Throughout the years, I have worked with some really good partners. Whether it is being very responsive, super proactive or just plain easy to work with, every so often, a particular partner would stand out from the rest. Today, I wanted to give a quick shout out to one particular partner that is all of the above… and more! That partner is Doclix’s AdSide Network.

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of participating on an AdTech San Francisco / AdSpace panel with Leora Blumberg, VP of Business Development from Doclix. To make a long story short, Leora and I immediately connected and we are now partnered with AdSide (Doclix’s advertising network) to delivery their ads. Not only was it a pleasure to meet Leora this year, but I also began working with AdSide’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Yael Yekutie. I only need to say that both of these ladies are simply fantastic people! Period.

It was definitely great to have built another good business relationship this year, but the icing on the cake actually came last week. To my surprise and delight, AdSide sent us a holiday care package. Here are the goodies from Harry and David that arrived in the mail a few days ago. There were actually some delicious mint chocolate cookies as well but they did not make it to the photo shoot. I had eaten them already.

It’s nice enough to be able to work with great people in the advertising industry but it gave me extra warm and fuzzies this Christmas when a great business partner cared enough to send a nice gesture. So a giant thank you goes out to the AdSide team. Not just for the yummy goodies but as a partner, you guys & girls completely rock! Know that the goodies will be thoroughly enjoyed over many movies throughout the holidays.

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The results are in for the 2009 Glam Network Awards. Thanks to everyone who supported HealthCastle.com. Your votes made us the winner in the Lifestyle category!

Here are the winners.

• Beauty: Temptalia
• Fashion: The Fashion Police
• Celebrity/Entertainment: The Celebrity Cafe
• Lifestyle: HealthCastle.com
• Living: Making It Lovely
• Shopping: The Purse Blog
• Family: A tie between Black and Married With Kids AND Honest Baby

Judges Categories

• Best Newcomer: Stylemaven
• Best Design: V Magazine
• Best Use of Photography: Chubby Hubby
• Most Creative: Fafarazzi
• Most Humorous: Guanabee
• Best Tagline: Adventures in the Stiletto Jungle
• Judges Pick: Makeherup

Congrats to all the winners and a big thank you to all supporters!

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I’m excited! I have been invited to speak in a keynote event at the debut ADSPACE conference co-held with ad:tech San Francisco 2009. ADSPACE is the first and only conference and expo dedicated to AdSense and contextual advertising. It’s geared towards small to mid-sized publishers looking for insider tips on how to maximize AdSense revenue. Thanks to Sunil and Arlene from Google for nominating me for the panel!

There is definitely an impressive line-up of speakers at ADSPACE and I am honoured to have been invited to speak. If you are attending ADSPACE at ad:tech SF this year, be sure to check out “The MasterClass for AdSense Rock Stars – Tales on Generating Traffic and Contextual Profits“. It’s a day-ending keynote where expert panelists, including yours truly, will be sharing stories and tips about contextual advertising and more. Given the session title, I am now officially a rock star, AdSense style.

Here are the panelists for The MasterClass for AdSense Rock Stars session:

• Leora Blumberg – DOCLIX
• Barbara Feldman – SurfNetKids.com
• Kim Kaplan – PlentyOfFish.com
• Me, Ian Lee – HealthCastle.com
• Chris Raimondi – FreePatentsOnline.com

If you want to connect and share ideas about contextual advertising or publishing, my twitter handle is @HealthCastleIan.

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For those who remember the buyout of Be Free by ValueClick in 2002 will remember that the total cost of that transaction was in excess of $100 million dollars. The oddest thing was that shortly after that purchase, ValueClick shutdown Be Free and moved all clients over to Commission Junction, their other affiliate marketing platform. So why pay $100 million and then close the shop? It probably has something to do with the fact that the real value of Be Free was not its affiliate platform but the two behavioral targeting patents that it holds.

One patent at issue, the 1998 “Method and Apparatus for Determining Behavioral Profile of a Computer User,” involves creating psychographic profiles of Web users “by recording computer activity and viewing habits.” The second, “Computer Program Apparatus for Determining Behavioral Profile of a Computer User,” issued in 1999, likewise deals with creating behavioral profiles of Web users. Both patents list Thomas Gerace as the inventor. Gerace founded Freedom of Information, Inc., which later became BeFree, Inc. and was acquired by ValueClick for $120 million in 2002. Gerace also is the founder and chief executive of the social networking site Gather.com.

Over the last few years, ValueClick has filed lawsuits against Blue Lithium, Revenue Science and Tacoda for infringing on a patent on the general principles of behavioral targeting.

Google surely knows of these ValueClick lawsuits. Now that Google is testing the behavioral targeting waters, they probably have their legal team waiting in preparation for more lawsuits to come through the door. Either that or Google has an out and have found a way around the infringement of ValueClick’s patents. Google is calling it “interest-based” with no mention of the term “behavioral targeting”. Here are two references to this new Google offering:

• Google sidles up to behavorial targeting
• Google will let people choose how its ads target them

For a while after AOL purchased Tacoda, an industry leader in behavioral targeting, it looked like ad serving based on user action was being phased out of existence. It’s good to see behavioral targeting come back to life. I am sure ValueClick lawyers are going to have a field day with Google’s latest offering.

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Online marketing is becoming more sophisticated and marketers are looking for even better tools to help them do their jobs and more importantly, to gain that edge over competitors. In the past, it was difficult to target a specific audience in a Google AdWords campaign. Normally when you use keywords in your ad groups to contextually target ads, Google will match them to relevant pages across the hundreds of thousands of sites on the Google content network. But have you ever wanted to bid more (or less) for a specific content network site you’re contextually targeting? Or write customized ad text for a precise group of pages, such as news articles or relevant discussions on social networks? Now you can!

Enhanced Online Campaigns – Targeting Specific Web Sites

Advertisers will now be able to increase bids and more accurately target sites they are performing well on with greater ease. Google has combined keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns into a single online campaign type. As of yesterday, you can target keywords and placements together in the same ad group. This new tool is called Enhanced Online Campaigns. By doing so, you combine the benefits of contextual targeting with placement targeting: use keywords to show your ads only on contextually relevant pages, then use placements to set specific bids for, or restrict your targeting to, sites you value differently from the rest of the content network.

This is great news for AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers. Increased targeting means the advertiser may bid higher for keywords and this increased ad spend should trickle down to the publisher’s end and result in increased AdSense revenues. At least in theory, this should happen.

Gain the SEM Competitive Edge

So if you are looking for that edge over the competition in search engine marketing, look no further. Google suggests these 2 ways to use the new Enhanced Online Campaigns to highly target your keyword buys.

1. Set custom bids for specific placements
2. Show your ad only when both keywords and placements match

For more information on, check out Google’s Enhanced Online Campaigns page.

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Have you secured your holiday season marketing and PR campaigns yet? Will it include getting your product or service into New York City’s always busy Time Square? If not, then you are not reaching the approximately 1.5 million tourists flocking to the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center, the windows at Macy’s and Radio City Music Hall. Now you too can take advantage of this special offer… for the right price, of course!

To promote your products on the Reuters Sign in Times Square on four of the biggest shopping days of the year:

• November 23rd
• December 15th
• December 23rd
• December 24th

It will only cost you:

• $1,750 (4 showings)
• $5,750 (20 showings throughout the holiday season including display on the four designated days)

You also get these as part of the ad cost:

• Images will be displayed in Times Square at least once for 15 seconds on each of the four designated days.
• Receive a time-stamped snapshot each time your photo is displayed, and in addition, you will also receive one high-resolution image of your photo displayed in Times Square.

The 20 showing option is a steal at $287.50 per impression (or $19 / sec) compared to $437.50 per impression (or $29 / sec) for the lower package.

I wonder how effective this type of advertising really is. Brand marketing would make sense here but if you want to drive call-to-action, it’s highly doubtful someone will remember your website while if flashes across 3 video screens on a busy street corner. But it sure would be cool to have your ad served here wouldn’t it? Check out this Dell ad spread across 3 screens over 20 stories high.

Photo Source: Flickr member xsquare2

The above pricing is actually a special offer through PR Newswire. Retail pricing could be much higher! If you are interested to showcase your offer on the Reuters sign in Times Square, send me a note here and I will put you in touch with my PR Newswire rep.

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As mentioned in “Affiliate Marketers Don’t Behave. Do You?“, companies like 24/7 Real Media and Tacoda serve behavioral targeted ads. Since 24/7 Real Media’s recent acquisition by advertising holding company WPP Group (WPPGY), I have been wondering who will be the lucky one to acquire Tacoda. I am a believer that behavioral targeting can play a positive role in affiliate marketing and have been wondering who will want to acquire behavioral targeting technology. Today, we find out.

Earlier this morning, I received an email announcement from Tacoda about their acquisition by AOL. Looks like AOL sees the potential of behavioral targeting as well. Tacoda prides itself on being the only network providing transparency, control and data privacy to their partners. Having worked with Tacoda, it is definitely nice to receive monthly reports of traffic behavior. No other network as I know it provides this type of web analytics to publisher partners.

Way to go Tacoda. Congratulations are in order!

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