Google's PageRank Is Best Way to Rate Online Influence

BusinessWeek recently created a bit of a stir from bloggers such as Ogilvy's John Bell when it reported that Google had created a method for ranking the influence of social networkers. But it might be moot, because bloggers are more influential.

Blog readership has quietly grown 300% in four years. Further, blogs strongly influence purchasing decisions, according to a new Jupiter Research/BuzzLogic study. Once again, trust comes into view. Frequent blog readers trust blogs for product advice more than they trust social networks.

Influence in the blogging community is built link by link. That's why Technorati's link-authority algorithm, for a time, was the de facto way to measure bloggers. Over time, however, the environment changed. The media started to blog, and bloggers started attracting links from an array of sources, including Twitter and even static corporate sites. Enter Google.

Google assigns every page and site in its index a PageRank between one and 10. According to Google, "Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results."

Let's argue that Google is the gateway to all online content people want to find. To me, then, as a site builds its PageRank, it also grows its ability to influence people just when they're searching for products and services. Many bloggers -- with their linking ethos -- have attracted high PageRanks and thus have been assigned influence ratings by Google. It's a big reason why they remain more influential than social networks.

Although it's not perfect, there are three reasons why Google PageRank rules: It's something you have to earn over time, it measures your ability to shape opinions on the world's largest digital stage and it takes the entire online ecosystem into account. Many bloggers monitor their Google PageRanks; the Ad Age Power 150 and Healthcare 100 lists allow you to sort bloggers this way. (You can see the PageRank for any site or page using the advanced features of the Google Toolbar.)

So until someone shows me a better system, PageRank is the ultimate way to measure online influence.


You could read the article at http://adage.com/article?article_id=132554

Adplacement on YouTube - Videos growing in popularity

YouTube has begun offering advertisers the ability to pair their in-video ads with videos the site believes are on their way to becoming viral hits.

The YouTube product team has created an algorithm, which it says can identify videos that are increasting in terms of views. It makes that determination by looking at factors such as the early acceleration of views on a given clip, along with the number of times it is "favorited" (added to favourites) and the number of ratings it receives. The Google owned platform hopes the feature will appeal to entertainment marketers and to those pushing products with broad appeal.

"We believe buzz targeting is a strong marketing opportunity for any advertiser that wants to offer compelling content alongside the most popular videos taking off on the site," the spokesperson said. "It's an opportunity for them to wrap themselves in the experience that is YouTube itself."

However, the targeting option is available only on clips created by members of YouTube's ad partner program. Among those partners are content majors like Universal Music Group, NBA, and CBS & amateur creators such as Brookers and Daxflame & artists like Ashley Tisdale.

The first advertiser to use the program was Lionsgate Films - "The Forbidden Kingdom." For roughly the past month, the distributor has advertised the Jackie Chan/Jet Li martial arts vehicle on approximately 500 of YouTube's most popular music and entertainment videos, YouTube said. Buzz targeting joins other YouTube ad targeting factors such as geography, time of day & profile targeting (only gender and age). The feature is available now to advertisers in the United States only.

YouTube and other Google sites hosted more than 4.3 billion video views in March, accounting for 38 percent of all U.S. video traffic. During that month, U.S. Internet users increased their video intake by 13 percent gain compared with the previous month, and by 64 percent compared with March 2007.

YouTube has regularly introduced new ad-related features in recent months. Six weeks ago it debuted an analytics product designed to generate a wide range of data about who viewed their videos, where they viewed them, and when. Some real good information that can be applied in planning future video programs.

My First Blog

Well, my friends have been after me for a long long time to start of a blog on Advertising where they could know, all that i learn't in my field of work, rather its a way for them to gauge the depth of how hard i work :)
I'm not that much of a blogger but yeah i can "just about express myself in words". So, here it goes... My first post.
Your probably thinking what you would find here!! Actually, it would be regular stuff of whats happening around the world in the online advertising space and at times even the offline advertising world. You would probably would even chance upon some tips n tricks and dope on online advertising.
I cannot guarantee daily posts, but buddy i would surely try and be regular. So long then...

P.S : For those who find this blog, either surfing or in an organic listing, i could just say, "stay tuned, your lucky :D"