Mar 17, 2010
When it comes to rich media ads on the Internet that employ video, engagement matters enormously. Environment, not so much.
That's the major and in some ways surprising takeaway from a new study conducted by VideoEgg and comScore.
The study examined the effectiveness of rich media video ads vs. traditional banners. The goal was to prove the theory that banner ads containing video are more engaging. In addition, the study gauged whether site environment -- particularly contextual relevance -- played a role in how well such ads performed.
Emily Steel
Mar 15, 2010
Digital-marketing companies are rapidly moving to blend information about consumers' Web-surfing behavior with reams of other personal data available offline, seeking to make it easier for online advertisers to reach their target audiences.
Advertisers say the push could enhance their ability to target ads at specific types of consumers, but it is drawing scrutiny from Congress, federal regulators and privacy watchdogs, who are already concerned about the use of Web-surfing data.
Bob Deutsch
Mar 15, 2010
In my work as a cognitive anthropologist I study how the mind works, how people "make meaning," how people form attachments to things (brands), and how people make decisions. Decisions like how to select what to invest in, whether stocks or mates; why and under what conditions, people prefer Coke over Pepsi (or vice versa), Charmin over Cottonelle; why a person believes in one God over another.
In that search I have inadvertently uncovered something about viva la difference: WOMEN CYCLE, MEN CONSUMMATE.
Mar 15, 2010
If your marketing department has invested in any technology since the early 1960s, chances are you probably have something called a "dashboard" running on a PC near you, maybe even on yours. The idea is that your various technology systems -- tracking things like digital ad performance, conversational media results, and online sales -- can feed into a spot wherefrom you can "drive" your marketing.
No you can't.
Mar 15, 2010
Search engine marketing no longer exists in an online vacuum. In today’s multi-channel world, people search online, visit stores to test out products, return to the internet to compare prices and then complete purchases in-store, online or via a call center.
Over $155 billion worth of consumer goods was purchased online in the U.S. in 2009, yet a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research, according to a March report from Forrester Research. Forrester estimates that $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “web-influenced,” with online and web-influenced offline sales combined accounting for 42% of total retail sales. That percentage will grow to 53% by 2014, when the web will influence $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.
Ethan Smith
Mar 12, 2010
The Disney studio, which is to unveil its production slate this spring, is backing away from one-off comedies like "When in Rome" and "Confessions of a Shopaholic," according to people familiar with the studio's new gameplan.
In their place, Disney plans to focus on films that are essentially brands—like a planned Muppets movie—that can be exploited across its network of theme parks, videogames and commercial products. The recent success with "Alice in Wonderland" has given a new team of executives who run the studio confidence in their approach.
Mar 12, 2010
It has been a rough few months for Toyota because of its three big safety recalls. But the automaker’s luxury division, Lexus, appears to have avoided much of the fallout.
Even though a Lexus ES 350 was involved in a widely publicized accident before the recalls, Lexus sales are up about 5 percent so far in 2010 compared with last year. That is close to the average for other luxury brands.
Mar 12, 2010
What do Ford Mustang, True Religion jeans, Xbox 360 and Coke have in common? Kids are curious about these brands, and are going online to ask questions about them en masse on social media platforms catering to youthful queries.
Mar 11, 2010
The recession is forcing cash-poor consumers to stick to the basics when they shop, according to a list of the most valuable U.S. retail brands as ranked by Interbrand. In its 2010 list no-frills retailers, including Dollar General, Family Dollar, AutoZone and other retailers that sell necessities, rose in this annual ranking of 50 brands. Many top retail brands that sell niceties consumers can do without in hard times, including Avon and Polo Ralph Lauren, fell on the Interbrand list.
Vikas Mittal, Rajan Sambandam, and Utpal M. Dholakia
Mar 10, 2010
Toyota has announced three major recalls covering a total of eight million vehicles globally since October 2009. The recalls are for defects that have been associated with 52 fatalities and 38 injuries so far.
Not surprisingly, the business media and notable Toyota experts are starkly pessimistic. We looked at 108 Wall Street Journal articles discussing Toyota during February, 2010, and found that 106 were negative to Toyota. In a recent column by Dennis Seid, Jeffrey Liker, an economist and author of The Toyota Way observed that the hearings and the resultant lawsuits could severely damage the company in many ways.
Mar 4, 2010
This Sunday, the film industry's good and great will adorn the red carpet with their Gucci gowns and Cartier jewelry for Hollywood's biggest night, as the 82nd Annual Academy Awards celebrate the best in the business. But who would win our Oscar for "Best Use of Media to Promote a Film"? We nominated "The Blind Side" from Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. and Paramount's "Up in the Air."
Matt Rhodes
Feb 26, 2010
A useful survey from global PR firm Burson-Marsteller this week looks at the ways in which the Global Fortune 100 companies are using social media. The tools they are using and how they are developing a social media strategy. The survey looked at 100 firms in the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and examined how these firms are using social media.
Feb 26, 2010
The satellite radio company Sirius XM Radio posted its first quarterly profit since its merger and said it expected to add 500,000 new subscribers in 2010 as the recovery in the car market increased demand.
The results on Thursday suggest that the company, run by the media industry veteran Mel Karmazin, has solidified. Just a year ago, it flirted with bankruptcy.
Feb 26, 2010
Coca-Cola Co.'s deal Thursday to acquire the bulk of its largest bottler is likely to spell major changes in the way beverages reach stores and consumers in the U.S.
Coke shares slipped 4% to $53.12 in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange following the company's announcement that it will acquire Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.'s North American operations, representing about 75% of the volume of Coke products sold in the U.S. and all of its Canadian volume. At the same time, CCE will expand its European operations, acquiring Coke's bottling units in Norway and Sweden, and later possibly its 83% stake in its large German bottling operations.
Feb 25, 2010
The New York Times brings this story of an economist who has been predicting - disconcertingly accurately - the medals tally for the last few Olympics. Daniel Johnson - the economist in question - is currently in the news for his predictions for the current Winter Olympics. The strange thing about Daniel's predictions is not that they have a record of 94% accuracy with actual medal counts. It is his methology. Rather than basing his predictions on individual athletes, the events or even any knowledge of sport, he bases them on something far more removed.
Feb 24, 2010
Nielsen recently released a new report that officially documents what many of us already know, just never substantiated through data. According to a study published at the end of January 2010, Nielsen observed the online social activity of consumers around the world and discovered an 82% increase in time spent on social networking sites in December 2009. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours on popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter. In December 2008, users clocked just over three hours on social networking sites.
Feb 24, 2010
Starbucks coffee was the No. 1 brand tried by consumers in the coffee/tea category in January, earning twice as many mentions as No. 2 Dunkin' Donuts coffee and No. 3 Celestial Seasonings tea in a consumer survey conducted by Market Force Information, a worldwide leader in customer intelligence solutions.
Feb 21, 2010
You get that coveted interview in the Wall Street Journal or your company is covered by AP and the news goes mainstream and you jump for joy. While that's great news, counting the potential eyeballs that glanced at that story is no longer enough. It is specifically not good enough in a digital era where every action can be tracked.
Scott Berinato
Feb 19, 2010
Data visualization is cool. It's also becoming ever more useful, as the vibrant online community of data visualizers (programmers, designers, artists, and statisticians — sometimes all in one person) grows and the tools to execute their visions improve.
Jeff Clark is part of this community. He, like many data visualization enthusiasts, fell into it after being inspired by pioneer Martin Wattenberg's landmark treemap that visualized the stock market.
Clark's latest work shows much promise. He's built four engines that visualize that giant pile of data known as Twitter. All four basically search words used in tweets, then look for relationships to other words or to other Tweeters. They function in almost real time.
Feb 19, 2010
Facebook announced that active users of its mobile platform surpassed 100 million, each and every month. And, this usage happens on almost every carrier in the world. If interaction and participation serve as the foundation for social media, then Facebook is setting the standard. Facebook is reporting that mobile users are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
According to estimates, the number of mobile Facebook users far exceeds the total active user base for Twitter, including mobile, Web, and through third-party applications.
Brian Stelter
Feb 18, 2010
NBC Universal’s television coverage of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver this month is exhaustive, as viewers have come to expect. But its Web coverage, at least when compared with the Summer Games in Beijing 18 months ago, is limited.
NBC’s Web site is live-streaming fewer sports than it did in Beijing, marking a step backward in online access to marquee events. The company is making no secret that it would prefer for viewers to watch the Olympics on television, especially in prime time, even though a growing number of people are accustomed to watching TV on the Internet.
Ilan Brat
Feb 17, 2010
The bowls are getting bigger and steamier, but the soup spoons are going away.
Those are among the biggest changes Campbell Soup Co. is making in decades to the iconic labels and shelf displays of its condensed soups—the company's biggest single business, with more than $1 billion in sales.
The changes—expected to be announced Wednesday—will culminate a two-year effort by Campbell to figure out how to get consumers to buy more soup. Condensed soup has been a slow-growing category in which budget-conscious consumers have little tolerance for price increases.
Feb 17, 2010
Who knew that Boomers were such media-hungry digital infovores? New research on the media use habits of the age 45 to 54 consumer demographic by the CRE Mapping Study shows that they consume more TV and more Internet media than any other cohort.
Brian Morrissey
Feb 16, 2010
For all the excitement about social media, there's a specter hanging over its use by companies. Is all this tweeting, blogging and Facebooking paying off? For some proponents, the question is irrelevant. They agree with the view encapsulated in the social media bible The Cluetrain Manifesto -- markets are conversations. Companies have to participate in the conversations where they're happening, ROI be damned. Their dismissal of metrics is summed up in an oft-repeated question, "What's the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?"
Amy Chozick
Feb 16, 2010
NBC calls it "the world's biggest focus group."
With an estimated 185 million unique viewers over a 17-day period, the Olympic Games provide a special audience microcosm, and one that NBC believes will be particularly useful for measuring new-media consumption habits and trends.
NBC touts all the different platforms it is bringing to bear for the Games, which began Friday in Vancouver. Viewers can watch on the network, NBC Universal's many cable channels and NBCOlympics.com. They can download clips to their iPhones and receive mobile updates on a favorite skier or figure skater.
Feb 16, 2010
The last 10 years of growth at Reckitt Benckiser are pretty impressive. The market value of the company has increased an eye-popping seven times, to £21billion, according to an article in The Times. And if you had been smart enough or lucky enough to buy shares in 2000, you'd be sitting on a return of 400%. At the heart of this success is the power of focus, a key theme in our new book. Let's look at what Reckitt have done well.
Feb 16, 2010
In the derby to please shoppers, stores like Nordstrom and Target continue to trounce their competition. But overall, online retailers continue to gain, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), indicating that many consumers find shopping online much more pleasing than hoofing it through an actual store: The ACSI, founded at the University of Michigan and based in Ann Arbor, says its index for e-tailers gained a percentage point to 83 (out of a possible 100) compared to offline retailers, which gained a percentage point to 76.
Feb 15, 2010
The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) recently produced a playbook that contains more than 35 case studies of putting listening to work, written by Steve Rappaport, the Advertising Research Foundation’s Knowledge Solutions Director.
The playbook is about listening to customer conversations and seeks to answer four questions that ARF members and many industry folks are asking:
Feb 9, 2010
It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline.
Todd Wasserman
Feb 8, 2010
If you're a marketer who has steered clear of Twitter, your (non)strategy may be paying off! It's possible that this Twitter thing may just take care of itself.
In the middle of last year, Twitter's growth slowed from 7.8 million new users a month to 6.2 million, according to a recent study from RJ Metrics. That report also found that only 17 percent of Twitter users updated their accounts in December -- an all-time low. An earlier study by the Nielsen Co. revealed 60 percent of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next. Taking that into account, it's tempting to conclude that Twitter is following in the footsteps of another social-media ghost town, Second Life.
Feb 8, 2010
Even as major marketers once again threaten to pull back on TV spending -- a new survey indicates they will allocate only 41% of their budgets to the medium this year -- the TV networks are gearing up for an "upfront" ad-sales market they expect will be more robust than in the recent past.
In a new Forrester and Association of National Advertisers survey of 104 U.S. advertisers that collectively spend almost $14 billion in measured media, more than half of them -- 62% -- said that TV advertising is less effective than it used to be.
Feb 5, 2010
Since the news of Comcast's name change to Xfinity broke, Twitter's been all a 'tweet' with opinions on the new name. Unfortunately for Comcast, many of these virtual birds weren't singing a happy song about the naming switch.
In order to quantify those negative Xfinity tweets, we quickly surveyed a 511 U.S. consumers, at 95% confidence. In plain English this means the data are projectable nationally.
Feb 4, 2010
With all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.
There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to:
Feb 3, 2010
By now you're probably familiar with the tradition of sports stadiums selling their names to companies for cash.
Sunday's Super Bowl will be played in a building that, over the years, has been named Pro Player Stadium (after a clothing line), Land Shark Stadium (after an entertainer's beer company) and Sun Life Stadium (after the Canadian financial-services firm that cut a deal last month).
There's not much point in raging against the practice—most of the roughly 110 companies that have done this say there's more upside than downside. But here's a relatively obvious question you may not have considered: Which companies have associated themselves with the best teams?
Brian Solis
Jan 29, 2010
Good friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”
Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on the establishment of a distinct ecosystem for cultivating and grooming who we are in public, private, and in secret.
Brian Steinberg
Jan 29, 2010
NBC Universal likely won't turn a profit off its broadcast of the Winter Olympics this year, but it hopes the research it performs on the event's massive audience might generate additional ad revenue in the days and months after the last gold-medal hockey skate has left the ice.
The media giant, in the midst of parent General Electric's transfer of majority ownership to Comcast Corp., intends to ratchet up its examination of Olympics viewers' media-consumption habits, building off a big test it performed during the 2008 Summer Olympics broadcast from Beijing.
Jan 26, 2010
Money spent on social media-related advertising is already expected to grow significantly this year, and now we also know that the medium is considered the top priority in the digital space according to a survey of senior marketers.
Jan 25, 2010
In December 2008, global consumers spent an average of just over three hours on social networks. In December 2009, they were spending over five and a half hours on average. An increase of 82%.
According to The Nielsen Company, social network sites have grown in importance globally in 2009. Alongside blogs, they are now the most popular category online when ranked by time spent on site. The survey (which looked at the US, U.K., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) shows not only that overall time on site has increased, but also that the global audience for social networking has increased.
Jan 14, 2010
What's the most inventive company on the planet? If you judge by sheer volume, it's IBM, which has received more patents from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office than any other company for 17 years in a row. No. 2 would be Samsung, which has trailed IBM since 2006. But the rankings look different if you measure patents by their value, as Ocean Tomo did at the request of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The intellectual-property consulting firm sorted through U.S. patents granted to the world's 1,000 biggest companies (by revenue) from 2005 to 2009. Ocean Tomo then assessed the patents' value by tallying, among other things, patent filing trends, litigation rates, and how many times each was cited by other applicants or in scientific and technical journals. The data were aggregated into a patent value index number and ranking.
Dec 23, 2009
Now that the leaves at the bottom of the old gypsy's teacup indicate that the 2008-09 recession is in reverse, it's time for us to accelerate the synergy across the disciplines of finance and marketing.
Will things return to normal in 2010? If our idea of normal includes the notion that marketers manage their discipline as a cost, then no, that's no longer normal. This kind of thinking has long been in decline, and the recession has hastened its obsolescence. Especially entering a positive economic cycle in 2010, CMOs must absolutely lead their corporations in generating profit and growth. Marketing is no longer a cost center; it's a profit-and-growth center.
John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison
Dec 11, 2009
Until now, executives have focused on two forms of strategic advantage: structural and capability-based. The Big Shift challenges both. It undermines traditional approaches to structural advantage by systematically reducing barriers to entry and movement. Static capabilities are also increasingly vulnerable - they represent knowledge stocks that depreciate at an accelerating rate. Unless they are rapidly refreshed by knowledge flows, these capabilities rapidly lose their power to differentiate. The findings from our recently released 2009 Shift Index provide graphic evidence on these points. Our analysis shows a sustained and significant deterioration in ROA for all public companies in the US since 1965 - ROA declined by over 75% during this period.
Dec 2, 2009
The Nielsen Company said Tuesday that its television measurement homes would soon be Internet measurement homes too, bringing the company a step closer toward providing the integrated ratings that media companies are demanding.
Starting now and going through August, Nielsen will install Internet meters in 7,500 of its television panel homes, where viewership is extrapolated to produce national TV ratings. Eventually — Nielsen has not said when — data from those homes will be used to calculate combined ratings for TV and Internet viewing.
Dec 2, 2009
To many, tracking the success of TV ads is like admiring a Monet -- it's a beautiful picture when taken as a whole, but not meant to convey detail. When it comes to measurement, most TV advertisers know audience reach, some demographics and probably some level of top-line results. Admittedly, it doesn't match the depth and granularity of data we can get for online campaigns, where we know who's responding to our ads, what they're doing on our websites, how much time they spend there and whether or not they complete a purchase.
Valeria Maltoni
Dec 1, 2009
Marketing spend these days is all about justification. I'm glad that the use of social media is quickly moving from "shiny object" darling to why should my business use it? The latter is a much better question. One that will get us somewhere, not necessarily faster but more real. The ROI question pops up everywhere these days. I do wonder how do you measure your other business activities? Do you measure marketing? Do you hold advertising accountable? Do you know what works, what doesn't? How about public relations? Finance? HR? IT? Any ROI calculations handy on those?
Nov 24, 2009
Google has signed a license agreement with DVR company TiVo that enables the Internet search provider to integrate TiVo set-top box viewing data into its measurement of audiences for inventory sold through the Google TV Ads platform. The deal adds approximately 1.6 million subscribers to the universe of set-top boxes that Google TV Ads has to draw on to analyze the second-by-second TV viewing behavior of audiences. Google also has a deal with Dish Network and access to more than 13 million set-top boxes via the satellite carrier.
Nov 24, 2009
Twitter is amongst new media channels that are challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people.
Analysis of these new social media channels has been hobbled by old world thinking, when it comes to marketing, from the world of Television and Magazines or, when it comes to measurement, from the world of traditional web analytics.
These new channels, twitter and facebook and youtube and tumblr and, yes, even blogs, are very distinct customer / participant experiences. Stale marketing or measurement thinking applied to them results in terribly sub optimal results for all involved.
Andrew Winston
Nov 19, 2009
If you put an energy meter inside a home and show people total usage in real time, a miraculous thing happens: they use about 10 percent less energy. The simple act of placing data in front of people changes their behavior. Data makes people smarter and inspires them to make small changes to save money and energy. You can use this powerful tool in business not only to cut costs, but to drive innovation and revenues.
Anjali Ramachandran
Nov 19, 2009
I’ve been thinking of how to measure engagement in the digital space for a while now, so I wanted to aggregate my thoughts and put them in one place. This post is intended to be provocative and get people thinking about how the current thinking of measurement of social media should change. It isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution – more an articulation of things that people should consider more and more when they embark on work in the online social space.
Mike Arauz
Nov 18, 2009
Whether you think digital agencies are "ready to lead" or not, failing to bring a digital mindset to marketing and communications challenges is no longer an option.
Yesterday, Ben Malbon tweeted a quote by Garrick Schmitt from the Razorfish FEED 09 Report: "Brand marketers neglecting digital is akin to showing up to a cocktail party in sweatpants."
This reminded me of the Shel Silverstein poem and illustration above (which Johanna helped me to track down).
The digital age is here. And it's permanent. This means that regardless of whether your career has been labeled digital or not, it is essential that you bring a digital mindset to all of the work that you do.
This is beyond tools, platforms, and capabilities. This is a new way of understanding our world that changes every aspect of our work.
Nov 11, 2009
By now, most marketers have a social network presence. But those looking to capture the attention (and even wallets) of women may want to dig a little deeper to make sure they have a presence in social gaming. "It's grown so fast and so rapidly that brands are struggling to keep up with it," Matt Wise, CEO of Q Interactive, tells Marketing Daily. "If you're looking to find consumers online, it would be hard to find a better opportunity than social games."
Nov 6, 2009
Each year at Blogworld Expo, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra presents The State of the Blogosphere as one of the event’s prestigious keynotes. For those who are unfamiliar with Technorati, it serves as a directory and search engine for the blogosphere as well as a benchmark for the ranking of blogs worldwide. While there has been much discussion about the relevance and even demise of blogs as the statusphere and micro updates gained traction in addition to earning prominence in the mainstream spotlight, the reality is that blogs are a vital ingredient to the media ecosystem.
Helen Coster
Nov 5, 2009
Google's Android software will soon be powering Motorola phones, but for the 11-year-old Internet giant, advertising is still king. Google beat analysts' estimates last quarter, thanks to brisk advertising sales. In October the company announced that its third-quarter revenue increased 7% from the same period last year, to $5.94 billion. Net income rose 27% to $1.64 billion. Google accounts for roughly a third of all online ad spending in the U.S.
Nov 2, 2009
National-brand frozen food companies have been keeping an eye on the rearview mirror as private label sales have grown during the recession’s penny-pinching days. Store brands have made gains in several frozen categories. However, while tough times may have changed the shopping lists of some consumers, the times have not frozen out national brands, which continue to command 80 percent of frozen food sales. In 2008, private label frozen foods represented one-fifth of total department sales of $29.4 billion (The Nielsen Co., 52 weeks ending Dec. 27, 2008). Over the past few years, statistics show store brands have increased their share in several frozen categories, including ice cream, desserts/fruits/toppings, juices, ice and, in particular, vegetables.
Oct 26, 2009
Companies big and small monitor Twitter to find out what their customers like and what they want changed. Twitter does the same. It started two years ago as a bare-bones service, offering little more than the ability to post 140-character messages. Then, it outsourced its idea generation to its users. The company watches how people use the service and which ideas catch on. Then its engineers turn the ideas into new features.
Oct 26, 2009
The upcoming census count will be accompanied by one of the broadest marketing efforts imaginable -- trying not just to reach every person living in the United States with a message, but getting all of them to act on that message. "Typically when you're marketing a product ... you market it to the people who are most likely to buy that product. In this situation, we have to market to everyone, whether they are likely to participate or not," said Vita Harris, chief strategy officer at DraftFCB, who is handling the general-market leg of the census effort.
Michael Learmonth
Oct 19, 2009
Fact: Most people never click on web ads. And that poses a problem for marketers who want to know if their display ads are working. Google, though, is starting to provide an answer. In a bid to build a brand-advertising business, the search giant is using its vast trove of data culled from search queries and web traffic to measure the effectiveness of brand advertising. The system, called Campaign Insights, has been in beta test in the past year with marketers like PayPal and Simplexity and beginning today, the company will start offering it to its bigger advertisers in the U.S. and U.K. Ultimately, like Google Analytics, Google will offer it to all of its display advertisers for free.
Brian Solis
Oct 14, 2009
Honestly, categorizing human behavior and activities in social networks by financial status appears incomplete and almost insular. If we are learning anything in the study of and participation in social networks, it’s that individuals are forming networks that traverse across multiple social networks – and, they will continue to do so, forming one larger, expansive human network in the process. We’re bound by context and interests and it’s why psychographic data overcomes demographics when assessing how to best reach, engage, and galvanize the people who define our communities online.
Oct 13, 2009
By now, most consumer marketers know they could be using Facebook (Facebook), Twitter (Twitter), blogs, and other social media platforms to boost brand recognition, engage customers, and drive sales. But getting a social media marketing program started – and keeping up with the rapid pace of change in the industry – can be daunting. The good news is that with the right technology tools, social media marketing programs can be managed at scale and can help the entire organization (not just the marketers!) find out what customers are saying, sharing, even feeling about your brand or business.
When thinking about the technology tools you need to launch, measure, and optimize your social media marketing and online customer engagement programs, it helps to organize your efforts into categories: listening and monitoring tools; editorial, publishing, and content syndication tools; and conversation measurement tools. There are hundreds of tools out there, but here are some of the more popular and effective ones that can be put to work for you.
Oct 6, 2009
Now that everyone has had a chance to digest BusinessWeek/Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report, I thought I’d offer some suggestions for how to use the results. There’s a risk that if someone doesn’t know what brand valuation really means or what it’s useful for, the conclusions and implications drawn from the report could be off.
And while I’m in no way an expert on brand valuation, I have spent quite a few years using the results of the BusinessWeek/Interbrand study, as well as similar rankings from Brand Finance, Millward Brown’s Optimor, and others.
This is what I’ve learned.
Sep 29, 2009
Imagine an advertising world where ... spending on interactive, one-to-one advertising formats surpasses traditional, one-to-many advertising vehicles, and a significant share of ad space is sold through auctions and exchanges. Advertisers know who viewed and acted on an ad, and pay based on real impact rather than estimated “impressions.” Consumers self-select which ads they watch and share preferred ads with peers. User-generated advertising is as prevalent (and appealing) as agency-created spots.
Based on IBM global surveys there are four change drivers shifting control within the ad industry:
Sep 29, 2009
One of the ultimate excuses for not measuring impact of Marketing campaigns is: “Oh, that’s just a branding campaign.”
Admit it, you’ve heard it.
I suspect you’ve even used it liberally!! : )
Before we go any further I must clarify that I love branding campaigns just as much as the next guy.
Adam L. Penenberg
Sep 22, 2009
Some of the most iconic companies of our time -- Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter -- attracted millions of users practically overnight, by unleashing what's known as a "viral-expansion loop." In plain English, they grew because each new user led to more users. The trick is that each of these businesses created something people really want and then made it easy for customers to happily spread their products for them to friends, family, and colleagues.
Sep 22, 2009
Facebook Inc. plans to announce a deal with online measurement company Nielsen Co., in a step to address advertisers' frustration with measuring how ads perform on the social network. Under the partnership, Facebook will begin polling its users about some of the display ads it runs on its site, such as a banner promoting a movie release.
Facebook will provide that data, including responses from those who didn't see an ad, to Nielsen, which will package it for advertisers, say the companies.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is planning to introduce the product, called Nielsen Brand Lift, in a keynote address at an advertising conference Tuesday and to pitch it to marketers this week in New York.
Katie Delahaye Paine
Sep 1, 2009
A new mindset is needed. There’s been a great deal of discussion of late both here and in other forums about the blurring lines between advertising and editorial and the implications for both relationship building and sales. As a measurement geek (or queen, which ever you prefer) my response is generally – who cares what you call it, focus on the results. Is what you're doing selling stuff, saving money, or making you more efficient? Great, do more of it, and less of the stuff that isn’t generating revenue.
Alan Mitchell
Jul 7, 2009
Mad Sheep Rage. There - what a satisfying way to introduce a new column. No, I'm not nuts. Mad Sheep Rage is an acronym you might find useful. But first, let's get some perspective from another world where an important debate is raging.
May 20, 2009
Digital strategy should be a continuous and iterative process, informed by a steady flow of measurement and used to guide tactical adjustments in pursuit of the client's primary online objective.
May 20, 2009
One of the corporate barriers to going social that David Griner identified in his recent presentation was the lack of ROI. That argument always seems a little odd to me, as arguably anything that happens online is inherently measurable.
And while doing a project for a client to identify online influencers I went into Delicious to search for bookmarked pages that combined the tags “socialmedia” and “measurement.” The result? 2302 bookmarks. The fact is we’ve got measurement coming out of our ears.
May 12, 2009
So I've got it: Twitter isn't a technology, or a service, so tracking the numbers really won’t add up correctly. After reading all of the commentary, I understand that numbers will never capture the meaning of the phenomenon. Twitter is more like love: you either feel it, or you don't. Here are six reasons why they're one in the same:
Tim Brown
Apr 28, 2009
For the next few days I plan to explore what I am calling the Age of Involvement: the role of participation in an information society and how it leads to an expanded view of our economy. I am not an economist and have never studied economics. I am approaching this as someone who believes that innovation is redefining everything around us, including the ways that we measure human achievement.
Apr 14, 2009
Major U.S. advertisers cut their spending on search ads in the first quarter by 13% compared with a year ago, but the market showed signs of revival in March, leading search-engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier said Tuesday.
The decline marks the second consecutive quarter in which the firm's advertising customers reduced search spending, and could renew concerns about the performance of market leader Google Inc., which analysts expect will announce a first-quarter profit of $4.18 a share on sales of $4.08 billion on Thursday.
Mar 3, 2009
Influence is difficult to ascertain online. What about that guy on
Twitter with 25,000 followers? Isn’t he influential? What about that
woman who has 5,000 RSS subscribers? She has to be influential, correct? People who are truly influential become conduits for human based
filtering and content discovery within their communities, as members of
the community look to the person of influence to connect them to people
and content they should trust, and fuel positive community growth.
Feb 24, 2009
After a great
conversation with Mike Barbeau, who has spent his career on the agency
side and is now head of account strategy for SocialVibe, I am sold on
engagement as a key metric for buying and selling branding online.
Given the proper definition and standardization, engagement can provide
the right baseline for marketers to plan, buy and measure brand
campaigns online. But there is work to be done.
Jan 25, 2009
Blaming the economy, Nielsen said late Friday (Jan. 23) it is
suspending indefinitely the launch of PRISM, its ambitious
syndicated service designed to measure in-store media. The
announcement follows one month after Wal-Mart opted out of the
project.
Davis Thinking
