Most corporate houses, advertisers and Internet marketing professionals are jumping on the video advertisement bandwagon. People are becoming amenable to the idea of watching an online video. They also do not mind watching an online advert.

Experts feel that video adverts can help the advertiser to pack extra power in the message that he wants to communicate with the audience. The presence of animation and special effects only helps one to add an extra zing. However, when preparing a video advert for the online medium, you need to take the help of professionals. At least, this is what a report from Clickz.com suggests. The report states that, “over half of online adults share a hunger for online video, while 19 percent watch or download video on a typical day, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report on online video. Those who pursue video favour sophisticated content. Sixty-two percent of online video viewers express a preference for video created by professionals, versus 19 percent who would rather watch video produced by amateurs. Eleven percent remains agnostic to the skill level of the creator. YouTube, which provides a mix of consumer-generated and professionally-produced video, is frequented by 27 percent of the online video audience.”

So, if you are interested in preparing a video advert, then you need to invest in professional staff. At the same time, your online video adverts should not be copy lifted from your ads that run on the TV networks. This is because the difference in resolution makes the TV ad appear blurred and grainy on an online medium. According to Lanctot of Avenue A/Razorfish, “It’s easy to repurpose TV Ads, but it’s not a good idea. Everyone seems to agree, but they keep doing it.” You also need to factor in the duration of the video advert. A survey carried out by YouGuv in association with Utarget Networks revealed that 93% of the British population is open to the idea of watching an online video ad provided it does not exceed the 15 second limit.
So, while coming up with a video advert, do not forget to follow these small but vital points.

PPC [Pay Per Click] is a huge market. There are many advertisers and business houses that make use of PPC. As an Internet marketing professional, you must be aware that under PPC, the advertiser has to make a payment when a person clicks on the ad. These ads are displayed in search results as well as on third party websites. The webmasters of these third party sites receive payments whenever the ad gets clicked. Hence, many a times site owners incessantly click on the ad so as to generate more revenue. In other words, it will not be wrong to say that the very operating premise of PPC has given a rise to click fraud.
A report that appeared in Marketingvox.com states that there has been a rise in the incidence of click fraud. The report states that, “Pay-per-click (PPC) industry fraud figures for the second quarter of 2007 increased a full percentage point from the previous quarter, reaching an average of 15.8 percent, according to Click Forensics, Inc.’s Click Fraud Index, MarketingCharts reports. The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 25.6 percent. That’s up from 21.9 percent in 1Q07 and 19.2 percent in 4Q06.”
The above report seems to have created an impact on Google AdSense. Hence, they have initiated something known as CPA [Cost-Per-Action]. Here the advertiser has to pay only if the person who clicks the ad performs an action specified by the advertiser. For instance, if the advertiser states that anyone who clicks the ad should register for a newsletter, then that particular advertiser will make the payment only if someone who has visited the site by clicking a CPA ad, subscribes for the newsletter.
Experts feel that CPA might help to rein in the rising rate of click fraud. According to a report that appeared in CNETnews.com, “On the morning of day three here at Search Engine Strategies (”SES”) San Jose, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, gave her keynote presentation. She said a lot of interesting things, but of particular note to me was that she deemed cost-per-action (CPA) “the Holy Grail.” According to Marissa, Google is making moves towards cost-per-action as a more ideal auction-based pricing model, but she also pointed out that it’s a long way away.”
Thus, CPA might be the model of future. In addition, if you are one of the many advertisers who have had a harrowing time with PPC and click-fraud, then CPA might help you to get some relief.

Small [and at times medium] enterprises often question, “ Is it necessary for my organisation to make a space for itself on the virtual world? Will a website prove beneficial?” Well, if you are interested in getting maximum customers and increasing your sales, then you need to create a presence for yourself in the virtual world. This is because Internet is rapidly gaining popularity amongst the general population. So, you have an increasing number of people who are spending more time with the Internet rather than TV.

A report from Marketingvox.com perhaps underlines the above-mentioned fact. The report states that, The IBM Institute for Business Value survey of more than 2,400 households in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Australia covered global usage and adoption of new multimedia devices and media and entertainment consumption on PCs, mobile phones, portable media players and more. The global findings overwhelmingly suggest personal Internet time rivals TV time, IBM said:
· Among consumer respondents, 19% stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus 9% of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing.
· 66% reported viewing 1-4 hours of TV per day, versus 60% who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.
The above-mentioned report perhaps establishes the fact that an increasing number of people are getting hooked to the virtual world. A presence of website will ensure that your products and services are able to get the desired exposure.
In the opinion of ill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services, “Consumers are demonstrating their desire for both wired and wireless access to content: an average of 81% of consumers surveyed globally indicated they’ve watched or want to watch PC video, and an average of 42% indicated they’ve watched or want to watch mobile video.”
The report also highlights the importance of Internet marketing and search engine optimization. Internet marketing will ensure that your products and services get displayed in the virtual world. Similarly, trying out Internet marketing strategies like email marketing and banner advertising will ensure that the product stays in the minds of the customers. On the other hand, optimizing your site for the search engines will ensure that you are easily discoverable when people are using search engines.

Frankly speaking, there are many forms of internet marketing and advertising. In other words, as an internet marketing professional, there are many options available to you. You can decide to give info of your products and services via the emails. On the other hand, you can choose to display them via banner advertising. Then, you have the choice of including them in a PPC [Pay Per Click] campaign. In short, today’s internet marketing professional has a galore of choice before him.

However, have you ever given a thought to video games? Yes! Yes! Those same video games that are loved by millions, worshiped by billions and cursed by a few thousands. Now, you are likely going to question me about the logic behind including a talk on video game in a blog that mainly focuses on search engine optimisation and Internet marketing.

Well, advertising in a video game might just be the next big thing, especially, if this particular report from ClickZ is to be believed. The report states that, “A recent study of approximately 600 video game players found that those gamers exposed to in-game ads while playing displayed an increased brand recognition compared to those who were not shown ads. The survey was conducted by Nielsen Entertainment, a unit of The Nielsen Company, and undertaken in Q1 of this year on behalf of in-game advertising network Massive, a unit of Microsoft. As part of the survey, respondents from Massive partner Electronic Arts’ “Need for Speed Carbon,” racing game were placed into a test or control group based on whether they played on an Xbox 360 or PC system and were shown ads, or played on another system and were not shown the ads. The survey found that on average the test group’s brand familiarity increased by 64 percent, its brand rating increased by 37 percent and its purchase consideration increased by 41 percent over the control group that was not shown ads. It also found that average ad recall increased by 41 percent and ad ratings increased by 69 percent.”

The above report proves that you can establish a successful communication channel with the audience, if you can place your product in a video game.

Now, you will ask, “why does the target shows such a high degree of involvement?”

Hmmmm. the answer is simple. Have you watched people playing a video game? You can sense that they are completely involved in the game. Now, compare the scene when a person is seated in front of TV. There is every chance of him moving away from the TV set when ads are being broadcasted. In other words, there is every chance of your target audience missing out your advertisements. However, such a scenario does not comes fore in case of video games.

The advantage of video-game advertising is perhaps best summed up by Cory Van Arsdale, CEO of Massive, “”When you play the game and you see how the ads are rendered you get a huge sense of the engagement and that backs up the data more than anything. This will start to validate the direction we’re headed. It’s validating for advertisers and marketers the value of the engagement in the game.”

So, including the ad of your product in a video game might jus work wonders for your sales.

Newsletters. Now, we must have heard about these. And why not? After all, newsletters are created by schools, colleges, and business organisations. In other words, most of the organisations do come up with newsletters. However, are you aware that newsletters can help you win a few points as far as search engine optimisation is concerned?

Now, you will ask ‘how can a newsletter help me out in the SEO process?’ Well, if you publish newsletters, then you can consider creating an archive out of them. If you are aware about the basics of SEO and operation of search engines, then you must also be aware of the important role played by content.

Search engine spiders display a particular affinity towards content. They love fresh content. So, if you keep updating your site with fresh content, they will keep visiting your site and this will improve the rankings of your site in a SERP [Search Engine Result Page].

If you do keep archiving your previous issues of newsletters, you will be providing the search engine spiders with new content. You can also consider including the newsletters that were published in previous years. According to Dianna Huff, “Search engines like to see sites with regularly update content. If you don’t have an archive, simply begin by adding your current issue to your site and archive the previous issues. If you publish monthly, you’ll have 12 new Web pages at the end of the year! If you have the time, see if you can archive previous years’ issues. You have no idea how much traffic these archived issues can send your way by virtue of people finding them in the search engines.”

Similarly, there are many sites that are on a look out for reprintable content. Now, if you allow people to use your newsletters, obviously, they will provide a link back to your site. In other words, you will be getting a sort of a free publicity and an invaluable inbound link. At the same time, people who read the reprinted content will visit your site. Thus, your site will get an exposure in the minds of the people as well as in the records maintained by search engines.

However, when you are thinking about archiving your newsletters, just keep these tips shared by Dianna Huff. She states that, “When you create an archive page, don’t use drop-down menus search engine spiders can’t access. Instead, build pages of annotated links that the spiders can index and make it easy to people to find.”

So, when you are chalking out the SEO strategies for your site, do not forget about the humble ‘newsletter.’