There has been more than enough hype over the last week as Apple introduced the Ipad. From most observers, the Ipad is little more than a larger version of the Ipod Touch and Iphone. The screen is about 10 inches and battery life is supposed to be 10 hours during active use and up to a month on standby. If that is true, then why is the battery life on the Iphone so terribly short. From my perspective, the importance of the Ipad is not the technology, but the increase in mobile device usage and what that means for marketers going forward.

As I detailed earlier this week, mobile data usage is exploding and will grow exponentially over the next few years as the introduction of more smartphones and other mobile devices drastically changes how and where we consume information. I believe this will lead to more accurate ways to target your market across any device that they are using. Within Google Adwords, there is already the option of targeting by device and phone carrier.

This system will become more intelligent and segmenting will become that more important. You will have the data to analyze the behavior of Iphone users versus Ipad users versus laptop users and adjust your ads, landing pages, and offers accordingly. No longer are the days of throwing ads out to the the wild and hoping for conversions. With the information and tracking that already available, targeting down to small user groups will be the determining factor on how to maximize ad spend as click costs increase.

Imagine that you can target Ipad users while they are on an airplane and give them an offer that appeals to most airline passengers during flight. You think that would help conversions? Undoubtedly. Or you know that a person in Florida is watching a Disney Movie and has visited sites pertaining to other Disney movies or child toys. You think you could find a way to put an ad in front of this person that appeals to their interests? Hope so.

We will soon walk that fine line between targeting and creepy as the intelligence of tracking improves. This will lead to better conversion rates if you are willing to invest the time and money into the technology and people to segment and target. If not, then you will probably waste a lot of unnecessary money hoping for conversions and not understanding why your visitors do not convert more frequently.

Yahoo recently introduced traffic segmentation that gives the option of segmenting your traffic between the search engine and their partner networks. This is an option that Google has had for years, but it is just making it’s way to Yahoo. This is important because as you track conversion rates and attempt to maximize your paid search spend, the type of traffic from the Yahoo Search Engine will perform very differently and probably convert differently than the partner networks, but if it is like Google, the click prices on the partner network should be much less than the search network.

It is important to note that the Yahoo Search network will still include other Yahoo properties like e-mail, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Finance, but will be separate from their partners which are properties like City Search, Buy.com, Forbes, Comcast, etc.

What is not yet clear is if Parked Domains are considered as part of the Yahoo Search Network. Parked domains are those domains that have great domain names like candy.com and benefit from tons of direct type-in traffic that the domain owner simply places ads on the page without any content as a way to greatly monetize the traffic. Yahoo has historically paid more than most other networks for clicks on parked pages, but for search marketers, this traffic does not convert very well. I am not sure what percentage of traffic that parked pages contributes to the traffic for Yahoo, but my guess is that it is a moderate amount. In my opinion, this traffic should be considered as part of the Partners network, but I have not seen anything that has said definitively either way.

This change by Yahoo should help tremendously to improve conversion costs and to identify the most successful traffic sources. It will also be very interesting to see how the click costs vary between the two networks.

To make the changes, simply edit your network distribution settings from the main campaigns page. Although setting up separate campaigns in Yahoo is not as easy as Google, it will definitely be worth it over the long term for tracking conversions.

Google recently created a search option for businesses to find Google Adwords Certified professionals and companies more easily.  The search engine lists all of the companies that have completed the Google Adwords certification tests and who have completed the business information in the Google Professional admin panel.

In addition to the badge that is available, like the image above, this search engine provides more credibility to Google Certified professionals and depending on how Google chooses to promote the search engine could lead to an increase in traffic and new business for many of the companies. Especially if Google chooses to advertise against some of the better keywords to promote their database of certified professionals.

I found it a little surprising that there are only 442 certified professionals and certified companies. Although the criteria is different to become a qualified individual versus becoming a qualified company, I would have guessed that there would have been more of each. The test is not very easy to pass and my guess is that many attempt to pass without reviewing the material beforehand and therefore are disappointed with the results. It is a course that I would recommend that all advertisers that are working with Google Adwords should take because it begins to give you an idea of how Google looks at advertising, how it prices clicks, and how it determines placement.

Hopefully, this search engine is promoted properly and has an impact for the professionals and companies who have taken and passed the Google Adwords Certification exam as that will lead to more people taking the exam and provide a good resource for businesses to find quality campaign assistance.

You can view my Google Adwords Certification or search the database of qualified professionals.

Online marketing jobs are probably one of the few disciplines that is growing in the current economy. This need will continue to increase as the shift from traditional marketing to online advertising accelerates. I have compiled a list of quality job boards, some better than others, that keep up to date lists of online marketing positions where companies are seeking search engine optimization experts, search engine marketing managers, and web analytics analysts. These sites have a healthy mix of entry-level, mid-level, and executive positions and for many of the boards, the positions are exclusive to their site.

The one drawback of some of the sites listed below is they are not as quick to eliminate positions form their board that are 6-8 weeks old. My guess is that if they are too quick to remove these jobs, then the number of listings is too low at any given time. Besides that, the job boards listed below have done a good job of listing and aggregating some of the online marketing opportunities available.

This list is not ranked in any order as they have different jobs at any given time.

SEOMOZ Job Board - http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace/jobs

Onward Job Search - http://jobs.onwardsearch.com/

SEMPO Job Board - http://www.sempo.org/jobs/

E-Marketing Silo - http://www.emarketingsilo.com/

Online Marketing Jobs - http://www.onlinemarketingjobs.com/

Web Analytics Association Job Board - http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/jobs/search.asp

Search Engine Watch Job Board - http://jobs.searchenginewatch.com/c/search_results.cfm?site_id=2660

Marketing Pilgrim Job Board - http://jobs.marketingpilgrim.com/

Search Engine Journal Job Board - http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/

SEO Consultants Job Board - http://jobs.seoconsultants.com/

SEOBook Job Board - http://www.seobook.com/jobs

Problogger Job Board - http://jobs.problogger.net/

Techcrunch Job Board - http://www.crunchboard.com/jobs/

If you know of any other resources that should be added to the list, drop them in the comments.

In order to continually improve your PPC campaigns, you should always have multiple ads running against each other so that you can test which one is the most effective and adjust accordingly. One of the elements that reduces your cost per click and improves the positioning of  your ad is your Click Through Rate(CTR). Click through rate is simple the number of times that your ad is shown(impressions) divided by the number of times a searcher clicked on your ads(click). The higher you can improve CTR, the overall improvement of your pricing and positioning.

One of the methods to improve CTR is to split test your ads and make small incremental changes to improve your CTR over time. While a lot of attention is focused on keywords and bid prices, ad copy is one element that is often neglected, but can have the same positive impact as all other elements. Small differences such as a change of a word or different punctuation have proven to have a significant impact for CTR.

To continually improve my ad copy performance, I use a program called Winner Alert. Winner Alert is simply a program that send you a report on a daily basis that identifies which ad copy is performing best for each of your ad groups. Winner Alert determines a winner after there have been a enough clicks to determine which ad is receiving a higher click through rate. This gives you a daily report that you can quickly login and make changes to your ads that are determined the loser. Using Winner Alert keeps ad copy at the top of your radar and will improve your overall campaign performance over time.

Setup of Winner Alert is easy. It requires that you setup a report to run daily in XML format, that is sent to an e-mail address that is specified in your account setup, so that they can monitor your account on a daily basis and send you a report. In order to get the most out of Winner Alert, your ppc campaigns need to be set to “run ads evenly.” If your campaign is set to run the best performing ad, then what I have found is that the new ads typically do not receive enough clicks to determine winners very quickly. When ads run evenly, the traffic is split to 50% and helps to improve ad performance much more quickly.

The only negative for Winner Alert from my perspective is the ability to change how frequently I want to receive the report. The option of receiving the report every other day or every third day would be plenty because depending on the size of the account and the number of clicks involved, most ad groups will not have a winner selected everyday or even every few days. This is more of a desire of mine, then a true need for the program. Besides that, Winner Alert has truly been helpful in improving campaign performance, but also not allowing ad copy to get lost in the many other tasks of managing campaigns. The cost is $19.95 for as many accounts as you have, therefore a small price to pay and one that should easily pay for itself with reduced click prices and improved performance.