 
imwave, inc.
#2610 for 2009
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Hot Performance Marketing Industry Topics and Company News
I was looking over my Google Stats today an noticed that we have reached a major milestone, we recently served up our 2 Billionth Ad on Google!!!
Since starting IMWave we have displayed over 2 Billion Ads through Google Adwords, received almost 25 Million clicks on those ads at a cost of just over $2.5 Million.
Google sent us a refrigerator when we had served over 1 million ads, I wonder what 2 Billion should get us?
By Tony Pantano
So, let me first say that the first and only Apple product that I would concede to owning was an iPod. Once I got over my initial "Oh, my God I bought an Apple product" shock, I began to realize that they really had put together a nice interface. This was the beginning of my journey to the dark side.
  When the first iPhone came out, the hype was just too much for me to take. Thank you very much, but I would just keep my Palm Treo 680. Palm was not my first choice. My previous phone ran Windows Mobile , but it was an older version. It was slow and had some bugs, so I was talked into buying the Treo.
Fast Forward two years and the only way I can describe my feeling for the Treo is complete disdain. It's an awful piece of technology and would be better under the tire of my car than in my pocket, pretending to be a phone (and a "smartphone" at that.)
Frequent reboots, dropped calls, not ringing when calls would come in … you name it. Along comes the iPhone 3G. I took another look at my iPod and thought, "How bad could this be?" I went to the AT&T store to look at the iPhone demo and thought, "I'm going to hate this." I wandered over to the AT&T Tilt display and considered going back to Windows Mobile. I read the reviews and even had a friend stop by my office to let me see her iPhone in action. "I'm going to hate this," I thought again, but what the heck, I can always get a new phone if this one sucks, right? So I ordered a 16GB, black, iPhone 3G.
This was two weeks ago and all I can say is: My journey to the dark side is now complete.
The iPhone is frankly the best phone I have ever owned. Let me give you a few reasons why:
- Phone: As a phone, the iPhone doesn't drop calls like the Treo did. The calls are clear and best of all it actually rings when a call comes in. I know what you're saying, "A phone should do that." Well I agree. But it was hit or miss with the Treo.
- E-mail: I use Exchange for work. In order to use Exchange in push mode on the Treo my provider had me install GoodLink. Once I did this, the Treo was never the same. E-mail was OK, but the additional software caused all sorts of problems. On the iPhone, Exchange was a breeze to setup. It took about three minutes, tops, and that was only because I wasn't used to the touch screen yet. The ActiveSync with Exchange has been flawless and seamless.
- Contacts: This really goes along with No. 2 except that the Palm version of the contact screen gets replaced when you install GoodLink contacts and simple things like custom ringtones for contacts goes away. Also, there are many more fields for data on the iPhone than on the Treo.
- Web browsing: I use my phone quite a bit for work and having the Web available isn't just a luxury, it's a necessity. The browser on the Palm was slow and completely dysfunctional. In fact, I just stopped using it, rather than beat my head against the wall. The Web on the iPhone is, well, it's the Web. I can login to most sites, though it doesn't support Flash yet.
- Screen: Do I really have to say it? Just look at picture of the two phones. The iPhone's screen is huge compared the Treo and the resolution is awesome.
- iPod: No more carrying my phone and my iPod when I travel. I know I only have 16GB on the phone, but really I just need some tunes and a movie or two to get me through the flight. One device is much better than two, right?
- Bluetooth: I think it's a travesty that Treo claims to have Bluetooth support. It was a horrible implementation and often would not sync in my car or worse, wouldn't "un-sync" when I left the car. So once again, I just disabled it. On the iPhone, I didn't even have to set anything up. I just turned it on and it syncs every time. Works like a dream.
Oh, and I have two words for you: App Store.
If there is anything you need/want that doesn't come with iPhone, it's more than likely that you will be able to find it in the App Store. Mixed in among all the time-wasters like Bubble Wrap and Scribble, there are some real gems -- like TypePad . And I haven't even scratched the surface on this yet.
I will say that the battery life on the iPhone is short. Mine lasts about a day. For me, I was used to charging my Treo every night, so this is no better, no worse for me. But if you charge your phone once a week, then this may be a pain for you. Also, the keyboard does take some getting used to, but if you can manage the Treo you will get the hang of the iPhone touch screen pretty quickly.
My journey to the dark side is indeed complete.
I am now a huge fan of the iPhone and take the opportunity to show it off when I can.
As for my Treo, if you happen to be in York, PA and see one smashed in the middle of either Interstate 83 or Route 30, it's probably mine. Please feel free to run over it again ;-)
Tony Pantano is chief executive officer of imwave, an Internet marketing company based in York, PA.
- Apple
- iPod
- iPhone
- Palm Treo
- Apple App Store
- TypePad
- Exchange
post originally appeared on The Central Penn Businesss Journal Blog "the Gadget cube"
We have started working on a new site called FreeTrialWorld.com, where we will highlight partners that offer Free Trials. Once we have built up enough trials and some organic rankings we will start doing PPC campaigns to this site.
If you are one of our partner companies, and wish to be added to this site, please email us and let us know. All we need is a decent landing page highlighting your free trial, or a large ad that we can use for a page. Review the other Free Trials that are online for examples:
Thanks,
Adam
 Today we launched our first Beta version of DealZam.com!
We have been working on DealZam for a while now, and are happy to get our first beta version out into the public and get some real user feedback. Please let us know what you think of the site and what features you would like to see in the added in the future. This site is a work in progress, so please be kind. :-)
Advertising Age recently put out an interesting article where they suggest that the current cost-based compensation model that exists between advertisers and advertising agencies is flawed and provides the wrong incentives, further suggesting that a value based model is needed. "The current cost-based compensation model for advertising agencies is flawed for a simple reason: It misaligns the economic incentives on each side. The client pays whether the agency adds value or not, and the agency is paid a fixed amount regardless of the value it creates. Clearly, this model is not in the best interests of the client or the agency."
"Even more perniciously, the existing compensation model focuses entirely on the wrong things: efforts, activities and costs. It does this at the expense of the right things: output, results and value. "
The article goes on to suggest that one of the main factors keeping advertising agencies from moving to this type of model is the lack of information and trust on value based metrics as well as control over the value creation process.
Hello? Welcome to the world of affiliate / performance based marketing. Those of us in the industry have been doing this years!
It works like this, Top Affiliates, call them Online Advertising Agencies, decide who they are going to create a value based relationship with, then they spend their time, efforts, and dollars to promote these advertises on pre-agreed terms which are managed by affiliate networks, a 3rd party that both the advertiser and marketer trust to manage the technology that facilitates the relationships and track the results. Special links from these networks are used in ads created by the "performance agenecies" to track the results.
It seems hard to believe when such an efficient model exists, that companies continue to rely on individual ad agencies and pay them on a percentage of ad-spend basis. Hire an army of performance marketers with a great affiliate program, preferred compensations and terms for top performers.
Ask your advertising agency to spend THEIR money on the marketing campaigns and pay them based on their results, let THEM put their money where their mouth is, just like we do every day.
Bottom line. Top Affiliates are the advertising agencies of the future.
Results, Results, Results.
The only companies that should need to hire cost-based advertising help are those that a focused on none performance based brand advertising or are just starting up and need help being able to convert the traffic at a level where performance based affiliates make sense.
Welcome to the new world of Advertising!
IMWave continues to grow, and we are looking for a Website Designer / Developer. Here are the details of the job posting: Website Designer
Imwave, Inc., an Internet Marketing firm located in York, PA is seeking a website designer to create & develop our portfolio of websites.
The ideal candidate will have experience designing ecommerce websites and should also be familiar with Blogs, Blog software, Web 2.0 and social networks. Candidate should be able to implement existing scripts into web content.
Familiarity with Search Engine Optimization and website monetization is a plus.
Please send Cover Letter, Resume and URLs of websites that you have created to: jobs (at) imwave.com
In January of 2006, we announced that we had created The Affiliate AIM List (www.affaimlist.com), a small website that lists members of the affiliate community, the companies they work for, and a little clickable icon showing if they are online or not through AOL's Instant Messenger service. The site has grown in popularity and we are happy to report that we have reached a big milestone! The Affiliate AIM List now has over 500 members!
This was one of IMWAVE's first Affiliate Industry community projects.
In April of 2006, we announced that we had created The Affiliate Skype List (www.affskypelist.com) to enable affilaite skype users to more easily find each other and communicated. They Affiliate Skypelist is approaching 100 members!
We also just recently announced the launch of our Affiliate Twitter List (www.afftwitlist.com) where you can follow along with the Twitters some of the industry's most interesting characters and see what they are doing throughout the day. The Affiliate Twit List now follows 31 Affiliate Tweets, and is growing.
All of these projects are designed to help the members of our Industry better communicate with one another, we hope you sign-up and enjoy them!
The Utah State legislature quietly passed through a bill outlawing advertising via search engines on competitor's keywords, stating that a company's name is an "electronic trademark" for the Internet.
Google claims the law violates both free commerce and free speech rules and things that the law will be held unconstitutional.
Here is a snippet from the Daily Herald Article: This law is one of those bad ideas that should have been killed at birth. Not that anyone didn't try. The Legislature's own lawyers warned that the bill had a "high probability" of being deemed unconstitutional by the courts. Unfortunately, lawmakers chose to ignore the lawyers and put the state on a high-speed connection for litigation.
The bill is constitutionally flawed. Advertising enjoys a great deal of free-speech protection, especially on the Internet, which gets a constitutional analysis much like print. Utah's law is essentially a state-imposed gag on Google and other services, censoring attempts to deliver advertising because a Utah business has declared that words used in the search are part of its trademark.
Read more...
If they allow individual states to have different rules and regulations, it's going to get very confusing very fast. Perhaps Google should provide a way to opt out of a specific region. Right now if you didn't want to show your ads in Utah, you would have to turn on local targeting for your campaign and select every stat except Utah. This would then display your ads as local, and add the little geography indicator underneath all of your ads, something an advertiser might not want when opting out of a specific state.
There have been several legal cases over the past few years where companies have challenged Google's right to allow competitors to bid a company's keywords to drive traffic to their site.
Currently in the US, anyone is allowed to bid on a competitor's trademarks so long as the ad doesn't use the competitor's name in the ad copy, thus causing possible confusion. In the UK the decisions have gone the other way and competive trademark bidding is not allowed.
On Friday, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that a American Blind's trademark infringement suit against Google can go to trial, this case is sure to be watched closely by the Industry.
Google had asked the judge to declare that Google's sale of trademarked terms was legal and didn't constitute use of commerce under the Lanham act. However the judge ruled that American Blinds did precent enough of an argument for the case to go to jury, saying "he evidence suggests that Google used the mark with the intent to maximize its own profit so the intent factor favors American Blinds."
The case is over 3 years old now, and should go to trial this fall.
Google, which generated advertising revenue of $10.5 billion in 2006, says it is confident of presenting a solid case in a jury trial. "Judge Fogel rightfully concluded that they did not prove that two of their marks are protectable, and we are confident that they will be unable to prove their remaining claims at trial,” says Michael Kwun, Google`s litigation counsel.
But American Blinds, which derives about 50% of its revenue from the web, says the eventual outcome will help web retailers do a better job of protecting their brand and trademark. “The case will prove that Google isn’t a god,” Levine says. “This issue isn’t going away."
Welcome to TheWave, imwave's affiliate industry blog. This blog will contain news about imwave as well as links to the most important stories and issue affecting the affiliate industry.
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