Google created the original Keyword tool to help small business owners advertise their products so they wouldn’t need to deal with the hassle of learning the ins-and-outs of Search Engine Marketing. The Keyword Tool allows small business owners to identify relevant keywords that a consumer searches for when looking for related products. By identifying necessary keywords to include in their ads, small business owners can accurately target their ads at the right consumer, which is the primary purpose of search engine marketing.

When a small business owner searches for the usefulness of a keyword in the Keyword Tool, Google returns statistics of the amount of times the keyword is searched per year, suggests alternate keywords ideas, and discloses the amount of competition among other ads currently in the market. By doing this, a small business owner can easily compare whether this keyword is necessary for their ad.

The Google AdWords Traffic Estimator is another tool designed to simplify Search Engine Marketing by allowing small business owners to see the best way to utilize their limited budgets. In other words, the Keyword Traffic Tool estimates the amount of clicks an ad will receive based on the daily budget and the bid amount. This tool allows small business owners to plan out how much they actually want to spend. In addition, this tool helps small business owners decide whether or not they actually want to change their budgets.

The Keyword Planner Tool streamlines the process of creating an ad by combining the current Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator. Now, advertisers can not only see the effect a keyword will have on Cost-Per-Click (CPC), but also can bid and search for keywords in the same space. In addition, the Keyword Planner enhances the existing tools by utilizing wizard and multiplying list tools. The wizard tool facilitates small business owners and general advertisers. As digital advertising company WordStream notes the wizard tool is an, “Integrated workflow to guide users through the process of finding keywords for creating new Ad Groups and/or Campaigns.”

The Multiplying List Tool, on the other hand, simplifies keyword creation by creating variations of keywords for users. For example, if I were creating an ad for a new cereal, I might create two lists. One list for the specific cereal attributes, such as color and taste. I would create another list of action verbs to encourage the user to try like buy or purchase the product or service. Instead of manually combining these two lists, the multiplying tool combines the different variations for me. The user will then be able to automatically see the best matches and save a tremendous amount of time.

Pricing Engine is excited by the continued improvements Google AdWords seems to be making. We believe this new tool will simplify the black hole digital advertising can sometimes be for users. Only time will tell however whether this new tool is everything it is made out to be.

BIA/Kelsey, a market research firm, predicts digital advertising to make up increasing portions of local advertising. In 2012, BIA/Kelsey estimated digital advertising made up 17.4% of total local advertising. By 2017, its experts predict 27.6% of local advertising will be digital, an increase attributable to a $16.3 billion increase. BIA/Kelsey also attributes the increasing presence of digital advertising to mobile marketing, one of the most effective marketing tools up to date. Mobile marketing allows small businesses to target specific customers in their region and allows customers to search for local businesses at any time in any place. For this reason, its experts predict mobile search to increase revenue from $704 million is 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2017.

Borrell confirms BIA/Kelsey’s predictions by focusing their research on the role digital promotions play in mobile advertising. Borrell estimates digital promotions make up 65% of digital advertisements, because mobile marketing is effective. For a company, advertising by using digital promotions allows for more accurate targeting of potential customers. Borrell projects digital promotion revenues to increase from $32.3 billion to $82 billion by 2017.

The future looks promising for digital advertising. As advancements grow, like mobile marketing,  digital marketing will hold greater share of all local advertising. In other words, revenue will increase, while costs will decrease.

ComScore’s March 2013 vs. February 2013 report shows Google losing 0.4% of its search share, while Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Ask all gained share. The report also shows an estimated 20.4 billion desktop searches, according to Search Engine Land, which is an 11% increase from February 2013 and an all-time high.

Naturally, search share fluctuates. However, Microsoft has seen a steady incline since 2011. Although minute increases, Microsoft has gained nearly 3% of search share since 2011. Yahoo!, on the other hand, has dropped more then 4%. But let’s remember Google is still King of Search. Globally, Google maintains approximately 60% of the search share, followed by Baidu’s 8% of share. Other contenders include Yahoo at 5% and Yandex at 3%. Bing significantly trails the world rankings with 2.5% of global search share.

What else has been happening in the search world to warrant any kind of change at all?

Bing has seen activity grow as Facebook’s Graph Search has also grown, as Graph Search is powered by Bing. However, Graph Search has been a major letdown so far. Not only are the searches limited, but also its results are often inaccurate. Still, Facebook’s gigantic user-base is bound to have a positive effect.

At its heart, benchmarking is the practice of analyzing the performance of your competitors’ and industry’s paid search efforts in order to monitor, adjust and improve the relative performance of your own campaigns. [Source: Search Engine Watch]

Chantel Waterbury:  “There are certain companies that have to be here [to succeed]. Nowhere else can you find people who work with both tech and fashion.”

Oisin Hanrahan:  “We wanted to be near the most difficult customers. If you can make New York customers happy, then it’ll be way easier anywhere else.”

Aaron Schildkrout:  “Building a dating site is about building a brand, particularly if you’re building a subscription site. It felt like this was the place to build a brand.”

Matt Brimer:  “I think, post recession, the opportunity cost for people to pursue an entrepreneurial career or consider more alternative career paths went way down. So you started to see people coming out of all these different industries.”

Scott Heiferman:  “Well, New York is where you have to be if you want to work on a certain kind of Internet. They’re here because of the collision of people […] because at the end of the day the Internet is about how people are turned to each other.”

Heiferman’s point resonated so much that it became a recurring theme throughout the rest of the session. The panelists seemed to agree that NY tech startups thrive on being in close proximity to other people; Schildkrout even referred to New York as a “Bump-into-each-other Petri dish.” Here, startups aren’t reliant on meeting with big companies or potential partners over the phone. Instead, they can walk down the street and meet at a coffee shop. As Heiferman puts it, “[New York] is a fertile mass of human collision that creates this ugliness that is the future.”

[Source: AlleyWatch]