Advertising for Real-Time Search (aka Twitter)

March 3, 2009 | 4 Comments

Real-time search is going to change things up on the web. To me, real-time search is essentially “conversational search” — what are people talking about right now? What events, what trips they are planning at this moment, what answers they are trying to find to looming questions, etc.

Twitter is all about conversation and what people are doing now. Twitter has real-time search, but hasn’t made it widely available yet — imagine when Twitter puts this search box at the top of every Twitter page; it’s going to be a game changer.

Some companies have been trying various methods of helping users of Twitter make some money, but generally putting ads in their feeds. I think this will work if they insert a link that is 100% relevant to what ever the person is tweeting about.

But what really needs to happen is another Google AdWords, but for real-time search. Text ads to people doing real-time search queries, are going to read/look different than search queries at a search engine. Some company needs to start figuring out what these ads are going to read/look like — and also how people will be searching the real-time web, because it’s going to look much different than their search habits on Google. People will use different keywords/phrases and ways of phrasing their queries.

Some searches will stay the same (i.e. “tickets for Purdue Ohio State game”), but others will change (i.e. instead of “hotel recommendations in Buffalo NY”, they might search on how others would be saying it, “hotel great Buffalo NY” — to get people twittering ‘The Mansion Hotel has been great in Buffalo NY!’).

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Ideas, analysis, inspiration, twitter 

I’m Rich, Bitch! [inspiration]

January 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Fellow Buffalo-NY affiliate rockstar Paul Bourque (aka Uber Affiliate) launched a new Site called S.eriously.com that is quite simple and shows a handful of “big money” checks/earnings that some Super Affiliates have earned from various offers they have promoted through affiliate networks. [that is the longest sentence I think I have ever written in my life; and I think it might not be a run-on, so I'm going to leave it]

Paul monetizes the Site by providing referral links to the affiliate networks that those big money checks were earned from (i.e. Copeac, NeverBlueAds, Millnic Media, CPA Empire, Rextopia, Rocket Profit, CoProsper, OfferForge, etc). If anyone signs up for those networks via his links, then he receives a % of that user’s earnings for a period of time (anywhere from 2-10%, typically 5%). This is called “2nd tier referrals”. It is then in his best interests that those people earn a lot of money, so then he earns some extra cash.

It’s a good source for some inspiration.

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under inspiration, uber