Google is considering blocking newly registered domains from participating in the Google for Domain Names process, according to Tech Crunch. This could put the kibosh on domain tasting, which would be great for the industry.

Google requires a waiting period for new websites to enter its rankings, so the same policies should be in force for domains in its Names process.

Domain name registration has become a competitive business as it has opened up to the benefit of all. Allowing companies to generate huge revenues from tasting without having to commit registration fees is a loophole that needs to be closed.

The entire domain name registration process needs more oversight. Network Solutions' policy of holding domains that were searched on hostage is an abusive of power and needs to be terminated.

Traffic building campaigns, to quote Blanch Dubois, "have always depended on the kindness of strangers." The trick is getting in with the right crowd -- and staying with them.

Vertical Measures accurately describes the need for diversity in link building campaigns. Links from forums, directories and blogs require constant cultivation to maintain your search ranking, according to a VM recent post.

Search engines are constantly changing, growing and evolving. They become more complex, develop new algorithms and morph so that you can’t ever keep up with how they are weighing the relative importance of any one kind of link, so you shouldn’t even try.

Any magic formula that gets you up high in the search engines one month will quickly become as stale as bread if you aren't continually adding new links across the board. This is a good thing -- it's called democracy because the door is always open for new publishers to compete.

The importance of link building is an enticement to resort to paid link building services, but "natural" links is the better way to go. By being aware of the various communities you can stay on top of your game and build new relationships with the people who have contributed those links.

It's chicken little time in the music industry. The revenue is falling, the revenue is falling!

CD music sales continue to plummet faster than digital music revenue is increasing, so overall revenue is expected to shrink by 10 percent in 2007. Advertising supported "free services" such as the newly upgraded Last.fm are part of a shift that is forcing the music industry to revisit its marketing strategy.

The good old days of platinum selling albums are over. Back in my day people boasted of their racks of vinyl and fawned over the album art like treasures from the Louvre.

No more. First smaller CDs and now digital downloads has killed the physical connection with an "album." Being able to buy tracks one at a time has slaughtered the cash cow that enabled the music industry to sell entire albums based on 3 or 4 quality tunes.

Many people now prefer access to entire music libraries over racks of CDs in the family room. The music industry must view this as an opportunity instead of a threat. The music industry should embrace advertising and develop new models that harvest as much possible revenue through broad licensing deals. It has worked for the TV industry for decades. Instead of just picking on online services, the music industry needs to get a bigger slice of the revenue from analog (and now digital radio). Last.fm and the other streaming services have a much better shot than the SpiralFrogs of the world in being a part of the music mix.

So goodbye to album collections, the iPod generation has taken over, and there is no turning back. Now where is my Gary Numan album?

YellowPages.com has partnered with online video company TurnHere to put small business owners in the spotlight. Local business owners will work with TurnHere to create video ads which will run on YellowPages.com.

Companies that invest in video will likely have much higher conversion rates. Videos of business owners humanizes the bland directory listings. Seeing a restaurant or bed and breakfast can be very convincing to prospective customers.

TurnHere works with a national network of professional videographers to guarantee a quality product. Local businesses largely have been slow to go online, so it may take a while for video to catch on.

Putlocal.com similarly allows small businesses to upload their own 60 second commercials or contract for professionally produced spots.

TurnHere started its service for local directories more than a year ago.

Most analyst firms have painted a rosy picture for online advertising. It is refreshing for Deloitte to caution ad firms because of an expected backlash to behavioral advertising that could slow growth.

The consulting firm published a report on global trends for the year, including an expected slowing of the growth in advertising. Consumers will have antipathy towards being tracked wherever they go and having their transactions and browsing made public through Facebook's Beacon and similar programs.

Behavioral marketing is a bad thing only when it goes too far and doesn't offer anything to the consumer in exchange for the priviledge of tracking their activities. It must be opt-in so users aren't surprised, and there must be some additional free content that makes being tracked worthwhile. More controls need to be put on behavioral marketing activities, but the enthusiasm for the technology shouldn't be dampened simply because a few early implementations were executed poorly.

 

The countdown is on for Super Bowl XLII, and the NFL is making the most of the hype.

Search Engine People provides valuable insight describing the league's well designed marketing and offers up 5 lessons that search marketers can learn from its web strategy.

I agree that they've done a pretty good job of embracing social networking and the latest web technologies. NFL.com offers customization through enabling registered users to track their favorite team on the site and via a newsletter. Creating an area to watch the famous Super Bowl commercials on demand is brilliant, and probably a nice revenue generator too.

The NFL smartly integrates RSS feeds and embraces fantasy sports, something major league baseball has also done. The league sells sponsorships to different areas of the site (such as Planters sponsoring Super Bowl news), which is preferable to banner ads.

However, the social networking integration could be more complete. There are no tools for commenting on, tagging or sharing news stories. NFL.com allows for video highlights to be sent to a friend or linked to, but they should facilitate embedding, creating a custom highlight reel, and commenting to create community around highlights.

Any app, any place, drawing content from anywhere. That's the promise of widgets that marketers are rushing towards.

From Facebook to MySpace to Netvibes, widgets are seen as a lucrative alternative to AdSense and banner ads in generation revenue for publishers while creating a better user experience. Widgets' popularity is their ability to add useful but simple features to organize one's social and browsing experience. Custom home pages are a good example as we continue to be over saturated with info. We need to spend more time in a few relevant places and less time jumping from website to website, and widgets can bring it all together.

The widget euphoria has resulted in the over valuation of startup Slide, and others will follow.

The challenge is to integrate advertising that is relevant and unobtrusive. The "message" has to be seamlessly integrated to appear natural with the rest of the content, as well as the medium (video, audio, static).

Microsoft wanted its Dot-net platform to be the unifying platform for application development, but the free market has led to things like Flash and Javascript as being better tools for developers. If you build something useful, they will come. If you build it so it can generate a smattering of revenue, you can be profitable.

What are your favorite widget, and is anyone making money off of it?

Online gaming continues its rapid sales growth. This might be the year that contextual advertising in games pays off, resulting in free games or upgrades that is ad-supported.

Product placement within virtual worlds and console games is picking up as people continue to tune out online and TV ads. Making the games free or inexpensive could make the top games as important media buys as the top-rated TV shows.

The biggest advantage for in-game marketing is that billboards that appear within games can't be skipped, according to DM News. Marketers are expected to increasingly move away from traditional ad buys where exposure is uncertain.

The competition for placement in top selling games like Battlefield Heroes will soon be intense, so getting in now is the best battle plan.

It won't be long before every virtual wall and video screen is plastered with the same ads that light up Times Square. Yeah?

A survey by BurstMedia about online video consumption shows that (surprise surprise) young males are the dominate viewers, and they ain't so crazy for in-stream ads.

The December survey indicates that nearly 60 percent of netizens watch video on a weekly basis, but gender plays a role in viewing habits, with more than two-thirds of males watching while less than half of females checking out a stream.

This is good news for advertisers since young males are THE demographic to have. Not-so-good-news is that half of the audience tunes out once an ad appears in the video. Ah the TiVo generation - so impatient!

Netizens have been spoiled to get to watch clips aplenty sans ads, but that must change. Someone has to pay for this content, and I doubt that most folks would be willing to actually pay for the news and entertainment clips that they are consuming. Consumers will adapt to this reality as they will have no choice but to tolerate some advertising within quality programming. This year will be the shakeout years as the ad models are refined and users adjust.

The pressure is greater than ever on advertisers to make their content as entertaining as possible. The luxury of a captive audience is no longer, a victim of the fast-forward button. Surprisingly the 18-24 year olds were the most willing to watch an ad, and more than one-third said they pay more attention to video than static ads.

Why read all of the news on popular web tech and social sites when you can watch it?

Revision3 is building a network of shows aimed at the internet generation with a series of shows covering web video, internet technology, and general online mayhem.

The latest show added is Digg Reel is a 10-15 minute show highlighting the 10 most popular videos on Digg. This is the second Digg-centric show, following Diggnation, co-hosted by Kevin Rose and focusing on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories.

Revision3 is being run by Jim Louderback, with whom I worked at TechTV. The network also includes the GigaOm Show (guess what that's about) as well as geekie shows Systm and Tekzilla.

There is demand for shows with this type of high production quality, and being able to watch on demand will enhance their popularity. TiVo should make these channels default choices for their new service for adding RSS to your video queue.

I'm encouraged by these shows because they focus on in-depth interviews that drill down on a specific subject. Rather than TV shows that try for the broadest appeal by dumbing down the content, these are vertical shows that get into the meat of their subjects.

It won't be easy to derive enough revenue online to make these shows profitable, but they are further proof that internet TV has arrived.