The new version is out. The following is a list of what they’ve improved on.

•  You Can View Image Ads
• Drag & Drop: Mouse Friendly organization by dragging objects to their desired location.

• Region & City Targeting: Finally! An expanded version of GEO targeting that allows you to target cities and Regions. The previous version only allowed country targets. Here’s a screenshot;

• Other Miscellaneous Changes: Keyboard Shortcuts, Delete Multiple Tools, & Add Draft Campaigns via Tab Tool Bars.

What I like most about the possible Yahoo/MSN merger is that it will raise the profile of Ask.com which, to my mind has possibly the best interface of them all.

Saw the new Google search results page design and decidely do not like it. It seems forced and is redundant in ways.

Haven’t seen it? Google Blogoscoped has it covered.

Have a good one.

~The (SEP) Guy

According to The Globe & Mail and Keith McArthur, online advertising in Canada surpassed the one billion dollar mark in Canada in 2006, and is expected to rise a further 32% this year. It also represents an 80% increase over 2005.

This is apparently about 8% of the total advertising spend in Canada, but those numbers will be confirmed in coming weeks/months.

So how does it play out?

According to the article, the lion’s share at 36% is display advertising; with search advertising at 35%; classified at 27% and email advertising at 2%.

MSNBC and the David C. Churbuck article Google and the Rebirth of Banner Ads provided not only some interesting insight into the Google Doubleclick deal, but also this little nugget way, way, way, way down the article, and it’s a long article so perhaps if reading it, you might have zoned out. It is after all Friday.

Recently Search Engine People has been given the oppourtunity to participate it the new Pay Per Action Beta from Google. The following is a list of things to keep in mind when structuring your PPA campaings. Screenshots follow. 

Top 5 Things to Keep in Mind When Building PPA Campaigns.

1.  Your campaign should revolve around one central theme.

2. Keep in mind that each Ad Group within the campaign should target a single product or service.

3. When naming the product or service, make sure the name is accurate as it will be shown to publishers who want to choose your ads.

Ka-Ching!

Of course Doubleclick has to be happy with the recent news that it’s sale brought in 50% more than anticipated by The Street.

Microsoft, not so much. Having been shut out of the the game, it’s now urging regulators to look at the impending Google/Doubleclick deal, according to The New York Times. And AT&T has joined them in the cry.

But it’s not just Doubleclick and Google that are benefiting.

Aquantiive, 24/7 Real Media and Valueclick have also witnessed upticks today, and not insignificant ones.

As a friend discovered this week, not all Google results are the same.

A search from Toronto and a search from New York will usually resulting in a different set of organic results appearing.

To be clear, using Google.com as your base search and not Google results from Google.ca or Google.ca Canadian specific results will show variations depending on where you search from.

To borrow from George Orwell’s Animal Farm; All searches are equal but some are more equal than others.

The difference of course is about server location, IP and all of that. I’ve long maintained that this is, while probably an algorithm oversight, nevertheless a shortcoming of the search engines.

A couple of weeks ago now, okay, a month ago now… The (SEP) Guy has been busy… Piper Jaffray released its Internet Media & Marketing Report.

One the more interesting findings was the opportunity that abounds and remains untapped in search. More specifically, in Local Search or to put it another way, Niche Search or to put it another way, Vertical Search. Greg Jarboe had an interesting perspective at SearchEngine Watch with Piper Jaffray Maps Out Where the Search Industry is Headed.

Famed adman David Oglivy is usually credited as having said: “Half my advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half.” In fact, it was actually John Wannamaker, considered the father of modern advertising.

No matter who said it, ROI (Return On Investment) or in Googlespeak, ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) has long been the bane of marketers and advertisers alike.

Google was supposed to have solved that but according to ex-Google employee Adam Goldberg, responsible for the $500 million team behind Google Adwords, this may not in fact be the case. According to the ZDNet Digital Markets blog posting by Donna Bogatin, Google clients ‘frustrated’ by unprofitable AdWords buys,

It’s “how to” day.

This is a tremendously easy way to see your Google Adwords Results in cities or countries where you’re not located.

To see Google Adwords Results In Another Country:

Move there

Append the following code to the end of your query: url &gl=country iso code (ISO stands for International Orgzanization for Standarization — why it wouldn’t be an IOS code is quite beyond me, but I digress…). For the very curious, here’s a listing of the various and sundry ISO country codes.

So, a search for dentists on Google http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GFRC_enCA213CA213&q=dentists becomes http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GFRC_enCA213CA213&q=dentists&gl=UK to show dentists in the UK.