I have spent a bit of time this evening catching up on some reading whilst watching the Bulldogs play the Cowboys in the NRL.  My idle surfing led me to Australia’s best sporting Blog — The Serve.  Today’s rugby league news has been full of the Andrew Johns drug controversy, and whilst reading an article about his brother Matthew’s reaction, I noticed a couple of contextual ads by Google leading to nineMSN and the Sydney Morning Herald websites.

Clicking on the links gives a great insight on what PPC advertisers should and should not do. 

The ninemsn headline and ad copy reads:

Johns Caught with Ecstasy
Joey Johns Caught with Ecstasy
Read the full story online now.
news.ninemsn.com.au

Click here for link to landing page!

The ad is very much on topic and when I click through to the website there is a great section with all the latest news, video, photos, articles and user comments all related to the Andrew Johns story.  Exactly what I was looking for!  The advertising was related to what I had been reading, the advertising copy set an expectation of more news about this topic, and the landing page delivered the extra news that I was seeking.

Then on the other hand we have the Sydney Morning Herald:

Rugby League News
SMH gets a fresh new look.  Read
the latest sports news & you could win.
SMH.com.au

Click here for link to landing page!

Clicking on the ad leads me to a page with a very attractive young lady telling me that if I bookmarked the SMH homepage I could win an Apple MacBook pro.  This is totally so far off the mark is not funny.  Fairfax want me to hand over personal details without even giving me a taste of their journalism.  Surely their online marketing brains must know something about building trust!

If I were going to bookmarke either website it definitely wouldn’t be this one.  My reaction when landing on this page was to hit the back button, shake my head, and write a Blog post outlining what not to do …..

Rumour has it that Microsoft plans to launch its paid search platform “adCenter” in Australia before the years end.  The ads will be distributed on the already popular nineMSN search network, replacing Yahoo Search Marketing.

Business Strategy Manager Harvey Sanchez has stated that they see Australia as a top five international priority market for Microsoft search.  He said that he hopes that adCenter will be launched by the end of 2007 and that they have already commenced a lot of localisation work to increase the relevancy for Australian searches.

Source: Search Engine Room

For some reason after updating to Internet Explorer 7 I found myself unable to log in to Yahoo! Search Marketing to check on a client account.  Each time I tried to log in I received an error message saying that the “verification code is incorrect“.

Performed a couple of quick searches and found no solution to the problem, so I finally succumbed and rang Yahoo! who quickly provided me with a really simple solution.

If you’re having trouble signing in to your Yahoo! PPC account you will need to follow these steps:

1. Go to tools> Internet options
2. Select the “Security Tab” and click on the “Trusted Sites” Icon
3. You will then be able to click on the button labelled “Sites” and a new window will appear
4. In this new window enter the URL https://secure.overture.com and click on the “Add” button.
5. You can now close all Windows and happily go about your business.

Hopefully this post can help others avoid the same frustration that it gave me.