report by Epsilon.

The Q3 2008 US Email Trends and Benchmarks Results report, e-mail open rates have stayed consistent during the past 12 months, ranging between 19 and 21 percent, click rates increasing over 27 percent in the quarter when compared to the previous quarter.

“Despite slight declines in deliverability and click rates, e-mail continues to be a valuable channel for most,” says the report. It said the fact that deliverability rates are at 93 percent “is a positive sign for the industry, which has been concerned with the increasing use of e-mail filtering.”

The report also notes e-mail is currently driving an average of 14 cents in revenue per message delivered “which means that e-mail continues to deliver a healthy return even in the current economic downturn.”

Source

Yahoo has announced it will be quitting its European contextual ad product to better focus its efforts on its search and display business.

Content Match, which places contextual text ads on pages of Yahoo’s Publisher Network in a similar manner that Google’s AdSense does, will close its doors in Europe by the end of March.

A Yahoo spokesperson said, “By focusing our efforts on Sponsored Search and Display Solutions in Europe, we strengthen our commitment to deliver advertisers a high ROI and underline our mission to be an advertiser’s ‘partner of choice’ to meet their marketing objectives.”

The news was released just a few days after Carol Bartz was welcomed to big purple as the new CEO and among returning rumors of a potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo.

Yahoo has not made any announcements concerning its US Contextual ads.

Source

The New Year was just ushered in but spam attacks are already on the rise compared to last year.

MessageLabs, and e-mail security firm owned by Symantec, has announced that 2009 has already seen a significant spike in e-mail fraud and financial scams compared to last year.

“As the economic climate continues to be frosty and the inability to secure credit through official channels remains, spammers are tempted by the possibility that consumers facing uncertain futures may be more tempted by some of these hard-to-resist offers.” - Paul Wood, Senior Analyst at MessageLabs.

With the increase in spam and the economic downturn businesses need to seek real professionals for assistance with their e-mail marketing and eNewsletter campaigns, as browsers are sure to become leery as these instances continue to rise.

Find out more about Hotel Travel Check’s services.

Source

After a disappointing holiday season, traditional brick-and-mortar and e-commerce retailers are still hopeful for 2009 and are putting their money in online advertising.

Among the different strategies, search marketing spending is expected to increase in 2009.

“Retail sector search spending will grow in 2009, regardless of what becomes of some individual retailers,” said Michael McVeigh, associate director of strategic analy sis for Zeta Interactive. “The major ity of [retail] advertisers still have clear untapped ROI in search mar keting. The economic downturn is focusing retailers’ attention and budget on efficient, measurable marketing programs, and search marketing continues to deliver.”

“Retailers front-loaded their spend this quarter, which is com­pletely different from historical holiday seasons where retailers would really ante up in the latter half to drive traffic,” said Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite.

Macys.com and Bloomingdales.com use email marketing and search marketing tactics to drive shoppers to their websites, and the result was a 39.1% bump in sales in December, going against many other trends.

“People were clicking over to retail sites and purchasing after coming from their e-mail applications, indicating retailers were able to get some traction from their promo tional e-mails,” Lipsman said.

In 2009, forecasters predict that online marketing will change its tone from big discounts to promoting the overall value, much as Hyundai si already doing with the Hyundai Assurance plan, which enables new car buyers to sell their car back to Hyundai if they lose their job.

“This is getting the consumer to say, ‘I might think about a Hyundai,’ which is exactly what marketing is supposed to do,” said Suhr.

Source

For any marketers or business owners still wondering when, if ever, the time will come to jump into the mobile marketing game, consider this: despite the global economic downturn, more and more users continue to tune into the internet using mobile devices like iPhones.

The third quarter of 2008 saw more than 267 million mobile phone users in the US, a 6% jump over the fourth quarter of 2007 which saw only 251 million (Mobile Advertising Report by Limbo and GFK/NOP Research).

Some predictions say that by 2013, the number of US mobile broadband users will jump more than 200%.

“Consumers will grow more comfortable with mobile broad band, and the service will become part of their daily lives,” said Anton Denissov, research analyst, Parks Associates in a statement. “This tight inte gration [means] the service remains popular even during economic downturns.”

Some companies are already in the thick of things, getting their marketing teams on this hot new medium with a huge amount of potential. Google’s mobile web advertising, for example, can geo-target ads, displaying relevant and nearby companies’ adverts to users who are walking by their front doors or just a few blocks away.

Kraft Foods is even getting in the mix with the launch of the iFoodAssistant for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app gives recipes and meal planning ideas to users.

“The launch of iFood Assistant represents the latest in Kraft Foods’ commitment to providing innovative solutions for consum ers’ busy and increasingly mobile lifestyles,” said Ed Kaczmarek, director of innovation, new services at Kraft.

“Text and mobile applications are growing concurrently, and I think that marketers should be adopting both,” said Riccardo Zane, president Agency.com NY. “They should go hand-in-hand for any kind of marketing plan for the year.”

Sources

Combining Search Calls-To-Action in offline marketing and a smart search engine marketing campaign online can bring in big results, and major Search Engines have begun to push its advertisers to give it a try.

After Orange launched offline campaigns that encouraged viewers to remember and make a search online it saw big jumps in traffic, and Google wants others to mimic Orange’s success.

Nick Gill, head of account management at Yahoo UK, said, “As search is most people’s starting point on the web, it makes sense to encourage them to search for a particular phrase or term. It’s easier for consumers to remember a search call to action than a phone number or specific URL.”

Spencer McHugh, head of brand communications at Orange, said it intends to increase its use of search prompts in advertising in 2009 after it saw an uplift in online traffic from its I Am campaign.

The campaign, which included TV ads featuring the prompt ‘Search online for I Am online’, exceeded expectations in driving users to search for the phrase.

“Our reporting shows a 15% increase in web traffic as a direct result of the I Am campaign and the ‘Search for’ prompt,” McHugh said. “The next stage is adding more creative elements to it.”

Of course, for the ad to work, an optimization campaign on their web properties was also required. Hotels looking to drive more traffic that are currently utilizing offline media in tandem with online efforts would do well to making their efforts a concerted and more profitable effort.

Source