CogBlog

I'll be in San Francisco for the rest of this week attending Ad:Tech. This time the conference will be bigger than ever before, with over 9,000 attendees expected. And again I'll be joining the AdRants/MarketingVox team of bloggers on AdTechBlog.

My first covered session will be "The Future of Search" moderated by Bambi Francisco of Dow Jones, and featuring Fredrick Marckini of iProspect. Should be interesting.

http://www.adtechblog.com

Google is bringing back the Google Maps name. They'd previously switched to Google Local. "But we're not just maps" I hear Eric saying. "Doesn't matter" say Sergey and Larry "The name is crazy delicious".

This week in DM News there was an article about the fun that search engines like Google have with April Fool's day. In the article was a quote from Fredrick Marckini, CEO of search marketing firm, iProspect, where he explained how the Search Engine April Fools joke works:

"For the period of time that it is mistaken for not being an April Fools' Joke, it can dramatically increase the reach of the brand" "Later, when people find out it was all in fun, they leave with ... a reminder of the brand, and, hopefully, a warm association with the brand."

Here is the full article on DMNews.

We've just launched a new site for client Qqest Software Systems. MyTimeForce.com will be taking over from the previous domain QqestTime. Besides being much easier to remember and spell, the new site is now focused more directly on the featured product, TimeForce, than the parent company Qqest.

A challenge on this project was to effectively present a product that is both hardware & software, and can be effective for a 10-person office, or a large enterprise.

Initial response to the change has been positive, lead conversion rates this week are up about 1/3 over last week.

Here is a link to the site:
http://www.MyTimeForce.com

Today we received an invite for the Beta test of a new Google product, which of course makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. Creatively named AdWords Editor (for now anyway), it is a tool to manage AdWords accounts via a stand-alone application.

I've only had a chance to download and play with the app briefly. Other than the fact that I was required to use Windows XP (no mac version at the moment), the install went smoothly. Once you log into the tool, it synchronizes and creates local versions of all your campaigns, ad groups, creatives and keywords.

It proved itself useful right off the bat though by allowing me to export a snapshot of an entire campaign to a CSV file--just what I needed to send to MSN for their AdCenter Beta. Probably not the use they had in mind.