DAILY NEWS UPDATE

Kamis, 15 November 2012

Get local in time for the holidays and beyond

This holiday season, make it easy for your customers to find, visit, and call your business with AdWords location targeting and location extensions. Location targeting shows your ads to customers in specific geographic areas you want to reach, while location extensions dynamically attach your business address and phone number to your ads. Today, we are announcing a few improvements to these two features and making them available in more countries to help your business “get local” for the holidays.

What’s new

1. Introducing airport targeting: A new way to reach travelers on the go
Whether people are checking a flight status or passing time before take-off, mobile and tablet devices have become indispensable for airport-goers. With the launch of airport targeting, businesses are now able to connect with potential customers on mobile, tablet or laptop devices in more than 350 airports around the world via AdWords.

With airport targeting, you can offer relevant, last-minute travel and entertainment opportunities, promote your mobile application to airport travelers, amplify interest in your in-airport campaigns, build your brands with mobile display ads, and much more. Plus, you can easily review the performance of these campaigns using geographic performance reports.

2. Location extensions and sitelinks show together
Location extensions can now be shown alongside one-line sitelinks in text ads (on desktop and laptop computers) and will continue to show with two-line and three-line sitelinks. If you have a multi-channel business, consider using location extensions in addition to sitelinks to help you highlight specific areas of your business.

3. Larger, more useful maps
Location extensions on desktop and laptop computers will now appear with a larger, more engaging map panel that will replace the current expandable map. When the location extension address is clicked, this new map panel appears to the right of the top search results.

Early testing suggests that users will click to see locations on a map more frequently than with our previous design.

4. Better location matching for customers
Features such as postal code targeting in the U.S., have enabled us to show closer and more relevant locations to your customers from within your location extensions. At the same time, if you have a specialty or destination business such as a niche boutique or a ski resort, your location extensions can be shown to people who are located nearby, but who aren’t within your business’s postal code -- so you also can attract customers who are willing to travel longer distances to visit your business.

5. Online conversion reporting for Location Extensions
If you use AdWords conversion tracking, you probably want to know how location extensions affect your online conversion rates. Earlier this year, we included online conversion data within ad extensions reports to help you analyze the overall impact of location extensions on online conversions and measure your online conversions per location more effectively.

6. Geo-targeting and location extensions available in more countries
In addition to previously announced updates to location extensions and geo-targeting options in more countries, we’re excited to make location extensions available in Argentina, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, UAE, and Vietnam.

We have also expanded geo-targeting options in the following countries: counties in the United Kingdom, departments in France, and cities in Argentina, Russia, and United Arab Emirates.

Here’s a full list of location targets available globally.

Get local
We hope these improvements will make it easier for you to highlight your local business information for customers, both during and after this busy holiday season. If you’re new to local ads, or would just like to learn more, check out our help center for step-by-step instructions on setting up location extensions and location targeting. And, you can always contact AdWords support.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager

Registration opens for DJCamp2013 in Istanbul

[Update 08/01/2012: All the places for this workshop have now been taken. However, if you are interested in attending, please add your name to the waiting list and we'll let you know if any additional places become available]

Registration is now open for the much-anticipated DJCAMP2013 Istanbul – a two-day workshop designed to inspire and equip journalists with the skills they need to find and shape data into stories with impact.

Presented by internationally-recognised digital journalism thought leaders and experienced data journalism trainers Sarah Hartley and Megan Knight, this hands-on workshop will run over the weekend of 26th and 27th January 2013 at Istanbul Bilgi University's Santral Campus. DJCamp2013 is part of the series of activities of the MADE project, which aims to support innovative news entrepreneurs in Turkey and the UK.

In addition to spaces reserved for those who participated in the recent MADE: Turkey Weekend for Startups, 15 additional spaces are available to professional journalists and journalism academics.

You'll find more information about the workshop and alshow you can reserve your place available here.

Senin, 12 November 2012

2012 was the breakthrough year for digital persuasion across 4 screens

The 2012 campaign will be remembered as the first four screen election.

The Internet has fundamentally transformed how voters receive information on candidates and issues. Access to political information no longer comes from one place, or one screen. That means that campaigns that adapted to this new reality - and adopted a four-screen strategy to persuade and connect with voters - more often than not won. The trend is clear: those who invest in online win. In fact, 9 of the top 11 US Senate races who spent more online with Google won on Tuesday.

Let’s look at how the four screens worked together in the closing days of the race.

Of the four screens, mobile’s role in political campaigning grew the most from 2008. Voters use their devices to stay up to date about key issues, look up quick answers, or find last-minute information like where to vote. Candidates who recognized these behaviors and developed mobile strategies to reach people on their smartphones were able to drive voter interaction. Specifically, we found that as election day neared, voters turned to their mobile devices for election-related information.

Total US Mobile searches related to finding a voting location increased by 164% from Monday to Tuesday. This trend was even more pronounced in battleground states.

Quite a few voters leave their homes on Election Day and are still undecided. On the day of the election, throughout the US, the majority of Obama-related searches occurred on mobile devices as millions of Americans stood in line and travelled to their polling places.

Search, especially on larger screens like laptops, is an essential voter tool for fact-checking and education. It is also a critical campaign tool for rapid-response and persuasion. We saw campaigns and issue advocacy groups use search to respond, educate or even ‘bracket’ events in real-time. There was a real shift toward voters using (and trusting) the Web as a fact-checker, especially around offline events like debates. 64% of voters use the Internet to verify or “fact check” a claim made by a candidate or issue group and it is clear that it is key to formulating voting decisions.

In Maryland, where same sex marriage legislation was passed, total searches for gay marriage increased by 482% from the same period last year.

Since April 2011, when Romney officially entered the race, over 700,000 videos mentioning Obama or Romney have been uploaded to YouTube, and these videos account for 2.8 billion views.

Television - especially around live campaign events like debates - is a powerful catalyst to drive action on digital devices. Savvy campaigns built presences across all screens to stay connected with voters that are driven online by TV to fact-check or research.

77% of TV viewers use another device at the same time in a typical day. (Google Multi-Screen Research)

And, finally, while tablets are still a relatively new device, they distinguished themselves as an important tool this election. The most notable role that tablets played was as a couch companion, helping voters find more information and react to the things they saw on TV. While this TV + Tablet multi-screening was the most mainstream behavior, we are also seeing a growing number of people who are turning to tablets first to consume news and find information.

During the second Presidential Debate, energy-policy related searches on tablets spiked by 359% immediately after the question about gas prices. This shows how people reach for their tablets in response to things on TV.

Campaigns who don’t come to grips with these changing voter behaviors will have a harder time giving that victory speech on Election Night. Campaigns who go online and develop a multi-screen approach to persuading and connecting with voters will win. It has never been more clear that the road to victory requires a four screen strategy.

Posted by: Jennifer Gross, on behalf of the Politics & Elections Team

Minggu, 11 November 2012

Ear-Powered Medical Devices In Development

think subdermal bluetooth headset.

you can really walk around talking like a crazy person and be completely correct.

when your phone rings only you will be able to hear it.bbnow if they could come up with a subvocalized microphone to go with it then you could have a full conversation while looking like your paying attention in a boring meeting.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/jVFTeZA1GLU/ear-powered-medical-devices-in-development

lollapalooza lineup joss whedon ronnie montrose melissa gilbert dancing with the stars dandelion wine cough matt groening