Ad News and Views from Around the Web

SEO and usability; Yahoo! hearts Samsung; bubble trouble; every company is a media company, and more

Usability is SEO
You’ve heard a lot of blather about search engine optimization (SEO)—the art and science of getting your search results at the top. But the fact is if your site sucks, then all the SEO you do is wasted. Writing on SEM Clubhouse, Chris Silver Smith talks about how to do SEO right, and get your site in order for maximum effect.

Yahoo! and Samsung team up
On April 26, Yahoo! announced a strategic global partnership with Samsung to distribute Yahoo’s services on millions of Samsung mobile devices—including those running Samsung bada and Android platforms. Samsung will distribute Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Front Page, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Flickr, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Contacts, Yahoo! Calendar, and Yahoo! Weather on its mobile devices globally, beginning in May 2010.

Tech bubble could mean trouble
Put all your eggs in one basket and sit on that basket. That used to be the advice our parents gave us way back when. But, says James Temple in the San Francisco Chronicle venture capitalists may be creating a new tech bubble, one that relies largely on ad-based business models, the just might burst, and soon. To mix a metaphor, let’s not count our chickens before they’re fully monetized.

Every company is a media company
Blogger Brian Solis recognizes that every company that needs to get a message out—that would be all of them—is also a media company in addition its core business, whether it’s Yahoo! FOX News or a local plumbing contractor. “The future of marketing starts with publishing, and as such, brands must contribute to the evolution of social media in order to truly socialize media and galvanize communities to create more informed and active markets,” says Solis.

Location, location, location…
Nearly one in four U.S. adult consumers use mobile location services, phone apps or other software that know where the user is. These are very useful for navigation and for finding nearby things like gas stations, cinemas and restaurants, and now a new study indicates they’re great places to advertise, too. Nearly half of those who noticed ads while using location-based services took at least some action, significantly more than those who did so while texting (37 percent) or on mobile websites (28 percent). Also, even though this is a young industry, 22 percent of adults ages 25 to 34 already use a location-aware service at least once a week. This report comes to us from the Mobile Marketing Association and Luth Research.

Creative Spotlight: NYC Subway PSA

For those of us creatives who live in cities and use public transportation, there’s no end to the small annoyances created by our fellow passengers. The uncivilized talk loudly into their hands-free sets, sounding like lunatics who just got out of a padded cell. Then there’s the noisy gum-chewers, the Ripple-swilling drunks, the hair-combers, the coffee-slurpers and, worst of all, the nail clippers. Well, one street artist, Jay Shells, has finally taken on this last sort of barbarian, posting a subway etiquette fulmination against public nail clipping. Testify, Jay! (Hat tip to AdAge for revealing this one to us.)

— Michael Mattis