YouTube has launched a new advertising option for its partners, called First Watch. The option lets advertisers purchase pre-rolls on users’ first view of a YouTube video each day. A report from the New York Times says: If the sponsorship …

One of the leaders in the retargeting space, FetchBack, has announced its adoption of the Advertising Option Icon provided by the Direct Advertising Alliance. All FetchBack retargeted ads will now include the icon, visible in the upper right corner of each ad.

The symbol is trademarked by the Direct Advertising Alliance (DAA) with the intent of…

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Good news for Singaporean travelers – TourPackages.com.sg, is a one-stop travel portal which helps Singaporeans with travel research, holiday ideas and savings. The portal includes a searchable database of tour packages and itineraries, [...]

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Today Google announced a slick update to its ad Preview Tool. Included is the ability to see integrated keyword diagnosis results. So, an advertiser can select a keyword or phrase and check where and in what ad groups the ads are appearing, or not appearing. From the AdWords blog:

"In addition to displaying the ads for that search, the…

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We are used to bookmark links that contain useful resources. But would that habit apply to advertisements too? Will you bookmark an online ad? AdKeeper, a start-up that helps users to save ads for later viewing is hoping that we will. The 10-month-old start-up believes that the Internet lacks a tool that allows users to [...]

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A new service is being tested that would allow Web users to click on an ad to save it so they can interact with it later. The company behind it is startup AdKeeper, whose CEO Scott Kurnit founded the Web property that became About.com. The idea behind…(read more)

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Early reviews of Hulu Plus weren’t too favorable, with most folks coming to the conclusion that Netflix was a better deal.  The newer service has cut its price and improved its content selection, however, and as a result, apparently caught on to the point that it helped Hulu earn an unanticipated $20 million.

Here’s what happened: last month at the NewTeeVee Live conference, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar predicted that his company would take in $240 million this year.  Then yesterday, during a CNBC interview, he mentioned the number $260 million.  And Kilar won’t admit to misspeaking either time.

Instead, he told Dan Frommer this morning that demand for Hulu Plus and Hulu’s ads have "been larger than we anticipated/projected back in early November."

So some impressive growth must have taken place in the space of one month.

On a related subject, Hulu’s now trying to sell even more Hulu Plus subscriptions.  On the Hulu Blog, a post appeared late yesterday suggesting that people give them as gifts, noting, "These gift subscriptions can be sent instantly via email (a bonus for you last-minute shoppers) or printed and tucked into a card if you prefer."

Keep an eye out for Kilar’s next interview in case the holiday push adds another $20 million or so onto Hulu’s revenue figures.

With the Federal Trade Commission recommending stronger regulations for online advertising, the future of behavioral Web marketing practices is somewhat uncertain right now. The FTC argues that consumers overwhelmingly consider these targeted ads intrusive…(read more)

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Location-based marketing is one of the major trends in the digital advertising world.
Instead of increasing web traffic and hoping that customers will visit and make purchase, location-based marketing directly helps your business increase foot traffic, bringing consumers closer to your physical point of sales.
However, with so many different location technologies like Gowalla, Foursquare, and recently [...]

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I’ve always seen a great deal of potential in Facebook’s advertising offering. The premise is that ads are highly targeted based on users’ profile information. Theoretically, the more a user adds info about the kinds of things they like, the better idea Facebook has about what they are actually interested in, and can serve ads accordingly. 

Does Facebook serve you ads that you find relevant? Let us know.

To be honest, it’s been hit or miss with me. I see a lot of ads for things that I actually do like, which is more than I can say for ads in other channels, but I see a lot of ads that make me wonder why I was possibly targeted for them as well. 

The question is: how good at targeting is Facebook? I stumbled across a post from Robert Brady at Righteous marketing talking about the problems he’s having with Facebook ads. 

"I’ve set my relationship status to single," he explains. "Therefore, I see ads for dating sites, dating sites, and more dating sites. Based on my ads there must be at least a bazillion different dating sites that feel I am exactly who they want on their site. Asian girls, girls who golf, christian girls, desperate girls. You name it, I’ve seen an ad for it." 

"The only problem: I don’t use dating sites," he adds. "So I give Facebook my feedback and hope for some different ads. Something I might be interested in. Every time I see that little message and have a little hope that my ads will improve. Do they?"

The answer would appear to be no. The message he’s referring to is when you click the "x" on a Facebook ad and Facebook delivers a dialogue box asking why you didn’t like the ad. Again, theoretically, Facebook should get the message that Brady doesn’t like ads for dating sites if he’s clicked that x on enough of them. One could argue that clicking the x on one should’ve been enough, though there are different target audiences for different dating sites. 

Is this just limited to dating sites though? Probably not. 

Even if Facebook’s targeting isn’t always perfect, the concept behind it still does have a great deal of potential, and like I said, I still find ads on Facebook that are more relevant to me (at the consumer level as opposed to say, B2B) than probably on any other channel. This is the main reason it seems to me that an AdSense-like network could be a goldmine for Facebook. If they could deliver that kind of relevance on sites across the web (as users are logged into Facebook, which they will likely be on many, many sites) it could be pretty powerful. 

But how much progress does Facebook have to make in targeting? Do they have a long way to go? How much of it is in the user’s hands? The more information you give Facebook about your interests, the more targeted your ads should be. Facebook’s new profile redesign already appears to be coaxing a lot more info out of people. 

What do you think? Comment here.