Marketing Tactics

Here’s a brain teaser for you: 1. Most people claim to dislike advertising on the web. I know, display advertising is probably despised more than less flamboyant search ads. But in my recent survey, 71.4% of the respondents who don’t work in marketing claim that they never or rarely look at the sponsored search ads […]

Forgive me, I was going to title this post something more subtle like, “Social media’s sin of omission,” but as a blogger shamelessly vying for your attention, I find myself succumbing to the very social media marketing arms race of “say what?!” that I want to push back on. I know, as a marketer, it’s

As part of my adventure in academia at Harvard to explore new ideas in marketing technology, I’ve been taking a class on the intersection of economics and computer science. It’s an incredibly vibrant research area these days, particularly because online advertising auctions such as Google AdWords have provided a fruitful real-world application for software-driven market

This is one of those rare, cross-over posts related to my work at ion, but the concept at play is something that I think you’ll find relevant in many contexts. The recent popularity of two posts of mine — 8 dimensions of excellent landing pages on Search Engine Land and the 7 levels of landing

You have to admit, the social dynamics of Twitter are worth a chuckle, especially when you try to explain them to people who aren’t into it: You overhear something someone says. For some random reason, it intrigues you. So you start following them. And listening in on their conversations. And repeating what they say, verbatim,

If you’ll forgive me for a little promotion of my company — usually I try to keep my posts here as agnostic as possible — I’d like to share with you a book, a story, and a dream. If you’re a marketing technologist, I think you’ll find this relevant on a number of levels, especially

The law of propinquity states that the greater physical (or psychological) proximity between people, the greater the chance that they will form friendships or romantic relationships. Other things being equal, the more we see people and interact with them, the more probable we are to like them. The classic example of propinquity is that two

A colleague of mine recently said her New Year’s resolution is to blog, blog, blog. She’s a busy executive, with little time to spare, and always a hundred other things competing for her attention. But she also knows that active participation in the social media sphere — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. — is increasingly

Are we on the verge of a new S curve for search engine advertising? S curves are a phenomenon of technology adoption. They begin where a particular technology — in this case, ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) — arrive on the scene with chaotic, slow growth while early adopters figure it out. Then