Just a heads up that I'll be speaking at The Online Information Conference at Olympia's Grand Hall in London on the 2nd December 2008. I'll be talking about how we use social media like blogs and forums to help advertisers get better ROI and support them.

Satya Nadella made some announcements during his keynote speech at PubCon in Las Vegas this morning. In his speech Satya talked about the evolution of search engines from directories to the use of keywords but suggested there is more to come in the form.

I attended a great session on web analytics here in Las Vegas today. The advice doled out was not out of the ordinary but the delivery was excellent and that always helps to drive the message home. Jamie Smith from Engine Ready gave a detailed presentation outlining the history of web analytics and managed to articulate some of the mistakes people make when implementing analytics packages. He said people fail to set up the proper tracking codes on their sites,

I'm in Las Vegas at Pubcon , the internet marketing conference organised by the folks at WebmasterWorld.com It's a huge event running over three days and includes six tracks on SEO: Organic Search, SEM: Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliates.

We're pleased to announce a trio of experts in the field of online marketing have accepted an invitation to impart some of their knowledge and wisdom on the adCenter Analytics Blog . Starting next Monday Jim Sterne , Bryan Eisenberg and Vanessa Fox , all well known and well documented industry thought leaders, will begin a series of posts on web analytics and marketing optimisation that will take us through to 2009. We'll kick off with Jim Sterne,

Following on from our announcement a few weeks ago that our customers can now follow updates from the adCenter Blogs & Forums by following us on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/adCenterBlog - we have now launched a page on Facebook so you can stay connected.

When I was at school we were still using chalk and blackboards to communicate so typing has never been my strong point. I've never understood how some folks are so talented that they manage to blog live from conferences and not manage to sound discombobulated.

adCenter customers across the globe will have noticed some changes to the user interface as they signed in after the weekend. Carolyn has started a three part series on what the upgrade means for PPC marketers on the adCenter Blog for Advertisers. But here, I just wanted to point out a couple of new features the analytics team have added to adCenter Analytics. Report Export Now you can download reports in Microsoft Excel or .csv formats,

Microsoft adCenter and Live Search will be well represented at the 2nd Search Marketing Expo conference being held at the New Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden on the 4th and 5th of November 2008. The show will open on the Tuesday with a keynote speech.

I spoke at the NMA Live conference recently about how to navigate the credit crunch through online marketing. The first presentation was delivered by Tim Davis of Billetts â€" a marketing analytics company based in London. It was of particular interest to me for the actionable insight it provided. There has been many a seminar and blog post on the subject of budget allocation in difficult economic times,

After blogging yesterday about the IAB's announcement of excellent growth in online advertising in the UK , it got me thinking that although we gave advertisers some tips on how to optimise your PPC campaigns in these lean times - what about the other end of the process? In a downturn we tend to "batten down the hatches" and spend more time being careful about where we spend our budgets to maximise ROI.

The IAB has announced today that UK internet advertising spend in the first half of 2008 grew by 21% compared with the same period the year before. Online advertising now has a healthy 19% share of the UK's total advertising budget with marketers allocating.

Join us at New Media Age's NMA Live event on Thursday 2nd September at the Hotel Hesperia near London's Victoria Station . Titled: "Digital in difficult times - How to make your digital marketing budget work harder", I'll be on a panel with representatives from other search engines, talking about how to get the best out of your PPC campaigns in an increasingly gloomy economic climate.

With the latest beta release of adCenter Analytics we introduced the dashboard view . This customizable visualization gives you a snapshot of your sites traffic including top pages, keywords and referring websites. Today's tip shows you how to do a quick comparison of metrics by day, week or month for the previous period. After logging into adCenter expand the dashboard to expose the calendar view. To assess any difference by day,

Myself and Tor Crockatt will be giving some PPC tips at the Affiliates 4 U Marketing Conference in London on Wednesday 15th October. Tor - who gives great talks on PPC Research - and I will be joined by Dixon Jones from Receptional and we'll be discussing.

Microsoft is sponsoring the Small Business 2.0 event in Covent Garden on Saturday 11th October 2008. My colleague Cedric Chambaz will be speaking at the conference about: "Online advertising: paying for ads successfully and how to avoid common pitfalls.

Summer has arrived here in London )!( so yesterday I took myself up to Sheen Common to watch some village cricket in the blazing sunshine. Accompanied by an assortment of Sunday newspapers, I couldn't help but spot the word "hits" being spattered around various articles as a supposed indication of a website's success.

In the UK last week Brand Republic reported that UK spend on search engine marketing would reach £2.75bn this year. However, just a tiny fraction of that cash - £330m - was spent on the art of SEO or search engine optimisation. The lion's share of web site owner's budget went on paid search solutions like Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter. SEO is an essential and vital route to improving usability and search engine visibility of web sites.

Please join us at ad:tech London on the 24th and 25th September at the National Hall in Olympia London . Not only will we have adCenter staff on our booth, but there'll also be representatives from Live Search and our display, video and mobile advertising.

One common misconception many website owners have is that people enter their site via the front door. The homepage is probably your main entry point by design and may have some welcome message outlining what the site is about and what users may find if they navigate a little further. But as mentioned in a previous post on measuring online success , visitors to your site do not always enter or exit your pages in an orderly fashion,