What do big brands use for SEM bid management?

I’ve lost touch a little with the paid search bid management market since leaving Adobe. I thought it was time to see what’s going on, and which platforms the big advertisers are using. A bit of digging into the HTML of the Google SERPs gives a good indication of what’s going on. Third party platforms […]

Is it time for Ad Tech 2.0?

Last week I had a chat with Business Insider’s Lara O’Reilly, prompted by the news that Google is locking down access to buying Youtube ads. She wrote that up, and here’s what I said: “Programmatic is meant to be this open way of buying and selling media, but it’s not that, and it hasn’t been […]

Culture comes from the top: Outbrain

Last week I found a distasteful ad underneath a Guardian article about the sad death of cricketer Phil Hughes. It was one of this ‘native’ units that directs you to a similar article on another site. Like a typical middle class whinger, I expressed my dismay on Twitter. Not the right ad for Outbrain to […]

Is it time to abandon IAB standard ad formats?

I spoke on a panel this week about media innovation alongside Andrew Girdwood of LBi, and moderated by Amit Kotecha of Quantcast. Two topics dominated the discussion: native ads and data. Native isn’t just advertorial Native formats attract a certain amount of derision (“it’s just advertorial”) – one of the reasons I don’t like the name. Ben […]

Falling CPCs are inevitable if Google increases paid ad space

True to form, Google announced another bumper quarter last night. But one statistic causing some hand wringing is the continual fall of CPC prices. Google say this isn’t a problem and not a concern for their business. Not only do I agree with them, but I think Google are the cause of the decrease in […]

Growth of Internet Ads (and Demise of Press) since 2000

In my last job (c.2004) one of the press buyers said to me, “Nobody would visit your bloody web sites if it wasn’t for ads in newspapers!” I don’t think that was true then, and I’m sure it isn’t true now. Latest forecasts published by ZenithOptimedia demonstrate the enormous year-on-year growth of internet advertising in […]

Google Trademark Policy Change

On Wednesday Google announced separate trademark policy changes in that affect the UK, Ireland and Canada and the rest of Europe differently. Reading about the changes on the web, I’m really surprised how many articles have got this one wrong. Mostly it seems to stem from an inability to distinguish that different policies have applied, […]

Google Took 88.9% UK Market Share In 2009

The IAB UK released its 2009 Internet Adspend report this week, declaring that £3.54bn was spent on online advertising last year. Paid search took a whopping £2.15bn, 60.7% of the total. My previous analysis on Google’s financial results suggests Google made £1.912bn in 2009. That’s an 88.9% market share. The share is broadly in line […]

Yawho Are You?

SEM traffic is a bit like scotch whisky. You might think you’re getting a pure single malt from the glens of Google or Yahoo, when in fact you’re washing down a blend of different traffic sources. Sure, you’ll get the strong flavours of the world’s leading search engines, but often there’s an after taste of […]

Automated Bid Management: The Debate Continues…

After a long hiatus, this week I thought it was about time that I came up with another blog post. Whilst scratching around for ideas, I noticed the perennial debate about automated bid management had sprung up again over on Search Engine Land. Guest columnist Nic Abramovic posted a rant about automated bidding tools. The […]

Jonathan Beeston

Online advertising, digital marketing, social media and technology

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