I know that many people around the country view Idaho as one of the states where everyone lives on farms and votes Republican. Yes, Idaho did go solidly to McCain, but one of the candidates running in the state decided to try a clever marketing ploy in a state that is devoutly pro-life. This is an actual absentee ballot from the state of Idaho:
 Heretical!
Tribes, the newest book from famed internet marketer Seth Godin not only preaches the message of being the heretic, but practices it as well. One of the first details you’ll notice about the book is the absence of chapters. That’s right, the entire book is simply a collection of sections, each with a bolded headline, that further the idea of tribes.
According to Seth, “Tribes are about faith - about belief in an idea and in a community.” He also proposes that anyone, anywhere, no matter their position or status can be a leader of a tribe. But though all have the potential, the world is in dire need of individuals to rise up and lead.
The book spends considerable time with the idea of heretics, those that are outside the mainstream and don’t accept the status quo, and advocates the idea that leaders of the most influential tribes will initially be viewed as heretics. I couldn’t agree more and I think that Seth Godin is a prime example of a heretic. Reading the book you can’t help but feel that Seth is not only describing himself, but trying to inspire others to follow his lead and find their own path.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The 151 page format and small size made the reading quick and allowed Seth to make his point without beating the reader over the head with it. The examples in the book were short and effective. Seth Godin yet again delivers.
Google announced Monday on the AdWords blog that users would no longer be seeing “Inactive for search” for keywords and instead would be given a first page bid estimate if their bid was too low. Many of you may have missed this little tidbit in the announcement because it was somewhat couched in their announcement that Quality Score would now be calculated for each and every search at the time of the search. That’s just fine by me and I really don’t have any problems with the first page bid estimate either. I’ve been guesstimating it for awhile since showing on the first page is critical. A majority of users don’t ever go to the 2nd page, so I see the merit. However, in reading the post from Google I noticed a couple of disturbing answers in the FAQs they posted:
 Finally, for first page bid estimates, many of you were interested in learning how these would compare to your old minimum bids.Â
For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you’ll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page.
Google saying their estimates will be higher? Sounded a bit fishy to me, so I did some research and here is a screenshot from an account:
I don’t know about you, but this sure looks like Google is pumping up the “estimates” in order to get people to up their bids. These keywords are showing on the first page at these bid levels as evidenced by the average position. So is Google trying to pump up their revenues to satisfy Wall Street?Â
I don’t know when Google officially tweaked their Analytics interface, but I noticed the slight change today. 
 I would draw your attention to the dropdown menu on the left just below “Ecommerce Overview”. This used to be on the right side of the screen and frankly I think it works a lot better over here. I used to always be clicking the wrong dropdown when I was trying to change the date range. What do you think of the change?
In a post over on TechCrunch, Don Reisinger notes how online advertising spend is going up, up, up, while the overall economy seems to be in the midst of a R-E-C-E-S-S-I-O-N.
Intuitively the findings make perfect sense to me. Say you’re an e-retailer who sells products online. You are feeling somewhat of a pinch with sales decreasing and so you look for areas to cut costs. The marketing and advertising budget is almost always one of the first targets, so you start there. You have the option of cutting traditional media, online display or search advertising. With search you know that at least the person is interested somehow in your product or category, hence the search. Online display ads and traditional media however lack the clear connection to interested customers.
So, snip snip, you cut out some traditional media and/or display ads. You may even make deeper cuts and shift some of the spend to search because it is more effective. So congratulations to Google, who has positioned themselves to dominate even an economy in recession.
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I usually avoid politics in civilized conversation, but I believe that this deserves mentioning. Earlier this morning Sen. John McCain announced that he chose Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his running mate. So why is this noteworthy for RighteousMarketing?
Strategy at its best
No doubt about it, this selection was highly strategic. The Dems just finished their convention which was as much about Hilary as it was about Obama, so he’s partially stealing their thunder with this announcement. Also, there are still a good number of hard-core Clinton supporters that aren’t sold on Obama because they wanted to see a female in the White House. So what does McCain do? He gives all those women a chance to put a woman in the White House. Sure it’s as VP, but don’t forget that McCain turned 72 today. The first female president would only be a heart beat away.
After years of using the Google Keyword tool and trying to interpret what those stupid green bars meant, Google has finally come around and is showing real numbers in the search volume estimator. Hallelujah! Check it out:
First I would like to point out that this feature was a long time coming. With all the data Google has, all the users of their AdWords platform and all the money being spent, this seems like it should have been available (at least for AdWords customer) for a long time. However, I am elated to finally be able to have an idea of how many impressions I might get. This will allow me to put together much more accurate budgets for ad spend in the future.
As I logged into my Google AdWords account this morning I was greeted by a new message from Google. The message read,
“The pay-per-action beta will be discontinued the last week of August 2008. After this date, your pay-per-action campaigns and ads will no longer be active.”
This comes right after Google announced its new Google Affiliates program (which is just a rebranding of Performics) and seems to confirm the rumors that Google would be shutting down their PPA beta in favor of a single solution through Google Affiliates. I personally think that the PPA program was underwhelming for most advertisers and publishers. It really seemed like they hacked the AdWords platform to offer a watered down affiliate system for AdWords users, so in the end this will probably be for the better. However, they’ll have to link it into AdWords if they really want it to take off.
It was a cold and wintry day in Cupertino. Steve Jobs sat comfortably in his office at the headquarters of Apple, greedily counting his fortune. Things were good for Steve. The iPod ruled the MP3 market with an iron fist. Through iTunes Apple even managed to subdue the music industry. Apple laptops, with their new Intel chips and Windows operating system, had shattered the Windows monopoly and gained market share point by point. The iPhone, now free from AT&T, looked to rule the smartphone fiefdom. But this was not to be an ordinary night for Mr. Jobs.
A Message
As Steve prepared to sleep in his ridiculously expensive house he thought he heard a noise. It was his iPhone notifying him of an email. He quickly tapped the screen to reveal this message, “You’ve become the bad Apple in the barrel. Three ghosts will visit you tonight and show you the error of your ways. -Bill Gates”
A Visitor
“Hmm. I thought Bill was saving the world,” Steve thought to himself. However, he quickly shrugged off the mysterious message and hopped into bed. Sleep did not come quickly enough as a slight breeze was soon felt across Steve’s face, an odd occurence with his fully climate-controlled house. As he sat up to see the cause of this anamoly he discovered it’s source to be a computer, hovering a few feet in the air, that looked strangely familiar. “Lisa?” he said?
Lisa
“Yes, I am Lisa, the ghost of Apple past. I have come this night to show you how it all began, and, more importantly, to show you where it went wrong. Click the “Apple past” icon on the screen and we’ll begin.”
 To Be Continued …
As I was reading TechCrunch today I noticed a recurring theme; Yahoo is starting to sink like the Titanic. Three separate posts detail how top talent is leaving the company (or getting fired, depending on how you view these things), Microsoft has officially pulled out of all negotiations to purchase all or part of Yahoo (and make a somewhat viable competitor to Google), and that Google will now swoop in like an opportunistic vulture to gobble up the rotting remains of the once powerful Yahoo.
I know that sounds awfully dire and I purposefully conjured up some pretty vivid imagery, but let me clarify a couple of points. First, Yahoo still has billions of dollars of value simply because of their brand equity and web property portfolio. Nobody will enjoy the spoils of Yahoo’s fall without paying a pretty penny. Second, Yahoo may be able to survive independently, but not unless something drastic happens. Jerry Yang can’t just make a few minor tweaks with the algorithm and the website to save this ship. He needs to change the way Yahoo competes because going head-to-head with Google in search will just get them beat up like the scrawny kid on the elementary school playground.