Google announced a new ad distribution system today, Google TV Ads. Using the existing AdWords system, users can now create television commercials and manage them alongside their online campaigns. The commercials will run on selected TV stations, during time segments that users specify. If you're not sure which stations are right for your ads, there is even a suggest by demographic function that will match your target demographics with TV stations and time segments that would best fit your target viewers. Going even more in depth, users can target a specific program to advertise on or block if they feel that specific programs fit or don't fit into their strategy. Since this utilizes the easy to use AdWords system, television ads are now open to a whole new segment of advertisers who may not have had the opportunity in the past.

TV ads are already starting to encourage people to go online and search for their brand, so this is an interesting way to bring internet and traditional media advertising even closer together. With search, radio, mobile, print and now television ads, Google is helping to promote the idea that in order to market successfully you need to consider all possible avenues to reach your target audience.

Let's recycle our magazines! I was getting ready to throw some away last night and realized that instead of dumping them, I could share them with the Team at Congruent Media.

If you're interested, start bringing in your magazines after you're done with them. If you're like me, you browse through them when they arrive, then hardly ever reference them again. I'm sure we have a quite a variety being delivered to our homes that other team members would be interested in.

I'll start with late copies of Boating World, Money Magazine and Real Simple Travel. They're now with the regular business publications we get. Help yourself and enjoy!

IMPORTANT UPDATE
Almost immediately after this blog was posted, Nalgene announced they will be pulling their hard plastic bottles made with bisphenol A (BPA) due to growing consumer concern over whether the chemical poses a health risk. Read the article here.

We've since canceled our recent order in response to the concern, and are now researching BPA-free water bottle options. Stay tuned for more on our quest for the absolute perfect water bottle.
 

THE TASK:
Order spiffy new water bottles with a shiny new Congruent Media logo

THE CHALLENGE:
Whether you're an avid water drinker or an athlete replenishing fluids, you probably know how difficult it can be to find the perfect water bottle. When we ordered our last round, we found a handful of defects that made the normally refreshing act of drinking water, well... not so much fun:

The Gleek Effect
When Dan Dawes, founding Partner at CM, went to take his very first sip from the last order of water bottles, he had the extremely unpleasant experience of being gleeked upon - by his own bottle! We thought you were supposed to drink your water, not wear it!

The Helpless Hand Holder
Version 1.0 of our water bottles included a strap from the cap to the lid that’s intended purpose is two-fold:

1. Make sure the user doesn’t misplace or lose the cap to their water bottle, and
2. Give the user a handy little mechanism for toting the bottle from location to location

The problem? The straps started to break within just a couple of uses - not very reliable, and certainly not handy.

Flavors That Weren't Meant to Be
Drinking water should be a pure, refreshing experience. So why did water from our old bottles taste like it came from the kitchen sink? We read up on terms like "chemical leaching" and "flavor residue" and decided that drinking water just wasn't meant to be like this.

Logo? Uh, No-Go
Rule #1 of promotional item printing: make sure the client's logo looks good and that it's applied correctly. There's really not much more to say about that!

THE SEARCH
With all of these defects in mind, we set out to find the perfect water bottle. Meet our contestants:

	Contestant 1: This water bottle had odd, angled ridges on the side, presumably to help with gripping its massive girth. Those of us with smaller hands were not so ergonomically pleased with this design. Plus the aforementioned "handy strap" was merely a little nub of a loop that only a small tike's finger could fit into.
	Contestant 2: This water bottle was a little too complicated for our taste - the top looked eerily like a hand grenade, and it should have come with an instruction booklet for use.
	Contestant 3: This water bottle was getting closer to "just right" - the ergonomic shape made it easy to grip, it had the all-important handy strap, and it even included a measuring tool on the side for people that like to create mixtures or using training supplements. Still, the handy strap was just a bit on the massive side and looked like it could accidentally get hooked on something that one wouldn't necessarily want to be attached to...

Contestant(s) 4:
Last but not least, we had the good old, tried and true Nalgene bottle. We ordered two samples of this bottle - one smaller 16 ounce bottle with a narrow mouth, and a 32 ouncer with the larger mouth for those of us who really love our water. These samples were the last to come in, but when they did, it was pretty evident that we'd found our winner. This option offered *seemed to offer* a little bit of everything - it was virtually odorless, had the handy strap, featured the measuring tool, and we could even order a neat little splash guard to minimize the gleak effect we experienced with our old water bottles! Though they were a little bit more of an investment, they proved the old cliché that you sometimes you really do get what you pay for - plus, our clients are worth it! Unfortunately, Nalgene just announced they are pulling this line of bottles due to concerns over the chemical BPA, so we're forced to seek out a better, healthier option for our clients - more to come soon!

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article announcing the results of Yahoo's trial-run of Google's ad platform. The results? "Positive."

Despite Google's ad network having a smaller reach than Yahoo, Google's ads bring in "significantly" more money. Should a Google-Yahoo partnership shape up, that additional revenue could add up to $1 billion a year to Yahoo's coffers.

Granted, a partnership between the two search giants (Google's market share: 67%; Yahoo's market share: 20%; source: Hitwise) would likely be difficult impossible to get by regulators, it gives Yahoo more leverage against Microsoft's hostile takeover attempts. Redmond's April 7th ultimatum might hold a little less weight now that Google may be sniffing around. And even if they're not, Yahoo would probably be wise to play that card ;)

If a Google-Yahoo partnership were to emerge from this, what would that mean for your SEO/SEM campaigns? Would a singular entity in the market make it easier and cheaper to reach your audience? Would the new search behemoth be able to mold internet marketing practices to it's own terms, at the expense of current SEO techniques? Or is any merger/acquisition/partnership destined to fail simply because "GooHoo" is a ridiculous name?

Give me your thoughts in the comments.

My friend, C, emailed me this morning to let me know he was rudely awakened at 6 AM by his BlackBerry, which had received some sort of SPAM or other...  In the same message, C also let me know that Google had just launched its new "App Engine", open to the public (well, about 10,000 of them, anyway, since this is a "Preview" release) - pointing me to Matt Cutts blog (posted yesterday) on the subject.

According to the official Google Blog, the Google App Engine opens up to developers the "same building blocks" that Google itself uses.  Items built using the Google App Engine are hosted on Google servers, for free, and receive 500 MB of storage utilizing the Google File System and Bigtable data storage system and 10 GB of daily bandwidth.

This rung a bell, reminding me of SalesForce.com's entrance into providing Software as a Service (SaaS) with their AppExchange and SDK for developing SFDC-integrated and hosted solutions.  A little bit of Internet sleuthing uncovered a blog entry on Tech Crunch, also dated yesterday, that hints at "Deep Integration" between SFDC and Google.  According to the blog post, SFDC is going to begin reselling Google Apps, such as Google Docs, which will be "tightly integrated" into SalesForce, and is purported to make an announcement next week to the same effect.

Interesting timing... In light of the Google App Engine announcement, WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?  The Tech Crunch article goes on to offer the tantalizing speculation that Marc Benioff, SalesForce CEO, might be considering selling to Google, but I'd think a merging of forces might be more in-line with these recent announcements.  If SFDC is going to resell Google Apps which are going to seamlessly integrate with it's own SaaS platform, it makes a blogger wonder if SFDC isn't going to end up being powered by the Google App Engine itself.  Imagine the kind of powerhouse that would be...  People integrating SFDC inside of the hosted Google App Enginge, people integrating Google Apps in SFDC, strange hybrids between Google and SFDC, monstrous cross-breads, ridiculous amounts of customer data flowing back and forth...

Is Google in it to gain access to the customer data?  That "deep integration" certainly is a way to expose Google Apps to the corporate (paying) sphere...

Are Google and SalesForce in it for platform dominance?  A combined Google/SFDC platform would sure blow the metaphorical socks off of the Windows Live/Office Live platform...

And aren't there any other players out there?  What happened to that offer for Oracle to buy up SFDC?  Where's Yahoo! when you need them? (Oh, right, hoping to fend off Microsoft's takeover bid...)  And Apple Computers (forget about them - they gave up the good fight a long time ago)?

It's beginning to look more and more like a two-player world after all - two corporate titans gobbling up everything else in sight.  Get ready for another match up of corporate titans, ten rounds of Microsoft versus Google, Steve Ballmer versus the tag-team of Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  I don't know who to root for on this one...  Linus Torvalds, where are you when we need you the most?

After a 6% sales tax on technology services was passed in the special session last fall (literally in the middle of the night) the Team at Congruent Media worked with the Tech Council of Maryland and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce to build FightTheTechTax.com.

The purpose of the website was to provide information about the tax and to help people express their opinions to the appropriate people in quick and easy ways - phone, email and snail mail.

For those who wanted to make calls, the site allowed users to find the appropriate legislators for their districts and provided the accurate phone numbers for them.

For those who preferred email, we provided a customizable template and the search tools to select the appropriate email recipients. These consisted of Delegates, Senators and Governor O'Malley for the sender's districts.

The website was launched in a very grassroots manner, with the main players emailing colleagues and business associates about the tax. As a viral marketing play, we provided Fight the Tech Tax buttons which showed-up in many a blog post helping to brand the mission and generate traffic to the main website. Many of the members also added information to their internal enewsletters.

It was very cool to track all of the site activity over the past few months. We watched traffic and site actions spike as the press paid more attention to the growing lobby against the tax. After one hit on WJZ we saw the email system use increase 5x the next day. As bloggers worked their keyboards, we saw referral traffic to the site rise. Cross-linking with members and other organizations helped to make sure all of the bases were covered.

In all, it was a great lesson in how to empower people to have their voice heard -- in the right way. By taking the time to put together an easy to use system, we enabled a lot of folks to direct their concerns to those who matter without bombarding legislators out their districts. It used to be that it wasn't so easy to find all of that contact info. Now automated systems make it a snap.

Over the past few months the system generated over 4,500 targeted emails, untold phone calls and a lot buzz. We saw it and the lawmakers did too.

We weren't alone though as Tom Loveland and John Eckenrode, co-Founders of the Maryland Computer Services Association, did a bang-up job in bringing support for the repeal as well building a team of lobbyists and communications pros to push the right buttons. Tom became somewhat the "face" of the fight and did a great job in all of the interviews as well as keeping folks up to speed on the activity. I was impressed to receive updates from Tom late on the weekend with instructions on where to meet the next morning.

All of this is a great example of how groups can rally together to fight for something they believe in. Early on it was said that this law was not going away, but through everyone's continued efforts right down to the last minute, we were all able to get the gov't to make the change we believe in. Sweet.

Ryan did an interview with Daniel Sernovitz of the Baltimore Business Journal a couple of weeks ago and the article came out in this week's edition. You can view it here (subscription required). It's a nice article on what companies are doing to help reduce the amount of stress in the workplace -- especially in very deadline-driven businesses like ours.

Featured prominently in the big color photo are Ryan and a few team members having a good time playing some foosball. It's a friendly game as you can tell from all of the smiling faces, as most are.

Sometimes though, the competition gets a bit heated after work as you can see in this shot as Eric chalks up the winning goal as Sean looks down in disbelief. I think this particular game may have actually caused some stress for Sean :)

Google is always tinkering, inventing, reinventing and otherwise expanding their offerings to stay in front of the pack. Friday's announcement on the official Adwords blog that their demographic bidding is out of beta and into the hands of all Adworders falls in lock step with that strategy.

In short, advertisers can tweak their campaigns to only show ads on the Google content network to those that fall within reported demographic segments. Bids can also be adjusted accordingly. Think about being able to run your ads on MySpace based on what those users report as their age and gender. There's a lot of potential for increasing ROI when properly executed.

We're going to be running some tests here and will report back initial findings shortly.

I have long considered Ask.com to be the little search engine that could. They didn't have the legacy audience of Yahoo, the endless budget of MSN (or Live if you prefer), nor did they have the technology and overall popularity of Google. What they did have was an urge to innovate. Ask incorporated an all-in-one search format, binoculars to preview websites, a map system that in my opinion surpasses even Google Maps in terms of usability and neat features, and special current events callout boxes on results pages. All of this should have lead to an expanding user base. But there was a problem.

Ask's marketing strategy has been questionable for quite a while now. Ask used to be called Ask Jeeves. In early 2006 the Jeeves character "retired" perhaps in an attempt to shed the goofy cartoon image of a butler serving you search results. I thought the butler was a nice touch, but in any case. "The Algorithm" became the new marketing focus for Ask, which touted a new and intelligent system to produce search results for users. Billboards went up around the country, some of which drew the wrong kind of attention.

Invoking the name of someone like the Unabomber is perhaps not the best idea when advertising a website. Ask then put a series of TV commercials out, the most notorious two being focused on Kato Kaelin and "chicks with swords". The attempt to be wacky and memorable backfired as search discussion blogs exploded with negative reactions and Ask apologists were left "searching" for answers. For a search engine with less than 5% market share Ask seemed to be making bizarre decisions.

The most recent misstep was an Associated Press Announcement that Ask was firing 8% of their staff and was re-tooling to be a site tailored specifically to married women in the Southeast and Midwest. The next day Ask apparently refuted the claim and said they would not sacrifice general users to appeal to a specific subset. The main problem is that in this internet age news spreads like wildfire. I read the story of Ask's restructuring on more than 10 websites, but only found the supposed retraction on one. With all the buzz and discussion of the validity of these stories, Ask has produced no official position on their blog or in a press release. Even if the story was a mistake, the impact of a splashy headline all over the internet has done its damage.

If we can learn anything from the rocky marketing history of Ask it is that reputation management is of paramount importance on the net. With the constant rush of information users are presented with you might only get one chance to change someone's mind. Make it count.

Perhaps in response to the online backlash from the developer community about IE8's proposed method of version targeting, or, as Microsoft's own press release hints at, fear of more potential legal trouble in the EU, the guys behind Internet Explorer announced yesterday that, after thinking long and hard about their previous position on the matter, IE8's wholly embraced (then widely criticized and, ultimately, reluctantly accepted) version targeting system was going to adhere to standards mode by default.

Whatever the impetus for this about-face is, the only thing that matters is that Microsoft has finally started making good decisions about web standards support.

Instead of continuing to put the onus on developers to submit to IE's quirks, Microsoft has finally woken up to the fact that the standards are here to stay and that the only way for the web to progress is to stop pandering to incompetence. That may seem a little harsh, but it's the truth. The web has grown by leaps and bounds over an incredibly short period of time, and the innovations we've come to expect from the web can only continue if EVERYBODY works towards the same goal- an open, accessible web.

I can completely understand Microsoft's desire to support older sites. Given the size of their userbase and the number of legacy intranets that depend on IE6 quirks, it's impossible (and unacceptable) to expect them to completely drop support for those customers. On the other hand, it is equally unacceptable that standards-aware developers be forced to use outdated technologies and compromise what's possible simply for the sake of those legacy applications.

With the news that IE8 will now, thankfully, take the logical route of rendering in IE8 Standards mode by default, the web community as a whole can only benefit from it's release. The web will, hopefully, no longer be restricted by Microsoft's (again, understandable but incorrectly handled) coddling of legacy users. Those users now have two options: set their servers to trigger the appropriate rendering engine in IE8, or get their code compliant. The latter is obviously preferable and will hopefully see some significant play, but in reality, probably won't. Those developers that have grown used to being pandered to by Redmond will probably just choose the first option (the quickest and cheapest, so I can't really fault them). But, hey, that's OK. They don't need to update if they don't want to, as long as the rest of us no longer need to worry about Microsoft "favoring" incorrect websites.

So thank you, Microsoft, for stepping up and putting some support behind your (let's be honest, less-than-fulfilled) past pledges to support web standards. It is really, truly appreciated.