Squidoo. It’s new and not as noticable as it should be amongst news and resource hounds. Squidoo is also a great tool for your blog or web site’s search engine placement. Squidoo is a commercial site launched Oct. 2005. Users can create ‘lenses’ which is like a MySpace portfolio for vieing. You can make a lens about anything. The primary focus is not building content like a blog and its’ not just social networking like MySpace. Rather, you use your lens to point to tools, links, feeds, abstracts, and more while earning cash. The Squidoo site allows ‘lensmasters’ to share their expertise on any given topic to save web searches time.

When it comes to optimizing your site for the search engines, Squidoo will help your site get the exposure it deserves. Now you can learn all the tips, help, and tricks to earning more money with your Squidoo lens. Just download the Squidoo-It Yourself Guide (.pdf).

Starbucks announced Tuesday that it will be withdrawing free iced coffee from a limited number of employees, friends, and family. It all started when the company wanted to promote unity within the company by e-mailing a free Starbucks iced coffee coupon out to employees in the southeast on August 23rd encouraging the employees to forward it to friends and family. Not a bright idea to give that amount of freedom with the words ‘free’ written all over the offer. The company stated that the offer “has been redistributed beyond the intent and modified beyond our control.” Sorry folks, the offer is no longer valid!

The subjective nature of hiring a quality decision maker will commonly preceed a objective ‘number cruncher’ coming staight out of college. With over 105,000,000 MySpace members and worldwide advertising exposure, the fastest growing advertising medium is hindered in finding experienced online advertisers according to the Financial Times. To catch onto the booming online market you must first seek out experience on your own terms. Set up a web site, an ecommerce site, or a web design business. Learn search engine optimization and computer programming. Use your expertise and keep up on emerging trends.

A Computer Science or Marketing Degree is a dime a dozen. Real hands on experience will get you where you’d like to go in the online world of advertising. “There is a dearth of talent on the agency and marketing side and the online publishing side,” said James Kernan an associate digital director at MediaVest. Unlike conventional advertising mediums, the internet has become a non-linear world controlled by social networks and ultimately the consumer. Finding an online advertising job might be easier than you think when you gain experience by doing it on your own terms. Online entrepreneur is the name of the game. As Larry The Cable guy says “Get er’ Done!”

Fellow Caffeine Junkie Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal has dug deep and discovered interesting tid bits on both our laziness and addiction to online videos.

Mr. Gomes discovered that globally video watchers:

 - Have spent a whopping 9,305 years watching videos on the site.
 - 70% of YouTube’s users are from the United States
 - About 50% of all users are under 20 years old.
 - Transferring the 45 terabytes of videos each month requires several million dollars.

The real estate boom seemed like it would never end. But as North America’s housing market continues to slump , Yahoo is busy at work. Yahoo is working on a new real estate web site partnered with both Prudential and Zillow in hopes of gaining local market share. Yahoo’s new real estate web site will include home evaluations (Zillow), information on over 3 million properties (Prudential), and aerial views of neighborhoods (Yahoo Maps).

It’s a mixture of three power horses both online and off that will hopefully bring a boost to North America’s slumping real estate industry. The simple marketing campaign has turned plenty of heads. Both MSN and Google have shown quite a bit of interest in the real estate markets over the past few quarters. Google Base will be offering free real estate classifieds to break local markets. MSN will continue to revamp its’ real estate portal this fall.

The former Universal McCann Chief Executive Robin Kent is starting up a free ad supported music download service with Universal Music Group backing up the project. The new music download service will be titled (what?) SpiralFrog! Well I shouldn’t be surprised after names like LimeWire and Napster. The software will be available for download at the site of the same name in December. The deal with Universal Music Group allows SpiralFrog to offer the full catalog of music artists such as Mariah Carey, Eminem, and Kanye West.This isn’t the first time we’ve moved back to free downloads. The re-launched Napster was experimenting in May with giving away up to 5 music tracks for free while users viewed advertisements.

In addition, as MTV shows less and less music videos everyday (besides TRL and Late Night Viewing), YouTube has been negotiation with music companies about sharing ad supported music videos.

That’s right. Bob Dylan is making heads turn by cutting a commercial for iTunes to cross-promote both the iTunes and his appropriately titled “Modern Times” album. Following in the footsteps of the iPod dancers, the move by Dylan has stricken a sour chord with many fans. On both blogs and forums, Dylan fans have exclaimed that the corporate commercial move has made the musician a ’sell-out’.ÂÂ

Microsoft’s Content Ads might change the way we look at contextual advertising forever. A select group of high end advertisers have begun to receive invitations to join Microsoft’s Content Ads contextual advertising system.

The Content Ads pilot will be running this fall. The Content Ads will appear on MSN Real Estate, MSN Money, and MSN Portal. Microsoft will be taking Google Adwords head on with this beta release. The company said that “Content Ads is Microsoft’s next product that allows advertisers to place content-targeted, text-based advertisements primarily on Microsoft-owned properties including MSN Money, Real Estate, and many others within the www.msn.com portal.” From the company’s statement, it is quite feasible that web site publishers will be able to get into the program before it official drops the beta testing.

A publisher myself, I am always excited to see a new contextual advertising system being released. The Content Ads will be utilizing demographic targeting, incremental bidding system, geo-demographic targeting, and much more flexibility than Google Adwords or Yahoo Publisher Network. Currently, there is no information available whether or not Microsoft has implemented a more advanced click fraud proof system.

Faced from rivals McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks Corp. is stepping up their game to remind you how great their products are. Slower sales this year bring about a push by the company to remind consumers with coffee tasting and a series of podcasts on their web site.

A few months ago, McDonald’s made a push to promote their new coffee blend and has taken away much market share this quarter. Likewise, Dunkin’ Donuts had launched a new advertising campaign to expand its business into Western North America where Starbucks currently dominates. Analysts have said that there is no evidence (ya right) that Starbucks customers have down graded to buying their morning cup of joe from McDonalds or Dunkin’ Donuts. This fall marks Starbucks 35th anniversary and the company will be inviting customers across the United States to in store testing events. Never have I thought of coffee being of wine quality but the company feels the move will help boost sales. In addition, a four piece podcast episode featuring “Coffee Conversations” will take place on the company’s web site this fall. I believe that the reenforcement of customer satisfaction and superior quality is something we all have to do when marking a premium on our products. A $5 cup of coffee from Starbucks might seem like an irrational pricing decision to those unaware of the quality of the product. Starbucks promises to do everything they can to get your butt back in there this fall.

Yesterday, Wal-Mart announced that it will begin a brand new marketing campaign that closely resembles political candidate advertisements.

The new marketing experiment will run in several television spots where the discount giant will boast about its health care plans, charitable contributions, and positive impact on the economy. (continued)

Instead of attacking opponents and critics (such as the Democrats), the ads will feature Wal-Marts merits. Much like a candidate not attacking critics but rather trumpeting their own horns, Wal-Mart hopes these ads will represent a departure from its practice of rebutting critics. The television ads look and sound like political campaign spots. In contrast to the bright smiley “roll back” prices commercials, these will do something that only a giant such as Wal-Mart can do…act as big as they are.

Surely the company’s impact on the economy is nearly as great as a political candidate for creating jobs and affecting health care. “Last year alone, Wal-Mart created tens of thousands of new American jobs - many in areas where they’re needed most.” There is a blog at WakeUpWalmart.com which is backed by union critics. Check it out for more details.

Harris Interactive recently released two reports on marketing to children online. What is important to remember while reading these findings is that while kids and teens might not have the spending power of their parents, there is no doubt that their ability to influence purchasing decisions is immense. Of the estimated 61 million people between the ages of 3 to 17 (US Census Bureau data) a startling 74% are regular internet users and 39% of kids ages 3 to 11. The internet usage rates amongst teens and kids is expected to continue to grow in 2008. According to Harris Interactive, American teens and kids spend an average of 40 minutes to an hour online per day. The most popular activity for these demographics appear to playing games. Teenagers 16 + spend more of their time online surfing the internet, doing their homework, and using social networking sites.

Teens and kids have a great influence in the food and clothing industries. Marketers have begun to employ more advergames on their web sites to promote new products. In a recent study by Kaiser Family Foundation, 73% of corporate web sites had a advergame that a visitor could play. Drawing the distinction between a fun game and encouraging a child to influence a purchase decision after playing a advergame is something marketers are currently working on.

I saw this coming for sometime now. Social network giants such as MySpace are successful because they are user driven peer to peer type interactions and developments. These sites allow users to create their own custom profiles, blogs, post and share music. Thanks to a $500 + million dollar takeover by NewsCorp the web site now experiences a growing corporate network rather than a social network. The web site is loosing its purpose and many MySpace users are catching on and ridiculing these corporations creating custom profiles to promote their products or services. Marketers are spending so much time understanding consumer generated media space that they fail to see what made the site attractive to users in the first place. Studies have shown that the MySpace marketing these corporations perform does not significantly affect sales.

Many marketers attempt to jump on the bandwagon by developing “viral videos” to promote their products but often fail. It’s almost like MySpace is a collaborative effort of “young cool kids” and these corporations represent the “older adult trying to be hip” by blending in inconspiciously. The line between a profiles authenticity and advertising on MySpace is thinner than Nicole Richie.

Google beat out the competition to be the premier MySpace search sponsor. Now it will be sell advertising on the 10th most popular web site on the internet, eBay. The ads will be shown to visitors of the American eBay web site and foreign eBay versions as well. This deal comes under controversy as both companies are directly competitive in areas such as phone service, payment (Paypal), and product listings (Froogle vs. Ebay). As the leader in text based advertising on the internet, this deal will seal Google’s dominance over competition such as Yahoo!, Kanoodle, and others. The deal strikes like a hammer in my mind though.

The alliance will bring about an important competitve standpoint which could radically affect eBay’s growth. Users will now be able to use search engines like Google to find their odd-ball products rather than going directly to eBay. While using Google, users could click on Google’s text ads instead of clicking on eBay listings. As part of the deal, Google and eBay will charge a fee which both of the companies will be splitting. Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive commented that “this is all about getting the customer to buy quicker.” Maybe Mr. Schmidt should consider the possible downfall of this move. Only time will tell.

The White House’s anti-drug media campaign has found that the $1 billion-plus size wad spent on reducing illegal drug use has not been affecting drug use in teenagers. The study has shown that the campaign has actually contributed to an increase in marijuana use among teenage girls. I believe the problem with these advertisements is that marketers are attempting to establish a laid back relationship with the viewer and that rarely works. The ‘Truth’ anti-tobacco advertising campaign was successful because it did not claim to prove a laid back relationship between the advertiser and the viewer. Youth smoking has since dramatically declined while drug use has not. What is important to remember is that the messages teens are receiving from these ads need to be heard clear and honestly.

Teens are constantly flooded with pro-drug use advertisements in rap music, movies, and more. The anti-drug campaign needs to go back to the drawing board.

Nielsen Media Research recently announced that the number of television viewers ages 55 - 64 has risen by 4 perfect for the begining of the new TV season. As the fastet growing demographic, next to the teens demographic raising nearly 2 percent, advertisers will be switching their focus towards the retiring baby boomer generation. Is there more to old people than an opportunity to mock and ignore? Of course there is and here’s the undeniable proof for marketers to switch their focus for this years new TV season. I’m sure we will start to see grinning older women in unfashionable glasses wearing a bikini trying to sell us “Fanta” any day now. I’ll keep everyone posted.