Ever wondered how all those ads you see populating the websites and blogs that you frequent get there? Exactly how is the data gathered for all those targeted Google, Yahoo and AOL ads? Below is an infographic of the path of how online ads are generated from the initial data to the target audience.

Another great piece of work from Infographiclabs

Hello. My name is Jonathan Bailey. I’m the new guy here at the Blog Herald, once again, and I’m starting up a new column that will be running every Friday targeting the law and blogging. We’ll be tackling some of the major legal issues that bloggers face as they run their sites.

Many of you may already know me from the various sites I have either written for or currently write at. This includes a previous stint here at The Blog Herald, my ongoing Blogging Pitfalls column at BloggingPro, my hosting-related column at WhoIsHostingThis and, of course, my home site of Plagiarism Today, where I talk about copyright and plagiarism issues on the Web.

To be clear, I am not an attorney and nothing in any of my columns should be considered legal advice, but I have studied the law as it applies to mass media for over 12 years, come from a journalism background and have been studying copyright especially closely for over ten.

My goal with this column is to include a variety of pieces including general information pieces about how the law, in particular U.S. law, applies to blogging, legal news and rulings that might affect bloggers and also answer some of your questions as time permits.

With that in mind, here are just a few of the topic areas that this column will cover moving forward: read more

The last 10 years or so have seen online publishing startups such as Mashable and Gawker Media jostle for position with many of the traditional publishers such as the BBC and the New York Times. The team at Infographiclabs created a fantastic visual representation of this in the Infographic below.

Bloggers are always looking for ways to improve their content, site or profile. Bloggers, who were previously ruled off as nothing more than a hobbyists are now make a massive impact on the world around us opening us . There are always ways to improve your content and the best way to do so is through Google Analytics.

If you run your own site and don’t know what Google Analytics is, you’re missing out on vital information. The wealth of data Google tracks when visitors come to your site gives you a very accurate profile of your target demographic and what they’re looking for. Here’s how you can supercharge your Blogging by using Google Analytics.

Are Visitors Really Reading Your Content?

As Bloggers we love it when readers not only share content but well, read it. I’m not talking about lightly skimming through the post and picking out the most important pieces of information but actually reading it. When you log in to Google Analytics and select the dashboard for your site, you’ll notice the Content Overview box in the lower right hand corner. The information in the section shows the top performing content on your site.

Clicking on the top links — which are hopefully Blog posts — shows how long a visitor had that page displayed. You’ll have to estimate how long it would take you to read your post at a normal rate and see if it matches the time reported by Google Analytics. If it’s close (everyone reads at different speeds) then you’ll have a better idea of how your readers are interacting with your content.

Social Media Campaigns

One of the coolest tricks I learned while using Google Analytics on a daily basis was creating custom tracking links that can be used with a Social Media ‘Marketing’ strategy. This is the same tracking link you would build for a traditional Google Adwords run but can be condensed using bit.ly or your favorite URL shortening service.

Building a Google Tracking URL is extremely simple and will give you a better understanding of which Blog posts are the most popular in the social sphere.

Here’s how I set up my tracking URLs

Campaign Source: Where is the content originating from? Hint: It’s most likely your Blog
Campaign Medium: Where are you sending the content? Twitter, Facebook or just a general Social Network submission?
Campaign Term: Always left blank
Campaign Content: Short name of the Blog post.
Campaign Name: What major category would it fall under? Is it part of your campaign on tracking tutorial posts or opinion pieces?

The results are available for each site under Traffic Sources > Campaigns.

Using these links when posting on Facebook, Twitter or any network will give you a more accurate reading of how the Social Sphere responds to your content. When working with clients and using Google’s tracking URLs, it showed me which post categories were popular and how I should improve on them. Just as important, Google Analytics also showed which posts failed to capture attention and frankly turned off followers.

Google Analytics packs a treasure trove information about your site. When used in creative ways, it can reveal much more about your site, your brand and how it’s being perceived online. Combining Google Analytics with your existing analytical tools can energize any social strategy.

A visual look at global brands and celebrities with the most social media presence and followers. Which companies have utilised social media with success and who has the biggest Twitter following, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber?

Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs

One of the major advantages that WordPress has over its rivals (aside from its beautiful user interface) is the sheer number of plugins available for users to download.

With over 12,000 plugins at its disposal, WordPress vast arsenal dwarfs both Joomla and Drupal who are currently hovering around 6,000 extensions and 7,000 modules, respectively.

However when it comes to the number of premium plugins available, selection seems to be rather slim (at least as far as those that are compatible with the latest version of WordPress).

While WordPress’s current setup for free plugins already places them far ahead of rivals, it might be time to rethink the current approach when it comes to premium plugins for WordPress. read more

Email is something that we now take for granted and many of us use it as our primary communication method. Email is something that most people do not know how it works or when or where it originated from and most would be surprised at exactly how old it really is! We decided to take a look at the process of how your emails are sent and received and also the history of how it has evolved over a period of almost 5 decades. Finally, we look at dreaded spam, its origins and unstoppable growth since the turn of the century.

Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs

We recently have published the excellent The History of Online Video infographic and some months ago already had the Google’s timeline so it is no surprise that our next infographic the story of Youtube visualises.

The startup, launched in April 2005 was sold to Google only 18 months later for the sum of USD1.65 billion. Even after the acquisition by the Palo Alto search giant, the video platform continued to grow and is now one of the most popular websites in the world, hosting billions of videos and playing more than 2 billion videos every day. Often marketing campaigns heavily rely on Youtube plays and many artists use the platform as well as MLM marketers.

Thanks go to the crew at Infographiclabs for another graphic.

The Internet has changed massively over the last years and the days of a life without www seem to have become long forgotten for most people already. Many youngsters could not imagine a life without ‘technology’ or internet anymore. The biggest change online has been the emergence of video streaming though. What seems now to hit the living room for everyone, also not tech savvy people , with AppleTV and and GoogleTV, happened in actually less than 5 years. Online video has always been something for nerds, with QuickTime and RealPlayer in the first years but once Youtube was launched 2005 the complete internet landscape changed. And continues to change. Nowadays around 69% of all internet users also watch streaming or download videos.

Together with the popularity of online video screencasting has become popular and one of the best tools for this certainly is Techsmith’s Camtasia a long time favourite for Windows screencasters and since recently also on the market for Mac users.

We analysed the last 5 years of online video history and the result is this awesome infographic, requested by Techsmith.

For a more detailed analysis of the history of online video, check out Andrew Baron’s A Decade in The History of Online Video.

We and the Techsmith crew thank the team over at Infographiclabs for another awesome infographic.

One of the biggest questions about the internet since several years is ‘How big is the blogosphere’ or How many blogs are there?. While the answer to the last question almost impossible to count is, BlogPulse currently tracks almost 150 million websites, identified as blogs.

We wanted to know more and decided to analyse more data, such as how much revenue is generated from blogs and what are the key demographics for the blogging publishers. We also were interested in the languages used online and their spread. The result of all this can be found in our State of The Blogosphere infographic.

The average earnings made by blogs are a ten fold of the investment made to sites with most hobbyists surprisingly missing out on any earnings, but investing an incredible $1,500 in their blogs. In these economic challenging times for many, maybe it’s time to reconsider mortgages and loans and get some solid advice from the folks at Credit Loan. After all blogging is not a cheap task it seems and part timers invest even more in their blogging habits, more than $10,000, with rather low profit.

With huge thanks to the team of Infographiclabs.com for this graphic.
Visit our Infographics archive to find more awesome infographics about social and new media.