Online Video Soars to New Heights

Labels: Advertising, iPad, Online Media, online video, Rich Media

The New Vision of a Digital Future: Monetizing Mobility

Labels: Advertising, Direct Marketing, e-readers, iPad, Mobile Marketing, Mobility

Leaving Your Fate with Facebook

Labels: Advertising, Facebook, Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media

Social Media comes to the Age of Aquarius

Labels: Advertising, Facebook, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, web 2.0

Interactive TV Ads: Real-Life Examples

Budweiser ran an interactive TV ad that rewarded "interactors" with a game and chance to win a trip to the World Cup. According to a case study examining this campaign, around 890,000 people interacted with the ad by "pressing red" or select and 90 percent of the interactors played the "Heads Up" game to win World Cup tickets. Interactors reportedly spent an average of just over seven minutes interacting, but 38 percent thought they'd spent 10 minutes or more interacting! See a video of the Budweiser interactive TV ad here on YouTube.

Axe Body Spray: Interactive Branding Game

For this interactive TV commercial, Axe created games where viewers controlled bikes and did a stunt using the arrow keys. Other options also brought up a slow-motion version of the stunt and information about Axe body spray. The ad was shown to 60 million homes that have either DirecTV or Dish Network. In just a few weeks, 3.5 million people watched the video and spent an average of five minutes playing with the ad.

Charmin: Coupon Distribution

This Charmin toilet paper interactive ad was delivered to TiVo users. When the ad appears, a green thumb appears in the right corner of the screen that reads, "Apply now for a valuable coupon from Charmin." When viewers click the thumb using their remote control, the program they are watching pauses and they are taken to a coupon request screen. Using the remote, they can choose that option and the coupons are sent by mail. The program resumes once the viewer completes the interactive ad. Although this ad was done via TiVo, it could be done with any cable system.

Domino's Pizza: Ordering Goods

OK, this was one of the first interactive TV promotions to really get some buzz. As described from the press release dated Nov. 17, 2008: "TiVo subscribers can seamlessly access their Domino's Pizza order from various advertising entry points on the TiVo user interface...by clicking on "Order Your Pizza"...they can log-in with a simple account number...build their pizza order right from the television set by selecting type of crust, toppings, and sauces, and get the pizza delivered by their local Domino's Pizza." This particular promotion was not e-commerce enabled, so you paid for your pizza when it arrived. But how hard would it be to add a pay feature now? Not too hard.

Clickable Video: Imagine Where This Can Go

Let's start to imagine where this can go. First, take a look at the images and videos below. They're examples of Web-based clickable video. Now, imagine that this Internet technology moves to television and the mouse-like remote control evolved to be a Wii-like remote control mouse where you can move a curser around a screen to play games and click on items in actual TV shows. Now, imagine watching your favorite shows and movies in catalog mode. Product placement will be huge and shows will generate click and commerce revenue from the highest bidders. It will be "The Truman Show" meets Google AdWords meets Amazon! There is no reason why this technology can't be applied to television now that the remote control, the Internet, and television video are fully merged and we can pause shows while people perform transactions. At the very least, we can tell people to click "OK" to see more info on a particular item. Then the DVR can pause the show and a consumer can view a pop-up Web page and make a transaction if she wants to. This could be done in millions of homes right now!

To see the below videos live, visit VideoClix, choose a category, and choose a video. When watching these videos, roll your curser over the products and click on them.

Vogue, 60 Seconds to Chic

This video includes links for consumers to obtain additional information and to make a purchase.

Progresso: Start Cooking

This is an example of a brand's informational video that could link to coupons.

Nike: Zappos Clickable Video Catalog

I couldn't find this on Zappos, but you can see it on YouTube here. I like this example because it integrates everything and shows where you could end up making a transaction at the end.

Bring It All Together, Mash It Up, Make a Wish List

So, here are a bunch of things I can imagine being done -- or are already being done -- with interactive TV. For the real-life examples, the items include links. What can you add to this list knowing what you know now?

• Unrivaled behavioral, geographic, and demographic targeting
• Unrivaled tracking
• Voting and polling
• Send an e-mail with more info
• Send a coupon
• Send a package by mail
• Send a video
• Call me
• Text me
• Find a store/location
• Schedule an appointment
• Order
• Order and bill my credit card on file
• Order and put it on my cable bill
• Watch in catalog mode
• Pause and click on a pop-up Web site or widget
• Chat or a Twitter stream
• Real-time social and wall posts
• Multi-player/multi-viewer interaction
• At home game show participation
• Custom story lines and endings

Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

When TV and the Internet Converge

Labels: Advertising, Application Development, ClickZ, Industry, Integration, TV

An Alternative Approach To Social Media Marketing - Your Social Brand

“Your Brand is what identifies your business to consumers.
It resides in the hearts and minds of your customers and prospects
as the sum total of their experiences with and perceptions of your company.”

- SEMPO
Branding With Search Marketing

If you were to ask most people about ‘branding” as it applies to their business they will most likely respond with an answer rooted in a company’s products and services. Sure, they will speak to the importance of emotionally connecting with their target audience, but at the heart of it all it still boils down to what you do or the products you produce. In short, for your brand to be effective it needs to sell and move product or services.

As we all know, companies spend untold amounts of money to develop a brand that connects with the hearts and minds of consumers, so as to ensure that they understand who, not just what, they’re all about. Therefore, if a company can form an emotional bond with consumer, it will lead to a much more long term and profitable relationship, as it’s more about the connection, than just about the product. However, while many brand marketers will speak of the effectiveness of a brand in terms of “awareness”, success is ultimately tied to and measured by units sold or profitably. What I mean here is that if people are aware but no one actually buys, are you really being successful?

Transactional Branding
I like to call this approach “Transactional Branding”, due to the fact that at the end of the day, while you are looking to emotionally connect with the hearts and minds of your consumers, it’s really about promoting products and services. Now, I will say that Transactional Branding makes complete sense due to the fact that it's rooted in common business strategy, which is to grow revenue and improve profitability. It also makes complete sense when used in the context of traditional media…broadcast, print, display and even search. The reason being is that in most cases you are using these forms of media to push a message out to consumers with the hope of connecting with them and pulling them back to purchase your product or service. While this type of brand connection does have the opportunity to facilitate a dialogue and customer relationship, it's ultimately based on the sale and/or product/service experience.

However, when it comes to Social Media, the paradigm is changing and many companies are trying to figure out what to do. The reason being is that the “Transactional Brand model” just does not seem to fit. Companies want to speak, but not be spoken to. They want to hear, but are afraid what might happen if they actually start to listen. The challenge for many companies is that when it comes to branding, they have built and developed their brand as a means to sell to, not socialize with, their target audience. However, for companies to leverage social media effectively, they need to be willing to socialize their brand, because that is what social media is all about…Socializing!

Now for companies that have the good fortune of a having a transactional brand, with a social angle, jumping into social media is not that big a stretch. The reason being is that these kinds of companies, such as Harley-Davidson, already have a very strong social relationship with their user and customer base. The reason why these types of companies are successful when it comes to social media is that they have figured out a way to “socialize” the “Transactional Branding relationship”. Therefore, when it comes to socializing with their customer base via social media, they are ready, prepared and willing to do so, because it’s been part of their core business and brand strategy all along.

However, there are many companies, such as those in highly regulated industries such as financial services that don’t have the luxury of being able to readily socialize with their audience. While many have very strong and trusted brands, they have been built from the top down and are not readily structured to be dissected via social media. The fact is, many companies in this arena have very carefully crafted brands and images and the thought of being exposed to the world of social media, scares the heck out of them. At the same time, they realize that there is an audience to be had and that they need to figure out a way to communicate with them via social media and establish a presence.

In my opinion, the mistake that these types of companies are making is that they are rooted in one size fits all model when it comes to branding and are flustered by the fact that they can not seem to fit their Transaction-based Brand model into a social environment. The lack of control scares them, and as a result instead of jumping into the social media space they have opted to just sit on the sidelines.

The Social Brand
This is where the notion of the “Social Brand” comes into play. While a brand should always be rooted in a company’s core values, how it’s developed, presented and executed within different forms of media, can enable a company to enter new and uncharted waters much more readily. Hence, while your Transactional Brand is aimed a facilitating sales, your Social Brand is aimed at facilitating socialization. Of course both are rooted in the same values and at the core express the same ideas, the content you put forth with your Social Brand, does not have to exactly mirror what you are doing with your Transactional Brand.

For starters, in developing your Social Brand you need to look at your company and what it does from a “Social Perspective”. This will enable you understand how and where people might want to socialize with your brand and what components are ripe for socialization. Therefore, while you may be in a regulated industry where you can not openly endorse or make claims about a product, you need to take a step outside of these parameters and look at other components of your business. For example, does your organization sponsor sporting events, support particular philanthropic endeavors or back particular social initiatives? While these items might not be tied directly to your products and services they are tied to your company. They are a brand component and most importantly convey its value system. These are also aspects of your business/brand that people can also readily connect and socialize with.

Now, I’m not endorsing the fact that when it comes to social media you should deny what your business is rooted in. What I am saying is that when it comes to social media, you need to think differently about your brand and how it can be leveraged to socialize with your audience.

By identifying and developing your Social Brand, you also have the opportunity to steer and guide the social conversation. Of course there’s always the potential that someone will address and bring-up product or service related issues, but by focusing on your Social Brand, you can help to guide the conversation around particular topics. Additionally, by focusing on and developing your Social Brand, you have the opportunity introduce your audience to a completely new side of your organization. Simultaneously, you will be likely grow your base, as you will bring people into the fold, who would not have previously engaged with your company, as you are now tapping a whole new set of interests.

How To Develop Your Social Brand
So, how does a company go about developing a Social Brand? The following are a few key points:

• Alignment
  For your Social Brand to be effective, it needs to be aligned with your core values and business plan. Therefore, it can’t just come out of left-field, rather people need to see how it relates and applies to your overall business positioning.
  
  
• Social Segmentation
  Take a look at your organization from a “social perspective” and identify which aspects and segment are ripe for socialization. Taking this approach will enable you to see what opportunities exist and the different ways you could socialize with your audience.
  


• Content
  After identifying how you can socialize with your audience, what are you going to say and communicate? This sounds more daunting than really is, as you are most likely doing this, but it's just not being surfaced within the context of outbound media channels. Rather the conent is being tied to the "social" initiative itself. For example, if your company sponsors a sporting event or is involved with a particular charity or social issue, focus on content that pertains and gets created in relation to these endeavors. Before you know it, you may find yourself becoming a hub for people passionate or connected to these issues, causes or events.
  
  
• Socialization
  Now comes the big leap, you need to be ready to socialize. Do you set-up a MySpace profile, YouTube Channel, Facebook Page, Twitter Account…all of the above or just some? The key here is that you don’t need to jump into everything all at once, focus on those areas that make the most sense and that best complement your Social Branding strategy.
  

Social media is definitely changing how we market and connect with consumers. Therefore as marketers, we need to also think differently about how we approach our business and look to connect with consumers. In the end traditional branding models will not always work, because they were not constructed to deal with a high degree of social interaction and input from consumers. Therefore, we need to look at branding as a form of subsets, including how we will and want to socialize with our target.

Developing a Social Brand, will help you provide a vision for your organization to approach the social media space and be comfortable with doing so. Yes, it will require you to think differently, but the development of a Social Branding strategy will also provide the vision and clarity needed to enter the social media space in a manner that compliments your overall business strategy and enables you to harness all the power that social media has to offer.

Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Integration, POV, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, twitter social media

Yahoo Picks Up Baggage for the Holidays

Labels: Advertising, Industry, POV, Social Media

Predictive Modeling and Display Ads

Often times we're approached by direct marketing clients who want to scale up their online sales, but have exhausted or saturated their successful channels. They're bidding on all the keywords that perform, they hit their e-mail list as much as they can, and they're applying all the focus in their power to SEO (define). The one channel they haven't successfully cracked open is display advertising.

Unlike search, where you're limited to the volume of consumer queries around your performing terms, display ads, particularly banners, have a lot more scalability if done right. The amount of inventory and opportunities in some cases (if your target audience is broad enough) is unlimited. The challenge is to crack the formula of what sites, placements, rates, creative (offers, images, messages, etc.), and conversion environments (landing pages, conversion paths, etc.) will ultimately form a scalable and reliable channel that grows your business.

The problem is that many companies have tried to use display advertising with sporadic bursts of banners, often in high CPM (define) and premium placements, without a foresight of predictive modeling and a sustained effort that applies an ROI (define) optimization process and methodology. They then fail and condemn the whole category of online display.

Read more...

Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, online marketing, Online Media, Strategy

If You Build It, They Will Come

Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Industry, POV, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

Turning One Ad Impression Into Ten

Not long ago, I had a client say something really interesting. He said, "We need to make sure everything we can in our campaign to turn every one impression we buy into 10 actually being delivered -- that is my challenge to you." Of course, we're always doing that anyway. Added-value no cost or super low cost impressions generally improve the metrics of what we actually optimize against -- things like cost per action (define), cost per sale, etc.

So, I decided to list some tactics we employ to beef up the impressions we were able to generate without having to actually buy them (or at least list them as having a cost, i.e., value-added placements.) Some are easy, some are hard, and some may require an awful lot of client side buy-in, implementation, or participation. But these days, clients are much more open to difficult ideas and logistics if they have a chance to improve the success of a campaign.

Value-added placements: First and foremost, when doing a buy, ask for value-added placements. (I know this is obvious, but I still see plans from clients' past agencies that don't list any.) Go beyond just getting more run-of-site (ROS) banners. There are high-volume placements like text links, text-based e-mail newsletter ads, buttons, and advertorials that complement premium placements very nicely. They not only add impression volume, but boost click volume and the top-line performance of a property, often saving it from cancellation.

Offline to online value-added placements: This is another often overlooked nugget. Make a list of the offline deals being cut in print, broadcast, and radio. Nine times out of 10, those buys come with a ton of online value-added placements that you would have never really considered paying for in your online plan. Many organizations offer bundled deals, but for the most part, there's a lot of online juice to be had here for zero cost -- and zero cost impressions and resulting clicks and actions help the top line metrics of any report quite nicely.

Tweet this: Put a call to action based on a chiclet (define) in your banner that gets people to tweet the deal you're promoting. If even a tiny fraction of the people who see it, tweet it, that could equate into thousands or even millions of added impressions and clicks. You can track the tweets by monitoring Twitter search, and track clicks and actions from this by using a bit.ly tracking URL in your tweet that jumps through your ad server tracking URL. If you have Radian6, or write a quick little script, you can also add up the additional impressions/tweets you got by totaling the followers of the people who tweeted your message.

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Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy

Social Media Weekly Buzz

• Myspace beats Facebook to Two-Way Twitter Sync – Myspace will now allow users to synchronize their Twitter and Myspace updates using the Twitter OAuth service. While Facebook currently allows individuals to post status updates on Twitter, and Twitter offers an app to push updates to Facebook, there is a lack of any simultaneous syncing among the services. Will Facebook soon follow suite and offer a comparable feature?

• Twitter to Soon Feature Location Functionality – While current mobile applications such as Ubertwitter offer location based features for mobile Twitter users, there is yet to be a geolocation feature built directly within the Twitter API. This is soon to change with the release of Twitter Local, which, if a user chooses to opt-in, will assign a longitude and latitude to each of their tweets. Ever wonder what your next-door neighbor was tweeting about?

• Twitter Worm On the Loose: Login Information at Risk – A rather convincing worm has been spreading throughout the Twitter world through direct messages from infected friends. The phishing scam attempts to steal login information through a cleverly disguised Twitter landing page. Mashable did alert Twitter to the threat, and the service is quickly taking measures to stop any future distribution.

• FCC Pushes for Net Neutrality – The FCC launched on Monday a website promoting web neutrality. In a nutshell, this important development should help to keep the Internet free and open, and is targeted at discrimination by Broadband providers in particular. This important act should help sustain users’ freedom in deciding which applications and services they wish to use.

• ROI Soon to be More Easily Measured on Facebook – A recent study featured on our Stats Blog noted that 84% of businesses do not measure the ROI of their social media programs. Nielson and Facebook have teamed up to offer a better way to gauge ROI through a new product called Brand Lift. Ad measurement will be improved by showing viewers a poll after viewing the ad on Facebook. The responses will be compared to those who haven’t seen the ad, with the data then being distributed to advertisers in a succinct report.

• Survey Says: Social Media Most Commonly Accessed from Work – A study published this week by Crowd Science explored and compared the usage patterns of Twitter users to that of users of other social media services. While the trends in general mirrored each other, there were some interesting differences. Twitter users were much more likely to access the service from work, from the toilet, and from a car. These findings could have potentially dirty and deadly consequences respectively.

• Social Media and Phone Calls Collide – It looks as if the phone call will soon be getting a facelift thanks in part to social media and an iPhone app called CallSpark. The app will pull social media information from Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Twitter and display this info while you call a friend. In addition, CallSpark can also act as a search engine for phone numbers, utilizing whitepages, yellow pages, Facebook, and Salesforce. GPS will help to rank the results to make sure you are receiving the most accurate information.

Labels: Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, online marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

Socially Enabled Ads: An Update

Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Social Media Marketing

A New Pricing System for Online

Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Twitter is A-Buzz with Starbuck’s New Campaign

Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

YouTube Masthead Goes UG

Labels: Advertising, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Video, YouTube

Twitter Dips into Advertising/Sponsorships?

Labels: Advertising, Industry, POV, Social Media, Twitter

New Facebook Redesign Creates a Brilliant Marketing Platform for Brands

Labels: Advertising, Blog Outreach, Brand Awareness, Facebook, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

Common Tracking Issues and How to Address Them

Questions and issues over tracking and reporting online ads have persisted among agencies, media vendors, ad servers, Webmasters, and clients since I started my career. Terms and procedures around tracking have not been standardized, resulting in lots of confusion.

Last time, I listed five common tracking and reporting issues and offered sensible approaches to deal with the first two. In this column, let's examine ways to address the latter three tracking issues.

The five most common tracking and reporting issues are:

• Why online reports aren't 100 percent accurate.
  
  
• Why view-through conversions are not conversions.
  
  
• How double counting occurs in different systems.
  
  
• Why tracking from different systems don't always match.
  
  
• How to compare first-click conversions versus last-click conversions.

Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Online Media

View-Through Conversions Are Not Conversions

Just in the last couple of months, we have dealt with some tracking questions and issues. Throughout my career, these types of issues have persisted among agencies, media vendors, ad servers, Webmasters, and clients. One thing's clear: the terms and procedures around tracking have not been standardized. As a result, there's lots of confusion in the marketplace around tracking and analytics.

This two-part column will examine five common tracking and reporting issues and offer sensible approaches and explanations to deal with them. The tracking issues are:

• Why online reports aren't 100 percent accurate.
  
  
• Why view-through conversions are not conversions.
  
  
• How double counting occurs in different systems.
  
  
• Why tracking from different systems don't always have to match.
  
  
• How to compare first-click conversions versus last-click conversions.

In this column, I will dig deep into the first two items and follow up next time with the other three.

Read more...

Labels: Advertising, ClickZ

Listening to your Consumers

Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Google Suggest Extension for Firefox displaying PPC Ads?

I would assume that these "clicks" to the partial ads within the Suggest menu are not actually being counted since the user never hits the destination page, but this has yet to be confirmed. It looks like there are still some bugs to be worked out here obviously, but this is something advertisers should be aware of.

Impressions on text ads might not be as valuable as impressions for other ad units, but they can still have a major impact, especially for users early in the decision making process that are compiling a short list of potential solutions or products. So, if 70 characters of your impression are missing, the value is undoubtedly decreased, as benefit statements and offers that most often influence click behavior are missing. Furthermore, as an advertiser I would be concerned about the partial impressions and how these partial impressions could bring down the click through rate, which in turn decreases the Quality Score and brings down the performance of the AdGroup and Campaign as a whole.

Hopefully Google will allow for an option to block these impressions so that advertisers have the ability to save their limited funds for full ad impressions that don't dilute Quality Score overall campaign metrics.

Labels: Advertising, Google, Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Paying Less for More Buzz

Labels: Advertising, Social Media, Strategy, Video