Have you checked your Alexa ranking lately? If not, then now might be a good time to do so. What is the link between Alexa and the EE Roadshow? A lot. Since I introduce EE (ExpressionEngine) CMS to my website, my traffic has been on the way up and my Alexa ranking, on the way down (which is a very good thing). I am reaching 222,365 today and it keeps going down. I am very proud of the decision to move my site to expression engine and to use it as much as I can. You should do to. If getting more traffic to your site is something that you care about, please visit the EE Roadshow and sign up for the event. If getting more traffic is not part of your priorities, then this may be a much better option for you.

Please find all the details below.

EE Roadshow’s purpose is to bring ExpressionEngine users and developers together in real life, offering an overview to newcomers and in-depth development tips for advanced developers. Learn tips, techniques and development expertise from others who have been using the system for years, and get to know the people in the EE community.

Where is it?

Havana Theatre & Gallery
1212 Commercial Drive, Vancouver (BC)

We want people who aren’t EE users (yet!) to come and understand why EE is one of the best web CMS systems out there and why it’s a perfect system for web design shops that need advanced functionality but don’t want full-time developers. And you’ll hear it all from the people who build great websites with it everyday.
The price? Just $50

And that includes a chance to hobnob with some of the the most passionate EE developers on the West Coast, including Rick Ellis, CEO of EllisLab, the company responsible for all of this. At the part-EE (get it?), you’ll also nibble some of Commercial Drive’s best eats and we’ll even buy you a couple of drinks, just to make it more fun! There are only 60 spots, REGISTER NOW!

Not convinced? Why don’t you check out what’s happening during the EE Roadshow. 

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It was a sad day in my family. My grandma, Rejane Quenneville, passed away last night, September 22 2008, and I spent quite some time on the phone with my family today. My grandma was such a bold character. According to my older brother, she carried the entrepreneurial spirit wherever she has been throughout her life and it is that same spirit that lives on through our passion for business and all the projects we have been taking on, including this one, eMarketing 101 which has been my passion for the last 8 years or so. I will remember how much she enjoyed listening to our business projects and the spark that she had in her eyes as if she wanted to help out and be part of what we were doing. She was never tired of listening to us. She understood and was there to remind us of her dad and her grand dad and all that they have accomplished in their lives. Apparently, success was running in the family and I am grateful that my grandma taught us the virtue of hard work. Merci grand-man! 

As I was speaking to my dad, he mentioned something funny to cheer me up. He said, you know what, grandma was slowly going down last night and with all the drugs that she has been given, she was not really conscious for the last few hours of her life. In a desperate attempt to get a reaction, someone in my family decided to dip a sponge in maple syrup and give it to her. Believe it or not, it was at that moment that they got the long awaited reaction they were hoping for. Actually, one could say that this may be the sweetest way to end a life, in a truly Canadian way. Au revoir grand-man. RIP

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Unlike most elections, this year is a little different. I have been asked by my dear friend Cendrix Bouchard from French CBC to be part of a TV show on RDI (Reseau de l’Information), which presents a few “undecided” Canadians from every province, to answer questions in a weekly interview and provide my impressions on the weekly progress that has been made in the current campaign. In light of such experiment, which I enjoy thoroughly, I would like to share something that has been sent to me with regards to the lack of funding by the conservative party in cultural events. I think it is hilarious (and shocking) and regardless of where you are coming from (French and/or English), I am sure you will find this clip delightful (make sure you turn the close caption on, from the bottom right corner).

If you care about the culture, here is something you have to watch:

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I don’t understand why people are going to expensive Internet marketing conferences where most of the content is available for free online. As such, you will delighted to know that Search Marketing Now are offering a variety of online search marketing seminars, for free and on demand. These seminars are conducted by search marketing veterans and are of very high quality. If you are not sure about a certain task you need to perform for either your PPC program or your SEO strategy, feel free to follow these 60 minutes online webcasts that will guide you on the right track. 

For example, the September 16th Search Marketing Now webcast, “PPC’s Hidden Opportunity: Advertising on Content Networks,” featuring David Szetela is now on demand. To view the recording directly, you can go to their website at: http://searchmarketingnow.com/ and click on the “View Previous Webcasts-On Demand “ button.

Don’t miss the next webcast Tuesday, September 23rd.  Selling Your Search Strategy: Timely Advice to Help You Win.

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I have been using an excellent PPC (Pay Per Click) Management tool called Acquisio Search in the last few months to help manage numerous PPC (Pay Per Click) accounts, including Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing & MSN Adcenter (aka. The Big 3) Acquisio now releases an important update today which I would like to go over in more details. 

During the last few months that I have been using the tool and going through my own learning curve, I must say that Acquisio has help me save a lot of time in managing PPC accounts and I am now able to provide stellar reports to my clients. The consolidated view of all the different campaigns for all the accounts in one single (and easy to use) interface makes it far easier than managing them manually. Those who manage multiple PPC accounts on behalf of clients know what I am talking about. Creating reports is the least favorite task in PPC Management, which might be the reason why Acquisio is using the tagline “I Hate Doing This Shit”, which obviously get people talking. Acquisio makes this part very easy and fun. So far, I have been especially impress with the consolidated view it offers, with the campaigns related to the 3 main search engines, the easy to use interface, as well the quality of the report it produces. There are some other really cool functionalities including the campaign optimizer, the mass editor which I am starting to use and help saving a lot of time.

Up to now, Acquisio has been focusing exclusively on the top 2 engines (Google & Yahoo) and they have recently introduced MSN Adcenter as part of the mix. This is the next big thing as part of their development, which is why I felt compelled to talk about it today. Here is the full-on release of the most recent update:

Acquisio’s team has been extremely busy in the past few weeks working on the release of several very important features for our PPC Management platform, and they’re finally ready. The latest release of Acquisio SEARCH includes the following:

Microsoft adCenter Support: Finally, we’re ecstatic to announce that we’ve practically completed work on the integration of Microsoft adCenter to Acquisio SEARCH, which we will release to everyone in the coming days. However, if you need access to it right now, please contact me and I will activate your account as a beta tester immediately - there are still a few small issues with the integration, which will be resolved this week, but you will be able to produce reports and work with the editor. We will look to integrate other search engines, shopping feeds and directories in the near future. We count on you to let us know what your favorites are so we can prioritize our work according to your needs.

Support for Various Conversion Types: We now support all adWords conversion types.

Support for Revenue Metrics - ROAS and many more: You can now see revenue data in all your reports.

Column Picker: You will now be able to pick and choose which metrics are important to each account in a column picker.

New Summary Tables for Reports: You can now produce summary tables to compare overall performance for multiple date ranges, for various search engines, campaigns, ad groups, keywords, content vs search, etc.

In case you didn’t know, there were other releases in the past month or so. Here is a list of the most important features:

- Possibility to request a custom design for reports
- New custom colors in reports
- Login, can now remember credentials
- New Cost Per Conversion column in Optimizer
- New Geotarget with Google Maps
- New ad-scheduling interface (redesign, mostly)
- Editor Support for Mobile Ads, Local Business Ads, Image Ads, Placements, and Negative Placements
- Google budget optimizer supported in Editor
- Added a Client Center shortcut
- Adding a component (from dashboard) to a report will create an extra title component (i.e.: Most impressions)
- New snap grid behavior in reports (blue square preview) - makes it much easier to move things around

We hope you will enjoy these new features, and we look forward to hearing any feedback you may have - we do this for you, so your reactions are important to us. Good or bad, we want to hear it.

*********************************************
Acquisio: in the works:
*********************************************
Coming up in the next few days:
- Access Rights
- Add to Report from the Mass Editor

Also coming soon:
- Automated Bid Management

Don’t hesitate to call Alex Lamoureux at 1.866.493.9070 ext.: 211 or by email at if you need further explanations on any of these new features, or if you want to gain immediate access to Acquisio SEARCH.

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I found a little comparison today between Google & Microsoft on the New York Times you might enjoy.

Google applied for incorporation as a business 10 years ago Thursday, according to a timeline supplied by the company. The application was accepted on Sept. 7, which is Sunday.

In that decade, the search engine company has quickly emerged as the most successful business on the Web, and many expect it to dominate the next era of computing as thoroughly as Microsoft dominated the era of personal computers.

Here’s a quick snapshot of Google by the numbers along with some comparisons to Microsoft. The sources of the data are the companies, Yahoo Finance and comScore.

Google’s age: 10
Microsoft’s age: 33

Google’s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $19.6 billion
Microsoft’s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $60.4 billion

Microsoft’s revenue at age 10: $140 million
($279 million in today’s dollars)

Google’s revenue per hour in the last 4 quarters: $2.2 million
Microsoft’s revenue per hour in the last 4 quarters: $6.9 million

Google net income in the last 4 quarters: $4.85 billion
Microsoft’s net income in the last 4 quarters: $17.6 billion

Google employees, as of June 30th: 19,604
Microsoft employees, as of May 31st: 89,809

Google’s revenue per employee: $1 million
Microsoft revenue per employee: $672,000

Market value of Google: $142 billion
Market value of Microsoft: $241 billion

Number of tech companies with a market value larger than Google’s: 3 (Microsoft, I.B.M. and Apple, in that order)

Worldwide searches on Google in July: 48.7 billion
Worldwide searches on Microsoft in July: 2.3 billion

Worldwide searches per hour on Google in July: 65 million
Worldwide searches per hour on Microsoft in July: 3.1 million

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In light of recent misunderstanding about What the f*** is Adhack and what it does, James decided to make a little adhack introduction video which you will find below. Now, since eMarketing 101 has hired Adhack to make an ad (a great video ad) for eMarketing 101, you could too! For your business, your project, anything. And guess what, it is going to be a much better (and cheaper) ad than if you contact your advertising agency on record. Why? Because an ad made by Adhack will be authentic. It will be made by real people, not actors and it is going to be your story, not some kind of a manufactured story that sounds fake which you know will get caught in everyone’s BS detector. Now, take a minute, watch this ad for adhack and contact James at james@adhack to make an ad for your business.

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I just received another great eye-tracking study today conducted by Gord (Hotchkiss) and his team at Enquiro Research. This one was commissioned by Google and it demonstrates that contextual relevancy affects ad value.

Here is a summary from the release:

Business to business (B2B) advertisements which are relevant to their context can lift purchasing intent amongst viewers by up to 36% above a non-relevant placement. This finding comes from a new study commissioned by Google which examines high-level B2B purchasers and effectiveness of Internet advertising as it relates to brand, messaging and recall.

--> Download the 7 page mini-whitepaper

Key findings from the study included:

The test readers’ intent to purchase a particular brand, a key success indicator, is lifted by 24% with relevant ads.  But a non-relevant placement leads to a 12% drop in purchasing intent for that brand - meaning a non-relevant placement can actually hurt the advertiser’s bottom line.

When it comes to remembering the actual message of an ad, users were 52% more likely to recall the details of the ad’s message when they were fed a contextually relevant ad as opposed to a non-relevant one.

Interestingly, the study’s findings show that non-relevant ads stick out more than their relevant counterparts.  Users were 16% more likely to temporarily remember a non-relevant ad, likely due to the “surprise factor” of it being out of context. However, when it comes to actual impact as measured in higher purchasing intent, the contextually relevant ads showed higher value.

High level findings from the study are now available on Enquiro’s research portal, http://www.enquiroresearch.com/whitepapers.

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