Since Microsoft showed off its Massive advertising platform in Times Square in New York last September, the tech world has begin massive strides in the sector of in-game advertising. Analysts say the in-game advertising market is worth about $514 million today. And dynamic in-game dynamic advertising, which allows advertisers to change the advertisements at will, is expected to reach $675 million by 2012 in the United States, according to consumer research group Parks Associates.”Emerging media, like in-game advertising, is a huge component of our overall strategy,” said Matthew Carr, senior director of Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions. “We’re already in a leadership position here. And we see this as being where the future growth will be.”

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Find out how the experts run campaigns on Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture), Microsoft adCenter (MSN), and all the smaller Pay Per Click Engines!

PPC Summits are designed as How To workshops that teach you how to better manage your PPC campaigns. The focus is solidly on advertiser education: how to spend less money, more effectively, with better results.

Summit DescriptionIn these interactive, two day summits, you will be introduced to strategies and skills that are the foundation of successful pay per click marketing.

PPC Summits are designed to help you and the people at your firm become the savvy search engine advertisers you know you must be in order to maximize your pay per click opportunities, out perform your competitors, and build your business.

These Summits are designed for people who are active learners and want to know EVERYTHING about pay per click marketing

Who Should Attend Webmasters, Website Owners, Web Marketers, Search Engine Marketers, Internet Consultants and Strategists, CEOs, CMOs, Marketing Execs, Brand Managers, Ad Execs, AMs and AEs, Media Directors, Buyers, Planners, Product Managers, Solution Providers, Creative Directors, Etailers, Retailers, Manufacturers, Lead Generators, Affiliates etc.

What You Will Learn

Search Engine Marketing Tactics:
• How to set up and manage pay per click campaigns across Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture), Microsoft adCenter (MSN), and all the smaller pay per click search engines
• Identifying keywords that really drive conversions
• Effective Search Engine Marketing copywriting
• Which tools, solutions and resources can help you reach your CTR and conversion goals
• What to track and how to do it effectively

Search Engine Marketing Strategies:
• Bidding strategies that are specific to YOUR business model
• Effective landing page development and deployment
• Discover what is making your competitors successful - case studies, metrics, examples etc.
• How to recognize and avoid click fraud that could kill your campaign performance
• Focus on the best present and future opportunities in Search Engine Marketing that are right for your business

How You Will Benefit

Benefits of attending a PPC Summit:
• In-depth practical knowledge to manage effective PPC SEM campaigns.
• Two comprehensive “How-To” resource manuals that will serve as a complete reference guide for pay per click - one per day of attendance
• Access to leading vendors (search engines, tools providers, SEMs, etc.)
• Opportunity to build lasting relationships with peers who have similar goals of succeeding with pay per click marketing
• Get your questions answered by Search Engine Marketing experts and discuss issues critical to your business

Sign Up NOWChoose the date you would like to attend.
Seating is LIMITED and interest is HIGH.

According to FierceMobileContent, Dailymotion announced an agreement to license original comedy content from mobile production firm ComedyTime. Dailymotion will add ComedyTime’s original mobile shorts and stand-up packages–a.k.a. “funnysodes”–including current and future clips featuring Roscoe the Party Dog, Freestylin’, Booty Patrol and Dick Nobody and more. Dailymotion will program the content on its Funny channel.

For more on the Dailymotion/ComedyTime deal:
- read this release

Yesterday MySpace and Bebo joined the club of social networks supporting the Google-lead OpenSocial API initiative. OpenSocial will now provide access to over 200 million users. That’s quite an intiative. At a recent conference, Davide Berlind of ZD Net asked Eric Schmidt of Google if the OpenSocial network could lead to a world where the biggest and mightiest “social containers” win? As you can hear in his full audio podcast of the press conference, Google CEO Schmidt answered that question as follows;

It depends on your view of how network effects happen and whether you think a single dominant player comes out in any of these spaces. The history of the Web says that that’s not the scenario that will happen. The history of the Web says that there is enormous diversity in what people are interested in and that people who are willing to take a bet on an open platform whether its a developer or leading site like MySpace get the benefit of a larger pie. It does not end up as a zero sum game. Your question can be rephrased in exactly the same question we asked 20 years ago and 10 years ago and history says that the Internet wins and that the principles of openness; that people can extend things; that in fact they end up winning because the pie gets so much larger in all scenarios.

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So let’s just recap what it’s like to be America’s Most Wanted Mapping provider. Less than a month ago, TomTom offers you $2.5B, then Garmin, who relies on NAVTEQ maps, counters with $3.3B. The rumor mill suggests a bidding war may be just over the horizon. If so one only wonders how high the $$ will go. If you recall early last month Nokia Corp. (NOK) , the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, offered to buy Navteq, Tele Atlas’ largest competitor, for $8.1B. “Advanced mapping data is an essential ingredient for the continued growth of the navigation industry and this acquisition provides a means for Garmin to contribute more broadly to the development and growth of this market,” the company said in a statement.

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Apple’s iPhone this year had to have the greatest mobile device debut in years. Consumers went nuts and developers did too. But with an AT&T lock, within a few weeks, iPhone unlocking hacks were out and ready to be released. With ton’s on new applications developed and launched underground, Apple finally took notice and has now comitted to release the SDk in February 2008. In an article from tuaw.com we learn:

The SDK will arrive, for iPhone and iPod touch (!), in February 2008 after MacWorld San Francisco. Apple “[is] excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users,” but they are taking the time to do it properly “because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc.”

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Local search, hyper local, community search. No matter how you slice it, its poised to be huge. According to Search Engine Land, $8 billion will be spent in ad spending by 2010 targeting local searchers. The local search market and natural offspring, Local Mobile Search are still in infancy stages. The real key we see is to enable the last mile, that is concentrate on getting local advertisers on-line rather than competing with current platforms. Quoted from the article:

It’s also clear that as searchers get more sophisticated, they’re getting more comfortable seeking out nearby merchants and service providers using the web, rather than turning to the increasingly outdated, non-interactive yellow pages.

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Looks like Andy Sack and the remaining team at Judy’s book are looking to sell all the pages. According to an interview with Click Z, Greg Sterling speculated that the company suffered from “investor fatigue.” Judy’s book, launched in 2005 score two rounds of investor capital totaling $10.5 million. The recent model change from business ratings and reviews to local shopping deals just didn’t pan out quick enough.
The interview goes on to say:

“They never had a chance to walk, let alone run,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst of Sterling Market Intelligence. The local media consultant suggested the company’s investors didn’t have the patience to wait to see if its new local shopping business model would take hold. “They didn’t see the revenue curve going up fast enough,” he said. “The investors were fatigued.”

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Ad:tech New York is here again. The New York stop of the tour is by far the best. Usually at this show, many new vendors debut in the makreting arena. Over the course of the next few days, it’ll be interesting to see what new products and offering come to life.

Check back soon for our list of must see products. Here is the offical description from Ad:tech themselves:

Are you engaged in conversations with your customers? Are you leveraging those results to learn more about your customers? Are you optimizing your message and delivery in order to drive brand preference? These topics, along with other brand-building methods and digital media technologies and platforms will be discussed at ad:tech New York. From the high level overview keynotes to the performance focused workshops to the technologies showcased on the show floor – it’s all here, under one roof. ad:tech… the business of modern marketing.

Register today….