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Google recently launched  a new ad format for Adwords which see them integrate rich media directly into their SERPs.

Following in the footsteps of a Yahoo! product named RAIS (Rich Ads in Search), poor Yahoo! great idea – small audience Google are now integrating Youtube videos into their search results in the paid listings for the first time in Australia. They call them ‘Media ads’. As you know they’ve been integrating Youtube videos into the natural results for quite some time as a result of the inclusion of Universal search results (results consisting of more than just web pages including videos, images, news articles, products and local listings) but this is the first time video has been included in the paid listings.

Examples of the new ad format below…

In SERP…

Clicked & expanded…

The move sees Google integrate its core search product with Youtube and is a perfect fit for the likes of Fox Studios who were first to market to raise film awareness through the promotion of trailers.

At this point in time media ads are only available in beta to ‘major motion picture studios’. This will change very quickly based on guaranteed demand and it will be interesting to see how different industries and content producers take advantage of them.

The setup for the new ad format is slightly different to what we’re useful, as Dan Friedman from Google explains…

“With Media Ads, you don’t pick any keywords — the targeting is completely automated. When someone enters a search on Google.com that our algorithms determine is directly related to your movie title (most commonly the title and variations on it), we automatically display your Media Ad at the top of the search results page. Our research shows that when someone searches for a movie title on Google.com, they’re most commonly looking for a trailer. With Media Ads, we’re able to help you ensure that those users find exactly what they’re looking for.”

The payment model is slightly different too…

“Unlike typical AdWords ads on Google.com, you don’t enter any bids for Media Ads. Instead, clicks on Media Ads are charged at a flat rate. This simplified pricing model makes it easier to budget for your Media Ads campaign and to know exactly how much an interaction is going to cost.”

It will be interesting to see how quality score is factored in for this new format and how average CPCs compare to text ads.

I personally think they’ll be a bit of a game changer as advertisers take advantage of being able to include branded content directly into the search results, over and above a plain text ad, and we see Google grab itself a bigger slice of the brand pie.

What do you reckon?

Fenech-Soler Data Transmiss by datatransmission

Full credit goes to Search Engine Land

In the sheer manicness of the new job i’ve found myself increasingly reading productivity and management blogs to try to figure out where it’s all going wrong.

Some of these concepts and ideas have really stuck so I thought i’d share them with anyone else that may be interested.

Here’s my top 10…

1. Plan your day on a post-it note

This is one of my favourites. Basically the idea here is that your working day can only fit so much in. If you write out your most important tasks out and then limit the top (probably around 5 of them) down for the day then your day is full. If something comes up something has to get bumped off the post-it.

When you get to the end of the day you can screw up your post it note and toss it at the person that has annoyed you the most as your stroll out of the office, safe in the knowledge that the list, and therefore your working day ,has been done completed. It’s rather satisfying. Failing that you could just plan your time in your calendar. Boring.

2. Use a task management app

For the more geeky or you this is a task management app such as remember the milk or Toodledo can be really very helpful. Additionally, they also work well with the GTD way of thinking.

Most of the good ones will allow you to organise your tasks by due date, client, admin and also sync between all your gadgets. iPhone, iPad and PC. This way your ‘to do’ list is never far away and you don’t have to update it in mutiple places. This also means that you can setup alerts across all platforms which will buzz you when you’re near the due date/time of a task.

I also find these particularly useful when trying to fill in the pointless time sheets at the end of the week, whilst everyone else if racking their brains trying to figure where yet another blur of a week has gone you can simply view your completed tasks.

3. Do your most creative work when you’re at your most creative

Following the MIT theory, don’t ask me where this came from I read it somewhere, Most Important Things first means that instead of getting in first thing when your brain is firing on all cylinders you don’t waste this valuable period of concentration on trawling emails and getting super stressed putting out fires.

Chances are if something is mega urgent, heaven forbid someone may have died, or in media it’s more likely that an ad hasn’t gone out or someone’s not completed their time sheets, then there’s every chance that person may phone you, or even come and speak to you in person.

Based on the previous day’s planning you probably already know what your key priorities are for that day, if you don’t shame on you for not being busy enough or just too dam productive. Knock out your biggest tasks of the day first things and use the backend of your day to complete quick tasks which require less thought and being to plan your following day.

4. Question the value of the 3 biggest distractions

EMAIL
SOCIAL MEDIA
MEETINGS

Simply put the 3 biggest distractions at work are email, meetings and social media. Compared to my last agency i’ve found social media has been the first to be axed in this new job, hence my tweets and posts on here have been few and far between.

All three of these distractions deserve their own pieces so I won’t try to offer advice within this post on how t manage them. The question we need to ask is do we need to send that email? Have a whole hour long meeting? Check FB every 10 mins?

5. Don’t just work to Outlook’s meeting times

…or any other email client for that matter. Just because they generally default to 30min or 1 hour slots doesn’t mean that we have to organise a meeting the whole duration them. If it’s only going to take 15, schedule it for 15.

And breathe….

6. Use a collaborative project hitlist

I’m still figuring our if this works or not but it certainly has it’s uses.

At the moment we update all projects tasks within the sheet every few days and build our own action lists from there.

This acts as a great log of all activities completed against each client, but also a good way to share tasks and manage work-loads in a transparent way among the team.

We tend to use Google Docs, which is great for collaborative and secure documents hosted in the cloud to avoid multiple versions clogging up email.

7. Set goals – 3 top tasks

A day
A week

To help satisfy the feeling of productivity and keep you driven and focused.

8. Separate quick tasks & project work

This really helps me to focus on the larger pieces of work when i’m at my most focused and creative (the morning). I also try to schedule a second chunk of big tasks in the afternoon, providing the schedule allows.

I find a ‘to do’ list featuring all tasks can be quite over-whelming. I define a quick task as anything that takes less that 15 minutes to complete. I usually block 1 hour slots out in my diary dependent on how many I have on my action list at any time.

It’s also a great contrast being able to tick about 10 off in the space of an hour which you don’t have too be that focused on Vs putting yourself in the zone when you focus on your big projects.

In the line of work that i’m in and being client facing, these quick task slots invariably get filled very quickly by ‘urgent’ client queries and responses. I tend to make myself available to deal with around 2-3 times a day dependent on the volume.

9. Send email like you would an email campaign

- Does it have an enticing subject to get a strong open rate?
- Outline what you need in terms of response clearly and at the top followed by the detail
- Always number your actions for ease of reference and clarity
- Always include your signature (pet hate when people don’t)
- Bold important tasks
- There’s always time for manners (you can even put these within your signature)

10.Create a ‘priority inbox’ to better manage email

Very much borrowed from Gmail, but easy to setup on Lotus Notes even (yes my company is still in the 1970′s) a priority inbox is a great way of making the bombardment of email more manageable.

I take full advantage of the auto file rules within the email client. If your company is anything like mine then you’ll have a gazillion emails flying around company wide every day, which 95% don’t actually need responding to or probably even reading.

I setup a list of priority folders, in my case by client, that I know need responding to within a few hours. These are monitored and I allow myself to be interrupted by, apart from during ‘zone time’. The only channels I answer during this time are phone or face to face. If they contain requests then they’ll get scheduled into the action list, but most will simply require receipt with a response and completing the tasks contained at a later date.

This prevents a lot of stress, letting you know that generally if your main priorities (clients) are all being taken care of, and any other important contacts such as team members can always come and see you at your desk.

When you have a spare 30 mins you can do a bit of trawling through the rest of your mails to check which publisher free drinks you feel obliged to attend.

Disclaimer – A fair few of these concepts have been inspired by  the very successful 99% blog, please check it out if you haven’t already done so.

So, what are your tips and what do you think of the above? Please share within the comments below.