The best part of the today’s sessions was definitely the “You don’t know jack!” session. ad tech invited about 6 or 7 teens (dubbed millenials or the millenial generation) from the bay area and asked them what devices or services that can’t live without, what they they thought of sms advertisements, freerice.com, virality, etc. The kids were pretty sharp so they were likely a bit ahead of the curve when compared to their contemporaries but it definitely gives you an idea of what direction they are heading.

One thing that I’ve really appreciated at ad tech is not only the quality of the speakers but the quality of the moderators and interviewers. They’ve seemed to have hired a bunch of senior journalists from big newspapers and the quality of their questions and statements is noticed. Even if the content in tomorrow’s session is weak, the conference has already paid for itself several times over. I would definitely recommend it to anyone in the marketing industry.

Jeff Hayslett, CMO of Kodak, was the keynote and did a great job though it was the first time I’ve heard someone drop the f-bomb in a presentation! One of the more interesting points of his presentation that I wasn’t aware of was that Kodak actually invented the digital camera but decided not to release because they were making so much money selling film. Obviously a big mistake. I actually caught up with him after spoke and he seemed like he’d be a cool guy to work with.

One of the sessions covered the future of marketing… it was interesting. The speakers covered everything from digital coupons text to you cell phone, to digital ads on GPS systems to LCD displays interactively showing off the features of products on display. The presentation that got the most ooo’s was Total Immersion’s 3D digital imaging. It worked by holding up the packaging of the product to a camera and then viewing a 3D image of the product on an LCD screen. Though it looked very cool, it doesn’t seem very useful or even that effective in presenting the product.

In an afternoon session, the topic of the future of search was covered. Representatives from Google, Microsoft, a couple of big advertisers and an online marketing agency made up the panel. The Google rep was the Directory of Advertising for the Western Region of the US and that was about as interesting as her presentation got. Surprisingly, the rep from MSN was actually pretty interesting and talked about some interesting stuff they will short be coming out with, including real time, real data on keyword searches. It sounded like something similar to the overture keyword tool which I dearly miss (since its no longer been updated, I’ve been relying on SEO Book’s keyword tool which is ok but I don’t always trust).

Unfortunately, the afternoon sessions were pretty boring so I spent most of my time catching up on my google reader feeds were pretty lean on material. I also had to leave early a couple of sessions to do a couple of conference calls so I didn’t catch everything.

Tomorrow and Thursday will be covering a lot more material (more tracks) so I anticipate coming back to the hotel with a lot more education, information and ideas.

After an extended period of living with the originally designed enclosure for the iPhone, Jobs concluded that he didn’t “love” the shell, an emotion that he would need to feel for what he believed was the company’s most important release ever. “[W]e pushed the reset button. We went through all of the zillions of models we’d made and ideas we’d had.” And, with too little time remaining before the device’s announcement, he challenged the designers to do better, quickly. “It was hell because we had to go to the team and say, ‘All this work you’ve [done] for the last year, we’re going to have to throw it away and start over, and we’re going to have to work twice as hard now because we don’t have enough time.’ “

Now that take guts (what Jobs did)… and hard work (what his team had to do).

I have been really impressed with how well Romney has done considering his lack of name-recognition. He’s pretty far back in the national polls, but the party nominees aren’t decided by a national vote, but are done state by state over time (up until Super Tuesday, when more than 20 states will pick a nominee for each party).

Romney is a smart person and has showed his intelligence and capabilities by focusing on the first two states to vote, Iowa and New Hampshire. Yesterday, CNN reported the most recent poll in Iowa put Romney 23 points ahead of the next contender, Giuliani. That is simply remarkable. The same story also mentions Judd Gregg, a 3-term NH Senator and former NH Governer, endorsing Romney. In NH, Romney’s lead isn’t as large, close to 10 points, but it’s large enough that it won’t be easy for another candidate to take the lead. After New Hampshire, its Michigan, where Romney will likely win, and then South Carolina where he’s in second place.

Opponents say that Romney’s leading in those early states because he has poured so much money in advertising in them. Well, imagine the return that investment is going to give him when he gets all that free press after winning the early states before Super Tuesday… probably millions upon millions of dollars worth (my SEO readers understand this concept — how investing in paid advertising can result in a lot of free or “organic” advertising). Also, to dispute his opponents, you can’t lead the polls just because you’ve advertised, you also have to have to have a good “product”, have a good “offer”, and you have to target the right people (think 40/40/20 rule).

Yesterday, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, published an article on how the Republican race is most-likely a two-man race between Romney (who leads in the early states) and Giuliani (who leads in the national polls). The article paints the two most likely scenarios, though also recognizing that anything could happen between now and Jan 3rd. Either Romney or Giuliani.

One thing that the article doesn’t mention is Romney’s inevitable “Mormon speech.” Many evangelicals that back Romney want him to give a speech similar to JFK’s where he said that he wouldn’t take orders from the Pope. Romney hasn’t ever said that he’s going to do it but it he probably will. Yesterday when he was interviewed by Sean Hannity, he said that “the time may come” for him to address his faith. I think he’ll do it, he just wants to time it right, either just before the Iowa caucus or just before the first southern state votes (South Carolina). That will give him even more free publicity just before Super Tuesday.

Dave Pogue, a tech editor for the NY Times, reviews the laptop here. I recommend checking out his video review there.

The laptop will be available for purchase for $400 for two weeks in November. It’s $400 because it’s a buy-one, give-one plan (you get one and one goes to someone else less fortunate). What a great idea. Thanks OLPC.

[via engadget]

To my surprise, though revenue from the organic ranking increased, it didn’t increase near as much as I expected. Yet at the same time, revenue from the paid keyword had nearly doubled. As it turns out, the paid keyword was ranking number one as well so many of the customers were clicking on the ad first, then clicking on the organic listing. Since customers clicked on the paid ad, the Google cookie attributed the sales to AdWords, yet the organic listing made the sales.

So, when you’ve achieved a number one organic ranking but you don’t see a jump in revenue from the keyword, see how the keyword is doing in AdWords… AdWords takes all the credit.

This brings up another question…is it worth the expense to rank number one in AdWords when you have the number one ranking in the organic results? My answer: it depends on what it costs to rank number one in AdWords. If the keyword is very expensive (you’re barely breaking even or have a negative ROI), I’d try reducing the max CPC. If it’s not terribly expensive (you have a positive ROI), I think its worth the expense of ranking high on the paid ads for the exposure, branding, etc.

If you happen to see Robert Scoble’s video on the death of Google, consider yourself fortunate. I somehow got through 1 and half of the 3 part presentation and I just couldn’t listen to it any longer.

I don’t like to bash on anyone and it’s not really worth my time to do so. However, sometimes people just need to know when someone is giving them bogus information, especially if its coming from someone who is considered an “authority” on the topic.

Well, fortunately for you, Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz wrote an incredibly long post about how Scoble has it all wrong and just isn’t making sense.

By the way, if you’re reading this Scoble, if you’re going to use a whiteboard, it might be a good idea to make it so viewers can read what you are writing. One more word of advice (not necessarily relating to this video): I have a hard time respecting your opinion when you keep talking about yourself when you do presentations.

In the current top ad placement formula, we consider your Quality Score and your actual CPC, which is determined in part by the bids of advertisers below you. Even if you have a high quality ad, if advertisers below you are not bidding very much, your actual CPC may not be high enough to qualify your ad to appear in a top position.

With this new formula, instead of considering your actual CPC, we’ll consider your maximum CPC bid, which you control. This means that your ad’s eligibility to be promoted is no longer dependent on the bids of advertisers below you. Therefore, if you have a high quality ad, you now have more control to achieve a top position by increasing your maximum CPC.

Your actual CPC will continue to be determined by the auction, but subject to a minimum price for top spots. The minimum price is based on the quality of your ad and is the minimum amount required for your ad to achieve top placement above Google search results. As always, the higher your ad’s quality, the less you will pay. And you will never be charged more than your maximum CPC bid.

So, even if you’re ranking number one on a keyword, if your bid isn’t high enough, your ad will only show up to the right. I like how I can now have control for it showing up above the organic listings but I don’t like how I have to bid more, even if my ad is the most relevant. I wonder how Google will determine the minimum bid to be placed at the top of the results.

By the way, Google says it will be going into affect in the coming weeks. I wonder how this news will be received and how it will affect my campaigns. This will be interesting.

So last Friday I got a call and the rep asked me if I had looked at the keywords and ads and if I approved of them. They weren’t showing up in the account so the rep told me she would look into it and call me back. OK, no big deal.

Later that night I noticed that YSM charged the credit card on file to replenish the balance. Again, no big deal… or so I thought. Saturday morning at 2:12 AM I get another email from YSM saying they’ve charged the credit card again, just hours after the previous notification. I had noticed previously that sales weren’t up so I logged into our YSM account and sure enough, those keywords that I was supposed to approve of were live and had generated over a thousand clicks costing nearly a thousand dollars resulting in one conversion. Not cool Yahoo. “Broad” isn’t even the word I would use to describe the type of keywords they were bidding on… more like “irrelevant” and “high-volume.” Needless to say, I immediately paused the campaign.

So today I got a call from the same rep asking if I had a chance to look over the keywords. I related to her what happened and she wasn’t completely understanding. She started to confirm what it was that I had “requested” and she said she was going to look into it. Excuse me? What I requested? You called me and offered me this deal to me!

Stay tuned for an update. If a refund isn’t issued, they better be prepared for the consequences.