Facebook Ad Approval Times Improve

I’ve been glued to our FaceBook advertising accounts for the past several months.   BlitzLocal has been setting up targetted Facebook ads for most small business clients over the past several weeks.   Working with Facebook  has been one of my favorite, yet most frustrating experiences since I started working with online advertising in the late 90s.  Being able to accurately target ads to so many millions of people on a single site was unthinkable a few years ago.

Over the past month Facebook has made huge improvements with ad approval times.   Typical ad approvals during March- May occurred once in the morning, once in the early afternoon, once in the evening, and generally there was one final round of approvals around 10pm EST.   The exciting part is during June we saw ad approval times range between 15-30 minutes from 9am to 2am EST.

I am excited about being able to test and revise ads in a fraction of the time required a few months ago.  This should help everyone figure out the best ads in each campaign and maximize their profits quickly.  At the same time I wonder how much this new ease of use benefit will increase the average prices we must pay for to have our ads show up.   I am noticing ads requiring higher bids over the past few weeks.    Time will tell.

Blizzard Slams Colorado

Blizzard slams Colorado! For the past several days local TV stations have been warning a sizable snow would be possible today, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this. At 7:30am accumulation was around 2-3″, by 11am there was over a foot of snow and winds were breaking 40mph.

above: view of blizzard from Chad King’s balcony.

A bit of irony: Local Colorado University students are on spring break baking in the sun while 40″+ of fresh powder has fallen in the mountains, a few have been spotted racing home. In preparation for my previous visit to BlitzLocal’s Boulder Colorado office in February I packed gloves, hats, coats, insulated socks, etc. The average temperature in Colorado during my trip was around 65 during the day and 45 at night. For this March trip I just packed a few windbreakers and some light shirts… go figure.

Today’s SEO seminar has been pushed back until tomorrow. Hopefully the roads will be reopened tonight. Please stay tuned to our email announcements for further updates.

Meeting Howard At Treppedas in Niwot Colorado

I had a great meeting with Howard at Treppedas this afternoon. The Lasagna was incredible and I was impressed by Howard’s hospitality. I look forward to developing Treppedas online sales integration with the Blitzlocal team.

If you are in the Niwot area you should consider stopping by Treppedas for an authentic italain dish.

Treppedas
300 2nd Avenue
Niwot, CO 80544
303.652.1606

Importing TwitPic Pictures Into WordPress Posts using RSS

This is the first test using WP-O-Matic to create wordpress posts of my Mobile TwitPics in my blog.

Here is a view to the right of my desk at BlitzLocal’s HQ.

BlitzLocal Team Departs Boulder for SMX West in Santa Clara, California

Good Luck to Dan, Dennis Yu, Austin, and Kevin at SMX West.

Dennis Yu is scheduled to present @ 1:15pm on Feb 10th.

Local Search Marketing Tactics – Local search doesn’t only happen in relation what’s on a map. This session looks at a variety of local search tactics that are not necessarily tied to your physical location’s listing.

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence