No matter how popular or successful mobile becomes, search advertising will always exist and there will always be marketers that rely on it to create results. Paid search efforts are still strong today, even though according to a new study whose results were reported by Online Media Daily, the results are not really at their best these days. “Paid search, as measured by the number of companies running business-to-business (B2B) ad campaigns, dropped by more than 10% in 2012, according to a study released Wednesday.” It seems that fewer companies are making efforts to advertise through paid search now, even though the businesses that continue to run campaigns in paid search are still seeing significantly successful numbers.

The data comes from an annual B2B Optify study, which reports analysis of Google search market share. It appears that for businesses that are still running B2B campaigns, paid search “saw strong contributions to visits and leads, as well as an above average conversion rate.” Paid search made these contributions in the following manner; 23% contribution to visits, 16% contribution to leads, and other sources contributed the remainders, 77% and 84%.

The conversion rate for paid search advertising averaged about 2.34% and 3.58% for 75%. However, engagement rates, as measured by the amount of page views for each visit, dropped a bit during last year. It appears that things like Google product listing ads and social media drive more traffic to business sites, as they have for some time now.

For B2B marketers however, it seems that social media has not had the same impact that is has had in the B2C world. The excitement over social media can cause some confusion, making everyone believe that it has to be the best answer for their marketing needs. However, for B2B marketers, social media only accounted for about 5% of traffic and leads for sites. Of this 5%, Facebook contributed most with 54%, while the business-centered network LinkedIn only contributed 8%.

It seems that with paid search dropping for B2B marketers, the best solution has become email marketing, as engagement rates reached as high as an average of 3.75 views per visit, and the conversion rate for email averaged at 2.9% for B2B marketers.  Though many would think that social media would be the next step in the right direction for any type of marketing, it seems that for B2B email is the way to go.

As paid search declined in 2012, so did the amount of money that B2B marketers invested into the marketing platform. Marketers looking to reach other businesses have started to look for a better solution to their marketing needs, hoping that maybe paid search advertising will rise again. Email seems the best candidate for B2B marketers to put their trust in at the moment, but what the future has in store for paid search is unknown.

The data in Optify’s report comes from an analysis of more than 62 million visits, 215 million page views, and 350,000 leads for over 600 B2B websites.

It often proves true that small and medium sized businesses have the hardest time reaching their customers, especially with their individual customer bases being much smaller than those of the world’s big businesses. For SMBs, some of the more popular advertising solutions that can be found on the web might not bring quite as much success as they would for a larger business. Most of the popular web advertising techniques work best for bigger businesses because of the sheer size of their customer bases. What SMBs need is a way to reach specific individual customers, and local digital ads allow for just that.

An article from eMarketer reports the contents of a Borrell Associates report entitled, “2013 Local Advertising Outlook: Get Ready for the Rebound.” Borrell Associates is a research and consulting firm that focuses highly on local advertising. The company has predicted in their report that by the end of 2013, local digital advertising in the United States will reach as high as $24.5 billion, which will account for 25% of all local advertising budgets. When compared to actual numbers from 2012, the prediction makes up a 31% increase. It also quadruples the company’s prediction for ad spending growth overall.

In the article, eMarketer tells us;

Local digital budgets will go primarily to targeted display ads and paid search, which together will account for 60% of total local digital advertising. Social media was not broken out in the study, but included in targeted display and search spending.

Although the study did not go far into detail on social media in local advertising for 2013, it is definitely one of the most important local digital formats of today. The article points out that social will be important in local advertising because of the information that it provides regarding user’s interests and locale. Also, when a businesses or advertisement is Liked by a user or a friend connection, it could be incredibly valuable for another local advertiser. Of course, Facebook stayed up as number one amongst SMBs in the United States for social local advertising, and about three out of ten of these small and medium businesses reported plans to place ads on the network.

Here is the breakdown of how the SMBs in the study are planning to spend their local ad dollars in 2013:

Ads directly placed on Facebook: 28%

Run-of-site banner ads: 25%

Sponsorships: 16%

Geo, behavioral or other targeted display ads: 13%

Streaming Video ads: 10%

Display with audio: 9%

Video within ads: 8%

Other: 5%

No plans to spend on online ads: 42%

So, clearly there are still many SMBs that are very interested in local advertising, but still are not ready to change things up and place ads on the web. Small and medium sized businesses can often get away with having very little online presence, but the world is now a digital one. Therefore, the 42% of SMBs that have no plans for online advertising may end up rethinking their decisions before the year is up, because just as marketing is now a digital game, so is a huge chunk of consumer behavior.

I’m almost thinking that we should have a “strange news category” about networks that can’t pay their publishers and affiliates. Obviously Epic Media Group would be the main topic of that category, but it seems that SnapVertise wants to see if they can win the award. The Canadian company, seemingly based out of Toronto, but proudly announcing that they aren’t really based anywhere and have a “Virtual office” has announced that it’s basically run out of cash, and can’t pay anyone anytime soon.

We should give them credit for actually finally admitting it, after months of speculation by various people, that the company was basically kaput. They were nice enough to mail a very, very long letter today to all of their publishers detailing how entirely screwed they were, so that finally some publishers would start realizing the truth: that they were never getting paid. At least they aren’t shy about admitting everyone is going to eventually be screwed.

However, if that wasn’t enough, the letter, which we’ve copied and pasted below, gets very, very strange indeed and provides an extremely strange proposal to its publishers on how they might get paid in the future. Yes, they have a plan, and want you to know their plan to save the company and ensure, for sure this time, that you are going to actually get your money.

Basically, they blame everyone else but themselves for poor planning, including the sickness of a founder, failure of advertisers to pay timely, and probably somewhere in there Obama – and ask somehow that publishers ignore that they aren’t getting paid, and continue to run traffic. Despite their obvious monumental failure in cash planning and having enough backing to run a “real” company, they are going out on a limb and hoping publishers will continue to run traffic, even though they wont get paid necessarily for the old payments, under the hope they will get paid for the current traffic.

Yes, you heard it right and this isn’t April 1st. They really, really hope that publishers will ignore the fact the company has no cash, and continue to run offers under some ridiculous plan that was obviously hatched during a LSD experiment by one of their executives. Not only do you have to accept you’ll probably never get paid for the previous debt owed, but if this very peculiar idea doesn’t work, you’ll never get paid at all for the news traffic. They pretty much lay it out that this is a nutty scheme that probably but wont work, but hope that you’ll see past the obvious failures and help them out. At the same time, one can only assume that the cash flow will first go to what it always goes to: paying the employees and executives first.

There comes what they are probably asking: please help us pay our bills by sending us free traffic. We are most likely going out of business, but in the mean time someone needs to pay for my lease on the BMW (insert other car here) and pay my highly inflated salary. It’s not the first time we’ve heard about this: how many companies are right now rumored to be almost out of business, but their owners are living an extremely expensive lifestyle on the stupid publishers who are dumb enough to help with their cash flow.

Seriously, has the industry not learned anything? When Epic aka Kinetic Social sent out “settlement offers” to get people paid in part, but have to forgive them of most of the debt, I warned the entire industry that they would probably never get paid at all and were signing over their rights and allowing Epic to get away with one of the biggest cash and grabs the industry has ever had. What happened? They never kept to their end of the bargain, didn’t keep up to their payment plan and basically told publishers to go ahead and sue for the remaining amount since they had already signed away their other rights.

Please, pay attention guys. Please?

Good Morning, Afternoon, Evening, This email is going out to all Affiliates associated with SnapVertise to express our sincere apologies for the lack of communication there has been between SnapVertise and yourselves. Due to the length and detail of this letter, I would like to suggest reading this email carefully and in detail.  Further into the letter, described are options on how we can work together to ensure past due balances are received. As most of you know, we have run into a cash flow problem.  Initially, the problem started when a couple of very large, and at the time, reputable networks stopped paying their bills.  At first SnapVertise had a 3 to 6 month “Safety Cushion” for incidences such as these so that we were still able to pay Affiliates.  However, inevitably after such a long period of time and the large amounts not paid by the networks in question, this “Safety Cushion” was depleted. In the following months, the main principle of the company fell into fairly extreme personal health issues that resulted in an extended absence.  In the absence of our team leader, SnapVertise failed to have any direction, discipline or communication.  This resulted in Advertiser’s slow paying their bills or failing to pay at all.  Essentially, this created a snowball effect and we were unable to pay our own Affiliates. This is where our communication to Affiliates would have been essential.  Unfortunately, we took a different route by trying to formulate a plan whereby our Advertisers would make their required payments and as such SnapVertise would have the means to pay Affiliates.  This plan of action was soon found to be unrealistic as we depend on our Affiliates valued traffic to achieve the necessary cash flow. Now to be brutally honest; SnapVertise could take the easy way out and declare Bankruptcy, which would result in no one getting paid.  However, having experienced being an Affiliate myself I am fully aware of the consequences to small and even large affiliates when a Network does not pay.  This is not what SnapVertise is about, nor is this what we want for our Affiliates unless forced too.  We would like the opportunity to make things right for everyone involved.   Our plan of action to pay past Affiliate balances: Some of the Principles of SnapVertise also own other web properties and businesses.  They have agreed to push their profits from other properties into SnapVertise to cover Affiliate payments. This WILL take time as these properties were highly tied to the SnapVertise marketing distribution network and as such cash flow dropped in line with SnapVertise. Use positive cash flow from the SnapVertise CPA Network to fund past Affiliate balances. (This is highly contingent on us being able to generate Affiliate business again.) Affiliates can take advantage of what we (for lack of a better name) have called the “Full Rate Program.” This is explained in more detail later on, but essentially it takes our margin/profit on offers and credits a past Affiliate balance. (This may be the fastest method for individual Affiliates to have their past balances paid) To be clear, we want to avoid giving out false hope that past balances will be up to date in a timely fashion, with certainty.  The truth is, we are unsure how long it will take to cover past affiliate payments in full.  However, the point of this letter is to show you we are not running away and will do our best to ensure affiliates are paid! Furthermore, here are a few of the options the SnapVertise Team has to offer (We know they are less than ideal but this may be the best and only way to do right by our affiliates) First off, all CURRENT traffic sent by affiliates WILL be paid for in full and on time.  In order for this plan to work, we need cash flow.  In order to have cash flow, we need affiliates pushing offers now rather than later.  Previous affiliate balances will be covered by oldest to newest according to our cash flow levels and the current level of activity from affiliates. It is our hope that our other principle properties will achieve the revenue levels of early 2012 and if so, we could potentially pay the outstanding Affiliate balances within months. Another option we are offering is something called the “Full Rate Program.”  This means that for the Affiliates with outstanding balances SnapVertise will pay out 100% of the offers being pushed.  As such, our normal margin will be paid out to the affiliate’s past due owing balance with SnapVertise.  For example if an offer pays $1.60 and SnapVertise is being paid $2, the affiliate will be paid the full $2. $1.60 paying for the current traffic being sent and $0.40 will go towards the outstanding balance. To submit offers you want full rates on, follow the instructions here. If you have any further PRIVATE questions regarding this matter that have not been addressed, please email: balance@SnapVertise.com.  Also, for more information regarding the strategies in place to ensure affiliates are paid please request access to the active support section setup called The Affiliate Balance Resolution Forum. Questions that others might be interested can be asked PUBLICLY there as well. Follow the instructions here to gain access. Furthermore, if you would like to send traffic to an offer at the full rate as part of the “Full Rate Program,” and receive 100% Offer rates, please follow the instructions found here. Last but certainly not least, I want to tell you that I KNOW this is not an email of good news and new hope, but it is honest.  I hope you can appreciate our willingness to be honest with you and know that we will be doing everything possible to rectify this situation, including communicating on an above satisfactory level.  In short, our goal here at SnapVertise is to have all Affiliates paid in full along with what we hope is a worthwhile bonus. We thank you in advance for your time and consideration, kind regards, Sean Sutherland & The SnapVertise Team

Just as it happens every new year, all the biggest names on the web are showing off their own accomplishments from 2012, assuring online marketers of things to come for 2013. Now, the company that everyone pays the closest attention to, Google has released its revenue numbers from the fourth quarter and from the entire fiscal year of 2012. Just as one would probably expect, Google’s revenue results blow most others out of the water, with quarterly revenues staying well into the billions. Their recent announcement of revenue numbers includes for the fourth quarter revenue from the Motorola Home property that Google recently sold, and the actual numbers themselves reflect consolidated revenues.

In 2011, the entire year’s revenue from Google came to a grand total of $37.9 billion while in 2012, the number rose to $50.2 billion. The $12.3 billion increase year over year should cause marketers great excitement, being that Google continues to grow despite its already incredible standing in the digital marketing world.

From Google’s announcement:

We ended 2012 with a strong quarter,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half. In today’s multi-screen world we face tremendous opportunities as a technology company focused on user benefit. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be at Google.

Google revenues hit $12.91 billion, which comes out to 89% of the consolidated revenues for Q4. When compared to Q4 of 2011, that is a 22% increase from $10.58 billion. As for sites owned by Google, they generated $8.64 billion, making up 67% of Google’s total revenues for Q4. In 2011, this number was only at about $7.29 billion. Partner sites of Google generated about $3.44 billion in revenues, making up 27% of Google’s total revenues in Q4, while they generated only $2.88 billion in 2011. Finally, revenues categorized as “other” generated $829 million, which only makes up 6% of total Google revenues in Q4. However, that makes up a 102% increase year over year.

As for the more performance based aspects in the company’s revenue announcement, paid clicks were up 24% in Q4 2012 when compared to Q4 2011. On a different note, the average CPCs went down 6% year over year in Q4 of 2012. The costs of acquiring traffic were $3.08 billion for the final quarter of 2012, which increased from $2.45 billion year over year.

With all this said, I feel it is easy to say that Google has not ceased to impress marketers with their incredible numbers. The company has hit a milestone with 2012, hitting the $50 billion mark for the first time. Such growth with a company like Google shows that marketers can put their trust into it no matter what, and that some sort of success will continue to come of advertising with Google.

Facebook has done a lot for its marketing customers; that fact cannot be denied by anyone really, especially those marketers who are actually using Facebook as their main platform for advertising. The social media company has many ways of helping advertisers, most of them being in the field of presenting new marketing tools and opportunities. However, Facebook is now taking new, bigger strides to help users of its advertising tools.

Today we are excited to announce the global launch of a new conversion measurement and optimization system for direct response marketers. Facebook conversion measurement allows advertisers to measure the ROI of their Facebook ads by counting relevant user actions, such as registrations and shopping cart checkouts, that are driven by people seeing an ad on Facebook.

Measuring the success of Facebook advertising efforts has been possible in the past, but there has been plenty of criticism. Facebook created their new global measurement platform back in November, and have just recently decided to make it available all around the world. It can be used for Facebook ads, sponsored stories, and of course any of the other forms of targeted advertising available on Facebook’s advertising platform. So what makes this new tool so important?

Well, Facebook tells us that the new conversion measurement tool will be able to report any time a user views an ad on a given platform and then converts on a separate platform. For example, if a user were to view an ad on mobile, and then continue on to convert on their PC, marketers will now be able to measure that user action. So far, there really are no other measurement tools that can provide this type of service to users, therefore putting Facebook a step ahead once again.

Also, the new tool allows marketers to use optimized CPM in order to deliver ads to those users that are more likely to bring in conversions on their websites.

 Beta tests have shown that when conversion measurement is used with optimized CPM, ads reduced the cost per conversion by 40 percent when compared to CPC ads using the same budget.

This means that marketers who are interested in using Facebook ads and sponsored stories to drive specific actions on their websites can now use conversion measurement both to understand the ROI of their ad spend and to improve that ROI on future campaigns.

Needless to say, this will be an incredibly valuable new set of opportunities for Facebook advertisers, and Facebook made the tool global for just that reason.  Here are a few examples provided in the announcement that show the success that some companies are already having with the new tools, and what marketers can expect upon tapping into the new resource.

• Online retailer Fab.com was able to reduce its cost per new customer acquisition by 39 percent when it used conversion measurement and optimization to serve ads to consumers deemed most likely to convert.
• The Democratic Governors Association used conversion measurement with optimized CPM to deliver ads to users who were most likely to sign up for its mailing list.  According to Mark Giangreco, Digital Director of the DGA, the Association noticed a dramatic decrease in its cost per conversion – 85% lower than any other campaign the DGA had run online.