Mark Cuban Charged with Insider Trading on Search Engine Shares

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 17, 2008

Mark Cuban, mostly known for being the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks and maybe an internet guru from his billion dollar sale of his company to Yahoo, has been charged with Insider Trading by the SEC for “acting on nonpublic information and selling shares of Mamma.com to avoid more than $750,000 in losses, the SEC alleged,” reports Reuters.

“According to the SEC, Mamma.com invited Cuban to participate in a stock offering that would be conducted at a discount to the market price after he agreed to keep the information confidential.
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Predicting Top Online Marketing Trends for 2009

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 17, 2008

We’re coming to the end of 2008 and not too much changed on the online marketing spectrum from 2007. In 2007, it was literally the BOOM of the social media websites such as Digg, Facebook, etc. No one page made such an impact this year that the crowds flocked too.

In the very end of 2007, I wrote a post titled, “Identifying Top Marketing Trends for 2008 From Top Execs” which as you’ll see, I lost all the images to the graphics that displayed trends. The buzz word was predicted to be “green” which still today, will continue thru 2009 as being a buzz word. This year we’ll see the world focus MUCH MORE on the energy crisis and that topic is as hot as its ever been.

I think the demographic to make the most change to is actually still the baby boomers with more engagement and activity from the older demographic as their sons and daughters introduce their parents to social media sites such as Facebook. Due to current economy changes, many of the older folk will also go online to scoop for better deals online.
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80% of Adults Purchase Online

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 14, 2008

MarketingCharts.com today reports on a Nielsen rating study which shows that nearly 80% of adults make purchases online. 80%! That is a VERY significant number. How can you not be establishing your business with this high percentage?

According to this study, “The #1 online transaction category was travel, with 38% of adult online consumers making at least one travel purchase on the web in the previous six months. Credit-card account management and home banking took the #2 and #3 spots, with 36% and 35% of consumers conducting transactions, respectively.

Clothes, shoes, accessories and books were also popular online purchases.”

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Building A Large Website vs. A Niche Website

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 13, 2008

In recent times, probably 2 years or less, we’ve seen the web (websites) get more and more niche. For example you have a website that reviews all cars, and then you have a website that only talks about Honda Civics. You have an auction website like eBay that sells everything under the sun, and then you have Bidz which only auctions jewelry.

Most marketers have drilled down building on a niche of a niche! Its almost becoming/became a competition of how far in the niche you can drill down to get a better conversion from a user/customer that will show your website is as relevant as it can be to what they are searching for.

Time is one of the key elements we have to look at when strategizing for our SEO/PPC campaigns. How much time will we have to devote to this website/campaign and where do we want to go with it? What will be an overall better strategy for optimization and/or conversion? Should I build a big hub website or lots of small niche websites targeting certain keywords?
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