Sitewire

Television Advertisers are Following Their Audience Online
- Katie McNally

With the growing popularity of broadband internet connectivity we are seeing a heightened trend of TV commercials, movie previews and news programs moving to the Web. We have been hearing and talking about the integration of online and offline marketing for years. It is now becoming a reality in the eyes of the greater public with this very visible trend. We will see the same Ford commercial we saw on TV the night before when watching the baseball game, on the MSN homepage the next morning when we search for our teams' upcoming game schedule. Over the course of the next year we will see the evolution of how one media's marketing campaigns come to be represented through another media.

With the first wave of TV commercials that were posted online, we simply saw a frozen image and a link to the exact replica of the TV commercial that aired on TV. Now in the second generation, there have been a few changes that make these commercials a better fit for the interactivity of the Web, such as the ability to hold the curser over a portion of a car within a car ad to learn more about product features. There have also been a few TV commercials that made their way to the Web accompanied by an additional text box that provides more information. The next step for the integration of these forms of media will be to shorten the length of the TV commercials for their debut online and heighten their interactivity to an even greater degree. These changes are all the result of normal user behavior statistics varying completely between TV and the Web. Can you imagine sitting at your computer and watching an entire 30 second TV commercial? This would seem outlandish unless you were already very close to the purchase phase of your search, which would be an unlikely location for an ad. So, marketers are tailoring the characteristics of the TV commercials online to speak more fluidly to the online audience.

Yet another interesting concept in relation to television advertisers following their audience online is that their audience is at once drastically larger. While there is the growing capability to target geographically via the internet, the main audience of the Web continues to be world wide as the name so states - The World Wide Web. We are able to go online and watch local television news broadcasts from across the country or across the world. Similarly, as TV commercials find their way online they will have to speak to a much broader audience.

What we can take away from this glaring example of the online and offline integration is that now, more than ever, we need to look at our marketing campaigns offline and online as a whole. The lines continue to blur between these two distinctions with offline making its way online through TV commercials and the onset of pay per call. Conversely, online continues to make its way offline with mobile phone marketing and URLs appearing on billboards. It seems a waste of time to continue to distinguish, for eventually it will all just be marketing whether it takes place online or offline. We now need to start considering the effects of this paradigm shift and how we can best continue to effectively reach our audience as the times change.

Back to top

You May Think We're Nuts
- Leslie Jackson

You may Think Your Search Engine Marketing Folks at Sitewire are Nuts… but Here's Some Proof We're not (at Least When it Comes to SEO)…

If you've received search recommendations for your Web site you've most likely been informed that it is of utmost importance to have your keyword phrases repeated up to five times within the content of a Web page. You have probably also realized that the burden of such repetition can often compromise the overall readability of your Web page content. However - the following information serves to help you understand how and why keyword density is important for effective search engine optimization.

Keyword density is based on the amount of times your keyword or keyword phrase appears on the page in proportion to the other words on the page. Each of the major search engines has incorporated the importance of keyword density into their search algorithm. Each engine also has its own policy as to when to penalize for too high a keyword density rating - at which point, you're considered a spammer.

So what is the magic percentage for keyword density? Answer - between 5 and 7 percent of the site's content should consist of your targeted keyword or keyword phrase. Anything over 7 percent can be considered spam and a consequence of spamming could be the search engine dropping your rankings dramatically.

Too high a keyword density could also adversely affect the readability of your Web page and the user experience. After all, you want visitors to convert. Not to be confused by your keyword-dense page.

So there you have it - more information as to WHY we ask you to repeat your keyword phrase up to five times within the content of your Web page. Make sure you incorporate this tactic in your search engine marketing efforts to help improve your chances of achieving high search engine rankings.

Back to top

If you only Learn one Thing Today…
- Scott Kaufmann

…The Internet, the iPhone and the Decrease in Pirates.

You are probably not obsessed with technology like I am. Maybe you don't subscribe to every industry newsletter, read all of the technology headlines in Google news and discuss new technology with your friends for hours. I'm jealous. But then again I did try out the iPhone about a month ago before it's official release yesterday, I know about the correlation of global temperature changes with the number of pirates worldwide and have even drawn my own interesting parallel of the human maturation cycle and the Internet maturation cycle. The third is probably most relevant.

Did you know the internet was first brought online in 1969, as a project that connected four universities? But the World Wide Web, which made the internet into the visual communication medium for information delivery that it is today, was not implemented and publicly available until 1994. Widespread adoption took place in 1994 and 1995. The first online banner ads appeared in 1994. The first banner ever featured on a web site, shown below, was an ad for AT&T.

Then Prodigy, AOL and other similar dial up ISP connections became popular in the US. We jumped into email and the World Wide Web as a way to get information quickly and communicate cheaply. The WWW became synonymous with "The Internet" and movies like "The Net" came out with fantasy about where the internet might be going and what kind of dangers loomed in the future. The "Internet Boom" or ".com boom" happened around 1998, and companies began utilizing the internet for business, and "every company had to have a web site." Only 7 years later, the internet has quickly gone through its infancy, the adolescent years of awkward rapid growth and its "brazen and rebellious" teenage years that we saw during the internet boom. The last few years were much like young adult or college years, characterized by rapid learning, zealous analysis and aggressive as well as fast paced changes. So where are we now? If the internet matures much like we do, then it would be ready to make its sociological debut and head out into "the real world", hopefully nothing like MTV's version of "The Real World". If this is true, we might notice an eager industry/marketplace/medium that is figuring out who and what it is, and what it will be used for in future generations. Sounds pretty accurate to me.

The very first banner ad, in a most apropos manner, actually predicted a trend that would lead to the internet commerce and advertising revolution that has ultimately led to the rise of the over 200 billion dollar industry that we see today. Where do you see the internet going in another 7 or 10 years? Email me your thoughts and I'll discuss this topic in one of my next newsletter articles .

Note: As my girlfriend would be happy to tell you, I'm often wrong. But every once in a while I might have a bit of good insight. In my June 2005 newsletter article I discussed the "next big thing" and commented on how I thought "On Demand" or "In Demand" would eventually render traditional TV and media casting formats obsolete. In early August, Howard Stern announced that he would be moving his television programming to an On Demand format, allowing viewers to choose which episode or "bit" they would like to watch, order it and watch it instantly.

Until next time...

Of course I wouldn't leave you without a link to Learn More about the iPhone and a chart with some information about the decrease in the number of Pirates vs. The Change in Global Temperature. 

For more information about modern pirates, my co-worker Mark has recommended this book.

Back to top

"Best Bosses" Finalists
- Lacey French

Sitewire Co-Founders Named Among Fortune Small Business and Winning Workplaces' 2005 "Best Bosses" Finalists.

For those of us who work at Sitewire, it has always been apparent just how unique our Bosses and Co-Founders, Bret Giles and Margie Traylor, truly are. But now they are being recognized nationally for this uniqueness. On August 4, 2005, Winning Workplaces and FSB: FORTUNE Small Business magazine selected Bret and Margie as one of 26 finalists in its third annual "Best Bosses" competition. This award is presented to business leaders who have demonstrated resiliency and innovation in generating high-performance workplaces.

Since Sitewire's establishment, Bret and Margie set the goal of creating a positive, dynamic workplace where internal camaraderie and involvement in the local community would be as important as achieving company goals. With the launch of "Culture Club" this year, Sitewire has continued to focus on incorporating the fun into our workplace environment by participating in events such as: The Sitewire Olympics, Halloween Costume Contest, White Elephant Gift Exchange and the How well do you know your Cube-mate game. (This last activity proved that even while you may have worked with someone for 5 years, you still have yet to find out the most interesting things about them. For example do you know if your co-worker would rather be a fire hydrant, zebra or squash?? Well, we do!)

Bret and Margie also make an ongoing commitment to always know what's going on in the business rather than strictly working on the business. Our monthly Breakfast with the Bosses event gives us a chance to catch up with Bret and Margie in a laid-back setting, all the while getting to enjoy some pretty tasty breakfasts. Needless to say, those of us who have had the pleasure of working with Bret and Margie and experiencing what has to be one of the most distinct workplace atmospheres could not be more excited for them to be receiving this recognition.

Be sure to check out next month's Sitewire newsletter with word of the results of the FSB Winning Workplaces Best Bosses Award. The winners will be announced at a conference and celebration in Chicago on September 20 and will be profiled in the October 2005 issue of FSB: FORTUNE Small Business. If you are interested in learning more about the event, you may visit the Winning Workplaces Web site.

Back to top