Four of the nation’s largest newspaper publishers have created an online ad network designed to compete for national advertising dollars against Internet powerhouses Yahoo Inc., Google Inc, America Online and Microsoft Network.

Tribune Co., Gannett Co., The New York Times Co. and Hearst Corp. have formed a new company called quadrantOne to sell ad space on their local newspaper and broadcasting Web sites.

The idea is to provide one-stop shopping for advertisers looking to tap a national network of local audiences via well-trusted media brands such as the Chicago Tribune and the Houston Chronicle.

The name Quadrant One has meaning as well. “Quadrant One“ is the upper right quadrant on a 2×2 chart, where quality audience and national reach converge. Think of “Audience Quality“ on one axis and “National Reach“ on the other. The optimal media value is in the “upper right“, and you move into quadrantONE.

With close to 50 Million unique visitors and coverage in 27 of the top 30 DMA markets, quadrantONE  could be a powerful ad network and an interesting alternative to Adwords, TPN and the various other ad neworks. quadrantONE will provide its advertisers with access to sophisticated audience targeting by context, behavior and demographics. This is a combination not really offered by most other networks.

quadrantONE enters the marketplace with a new approach to selling premium online advertising to national brands. This well-funded online startup offers a cohesive national alliance of hundreds of local, credible Web sites. Backed by four of the nation’s top media companies, quadrantONE offers exclusive ad inventory (home page, sports, business, entertainment, etc) on premium news and information sites across the nation’s top local markets.

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I’ve been sick with the flu the last few days and not posted. My apologies for that. In the meantime…

Ten landing page tips to turn visitors into customers

There’s something about a ten-item list that makes us want to get all Hestonian on you and break out the archaic pronouns, especially when it comes to something like getting people who visit your site to actually buy from you. After all, you work hard to get clicks. What could be more important than turning those clicks into customers?

But we’re kind of a live-and-let-live bunch here, and we’re not so big on telling people what they have to do. So consider these a set of suggestions about how to help optimize your landing pages. That way, when people get to your site, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.

1. Tell them why they should buy from you
Clarity of your value proposition is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not. Ask yourself the question: “Why should I buy from this site?”

2. Keep ‘em with you
Protect your landing pages from the #1 threat to conversions: site flow disruption. After identifying a unique and compelling Value Proposition, you must ensure that you express it throughout your sales process in a clear, consistent and compelling way. Eliminate site flow disruption to help maximize conversions.

3. Don’t try to say too much
Don’t clutter your landing page with unnecessary details. Instead:
• Clearly state your key message using as few words as possible
• Use summary descriptions, sub-headings, bulleted lists and short paragraphs
• Adopt a standard one-column format for easy reading.

4. Make it simple
Improve the user experience with a site that is easy to navigate. A simple page layout that employs a clean visual and straightforward design is best. Here’s how:
• Design your site with a clear hierarchy with color and contrast for easily legible text
• Use meaningful and high-quality graphics (don’t clutter with too many)
• Use breadcrumbs to let visitors know where they are on your site
• Employ a clickable logo that takes the visitor to your homepage
• Use color to distinguish between visited and unvisited links.

Just as important, make sure you don’t:
• Employ horizontal scrolling
• Direct links to new browser windows
• Have flash-based content unless required.

5. Call them to action
Focus on one primary action per screen (don’t stuff too many products onto one screen). Make the call-to-action button clearly visible without having to scroll; don’t bury it under pages of information. Consider using tabs or a pop-up box to consolidate information.

6. Get specific
Provide product details and a large product image while displaying incentives—such as free shipping and warranty information—high on the page and close to the product. Don’t discourage visitors by requiring registration to your site.

7. Flaunt what you’ve got
What differentiates you from your competitors? Free shipping (both ways?), discounts, a 365-day warranty, price protection, privacy, customer service, etc.? If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

8. Search yourself
Make your site easy to navigate by helping potential customers find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. A search feature box should be simple and visible with a type-in field, not a link. To help increase conversions, make sure your search results link to product pages.

9. Rally the believers
Credibility is a true testament: people don’t buy from websites, people buy from people. Thus, testimonials from devout customers—or even a letter from the CEO/Editor—persuades the unbelieving.

10. Let them make the choice
“Why should I buy this specific product?” Almost every e-tailer forgets about this, but it’s the question that’s key to Mr. or Ms. Customer’s mind. Prove to him or her why they should buy this over the competitive product by offering reviews, ratings and comparisons.

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Jason Green over at Digital Point started a great thread, 65 Tips For Exploding Your Traffic!

I thought this post was so great I wanted to share with you. Jason owns http://www.sitesalary.com/. These are great tips for anyone who wants to increase their website traffic.

• 1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you
• 2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site
• 3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.
• 4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).
• 5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic. Everyone will link to you saying your wrong
• 6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers
• 7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature
• 8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors
• 9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page
• 10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)
• 11. Write articles and submit them to article directories
• 12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)
• 13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)
• 14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site
• 15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site
• 16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site
• 17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.
• 18. Submit a blog to a blog directory
• 19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories
• 20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)
• 21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for
• 22. Buy links to your site
• 23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site
• 24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI
• 25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website
• 26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!
• 27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook
• 28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush
• 29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)
• 30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)
• 31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list
• 32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.
• 33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.
• 34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche
• 35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates
• 36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.
• 37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.
• 38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them
• 39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages
• 40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website
• 41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site
• 42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche
• 43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.
• 44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.
• 45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters
• 46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews
• 47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.
• 48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.
• 49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.
• 50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.
• 51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.
• 52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.
• 53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you’ll do the same for them – split commissions on sales.
• 54. When you write a new article on your site – link to as many blogs as possible – they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.
• 55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.
• 56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google’s News search.
• 57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)
• 58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).
• 59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).
• 60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.
• 61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages – put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.
• 62. Make posts about sex (don’t have to post anything rude) – and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.
• 63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche – there’s always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.
• 64. Write good headlines/titles – good titles get more clicks.
• 65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say “My Website Yeah, Check it out.”

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Have you been wondering what had been going through the heads of Microsoft executives as they prepared to make the bid for Yahoo?

In December, I got my hands on three confidential documents that Microsoft used in its lobbying against the Google-DoubleClick deal, and I posted them on Bits. (See that post here.)

Re-reading those documents now show that Microsoft was clear with the Federal Trade Commission that an approval of Google-DoubleClick might lead it to take drastic action–like it is doing now with its bid for Yahoo.

Microsoft wrote in one of the documents:

“If the transaction is allowed to proceed, Google will control so much of the publishers’ inventory and such a large portion of advertisers that Internet competitors trying to catch up will not have access to sufficient inventory and advertisers to mount a credible competitive challenge to Google.”

Microsoft warned that the DoubleClick merger would leave Google delivering almost 78 percent of all non-search ads served to third-party Web pages, on a revenue basis. That means that a combined Google-DoubleClick gives Google dominance over more than three-quarters of sites that do not have their own technology for display ad serving. Microsoft and Yahoo are the only two companies who have their own ad-serving.

Google has long been dominant in search ads, those small text ads that run alongside search results or on the bottom of thousands of sites across the Web. Google made its fortune selling those to companies that paid based on how many people clicked on those ads. Microsoft and Yahoo each lost the battle in search, as Microsoft acknowledged in its writings to the F.T.C.

Microsoft wrote:

“One need look no further than search advertising to see that despite Microsoft’s size, technical prowess, and strong incentives, it has been unable to compete effectively with Google in search and that Google’s lead in search advertising has continued to grow because of network efforts.”

But the next flood of advertising money is coming online for display ads - flashy photos or videos that are used to generate brand recognition rather than immediate clicks for advertisers like Pepsi and Nike. And display ads will provide the next battleground between Google and its foes.

Google hopes to use DoubleClick’s connections to brand advertisers and major media companies to get in on the display pie. Microsoft warned the F.T.C. that Google might initially offer DoubleClick’s tools for free to media companies so that it can gain control over display ads.

Yahoo and Microsoft each separately have leads over Google in display ads, but Microsoft told the F.T.C. that a Google-DoubleClick would be much stronger on this front:

“Significant companies like Microsoft, Time Warner and Yahoo! that continue to make investments in non-search advertising will be unable to counter the anticompetitive impact of this transaction.”

You can count on Google’s lobbyists giving a good fight against a marriage of its closest two competitors. Microsoft, after all, did its best to block the Google-DoubleClick deal. The technology giant hired the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to create a group called the Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplace.

It might seem the commission allows almost anything. It has only been weeks since the commission cleared Google’s acquisition of the ad-serving company DoubleClick and just months since the commission cleared Microsoft’s purchase of aQuantive, the main competitor of DoubleClick.

You can also be sure that Microsoft will use its arguments against Google’s recent deal again to claim that it simply had no choice but to shell out $44.6 billion for Yahoo.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/microsofts-inner-thoughts-on-online-advertising/

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