SeoAlchemist

In what could be a preview of an impending battle between Facebook and Google in the coming days, Facebook has beaten Google as the most visited website on both Christmas Even and Christmas Day, says a tweet from Hitwise’s Twitter account. It was the first time that Facebook become the number one site during Christmas Day. Last year it was Google as the most visited site with Facebook closely following behind.

But come to think of it, it is not surprising for Facebook to be visited more both during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day since majority of people are spending their online time during those days probably greeting their Facebook contacts, sending Christmas wishes and greetings to their loved ones, friends and family who are not with them on those days. Facebook after all is more of a communication tool than Google.

What made the event surprising was due to the fact that Facebook has been lagging behind both Google and Yahoo! Mail all through out the year in terms of site visits.  It only goes to show that email is a thing of the past during these days, as Facebook and perhaps other social sites like Twitter are the more preferred ways of communicating online especially during special occasions.

Most importantly it is also quite surprising that online users still visited Facebook despite the slew of privacy issues that came out during the year.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Facebook Beats Google : Most Visited Site on Christmas

Entrepreneur or SMB marketer drawing up an advertising budget for 2010? Try this massive list of over 30 ad networks I’ve compiled while browsing around the web. I’ve tried to focus on those that are SMB friendly with self-serve platforms. I’ve ignored CPA networks and tried to eliminate advertising aggregators, and the search engines.

Particular demographics / audiences

1. FARK.com – 18-28 year old men – Flat rate text links sold on a weekly basis (through a redirect; they’re not for SEO points)

2. Facebook – The biggest social network has hyper precise targeting. Don’t overdo it though, or you’ll end up like I did once, targeting merely 20 people.

3. PlentyOfFish – The web’s second largest free dating site has an self-service ad platform

4. MyAds on MySpace.com – Self serve banners like Facebook, with similar demographic targeting

5. AdEngage – A variety of formats focused on humor and games

6. Canoe Klix – French Canadian contextual CPC on premium French Canadian sites

7. Adknowledge.com – Social network ads published on social games

8. Click-Share – A variety of demographic targeting options are available, including some not seen elsewhere such as household income, children in household etc.

9. Chitika.com – A focus on monetizing SEO traffic has made them attractive to retail advertisers.

General – Most of these are available on a CPC basis, even if the ad format is banners

10. AdRoll.com – Offers help creating display ads, retargeting and other capabilities

11. BuySellAds.com – Blog banners, mostly 125×125

12. AdToll – Banners, peel-away and mixed banner/text ads.

13. Advertising opportunities at Amazon.com – Available for both products and services

14. FetchBack – The Retargeting Company

15. AOL’s AdSonar – Different targeting options, and selling text links  afaik. I’d link to AdSonar.com’s homepage but it just redirects to an AOL Advertising page, even though the site itself is up…

16. ContextWeb / ADSDAQ – Allows you to bid on traffic by category

17. Bidvertiser – Text and banner ads

18. Adbrite.com – Generalist network

19. AdReady – A competitor to AdRoll with similar banner making capabilities, but without the retargeting

20. Marchex – Boasting a portfolio of 100,000s of generic domain names, Marchex sells ads by click (self-serve) or by call (not)

News Media

21. AOL’s BidPlace SB – Banners on premium sites

22. MediaBids.com Print advertising auction

23. NYTimes – Starts at the exorbitant rate of $8 CPM. [Also requires you to drop the soap on entering...]

24. CBS Interactive – Similar rates as the NYT.

What surprises me about the NYT and CBS is that they don’t get that advertising is driven by efficiency, and publishers accepting some of the risk.

Twitter.com - Buy your message and link in someone’s tweet. Pretty self-explanatory. Some also offer “analytics,” though those offerings are all pretty light for now.

25. Twittad

26. BeTweeted

27. Be a Magpie (UK oriented)

28. Ad.ly

29. Sponsored Tweets

30. AdCause – Support charity with your ad dollars

31. TweetROI

Note: I combed through eConsultant and several other ad network lists, but they’re largely out of date with links to dozens of ad networks that have gone under. Also, most other lists include CPA companies and non-self-serve ad networks (eg relying on a traditional sales force). For the convenience of SEJ’s SMB readers, I’ve eliminated those.

Gab Goldenberg wrote this for Red Fly Marketing, an online advertising company. You can see some of the search friendly web design work here.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

30+ Self-Serve Ad Networks & AdSense Alternatives for 2010

Here’s an interesting report speculating that Google might actually be planning to make YouTube as a hosted gaming site.  Sometime in February 19, 2009 Google applied for a patent which carries the title – “Web-Based System for Generation of Interactive Games Based on Digital Videos.” The patent application which was published earlier this month states that:

“the collaborative generation of interactive features for digital videos, and in particular to interactive video annotations enabling control of video playback locations and creations of interactive games.”

This seems like somehow games would be built atop videos that are being submitted to hosting sites such as YouTube.

So its either games will be created that hop in and out of popular videos or  a place where people could upload source videos will be created. This will allow users to play out multiple video scenes and combine them to create a YouTube hosted online game.

If this is where this patent application is going through, then it will open up the possibility for anyone to create games using their video camera and a good video editing software.

So, what do you think, does this makes sense at all?

Here’s the part of the patent application explaining all these points:

A video may have associated with it one or more annotations, which modify the appearance and/or behavior of a video as it was originally submitted to an online video hosting site. Some examples of annotations are graphical text box annotations, which display text at certain locations and certain times of the video, and pause annotations, which halt playback of the video at a specified time within the video. Some annotations, e.g. a graphical annotation (such as a text box annotation) comprising a link to a particular portion of a target video, are associated with a time of the target video, which can be either the video with which the annotation is associated, or a separate video. Selecting such annotations causes playback of the target video to begin at the associated time. Such annotations can be used to construct interactive games using videos, such as a game in which clicking on different portions of a video leads to different outcomes.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Is Google Expanding YouTube into a Gaming Site?