@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Video Marketing

Individualized and Interactive Media with GBTV

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Glenn Beck says the television model is no longer working because for the most part, the networks do not respect their audiences. Beck believes the key to change for this media format is to give viewers the options to delve deeper into an interesting segment or clip, or to pick and choose a bit more easily exactly what they want to view. This type of interactive TV is not a format that broadcasters have available at their fingertips today. 

Beck cites that current television has to play to the dumbest guy in the room while boring the rest endlessly.

“Why should I bore the 10 smartest guys to death, if they can move forward faster, let’s enable them,” he said. “Once I can change the usage of it so it’s not just one way information, television as we know it is over.”

Beck shared that he is working on a variety of projects that will serve to completely overhaul the television industry as we know it today. Beginning with his company, Mercury Radio Arts. He has recently launched his own pilot video program called GBTV. At the recent Ignition conferences, Beck’s boss had a bit to say about him as well.

Chris Balfe Shares Why People Watch Glenn Beck

Beck tracks his audience engagement fully. He uses this information to customize his segments into what he believes the audience will want to read. Beck shares that he doesn’t use this type of engagement with his audience to pander to them, but to learn from the analytics and his audience respectively. Recording about five hours of broadcast each day for viewers, Beck certainly stays busy, often on monologues that can last over forty minutes long.

According to Chris Balfe, people listen to Beck because they care what he thinks about issues. He also attributes Beck’s multi-media activities, along with unique opinions and audience loyalty, largely lend to the success of his programs. Balfe also suggest that anyone who is looking to build a brand for themselves do the same.

Opposing Views

Not everyone agrees that Beck has cornered the market on perfect customer and viewer engagement.

Arianna Huffington shared her thoughts on Fox News.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DevH6VwAfd4]

Huffington’s standpoint on the state of Fox News Media seems to have been taken with applause by some, a grain of salt by others. However, she may have a point in sharing that sometimes, news, that while by itself may not sell, with pomp, circumstance, and catchy headliners, can quickly become a viral topic.

She also makes an extremely relevant point in that which consumers and news viewers on all sides have been turned off in recent years by subjective journalism practices. This recent change also having fueled the statistics that have shown that networks like Facebook and Twitter are where people tend to go to get their news first. From friends, peers, and those they can trust have done their journalistic duty by providing an objective view.

Huffington denies that her site is a liberal blog, she instead prefers to think of it as a publication that will look at good ideas regardless of their standpoint on the political views. She also disagrees with news platforms like CNN who in her opinion provide too much of both sides for their stories to hold weight.  Huffington shared,

“When one side is clearly wrong and one is clearly right, it’s not good journalism to pretend that they have equal weight.”

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Summify Your Social Media Networks

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Keeping up with the most vital information in your industry was never made easier than with the inception of so many options in social networking. However, if you, like many others, find reading your Facebook and Twitter feeds to be increasingly more difficult as your network grows, it may be time to consider some of the options in news feed aggregation.

What is Summify?

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/15436623]

Integrated Ease

Instead of actually trying to keep up with lightspeed tweets and Facebook shares, the best thing you can do to save time, energy, and frankly frustration, is to head over to Summify and use their one-click integration options to log in via Twitter, Facebook, or Google.  You can choose to use only one network, or you can easily collaborate all three with a few more clicks.

From there you can configure how your summary is generated or you can sit back and wait for it to arrive in your inbox.

Inbox News Updates

Summify will determine by taking notice of your “Likes”, your trending topics, and the information in the industries you have the most influence, and make a daily progress report for you that is sent directly to your inbox. Users can choose to have this sent several times per day if desired.

Top tweets and the most often shared content will also be displayed along with those users names. See others in your fans or followers networks who have showed the same interest and utilize quick one-click buttons to add them to your network instantly.

View it as an email or as a webpage. Using the webpage option will give you far more interactive options.

Benefits of Summify

A very obvious benefit that makes Summify different is that this update will be sent to you per your desired frequency and will require no more effort on your part to configure than your original choices.  However, when you receive your emails you are given the chance to further refine your selections. Further benefits include:

  • Time Saving
  • Filtering Unneeded Info
  • Multi-Account Capability

When you receive emails from Summify you should open your articles from there. When you do, you are given the option to select a thumbs-up, or a thumbs-down option. Selecting the negative will prevent this type of content from being aggregated for you in the future.

Who Uses Summify?

Summify has seen a huge jump in user numbers in the last three months. Currently ranked at #5069 in the US, this aggregation option is beginning to be used widely on mobile devices due to its smooth compatibility with most options.

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The Power of Facebook Webinars

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The Power of Facebook Webinars

Webinars are fast becoming a vital source of communication for a variety of different industry needs. Some examples of trending Webinar needs include:

  • Online Education
  • Business Meetings
  • Brainstorming Sessions

This is just the foundation for many of the ways that companies are currently utilizing Webinars. Most businesses and institutions have little choice these days but to look for more cost-efficient manners to carry out communications with a group who are not within affordable geographical reach. Company’s developed and deployed only online may also have serious outsourcing needs that can include vital training for their businesses. Even in a superb economy, having a face-to-face with online employees is an expenditure nightmare.

FBWebinars

As Facebook continues to step up their game in many areas, FBWebinars has added another element to the social networking giant that can provide business owners with a system that incorporates automated and recurring presentations, videos, webinars, and VSLs. Utilizing all of the viral aspects of Facebook, list building features make creating a FBWebinar a snap.

Currently still in their Pre-Launch phase, FBWebinars has an Alexa ranking of #61,602 with the larger part of its visitors coming in from the United States at 76% with a local traffic ranking of #15,661. Most users are males over the age of 35 with mid-level incomes.

What Can Users do with FBWebinars’ System?

With the FBWebinars system, users can promote any service, product, training or other webinar needs, as well as the products of any others, with their permission of course, or even create your own to promote many affiliate products or services.

Users on the basic account can add five custom webinars for their own products or services, and using pre-screened options do not count against your basic five.

The Future of Business and Educational Communications

Harnessing the educational or selling power of a webinar, with the mass marketing capabilities of Facebook certainly adds a few elements of ease to Webinar creation. Many users have already become loyal fans in just the short time FBWebinars has been in open beta. If your business or institution regularly relies on Webinars for communications, you may want to have a look at a review or two, do some research, and see if your webinar needs can be more efficiently met on the FBWebinar system.

With new updates popping off left and right, FBWebinar.com seems to be continually improving, at a rather fast rate. New methods such as the Viral Traffic Generation method and incentive programs are offering users innovations in Webinar technology previously unseen. You will not know until you investigate, but even without the impending updates, the current platform may be the perfect tool for your organization to launch products or services, create educational and training presentations, and improve your online marketing campaigns.

FBWebinar Updates

FBWebinars has already implemented a few new upgrades.

FBWebinars Incentives – This program will offer users a gift when they invite a designated number of friends to attend their webinar.

FBWebinars ‘Done for You’ – FBWebinars’ goal is to provide its users with a consistent stream of the newest and most profitable webinars with the highest conversion rates. Let FBWebinars help you to turn your webinars into sales, traffic, and a powerful tool for list building.

Click Here to get your account now!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpJdmxTX-g]

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Is Google Plus (G+) the key in the transition to Web 3.0

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A Google account has become the most powerful tool that any entrepreneur or small business owner could ever hope for. While Google’s general public brand has been tied to Search, Google has been building a monopoly that can and will change the shape of business, politics, and education forever. In fact, Google is Web 3.0!

Google has many, many tools and products in its offering, most of which are free! If you have not taken the time to look around I suggest you spend a few minutes and start to familiarize yourself with them, they will save or make you A LOT OF MONEY!!!

Google recently made a few updates, but the top bar has been around for longer than most realize, it is in this bar that Google is writing the book on Web 3.0.

What is it that makes Google such a force? Why is Google Plus or G+ such a big deal?

As seen above, Google has captured the “cloud” era ahead of schedule. Without even looking at the advanced features or Google Apps, one can create and store documents on their google account, set appointments organize and share a calendar, find new information and search for products, solutions, books, or even watch a movie or a how to video.

Social Media has changed the way that people interact and use the web, in fact web 2.0 was all about social media. Websites, software and plug-in updates that allowed people to interact with one another and turned a one directional internet into a multi directional web. In web 2.0 not only can you talk back to the media or information source, you could share it or pass it around. The individual web user could claim the brand of a company for better or worse. Dell had individuals that were not related or employed by the company providing customer support in the forums, and Milton’s Scrabble lost thousands, arguably millions in its brand because two other developers claimed the brand in Facebook.

Web 3.0 has been branded the “cloud” era where information, both public and personal is stored on the world wide web and accessed via data plans, Wifi or traditional cable and dial up. This includes massive files for things like high definition media, entire company databases, etc. This is really not something that is new, just look at how startups like Patch Media use google to simulate a traditional IT infostructure or Saleforce.com to organize track and distribute leads, sales and work. With only one main hub in NYC, Patch Media delivers people and content without traditional overhead in over 800 communities around the United States.

Google Plus bridges the gap between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

In Google Hangout people interact in a real time public space. Others now have to rethink how they look, speak and the body language or facial features that they use. (The innovative marketers and advertisers will need to think how to get a coke can on the desk during that hangout, how to get a new movie poster on the wall behind that person on the hangout etc.)

Google Hangouts has a game changing advantage for those that know how to present, speak and are truly genuine in public. Users should be aware that this new social tool is a lot like “Larry King Live” and you better be prepared for questions that you may not want to answer.

Google Plus has an A symmetrical sharing system, which means that we can send to others but not get a share in return. G+ from its creation allows users to separate professional and personal lives and even organize beyond the largest separation issue that has plagues social users. This interface along with many other features makes Google Plus the most advanced social media site/tool/software that has ever been created, but all that pales in comparison to why Google is so powerful in web 3.0.

If you are in a space where you are using social in a way that allows you to network and share both your personal life and professional life, what could be better than the Google suite of products? You can share and update documents in real time, video conference, make appointments, develop leads, search out information, shop and buy products, services and so on…

A small business now has an IT Dept. in one place. They can seek out support, generate leads, share reports, organize their schedule, promote their business with video, learn from other videos, advertise in Search, not to mention capture the power of social or viral activity. The digital business can now provide face to face support in a familiar environment something that many still crave.

A teacher or tutor can instruct a class or group from half way around the world, share documents, collect home work in real time. A educator or small college can now reach millions and take online learning into a space that captures the best of brick and mortar with distance learning once only done through text based posts.

A politician can capture and organize moral entrepreneurs, organizations and supporters from an account that brands who they are, what they are doing and interact with them with little or no technical experience or knowledge.

The shift in the world economy has come from millions of individuals competing with large corporations and brands that once held a monopoly on professional marketing, networking and talent. Thanks to a Google account you can now work with the best talent, develop a impressive network and generate a brand that is professional, technologically competitive and organized.

 

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Google Plus: A short Intro to G+

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Vic Gundotra of Google explained that, connection is a “basic human need”. The current online choices in social media did not have enough diversity inside each individual social tool.

Who should be worried about Google+:

  • GoToMeeting
  • Flikr
  • Skype
  • Facebook
  • Microsoft
  • EVERYONE!

Bradley Horowitz, VP Products helped build Google+ explained in an interview for Twit:

Google+ allows individuals to create social networks inside a single social tool to share as you want where you want, when you want. It allows you to not only share via a news feed, but puts you face to face with people via video chat or in “Google Hangouts”.

In the real world people interrupt conversations and the technology in Google Hangouts was developed to recognize that and move the camera, its designed to develop the natural communication we see in real life.

Another innovation in Google Plus is Spark. Spark uses google news and google search to integrated with content that you interested in, it will provide a personal filter for content that is fresh and new to generate conversation. It keeps the discovery and sharing within your circles.

Another Great feature of Google Plus is the instant upload feature for Android. It allows users to automatically upload pictures as you take them on your mobile phone, then when you use G+ its loaded and ready to share if you choose.

Huddles is the mobile version of the platform that allows you to interact in small groups, I hope they add video to this, it would make the mobile video a real userfriendly social option.

Changing Social Interaction on the Web:

In Google Hangout people have to interact in a real time public space, something that others will now have to rethinking. Success will now include how they look, speak and the body language or facial features that they use. Google Hangouts has a game changing advantage for those that do know how to present and speak in public and are truly genuine. Users should be aware that this new social tool is a lot like “Larry King Live” and you better be prepared for questions that you may not want to answer.

Stay Tuned for “What does Google+ Really Mean for Google?”

This is a great video look at Google+ and really starts to get to the culture of Google+ at 44 minutes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3evAu7WN4Q]

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Why Online Videos are Important to Your Business?

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Videos are increasingly attracting huge audiences online. People love to share online video content, especially young people. They post them on social networking sites or spread them through e mails. Marketing people say that if you are not using video in your marketing campaign, you might soon be behind the crowd.

Why is that?

Think about this simple fact: 1 minute of video equals 1.8 million words, as demonstrated by Dr. James McQuivey of Forester Research. The amount of information contained in one single frame can take 3 pages to describe. The mood, the colors, the message is seen immediately. It is a known fact that people engage more when they watch a video and tend to stay watching it. They are also happy to pass it along.

Since e commerce has become so impersonal, a video that shows the business owner, the business itself and the products makes it more personal and human. There is now a face behind the business. The choice of music in the background makes the experience fun and uplifting, retaining the audience.

How big will online video be in a marketing campaign? It will be huge the experts say. Statistics done by Cisco.com and Invodo.com reveals some amazing facts:

  • In their estimation video will be about 90% of all internet traffic in 2013.
  • 64% of retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer in average compared to a site that does not contain video. In the e commerce world, the longer a visitor stays on the site, the greater the chances of him turning into a buyer.
  • Between January 2010 and January 2011 viewing time of videos grew by an amazing 44.5%.
  • Video in e mail marketing has been shown to increase click through by 96%!
  • With the right optimization, video increases the chances of a front-page Google search result by 53 times.
  • Internet retailers report that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy the product than visitors who do not look at videos.

With these kinds of numbers, no wonder many experts turn to video in an attempt to get to the first page of the search engines.

Studies reveal the need for engagement from the viewers, and videos provide this kind of engagement. Just like comments and reviews on product pages, YouTube looks at the number of comments to a video when it decides which video should be on their front page. It’s more than just broadcasting, videos engage audiences and sends them to your site if the video is insightful, funny, gives information, educates and talks about people – how your product can help others to be more… what they want to be.

Where do most of those videos originate? On Google, 82% of video originate from YouTube, 3% from DailyMotion, 2% from MetaCafe, 1% from Google video and 10% from other sites which support self-hosted videos.

On Bing, 38% of the videos come from YouTube, 37% from Bing, 9% from Vevo, 4% from Fox News, 3% from CNN and other news organizations. The others, about 5%, come from different sites.

Does it mean we all need to become film makers? Not necessarily. There are many ways to create sales and promotions video; telling a story (which is the most complicated), using a simple camera and following the owner around, using screen shots, animation or just captions with music in the background to explain a complicated point. The big companies have been doing so for some years now but with modern technology, cheap cameras and free software, everyone can do it too.

Videos are an Information Experience:

Here is a law firm talking about the importantce of video, almost as if the lawyer is selling the product he just bought!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t2RmvrfV7k]

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New Creative Commons Option for YouTube Fans

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YouTube recently released some new options in creative commons licensing for their uploading fans. Users will now be able to choose to license their videos under CC BY or to retain the default option of Standard YouTube Licensing.

In human terms, CC BY is the ability to share, remix, or make commercial use of the video under the conditions of Attribution. This means the video must be attributed in the method that the author specifies, however, not in a manner that suggest that the original creator endorses you, your products, services or ideas.

 

Users must retain the understanding:

  • That any of the previous conditions can be waived if permission from the copyright holder is received.
  • That regardless of where the video or any elements of it are located in the public domain under the applicable laws, that its status is not affected by the license.

Most commonly, providing a link to the original authors web page is sufficient for applying proper attributions.

10,000 Videos

Along with its newly launched CC BY implementation, YouTube has also created a Creative Commons Video Libary that contains 10,000 videos from Al Jazeera, C-Span, Public Resource.org and Voice of America. This base catalog of videos are available for users to access, edit, and if desired, incorporate into their own projects.

YouTube Video Editor

The always useful video editor now also contains a CC option that will allow users to search for only creative commons videos from the freshly filled library and choose from them which to edit and remix. This can save loads of time for those who find video editing part of their daily grind. Once the CC BY video has been edited and remixed, the newly created video will automatically display the proper attribution linked titles to their original source videos.

The good news is that this library will only continue to grow, making the new liscening and editor capabilities. As it stands, after its first week with this format, the CC BY library has already grown from its initial 10,000 to well over 60,000.

What Does This Mean for Small Business?

Quite simply, this means that if you currently run your social media marketing campaigns through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you will be able to garner direct benefit for your business in time saved, higher quality videos, and quality linking to help build your web presence.

Whether you do your own video editing, or pay an employee to do so, this has been in the past a rather costly, time consuming element of a marketing campaign. The problem lies within the available creative commons licenses. As any video editor can tell you, searching for and locating videos or the content of videos can be a needle-in-the-haystack endeavor, with a walking-on-eggshells result.

This is because there are few places on the internet that allow for free, the usage of any of their material. Just like stock photos, there are stock videos, and fortunately, users can usually rely on these to be of high-quality.  Unfortunately, these can also be extremely costly and the specific proper attributions can make managing the editing process incredibly tedious.

YouTube’s new library and editing attributions presets have taken all of the hassle, and the hours of data mining out of the equation. Now creating a quick video to toss into your social media networks is easy work for just about anyone.

 

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YouTube founders Gets Delicious

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The top and leading social bookmarking service, Delicious, has been sold by Yahoo to co-founders of YouTube, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. Begun in 2003, Yahoo acquired the service in 2005. Delicious claims a worldwide community of loyal users. Delicious is also a part of AVOS, a relatively new internet company in San Mateo, California.

Although Yahoo will continue to operate the bookmarking site until July, when the transition period ends, all data will be moved to the new Delicious servers. This means that the next time users sign into Delicious, they will be asked for permission for approval in moving your currently saved bookmarks to their new location.

Do Not Forget to Approve Your Bookmark Change Over

Members should have also received a message that provides notification and how to move the bookmarks, as well as what will happen if they do not.

Highly aware that this news has come as a surprise to its many users, Delicious execs also provided all the imperative information to their users today in a fresh press release from AVOS, as well as an explanatory blog in addition to the email sent out to each member.

Good News for Delicious Users

In the end, users should not be worried as AVOS does plan to continue the widely used service and therefore have taken the many necessary steps to ensure that all users know of the impending changeover and have plenty of time to approve their own bookmarks transfer to the new Delicious servers.

Developers and execs are well aware that there will be a period of adjustment as AVOS launches Delicious on their own, but they also have shared that their intentions for Delicious are to continually grow and improve on the services currently offered.

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Online Ad Spending Expected to Increase

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The online advertising industry hit a new high in 2010 with ad revenue topping the 26 billion dollar mark. After a falling in 2009, performance based-spending on forms of search advertising and digital display ads began to lead the way.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that online ad revenue increased by around 15% to the 2010 mark of $26 billion, up from the $22.6 billion from 2009. Other important elements of their 2010 ad revenue report include:

  • In addition to record numbers for the entire year, ad revenue reached a record quarterly high in the fourth quarter of 2010.
  • Search Ad revenue was the most popular format chosen and it alone represents 46% of revenue. Additionally, it achieved an overall 12% growth for the year.
  • With a 142% increase in the fourth quarter alone, Sponsorship ads received the highest growth with an 88% increase.
  • US Mobile ad revenue seen an increase of between $550 and $650 million.
  • Display advertising, including banners and display ads, digital video commercials, rich media and sponsorships continued to see growth with a nearly 10 billion dollar increase over 2009 numbers.

Top Display Ad Networks

Digital display networks are growing swiftly in popularity for small and large businesses. Ad display advertising can offer a company the opportunity to communicate directly with consumers who are interested in their products and services in addition to potential earnings just from advertising revenue.

Several display ad networks tend to reach far more users than others.

  • Yahoo’s network reaches more U.S. users than any others with high reaching numbers at 85.9%.
  • AOL Advertising leads an extremely close second at 85.7%.
  • Google’s own Ad Network comes in with 82.7%.

Other leading display networks include:

  • ValueClick
  • Turn Media
  • 24/7 Real Media
  • AdBrite
  • Collective Network
  • Specific Media
  • Microsoft

With five constructive quarters behind us, online advertising revenue expenditure is likely to continue to break previous financial marker milestones. If last year’s overall ad revenue profits are any sign of impending trends, display network advertising may be making its way into the advertising campaigns of many new businesses.

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YouTube Advertising & Channels

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Having a custom YouTube channel is kind of like having your own television channel. It will allow the user to upload their personal videos and to promote their own products or services via their video as well as URL linking on the custom YouTube channel page.

To begin you would simply need to sign up for a YouTube account and begin uploading your videos to their site. Once uploaded, users should than plan to ‘market’ their videos in various places online such as social medias, blogs, news articles and website content.

Once you have an account you will find many options for customizing your personal channel. However, if you want more than just a custom channel for private use and have a good history of having great views on your YouTube content, you may need to apply for  a YouTube Partner account.

YouTube Partners

Becoming a YouTube partner will make you privy to specialized tools and customization options, including page analytics. This will absolutely help to generate far more revenue than simply using the regular methods of ‘getting the word out’ via social medias and bookmarking.

How Does YouTube Advertising Help?

When you use the phrase YouTube advertising this can mean two different things. YouTube does offer their own method for advertising your products or services via Ad campaigns through their web site similar to Facebook ad campaigns, where a user pays for a certain amount of views or clicks.

YouTube advertising can also mean the method where business owners or those promoting their personal services use YouTube videos as a means to help drive more traffic to their own website. Providing helpful YouTube video ‘How-to’s’, Tutorials and walkthroughs on products, services, internet tools and a vast variety of other things that can help bring one more viewer to a users site via providing helpful content in hopes that it will encourage the user to get help from the ‘pro’s’, which is hopefully what your YouTube video will make you appear as.

 There is no doubt that both of these forms of YouTube advertising can be effective. Even the smallest bloggers have had great results by utilizing links to and from their YouTube videos. The more videos a user uploads the better their chances of bringing more users to their channel.

Most YouTube advertisers also understand the what’s and why’s of why others are utilizing its capabilities as well, so are commonly known to help promote good content by sharing it on their own social medias, or by joining your channel or choosing to ‘favorite’ your videos. This type of ‘word-by-digital-design’ is just as helpful if not more so than traditional methods of advertising such as banner ads or affiliate linking.

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