Details of the release are below.

Advertise.com Founder & CEO Daniel Yomtobian Named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2012 Semifinalist in the Greater Los Angeles Region

Finalists will be named in May, with awards being presented at a special gala on June 19, 2012 at The Beverly Hilton.

Advertise.com today announced that CEO Daniel Yomtobian is a semifinalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2012 Award in the Greater Los Angeles region. The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Finalists will be named in May, with awards being presented at a special gala on June 19, 2012 at The Beverly Hilton.

Now in its 26th year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy, Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and many more.

Founded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP, the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are nationally sponsored in the United States by SAP America and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

In the Greater Los Angeles region, sponsors include Acacia Wealth Advisors, ADP Cresa Partners, J. H. Cohn, Marsh, Montgomery & Co., Scherzer International, Smart Business, Strategic Equity Group, The Big Picture and Union Bank.

About Advertise.com

Advertise.com is a results-driven ad platform for PPC Search Engine Marketing, Bulk Email Advertising, Online Display Advertising, and Remarketing (Retargeting) advertising solutions. Our unmatched network of premium publishers empowers our advertisers to maximize their company’s audience reach.

Founded in 2001 by CEO Daniel Yomtobian, the Advertise.com has grown into the world’s largest privately held Ad network. Now delivering over 20 billion ad impressions monthly, advertisers are landing conversions beyond traditional search and display by delivering ads to real people who are actively seeking their products and services.

In 2009, our ClickShield® fraud detection technology was awarded a US Patent for network traffic quality monitoring and scoring. Presently, we continue to lead the charge in online advertising; connecting thousands of advertisers with millions of real consumers every day.

Headquartered in Sherman Oaks, California, Advertise.com has more than 75 employees around the world, with a portfolio of brands including the award-winning social search engine Scour.com.

About Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year®

Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs. The unique award makes a difference through the way it encourages entrepreneurial activity among those with potential, and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire others with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through regional, national and global awards programs in more than 140 cities in more than 50 countries.

About Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. Worldwide, our 152,000 people are united by our shared values and an unwavering commitment to quality. We make a difference by helping our people, our clients and our wider communities achieve their potential.

Ernst & Young refers to the global organization of member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit http://www.ey.com.

1. We had some very involved conversations with current and future clients about their ad goals for 2012 and it became apparent that online advertisers aren’t just looking for traffic anymore. They are in search of innovative and competitive ways to grow their business and stay ahead of their competition. The traditional traffic platforms aren’t cutting it anymore and alternative traffic sources are on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Of course, this is music to our ears.

2. With the boom of alternative computing devices there are more opportunities than ever to for publishers to monetize users and traffic. Our publisher department had non-stop meetings with mobile publishers, emailers, content sites and domainers all in search of ways to provide better user experiences while monetizing their traffic and data.

As always, we took plenty of pictures of the team hard at work. Check out the gallery below. 

As for our next show, we’ll be exhibiting at Affiliate Summit East at the New York Hilton, table#94 and booth#329. We hope to speak with you before then, but if you are attending let’s be sure to meet!

-The Advertise.com Team

We’ll be exhibiting at AdTech San Francisco on April 3rd-4th at the Moscone Center, booth #1400.

Become the Bond of Online Advertising

Advertising is an undisputed results-oriented method of increasing traffic and conversions to your site – but only if it is done correctly. Many entrepreneurs assume that as long as they have an online identity, it’s just a matter of time before they get discovered. They soon find out that they are but a tiny blot in a cyber world where trillions of other websites exist. In addition to traditional advertising platforms, knowing how to capitalize on more niche platforms is not just smart advertising, but a great way to stay ahead of the competition.

Some of the popular ad formats we see currently trending are Alternative Pay Per Click (PPC), Remarketing, Social, and Opt-in email lead generation.

Alternative Pay Per Click

PPC is highly popular because advertisers are able to reach engaged users at the height of the purchase cycle.  They are literally telling advertisers what they are looking for. Delivering on that need comes from proper ad creation, keyword targeting and messaging on the landing page.  What a lot of advertisers don’t know is that there are alternatives to the traditional search engines. Commonly referred to as second tier search networks, these networks aggregate the search and content traffic left behind by the bigger guys and create a single marketplace for advertisers. In addition to more affordable bids, these networks may offer more personal account management, less advertiser competition, traffic optimization tools and a great way to reach even more of your audience.

Social Network Advertising

Extremely exciting at the moment is the ability for marketers to hyper target their users on social networks. Because this user’s information is willingly submitted, you’ll have a real easy time finding your target audience. The goal is to relate advertisements to the interests of the user without being too obvious.  Next you’ll have to come up with a unique way to engage them.  Try something out of the box like irreverent copy or an eye-catching image.  Social advertising platforms are an interactive form of advertising and brand building.

Remarketing

Latest reports show conversion rates for first time visitors are around 2%. This means 98% of web visitors leave without converting. It’s no wonder why Remarketing is gaining such popularity. The fact that advertisers finally have a tool to reach out to these lost visitors means additional conversions that they otherwise would have lost to their competitor. Of course, Remarketing requires discretion and strategic tactics to be a valuable asset in your online advertising arsenal.

Opt-in Email Advertising

Opt-in email advertising refers to working with 3rd party email list managers to promote your ads to their subscribers who have opted-in to receive email offers in categories that interest them. Advertisers are finding fertile ground for lead generation by reaching pre-qualified email recipients who have already expressed an interest in the category of your products or services.  This traffic is highly qualified by the time it reaches the advertiser’s landing page due to the self qualifying nature of emails:  1. email reaches the user’s inbox, 2. they read the subject, 3. open the email, 3. read the message, 4. click on the call to action.

The tools available to online advertisers are constantly evolving. The trick is never grow complacent and always test the latest and uncommon.

Check out the gallery below as we take a “Love-Day” tour around the office!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Seasonal events like Valentine’s Day give PPC marketers an opportunity to generate even more traffic and conversions off of inflated holiday-themed searching.  Those who don’t take advantage of this increased interest and traffic around Valentine’s Day are letting money slip through their fingers.

Holiday traffic can be highly competitive, but not putting together specific Valentine’s Day campaigns is essentially handing over business to your competition. A little smart thinking and some consistent execution can go a long way.

Here are 5 simple ways to incorporate Valentine’s Day into your PPC strategy:

Special Offers
Valentine’s Day can get expensive. Who wouldn’t want free shipping, 10% off or a free gift? Make the most out of the holiday and insert urgency into your offering. Offer a Valentine’s Day only special and convert more!

Keywords
The absolute best way to get more pay per click exposure is to evaluate the strength of the keywords you are using. Keywords are the bread and butter of Internet traffic and having the right combination of keywords is the best way to ensure success. Researching keywords with something like the AdWords Keyword tool to determine what is being searched for the most right now should be the first step in building your Valentine’s Day campaign strategy. Popular Valentine’s Day keywords include “valentines day meals”, “valentines day gift”, “valentines day baskets” and “diy valentines gifts”. Looking over this list is the first and number one priority for capitalizing on the holiday of love.

Ads
Get some timeliness in there and brand them so they have a romantic, Valentine’s Day theme or feel. At this time of year, those seeking help with ideas or gifts for Valentine’s Day will be on the lookout for themed ads. Get creative with the ads! Even if the search doesn’t contain “Valentine’s Day”, giving the ad a timely theme will help you stand out and bring in more customers.  Do you sell gifts? Here’s a good title: “Valentine’s Day gifts to please anyone!”.  Do you sell pet supplies? “Give your Furry Valentine Something Special”.

Landing Page
Grab their attention right away with a Valentine’s Day theme and relevant products.  The landing page needs to be enticing, interesting, and highlight the Valentine’s Day items the company is offering. Why not change your logo to match the holiday theme?

Website
It is good to have a focus and a special occasion, like Valentine’s Day, is perfect. Instead of promoting the usual products and services, revamp the website to highlight featured Valentine’s Day offerings. This should also help raise the rank of your site in the search engines as you redesign, and add new keywords, to the website.

Valentines Day is the perfect opportunity to get creative and test out some new marketing techniques. Who knows, maybe you’ll fall in love with some of them.

In addition to the whole new look of our interface, advertisers and partners will have access to new tools & functionality. For more details, please read our blog post for advertisers or for publishers.

Your feedback is critical as we continue to improve our system based on your needs. If you have any questions or feedback about our new system, please feel free to get in touch with your account representative or contact us.

-The Advertise.com Team

Downtime
As we make our upgrade, our system will be down on Monday January 23, 2012 at 12am Pacific Standard time.  You will be unable to log into the system during this time. Your ads will not be served until approximately 9am PST and you may experience intermittent delivery for the rest of the day. Login access will also be restored at approximately 9amPST.

New Look and Feel
When you log in on Monday the 23rd, you will notice a few changes to the admin.  We are excited to offer you a more robust and user friendly interface. The snapshot to the left is a sneak peak.

Introduction of AdGroups
As part of this upgrade we will be introducing AdGroups to our system. Each of your existing campaigns will automatically be converted over to its own campaign with a single Adgroup. In addition all of your keywords and all other data will be migrated over without any work required on your end.

PayPal Funding
Looking for an alternative way to fund your account?  Take advantage of PayPal funding and keep that traffic coming.

Bulk Optimization
Optimize the traffic sources your campaigns receive within our Bulk Optimization tools. Manage custom traffic source blocks/white lists across a single adgroup or hundreds of adgroups, all in one place.

Enhanced Keyword Suggestion Tool
We have overhauled our keyword suggestion tool enabling you to choose your keywords in a variety of ways.  Turn a few keyword ideas into hundreds of popular suggestions in just seconds.  We also allow you to negative match keywords with exact or phrase matching options.

Changes to the Approval Process
With our new platform, your campaigns will no longer be paused when you make minor changes. Instead, your ads and keywords will continue to run as is while the changes are pending editorial approval. This way you can continue to get traffic while your changes are being reviewed instead of having your entire campaign paused and losing valuable clicks.

Addition of an Image Conversion Pixel
By popular request you will now have the option to use either our normal javascript conversion pixel or use our new image pixel.  As always, we offer both a secure and non-secure version of each.

Ability to Create Your own Run of Network Campaigns
For our advanced users, you will now have the option (once your representative has enabled it on your account) to create your own run of network campaigns right from the start.  For more information about this, please contact your account representative.

Addition of DMAs to Geo-Targeting
We now offer a more robust geo-targeting feature set that allows you to target entire DMAs instead of just individual cities or the entire state/region.

Creation of Profiles
If you find that many of your campaigns have the same keywords, geo-targets, or traffic source optimizations you will be happy to learn that our new system allows you to save a configuration and then reuse that same list on a new campaign/adgroup with only a few clicks.

Create your own Users
We understand that some of you may have multiple people accessing your account. Now you can create your own users and control what they can and cannot see and do.  Want your accounting team to only fund your account but not be able to edit ads? Now it’s possible with our new user creation tool and rights and roles management.

Integrated Alert System
Our platform can now give you important alerts and information when you log in.  When logged in, you will have the ability to check the “Alerts” page and view upcoming changes or other information Advertise.com thinks you should know.  We of course respect your privacy and allow you to opt out of any non-critical alerts at any time.

Comprehensive User Guide and Contextual Web Help
We have a robust user guide available for download once we go live that includes a search-enabled pdf as well as help files available on every page. When on a particular section of our website and you click “Help” you will be taken to the relevant help file online pertaining to the page/section you are visiting.

New API
Part of our upgraded system includes a new and improved API.  Please refer to http://media.advertise.com/API/ for full information on implementation as well as examples. The current API will no longer be available after midnight on January 23rd.

If you have any questions about our new system, please feel free to contact your account representative or contact us. We’re really excited to share our new system with you!

-The Advertise.com Team

Downtime
Our system will go down at Midnight of January 23, 2012 Pacific Time.  Our feed will not be accessible until approximately 9am and you may experience intermittent delivery for the rest of the day.

New Look and Feel
When you log in on Monday the 23rd, you will notice a few changes to our interface.  We are pleased to offer you a more robust and user friendly interface.

Changes to Bid Prices
As part of this change over, you will no longer need to factor in revenue share on our feed. Bid values within your XML feed will change from “Gross bids” to “Net bids.” Please be sure to reflect this in your system as we launch. If you have any “rev share” associated with our feed please be sure to remove that during this change over. We will be passing the “true bid” price moving forward.

Your New XML Feed
It is very important that you no longer use www.advertise.com for your feed.  You should have received an email in September as well as earlier this week as a reminder to switch your feed to the new url.  This new url is xmlXX.advertise.com where XX is a 2-digit number.  If you never received this email or are not sure what the url should be, please contact your representative immediately.  We cannot guarantee search results if you continue to use the www.advertise.com url and your revenue will be impacted.

Your login and reporting will remain the same. After the new platform becomes available, log into your account, select the “XML Feed” page and use the new feed provided. After 30 days from our launch date, your old feed will no longer function. Be sure to update it.

New API
Part of our upgraded system includes a new and improved API.  Please refer to http://media.advertise.com/API/ for full information on implementation as well as examples. The current API will no longer be available after midnight on January 23rd.

If you have any questions about our new system, please feel free to contact your account representative or contact: xmlsupport[at]advertise.com or call 800.710.7009.

The Advertise.com Publisher Team

Display marketing has come a long way since the early days. The web user has evolved into a lean, mean, content seeking machine.  If they don’t already know what they are looking for, they definitely know what not to look for – ads. Banner advertising has to accomplish more than just branding with hopes of bringing someone to your website. Your ads should target, attract, engage and offer value to all who see it.  Luckily, Remarketing empowers marketers like you to accomplish all of these goals with grace and efficiency.

We recommend that marketers of all levels check out the Remarketing presentation below.  You’ll cover some basics, best practices, how to make the most of it and what to expect whilst using some great examples.  It also has some funny moments.

Please share your experiences with Remarketing in the comments below!

-Advertise.com Team