We’re pleased to announce the addition of two new experts to the Serengeti team:

Liana (Li) Evans is well known in the digital marketing industry.  She is an expert trainer in both search and social media and a frequent speaker on both topics at conferences around the world (catch her at SES Toronto in June, presenting on the ins and outs of Twitter).  Li contributes and moderates at a number of industry forums, including Crea8site, High Rankings, Search Engine Watch and Webmaster World.  Li will be leading Serengeti’s search and social media strategic consulting services.

John Lynch ran his own, independent search marketing consultancy in New York for the past four years.  Having created and executed search training programs for large companies in publishing and high tech, John is a perfect addition to our Take It In House team of consultants.

Li and John bring extensive experience and insight to the table.  We expect great thought leadership from both of them as Serengeti continues our focus on empowering clients with the skills, tools, data and insights to succeed in all facets of digital marketing.

MediaWeek says mobile advertising is delivering some surprising results. According to a recent survey of 1800 mobile users, 53% click ads, 24% make purchases directly from their smartphones and 35% request more information or a coupon.

Why the sudden shift? Iphones have made the mobile experience satisfying, which means users are accessing the mobile internet more and downloading apps. The rest of the industry is mimicking the Iphone, trying to catch up, which is leading to more competitive products and services and creating more demand.

The Kelsey Group predicts that by 2013, local mobile ad revenue will reach more than 3.`1 billion, up from $160 million in 2008. Mobile search gets the biggest peice of that pie, at 2.3 billion.

Marketers should expect increasingly sophisticated mobile opportunities over the coming months. Yahoo for example plans to allow advertisers to tailor their ads to the location of mobile phone users, enabling local business to advertise only to people within their area.

I’m in Beijing at the moment and just saw an advertisement recruiting journalists who are native English speakers. CCTV, the English-language 24-hour news channel of China Central Television is actively seeking journalists who are native English speakers. Interested journalists should email their resumes to jobscctvinternational@gmail.com.

I find it odd that in the land of Baidu, the largest national TV network has a gmail account. On the other hand, it was CCTV who first reported that Baidu used fraudulent pay-per-click ads as its search results, for which Baidu apologized (“We put too much effort in competing technically with Google, and in doing so overlooked our advertising system and its management.”)

By the way, the origin of Baidu’s name is pretty cool. It comes from a poem comparing “the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles…’hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood’.”