How can we avoid advertising disasters?  When is it time to scale creatives?  What is the hidden problem when switching vendors?   Author/Expert Kevin Ryan walks OMCP through five of the current best practices for Programmatic Buying in this OMCP article+podcast. Check out the podcast here.

Google posted strong first-quarter earnings yesterday, with seemingly no material impact so far from the fallout over marketers’ suspension of advertising on YouTube. What remains to be seen is whether that impact will hit in the second quarter — and further, whether marketers actually restore…

The latest in public shame gotcha news trends is getting milked eight ways from Saturday. Ageism is everywhere in tech. Now it’s everywhere in the news. There’s a shame book, a non-apology interview, and mountains of editorial. Hubspot earned itself a parody book and an…

A Volunteer with Special Spectators, a few folks working and helping with game day contributors, Kevin Ryan a longtime standing supporter as a marketing and networking events joins Black Rockwell and Kendall Allen to talk about his involvement as a Special Spectators. Listen to the…

Stephen Colbert burned his computer. Bill Maher’s latest conniption about our government occurred over privacy fears. Big cable is stealing our data and our representatives could care less. United States Congressman Marcia Blackburn wants to protect privacy by eliminating barriers, like holding companies accountable to…

While I generally avoid using pictures of my own puppies and babies, in this instance I made an exception for a total of two reasons. First, the mass hysteria that seems to have taken over the internet ad biz in recent history (see what I…

Media outlets, including this one, have fanned the flames over brand safety the last few weeks as Google seeks to reassure advertisers that it’s putting the right measures into place to safeguard against their ads showing up next to offensive content. It’s already said that…

With the issue of brand safety front and center amid advertiser concerns over the possibility their ads will appear next to offensive content on Google’s YouTube, RTBlog asked industry executives to weigh in on the matter, and the degree to which programmatic media buying practices…

..well, wasted talent. Or wasted opportunity. Something like what Chazz Palminteri dove into in “A Bronx Tale.” Over the weekend I got caught up on some digital marketing reading and read a great piece by my friend Danny Sullivan in Search Engine Land. Without taking…

Transparency was a hot topic at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coronado, California. The problem, said Kevin Ryan, CEO at Motivity Marketing, is that we don’t know where to go for information and we don’t know who to trust for this information. In an effort…

The K2 Media Transparency report may be the final in-flight mechanical failure that forces the agency-client relationship into an unrecoverable dive. The headline reads, “ANA Independent Study Finds Rebates and Other Non-Transparent Practices to be Pervasive in U.S. Media Ad-Buying Ecosystem.” Read the rest of…

Did you hear the news? Google is changing the way search ads will appear in results pages. As Search Engine Land reported, most of the search ads appearing in the right rail will be going away or changing. Any change in how search ads appear…

Motivity Marketing CEO Kevin Ryan, coauthor of “Taking Down Goliath: The Digital Marketing Strategy for Beating Competitors With 100 Times Your Spending Power,” tells WIT Strategy‘s Bill Brazell that too many companies today are leaning on powerful digital tools and automation without asking if their…

Twenty years and hundreds of new business pitches. I won them all, made no mistakes whatsoever, and every single pitch was a smooth as a baby’s bottom. Well, not exactly. And quantifying success-to-fail ratios in the art and science of new business in the agency…

Kevin Ryan, author of  Taking Down Goliath, is a digital marketing expert who has helped countless businesses take on competitors with 100x their spending power. In our upcoming Google Hangout, we sit down with Kevin to talk about stories he’s encountered in his years as a…

In this bite-sized liveblog, Kevin Ryan shares where he sees paid search headed as an industry. Ryan is the founder of MotivityMarketing, a columnist for Search Marketing Land and the author of “Taking Down Goliath: Digital Marketing Strategy for Beating Competitors with 100 Times Your…

A couple years ago while on vacation, we got rained out at the beach.  Bummer. Not wanting to waste the day staring at our kids playing Minecraft on their iPads, we ventured into town, where we met up with a friend and ended up at…

There’s been a lot of talk about the ad model being broken, along with the agency model and the digital model. Most recently at a national advertiser event, a huge brand got up and complained about all three, spouting rhetoric the same way a gratuitously…

Your company — or sometimes even more stressful — your client has hired a new CMO. There’s usually a high level of panic that comes along with “courting” this new boss or contact. But it doesn’t pay to run around like a chicken with your…

There’s been a lot of talk about the ad model being broken, along with the agency model and the digital model. Most recently at a national advertiser event, a huge brand got up and complained about all three, spouting rhetoric the same way a gratuitously…

Certainly you all remember that recent Association of National Advertisers annual meeting at which PepsiCo’s Brad Jakeman trashed the ad business and the ad agencies within for being outdated, lacking diversity and running on dinosaur fumes. He also took issue with diversity, or the lack…

Twenty years and hundreds of new business pitches. I won them all, made no mistakes whatsoever, and every single pitch was a smooth as a baby’s bottom. Well, not exactly. And quantifying success-to-fail ratios in the art and science of new business in the agency…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5zKJyDwCv0

5 Questions with Kevin Ryan , CEO of Motivity Marketing, A Strategic Consulting firm and Author of “Taking Down Goliath” Check out the interview here.

Less is more. Small is beautiful. Content is king. Automation rules. If you take any cliché and tie it in with a cloud full of the latest contrived digital intelligence buzzwords, that’d make for one heck of an infographic. Hashtag content marketing, hashtag programmatic, hashtag…

In a perfect marketing world, your client’s C-suite leadership would never change, clients would promptly return your emails and phone calls, invoices would be paid completely and on time, and no one would ever question your campaign strategies. Sadly, that isn’t the case. However, you don’t…

Lenovo has officially gone into the tech betrayal record books with “Supergate.” “Or is it fish bait?” If you have no idea what I’m talking about (not to get into it), I’m referring to the recent “discovery” that some adware (aka, pushware, bloatware, or –…

Marketing apologies continue to rack up in numbers, but the latest one from Krispy Kreme U.K. puts the icing on the donuts. Perhaps those running campaigns get anxious and pull the trigger on search, display, email, and social campaigns a bit too soon. Krispy Kreme…

Learn the rules before breaking them — and don’t forget that basic online advertising and marketing skills provide the platform that leads marketers to success. Make a contribution to the world and the world will make one back. It’s not easy. In fact, technology makes…

How can small businesses compete against 800-pound-gorillas? What can they do to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of consumers? Well, Kevin M Ryan and Rob “Spider” Graham purports that digital marketing and online advertising is the answer. Targeted at small and medium…

Most technical entrepreneurs cringe when they finally realize that marketing is still king, despite the power of technology, and they are up against competitors who have a hundred times their spending power. Luckily, the digital revolution has been a great equalizer in the marketing world,…

In response to our informal polling question “What’s on your bookshelf?” we got some interesting responses, some useful ones and even a few surprises.  When we asked about the tactical guides digital marketers kept at their fingertips, we heard a lot about Media Planning textbooks…

Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath. Or, I should say, everyone thinks they know it. Ask anyone if they know the story of David and Goliath and most everyone will say the same thing: a big giant dude named Goliath, considered the best…

Make a racist comment? No problem. Post something embarrassing to your company’s Twitter feed? That’s a net positive. Comment on a celebrity’s talent? No one really cares. Call someone out for stealing? No sweat. Perpetrate any one of these blunders and you may be eligible…

Though it’s been said, many times, many ways, the art of search and find is second to the science of click and pay. Case in point: the recent Firefox bed hop from Google to Yahoo will be the gift that keeps on giving throughout the…

I know what you are thinking, only five? Well, I am sure there are more, but lately the volume of jack wittery in these five areas has grown exponentially among the digital marketing set. Or maybe I’m just overly sensitive.  Of course the most repellent…

It’s that time of year again – yes, the time we all reflect on years past and look forward to the New Year with a youthful exuberance and hopeful optimism that can only come with the holiday season. While everyone else is busy with hopeful…

The widespread apathy about charlatanry in digital marketing never ceases to amaze me. Rewarding those who place business ethics as a distant second to Machiavellian opportunism is so widespread; it’s difficult to separate good from evil. It seems the idea of representing your work and…

The trend du jour for virtually bringing people together (with no actual physical or emotional commitment) is inside the protective walls of a secret, members-only group on a certain social network. Sometimes this is under the aegis of a brand, while, at other times, the…

The media’s love affair with sensationalistic nonsense took a turn for the moronic once again last week and The Wall Street Journal took another step toward tabloid status in the process. The Journalran a Page Six-worthy story reporting that Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer arrived late…

Google has begun to build 100 prototype self-driving cars that it plans to begin testing this year in an effort to reengineer transportation. Marketing and advertising executives have mixed thoughts on whether they will make the purchase. Today, the electronic cars have a maximum speed…

The reality for the modern marketer is that while the discussion about SEO resources (in the form of software and tech tools) may be getting long in the tooth; it continues to occur and evolve as the market itself matures. Companies big, small and in…

If you think keywords have any place in the next-generation, digital marketing world, you’d be mistaken. If you haven’t taken notice of recent announcements about keyword restrictions, you really should take a minute or two and have a look. Right now, Google is moving away…

Looking for a financial adviser could take months. Consumers take to search engines to find information, and social sites to research other opinions — and this makes the ways people consume content just as important as what they search for on engines, on brand Web…

The Wearable Advertising Auction Model Designed By Search Experts What will advertisements look like on wearable devices, and how will the auction model work, as Google plans to extend its Android operating system to support smartwatches and other wearable devices? Motorola introduced the Moto 360…

There are a lot slick opportunities out there in search marketing. The wheels of progress have never been greasier. Yep, since people first started paying to be included in search results, a lot of smooth transactions have taken place. Yet, for a whole lot of…

You’ve read all the guidelines. You’ve hired experts to determine the morally correct and righteous path. You’ve watched the endless hours of Matt Cutts videos on YouTube. You pay experts thousands of dollars a month to make sure your search efforts are optimized safely and…

With the depth of attention given to Google’s broken promises lately, the natural-language-processing, sometimes-sponsored-content-identifying engine clearly has some ‘splaining to do. For those of you who haven’t read Danny Sullivan’s excellent piece from a few weeks ago, let me elaborate on those broken promises. Google…

Ever get those emails asking to “pick your brain” for some ideas? The good-hearted person in you says, “I can do that!” But favors like that have consequences and costs that may not have occurred to you or the person asking for them.brain_glasses For a…

Once again, SEO is in the news. Once again, the media (along with an elected official or two — shocker!) clearly doesn’t understand how the industry works. While it seems New York’s elected (and appointed) officials could give a rodent’s posterior about protecting the interests…

There’s never a dull moment in the advertising world. The proposed Omnicom and Publicis merger has everyone talking, but what (if anything) does this mean for the digital ad world? Who will be the winners and losers? What possible upside exists for the clients? Having…

One of the reasons people clamor for good social search is their pre-purchase desire to access user-generated reviews — information from people who know the product or service and can offer a useful opinion. With Facebook graph search going live for all (using US English),…

What happens when you combine big data with some big math? Good things, bad things and things we have yet to truly comprehend. Big Data is the most talked about, misunderstood and nebulously defined component of online marketing. Big data can mean anything from large…

In today’s afternoon brand track “Choosing the Right Partners: Search, Social, and Metrics,” Kevin M. Ryan, Motivity Marketing CEO,  moderated a panel with both brands and agency folks: Rhonda Hanson serves as Concur’s Director of Global Digital Marketing; Lizzy Fallows is Timbuk2’s Digital Director; Doug…

From the people who brought you the most efficient form of last click attributed advertising the world has ever known, we now have better mobile advertising. This week Google made some big changes to AdWords that means one campaign for multiple devices: PCs, tablets and…

“Any time you can increase the connective tissue and get consumers to spend more time with your brand — I don’t care if it’s a search engine — it’s a good thing,” said Kevin Ryan, CEO of Motivity Marketing. Mr. Ryan also pointed out that…

The road to Facebook’s mid-term success is paved with search goodness, many believe. When the stock starts tanking, the top execs apparently believe a good thing to do at a shareholder’s meeting is make an opaque reference to building a better search engine. “Build a…

There is no greater cost to an agency than the cost of acquiring new business. The race to build business in an industry experiencing unparalleled growth has led to agencies rarely stopping to ask if they should be answering those questions and in what context.…

Kevin Ryan on looking beyond Likes: “Think of the brand first before you think of the rules of Facebook. Likes are absolutely spectacular, but it’s hard to draw a line between likes and revenue. Three essentials: Focus on learning while earning, prep for smart online…

If Facebook opens its wildly popular network to pre-teens, it may not resist the urge to monetize the millions of new users it stands to gain by lowering the minimum age through advertising. Marketers and agency executives are split as to whether the move will…

Just when it seems the drama couldn’t get any worse for Yahoo, something else happens. The most recent turn of events involving Yahoo’s now former CEO Scott Thompson and his resume scandal has the once highly regarded tech company in even deeper turmoil. How could…

The foundation of search lies in the definitions of what people want and what makes them click to find what they seek. In other words, search is the foundation of digital commerce. Yahoo’s latest drama is only the tip of the iceberg for the stressed…

Negative SEO is not a new concept but it is one that has recently become more mainstream. These are underhanded tactics where companies do SEO activity for their competitors so it appears that they are breaching Google’s guidelines and they get penalized. Read the article…

A cold harsh inevitability of your career in digital marketing is that you will come across a disproportionate number of people who know a lot less than they should about subject matter that falls into their responsibility. Search is one of those subjects about which…

You’d think at this stage of the search marketing game, best practices for Search Engine Optimization would be foregone conclusions and everyone would be on board regarding the importance of executing on search initiatives. Well, unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Mom always told me…

I’ve heard no greater example of self indulgence than Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s nausea-inducing claim that 2012 was going to be the year of the Twitter election. (He spoke at the recent All Things Digital event in Southern California.) Amid the Google/Twitter separation mishigas (read:…

Is Google+ Mandatory For Marketers? And Is That So Bad? Jan 25, 2012 When Google launched its Google+ social network, the marketing world (along with everyone else) barely noticed. When Google decided to make this social network a bigger part of search results, marketers had…

November 11, 2011 Advertising Age: Digital Next Every time Google tries something new, site owners panic and hit the blogs, desperate for any sort of tidbit that will help them get ahead of the latest “shift” in the algorithm. While Google’s mathematical page ranking system…

October 20, 2011 At Mediabistro’s Socialize West conference in San Francisco today, Motivity Marketing CEO Kevin Ryan had a simple message for publishers and authors: respond to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers when they write about you. He shared data from a survey of…

September 29, 2011 by Jessica Zech Motivity Marketing CEO Kevin Ryan gave a group of students pointers on how to get a job in digital marketing. Here are Ryan’s top 10 pieces of advice: 1. Always remember your ethicsclasses. You will be happier because you…

September 20, 2011 Google has made its +1 button ubiquitous on web sites and search results. Now, Google is using the +1 to add a social layer to display advertising. Starting in October, ads distributed on Google’s Display Ad Network will have a +1 button,…

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 Google Inc. boss Larry Page says his company has agreed to pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, mostly to gain control of patents that would help defend its Android smartphones from rival Apple and its iPhones. From Wall St. to Silicon…

George Simpson, Jul 01, 2011 It seems more than ironic that in the same week: 1) Facebook plans an IPO that could value the company at $100 billion, give or take; 2) News Corp. dumps MySpace for a distressed $35 million to an ad network…

Will Google’s Search Ad Previews Break the Click? Probably Not, but Big Adjustments Lie Ahead for Search Advertisers Search ad formats are in a constant state of motion. Since sponsored ads first appeared on the scene, tweaks to how ads appear and what makes people…

How Not to Pitch Your Search-Marketing Firm Resist the Temptation to Misrepresent Your Capabilities or Steal Someone Else’s PowerPoint Search marketing is a complicated array of best practices, commonly held tactics and a secret underworld of marketing tricks that no one talks about. In the…

Is Google Biased? Sure It Is. But Good Luck Proving It One Company’s Algorithms Determine Winners and Losers on the Web, but Don’t Expect the Feds to Worry Search bias. Search neutrality. Search integrity. The debate over bias in search results has never been hotter.…

The Long, Sad Story of Ask.com The problem with most crazy people is they don’t know they are crazy.   The problem with crazy people in business? They think history doesn’t apply to them. The problem with crazy people in search? They are still looking for…

What ‘Like’ Really Means for Facebook Advertisers So Long, PageRank. Hello, LikeRank If the first internet ad boom set the stage for arrogance in internet advertising, the new millennium will see a new level of hubris in the field. If Google set the standard for…

What If Google and Bing Waged a Search War and Nobody Noticed? For Most People, Search Is Just Search Google is going to win the war for audience love and ad revenue. No, Bing is or maybe people will just start finding everything on Facebook.…

BP Buys ‘Oil’ Search Terms to Redirect Users to Official Company Website      Be careful where you click, especially if you’re looking for news on the BP oil spill. BP, the very company responsible for the oil spill that is already the worst in U.S. history,…

Get whiter teeth! Special discount for alumni! Hasn’t social-media-audience targeting gotten better than that? How helpful are social relationships when it comes to targeting? Will ads be the answer for Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other social networks, or will broader forms of marketing, e-commerce or…

After Google Bowl 2010, What Next? Google’s first foray into the world of televised marketing has been the talk of the town since its appearance. The “Parisian Love” spot on Super Bowl Sunday painted a pastoral scene portraying the soul of a searcher. However, if…

Sample articles from Kevin Ryan on iMedia: 5 can’t-miss SEO trends Published: March 15 2010 | SEO Dramatic shifts have occurred in the search field, but the fundamentals of good SEO still apply. Here’s how to adapt your tried-and-true strategies for the future. The path…

Sample Articles from Kevin Ryan on Search Engine Watch: Build a Better Cesspool Traditional media troops are pitted against the burgeoning voice of populace publishing. What’s search’s role in today’s publishing (2 comments)May 13, 2009 Luxury Brand Survival Did you ever notice that luxury brands…

Web searches benefit from some human help BACK in the early days of the World Wide Web, users could consult a directory of servers personally compiled by its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, to help them find their way around. A snapshot of this directory from 1992,…

Kevin Ryan is one of the most wry of our industry’s kingpins. Well connected, well intentioned and a well spring of knowledge, I sit down with Kevin at the Ad:Tech San Francisco event to see what he’s been up to. Always entertaining, this is a…

Stop In-House SEO Disasters Now! The central focus of many SEO efforts is reaching the right people with the right information at the right time. Third-party search engine marketing firms, many of whom work tirelessly helping clients consume information in the highly dynamic world of…

SMX East: Assessing The Googleopoly Good, bad, or nonexistent Google’s big and getting bigger, as firms like comScore and Hitwise can confirm.  Then there’s its pending deal with Yahoo to consider.  So a session at SMX East addressed the question of whether Google is a…

WebTrends tackles ‘search ad wastage’ WebTrends has launched a new tool designed to help clients minimise wastage on their search advertising campaigns. The web analytics and marketing company estimates that large online advertisers will waste as much as $4.5 billion on paid search advertising in…

Advertising With New Media with Kevin Ryan It works. Do it. Now. Question: Is advertising in the Yellow Pages book still of any value? Should I replace my listing in the Yellow Pages with online advertising? And if so–with what? Local paid search? Answer:Throw your…

Video search engines help users sort through clips The Internet is teeming with so much video that searching through it is becoming one of the biggest challenges on the Web. Read the article here.

SEM Is Maturing, and So Is Search Engine Strategies Congratulations are in order for my colleagues over at the event programming team at Search Engine Strategies (SES) and Search Engine Watch who’ve been promoted. Read the article here.