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Kindly allow me to pile on to the ten thousand articles that have already been written about this partnership. I’ve got a unique spin though; I’m going to be incredibly short-sighted about it.

We’re all aware of the fact that there will be all kinds of long-wave implications to this partnership. Marissa Mayer (Google’s VP) has been quoted earlier this week saying that the partnership will hinder innovation because there are less people “running in the race” now. I could easily argue that both Microsoft and Yahoo have been spinning their wheels in attempts to develop sustaining innovations that are just barely keeping up with Google for quite some time now, and I don’t think that cycle was going to change any time soon. Maybe the partnership will disrupt that.

What I want to know is, will the partnership lead Yahoo to be more precise in their paid search targeting? More specifically, will they begin to allow search advertisers to ONLY target Yahoo search traffic, and not force them to run ads on every Yahoo affiliate site in the universe.

Let’s take a look at some sample paid search data from one of our sites (data is over a one week period):

In the first column, Yahoo is providing over three times as many impressions as Google within the same time period. Strange considering Yahoo’s ~20% search market share, compared to Google’s ~65% (based on May 2009 ComScore data).

The reason for this is an inability to target only Yahoo’s search traffic. As opposed to running ads that are tightly connected to a user’s search terms, advertisers are forced to display “content” advertisements on websites that are a part of Yahoo’s network that may or may not be contextually relevant.

As a result, impressions skyrocket, click-through rates and conversion rates plummet, and ultimately the cost-per-conversion (the return-on-advertising-dollar-spent) suffers greatly.

The last row of data is what compels me to be shortsighted, and to beg someone at Microsoft to begin addressing the problem. Call it Live, call it Bing, call it Panama, but someone help Yahoo restructure their targeting model!

TECHNICAL NOTE:
There are site-exclusion methods that can be used within Yahoo’s platform that will begin to limit the websites within Yahoo’s network that your ads are displayed on. It’s not even close to an acceptable solution to the problem, but if you’re bleeding budget, look into those methods.

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I’ve decided to elaborate a bit more on this post about PPC & SEO on a slow economy, so a few of us at AWS put together this video on web marketing strategies for slow economic times.

Enjoy!

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On Wednesday night I found myself standing at the bar at ConnecTech’s Annual Launch party at the MGM Grand Casino chatting with another interactive marketing business owner.  As we traded stories about our companies, he commented, “I just heard you talking with that girl about how good business is for you guys.  It’s the same for us, but I feel like I need to down-play it so I’m not rubbing it in.”

I don’t.  I really wasn’t boasting, I was just telling her the truth.

Over the past few weeks we’ve seen many of our clients’ paid search and organic optimization budgets double, and then double again.  Some of it can be attributed to the holiday season (for the B2C clients that we serve), but the rest of it can be largely tied to the recession.

It’s no secret that an economic downturn will drive businesses to run more efficiently.  This means reducing operating costs by running with fewer employees, putting the clamps on purchasing procedures, reducing capital investments, and yes, slashing the marketing budget.

This squeeze brings on an evaluation of the company’s current marketing initiatives.  Those of us in the interactive space know that the more return-on-investment (ROI) and cost-of-customer-acquisition (CPA) focused our customers are, the better we look.  When our clients evaluate their marketing spend from a ROI perspective, the web often rises to the top.  They can understand dollar-for-dollar what they’re spending, and the leads and sales that it is creating.

This realization not only leads to a reappropriation of the marketing budget to be more web-heavy with regards to current initiatives (e.g. increasing the PPC daily budget), but it seeds conversations about online opportunities that haven’t been explored yet.

“If PPC and SEO are working for us now, why don’t we start attacking the social media space, and make some much-needed improvements to our website that we’ve been putting off.”

This is no time to be paralyzed.  When new product development goes on hold, use the time to do the things that you’ve been trying to find time to do.  Take a good look at your web analytic data, review your site and your competitors for opportunities, and talk it all over with your web marketing consultant!

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It’s great to see more mobile-friendly websites popping up every day, but if the site’s content isn’t selected carefully, it’s possible to launch a mobile site that makes life harder for your users.

After being peppered with commercials for Pizza Hut Pasta all day on Sunday while watching football, my friend and I decided to take the leap and place an order.

Even after being inundated with the commercial that many times, I only could recall two of the varieties: Mac ‘N Cheese, Alfredo and …. something.  So I pulled out my Blackberry and browsed to PizzaHut.com to find the menu so we could make a decision.

At PizzaHut.com I was presented with the mobile version of their site.  “Maybe we can even order online,” I said out loud (very few of my friends share my passion for web strategy, so I’m sure I was talking to myself).

At that point, my primary task as a user changed from finding the mystery flavor of pasta, to ordering online, assuming that I’d be able to pick the flavor somewhere along the way.

That was when I hit my first dead-end.

After selecting “Place Order,” I was taken to a login screen.  No option to skip registration; no option to register.  I clicked “Help” (something a geek only does when there are NO other options).  The help page stated that I would have to register first on the main (desktop) site.

Useless.

Deciding that my new goal was a bit lofty, and eager to return my attention to the game, I went back to my initial task of trying to find the menu.  Without a “View Menu” option on the mobile site, I browsed to Google, and clicked the “Menu” link in the abstract on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).  My hope was that their browser-detection redirect only happened on their home page.

I was wrong, and was flung back to the same mobile site with the same three sad options.

My final two attempts (changing my browser emulation to “Microsoft IE” and trying to open the site in Opera Mobile) were equally unsuccessful.

Now, I should give praise to PizzaHut.com for having a mobile site, but in some ways they’ve missed the mark.

Mobile web designers need to be aware of the context in which their websites are used.  Typically, mobile users are looking for a specific piece of information (event details, address information, contact information, or in this case, a menu).  This differs from standard website usage in that desktop users may be “browsing” or just reading and researching.

There are a lot of ways that Pizza Hut could have avoided this.  A simple review of PizzaHut.com (the desktop version) reveals that “Menu” is the first item on the site’s primary navigation.  It must be an important piece of content!

I also suspect that viewing the web analytic data for PizzaHut.com would show a large amount of traffic to that section of that site.

As you plan your mobile site:

- Put yourself in the context of your users (pick up your phone, and start to browse).
- Review your standard website’s information architecture for pieces of content that are relevant to mobile users.
- Perform a review of your web analytics, paying close attention to how the pieces of content on your site that receive the most views can be consumed by mobile users.

Using these three steps when selecting content for your mobile site will help you avoid creating a site that, although optimized for the handheld device, doesn’t contain the information that your visitors are looking for.

The pasta was great, by the way.  If anyone knows anybody at Pizza Hut, have them call me.  I’ve got a team of developers that love pizza, and it looks like they’re in need of some mobile web consulting.

We’ll work something out …

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