Although quite a few marketers have not latched on to the idea that the world is going mobile, Google knows it for sure. That is why the company has relentlessly been trying to push marketers toward campaigns set for mobile platforms. Evidence of Google’s huge push toward mobile these days is shown through things like the new Enhanced Campaigns that the company recently created. The focus of this feature from Google was to get more marketers to adopt mobile into their campaigns. The company sees the future of marketing becoming driven by the mobile device, and for that reason, Google wants to be sure that those who advertise with the company know what they can gain from making the decision to use mobile marketing platforms.

In fact, Google has even created an entire website, “How to Go Mo,” based on telling marketers what advantages they may be able to see upon choosing to adopt mobile into their advertising campaigns. Just recently, Google added to the site something called “The Full Value of Mobile.” It essentially appears as a wheel, sporting all of the famous Google colors of course. On it are five tabs; Calls, Apps, Cross-Device, Mobile Site, and In-Store. Each tab provides a short video explaining how each aspect of mobile can be of benefit to you. But, that is not the most useful aspect of “The Full Value of Mobile.”

ROI Calculator

This feature is what is most exciting about the “Full Value of Mobile” initiative. Here is how Google explains the function of the calculator in their announcement:

The Full Value of Mobile Calculator provides simple equations and benchmarks to help you estimate of the value that mobile drives for your business through calls, apps, in-store, mobile site and cross-device. In about 30 minutes, you can follow the step-by-step wizard to upload data from AdWords and your mobile website, and make some key assumptions to create your Full Value of Mobile estimate. Through the exercise, you’ll see the total value, value per click, and ROI that mobile is driving for your business across all mobile customer paths, not just your mobile website. You’ll also see how cost-effective your mobile CPAs are.

Google created this calculator for marketers, with the hopes that it will help them to start looking into mobile’s impact a bit more deeply. Having an idea or estimate on how mobile can be successful will hopefully help marketers to begin considering what they might be able to do on mobile devices. So many marketers are stuck in the world of the PC, missing out on quite an opportunity that mobile marketing presents. After all, mobile devices are changing consumer behavior significantly, and when consumers change, marketing strategies must as well. Google writes, “In other words, rethinking conversion paths is not only key to unlocking the full value of mobile, but also to unlocking the full value of digital.”

Years back, Yahoo was one of the biggest names in advertising, and the ad revenue that the company was seeing was quite impressive. However, in more recent years, Yahoo has fallen behind a bit in the advertising community. Growth in revenue has not been anything to marvel over for Yahoo in quite some time, but it seems now that the company is starting to turn things around. At least, that is what eMarketer gathers by analyzing signals that have been showing up from Yahoo and digital marketers across the web. The company estimates that the company’s revenue will be growing in the near future, though not by much. But this may serve as a sign that Yahoo is coming up from its setback in recent years.

In 2012, eMarketer reports that Yahoo saw ad revenues in the U.S. that reached $3.18 billion, the first growth that the company has seen in years. Now, eMarketer is forecasting that this growth will go even further, rising 3.2 percent in 2013 to $3.28 billion.

Last year, Yahoo! saw net US ad revenues grow for the first time in several years—to $3.18 billion—and eMarketer now estimates the company will see further growth of 3.2% to $3.28 billion in 2013.

The revised figures come after Yahoo!’s search revenues came in far higher than expected in Q4—a sign that management restructuring and investment may continue to propel search revenues higher than previously estimated.

When speaking of Yahoo’s search ad revenues, eMarketer believes that they will grow a total of 7 percent in 2013 from the $1.15 billion it saw in 2012, reaching upwards of $1.23 billion. Earlier forecasts from eMarketer only saw Yahoo’s search revenues reaching to $1.16 billion. By 2015, the search revenue for Yahoo is predicted to reach all the way up to $1.37 billion.

Display revenue is expected to see significant growth as well for Yahoo, contributing to the surprising overall growth of the company’s revenues. For 2013, display revenue at Yahoo is expected to grow to $1.37 billion from $1.35 billion in 2012. By 2015, if Yahoo’s growth goes as eMarketer expects it to, display ad revenue will have grown to an impressive $1.45 billion, a significant improvement from the lower numbers the company has been seeing since falling from the top four.

Although Yahoo’s predicted growth is not as incredible as one would expect, the company was not that far behind to begin with. Focus has been put on companies like Google and Facebook lately, simply because of the rush of new advertising tools coming from these companies. Yahoo has still been among the top display and search marketing companies, but there is no doubt it has fallen behind a bit. If things start to look up for the company like eMarketer is forecasting though, we may see that Yahoo sits at the top again among the web’s more popular advertising companies.

There was a concern by legal experts that in the California Appellate Court’s decision in Balsam v. Trancos that a huge amount of people would use this to abuse the legal system to make money. For those who didn’t follow the ruling, it required that all commercial email advertisements to include in the “from line” a domain that is registered to the sender, and not be hidden in a whois search (among other things)

Well, it seems that one such person has decided to use this law to go after as many companies as possible to make easy cash. Jamie Carper, a convicted criminal and felonious robber has filed numerous lawsuits in Small Claims court against companies, claiming that he has received emails that violate this law.

What’s strange about these lawsuits is that California prohibits anyone from filing more than two small claims lawsuits per year, in order to prevent misuse of the system by those who would attempt to extort money. Mr. Carper obviously has done his homework because this only applies to lawsuits for $2,500 or more, so he’s been suing all the companies for an arbitrary amount under that, hoping that no judge or the defendants will notice the plethora of suits he’s been filling. He’s also been filing in the same court outside of Los Angeles, making it harder for people to get to location without travel.

This is an obvious misuse of the legal system, because if the cases went to court, it’s highly unlikely that any judge would think that he suffered $2,000 worth of damages for receiving an email. In fact, more than likely the only reason that he is even getting these emails is that he signed up for offers, and then found companies that would rather pay him off than fight the charges.

What makes these lawsuits even weirder is that according to the companies I spoke to, some if not all of the emails that he received don’t even violate the ruling and don’t have these problems – and in some cases didn’t even come from the companies being sued. I haven’t looked over them separately, but if this is true it makes the accusations of misusing the system even more relevant.

However, there is another twist to this story. Jamie Carper is not only a serial plaintiff, but is also affiliated with famous spam lawsuit attorney Dan Balsam. He’s one of the Plaintiffs involved in the class-action lawsuit against SparkNetworks for violating this same statute. He’s not your run of the mill consumer – he’s a convicted felon who has learned to obviously manipulate the system to make money. He’s not suffering damages, but instead looking for companies that he can claim damaged him.

We’ve copied the legal record of Mr. Carper below, hoping that perhaps some people can shed some more light on this case. You can look them all up here.

If you haven’t been to an Affiliate Nation Party by ClickBooth, CPAWAY and MaxBounty yet, you’re missing out!

These parties are known for being the hottest events at every conference, consistently drawing the absolute biggest and best crowd, and ad:tech San Fransisco is no exception. Clickbooth, CPAWay and MaxBounty are ready to bring you another unbelievable party, this time at The Grand Nightclub on April 9th starting at 9pm.

They’ve lined up more entertainment, girls, music and drinks than ever before so get ready to dance, drink and party with the biggest crowd at ad:tech.

The best part about this Affiliate Nation Mega Party? It’s absolutely free to everyone who RSVPs! Don’t pay to party when you can get free entry, free entertainment and free OPEN BAR all night long.

A party like this is bound to fill up fast and the only way in is to RSVP. If you’re ready to party and network with industry legends get your name on the list today:http://www.affiliatenation.com/SanFrancisco/

What: Clickbooth, CPAWay & MaxBounty Present Affiliate Nation’s ad:tech SF Mega Party
Where: The Grand – 520 4th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
When: Tuesday, April 9th, 9pm – 2am
RSVP: http://www.affiliatenation.com/SanFrancisco/

It seems that DirectResponse Technology employees were met recently with a huge surprise. Out of nowhere it seems a bunch of HR employees from Digital River HQ, black suits, sunglasses and all arrived in Greentree Pennsylvania, with one purpose: to fire a dozen employees including the President and General Manager of the company, George Bordo. From what I have been told, they were asked simply to pack boxes, sign confidentiality and separation agreements and to promptly leave the building without much of an explanation.

I received this information through a source affiliated with the company, who identified himself only as “DeepPixel,” (ala DeepThroat) and provided me with enough information to verify it. A phone call to Direct Response’s office provided more than enough to know that what I was being told was more than just conjecture and that something was seriously wrong.

At first, I tried to reach George Bordo via his direct extension, with absolutely no success. Even though it was almost noon, dialing 0 was met with hundreds of rings, until eventually a meek sounding woman answered the phone. I immediately asked her if George Bordo worked for the company, and her response was “Not Currently at the Moment.” I’m gathering this didn’t mean he was taking maternity leave.

When I asked her about additional firings and who else was fired, the response was clear: she hung up the phone. Additional calls to the number, pressing zero was met with absolutely no one picking up the phone, and known extensions either rang excessively or went to voice mail – except one random extension in which the gentlemen on the other end only told me that they were instructed to not talk to anyone about anything. He didn’t want to talk about the subject of firings and eventually hung up the phone also.

Does this mean Direct Response Technologies is closing or that their employees are just incredibly secretive and rude? Who knows really, but it’s obvious that they might be on their last legs and that their parent company, Digital River no longer has much faith in the company. In January we reported that DRT was going to be sold, and had complete faith that this deal, confirmed by insiders was going to go through. However, the deal never matured, leaving people wondering why it was so abruptly canceled.

Now the truth, that has never been revealed:  Simply put, the board of Digital River put an end to the deal because the potential buyer was the former CEO and Founder of Digital River, Joel Ronning. Ronning just that year had resigned from his position after numerous well documented public fights with his board. He didn’t like the way his company was being run anymore, and the board of Digital River didn’t  like him. Regarding the deal, they had felt that any purchase by him would be met with SEC scrutiny (as they are a public company), because he was an insider at the company and also one of the people who wanted to at one time shutter Direct Response Technologies completely.

What’s next for Direct Response Technologies and DirectTrack? Personally, I think the company is standing on its last legs. They recently launched Direct Track X, which is supposed to be a next generation tracking platform… but they are about 3-4 years too late and the technology is still way behind what other companies produced half a decade before. They are still playing catch up, and without any faith from their parent company, I don’t see them getting much budget to improve their technology solutions. It’s clear that their history of problems over the last year or so has hurt them in the eyes of the marketing community, and that their masters are looking to either shut them down or sell them as quickly as possible.

I’ve also heard rumors that several competitors have been inquiring about buying DirectTrack themselves. They aren’t looking to actually buy the technology, but instead take over the company, fire all the employees and trash the system. They only want the customer database, which while dwindling, still has value.

Love your input on this, and what this means for the industry as a whole.

Why does everyone rush to YouTube when they are thinking about throwing a few video ads on the web? Well, yes they offer a great platform, with the right tools for placing video ads properly and effectively. However, people really go to YouTube because there, advertisements get viewed. Not only do they get viewed, but they get viewed a lot, sometimes hitting thousands per day. The reason for that is simple; the website’s traffic is immense. In fact, today the company proudly announced today that they have reached one billion active monthly users, an impressive feat for even the most popular websites on the web.

In the last eight years you’ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences. Advertisers have taken notice: all of the Ad Age Top 100 brands are now running campaigns on YouTube. And today, we’re announcing a new milestone: YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month.

This is mostly exciting for YouTube as a company, but of course it is exciting for marketers as well. Although, as it is stated above, there are quite a few marketers already using YouTube to advertise to the masses, this should be a sign for anyone that is hesitant that they will not be disappointed. With YouTube showing ads all over the place, and to over a billion users each month, there should be no question that advertisements are being seen.

YouTube has a pretty interesting way of breaking down the success of their social video network in their blog post. Here are the key figures that YouTube has come up with, straight from their blog.

• Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
• Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
• If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India.
• PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!

These are all pretty impressive statistics that YouTube is throwing out, and it’s safe to say that the majority of the following that the website has, came before Google was even in the picture at all. I suppose that’s why the company bought YouTube to begin with.

It’s interesting to see that a company like YouTube, which started out being seen by most as a place to post funny videos of your cat or something, has grown to such an enormous company. YouTube is so much more than videos now, almost taking the place of the family TV.

For internet marketers, video content is becoming a major player in the game these days, and with the enormous amount of traffic that YouTube is reporting here, we can put two and two together and say that advertising with videos is looking good for the near future.

For whatever reason, this came quietly in the middle of the night without Facebook announcing this very strange new feature. Well, it seems that Facebook has started a new revenue generating device that allows you to email people that you are not connected to, where your message would normally go to spam for the grand price of $1.00

Yes, you heard this right: Facebook has found a way to charge you for making money off of you messaging to people you may know, but are not connected to. Quite a few people have made their profiles semi-public, so people can’t contact them, unless they know each other.

Screw privacy – for the amazing price of $1.00 you can contact them now via facebook, ignoring their privacy setting and send them a message.

What’s the reason for this? I doubt Facebook cares about the $1.00 but they are looking for anyway for you to enter your credit card number so you can buy as many products as you want. Meaning, if you didn’t get this already, that once they have our card, they can start charging for more features. They store the credit card information in your file, which can then be used for everything from buying advertising, buying real gifts to even promoting your own posts. Of course, as many people have already noted, it means anyone can get onto your account and start buying things.

This is specifically targeted for guys who want to chat with hot girls, but can’t get to their inbox, right?

What are your thoughts on this?

Yes, you heard it hear first: Thanks to a certain performance-marketing network, a bunch of publishers are going to prison for their first time.

A friend of mine has forwarded me this confidential information just yesterday: that Adknowledge is taking a bunch of their top affiliates and partners  to Alcatraz Prison during ad:tech 2013 in San Francisco. This wont however be a normal prison experience, but instead will be probably one of the top parties of ad:tech, as they have rented out the entire prison for the night for an evening of dinner and drinks.

I’m currently trying to get more information from the parties involved, but they are pretty tight lipped about the entire event, except saying that if you are one of the people who get a golden-ticket, you’ll be partying with a host of A-Players from the Bay Area tech community.