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Facebook Announces New Advertising MetricsAll marketers who advertise on Facebook breathed a sigh of relief today when the social networking giant announced it has upgraded its analytics and reporting of ads on the site. To ensure you better understand how your ads are performing, Facebook announced three new Insights reports: Responder Demographics, Responder Profiles, and Advertising Performance. All three reports can be exported from Facebook into an Excel document or as Comma Separated Values. The Responder Demographics report is a very valuable tool for marketers since it allows you to analyze exactly who is interacting with your ads. If a person clicks on your ad, you will be able to track their age, gender and geographic location. This knowledge could allow you to further target your ad to specific demographic groups that tend to be more interested in your product or service. The Responder Profiles report extends the demographic analysis further by allowing marketers to gather common interests, favorite TV shows, movies, books and music of the users who clicked on their ad. This is a powerful marketing tool that will allow companies to strategically align traditional marketing efforts with consumers’ psychographic wants and needs. In the past, this information could only be obtained through surveys and/or focus groups. Now, with a single click, you will be inside the minds of your most loyal customers, at a fraction of the cost. The Advertising Performance report is similar to the report that already exists in Facebook’s platform with a few additional upgrades. Previously, marketers were able to export and view common metrics such as impressions, clicks and click-through-rates for their ads, but now you will also be able to view performance data by unique user and performance data specific to your ads that contain social actions. Hopefully news tools like this added by networking sites will ease the hesitation of companies to integrate Web 2.0 into their existing marketing campaign. Even though many companies are seeing the results gained by powerful social media campaigns, 80% of marketing executives are still behind the learning curve. Labels: Advertising, Analytics, Facebook, Social Media Marketing Why Pay for Online Audience Metrics When You Can Get Them For Free?Everyone loves getting something for nothing, particularly when that something has a pretty decent price tag associated with it. What am I talking about here? It’s online audience metrics, which until now were primarily available to organizations willing to subscribe to comScore or Neilsen Online. So who’s out there shaking things up? It’s our old chum Google! Yes, in the very near future, Google is expected to announce its own online audience measurement tool aimed at helping advertisers identify the best places to reach their target audience and purchase online ads by telling them which sites they visit. Not only will the tool be free, but it will also have a different means of collecting user data than either comScore or Neilsen Online, which many believe will make it better and more accurate. Specifically, Google’s tool will be based mostly on data from Web servers, which will allow for a more in-depth and broad-based view of internet use. Comparatively, both comScore and Neilsen Online gather usage data by tracking panels of people and what they do online or by conducting surveys. This methodology has the ability to make results inconsistent and incomplete as you are in reality measuring a small segment of the online population and then aggregating those results to make more broad-based observations about the marketplace as a whole. In comparison, Google’s tool, which will still rely on some data gleaned from panels, will measure a much broader segment of the population as it will be deployed across their entire very, very expansive ad network. While Google’s system does not appear infallible (it's cookie-based and users can delete cookies), the sheer size of Google’s user base and network has the potential to make this a very revolutionary system and shake-up the way online activity is measured. And because it’s being offered for free, it will make this kind of intelligence more of a commodity and level the playing field in terms of online media planning and buying. What do I mean by “leveling the playing field”? Simply stated, services like comScore and Neilsen Online cost money and are available only to those who can afford them. However, by Google making audience data free of charge, it will enable everyone to leverage it and make more intelligent decisions about how they plan and buy online media. Therefore, while such intelligence has primarily been available to big agencies or companies and touted as a competitive advantage that smaller rivals just don’t have access to, this will no longer be the case. Hence, what is exciting about Google’s forthcoming tool is that it will enable everyone to make more accurate and confident decisions about the buys being executed and the targets being reached, which should in turn lead to an overall increase in the ROI associated with online advertising. And in an era of heightened accountability, this will likely only make advertisers more comfortable with committing more dollars online. But the true value that I see in a tool such as Google’s coming to market, is not just that it’s going to level the playing field, lead to increased budgets and provide free access to data that was previously only available to those with the means to pay for it, but that it’s going to force us as marketers to become better at what we do. In order to be competitive, we’re now going to be forced to further evolve our thinking. So in the online media planning and buying space where will the competitive advantage now come from? Simply stated, it will no longer be enough to say you have access to and spout audience statistics, as soon everyone will be able to do this. Rather you will need to demonstrate that you understand and know how to use and apply this data. The truth is, while everyone likes statistics, people love it when you can demonstrate that you know what they mean and apply this knowledge to solve real business issues. With Google’s forthcoming tool, we’ll all soon be able to know who is going where and doing what. But now, to truly differentiate your plans and buys, you’ll need to demonstrate that you not only have the data, but understand what it means and the business benefits derived from it, and this is what will separate the leaders from the pack. Labels: Analytics, Google, Industry, Online Media Facebook Launches Keyword Measurement ToolGood afternoon everybody, Facebook.com, one of the first and most popular social media sites, has launched a keyword measurement tool called Lexicon. When users enter a term or phrase into the search bar, Facebook then returns a graph that counts the number of instances a word occurred on profiles, groups and walls in its network. The keyword data goes back 6 months and can be tracked to the day. By far the best feature of Lexicon is its keyword comparison functionality. Users can compare up to 5 keywords at once. In a comparison between iPod and Zune, iPod is clearly garnering more buzz, so no surprises there. Overall this will be a great tool to help companies better tailor their social media efforts to what people are talking about. The Facebook Lexicon can be found at http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/ Parts of this posting were derived from http://www.marketingvox.com/facebook-launches-lexicon-tool-for-measuring-buzz-038138/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink - Bill Holmes Labels: Analytics, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Mapping the Complete Path to SuccessOK, I know I'm supposed to be an online media guy and this is supposed to be an online media column. But, I just have to speak up here. Far too often, advertisers who base the success of their online campaigns on hard conversion and action metrics forget that media will only do one thing: put your ads in front of the right people. It won't make people, desire, click, or convert. It's the job of the creative to encourage desired behavior -- and it is some form of desired behavior (clicks, actions, or conversions) that success is typically based on. The funny thing is when our firm just does the media buy for our clients, and doesn't do the creative (banners and landing pages), we can usually tell whether something is going to work before the first impression has even been served. We can always tell when creative was done without the final metric for success in mind and wasn't mapped all the way though to the desired action or behavior. Read more... Labels: Analytics, ClickZ, Online Media The Year of the Dashboard: Analytic Stats and CMO SurveyTracking, dash boarding and analytics are not just for online marketers anymore and from what I hear 08 will be the year of the “Dashboard.” We here at Overdrive are all about Dashboards and they are central to everything we do! Below are some facts I just sent to our client Jim Stern who puts on the eMetrics Summit. (The premier tracking and analytic event!) http://emetrics.org/ Here are some stats and facts I read regarding the propagation of tracking, reporting and analytics propagating through organizations: DM News 1/7/2008, Page 8 in the Data Bank: Adoption of technology in teleservices - 15% of organizations currently use dashboard-type analytics software - 64% of organizations plan to use dashboard-type analytics software Source: Aberdeen Group Excerpts from AdWeek CMO Survey: -Vowing to plow more into e-mail programs, CRM, marketing-performance measurement "dashboards" and search-engine marketing, half of the respondents plan to increase their overall spending, while 37 percent of marketers expect spending to remain even, and 13 percent expect a decrease. -"On the one hand, the CMO focus on accountability and measurability and fact-based decision making is improving their position in the executive suite," Murray said. "On the other hand, it is too early to say that we've seen a turnaround in CMO vulnerability or status or longevity." - On CMOs' wish lists for 2008? More than half (53 percent) want better quantification and measurement of their programs, followed by a desire for better customer insight and more efficient and effective marketing." - Quantification is still the No. 1 goal," said Murray. "But overall there is greater focus on getting close to the customer. - It's not that it wasn't on the radar screen a year ago, but now CMOs are making marketing decisions based on customer insight with marketing analytics." The CMO Council study was co-sponsored by Deloitte, Marketo and TechTarget. Tracking: A Double Edged SwordThe good thing about online is you can measure everything. The bad thing about online is you can measure everything. When your campaign's performing, you can tell right away and share the great news with your client. When your campaign isn't performing, however, it can be a really hard, especially when you're the one who has to report it. Of course, if you're lucky enough to work on a campaign that has no tracking of meaningful actions and you're simply reporting on impressions and clicks, you don't have to worry about this. Read more at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626245 Labels: Analytics, ClickZ, Online Media Capitalize on the ViewThe concept of view-based clicks and conversions has been around a long time. We online media planners and buyers love the view-based conversion -- it makes us look like heroes. Clients eat it up because they love the boost it gives campaign metrics, and publishers love it because they can use it to create better retention rates for advertisers. Overall, it lends incredible weight to the whole online advertising space and has been a significant force in furthering of our common cause: growing the percentage of the ad budget that online gets. Used correctly, view-based metrics are a win for agencies, clients, and publishers. Read more at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625449 Labels: Analytics, ClickZ, Industry, Online Media Why Online Must Lead Offline CampaignsThe push for integrated on- and offline communications is as strong as ever. Yet integration still usually means all campaign components are managed by one firm and the integration occurs on the creative level. The next level of integration will be with data, where integration can truly have the most effect. In the spirit of the hottest buzzword craze, I call this "Integration 2.0." Read more at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625278 Labels: Analytics, ClickZ, Integration, Online Media |
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