Sending out postcards, letters and e-mail blasts generates interest in your potential customers, many of whom will most likely go directly to a search engine and start looking for more information about you, even if you print your web address in the mailings.

Is your campaign ready?

Dave Pasternack wrote a good piece on DMNews.com today that tackles just this issue. Among his various bits of advice is not to overlook misspellings of your company name and other keywords in your offer or mailing. Marketers should also think about words that the offers will inspire in search queries, even if not present in the letter copy.

Read his article at DMNews

It has been just over a year since Google launched AdSense for video and Google is ready to call it quits. By the end of April the service will no longer be offered.

The decision comes after a review of the program found that it just wasn’t causing the impact that was hoped for (read: not making much money). Google will still allow video producers to submit applications to have AdSense ads imbedded in their videos. What is really being shut down is the option for those who don’t own the video content to advertise within it, which seems reasonable.

For those out there that are running the adds Google will give you until May 1st to remove the code, otherwise your advertising will redirect to YouTube.com and earn you $0.00 per click.

Read the Insde AdSense blog.

Google has expanded the availability of its new Adwords interface to more US advertisers as well as a few other countries. They’ve also added language support in Spanish, Japanese, French and Brazilian Portuguese.

Added features are said to include performance graphs, insight across multiple ad groups, in-line editing, and easier content network management.

Search Engine Watch has a few screen shots available here if you want to take a peak.

While not terribly surprising to most in the industry, Google has rolled out some anticipated changes to their search engine results. The two new features are an expanded list of realted searches and the rollout of extended snippets. Both of these changes could affect search behavior and SEO practices.

As part of this, Google announced a new technology that will better understand relationships and concepts of queries, allowing Google to list a greater number of related searches to users via the search results at the bottom of certain search query results.

Read the official announcement or get more information from Marketing Pilgrim

Advertising Age ran a report on rumblings of anger within the traditional media complex. Apparently, they feel they are being slighted at the hands of Google.

It’s biggest argument is that their content is being mixed in with Google’s “undifferentiated slush of results”. Apparently, they should be on a higher level, as they have been throughout the history of newspapers and other traditional media.

Some publishers concede, however, they could help themselves more too. “Google has designed an algorithm,” one said. “They don’t owe us that we show up a particular way. They do publish a whole lot about how to make your site show up as much as possible. If people haven’t taken action on it, that’s their own damn fault.”

Well, that sounds much more reasonable than expecting the worlds most popular and useful search engine to make acceptions for you.

Read the report at Advertising Age.

Brands are finally waking up to the power of social networking sites and the potential windfall of traffic they can generate, and not a minute too soon.

According to Hitwise, those in the entertainment business or its peripheral are enjoying the power of these networks the most. “This is happening more with entertainment-based sites and is increasing in the sports vertical as well,” Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise, said. “And, because people spend so much time on [Facebook], it’s a natural destina tion for information.”

Traffic is being generated as Facebook users post more links in their profiles, essentially endorsing these websites and peaking the interest of friends vested in their profile.

Depending on the vertical, social networks can make a huge difference, but it is an area that most professionals agree is worth testing in.

Read more

Search ad network LookSmart is teaming up with Anchor Intelligence to get to the bottom of the click fraud pond.

Anchor Intelligence monitors traffic quality and as a partner with LookSmart will be investigating the prevalence of click fraud. Using its patented technology it can, in real time, determine the probability that any given click is fraudulent. That data is then siphoned off to clients and publishers to use in improving traffic and making sure they only pay for good honest click thrus.

Click fraud has long been an issue, and it’s something that that the industry needs to work to protect advertisers against, Schoen said.

“Fraudulent clicks have no value for an advertiser,” he said. “If there’s no actual user behind the click, then it can’t convert. So advertisers are then forced to factor that into their overall traffic.”

Read the whole story at DMnews.

SearchIgnite, the paid search marketing solution provider, has added a new feature tot he 3.0 search management platform. The new feature allows companies that are using their new software version to incorporate natural search rankings and performance analytics with paid search.

“The argument that comes up often for marketers is that if a company has already invested a lot of money in improving its organic search ranking, that it’s not worth it to spend money on paid search,” said Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite. “This represents a ‘one plus one equals three’ mentality that says paid and natural get more clicks when combined than if run separately.”

A study by SearchIgnite over the past four months showed that for one financial services client their natural search click thru rates were up to 17% higher on the days when their paid search adds were running.

Read more at DMNews.

The Microsoft/Yahoo dance continues after its failed buyout offer with Microsoft COO Kevin Turner sending out a somewhat desperate-sounding offer to Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.

We’ve certainly made [Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz] aware and the Yahoo! board aware that if they are ever interested in an opportunity to partner with them on search, we’d like to sit down and at least have the conversation.

Right now Yahoo! doesn’t seem to be interested at all in a possible offer.

Read more at Marketing Pilgrim

The famous Google double-talk was in action again in an interview between Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Charlie Rose.

Without saying yes or no, most people are reading between the lines and predicting that Google will be making a go at buying up micro-messaging service Twitter.

There are many reasons why acquiring the fast growing social network would be a good idea for Google, given it’s major goal of organizing the world’s information.