If you’re a publisher who sells advertising space directly to advertisers, you might have experienced times when you’ve been unsure about how much inventory is available for you to sell. Google Ad Manager can help you learn what you have available to sell by forecasting your future inventory and subtracting off what you’ve already sold.

A Helpful Analogy

To put this into context, pretend for a minute that instead of a website, you run a popular destination hotel. Instead of selling space to advertisers, your job is to book hotel stays for guests. You receive all kinds of requests to book hotel rooms: two rooms for a one-week family vacation, 100 rooms for a three-day conference, a suite for a weekend getaway. In order to book these reservations, you have to know both how many rooms your hotel has and how many rooms are already booked. For a hotel, this is fairly straightforward. You know exactly how many total rooms the hotel has, and you can subtract how many rooms are booked for each night.

For a publisher, it’s not as straightforward. Since the amount of inventory you have to sell is directly tied to your site’s traffic, it can vary day by day. It’s also complicated because there’s flexibility in how you meet your obligations. If an advertiser has booked advertising space on your Finance and Entertainment sections, for example, you can serve more ads on the Finance page and fewer on the Entertainment page. To compare to a hotel, it’s like you have the flexibility to substitute two single rooms for one double room. Because of the variability of traffic and the flexibility in how you can satisfy your reservations, it’s hard to know exactly how much space you have left to sell for any day or any specific area of your website.

A Common Problem – and Solution

Even though it’s more complicated for websites than for hotels, the customers’ (or advertisers’) needs are the same: They want a reservation, and you have to be able to guarantee that there will be availability when they show up. A hotel can’t operate effectively without this type of capability, and neither can these web publishers.

Google Ad Manager, our hosted ad serving and management solution for publishers with smaller direct sales teams, addresses this publisher problem. It allows you to predict future availability and be confident that when you sell an ad, you’ll be able to deliver it. In Ad Manager, forecasting works by using your historical data to estimate how many impressions you have left to sell. Ad Manager’s inventory forecasting system allows you to find availability broken down by different areas of your website, by cities or states, and even by custom criteria that you define, like the user’s age. Even better, when the inventory you request is unavailable, Ad Manager will give you suggestions for freeing-up the requested inventory, so that you can still make the sale.

New Improvements

In the last few weeks, we’ve rolled out major improvements to our forecasting system. It’s now up to ten times faster, and it uses much more historical data, so you get more accurate estimates of future availability. The new system allows us to quickly add new features in the future. We’ve already launched one of these improvements: Forecasts now take account of frequency caps, meaning that the availability estimates are modified to account for the fact that you might only want to show an ad once to each user. And more new features are coming soon!

Forecasting also continues to be a major development focus of our DART for Publishers (DFP) ad serving platform for publishers with larger direct sales teams, part of the DoubleClick Revenue Center suite of publisher solutions. Google Ad Manager serves as an effective complement to DFP and the DoubleClick Revenue Center to provide solutions for publishers of all sizes.

To learn more about forecasting in Ad Manager, visit the Ad Manager Help Center.

Popularity: unranked [?]

What happens when your hard disk dies, will your business survive if you can’t recover all of your important data? What about all those precious personal photos of your children growing up? Start backing up with Backup4all to avoid such risks.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

I thought I would share with you guys 15 Search Tips for Google. Hopefully this info is helpful to some of you

1. Google Calculator
How this works is your type an equation into the search field and it will give you the result. Example: 2*4 – 23*5 + 1000. After you type this in and click search or enter it will give you the result. You can do addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/), to the power of (^), and square root of a number (sqrt).

2. Dictionary Definitions
You can get the definition of a word by typing “define:” followed by the word. Example: define: canucks. This will get you the definition of canucks.

3. Search for a specific title
Suppose you came across a website you thought was awesome but you forgot to bookmark the site and only remembered the title of it and wanted to find it again. Well you can search by title with Google to hopefully find that website a bit more easily. All you need to do is type “intitle: then the title”. By doing this you will only get results of websites with that line in the title.

4. Google Converter
This is a very useful one if you need to convert something from one unit to another unit quickly. All you need to do is type something like “5km in miles” and it will do the conversion for you. I also use it a lot for changing from Fahrenheit to Celsius (25F to C).

5. Compare Currencies
Google search engine has a built in currency converter so you can go from one currency to another. This is done by simply typing something like “1 USD in CAN” and press enter and it will do the conversion for you.

6. Weather Updates
If you want to know what the weather will be like in your area you can type something like “London weather” and it will give you the conditions in that area.

7. Search for specific file types
If you want to find a certain type of file on the Internet it is normally pretty difficult to find what you are looking for but with the use of Google search you can find file types a bit more easily. You can search for file types by doing something like “Guide to build a good website filetypept”. That will look for files with that name and the file type of a powerpoint presentation.

8. Search on a particular website
If you want to search a particular website from Google you can do this by typing “hitch DVD site:www.amazon.com”. By typing in site: and then the website it will search that website for what you have type before site:.

9. Get the local time anywhere
Want to know the time in London now? You can do that by typing “what time is it London” in the search bar. You can also do it by typing “time (location)” without the quotes.

10. Remove unwanted search results
Have you ever wanted to search for something in particular but wanted to remove some of the search results? You can do this by type -something after the search term to remove it from the search results. Example: James Bond -movie. What that would do is remove the search results of James Bond that included the movie so you would find other things like news, books, etc.

11. Search for URLs
Want to search for a particular URL? You can do so by putting a “_, . , -” in between the words instead of a space. Example: What_are_you_talking_about. This would search for URLs that included those words.

12. Track Flight Status
Want to track a particular flight status? You can do that if you know the airline and flight number. You just need to type in the airline and the flight number to get the status. Example: British airways flight 5. This will bring you the results of this flight from this particular airline.

13. Search Google Groups by the subject line
You can search Google groups by subject line with this little trick. Type “insubject:then topic here” and you will get the Google groups with that subject line.

14. Find Related Sites
This trick will probably be familiar to a bunch of people but is helpful for finding related sites. What you do is type “related:www.site.com”. So if you wanted to find an alternative to the website your are looking at that you may have liked you can use this feature.

15. Find Links to a specific URL
This is pretty helpful for finding backlinks to your website. If you want to find out what websites link to your website you can type “link:www.yoursite.com” and you will get all the results of the websites that link back to yours.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Television ads are often prohibitively expensive for small businesses to produce and air. Magazine and radio ads are less expensive but still require a sizeable investment when part of an ongoing campaign. Although you can spend a lot of money on an Internet campaign, there are many ways to leverage the Internet and gain free advertising for your business. Following are 20 ideas to consider.

1. Increase your visibility on search engines: Insert keywords that describe your business into the HTML < META > tags on your Web site pages. Repeat these keywords in the text of your Web site’s homepage. Strategic use of keywords can put your business name at the top of customers’ search results. For more information, see our article “Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines and Directories.”
2. Put your URL on everything: Maximize your advertising efforts by listing your Web site address on everything you do. Print the URL on your company’s letterhead, on your business cards, on the front of your building or the door to your office suite. Use the URL in your e-mail signature. List the URL on any print advertising that you do, including phone books, brochures, flyers, and direct mail pieces.
3. Submit your site to every directory, specialty listing, industry organization, and yellow pages you can find: No matter what industry your business is in, there are online directories, such as Yahoo! Yellow Pages, that you should register with. Many business and industry associations allow you to list your business on their Web site. In addition, there are individuals who maintain popular lists of resources; use Web search engines to find these lists, and then create an entry for your business.
4. Utilize evangelists: Channel the energy of your most enthusiastic staff and encourage them to promote your company’s product as they surf the Web.
5. Blogs: A Weblog, or blog, is a collection of short articles, essays, or loosely-formatted thoughts, usually written by one individual. Since the 2004 U.S. presidential election, blogs have become extremely popular as both a medium to get your message out and a vehicle for paid advertising. Blogs also encourage reader comments, making them a valuable tool for gathering customer feedback. Companies such as Blogger (www.blogger.com) will host your blog for free. You can also install a blog on your own Web site with free software such as MediaWiki (http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net).
6. Podcasting: Podcasts are audio files recorded in a radio talk show format. By posting podcasts on your Web site and other sites like Apple’s iTunes (www.itunes.com), customers can subscribe to your podcasts, download them as soon as they are available, and then listen to them on their computers or portable MP3 devices. The software to create podcasts is free; for more information visit www.podcastingnews.com.
7. Join online communities: No matter what the topic, there are thousands of people discussing it passionately on the Internet. By contributing to these discussion groups, you can inform your customers and advertise your business..
8. E-mail lists: Cultivate a list of your customers’ e-mail addresses and send them new product announcements, coupons, special offers, and useful information. See our article “Introduction to E-Mail Marketing” for more information.
9. Get the attention of the press: Pitch news ideas about your industry to local newspapers, radio stations, and television stations. Pitch ideas to Web news sites. Propose that one of your employees be the expert interviewed in the news piece.
10. Win awards: Research organizations that give awards for the products or services you provide. Apply for these awards and take the process seriously. When you win, make the most of the publicity.
11. Donate time or resources to a charity: Encourage charitable organizations to promote your business’ donations and involvement. Try to get media coverage for the organizations and community causes you champion.
12. Publish information and reports about your industry: Provide consumers with free information about your business’ industry. Invest in potential customers and they will invest in you.
13. Reciprocal links: Companies such as LinkLeads (www.linkleads.com) help businesses by facilitating an exchange of hyperlinks. By allowing a company to insert links to their products on your site, a company will allow you to insert links to your products on its site.
14. Reciprocal banner ads: Companies such as 123Banners (www.123banners.com) help businesses by facilitating free banner advertisement swaps. By allowing a company to advertise on your site, they allow you to advertise on theirs. Be sure you retain control over what Web sites carry your ads, and what ads you post on your site.
15. Coupons: Make coupons available on your Web site and e-mail them to your customers. Encourage them to give the coupons to friends and family.
16. Free samples of your product or service: Offer free samples of your product or service. Distribute these samples as widely as possible. Register your giveaways with Web sites such as A+ Free Stuff (www.aplusfreestuff.com) that act as a clearinghouse for free products. Before giving something away for free, ask customers to provide their e-mail address or fill out a short survey.
17. Free classified ads: Use services like Yahoo! Classifieds (http://classieds.yahoo.com) to post free ads for your products and services. Also consider posting offers for free samples of your products, sweepstakes, and other giveaways.
18. Excellent customer service: There’s no advertising like personal recommendations made between friends and family. The best way to encourage this type of “viral marketing” is to provide excellent customer service. Take the time to properly train and motivate your sales people and do what is necessary to satisfy your customers’ needs.
19. Business alliances and partnerships: Build partnerships with businesses that offer complementary products and services, and then promote each other. Make joint press statements about your industry, your partnership, and your products and services. Make sure your partners provide links from their Web sites to yours.
20. Ezine: Write an e-mail newsletter, called an ezine, with articles about your industry, your products and services, and related news of interest to your customers. Check out sources such as goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com, which provide free articles you can use in your ezine. Advertise your ezine for free with directory sites such as www.ezine-dir.com.

Not all these ideas may be appropriate for your business. The important thing is to think creatively and experiment. The Internet is an extremely flexible tool that gives your business many avenues for advertisement and enables you to react quickly to customer feedback.

Popularity: unranked [?]