Ad-Butterfly, an online ad services, allows more control over ad placement, providing marketers with the ability to choose which blogs to post there ads to, and allowing bloggers to choose which ads get posted to their site, according to a BusinessWeek article published Wednesday morning.

The world of online advertising continues to grow at phenomenal rates, but certainly, in the big scheme of things, it is still in its infant stages. The control given to AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers has grown over the years, but Ad-Butterfly offers almost total control.

Ad-Butterfly works similar to the first tier PPC platforms of Google and Yahoo, using algorithms to automatically pair up ads and websites, but it offers a more advanced means of controlling which ads are displayed, for those who want total control.

Bloggers are given total control on which ads they will display on their site and also offers the ability for comments to be placed along side of the ads. Registered bloggers will also soon have the ability to request ads from other site.

The service is available in Japan and so far only 2,000 bloggers have signed up, but this form of paid ad placement is certain to grow over the very near future. Perhaps Google will even by them out it its quest for total control over online advertising. If you are fluent in Japanese feel free to visit the Ad-Butterfly website.

Last week I took part in a teleconference with Anne Holland (Content Director) and Tim McAtee (Senior Analyst) at MarketingSherpa. The call, “Top 5 Tests to Raise Landing Page Conversions” offered insight on how to get the most from your website and drive visitors towards completing your desired goal. Both a PDF and full MP3 of the call have been made available on the MarketingSherpa website.

The teleconference brought to light a number of great tips for increasing the conversion rate of your landing pages, whether from PPC or organic search. Here are 6 tips I found to be of interest. Read more…

If you have been looking for online storage to either back up your computer, or simply need some supplemental space for your large collection of photos or digital music, Google’s new GDrive service may be of use to you.

The talk of Google GDrive has been around for a while now, but could it actually be on its way finally? Tuesday morning the Wall Street Journal published an article on the future Google service. Read more…

Google has taken steps to remove malware websites from its search results, according to a ComputerWorld article released Wednesday.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software Distribution Inc released the news Monday that Google had removed more than 40,000 malware sites from its search results. While Google refused to either confirm or deny this, spot checks by Sunbelt researcher Adam Thomas did not turn up any malware sites.

Read more…

Internet domain registration and hosting giant GoDaddy is teaming up with Google to help clients enrich their web hosting accounts, according to a GoDaddy press release issued Tuesday.

Working as a pilot partner, GoDaddy has integrated Google Webmaster Tools into the hosting accounts of their customers.

This integration will make it easier for the average site owner to identify potential problems with their sites and to help improve their site’s visibility. Read more…

Tuesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerbook announced the launch of Facebook Ads. This new ad platform will allow advertisers to focus their precise target markets.

Facebook’s Ads consists of three major parts: “a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.”

With the announcement of Facebook ads, a number of brand specific pages were released Tuesday to the tune of 100,000 pages covering the world’s biggest brands. Users can share information about businesses they like acting as a trusted referral, sending qualified and highly targeted individuals to the main businesses page.

Users can also write on the wall of the business, add reviews, and interact with the business based on the features the business chooses to install.

According to Business Week, AOL has acquired pay per click search engine Quigo for a reported $300 million. The acquisition includes the AdSonar and Feedpoint platforms.

Quigo has been serving up ads for a number of Time.com properties, and with the success they have been having, saw the potential and went forward with the purchase.

The deal which is expected to close later this year, will allow for expansion of their contextual advertising on AOL as well as their partner sites. For the time being, Google will continue to provide AdWords ads alongside AOL search results.

Less than a month ago, On October 02, 2007, I wrote how Google shares were about to exceed the $600 mark. Web analyst Gene Munster had said in a report that he estimated the stock to exceed $660 within one year. I guess he was right.

In less than a month, Google shares have risen dramatically. Google stock has broken the $700 mark hitting as high as $707.00 on Wednesday afternoon. According to a simple Google search for “goog”, the stock showed an all time high value of $707.00 as of 4:00pm ET time on Oct 31. That increase is simply amazing given only a short 29 day window.

To put this into prospective, an investor putting in $10,000 when the stock first went public at $85, would now see their shares valued at $83,176. So how high can Google’s stock go? According to the Associated Press, Dinosaur Securities analyst David Garrity is predicting a reach to $985 in 2008.

There are a number factors involved in having a successful PPC campaign. These include everything from keyword selection, bid management, and campaign setup to your destination website. This article will discuss five of the most important areas: Keywords, Ad Copy, Destination URL’s, Organization, and Analysis.

1. Keywords
Having a successful PPC campaign starts off with keywords. While your keyword list will likely change and evolve over time, it is important to start with something that makes sense.

Base Keywords
First you will want to start off with your base keywords. These are any words you feel are relevant to your site. You may not end up using all of these in your PPC campaign but they will act as a stepping stone to finding other related phrases. Let’s say you own a camera shop. A few relevant keywords may include “digital camera” or “digital SLR”. Read more…

Google announced yesterday a few new features to be added to Google Analytics in the coming weeks. If you are a fan of statistics and currently use, or are considering Google Analytics, these features could certainly come in handy.

One new feature is the addition of tracking which outbound links visitors click when leaving your site. This feature is nothing new to the world of stats programs, and seems only fitting that Google is finally implementing this option. Other new additions include an “Events Tracking” section which is used for working on user interaction with embedded movies and widgets. Event Tracking and Outbound Link Tracking will begin in a limited beta with no date mentioned for a full release.

If you have Site Search enabled you will also be able to track what searches were performed, from which page, and where the visitor was directed.

Use of these new features will require the update of your on site Analytics JavaScript code; however, Google has also unveiled an extra little upgrade. This new JavaScript code will not need to be updated again in the future as new advancements are released.

Upgrading to the new JavaScript is not necessary if you are not interested in using the new features. The existing code will continue to work correctly into the foreseeable future.