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Excuse me this is reputation management.

Kjell Gunnar Bleivik 06.07.2010 Status: May be updated with additional information.

As you see the Norwegian word "skyld" has many different faces and a Norwegian company will silently pay a compansation before issuing a statement of excuse us. If the company issues such a statement, it is the same as admitting responsibility or guilt. A good Swedish company may give you compensation even if it is your fault. That is another story.

The following three Norwegian words and their English translation is important:

"uskyld" = innocence
"unskyld" = apologized
"unnskyld" = pardon

You will note that all versions of the Norwegian word contain the word "skyld" that an automatic translation service may translate with sake. A better word is guilt, fault or blame. For example:

"Være skyldig i noe" = Be guilty of something
"Få skylden for noe" = Get the blame for something
"Det er ikke min skyld" = It is not my fault
"Det er din egen skyld" = You have only yourself to blame.

The word skyld is important. In Norwegian "excuse me" is translated with "unnskyld meg". "Unnskyld meg" that is "excuse me" or "ta bort min skyld" that is "remove my guilt". Because of the word "skyld" that is in this regard best translated with guilt, a Norwegian company will never issue a statement of "excuse us". If the company uses those words, it is equivalent to plead oneself guilty. In other words, there you have me or in Norwegian. "Der ble jeg deg svar skyldig." The word "skyldig" has additional meanings in Norwegian.

A reasonable compensation for your fault is NOK 100 000, so you owe me NOK 100 000 + interest from this date. "En rimelig kompensasjon for din feil er NOK 100 000, så du skylder meg NOK 100 000 + rente fra denne datoen". Is that reasonable for the sake of peace? "Er det rimelig for husfredens skyld?"

As you see the Norwegian word "skyld" has many different faces and a Norwegian company will silently pay a compansation before issuing a statement of excuse us. If the company issues such a statement, it is the same as admitting responsibility or guilt. A good Swedish company may give you
compensation even if it is your fault. That is another story.

Pay per static brand link a better solution for professional publishers.

Kjell Gunnar Bleivik 08.23.2010 Status: Will be updated with additional information.

Because of this bad experience as a publisher, I will formulate the following solution for professional publishers that can offer targeted traffic. Branding may be the most important element in online advertising. Offer online banner / brand link advertising directly with the advertiser for x dollars for a period of y months. If you live in a small country with a relatively high page level, your effort with affiliate providers will hardly pay you salt and pepper for your food.

This article is based on 4 years of experience by a person that has surfed the internet since the beginning, has a strong academic background and experience as an investmet advisor, fund rater, mentor for more that 20 financial advisors and client service reporting specialist. I shall start this short article admitting that I may not have used enough time on my affiliate networks. The article may not be so relevant to people living in Australia, Canada, USA, UK and other English speaking countries. It is most relevant to a publisher living in a small country with a high page level. It is assumed that you write in English or in your own language. My mother language is Norwegian. Aside from that, my experience can be summarized in the following words. In a country where the wage level is relatively high you work for "free" for ad providers and merchants and your site soon looks like a badly decorated christmas tree unless you choose your campaigns very carefully. Semantic linking and contextual ads are very important when you allow third party code on your sites. Ads are sold in context. Some advertiser use a tracking code and cookies that are intended to live for x months. The problem is that surfers become more and more advanced in their search and online activity. Some of them remove the tracking part of the URL and many delete cookies daily or some times a week. Then you will not get a single dollar when the surfer purchases online. Broken links and color change is a constant experience if you sign up with a professional affiliate provider like (in alphabetic order) Amazon, Commission Junction, Google, LinkShare, Tradedoubler to mention the most professional. Other companies may even be worse, and you don't earn a single dollar. Sometimes I doubt their tracking software. I have had ad's on my site for years without a single payout. Be careful with those companies is my advice. My worst experience with professional providers are:

One of the above mentioned providers closed my account because of inactivity, even if the banners function on my sites.
Changed banner size with one of the above mentioned professional providers. Since I style my sites with CSS using div elements, the result was that the whole page became distorted. The menu at the right of this page suddenly covered the half with of the page and the text was moved to the bottom of the page.
Broken links that have no consistent markup solution. Some times, the missing ad was replaced by an area of the same color with the ad background color - my preferred solution if ad's are deactivated. A cyclical problem is well known to a programmer. Other times that area was covered with a broken ugly link that makes your page look unprofessional. It degrades your brand and eProperty.
Payout by checque where nearly half of the amount is paid to the bank for cashing out the checque. Again you pay a third party for hours and weeks of hard work.

Because of this bad experience as a publisher, I will formulate the following solution for professional publishers that can offer targeted traffic. Branding may be the most important element in online advertising. Offer online banner / brand link advertising directly with the advertiser for x dollars for a period of x months. Don't forget to add a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag. If you live in a small non English speaking country with a relatively high wage level, your effort with affiliate providers will hardly pay you salt and pepper for your food.

You end up using your time on making a small amount of money for the affiliate provider (that earns big money on the sum of all small publishers) and nearly free branding for an advertiser (until he removes his account). After that you may get a borken link on your page degrading your own brand and eProperty for a shorter or longer time period. As a publisher, don't buy every new advertising strategy. As a publisher, ask the following three important questions:

What do you do for the provider / advertiser?
What do you get back?
Is what you get back worth the effort, or is an offline job a better alternative?

Related information:

Marketing is a type of drama.

Kjell Gunnar Bleivik 04.21.2008 Status: May be updated with additional information.

Ad has never been objective and is very subjective in nature, in short, it is subjective sell propaganda. In that respect, ad is cunning, treachery and reduced to the least common denominator, trickery.

This short article is a modified version of a post I wrote at WebProWorld and inspired by a Norwegian marketing specialist, Trond Blindheim.

Traditionally advertising, ad for short, was about information, and

"Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive ... That tension will not go away."

Advertising was the the language of the product, the products spoken competence if you want.

Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa, but the company is the biggest advertising and media company in the world and to quote and other cite from the above link:

When Google turned advertising into a software application, a classic services business formerly based on human economics (things get more expensive each year) switched to software economics (things get cheaper).

Ad can differentiate similar products like Coke and Pepsi. The first is often related with exclusivity, with successful people. Among ad people, it is accepted that the brand is more known on the earth than the American flag. You find empty bottles in inner Mongolia, on Greenland, in Moscow, in Cartagena, in the Redwood forest, in the Goldswim Water and in the Thames. You find it on Norwegian glaciers, on the Chinese Wall, at the top of the Eiffel Tower and in the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There is no wonder if you find it on the moon or even on Mars. A bottle with the brand may have been forgot ton in a mars vehicle by an engineer. I am sure that you find the bottle in the stomach of sharks and other animals. The brand is worth trillions and the world's best investor, Warren Buffett, likes to be related to the brand and his company has invested a lot of money in the company, that is, in the brand. How is it possible to differentiate Coke and Pepsi? Is there a magical secret formula? Isn’t both brown water with sugar and gas? Is there a difference in color? Is there a difference in taste? Ad is the answer. If you aim at being exclusive, buy Coke. SAM'S choice is definitely not for persons like Warren Buffett.

Ad has never been objective and is very subjective in nature, in short, it is subjective sell propaganda. In that respect, ad is cunning, treachery and reduced to the least common denominator, trickery. Humor is very important, since it reduces your ability to think critical. Very often ad appeals to your sub consciousness. Soap operas, where ad is shown in milliseconds. You do not register the message or the brand, but your subconsciousness does. Ad does not reflect reality. It reflects your dream about reality and that is quite another story. It is possible to sell nearly anything if the ad message is good enough. It is told that you can not buy luck and success. That is the exact purpose of advertising. It tells you that it is possible to buy luck and success.

When a company buys ad it buys a public. It buys the exclusive part of the population or young people. It buys you who want to be in, it buys you who want to be successful. It buys you who want to be observed with a coke in your hand or have a nearly filled green indicator on your internet site. You do not need to use words. The whole world can see that you are successful. According to brandz valued at $86.1bn, Google tops brand ranking for second consecutive year.

You drive on the left side of the road. You are from UK and part of the Commonwealth. The rest of us other idiots drive on the right side. Now, Norwegian research, has even proved that for one reason or another it is more safe to drive on the left side. Did you say ad is information? It can be proved that the rest of the world is wrong and UK and some countries in the former British Commonwealth are correct. It may save lives if the rest of the world change their stupid practice of driving on the right side of the road.

In my left brain there is nothing right, and in the right part there is nothing left. Yes, you can sell expensive air or more precisely, smell with ad. You find some of the strongest brands in the smell industry. You may have the best product in the world. Without ad, you have no chance. Removing the Coke brand from the earth or Google’s little green indicator (unless Google wants it removed) is more difficult than tearing down the wall in Berlin. Only idiots fight Mr market. He is the worst dictator you ever meet, and he is always correct (at least in the long run). The Iron Curtain fell. Coke and Google's little green bar will (depending on Google's agenda) be there decades after this story was written in Moss, Norway 20th august 2007. Did you say that the Queen of England buys ... There are three methods to measure the effect of advertising.

There are three methods to measure the effect of advertising.

Register who advertise in all commercial media. In short, who uses money? There is data on this.
Register who calls from 09.00 in the morning to late in the evening. There is data on this, too.
In the (online) shop the product code is registered in a database and analytics is delivered immediately.

We started this article with the heading: "Marketing is a type of drama." The next internet will be more that an information super high way. It will be the infrastructure for everything that can be delivered as a bit stream, that is a concert in New York or a theatre played in London can be experienced in cyberspace on your computer screen or a much larger screen.

Concerts, theatre and education in real time become global. This will of course be used in marketing. Cybertheatre, was the first hit when I searched the word. On the about us page the company write:

"Welcome to a world of Hometheater, Cybertheater is a site dedicated to covering everything Hometheater related. Its provides info on all the latest equipment in the home theater sector from LCD TV’s to Hometheater DVD’s , if its anything to do with hometheater we will cover it. Where the worlds oldest hometheater site, yes even older than AVforums".

Avforums is the right place to start if you will prepare for the next wave in digital branding and marketing.

AdSchoolWorld

Excuse me this is reputation management.

Pay per static brand link a better solution for professional publishers.

Marketing is a type of drama.