Ebay has long been the go-to site for sellers and bargain hunters alike, and the annual Ebay Live summit provides an opportunity for ebay enthusiasts to hobnob with fellow buyers and sellers and Ebay head honchos. Attendees spent time visiting with exhibitors and had the opportunity to discuss Ebay’s new policies with the Powers That Be themselves.

The new policies, most of which will go into effect in July, are aimed at improving the buying experience, rewarding top sellers, and keeping users from leaving the site. Let’s take a gander at the key policy updates:

• Sellers will no longer be permitted to link to any non-Ebay websites selling goods or services. Linking to Ebay owned companies like StubHub or PayPal, however, is still a-ok.

• Rather than creating multiple listings for similar items (think 10 pairs of jeans in 10 different sizes), sellers will be able to include size and color options in one listing.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced a new feature for users of MS Live Search (clicking a search ad and buying the advertised product through the Microsoft search engine, then receiving a cash reward) that is clearly intended to kick market-dominant Google in its PPC (pay-per-click) search advertising shins.

This cash-back-for-clicks shot across Google’s bow would benefit retail and consumer search engine users far more than the pay-per-click search advertising that helps buyers and sellers find each other in the B2B wholesale merchandise industry. (For one, savvy wholesalers do their search marketing through industry-specific vertical search engines. And for two, the cash-for-clicking program was designed for retail-level e-commerce through a general consumer search engine.) 

Still, Microsoft is tossing an interesting business grenade into the competitive battleground of search marketing, because what Bill Gates announced is a PPA (pay-per-action) business model for Microsoft Live Search. Pay-per-action – or pay-per-purchase as it’s also called – is a method of charging the advertiser only for searcher clicks that result in a certain action, like a merchandise sale.

TopTenWholesale.com, owned by JP Communications, Inc., is releasing a new refined search feature today. The new function, referred to as S.A.S.E.©, will display the most probable results for commonly misspelled words and irregular searches. The acronym S.A.S.E.© stands for Synonymous Algorithm Search Enhancer and is being launched as part of an effort to add to the relevancy of search results pages displayed to wholesale buyers searching for products.

TopTenWholesale.com is bolstering its search features to compensate for human errors made while searching and to lower the search failure rate from wholesale buyers searching for suppliers.

An example of how S.A.S.E.© works: If a buyer visits TopTenWholesale.com and performs a search for the keyword “hanbags”, a common misspelling for “handbags,” the terms are connected manually, as to provide the most relevant results, and to bring wholesalers the most targeted and highest qualified traffic. The new feature will decrease search failure rates due to typos, commonly misspelled words, and synonynmous keywords.

Internet taxes have been fiercely debated since the first ban passed the U.S. Congress in 1998. That moratorium, set to expire November 2007, was extended for several more years at the eleventh hour. But those taxes had one thing in common: All were levied on Internet access or services. Internet sales taxes for goods purchased online were not on the Tax Man’s agenda … until now. Let’s back up a bit. Many groups eye revenues from Internet taxes: Budget-crunched state and local governments, groups speaking for shopping centers or brick-and-mortar retailers who claim tax-free online sellers get unfair competitive advantage … or that e-Commerce ruins storefront merchants who do pay taxes. Traditional telecom services joined the pro-Internet Taxation chorus, as the market demanded more voice-over-IP services, which are free of special regulatory fees that fall to landline customers. Again, that tax battle raged over Internet access or services.

The latest La Moda in world apparel design and retailing is to offer customized clothing options … buying made-to-measure clothing online.

Online product customization was touted as The Next Big Thing during Internet Bubble 1.0. Those were the Prehistoric Web Days of the late 1990s up through 2001, when the ability to display and online order special shoe colors, select T-shirt artwork and design your own car model (from a bag of pre-selected features) promised to use full personalization powers of the web.

Back then, even Levi-Strauss — evolving from rivet-sewn workhorse jeans once worn by 19^th Century gold miners into a dizzying array of boot/straight/flare cuts and stone-washed/distressed denim fabric — launched a Store-Your-Fit-and-Style-Preferences customer feature on its eCommerce site.

What remained elusive online was truly customized clothing, giving customers the power to design an entire garment and tailor it for a perfect fit according to her body measurements. Until now.

Wholesalers, importers and resellers of apparel, licensed clothing or toys, footwear, accessories, jewelry and general merchandise have specialized marketing needs, online and offline. If you don’t have budget to hire a digital marketing agency — but can no longer self-manage online ad accounts — it’s time to find a search marketing / ad services provider who understands the needs of wholesalers. There is a growing, competitive pool of wholesale publishing, advertising and auction or product sourcing sites that want your business. This checklist will help you find the right partner.

>>> Look for trade/vertical search sites. Online advertising and search marketing developed from retail consumer-focused, direct marketing systems. (Building site traffic and click-throughs; directing visitors from general, consumer search engines to online purchase or shopping cart pages.) But wholesalers and resellers have different buyer decision-making paths; and they measure conversions differently than the retail consumer world.

Oh, those privacy whiners. Don’t they know that entire neighborhoods of the Online Marketing village are built on Internet behaviors – subject preferences, web browsing habits, search requests? Don’t they realize that behind-the-screen behavioral targeting is for their own benefit, to save them time and match them up with the most relevant products, services and information on the web? To better serve them?

Privacy Is In the Eye of Beholder
Ask the Electronic Privacy Information Center – EPIC – who told the European Parliament that movement toward the IPv6 model means that user IP addresses will be more personally identifiable than ever. Or ask the European Union, which considers an IP address personal data when it can be used for any personal identification. You can even ask the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, though it says it’s not sure if IP address, harvested by search engines and ad-serving tech for local/geo-targeting, are really personal and subject to privacy rules.

One of the best strategies for growing a business, launching a new product or building your customer base is to give away valuable stuff. Such freebies might be a test version of your product, a trial product sample, an insider’s look at how your product lines get to market, hot tips on latest trends and up-to-date training for sales reps. (More suggested giveaways-to-get-customers below.)

Offline merchandisers use this giveaway-to-get-customers free samples technique. Haven’t you tripped over smiling food samplers in large grocery and boutique markets? Who can resist a coupon for Freebies or Massive Discounts, whether they pop up on a receipt print-out or a Sunday newspaper ad drop or, these days, are fed to a willing potential customer’s mobile phone? (With mobile geo-targeting, some ad networks claim to push the freebie coupon to a Whole Foods searcher just as he or she nears organic food advertisers’ stores.)

The Old Time Marketing Music — wisdom from direct marketing gurus, offline and on — is that hot-hot-hot trends get kick-started by an Elite Crew of Early Adopters (like the rebirth of Hush Puppies among NYC hipsters that brought the comfort shoes back from near-death in 1994 to 5,000 percent sales).

Another Old Time Marketing Motif is that fashion and lifestyle trends are birthed by big-name celebrities, like Madonna long ago … a simple Italo-American song-and-dance girl who suddenly and explosively hit the pop charts. And made steel-tipped bras at dance raves all la moda.

Ferggitabout it, says a paraphrased Duncan Watts, an Australian digging in global trendsetter marketing mines in New York. One of Watts’ current corporate social marketing clients is Yahoo!

A B2B survey of media and Internet professionals titled “Vertical Search Report 2008” was recently released by E-consultancy, an online publisher of Internet marketing reports and research, and Convera, a company that customizes specialized search functions for publisher web sites.

Time-challenged web publishers in various commercial and industry segments provided their insights on staying on top of business information, getting the most useful business information quickly and staying up-to-date.

·        Go Vertical for Search Needs.  Search engines and databases that specialize in a business or interest segment bypass more generalized search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search. Information overload has fragmented even the general search engines into special-focus verticals that are consumer targeted, such as in travel (Hotels.com, Expedia), used vehicles (Autotrader) and books, electronics, entertainment (Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Online).

“Go Local!” has long been the rallying cry in the whole foods movement (buying most edibles from regional growers, or The 100-Mile Radius Rule among food advocates) and in energy conservation green movements (thinking globally and acting locally).

Given gasoline prices and transportation costs, combined with buyer behaviors that favor local sources, it should be no surprise that buyer, wholesaler and retailer advertising is focusing on regional/local media as well.

Buyers seeking merchandise supply sources are as influenced by local or regional warehouses for faster and less costly shipments, as they are by opportunities to target specific regions with styles and features favored by local potential customers.

Second-tier search engine Ask.com has tried to expand its share of the search market throughout 2007 with user-friendly features and user-sensitive privacy initiatives.

For example, Ask.com paced the big tier-one search engines (Google in May, Yahoo! and Microsoft by September) by offering Universal Search Results: Returning multimedia (video, images, maps, audio feeds) plus localized search results. Like the Big 3 engines, Ask no longer asks search users to click on the “right” database to search on Videos or Maps; and some local searches no longer demand localization keywords, like city or zip code. (You may have seen Ask’s offline electronic advertising on this universal search feature. Spots were themed “Instant Get-ification” and closed with the challenge: Can your search engine do this?)

Ensuring Privacy by Erasing the Breadcrumb Trail

Search engines, as portals to locate products, services, information and community, continue their march toward destination of user choice. Whether it is a large, broad base, consumer targeted search engine, or a second- or third-tier niche targeted vertical engine, SE’s earn their user crede — and potential advertising revenues — step by step. They’ve focused on building their muscle in data warehousing, getting sticky with personalized feeds based on previous user behaviors, expanding their content distribution networks, and offering multimedia plus localized Universal Search Results … without being asked in the search box.

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang was scolded this week by a Congressional Committee for sacrificing democracy and free speech for commercial gains.

Given all the heat generated by the issue of net neutrality for U.S. Internet users — now tied into immunity from prosecution that U.S. telecommunications providers are demanding for breaking laws on wiretapping without FISA warrants for the government — the only surprise in this Congressional tongue lashing is that it does not involve a United States citizen. It’s about China.

The Chinese government maintains strict censorship over all forms of speech and communications on Chinese soil. So, when government censors wanted to shut down two Chinese Internet users who advocated for democratic reforms and rights of free speech, they contacted the ISP these two nationals were using as a democratic soapbox and they demanded the Yahoo! users’ identities. Presumably, Yahoo! was offered something in exchange, such as permission to operate in China’s heavily regulated playing field.