I have been practicing online marketing for several years now, and I was looking for a way to combine this profession with one of my real life passions… Health food. Would I be able to use new online methods of communication to share with others my own discoveries about food?

Sesame Butter – The Discovery of Yummy

When not at work, I… Well, it doesn’t happen often, but I do have a life and a good appetite. As part of my search for healthier food which is at least tasty, I came upon sesame butter. Have you heard of it? Most chances are that you haven’t. While it is very popular in cuisines throughout Asia and the Middle East, for some reason, it hasn’t penetrated the American plate. Yet.

The Perfect Sesame Butter

After enjoying different dishes with sesame butter, I started to research its qualities and learned that not all sesame seed spreads were made equal (I even started writing a blog about Loving Sesame Butter). And then, after more than a year of searching for the perfect sesame butter, I decided that it hasn’t been created yet. And, would you believe, I’ve actually decided to create it myself.

Sharing the Marketing Story

I’m happy to finally share here my personal hobby – Premium Organic Sesame Butter – and hope to be able to share with you the marketing aspects of this project. If you have any ideas for me, I would be happy to hear. If you want to give a hand, so do please… give a link-back

So, what are you waiting for? Please click to visit: Sesame Butter.

It was published by Mashable under the title: The Evolution of Advertising: From Stone Carving to the Old Spice Guy, where it received 2,418 Tweets  and over 700 Facebook Likes within a day.

Enjoy…!

Fact #2: The higher your page ranks, the more Google traffic you get.

Conclusion: You need to test your website’s loading time and choose the fastest tools.

Confused? This infographic should clarify this SEO tip… and yes, it does say that Infolinks is the fastest solution of its kind. Hurray!

Source: Tipsotricks.com. Thanks!

Search Ads: The Holy Grail of Online Advertising

Advertisers seek engagement and openness and while most ads get very little of both, it is when people search for something that they are giving their full attention. This is how search advertising, or subtly named sponsored results, became the holy grail of online advertising and still yields the highest conversion rates for advertisers. In case you’re not sure what I’m referring to, search with Google again – most of the results on the page above the fold are actually ads purchased by advertisers.

Google Takes it All

We Google. It’s hard to imagine our lives without the mega search engine. 90% of online searches are done with Google (and I actually think the number is higher, but other search engines buy searches). And so the biggest and by far the monopoly for search advertising, which is also sometimes referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), is managed by Google – the almighty pay per click marketplace – Google AdWords. This single marketplace handles most of the World’s online search advertising budgets, billions of dollars. And the fierce competition in this single marketplace drove prices up until placing an ad for a specific search term can costs several dollars – and we’re talking about a single person who will view this ad.

Second Chance for Search Ads

Advertisers need and want search ads, but the highly expensive Google AdWords marketplace can’t accommodate all the requests.  And yet, it is the specific searching users that we want… How can we get another chance to advertise to them? It took some time, but we finally have an answer… A special dynamic ad unit within websites that targets search visitors. It’s a true second chance for advertisers on the same search query. Not clear enough? OK…

The Infolinks Search Widget

Infolinks, the advertising network that I work for, now offers publishers a new ad unit that opens as a banner on the bottom of the page and targets search visitors. From the Infolinks blog:

Search Widget targets only visitors arriving to your website from a Search Engine (such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and others.) Our new widget will appear for those visitors only, and will present them with ads related to their search. It’s a guaranteed click magnet!

How Search Widget Works? Let’s say the term “Gourmet Chocolate” is entered in a Google Search and the visitor arrives at a website empowering Infolinks Search Widget. Then the following banner unit will appear at the bottom of the page:

SEM Opportunity

For search engine marketers and online advertisers, the new search widget is a huge opportunity. If you want to target Gourmet Chocolate on Google AdWords, it may cost you $3 per click and more, and you may miss the click in many opportunities. But then, if the user went on to visit a foodie blog about chocolate, Infolinks will open the search widget within the blog, suggesting another sponsored search result to the same exact term that the user initially typed and in fact is looking for. Once this user is finished with reading the blog, you may get the next click through the banner. And the cost? Well, in the growing Infolinks marketplace prices are still much lower than Google’s.

At the moment, from initial results from Beta advertisers, it seems that the results are very good. This is no surprise – advertisers get clicks from users who actually typed their search query and have knowingly clicked on an ad unit looking for more. Publishers are also happy with the new search widget because the click trough rate (CTR) is high and they get a new ad revenue source on top of their existing monetization tools. Want to learn more? You’re always invited to contact me directly or visit the Infolinks blog.

As publishers, we already know that placing in-text ads on our websites helps us earn advertising money with minimal interference to our visitors’ user experience. In fact, so many websites now have in-text ads on, that it has become standard. But then we search on… And there’s good news. A new ad unit has joined the club.

The New Tag Cloud

Meet the new and improved Tag Cloud Ad Unit. Based on the advanced contextual engine and language algorithm of in-text advertising, a new ad unit now offers a supplement on top of in-text ads. A dynamic tag cloud that features keywords and terms related to the content of the page that work similarly to in-text ads. This means that the links within the tag cloud operate as triggers for ads within bubbles that open up upon a hover and disappear harmlessly if the mouse is moved away.

This is how the tag cloud looks like:

Infolinks Tag Cloud Ad Unit

One Click Integration

Adding this new tag cloud takes a minute. Well, no. Much less actually. It takes a single click and then the tag cloud is placed automatically on the bottom of the main text areas on your website. If you’ve been following this blog Online Siesta, you already know that I write here about In Text Ads but also that I work in the industry for Infolinks. So this is the disclaimer: Infolinks is the only in-text ads network that offers the new Tag Cloud ad unit. To add the unit to your website you need to be a registered publisher with Infolinks, then – log into your account and under Integration, simply click Yes on the Tag Cloud tab. Within 5 minutes it will appear on your website and your potential earnings start to accumulate.

How Much will the Tag Cloud Ad Unit Earn?

Different websites yield different advertising revenues, this is clear. The tag cloud ad unit works the same way – the results vary between websites. However, if you provide high quality content on your website and your visitors are engaged, you can expect a relatively high click through rate on the unit, since it appears at the end on the content, exactly in place for the next click. Also, since the ad unit is on pay per click basis (PPC), you should expect a boost to your in text ads earnings.

This is how the tag cloud looks like upon a hover with an ad open:

Infolinks Tag Cloud with an Open Ad

The tag cloud is available in different color palettes so that it offers graphic flexibility for different looks. It is still new and I would be looking forward to any feedback. Good Luck!

You can see the tag cloud in action where I took the images from: My Guy Of Kind – Gift Ideas for Guys. Oh, and I’m about to add it to this website as well, so simply scroll down a little more to see it here…

I’m happy to share that the new book is out!  The Hidden Treasure in Your Website: The First Professional Guide to Monetizing Your Website with In-Text Advertising (the link goes to Amazon).

Humbly, author Tomer Treves is me, the same person behind this Online Siesta blog, so I can’t review the book objectively. But I think it’s only reasonable that I would recommend it…

Well, friends, I recommend the book – please buy one copy for yourself and 10 other copies for your family and friends

In Text Ads on Your Website Explained

Most bloggers and Web publishers need to make money from their websites but they struggle with keeping their readers happy and uninterrupted while visiting. There is a delicate balance between noisy jumpy display banners and clean focused content. In-text ads are a very good solution and alongside Google AdSense ads, they are the best monetization solution for many websites.

Yes, those double underline links that upon mouse hover open a bubble with a contextual ad within it are a great source of ad revenues for websites. But more important, they do so without interrupting with the reading flow. In fact, 90% (!) of the visitors read along without hovering, do not get exposed to the ad and enjoy the content.

The remaining 10% of the visitors do something wonderful – they express interest in the advertisement. This is like gold for advertisers because they get willing attention. This form of permission advertising yields high conversion rates and results to advertisers who are therefore willing to devote big online advertising budgets.

So the pay per click is relatively high and in text ads turn out to be an important source of earnings. This is why in-text ads are a hidden treasure. And this is why I recommend the book: it would help you earn more advertising revenues from your blog or website without covering your content with animated banners. Oh, and there’s a coupon…

$1,000 Coupon from Infolinks

The book includes a very nice coupon from Infolinks - double your first month earnings up to $1,000! Not bad as a start… Want the coupon? Click on the cover image below – it would take you directly to Amazon.

I would be happy and looking forward to receiving any feedback. Thanks!

New Google Search Algorithm

So, the Google team has rocked the boat yet again. On February 24th, 2011, Google announced a modification to their search algorithm which they referred to as “a pretty big algorithmic improvement” impacting 11.8% of the search queries. Aiming to lower the search ranking of low quality websites, Google now sends much less search traffic to websites that they find to be of low value add for users, copy content from other websites or that are simply not very useful. The change was first launched in the USA only but recently, on April 11th, 2011, it was rolled out globally to all English Google users.

The Big Google Traffic Drop

From inside information from the Infolinks in-text advertising network, which is now a giant network of over 300 million unique visitors, and from conversations with several major publishers, it is now clear to me that many big websites were hit by the Google change. In fact, they have seen a massive drop in visitors from Google searches. On the first couple of months this drop in traffic was in the USA only, as it is clearly obvious in this graph taken from Quantcast – notice the drop in the Orange area? These were US based visitors to a major articles website. Once the algorithm change is rolled out globally (and in all languages) we can expect the change to be similar in all geographic markets.

Lower Online Advertising Revenues

Some website publishers that monetize their content through online advertising and contextual ads like the combination of Google AdSense and Infolinks report a drop in revenues since this change occurred. Moreover, while a certain publisher told me he lost 32% of the US based traffic, the decline in advertising revenues was much steeper - over 50%!  The reason for the bigger drop in revenues is that those visitors who arrive through Google search from the USA are the highest earners for many websites. They tend to click more on ads and generate above average revenues. When they stopped visiting, they took the potential ad revenues with them elsewhere. But where to?

Higher Online Advertising Revenues?

But surprisingly other publishers report the opposite effect. They see an increase in Google traffic and AdSense and Infolinks ad earnings. Analyzing the situation, this should not come as a surprise at all. Assuming the volume of Google searches hasn’t changed, these visitors should land somewhere online. So one website’s loss is another website’s gain. The online advertising pie is just spread differently. At Infolinks, where next to major publishers we also work with numerous long-tail websites, we see this effect widely.

How Can I Earn More?

The natural question then is that now, after Google has rocked the boat, how can we land our websites on the positive shore?  While none of us has inside details about the algorithm change, we can still control our fate. At least partially. From Google’s announcement it is clear that they prefer websites with original content that yield real value to visitors. Obviously, no mathematical algorithm can provide this accurately, but the Google team is trying hard to do so.

If you want your website to get more visitors from Google search and earn more money from AdSense and Infolinks, think about your visitors. Forget about the technical SEO tips and tricks, abandon misleading links and methods to manipulate your visitors into clicking on ads. Abandon mechanic content with empty meaning. Be positive. Provide original content that helps readers. Hopefully, the smart people at Google will learn to recognize this content as adding value to readers. At any case, you will feel better about your work which is a very good start.

So much has been said and written about the importance of your website for your business efforts that it seems pointless. Yes, we all know by now that optimizing your landing page with multi-variant tests to reach the highest conversion rate is basics for online marketing ans sales. But do we actually execute? I have to admit that at least in my case, it took some time. In fact, it took a lot of time to realize that our company’s website is actually our storefront and it can’t be neglected. And I’m talking about an Internet company so I can imagine that in other fields the situation may be even worse.

The Initial Website

Every big development project has stage one and stage two. In real life, stage one is other words for what we’re going to develop and get stuck with, while stage two stands for our dreams never to be reached. This is also true about the company’s website. Our initial website was developed by genius developers who wrote the core of our in-text advertising algorithms. But let’s face it, Web user experience and graphic design do not interest them and the initial site reflected that.

The copy? We wrote the content of the website as we went along adding patch upon patch. Then came SEO requirements that changed everything. And then new features. And then Facebook. Patches.

And this initial website became our Stage One of the website project and stayed with us for three long years.

The New Infolinks Website

Online Siesta is my professional blog. I try hard to leave Infolinks out of it, but I can’t always help it. Also, since Infolinks has become a major player in the in-text advertising world, I think big news from Infolinks is of interest to the wider industry. So here it comes… we finally launched the new Infolinks website. Today. We proved – especially to ourselves – that Stage Two is not a myth and we managed to turn it into a reality.

Many people were involved. User experience experts, Web specialists, graphic designers, brand consultants, copy writers, developers, quality assurance teams, product managers, marketing people, translators. We’re going to thank them all separately in the Infolinks Blog (which also has a new look). It wasn’t an easy project, but it’s finally done. Well, at least stage one of it… we did leave many issues for stage two.

In Text Advertising: Publishers and Advertisers

Was the effort worth it? Time will tell. The new website finally addresses both publishers and advertisers. For a long time our focus was on recruiting publishers online while reaching out to advertisers offline. We assumed that while publishers could get to love in-text ads and join the network interdependently online – which happened and happens every minute of the day now – we assumed that for advertisers it’s going to be more difficult. But time has passed. By now, most online advertisers know the benefits of In-Text ads and want to include them in their media mix. It was time for us to offer self managed services to in-text online advertisers and we included this in the new website… check it out yourself or wait for the next update to come.

For now, I’m just happy with the newest website in the In-Text advertising industry. Congrats!

The Viral Video Secret

So, what makes a video go viral? At least for now, as of March 2011, you need a catchy name like Jenifer Aniston’s Sex Tape, cute animals, celebrities making fun of themselves, some violence… cook it all together, and there you have it. Enjoy!

Does Microsoft have an answer to Google AdSense? The two New World giants have open fronts in almost any field they operate in. From mobile phones through browsers and on to office applications. It’s a battle. But the golden egg is still online advertising and Google’s ability to grow fast and fight Microsoft on so many fronts is based on advertising revenues coming from the Google AdWords platform and its distribution through Google AdSense. If Microsoft wants to stand a chance in this battle of giants, it’s the online advertising distribution that needs to be targeted. And there’s no doubt that it’s on Microsoft’s map, but the focus on Search through Bing is not the only possible answer. There is another one.

Google still controls about 80% of the global search market. This is a major distribution channel for advertising and it’s Google’s main source of revenues. Microsoft has invested tremendous efforts in establishing and promoting Bing, with hopes to gain search market share, but this is and will continue to be a tough front. Changing the way people search is not easy. Google’s second distribution channel for online advertising is AdSense and it is there that it stands relatively alone as the leading contextual advertising platform. It is also exactly where Microsoft can fight back.

AdSense Alternatives Fail

There are quite a few AdSense alternatives that also offer contextual advertising units for website publishers to include on the verge of the actual content. None of them comes close to AdSense. In fact, in 2010 Yahoo has shut down the Yahoo Publisher Network which was a direct competitor to AdSense. Why do all AdSense alternatives either fail or suffice with meager leftovers? It is because they are not real alternatives. From the publishers’ point of view, the AdSense unit yields the highest advertising revenues (except for complicated direct sales). Publishers would only consider alternatives when their Google accounts are suspended, which means they have low quality or fraudulent traffic, or as additional units where Google wouldn’t allow them to run AdSense. No wonder then that they fail to gain market share.

This mountain would be too high to climb, even for Microsoft. It doesn’t seem reasonable for Microsoft to run a direct competitor to AdSense where many failed before.

Fight Back with In-Text Adertising

And yet, there is a real way for Microsoft to fight back – In-Text advertising. The rapidly growing method of double underline links that open an ad bubble upon mouse hover is unique in its positioning within websites and alongside AdSense. While Google dominates contextual advertising surrounding the content, In-Text ads run within the content where the readers focus their attention. And since these In-Text ads do not interfere with the reading flow they are much less intrusive than animated jumpy banners within the AdSense units. Publishers love them as an additional source of revenues on top of Google AdSense.

If Microsoft would have leveraged its advertising marketplace with flexible In-Text advertising technology, it could have placed ads within each and every website that has Google AdSense today. And guess what, In-Text ads have a much higher click through rate (CTR) than AdSense, which means they will be in position to present real competition. At Infolinks, the fastest growing In-Text advertising network where I work, we’ve managed to engage many thousands of websites placing billions of ads with many millions of clicks in multiple languages across the globe utilizing the newest In-Text advertising technology. Combined with a major advertising marketplace like Microsoft’s, it could do wonders.

Now, personally, I have nothing against Google. I’m a big fan. Also I don’t have any interest in Microsoft. But as a citizen of the world I’m looking forward to seeing a competitive market shaping a free and fast Web not dominated by one giant. If not Microsoft, there are a few other candidates that could also fight back and challenge the online advertising services to become even better. I know we’re trying.