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Leaving Your Fate with FacebookThis Sunday, football fans will be glued to their TVs for the Superbowl, while we in the advertising industry will be glued to our TVs for the... Superbowl. Let's face it, some people watch the Superbowl just for the ads, and through the years I've seen some great TV spots debut on the big game day. This year, 30-second ad spots reportedly cost $2.5 million and up - that's A LOT of money so advertisers often spend months (even years) in advanced preparing for those Superbowl ads. However, Budweiser - a huge Superbowl advertiser - decided to take a leap of faith on deciding which ad to play and leave its fate with Facebook. Yes, Facebook, particularly Budweiser Fans on Facebook. Budweiser proudly declares as its status: Budweiser wants our fans to help us decide which commercial makes it to the Big Game. Click on the "Game Day Pick" tab for an exclusive preview of three new spots and vote for your favorite! This "promo" first caught my eye when I saw a Facebook homepage engagement ad:  It was a basic "Become a Fan" ad unit and it actually made me wonder why Budweiser is targeting me - is it because of my age group/gender/location? Or is it because I have "advertising" in my profile? I'm not a big fan of beer but I am a big fan of (most) TV commercials so I still clicked the ad and became a fan. I landed on the custom tab for "Game Day Pick:  And proceeded to watch all three clips. My personal opinion: they were all... blah. I was not impressed by any but did end up voting for the "Payment" one (the only one that's slightly funny and more interesting than the others, I think).But if I didn't like with the Budweiser ads, why am I using up precious blog space and brain energy to write about Budweiser on Facebook? Because while I wasn't impressed with the ads, I was impressed with their strategy. This is one of the most well-known brands in the world, undoubtedly with millions of dollars invested in marketing and advertising, and it is wholly embracing the power of social media. I'm impressed that they are leveraging the power of Facebook to hype up their Superbowl ads, and are letting their fans become part of this big decision (what ad to run), encouraging user engagement and brand affinity. And I'm impressed that they got me - a non-beer drinker, non-Budweiser aficionado - to actually become a fan, and watch their ads, and vote! And even more impressive? Budweiser is smart enough to encourage viral propagation not just by giving the user the option to post it on their feed:  But also asking them to comment on the "what do you think" area:  This is just basic social media strategy, but it is genius in its simplicity. The key here is user engagement and Budweiser is doing a really good job at it.I'm definitely watching out for the Budweiser ad this Sunday to see if the one I voted for actually "won", and hey, I might even drink a bottle of Budweiser (just maybe)... Whether you're tuning in for the football or the ads, I hope you have a great time! Labels: Advertising, Facebook, Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media Social Media comes to the Age of Aquarius Hair - "The American Tribal Love Rock Musical" - is going to try a new way of reaching out to its audience. Starting tomorrow, the show's finale number where the cast and audience mix and mingle and dance to "The Age of Aquarius" will be recorded in high definition video and posted to the show's web page. The camera, controlled from the show's light booth, will follow a pre-programmed path to pan across the stage and zoom in on cast and audience members. Anyone visiting the site can then download the video, post it to their Facebook page, or send out a tweet to all their friends. Make no mistake - this is a first for the relatively stodgy Broadway theatre scene. Every new show these days has a web page, and some have videos of scenes or musical numbers from the show but Hair is about the only show where cast and audience actually interact during the show. What's in it for Hair? The best possible publicity for a show heading into its second year on the great white way - favorable word of mouth. Being able to spread the word about the show through social networks will probably give the box office a significant boost and keep the show running (and profitable) for many months. Here's link to a story in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/theater/02hair.html?hpw Labels: Advertising, Facebook, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, web 2.0 Digital Marketing; the Music Industry’s New HustleIn a time when cassettes and CDs are obsolete, the traditional methods of promotion and marketing in the music industry are close behind. The panelists at the “Music Artists go Entrepreneurial” Summit at Stanford; Chamillionaire (@chamillionaire), Hammer (@MCHammer), and Mistah Fab (all rappers), discuss how the internet has changed the music industry and how it has impacted their music careers. Chamillionaire said it best: “Digital is the [music industry’s] new hustle.” The days of street promotion and literally driving from city to city, store to store selling records are gone. The internet and social media have taken control, now serving as a convenient venue for promotion, marketing, and distribution; making it easier and quicker for artists to push out content and for fans to easily obtain it. Today, music fans (including myself) will have already heard an entire album and have tracks in rotation on their iPods before the album reaches stores. Thanks to YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, and Blogs, raising awareness for artists has become less manual and more digital. As Hammer explains, social media has replaced the middle man or “hype man” - the guy artists pay to promote them and their music; which may or may not actually translate into sales. Being able to apply and analyze their online marketing programs’ analytics allows artists to not only target exactly who their fans are behaviorally, demographically, and geographically; but also measure if it translates into record or concert ticket sales.  Technology and Social Media has rewritten the business model for the music industry. If artists aren’t incorporating Social Media into their current business models, they need to do so, immediately. As a music enthusiast and music blogger, I rely on other music blogs and artists’ Twitter accounts for valuable content; what’s new, what’s hot, and more importantly (stalking-ly) what artists are up to in their everyday lives. Whether they are tweeting/pushing content themselves or hiring a ghost tweeter, having this medium allows artists to control the content and information fans are getting, receive feedback on their work, and most importantly connect and build strong relationships with their fans, as we are ultimately consuming and purchasing their music. To view the entire discussion: http://alwayson.goingon.com/page/display/28097?param=session/343 Labels: Online Media, Social Media, twitter social media Great Free Media Planning ToolsMedia planners have many tools at their disposal to research and select sites that will help clients reach their target audiences. Very often we're targeting large audiences by demographic or region, and we can use standard syndicated data tools such as @Plan, comScore, or the SRDS, a provider of media rates and data, to help us identify sites that index high with our target audiences. This is fine for clients who want to reach very large groups of people such as females 18 to 24 in the northeastern United States. But what about when you're going after a niche audience such as users of a particular technology or collectors of classic cars? In these cases, those data sources are not as helpful because many niche sites do not show up on their radar screens. Instead, you have to start prospecting online to find sites that cater to those audiences. However, a slew of available tools and tactics can help you find and research those sites. So here is a list of free resources that planners can use when trying to find hard-to-find sites: Compete.com: A Web analytics tool that gathers information about consumers' online behavior from over 2 million U.S. Internet users. Its site profile section provides site traffic history for most every site on the Internet. Register with Compete, and you can compare traffic for up to five sites at one time. Alexa: This technology crawls publicly available sites to collect traffic rankings, snapshots of sites, and links that point to sites and related sites. Type in a Web site URL where you know your target audience resides, click on "related links," and you will find a list of similar sites. Also, you can search for sites by country, language, or category. Quantcast: This site uses data from audience insights to rank and sort sites. Quantcast has a free tool that allows planners to search for sites based on determined criteria, such as content category, audience demographics, geographic locations, and ad acceptance. Or just simply type in the site URL that you want to include in the media plan, and the results produce a list of sites the audience would also visit. Google Ad Planner: With this tool, media planners can identify audiences by a series of criteria, such as demographics, geography, language, specific keywords, and category. You can even search by domain suffix, a feature that is helpful when trying to find international sites. If your client is running a display campaign through the Google Content Network, you can select to see sites that only accept advertising in the network. Search: Natural search is one of the quickest and easiest ways to find sites. Search for Web sites using your target audience plus keywords that would identify the target audience's interest. Sites that appear on the first or second pages of Google search engine results page are more likely to have relevant content. For more obscure target audiences, you may have to dig a little deeper for sites that may not be optimized for SEO (define). Once you find a relevant site, click on "similar" to find other relevant sites. Online newspaper resources: Sites such as OnlineNewspapers.com and Newspapers.com are another way to find online news sites by state and country. OnlineNewspapers.com indicates the newspaper language and city, and Newspapers.com gives a brief description of the newspaper. Open Directory Project (ODP): This is a user-generated and classified directory of sites in multiple languages. ODP uses hundreds of portals and search engines to list and categorize Web sites. Type in "owners of classic cars," and you will find a list of sites from all over the world and description of each site that relates to classic cars. Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a user-generated reference site with more than 75,000 active contributors who have posted information in over 260 languages. If your client is looking to advertise on online newspaper sites in Ghana, type in "Ghana newspapers," and you will get a list of Ghana-based newspapers and links to their Wikipedia listings. Blog search: Narrow down the blogosphere by using search tools on sites such as Technorati.com or Google Blog Search. Technorati.com was founded as a blog search engine and has since grown into a social media network. Type in your target audience in the search field, and results reveal a list of relevant blogs, a graph depicting blog post mentions by day, and videos about the target audience. Google Blog Search will also list relevant blogs, but you can also sign up for blog alerts to keep up-to-date on newly posted blog content. As with all my columns, I am sure this is not a complete list, so if I left anything out, please let me know. Also, I must give a special thanks to Barbara for helping me to research and compile this list. Labels: Blog Outreach, ClickZ, Online Media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Strategy Four Dimensions of Online MediaUnlike print, television, outdoor, and any other form of media, online is hopeless, complicated, and ever growing in its complexity. Every day it brings a new list of ad units, serving options, compensation models, targeting options, and, of course, KPIs (define). To try and enter the industry now, without the benefit of gradually building up a knowledge base to get you up to speed, is difficult for many people. For clients who aren't seasoned online marketers but find their advertising increasingly channeled into the digital space, the task can be daunting. To help agencies help their clients make sense of all the dimensions and options that can go into an online media plan, I have outlined the four dimensions of online media in this column. They include targeting, compensation, ad units, and metrics. Even with all the options and opportunities we have to maximize value and customer impact, I still see agencies planning buys based on pre-determined ad units or creative concepts. The best plans take elements from all over the spectrum to create all-encompassing campaigns that deliver branding (impressions, reach, and frequency) as well as good old fashioned measurable return on investment (conversion, leads, sales, etc.). Also, any seasoned media planner should be able to give examples of each one of the items listed under the four dimensions. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, online marketing, Online Media, Strategy Google to Offer Captioned YouTube VideosTranslation for online video is about to get a whole lot easier. Google just announced that they are going to start offering an automatic caption service for YouTube videos: Offering a service like this, provided it works as described, is nothing short of amazing. Subtitling videos or offering an alternative translated soundtrack is a time-consuming and often costly process that prevents content creators from optimizing the reach of their videos. Being able to post a video to a corporate YouTube channel and then having a captioned translation available in 51 different languages is going to make it a lot easier to get that content embedded in multiple blogs and partner sites. Labels: Blog Outreach, Google, Online Media, online video, Video, web 2.0, YouTube Facebook Launches 'Friends of Connection' TargetingLast week, Facebook added another targeting opportunity for its advertisers: Friends of Connection. According the Facebook Ads: “Friends of connection” targeting is now available for Facebook Ads. Expand your audience reach by delivering your ads to the friends of people already connected with your Page, Application, Group or Event. In addition to harnessing the social graph by targeting your connections’ friends, every “Friends of connection” targeted ad promoting a Page or Event includes social content about a friend’s interaction with your business, amplifying the relevancy of your ad. This means that advertisers can reach potential customers or highly relevant users (since birds of the same feather flock together, and it is likely that you and your friends have similar interests) and gain free impressions/brand presence through viral propagation. For the advertiser: this option is only available though if you are the admin of a Facebook Page. So for instance, I am an admin of the Overdrive Facebook Page. When I create a Facebook ad (ASU = ad space unit) using the self-serve platform/ad interface, I can target users whose friends are already connected to Overdrive Interactive:  For the Facebook user: Facebook will then show those ads to the appropriate users and include a blurb about their friends. So for instance, Harry is a Fan of Overdrive and he is friends with with Barb. Facebook will show an Overdrive ad to Barb with the sentence "Harry Gold is a fan of this Page." Now the Facebook ad is more relevant to Barb; it has more "pull" because her friend Harry's connection/interaction with Overdrive is directly showcased. And remember that there are other brilliant ways that Facebook lets advertisers target. Here's a quick list:
Labels: Facebook, Industry, Online Media, POV Predictive Modeling and Display AdsOften 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 What We Can Learn from NBA Players and TV Stars... on Twitter. If you're on Twitter (and I hope you are), you might have noticed the influx of celebrities there - movie stars, professional athletes, TV hosts, chefs, etc. Usually, they're just on Twitter to tweet about random ideas (or their rumored dates; I'm looking at you, John Mayer), but every now and then you'll find a gem who really utilizes social media to improve their "brand" or strengthen their social image, and/or actually do something useful. They're basically pulling off these viral social media campaigns that agencies and marketers can learn a thing or two from. I put together a few tips for social media campaigns that were inspired by NBA stars and TV personalities - both groups are experts at gaining, performing for, and maintaining their respective audience loyalties. What We Can Learn from NBA Players and TV Stars on Twitter: 1) From Shaquille O'Neill: Be There First. And if you're not there first, be there BIG TIME Can anyone even discuss celebrities on Twitter without mentioning Shaquille O'Neil? Shaq jumped on the Twitter bandwagon when it was just a small toy sled. And he tweets a lot - he describes himself as "very quotatious, I perform random acts of Shaqness." Sometimes (okay, most of the time) what he says doesn't make a lot of sense but the point is he is there. And his fans know he is there. His opponents know he is there. He is there big time. As brand marketers and advertisers, we have to make sure that we're present in the right places. Even better, we have to hustle to be there before anyone else gets there. This is where beta campaigns, innovative ideas, and risk-taking come in. And once we're there, we have to make sure our voice is heard loud and clear. 2) From Dwight Howard: Synchronize Your Campaigns Dwight Howard is flying his one millionth Twitter follower to an all expense paid trip for two to the Orlando Magic home opening game. But aside from his Twitter "campaign", he also talks about that, and is interacting with his fans, on Facebook, SuperFan, and his blog. I never thought I'd quote Dwight Howard in an online marketing blog (or ever), but he said these "are just great avenues for me to connect with people." And he's right. And another thing he's doing right is that he is synchronizing everything, mirroring the content of one channel to another. When we launch social media, branding, promotional, or even lead generation campaigns, we have to remember that once we already have the content - all we need to do is create a cascading turn of events where we propagate all our media avenues or social channels with the same content. Remember: everything is interconnected. We can easily weave our content and synchronize our online and social placements so that our campaign message will be present throughout.  Paul Pierce would give away random clues on where he will be and post secret "passwords" on Twitter so his followers can find him and receive free Celtics tickets. And Ray Allen left random pairs of sneakers around Boston, tweeted clues about them, and whoever finds his shoes get to keep them! Everyone likes contests and give-aways, especially if the contest is actually fun and the give-away is actually something of value. What companies can learn from these two Celtics players is that Twitter can be an avenue to host interesting contests that encourage user action and engagement - contests that encourage socializing (say it with me: social media is about socializing). 4) From Rachel Zoe: Listen to Your Customers and Reply to their Questions Almost all of Rachel Zoe's tweets (for those of you not familiar, she is a stylist to the stars and has her own show on Bravo TV) are either re-tweets and @ replies where she answers various questions from her followers. She may not answer the minute the question is posted, but she still answers them. Most marketers and advertisers forget that the customer feedback is one of the greatest assets to any campaign. Don't just push-push-push your message. Take time to listen to your audience, take note of their complaints and compliments, and answer their questions. Sometimes the most basic things make the biggest impact.  5) From Martha Stewart: Tweet Useful Info Martha Stewart tweets quick and easy recipes and all sorts of food, home, and lifestyle tips. She also reminds her followers about important events, dates, and shows. She uses Twitter to communicate useful little nuggets to her socialsphere. She even thinks that Twitter is better than Facebook, but that's another topic all together (also, that's her opinion, not mine). The point is, she tweets useful info. Again, this is something very basic that we should not take for granted. If your brand offers something unique, tweet about it! If you have a good promo, tweet about it! If you want to share a relevant article, tweet about it! Make your tweets helpful, interesting, worth reading - and re-tweeting. Those are just 5 tips for successful Twitter and social media campaigns. Remember that gaining followers, fans, and friends in one thing, but growing that relationship is another. If you want to learn more about social media campaigns, please contact us! Labels: Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media, Twitter Turning One Ad Impression Into TenNot 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. Read more... Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy Clients: Tell Us What Your Budget Is!Why are some companies scared to disclose their budget to potential media buyers? What bad things could we do with that information? We will know eventually, right? Let me state here and now: It's okay to let media buyers know what your budget is! In fact, there are not many valuable things we can do without knowing that information. If it's a test, decide what you can risk on a test. Don't ask us what you should test if you cannot tell us what you can afford. Consider this: What if you went to an architect with no specific idea of what you wanted and said, "Design me a house." What would the architect say? Most likely the architect would ask, "How much do you want to spend on your house?" You wouldn't say, "Well, do some research, draw me up some plans, give me some ideas first, and then tell me what I should spend." A serious builder knows what his budget is, has an idea of what he wants, and shares that with architects he deems worthy of interviewing and requesting detailed information from. What inspired me to write about this issue? I recently participated in a pitch conference call with a prospect who wanted us to do media planning and buying but refused to reveal their budget. Of course we gave a presentation describing our full capabilities. The prospect said they were looking for a good partner and we seemed like a good fit but still didn't want to reveal their budget at this point in the process. Now that is fine, except when they wanted more details on what we would do and sought advice on what they should spend. Labels: ClickZ, Industry, Online Media, Strategy Planning The Buy: Seven Value-Add Ad Placements to ConsiderWhen developing an online media plan, don't overlook value-added ad placements, such as text-based newsletter ads and advertorials. These placements aren't always popular ideas, but they represent an opportunity to add performance octane to a proposal full of expensive premium ad placements. For example, I have run campaigns that included the purchase of a large amount of premium placements with high CPMs (define). If we used average click and conversion rates in the mathematical models, many of the sites wouldn't have been included in the media plan or would have been canceled after the first optimization round. However, when the average CPC (define) and CPA (define) from the huge amount of value-added text links, buttons, and run-of-site (ROS) impressions were factored into the results of the overall buy, those sites came into line with the campaign's optimization requirements. In this case, value-added placements saved the day for the agency, publisher, and client. The agency fulfilled its mission to drive a certain level of performance. The publisher sold its pricey CPM inventory and avoided losing the advertiser by tapping unsold remnant inventory. And the client got the brand impact and visibility of the premium placements with the ROI (define) performance of low-cost placements. So when negotiating a media buy, check out these seven value-added placements I always advocate: Read more... Labels: ClickZ, online marketing, Online Media, Paid Search Social Media Weekly BuzzWelcome to the second edition of Social Media Weekly Buzz. This week, both Google and Facebook managed to steal the majority of the headlines. Gmail’s outage on Tuesday sparked widespread panic and led most people, ironically, to use Google search to investigate the incident. In addition, the oh-so familiar, yet quite stark, Google search landing page has finally been patented, five years after being submitted to the USPTO. Facebook tested out a new ad scheme with direct offer engagement ads, and is being accused of leading a Welsh citizen to murder their partner. Also, have you checked out Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on YouTube yet? All this and more follows below:  • Gmail Outage – At 12:30pm PST, a small fraction of Gmail’s servers were taken offline for routine maintenance. Unfortunately, Google underestimated the load recent changes placed on the request routers… The result? Gmail went down for 100 minutes, and online chaos quickly ensued. • Google’s Search Landing Page Now Patented – After 5 years of fierce debate with federal bureaucrats, Google has finally won the right to patent their unmistakable home page. Google now owns the concept of having a large search box in the middle of the page, on top of two big buttons, with several links scattered here and there. Does this spell trouble for sites which possess similar layouts, such as Yahoo search?  • Facebook Tests Direct Response Ads – Craving a Chick-fil-A Chicken Biscuit? How about if it’s free? Soon you might be seeing more ad offers like this on Facebook if their testing of direct offer engagement ads goes well. Facebook has recently been exploring different advertising options as it gradually shifts away from its traditional sales funnel. • Facebook Regional Networks No More – Regional networks on Facebook are now officially gone. This move comes as Facebook attempts to expand beyond its college roots to a worldwide communication platform, not unlike Twitter. But is that really what users want? • Facebook Jealousy Blamed on Murder – A murder trial in South Wales has taken an interesting twist, with a UK prosecutor arguing that Facebook-related jealousy pre-empted the tragic event. Apparently the whole thing got started when Mrs. Jones started to “expand her social horizons” online. The last straw? When she changed her Facebook status to “single”. • Kremlin Launches YouTube Channel – Russian President Dmitri Medvedev launched his very own YouTube channel, located at www.youtube.com/kremlin. The main purpose of the channel will be to reach out to and connect with the youth of Russia. So far he has covered topics from good neighborhood ties between schoolchildren, to the outcome of the Second World War. • eBay Sells Skype – On Tuesday, eBay officially announced that it would be selling th  e VoIP and chat service Skype to a group of private investors for $2.75 billion. eBay will still retain a 35 percent equity stake in the service however, which they hope will increase in value under the new management. The decision to sell was provoked by a lack of synergy between Skype and eBay’s e-commerce and payments services.The Gmail downtime serves as a reminder of how much of our lives are becoming dependent on the Internet. As more and more services become cloud-based in nature, it is imperative that network interruption be minimized at all costs. Fortunately the Gmail downtime occurred during the night, which helped save what could have been a large-scale interruption in productivity for the US. Twitter experienced a similar issue not too long ago, though that issue was more malicious in nature, and not just a big mistake. Facebook continues to modify its services in order to improve both the experience of both consumers and advertisers. The direct offer engagement ads are a great source of lead generation for businesses, however it will be interesting to see how many people are willing to enter their address and other personal info for discounts and promotions. This is definitely a jump in the right direction for Facebook as it tries to shift away from its traditional sales funnel. The major step in this development is that companies will now receive instant results from the advertisements they publish on the service. The Facebook alteration that might not be met with open arms is the decision to completely remove regional network categories. As Facebook attempts to take a more worldly approach to its communications platform, it has the potential of upsetting long time users of its service. For them, Facebook served as a tool to better connect with friends, not strangers. In addition, many users prefer Facebook over Twitter for the very fact that it isn’t… Twitter. Any step closer to the other service could be taken very negatively among its fan base. The sale of Skype was definitely a smart move for eBay, whose e-commerce and online payments businesses really have nothing in common with the VoIP service. The real question is what prompted eBay to make the acquisition in the first place? Earlier in April StumbleUpon was also sold off to a group of investors after a failed attempt to synergize operations. Fortunately now the company can turn to focusing on its core eBay and PayPal businesses. Labels: Facebook, Google, Industry, Landing Pages, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Video, web 2.0, Yahoo, YouTube Great Free Media Planning ToolsMedia planners have many tools at their disposal to research and select sites that will help clients reach their target audiences. Very often we're targeting large audiences by demographic or region, and we can use standard syndicated data tools such as @Plan, comScore, or the SRDS, a provider of media rates and data, to help us identify sites that index high with our target audiences. This is fine for clients who want to reach very large groups of people such as females 18 to 24 in the northeastern United States. But what about when you're going after a niche audience such as users of a particular technology or collectors of classic cars? In these cases, those data sources are not as helpful because many niche sites do not show up on their radar screens. Instead, you have to start prospecting online to find sites that cater to those audiences. However, a slew of available tools and tactics can help you find and research those sites. So here is a list of free resources that planners can use when trying to find hard-to-find sites: Read more... Labels: ClickZ, online marketing, Online Media Social Media Weekly BuzzWelcome to the first of many social media recaps that will be featured right here on our eMarketing blog. We will be gathering a weekly digest of the top stories and latest happenings within the social media sphere, and from these headlines offer our suggestions and conclusions on what the overall impact might be for marketers and casual users alike. This week, not unlike any other, threw us some interesting developments in the social media world. Most of the buzz was focused on new Twitter and Facebook developments, both good and bad. YouTube also managed to make news with a new revenue sharing platform, in addition to lending a helping hand to Lindsay Lohan. Without further delay, here are the top social media headlines for the past week: • Facebook Privacy Changes – Facebook has been falling into trouble lately with Canadian authorities due to being in violation of the country’s privacy laws. In particular, the privacy issues which surround the retention of customer data after a user cancels his or her account. This could cause wider implications for other social networks concerning the way user data is currently being handled. • Should Twitter Sell? – With strong competition coming from Facebook’s end, especially after the recent FriendFeed acquisition, many individuals have suggested that it might be time for the popular micro-blogging service to sell out to a larger and stronger partner. However, while it might be profitable prospect, there is still a debate over how much growth the service still has left in it, and therefore this decision should not be taken lightly. • Woofer – 140 characters holding you back from what you really want to say? Why not use 1400? Enter Woofer, a carbon-copy of Twitter that alters the service from a micro to a macro-blogging atmosphere. Just sign in with your Twitter name and Woof away! • Bit.ly and Yfrog Partnership – One of the most popular URL shorteners available on the web partners with Yfrog, a current underdog in the Twitter picture-sharing landscape. The result? Much trouble for TwitPic, currently the leader in this segment. • YouTube lends a helping hand to Ms. Lohan – The LAPD released video footage of an apparent break-in of Lindsay Lohan’s home with the hope of catching the three suspects. Even police departments these days are realizing the true potential of social media. • YouTube Videos a Source of Revenue? – YouTube announced that it may soon be offering money to individuals whose videos have a specific number of views and the potential to go viral. The source of the income? Advertisements that the service will sell against the video. • Social Media Use in Companies Continues to Rise – In a recent report by eMarketer, it was found that currently 59% of brand marketers are now using social media. What’s really interesting is that within 12 months this number is predicted to jump to 82%. The most popular social media channels? Facebook, Twitter, online videos, and blogs. Canada continues the trend of cracking down on privacy issues that have been surfacing recently due to increased usage of social media outlets. The result could be stricter laws and regulations across the board, with increased security for users, but also a decline in the ability for companies and other services to gather important statistics on potential clients. Twitter is again in the news thanks to Facebook and bit.ly. Certainly the partnership of bit.ly and Yfrog will mean TwitPic must scramble in order to retain its dominating market share, that is if Twitter is still around in its current form. Though Twitter adamantly denies it is for sale, the prospect is that there is a lot of money to be made. The key in this situation is determining whether the service has any significant additional growth, as selling out too soon could result in lost profits for founder Biz Stone. Speaking of profits, the fact that popular videos on YouTube, which meet the correct guidelines the service has laid out, can soon be making an income from ad revenue is a pivotal move forward, and might even serve as an incentive for posters to submit higher quality material. It is interesting to see that as the service continues to grow and transform, even police departments are jumping on the social media bandwagon, with the LAPD revolutionizing the way we will search for suspected criminals. Could this be the beginning of social media law enforcement? The fact of the matter is, social media is here to stay. The eMarketer report only solidifies this position, as 82% of companies within the next 12 months will have integrated some sort of social media platform into their marketing programs. Only 13% have said outright that they do not use, or are not planning to use, social media any time soon. The main reason? They just don’t know where to begin. This is why it’s important to find a social media marketing company who has a clear strategy for this revolution. They can provide insight as to why social media marketing must be a pivotal aspect of any successful company’s overall business plan. Labels: Facebook, Friendfeed, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, YouTube Social Media: Passing Fad or New Reality?With all the hype surrounding social media these days, it’s hard not to draw parallels to the dot-com boom that took place in the not-too-distant past. The shear growth which has occurred in the past few years on well-known social media websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Twitter, and Wikipedia, to name a few, is at the very least mind-boggling. However, social media has in fact been around for longer than most people tend to believe. One of the earliest forms of social media is the bulletin board. Here, information was exchanged freely within a network of individuals for (usually) the betterment of the organization. Anything “posted” to that board was easily accessible by one’s peers. Much the way weblogs today allow individuals to openly express their thoughts and ideas, so did the bulletin board. Social media, in today’s definition, is significantly intertwined in the processes and technologies which make these types of interactions a reality. The World Wide Web has done wonders for the exchange of information, thoughts, and ideas on a global scale. So can the recent surge in social media be considered a fad, like bell-bottom jeans? Or is this really the wave of the future, a social revolution that might someday be compared to the Industrial Revolution as a critical time of change? Here are some fascinating statistics, compiled by Socialnomics.com, which uncover how much an effect Social Media is having on our generation:
See the stats displayed visually in this video on YouTube: However, as social media continues to evolve, individual users and companies alike must discover best practices in order to take advantage of this new technology to its fullest, or else face serious repercussions. For example, lately Twitter has come under fire due to a recent study by Pear Analytics, which found that 40.55% of total tweets captured could be found to be pointless babble. The graph below also takes a stab at Twitter, condensing its community down to 100 users and classifying them on usage patterns.  In this simplified breakdown of the Twitter user base, it is easy to see that currently, very few accounts utilize Twitter in an efficient way. The majority of users seem to lack frequent updates, a pivotal part to the successful functioning of Twitter. The second largest category is “dead” accounts, where somebody had created a profile yet for one reason or another has not yet used the service. What is interesting to note is that most of the noise found on Twitter is created by a very small portion of the entire user base, yet makes up 75% of the tweets found on the service. These two sources bring to light that, while social media can be extremely useful, it can also be abused, and extremely inefficient when not correctly utilized. So is social media just a fad? Some naysayers definitely think so. If anything, this revolution that we are currently in will drastically alter the way individuals interact and the way companies must market themselves to consumers. No longer will direct marketing generate a positive ROI on its own. Socialnomics.com notes that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements. Companies instead must engage consumers in conversation, spark interest in relevant communities, and not instruct consumers on what their wants and needs should be, but instead listen to them. This, in turn, will lead to a positive buzz surrounding a brand and ultimately create those valuable personal recommendations all companies strive for. Labels: Facebook, Online Media, Social Media, Twitter, web 2.0, YouTube Recent YouTube ChangesA few days ago, YouTube quietly launched its homepage redesign (see Mashable article and YouTube blog post). The changes are pretty subtle, but are aimed at streamlining and simplifying the YouTube experience. According to the YouTube Blog, the left side is dedicated to exploration: finding videos to watch through search and browse. The right side is all about organization of the videos that matter most to you: your subscriptions, your recent viewing history, and your own uploads. Apparently, YouTube ran a large landing page testing experiment before implementing the changes and launching the new page, but personally it doesn't feel like much of a redesign for me. Being a regular YouTube user, when I saw the homepage, I thought it looked different but couldn't quite pinpoint it. After chatting quickly with YouTube account executive extraordinaire Ryan Stonehouse, he confirmed that the changes were indeed small (for instance, the Search box now has a separate area with a gray box around it) but all aimed to improving the user experience. I am glad to see YouTube constantly trying to improve and as an advertiser, I'm impressed with the expanding array of opportunitiess not just for branding but also for user engagement and entertainment. I am a big fan of the interactive masthead units, such as today's Madden 10 video. It starts out as a regular homepage video unit on the usual upper right hand side, but one of the players busts out of the frame, it expands into a full masthead unit, and the player pushes out the content on the left like he's breaking a tackle. Very fun to watch (although I thought there was still a lot of room for more interactivity/user engagement - maybe some games? video within the video?). Check out some screen grabs below.
 There is usually a companion 300x250 ad on the right - that's another avenue for branding, obviously... It becomes something like a page take-over, with all possible units promoting one brand (in this case, Chevy). And let's not forget that YouTube also offers those flash lay-overs, video within a video, and even call-to-action opportunities.We'll keep you posted on other YouTube and social media news so keep reading our blog! Labels: Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media, YouTube Create a Media Plan and an Engagement PlanWhile working with clients, have you observed this? Clients will call a marketing initiative a branding campaign until they take a look at their reports. Like any rational person, their eyes head to the far right-hand side of report, looking past impressions, clicks, and cost per click to evaluate how many actions they are getting. And they should. Today, marketers must focus on engagement, high-value brand interactions, and of course, actual leads and sales. Think of it this way: there are banner impressions and then there are lasting impressions. Engagement helps brands make lasting impressions with target audiences. So in parallel to a great Media Plan, one should have a great Engagement Plan. An accompanying document should map not just where your creative will be placed, but what people will be encouraged to do when they see and click on your ads. Especially today, when properties offer an assortment of rich media units and engagement ads, how people respond can vary as much as what people see. Let's say you are advertising on LinkedIn. You can enable people participate in a poll and then be redirected to your landing page. Facebook's Engagement Ads let people become a fan of your company right from the ad. And on all media you place, your clicks go to landing pages that should be help trigger chains of events and engagements. So as a media planner your plan should show the whole picture: the Media Plan and the Engagement Plan. The Media Plan tells clicks where they are going to "be," an Engagement Plan tells the client what you are trying to get people to "do" and what you are going to "measure" from an action standpoint. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Online Media New Facebook Ad FeaturesFacebook continues to improve its ad platform! Over the last few months, Facebook has added new features for Facebook Ads, such as the options for inline fanning and RSVP right within the ad units (which makes the Facebook ASU's more socially enabled) and ability to target users by languages spoken (in addition to the existing targeting options). Last week, Facebook announced recent adjustments in the Ad Manager, which basically now lets advertisers edit and revise existing ads, as well as specify date ranges (and viewing format) when viewing reports. And yesterday, Facebook announced more targeting filters: connections, location, and birthday. Targeting by connections lets the advertisers target fans, members of your group, users who have RSVP’d to your Events, and users who have authorized your Application/s. This makes it easier to target users who have already expressed interest in your brand/company and strengthen your relationship with them by continuing conversations, sending alerts and promos, and increasing engagement. This new feature also lets advertisers targets users who are not yet connected. This is especially useful for increasing the number of Fans and page views, since impressions will only be shown to new/potential members of your community.  (Improved) targeting by location simply means that advertisers can now target the same Facebook ad to multiple countries. This is a good tool for agencies like us who manage international campaigns, if we are running the same ad but for different countries.  Targeting by birthday is a great opportunity for advertisers who offer special birthday promotions. This can also be coupled with targeting by Age to be even more specific.  It's great to see that Facebook is listening to advertiser feedback and is actively trying to continuously improve its advertising interface and reporting tools. Today, Facebook is connecting 250 Million people and it continues to try and make the site more meaningful for all its users (and advertisers!). Just a year ago, I remember advertising on Facebook and being so frustrated with the lack of options. It has definitely come a long way since then! I admire Facebook's efforts to give its users more opportunities to engage and experience a seamless, connected, social experience. I'm looking forward to even more developments to come. Labels: Facebook, Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media Research Tips for Landing a First Online Media JobRecently I had a job candidate come in for an entry-level position, and she was very interested in working in the online media planning and buying department. She was clearly a very bright candidate who was fresh out of school, but unfortunately she wasn't conversant in the standard terms and technologies associated with the trade. Now, we don't expect entry-level people to come in knowing everything. But candidates have come in who know the fundamentals of online media and marketing, either through school or independent research, and can at carry on a conversation about it. I gave the candidate a list of things to research on her own and invited her to contact us once she had become more familiar with the field. I realized this is a great list for entry-level candidates. Media planning and buying is all about independent research and being able to grasp complex advertising concepts and technologies. Between the vendor sites; media sites like ClickZ, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), SlideShare, YouTube, and Wikipedia; and search engines, there is more than enough info out there for candidates to get at least partially up to speed on this stuff. Frankly, this is the stuff colleges and universities should be teaching to their advertising and marketing students. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Online Media Ten Ways to Strengthen Relations With Your Media RepsEvery once in a while I like to remind myself, our industry, and of course my team how important it is to maintain strong relationships between media buyers and reps. Don't get me wrong, reps know my team drives a hard bargain. They understand that we, like all other agencies, represent the client and their interests. Yet they also know that my team appreciates the hard work they put into formulating programs that will work for our clients. When it comes down to it, reps will fight harder for deals for the buyers they like and respect. You need to acknowledge the work that a lot of people do to make your agency more successful. So this column is about things you can do to show gratitude to your reps for all the hard work they do for you. These tips are based on things I've heard reps talk about, things we try to do, and things we've discussed doing. Remember, you can attract more flies with honey. (If you are a rep and feel we aren't doing at least the basic things here for you, my apologies. Please let me know.) •Be polite. Return calls and e-mail, even if you aren't in buy mode. It only takes a couple moments. It will help reps do their job to connect with media buyers, acknowledge their effort to reach out to you, and give you both the opportunity to get into each other's contact list. •Acknowledge their value as educators. Sales reps are the continuing education professors for media buyers. They keep us in the know about all the new placements and technologies in the pipeline. Admit it, media buyers: How did we learn about all this stuff that we recommend to our clients? How did we amass much of the information that makes us experts in online media? We got it by letting the media reps give us their dog-and-pony shows. We got the information from the source, which is exactly where we should get it from. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Online Media Eight Things You Need to Manage Social Media"Who Owns Social Media Campaigns? written last week by ClickZ columnist Rebecca Lieb, explores who should manage social media for companies - public relations firms, search firms, or agencies. I'm grateful to Rebecca for getting me a gig at ClickZ as a columnist more than two years ago. This week, I'm appreciative because she gave me fodder for my column here. Below is a comment I posted last week in response to her column; I'd like to elaborate. Online Marketing firms who have search, online media, creative, development and tracking technology under one roof are the only entities really qualified to deploy and manage a robust social media channel alive with good content, creative and interactive applications. Agencies might be close but most PR firms are just not equipped to deploy creative and technology-infused online assets and blend them with high-octane online media programs. Certainly "search only" firms are not the right folks for this either - they don't have great creative or online media buyers. The one thing PR firms may have a leg up on is good blog-relations programs. Let me list skills and components that a company needs to manage a social media campaign in a comprehensive way and explain why online marketing firms are the right ones to make it happen. First, the lines between search, online media, online creative, and online technology are blurring and nowhere is that more true than with social media marketing. A social platform is a channel that will forever build your brand, encourage engagement, and drive site traffic, leads, and commerce. Only online marketing firms adept at maintaining, managing, tracking, and optimizing "always on" online channels and technologies should be in charge of managing these platforms. A robust social platform has tons of moving parts and technologies behind it. So in exploring what type of firm is best at managing a social platform consider the following. You wouldn't have your PR firm build and manage your Web site, right? You may have your branding agency do it but probably not. However, you would retain your pure-play online marketing firm that has all the creative, search engine optimization (SEO), and technical/Web development skills under one roof to build and manage your Web site right? Well a social media platform is like a huge Web site that not only integrates with your site but lives all over the Web. That's why a full-service online firm is they way to go. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media YouTube Masthead Goes UGThere have been a lot of buzz recently about Sprint’s user-generated “Human Clock” which will launch this week on YouTube. The ad, which supports Sprint’s “Now Network,” will feature videos of people holding up one number that will be strung together similar to a clock. “For example, at 12:09 the ad would display four people, each holding up one number to represent 1, 2, 0 and 9,” MediaPost writes. The images will change as the minutes and hours tick by.  The ad will utilize YouTube’s masthead ad unit which works with other ad units on the homepage. This placement is great for advertisers who want to make a big splash. Zal Bilimoria, product manager for homepage at YouTube states, “On average, these rich media masthead units have 14% interaction rates, compared to the industry average noted by DoubleClick for similar-size units of just under 5%.” The ad unit will also be available as a widget at Sprint’s Now Network micro-site. The site also features interesting facts of things happening “Now,” such as the number of bicycles being produced worldwide, traffic updates in major cities, and even the number of people stuck in elevators. Overwhelming at first, the montage of stats is artfully displayed as a series of interesting stats happening around the world. I admit, I have been on the site for over 42 minutes and I haven’t even clicked on half of the stats. To find out more about the number of coffee cups being produced or the next bus arriving in Portland, visit the site at http://www.sprint.com/network For more information about this post please visit MediaPost's article, "Sprint Takes Over YouTube Home Page With UG Human Clock" Labels: Advertising, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Video, YouTube Six Tips to Get Prospects to ClickI have a saying that I often apply to many situations in life: "Don't go to China to get to California." How does that apply to online marketing? More often than not, we determine an online campaign's success through some high value action, like lead capture, video view, or something similar. But just as often, and even though these actions are at the heart of a campaign's success, those actions are hidden or put at the end of a process or banner. Critical messages and calls to action are obscured by creative, images, and messaging, and they're relegated to the back of the visual and click-path sequence. Yet those items' resulting metrics are the first thing people look at when evaluating a campaign's key performance indicators (define). This is done for a variety of reasons, such as simple ignorance of best practices, an aversion to asking people for what you want, extraneous pages and content, or an overly hard sell that focuses on selling a product rather than the escalating or high value action on a landing page. The result is always the same: users are forced to jump through more hoops to engage in the behavior we want and conversion rates go down. Users are being forced to go to China to get to California. Below are six tips to helping your users get to California by a more direct route:
Labels: ClickZ, online marketing, Online Media, Strategy New Facebook Redesign Creates a Brilliant Marketing Platform for BrandsFacebook made a bit of noise last week when they introduced the new Business Pages layout. Then, several days later, made changes to the Home page of all user profiles, and integrated a 'Twitter' like wall stream - Facebook's strategy in building out a more real-time conversation tool. As usual, when Facebook decides to make changes, your entire office, your close friends and other random people you might see throughout the day - they all have something to say, and I am sure you've heard the complaints already. However, I am here to bring calm to the storm...rest assured, Facebook is making a very intelligent change in status here. And most importantly, businesses will be able to flourish greatly from this move. When it comes to the new business pages - it will now look and function much like personal profiles, offering stronger brand connections via the wall stream, which now takes center stage. When a fan comes to your page now, the very first page they look at is the 'wall stream'. On this page, businesses that create content often, will thrive in this new environment. As a brand, the wall stream page will gather content and post information about the page and posts by the page itself. Also, content shared by you, links, photos, videos and short text updates via the status updates, and posts by your fans left for you - all now show up in the wall. In this update, which is really the holy grail here, the wall updates you post will publish to your Fans' news feeds, and posts by your Fans will go to their friends' news feeds as well. So, think about this a second - the more content you are able to place and create in your channel, the more you engage with your fans, in turn, the more people you will be able to reach constantly. A single status update of your business profile seeds through Facebook into your fan's news streams. Now, all their friend's see this, and can 'like' or 'comment' on the update, and possibly go one step further and become a Fan of the page. The wall stream will be a large key in driving attention to your page - use it wisely! You are familiar with how Twitter works, Facebook is integrating the same concept using this wall stream - homepage stream. The more frequency of status updates on your page, the more chance you have to stand out with your fans in the Facebook stream.  When it comes to the layout of the page, Facebook rid themselves of the long 'leaderboard' layout, and moved to a tabbed layout - exactly how your user profile pages now function. And now, when a fan goes to your business page, they are defaulted to the Wall tab, so that fans can see the most recent added content to the page. And for non-Fans that visit your page, you can set a default landing page within your business profile page.  With the ability to send new potential fans to your business page, you can highlight a specific default tab to send them to that might have the most appealing or interactive elements within your page. This will allow users to better promote different portions of their page by driving ad traffic or new fans to certain sections of your profile. By driving potential fans to landing pages within Facebook, you can dramatically grow your fans and leads that ultimately improve conversion rates. If you are running a specific campaign, or have a new application, event, or interactive element on your page you want new users to connect with - now you can easily create that conversion path for the user. Some interesting analytics were also integrated into new business pages. Facebook now allows you to track video views, comments posted, news feed posts viewed, and this is all in addition to page views and unique views. And even better, all this data is exportable via CSV sheets. New Design Makes Advertising on Facebook Irresistible Facebook is clearly trying to drive more advertisers to use the platform, and it makes a lot of sense now with Facebook allowing you to drive non-fans to specific pages inside your business profile. This is going to add value and interest for users who will make their way to your Facebook page. Brands should embrace this tactic and give Facebook advertising a shot - you won't be disappointed this time around. People in the past have been reluctant to spend money on advertising within social networks. The real fact is, social network members are co-creators of content, and in turn, feel they have a sense of ownership within the site. Advertising needs to be more about participating in relevant conversation with consumers rather than simply pushing ads onto a social network user. Advertising should focus on being part of the conversation, not invading the social space. Advertising needs to be about adding value to a user's experience, as social networks are built around members adding value to each other's lives through interaction. This is why fan sites and sponsored groups are truly one of the most successful strategies when marketing within the platforms. This act touches on the principles of interactivity, and adds value to a user's experience via offers, previews, and the ability for user's to help create content. The true challenge though in creating a perfect marriage between social network advertising - marketing and that network's user, is time. There is no quick-fix in social network marketing, sure there can be exceptions, but those are few and far between. Much like a friendship, social media marketing requires effort, time and a continual investment in the platform to build and foster relationships. Remember, your messaging needs to be authentic and humble, and built on two-way conversation, not a push (one-way) model - in the end, this will add value to the consumer's decision. For more information on social media marketing, please review our services, and contact us or myself if you have any questions. Labels: Advertising, Blog Outreach, Brand Awareness, Facebook, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Common Tracking Issues and How to Address ThemQuestions 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:
Read more... Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Online Media Good Example of Someone Listening in the Social SpaceAs a part of our company’s social media marketing strategy, we continue to seek new applications and services which best meet our SM needs. When we began using Twitter, we really needed a site that allowed us to schedule tweets in order to manage the account effectively. We decided to use TweetLater, who proved today they really know how to listen to their users. A frustration which bothered me about TweetLater was the lack of navigational links on the homepage. Each day I used the site I would have to click at least two or three times until I reached the section I needed to schedule a new tweet. I was very close to looking for a new service when I decided to send a tweet to @dewaldp, the creator of TweetLater. To my surprise, my frustration was resolved in less than half an hour and a new link was added to the TweetLater homepage! Here is the conversation which occurred: @dewaldp (Mon, Feb 23, 3:40PM) It would be very useful to have "manage account" link right on the homepage This is a great example of how companies should be utilizing social media. By listening to your clients, customers, or followers you are building a brand image and relationship with them that is stronger than any advertisement. The experience I had today was memorable and I will continue to use TweetLater since they have proved they care about the service they are providing. Labels: Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy, TweetLater, Twitter Online Advertising for B2BAt our agency, we do a lot of work for B2B (define) companies that look want to reach people by job title or function. Especially today, advertisers want to hone in their targeting as accurately as possible to reach the right people who can buy or influence the purchase of their products and services. So I worked with Bianca Garcia, one of our media planners who does a fair amount of B2B online advertising, to list a few options -- and she came up with these great ideas. Here are six approaches or places to target people online by job function or title. Labels: ClickZ, Online Media, Social Media Marketing Socializing Your Banners With ChicletsWe all know the lines between social media and online media are blurring. One noticeable way social media marketing is creeping into traditional online display is by incorporating sharing, bookmarking, and syndication chiclets into banners. Do you know what chiclets are? They are those little Digg, Facebook, Delicious, and Twitter buttons you see nestled around blog posts and articles or consolidated in aggregators like ShareThis. The definition according to Word Spy is "a small image that links to a syndication file for a web site, particularly a blog." Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Online Media, Social Media Online Media Stats That Make Me Feel Great About '09!When driving to work just after Christmas, I was listening to an interview with an e-commerce company CEO who said something that made me laugh. She said, "In 09, flat is the new up." If you did the same in final three months of 2008 as you did during the same period in 2007, she said you were ok. Well, I say, let's not be content with flat just yet. Let's raise our cups to a new year that will defy expectations! With all the doom and gloom projected, it still does seem that budgets are still migrating online. Unlike the last burst bubble, this burst is aimed squarely at everything but online marketing. Wow, does that feel good. (I guess all that "pain in the you know what" measurement stuff we online marketers push all the time is paying off.) It also could be that our budgets are often still a pretty small percentage of overall budgets in the grand scheme of things and we have a long way to go. From where I sit, the outlook for '09 still looks pretty good and in some cases, better than '09. So I am not ready to be content with "flat" just yet. If you find yourself not feeling quite as chipper and enthusiastic about the future of online as I am, here are some stats that may help you get to the other side of this recession, depression, downturn -- whatever you want to call it. Labels: ClickZ, Industry, Online Media EMC Launches Content Management WidgetToday, EMC launched a social media widget and ad unit that will allow users in the field of enterprise content management to keep up to date with the rapidly moving industry. The widget provides a video, as well as links to the most recent whitepapers in the field of ECM. In addition, the widget displays a feed of the latest news, upcoming events, podcasts, and webinars in the field. The "grab it" functionality built into the widget allows for simple distribution of the widget throughout the social media grid on social sites like Facebook and MySpace, or even blog platforms like Blogger and WordPress. Users can even add the widget to their iGoogle homepage, or as a Windows Vista sidebar gadget. Try it out- the widget below is fully functional and can be added to the platform of your choice by clicking the "grab it" button in the top right corner of the widget below. Labels: Advertising, Facebook, Google, Online Media, RSS, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 A Very Special (K) New Year We all know that one of the most popular New Year's resolutions is to lose weight or start dieting, and Special K is here to remind us all of that. According to AdAge, Special K Kicks Off "Wake-Up Call" in Times Square. Just before midnight in Times Square, Kellogg will launch its newest digital and integrated marketing campaign which focuses on consumer's healthy-eating goals. For the whole month of January, Special K will run billboard, mobile and online media campaigns, kicking off with the Nasdaq and Reuters billboards on Times Square just as the ball drops on Newy Year's Eve. Display ads will encourage consumers to share their holidays indulgences and wake-up calls, and there is also a social media mobile component where consumers can text their weight loss goals, as well as 15- and 30-second TV spots. (photo from AdAge) Special K is focused as "a weight-management brand, and [it] always had a marketing presence during resolution season," according to Kellogg spokeswoman Kris Charles. However, the campaign hasn't even started yet and there is already some criticism, with some people accusing Special K of being a party pooper for reminding people of dieting during one of the most festive celebrations. Personally, I think the campaign is a great example of timing, relevancy, and media savvy. Special K is positioning itself to be present at the consumer's critical moment, aka right when most of its target market (women) realize and vow to make dietary changes. Besides, who says you can't celebrate and think of your health at the same time? Maybe I just have a soft spot for Kellogg - after all, this is one of the (smarter) companies whose own New Year's resolution is to spend more money online, forecasting their digital efforts to surpass their broadcast effort's ROI (yay for online!) But in any case, kudos to Special K for reigning in the New Year with an innovative advertising campaign that aims to reach its target consumers in non-traditional, relevant and engaging ways. Wishing everyone a healthy, happy, fantastic 2009 ahead! Cheers! Labels: Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Online Media, POV, Social Media Marketing Spreading Holiday CheerTV holiday ads such as the ever-popular (and frequently aired) Kay Jewelers signify for me the start of the holiday season. So as advertisers turn their marketing efforts from traditional advertising to online advertising, advertisers have turned to viral ads to spread holiday cheer, and their brand. I read an article today on PromotionWorld.com, which list the five best viral holiday campaigns of the year. As the article points out, what makes a viral ad campaign so successful is providing a connection between the user and the ad, providing a unique brand experience through the creative content, and the ability to spread the ad to their friends. However, a successful viral campaign is more than just adding a grab-it feature to the ad unit. As the author points out, an ad is more likely to spread through personalization techniques, such as adding your picture to a dancing elf, just as Office Max has done. Here are some examples of this year’s viral holiday campaigns. Happy Holidays! 5. The Buddy Group’s Naughty Mrs. Claus 4. X-Box’s Holiday Gift Influencer 3. Simon Sez Santa 2.0 2. Office Max’s ElfYourself 1. Disney’s Personalized Video Message From Labels: Advertising, Online Media, Social Media, Strategy, Video |
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