Engagement is all the rage in Internet marketing, especially when companies like MasterCard talk about how to measure it and why it’s important. Engagement is reaching the right people, and motivating them to do something. Today, you have more opportunity than ever before to reach market segments on a micro level.

Geographic Targeting

Targeting users by location is a huge boost for local business, especially those who rely on mobile. Mobile users are more likely to buy, and banner advertising aimed at their location can boost sales. Geo-targeting also helps eliminate a state where your offer may not apply, which is common in affiliate and lead generation campaigns.

Demographic Targeting

Targeting by gender, age, and income level are all possible now thanks to greater amounts of data on users. Companies like Facebook have helped to catalog and crunch data, and those practices have filtered down to many buy-side platforms offering better quality traffic at a fair rate.

Retargeting

Marketers now have a second chance to reach users at a fraction of the cost. Retargeting looks at users who have viewed your website or your display advertising, and reaches out to them specifically. Advertising needs repeat views to sink in, and retargeting allows marketers to reach these segments alone.

Final thoughts

When you micro-target your audience, you remove all of the irrelevant page views your campaigns can accumulate. That immediately cuts spend, and should raise the overall response rates of your campaigns. If you’re unsure of a new segment that you’re targeting, try opening a new campaign to test that variable.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is an Internet marketing thought leader, and CEO of engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik began his work with MySpace.com and LowerMyBills.com, learning the secrets to banner advertising. Find out how to generate leads through Internet marketing tips from Ted Dhanik.

This article was written by Phin Upham

Pierre Omidyar founded AuctionWeb in September of 1995. The company was based out of San Jose, and it was part of a larger group of sites that Omidyar was managing for personal reasons. Omidyar was amazed when his first item sold: a broken laser pointer that went for $14.83. Omidyar even went so far as to ask the bidder if he realized that the laser pointer was broken. The buyer claimed he collected broken lasers, odd, but it was enough to motivate Omidyar to pursue his creation.

Omidyar had the company’s PR team fabricate a rumor that AuctionWeb was created to help his wife sell Pez dispensers. This was an elaborate ruse meant to compensate for the fact that the media didn’t find his actual motives all that interesting.

The site was just a side project until he was asked to upgrade to a business service by his internet service provider. The change in cost is what forced him to seek out a method to monetize the site. Omidyar hired his first employee specifically to process all of the new checks that would come in as the site grew.

Omidyar formally changed the company name to eBay in 1997, after a merger that allowed the company to sell plane tickets. eBay came from Omidyar’s consulting group: Echo Bay, but the name was already taken by a gold mining company. He shortened it to eBay and found the domain was not taken.

When eBay went public in 1998, Omidyar and his partner became instant billionaires.

No one wants to fail at their job, but tons of people start and fail at affiliate marketing every day. Most of these are fly-by-night efforts that were never destined to success, but some affiliates will pour thousands into a campaign hoping to make it work. Stop paying to learn what the experts already know. These obvious flags are guaranteed to turn your campaigns into failures, so avoid them to reap rewards of your work.

Automate Too Quickly

As recently as a few years ago, “set and forget” was the affiliate mantra for display advertising. There was a time when you could tweak your campaigns to get just the right settings before you sat back and watched the numbers roll in. This is not so true today. You can no longer rely on your targeting settings to remain effective, because other advertisers bid for the top spots in your area. You can no longer rely on your bids beating competitors, because advertisers are constantly fighting for the top position and will push your ads further down the page, if not entirely off of it.

Trying to automate your campaigns too quickly is the fastest way to fail. Instead, look for what you can automate, like the time of days your ads run, and try to take the stress off of your own workload.

Advertise Without Researching

Affiliate marketing is built on research. The more data you can assemble for your banner advertising, the more likely you are to hit your target and score a conversion. One of the biggest reasons that affiliates lose money is a lack of research. You need to know your core market for the product you’re selling, and any details you can glean about them. Learn about where they shop, what their income levels are, and what problems they deal with. You should also have a sense of what works in your niche, so you have some copy in mind when you design your ad.

Never Push Boundaries

If you don’t try to change up your advertising content, you’re bound to fail. Content marketing has been around for a while, going all the way back to vintage magazines and pamphlets from the Victorian period and earlier. If you try to rely on the same ideas, or in some cases the same content, you won’t be able to attract new attention. Your landing page should be specific to the buyer’s needs, which automation can’t account for.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is an expert in mobile, video and display advertising. As the co-founder of engage;BDR, Ted Dhanik manages business development and builds leads. Found out how to build successful campaigns with tips from Ted Dhanik.

The development of the modern circuit board really began in the early 20^th century. It was German inventor Albert Hanson who first discovered how to laminate flat foil conductors on an insulated board. Since, circuit boards have become crucial to the operation of electronic devices in the home and workplace. These important components would not be possible without advanced manufacturing techniques.

Mapping Boards

The first step in the creation of a circuit board is to map the wafer and plot out where the circuitry will actually go. There is a process called photolithography that is used to add a kind of roadmap to the board. Next, a sputter deposition system is used to lay the conductive materials onto the board itself.

Conductive Materials

The primary material used in the creation of a circuit board is copper-based. Copper is highly conductive of electricity, and fulfills the requirements a circuit board needs. Copper thickness is usually specified in micrometers, and a square foot usually requires about an ounce of melted down copper. Using a PECVD system, manufacturers can apply three or more layers of copper to the board, creating a heavy copper layer.

Final Thoughts

Circuit boards need to be able to draw in power and then disperse that power to the proper units. The creation of these boards is highly regulated, with safety standards designed to limit flammability and document maximum temperature threshold. These boards are live electrical parts, so they must be able to operate safely without sparking or shorting out.

Denton Vacuum, LLC sells thin film evaporation devices for advanced manufacturing techniques. Find heavy duty manufacturing devices online at Denton Vacuum, LLC.

This article was written by Ted Dhanik

Copywriting is not a primary concern for display advertising, but it should be. Effective copywriting can be as simple as choosing two words to adorn your banner, or it can involve more complex messaging. Banner advertising makes this practice tricky because it’s difficult to tell when your writing is too much. With a text ad, you know how many characters to work with, but banner ads rely much more on visual aspects.

Here are some of the basics of copywriting for display advertising. Use them to improve your messaging and increase your conversions.

Headline Tips

Because the headline is the first thing the user is likely to see, it’s important that you pack it full of the essentials. Your headline should, at minimum, include the keywords that you used and a brief proposition or sales pitch. Typically, the pitch comes in the form of a question that is on the user’s mind. If you were gathering leads for a hardware store, for instance, you might want to include a question about reliability or price.

You should also include the keywords that you’re bidding on. The idea is that a customer searching for those keywords would probably be more drawn towards your ad if the text featured that keyword.

Body Copy

Banner advertising also has body copy, although this might be the most minimal effect. On the banner itself, you only have so much space to work with. You must fit only the most important keywords into your ad text, arranging that text around the colors in your image. Design know-how will come in handy as you position your text. Remember that a banner is not a text ad, and too much text can make the picture feel cluttered. Less is more with banners, so don’t scare your users off with a complex sales proposition. If it’s more than a few words, save it for your landing page.

Facts and Figures

If you can, include some facts to bolster your point. A good place to start might be the national average in savings that a new client can expect when using your product. If you have figures handy that suggest that number, you should use them in your ad. You can also quote the number of users you have or some other relevant statistic.

Final Thoughts

The most important thing to remember when you’re practicing good copywriting is to keep it relevant and enticing. You should always try to get your point across in the fewest possible words, but it’s important that you include keywords that entice the user to click your ad for more information.

Bio: Ted Dhanik has helped big brands like MySpace to launch online. With over fifteen years of sales experience, Ted Dhanik understands direct marketing. To learn more about copywriting for direct marketing, contact Ted Dhanik.

This article was written by Allied Time

Biometric time clock systems are all the rage these days. A biometric time clock is one that uses an attribute of the human body to identify the employee. There are three main types of biometric time clocks on the market: fingerprint systems, hand readers, and face recognition time clock systems.  The face recognition time clock system is the most advanced of the three by far, offering companies incredible efficiency, security, and flexibility.

If you’re in the market for a new face recognition system, you might have a few questions. If you’re new to advanced time clocks, you might wonder whether this technology is right for your business. Do you need a face recognition system or a fingerprint time clock system? To help you make a well-informed purchase decision, here’s a brief look at the features and benefits of the face recognition time clock system.

The Features of Face Recognition Systems

The specific features of a face recognition time clock depend on the brand and model. But the following is a list of features that are common on most units. As the name implies, a face recognition time clock system identifies employees by scanning the face. Unlike fingerprint or hand-reader systems, a face recognition time card machine is sanitary and doesn’t involve dirty prints or germs. Along with tracking total hours worked and overtime, this type of model offers many advanced features, including optional automatic lunch deduction,  work codes collection, two level of overtime, archive features, manual recording of various hours, and language configurations.

A face recognition time clock system can be installed on a single PC or multiple computers. The data can be integrating with multiple payroll providers, and provides a wide variety of reporting capabilities.

The Many Benefits

There are many advantages to purchasing a face recognition time clock system for your company. It’s ideal for companies that want a simple yet effective way to track employee time. Since it offers many automatic features, a face recognition machine can help improve workflow by allowing managers to focus on other areas of the company.

A face recognition system also provides incredible compliance. Many systems provide instant back up of vital data, and can retrieve the information is a fraction of the time compared to manual data retrieval. It also offers incredible security. With extreme security, businesses can have protection and peace of mind. Finally, it doesn’t require a lot of software to run.
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Allied Time offers employee time tracking systems and supplies, including employee time clock software, biometric time clocks, and traditional time clocks.

This article was written by Ted Dhanik

Keeping your display advertising relevant to the keywords and campaigns that you are bidding for is the key to closing more conversions. Just like SEO, relevance determines the effectiveness of your ads. Break that chain of relevance, and you risk alienating users and losing them. There are several cues that you need to be aware of when you are designing banner advertising. Use these tips to keep yourself focused on possible points of disconnect.

Adhere to Sizes

The International Advertising Bureau has established uniform rules for banner sizes on a webpage that you need to follow. These sizes are meant to help you place an ad on a page, and for webmasters to plan for ads that won’t clutter the content. However, some networks require a specific size to serve pop-up ads to the user, so be sure that you conform to those standards so your banner advertising will show normally.

Test for Variations

You should test your campaigns frequently, but the amount of time and effort varies depending on the expectation. You need to make sure that your campaign is spending enough to gain traffic to it, but that you are not “blowing up” a particular placement with an influx of traffic.

Cohesion

The user has certain expectations by clicking on your ad, and assumes he will get what he wants in a timely manner. Do not try to force upsells on a user out of context, just deliver what he wants and then focus on complimentary offers.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is a media buying expert. As the president and co-founder of engage:BDR, Ted Dhanik has been using display media to turn more visitors into paying customers. To see how media buying can grow your business, visit Ted Dhanik online.

This article was written by Ted Dhanik.

The tools that you incorporate into your banner advertising campaign can have a huge impact on conversions. Without tools it becomes difficult to monitor competition and come up with new ideas. The right tool set can provide you with new ideas for ad copy, or find new opportunities to sell.

Keywords

Google’s keyword tool is a good place to start, but it is not available to users without an AdWords account. There are others around the Web that will compare home pages and show display advertising history for a particular keyword from a particular competitor. Keyword tools are also useful for discovering which long tail keywords are actually useful.

Try to resist high competition keywords in favor of anything low to mid-tier.

Analytics

Good analytics will tell you what customers are actually doing when they get to your page. You can use Events from Google Analytics to determine when a customer clicks something or which page a customer came from before visiting your home page. Analytics will also tell you which pages have the highest rate of retention, an important factoid if you’re trying to increase conversions. Look at the most popular pages, and then push some of that copy out to the campaigns that aren’t working as well. Perhaps you’ve already stumbled upon your winning formula.

Networks

The actual network that you use can be a huge benefit for you, if you know what to ask or look for. You should speak with your network representative and find out where the traffic is coming from. Then use that information to view your ads in the wild. When you know what the user sees, you stand to improve your copy with better results.

Ted Dhanik, provider of display advertising and high performance marketing solutions. Ted Dhanik is the CEO of marketing company engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik mentors business owners interested in start-ups.

Written by Phin Upham,

For a long time, scientists believed that it would be impossible (or very nearly improbable) for groups of people to reside in the Amazonian rainforest. Not only was it difficult to mount an expedition to uncover any ruins, the poor soil quality seemed to hint that the food needed to support civilization simply could not have come from the jungle.

But the discovery of ancient roads and earthworks seem to suggest that a group of people once thrived there. Those seeking further proof need only look at the ground. The secret was a treatment the natives gave to the land that turned the ground black.

So called “terra preta” is a black soil with bits of charcoal and Columbian pottery mixed in. Archaeologists estimate that the soil was made over 2500 years ago, before the Columbians ever set foot in the jungles.

What scientists found about the soil placement was also telling. The groups seemed to prefer settling on bluffs overlooking rivers, or the Atlantic Ocean. Civilizations did exist in the western portion of the Amazon, near the Andes where runoff from the mountains brought minerals organically to the soil.

Skeptics argue that the evidence is inconclusive. The absence of terra preta does not mean the absence of civilization. Because the original findings came from heavily trafficked sites, it’s arguable that we merely weren’t looking for civilizations before we stumbled upon them.

How these civilizations thrived is still a mystery, but their food sources no longer have to be. It appears people did once live in the Amazon, but what the region looked like before we found it is an image thus far lost to time.

Phin Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phin on his Phin Upham website

By Ted Dhanik 

Advertising is a necessary part of running any type of business.  While some small businesses rely on word of mouth referrals, it’s still a good idea to look into advertising to the general public.  There are a few reasons for this.  First of all, advertising allows companies to grow their client base exponentially.  Also, advertising helps to achieve one of the most important elements of running a business: brand awareness.

Many companies stick with traditional advertising because they either aren’t sure how online ads work or because they believe it’s cheaper.  Traditional advertising includes putting an ad in a newspaper, magazine, billboard or on television.  While this can be a good option for certain types of businesses, there are some disadvantages.  With these types of ads, it can be difficult to monitor whether a large number of viewers are exposed to the ad.  For example, if an ad is placed in a magazine, there is a big chance that viewers graze past the ad.  If an ad is on television, it’s crucial to have the ad or commercial play at times of the day when viewership is highest.

Online advertising can be expensive, however, it’s not typically more expensive than other types of ads.  There are some definite advantages online ads offer over traditional ads.  For example, one benefit to display ads is that they can easily be updated and changed without a lot of time, energy, or money.  Obviously, traditional advertising doesn’t offer this same convenience.  Another big perk of internet ads is that they can be tailored for a target audience more easily.  Particularly category and contextual ads are placed on websites that line up with the correct demographic.  This unique tailoring is what makes display ads successful.

Author bio: Guest post is submitted by Ted Dhanik, the president and co-founder of engage:BDR.  engage: BDR is a leading media company that offers marketing solutions for direct response marketers and advertisers.  Ted Dhanik has his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Marketing from California State University, Hayward.  Ted Dhanik was previously the VP of Strategic Marketing for Myspace for over five years.