Ohad's Internet News

Ad serving via Right Media

2008-09-16T10:34:00.000+03:00

As anyone can see from the link to the left of this blog, I am now serving ads on this site.
The ads served come from my company's (TLV Media - check us out) adserver named right media. If you have not heard of it before, right media is an exchange of ad networks allowing trading of media globally.

And now for a short sales pitch... If you are an advertiser looking for performance oriented campaigns, contact us to get exactly what you need and even more. If you are a publisher, contact us to see how you too can commercialize your site and earn even more then you are making today.

Introducing TLV Media

2008-08-02T22:12:00.000+03:00

Tomorrow is the first day of work at my new company by the name of TLV Media. TLV is a performance marketing agency focusing on optimizing display ads inventory using automated tools. While still in the process of setting up the company (legal & accounting takes time), I am already getting a very good reaction from customers, suppliers and potential partners. While the SEM market has become saturated with players working on performance basis, the display ads market still shows tremendous potential.

Wish me luck in the new business

The Human Race

2008-07-14T18:12:00.000+03:00

I am participating in Nike's run named "The human race". This run which will take place simultaneously in over 25 cities world wide, is a 10 Kilometer run. In Israel, the run will take place in Tel Aviv as it did last year and is sure to be an amazing event.
In the past 3 weeks, I have been training to make the jump from 5Km runs to 10Km. It's not easy but I am having fun training 3 times a week.
For those of you who can read Hebrew, feel free to visit the local run's website @ http://www.nikerunning.co.il/ or visit the Facebook Event for the "Human Race"

Run Forest, Run...

Republix widget - Will blog for widgets

2008-06-20T08:47:00.001+03:00

Hi all,
As I usually write in all my current posts... it's been a while since my last post :)
It's not easy getting back to weekly posting but I am making the effort to get back there.
In the mean time, here is an exciting widget that I placed in my blog by a company named Republix. I have been involved with them for the past few month and believe that their widget will change the way users interact in content sites. What Republix does is to integrate content sites with social networks by providing a widget that allows users to view what their friends read on the site they are on and interact with them. All users need to do to start enjoying the Republix widget is to click on the widget (left bar in this blog), install the Republix Facebook app and start communicating with friends over this site and others. While still in a closed beta, this is an amazing widget, but why trust me? Try it for yourself.

If you want this widget for your site as well, please comment here with a brief description of your site, traffic.

Joined Twitter - I am late but not the last to join

2008-05-04T09:01:00.000+03:00

I finally decided to join twitter.
After everyone I know is active there, I figured it was time for me to join.

What got me to join? A post (don't remember by whom) that explained the business values of Twitter. I will try it out and see how it works for me.

In the mean time, you are invited to follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/ohadgliksman

Onslaught - a new tower game

2007-12-19T11:25:00.001+02:00

Got some time to spare?
Here's a new cool flash game by the name of onslaught.
Onslaught is a tower defence strategy game like the ones Shock Defence, Desktop Tower Defense and Flash Circle TD. Although it holds the basic logic of these type of games, it is the one with most features that I’ve ever seen…

Firstly you don’t have to play on a single map like in the others, instead there are 7 different maps. Secondly, it has an improved tower upgrade mechanism. You can upgrade damage, rate of fire, and range individually. Lastly, the towers can perform combo attacks, meaning two or more towers can attack stronger if you place them on a correct pattern. In addition to these great features, you can use shortcuts for almost everything which makes things easier. The first 100 levels are not so hard, but it starts being a nightmare after 100…

What are you waiting for? Go play Onslaught

rssHugger - A new service for bloggers

2007-12-09T15:23:00.000+02:00

Here's a new directory I've signed up to.
rssHugger is a new service for us bloggers offering to publish our rss feeds.
To sign up to rssHugger, you need to either pay a one time fee of $20 or just write a review of the site. As you can see, I have chosen the 2nd option :)

I think the model of offering a free service for a review is a real good one and is suited for bloggers.

Are you signed up there already?

First impression - Rubicon Project

2007-12-06T10:57:00.000+02:00

I've signed up for the beta of the Rubicon project.
If you haven't heard of it by now, the Rubicon is a self-optimizing platform for websites offering ads from multiple ad networks such as Google Adsense, CPX, Azoogle and Shopzilla.
I have implemented their ad solution in my blog on the top header 468x60 and the left 160x600 banners. They currently support only a small number of placements, but I'm sure their list will expand in the near future.
My current feedback on their service is that so far, only a small number of networks show ads on my blog and the interface while well designed still lacks a number of important features.
Having said all this, I have a good feeling that once mature, this product will enable site owners to maximize their sites' income in a significant manner.

Other products claiming to offer a similar service (I haven't tried them out yet) are:
RightMedia direct
Pubmatic

Have you tried any of these or Rubicon?

Parking my domains at SEDO

2007-11-06T10:48:00.000+02:00

I just parked 7 of my domains at SEDO. if you are not familiar with it, then SEDO is a domain parking service that allows you to generate revenue from your inactive domains. I checked several domain parking services and narrowed my choice to 2 companies. The first was parked.com which seemed very impressive but insisted that I park at least 10 domains there. The second one was SEDO. They allowed me to setup my account very quickly and even generated a few cents on the first day of activity.

The domains I've parked there are:
babyguideonline.org
banner4me.org
giftphones.org
h2visa.net
newlcdtv.com
rigntone.net
rigntone.org

What do you think of these domains?

dj2.org - my new domain

2007-10-21T09:22:00.000+02:00

I just bought a new domain from GoDaddy. Their buying process is simply amazing from a marketing point of view. In every step, a new promotion or relevant special offer is displayed.
After going through all the required steps, I was asked to enter my payment details. One of the fields in the payment page is a promo code. I quickly searched Google for a "godaddy promo code" and found several sites offering valid codes, one of which entitled me to a 30% discount for any purchase over 25$.
So, next time you see a promo code or coupon field in the payment page, just run a search to see if you can find one.

You are invited to visit the new domain @ http://www.dj2.org

Google hot trends

2007-10-09T09:39:00.000+02:00

Take a look at Google's hot trends and find out the hottest 100 searches in the US right now.
All that's left now is to find a way to monetize it.

I started adding these words to my generic adwords campaigns to see if these keywords will convert. Can you figure out another way?

RSS shortlist: Internet marketing

2007-09-08T11:43:00.000+03:00

A friend of mine just quit his job @ Google and has some vacation time until he starts his new job.
In an email he sent to me, he asked me to share with him my RSS list for internet marketing news and resources.

The moment I sent him my list (grabbed from my Netvibes account), I figured out that this list I've compiled over 3 years could be valuable to my blog readers (Are you really out there?).

Here's the list. Let me know if there is any related feed you think I should include here.
The site list is to the actual URL and not the RSS feed so you can view these sites before subscribing to their feeds.

http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/
http://www.shoemoney.com/
http://www.jenniferslegg.com/
http://www.jensense.com/
http://www.cpa-affiliates.com/
http://www.problogger.net/
http://blog.seoptimise.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://sleepyblogger.com/
http://www.conversionrater.com/
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/
http://directory.sootle.com/directory-weblog/
http://www.cre8d-design.com/
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/
http://www.internet-marketing-blog.com/
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/
http://www.techcrunch.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/
http://www.marketingbabylon.com/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Adwords Editor 4.0 released

2007-08-03T17:13:00.000+03:00

My Adwords Editor just offered to download a new version titled 4.0
After downloading and installing it I found some new features.
The new features I've noticed (there may be some more) are:
1. Custom date range for performance stats.
2. Ability to upload a single campaign changes and not a full post
3. Much faster campaign downloading. I downloaded a 20K keywords campaign in under 2 minutes.

This new version is so far not being advertised by Google anywhere I could find.
Even the Release Notes still refer to version 3.5

Have you tried the new upgrade? Did you like it as I did?

RSS for SEO

2007-06-15T19:06:00.000+03:00

A little known secret that SEO experts use, is that adding RSS support to sites contributes to their inclusion in the major search engines (SERPS). As RSS has become a standard for updating users of new posts and changes of a site, it can be used to notify search engines of new content that needs to be crawled.

Even if your site is not part of a CMS (content management system), you can still enjoy this technique. The following steps elaborate how even static websites can communicate with the Google Bot and the other crawlers more effectively.

Step 1: Create a static RSS file in your root directory containing your latest pages. the format of this file should be like the one mentioned in wikipedia

Step 2: Register this feed in a feed publisher. My personal favorite is FeedBurner which has been acquired by Google recently. Feed publishers notify of your feed changes to the search engines.

Step 3: Update your feed whenever your content changes and the search engines will get notified by Feed Burner.

New version of Google analytics

2007-05-10T08:22:00.000+03:00

Have you seen the new Google Analytics interface?
Although it takes time to get used to, the new interface offers very nice and customizable reports.
It hasn't been deployed in all accounts yet and some of my managed Adwords accounts still haven't been implemented, but I think it's going to make the users far more comfortable using it to understand how their website visitors behave

New company website

2007-04-17T19:50:00.000+03:00

Most of my posts in the past few month have started with "It's been a while since my last post..."
I think I can blame my new job. Having founded a new company by the name of Inlight, most of my time now (24/7) has been put to use around it. The company provides our customers with SEM and SEO services focused mostly on the Israeli market with some international customers to make things more interesting.
I've just uploaded our new website and would love to get some feedback from you on how it looks (warning, the site is in Hebrew, so if you can't read it, feel free to compliment me on the smooth design). Just drop me a line here to let me know what you think.

Using the content network

2007-03-22T08:35:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I received a mail form one of my contacts that included the following sentence: "So you are Ohad from the blog. It's about time you updated it". I've taken this advice and this post is for you Alon.

Google Adwords allows advertisers to use the content network in addition to the search network, but most advertisers complain that they can't justify using the content network as it brings very low conversions. What I found was that if you separate your content network into another campaign and manage it as a different entity that does not behave like the search network, it can become a very useful channel. While this does not necessarily work for all my clients, for some of my campaigns the content network brought a better ROI then the search network.

The next campaign you open, try the following process:
1. create a campaign for the search network only and run it for a week.
2. optimize this campaign as you go along adding keywords and modifying ads.
3. After a week, copy this campaign into a new campaign targeted only at the content network
4. When adding a new keyword to the search network, make sure that it is also added to the content network

Let me know if it works for you

Google analytics videos

2007-02-28T08:24:00.000+02:00

I came across a series of 3 posts in the Conversation Marketing blog about using Google analytics.
If you are not using it yet, Google analytics is one of the best free web statistics software available on the market. The 3 posts include videos on the setup and usage of the analytics.

You might want to check out all three:
1. Setup
2. Essentials
3. Content and navigation

Adwords Editor 3.0 released

2007-02-26T08:20:00.000+02:00

If you are managing multiple adwords campaigns, then you are probably using the Adwords Editor application. The adwords editor is a windows application that allows mass changes to be performed on adwords accounts. The new version of the adwords editor has just been released for download and contains several features that were really needed in the past such as: word count and CPM campaign management.

If you are already using it, just upgrade your version.
If not then now is the time to start and get better control of your campaigns

Alexa now shows geographical info on sites

2007-02-17T19:11:00.000+02:00

I just saw that Alexa added geographic information on their website.
This means that you can now see what countries your visitors are coming from as well as see the relative alexa rank your site has by country.

For example, my blog is ranked 429,364 but in Israel it's rank is 44,870
See for yourself in the alexa report on Ohad's Internet News

Does this make Quantcast irrelevant? What other info can I get using Quantcast that I can't get from Alexa?

My LinkedIn network

2007-02-03T09:03:00.000+02:00

My LinkedIn Network is over 140,000 users. This means that I can use my network to contact lots of people when looking for an introduction or a reference.
Is this what I use LinkedIn for? No, LinkedIn is a good way to let people find you. While my network is large (1.5% of the available network in LinkedIn), I have no use for it on a daily basis.

So what am I using LinkedIn for?
1. Contact management - Keeping in touch with my direct contacts.
2. Visibility - Allowing people to find me online to offer new business opportunities.
3. Fun - I was a member of a network by the name of 6 degrees which tried to achieve the same purpose. It failed due to hardware and bandwidth issues. That was about 6 years ago and I really enjoyed feeling like everyone in the world was connected to me via 6 degrees of separation.

What are you using LinkedIn for?

LinkedIn - Managing My Contacts

2007-01-27T15:56:00.000+02:00

I've been using LinkedIn for a few month now. In case you are not familiar with it, LinkedIn is an online network of business professionals all around the world. LinkedIn allows me to publish my profile online and manage my contact through them.
LinkedIn is based on connection circles, which means that you can see your list of contact, their list of contacts (2 degrees separated from you) and so on. While this model has been tried in the past and failed, LinkedIn targeted the business community and has become a leading tool for it.

Posting my profile online enables me to connect (and reconnect) with my contacts.

Contact me if you want through: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ohadgliksman

Adwords Tip: Use the ARROW

2007-01-18T08:21:00.000+02:00

Here is a very nice insight by ShoeMoney on dynamic keyword ads.
According to ShoeMoney, if you place your dynamic keyword at the beginning of the ad title, again at the end of the first line and finally in the beginning of the second line, you get an arrow like shape from these keywords which increases CTR rates.

Interested? Read more here

Quantcast Internet Rating System

2007-01-15T08:43:00.000+02:00

I've just installed a new web analytics software for my blog by the name of Quantcast.
Quantcast is an internet rating system whose aim is to quantify the internet.
According to their site, stats collection should take a few days.
Stay tuned for some more updates on this...

Great excuses

2006-12-15T18:37:00.000+02:00

I've got plenty of good excuses why I didn't post in the past week.
1. I am working on a new business
2. Customers get my first priority
3. There are only 24 hours a day, and I sleep through some of them
...

When you finish reading through my excuses, you realize that that's all they are, excuses.
In the meantime, here is a great site by the name of Conversation Marketing which is full of content for the internet marketeer. So, if marketing is your game, spend some time reading the articles at Conversation Marketing