Salesforce.com Creates Google Ad Channel
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE  SAN FRANCISCO - Online software pioneer Salesforce.com Inc. will help Internet search leader Google Inc. sell ads as part of a partnership that falls short of Wall Street's anticipation since word of the alliance leaked last month.
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(InfoWorld) - Google introduced a new service for small businesses that allows visitors to search within their Web sites on a customized search page. The product, Custom Business Search Edition, adds to Google'sÂ growing portfolio of paid servicesÂ for businesses. It builds on Google'sÂ Custom Search Engine, a free, ad-supported product launched last October for searching within a predefined group of Web sites. A key difference with the paid edition is that businesses can customize the search page with their own logo and color scheme. They can also modify results by manipulating an XML (Extensible Markup Language) feed of the raw search results, to guide visitors toward products the company wants to sell, for example. The service is priced at $100 per year for Web sites with up to 500 pages, and $500 for up to 50,000 pages, Google said on its Web site. Custom Business Search Edition uses the same index Google uses to deliver its other search results, and Google's own servers are used for searches. To set up the service, customers follow a set-up wizard and copy a small amount of code to their Web site. They get access to a reporting graph with daily and monthly views of how many times people used the search engine and what search terms they used. The service provides an option for businesses who want to bring Google's powerful search technology into their organization but without paying for more expensive products. The company already sells the Google Search Appliance, starting at $30,000 for 500,000 documents, which indexes material in file servers, content management systems, databases and other sources. It also offers the Mini Search Appliance starting at $1,995 for 50,000 documents. Along with English, Google's Custom Search Business Edition supports Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. Â
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At the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, Webmaster Radio&#8217;s Jim Hedger is currently holding a press conference which is making public the investigative report that Google is serving Adwords and Adsense advertisements on Google properties and the sites of Google AdSense members who are connected with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups which [...]
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Ryan Malesevich is back today with a look at another handy WordPress plugin - Adsense Beautifier.   I'm here to let you guys in on a little secret. From what I hear, if you're using Google Adsense, if you add images next to the ads it helps through with your click through rate. And a better click through rate means higher revenues. Now, I've never done it but I hear it works out pretty well. So how exactly would you go about doing that? You could do it manually, but where is the fun in that?   He talks about what the plugin does - generate the Adsense code for you, without having to go back to Google each time. It supports most of the syles that Google offers currently, but a few are left out. It also helps arrange the ads to make it easier to place them on the page.   Installation is easy, and complete details on the plugin can be found on the project homepage.
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In an effort to better compete with rival Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com said Tuesday that they would collaborate on several services aimed at small business.
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BERKELEY, California  - Web search leader Google  Inc.  and marketing software maker Salesforce.com Inc.   said on Tuesday they have jointly developed a new  product that lets Google advertising be resold using Salesforce  software, as part of a wide-ranging alliance.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has lost the services of the co-founders and top executives of dMarc Broadcasting,Â the radio advertising company Google acquired one year agoÂ to push into that market. Chad Steelberg, dMarc's chairman and CEO, and his brother Ryan Steelberg, dMarc's president, no longer work at Google, a Google spokesman said on Friday. The spokesman declined to answer further questions, so it's not known when was their last day at Google, whether they resigned or were fired, and who is in charge of Google's radio ad operation now. The short and terse way in which Google is dealing with the news of the Steelbergs' departure seems to indicate that tensions and disagreements played a part in the situation and that the rift wasn't amiable, an analyst said. "It could have been handled differently. This is suggestive of a deeper problem," said Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. The Steelbergs founded the company in 2002, and Google acquired it in February of last year as part of its attempts to diversify from paid search advertising into other forms of advertising. DMarc's technology links radio stations and advertisers and automates various aspects of the radio ad-selling process in a way that Google has said is very similar to the way it matches ads to the users of its search engine. The Steelbergs' decision to abandon the company they founded could stem from problems Google may be having in carrying out its plan for radio advertising, Sterling said. "This may set back the effort to some degree if there's a larger problem with executing the strategy," he said. Moreover, when founders leave their company, it often happens that loyal employees follow them out the door, and if this happens with dMarc, it could further destabilize the operation, Sterling said. Google paid $102 million in cash for all outstanding equity interests in dMarc and agreed to make up to $1.136 billion in additional payments when and if certain performance goals were met. Google has been integrating dMarc's technology into its AdWords advertising platform to open a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers. Google recently began testing its radio ad system with some advertisers and radio stations. "Google is committed to the audio business. We will continue to gather feedback during the Audio Ads beta test and are happy with the progress to date," a Google spokesman said. "We remain focused on delivering value to the radio industry as we continue to expand radio station inventory and enhance the product so that it's ready for all advertisers."
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Business software maker Salesforce.com Inc.  said on Tuesday it would help other companies market their software products on its Web site and charge commissions on sales generated by the new service.
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New pay-per-call paid-search engine model has potential for luring new ad business.
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(InfoWorld) - GoogleÂ is testing a new advertising format that it hopes will make people spend more time looking at ads online, and even embed them in their own Web sites. Called Gadget ads, the service has already been in testing with a small handful of clients. On Wednesday Google announced that it was widening the tests considerably, which means more of the ads will start appearing on Web sites. The format allows companies to build ads that include audio, video, games, and live data feeds, and to spruce them up with the Flash and JavaScript programming languages. The ads wind up looking like small Web pages within a Web page, and people can save them to a blog or to their iGoogle home page. Google posted several examples of the Gadget ads on its Web site. An ad for a Nissan car lets people type a U.S. postal code in the advertisement to get a map showing traffic conditions where they live. Another for the Six Flags theme park includes a simple game and a link to "add to your Google home page." The ads give advertisers detailed metrics about who uses them, according to Google. The Six Flags ad delivered 94.5 million impressions to 17.1 million unique users, and was interacted with about 200,000 times, Google said. 0.3 percent of those exposed to the Gadget ads interacted with them, Google said. In comparison, direct mail generates a response rate of 2.18 percent, according to figures for 2006 from the Direct Marketing Association. The Gadget ads run onÂ Google's Adsense advertising networkÂ and are priced by number of clicks or number of impressions. Google didn't say when the testing period would end, but the it said Gadget ads will eventually be available in 20 languages and 100 countries. Microsoft and other companies also let advertisers put video and interactive features in Web sites, but Google claims that its ads offer more ways to keep people engaged. The ads can also appear on YouTube and sellers can include part of a checkout process in the advertisement.
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Google AdSense Expands to Multiple Advertising Units  Google is now letting AdSense publishers place Google contextually targeted AdSense advertising on up to 3 placements on one web page. Google AdSense had always stuck to their guns about one AdSense ad per web page, however, web users may be getting used to ...
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Blog: Google now lets advertisers see exactly which web sites their ads appear
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Salesforce.com (Quote, Chart) CEO Marc Benioff is hoping to do to call centers and help desks what he has accomplished in the CRM space.
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NOVEMBER 03, 2004  - On-demand CRM software provider Salesforce.com Inc. is branching out to offer hosted application development technology and online marketplace services to supplement its own software services.
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Inside Adsense announces that the recently launched (for beta testing) referral scheme for Adwords advertisers&#8217;Â  products will soon be available to all Adsense publishers in referrals-supported languages. Dubbed as Referrals 2.0, the new scheme allows Adsense publishers to direct traffic from their sites to various advertised products of Adwords clients and earn on a cost-per-action [...]
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Benioff resists Office 2.0 distraction Salesforce.com wants to be many things to all people. But a move into hosted office productivity apps won't be appearing on its agenda anytime soon.â¦
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Google's new commitment to on-demand apps should terrify Salesforce.com.