The traditional advertising agency is in a state of flux. Long accustomed to creating campaigns for print, radio, television and direct mail clients, the traditional agency model has been slow to adjust to the demands of digital advertising, namely online, viral and mobile marketing. When you consider that advertising is rooted in creativity, that outside the box strategy drives success within the medium, the unwillingness of, or perhaps more frighteningly the ineffectualness of traditional markets to evolve is rather mind-boggling. But on the heels of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council’s latest State of Marketing survey, the potentially devastating financial fallout to conventional advertising agencies may be precisely the spark the genre needs to get with the interactive age.
The survey reveals that senior marketing experts are anticipating a significant shift away from traditional agencies in favor of increases in digitally-minded hires, in-house training solutions and working relationships with digital agencies. In keeping with the study’s findings a new breed of consultant is springing forth to provide systemic, infrastructural and technological advances to marketers in lieu of old-fashioned advertising agencies. Given that the CMO manages nearly $200 billion is annual marketing budgets, the figurative dark cloud hovering over the traditional model is becoming more demoralizing by the minute.
Traditional advertising’s dilemma has been performance and affiliate marketing’s gain. PPC and SEO are not only cost-effective alternatives to conventional advertising, they bolster visibility increasing ROI. And yet with all the gloom and doom talk, traditional advertising has not picked out its coffin just yet. Last time I checked, television watching and radio listening hasn’t gone the way of the dinosaur. The T-Rex never did get with evolution. It didn’t adapt. There’s still time for traditional advertising to embrace digital. But it would be unwise to wait much longer.
martes, 20 de abril de 2010
Making a Good Overall Impression on Facebook
We’ve all heard the old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Now, before you panic, this blog post will not regress into a litany of clichés. And you have Facebook and Nielson to thank for that. In a study examining the reach and effectiveness of Facebook impressions, Nielson determined that users of the social networking site were more prone to notice ads and purchase brands if they featured earned media and social advocacy. Alas, good impressions that incorporate positive word of mouth win out.
Nielson’s research involved analyzing three forms of Facebook impressions: Homepage ads, Social impressions and Organic impressions. Essentially, Nielson was evaluating the strength of paid and earned media, the former referring to advertising publicity and the latter alluding to publicity gained through favorable opinion. A “Become a Fan” ad created solely to engage the user with a brand is a homepage ad, an example of paid media. A “Become a Fan” ad that also lists the names of other fans in the user’s friend network is a social impression, a blending of earned and paid media. Lastly, an organic impression is a promotional tool that appears on a page belonging to the user’s friend. This impression announces that the friend is a fan of a brand, a type of earned media.
Nielson concluded that social advocacy in Facebook ads doubled awareness among users. More importantly, it resulted in a 4x increase in buyer intent. The lead generation significance in the wake of these findings is palpable. Performance marketers should incorporate the Nielson study into their CPM pitch. The message to advertisers shouldn’t be about making a good first impression. The message should focus on making three – creating a compelling home page to foster organic impressions, stressing the importance of social impressions by investing in paid media and giving due consideration to each impression category for premium campaign effectiveness.
Nielson’s research involved analyzing three forms of Facebook impressions: Homepage ads, Social impressions and Organic impressions. Essentially, Nielson was evaluating the strength of paid and earned media, the former referring to advertising publicity and the latter alluding to publicity gained through favorable opinion. A “Become a Fan” ad created solely to engage the user with a brand is a homepage ad, an example of paid media. A “Become a Fan” ad that also lists the names of other fans in the user’s friend network is a social impression, a blending of earned and paid media. Lastly, an organic impression is a promotional tool that appears on a page belonging to the user’s friend. This impression announces that the friend is a fan of a brand, a type of earned media.
Nielson concluded that social advocacy in Facebook ads doubled awareness among users. More importantly, it resulted in a 4x increase in buyer intent. The lead generation significance in the wake of these findings is palpable. Performance marketers should incorporate the Nielson study into their CPM pitch. The message to advertisers shouldn’t be about making a good first impression. The message should focus on making three – creating a compelling home page to foster organic impressions, stressing the importance of social impressions by investing in paid media and giving due consideration to each impression category for premium campaign effectiveness.
lunes, 19 de abril de 2010
Compliance in online marketing: A case for the long haul
By: Peter Klein, GM of MonetizeIt, MediaWhiz
I started my career in the direct mail world of magazines, “As Seen on TV” products, and sweepstakes offering people a chance at riches. Probably our most questionable tactic back then consisted of making the following exciting, emotional claim; “You could almost possibly already be a winner!” Despite the hyperbole, ten million dollar and one million dollar grand prizes continue to be awarded annually to a fortunate few. It is a real testament to compliance and self-regulation.
In contrast, many of today's online marketers profit from deceptive techniques, false claims and taxation. The Internet has become saturated with fake blogs and fake articles, commonly and not so affectionately referred to as “flogs” and “farticles.” These pages not only make unsubstantiated claims that cause people to spend money and ingest a potentially toxic cocktail of unproven home remedy-type products; they also result in advertisers losing their merchant accounts. How do these companies and affiliates get away with such chicanery? They lack compliance and self-regulation.
Determining how and when to monitor publishers and ensure compliance can be a slippery slope. When these irresponsible parties get blacklisted, will the volume of companies and affiliates contract? This question needs to be carefully considered. Still, FTC involvement levying fines, handing out lawsuits, and assessing future regulations will go a long way toward instituting best practices across the varied media courses.
Compliance and self-regulation are issues of great personal importance. Having spent fifteen years working in direct marketing, I fully recognize the role I played in promoting such practices. But it is this level of understanding that has caused me to reevaluate my prior philosophy and establish better ways of doing business. For example, instituting improved monitoring tools and best of breed practices can diligently protect the brand image of the client. Making branded offers available exclusively to a select group of trusted partners who directly control the media promotes transparency and builds confidence.
Additionally, I believe that creating online governing boards is an idea whose time has come. Global blacklists, standardized regulations, and even scoring affiliates would advance financial and ethical responsibility among Internet marketers. Gravitating toward this limited inclusion model is something of a corrective shift by us “old timers” who expanded the online space over the past decade and remain committed to it for the long haul.
As more dollars pour into the online space, it is time for marketers to unite if we want to avoid the government regulations currently impacting the radio, TV and print mediums. Once that happens, progress will be slowed and all moves will be long-term by default.
Those who have spurious short-term monetary goals are often envied and, at times, held in high esteem. But in my opinion, it is more estimable to execute your wealth building strategy the right way: through compliance and self-regulation.
I started my career in the direct mail world of magazines, “As Seen on TV” products, and sweepstakes offering people a chance at riches. Probably our most questionable tactic back then consisted of making the following exciting, emotional claim; “You could almost possibly already be a winner!” Despite the hyperbole, ten million dollar and one million dollar grand prizes continue to be awarded annually to a fortunate few. It is a real testament to compliance and self-regulation.
In contrast, many of today's online marketers profit from deceptive techniques, false claims and taxation. The Internet has become saturated with fake blogs and fake articles, commonly and not so affectionately referred to as “flogs” and “farticles.” These pages not only make unsubstantiated claims that cause people to spend money and ingest a potentially toxic cocktail of unproven home remedy-type products; they also result in advertisers losing their merchant accounts. How do these companies and affiliates get away with such chicanery? They lack compliance and self-regulation.
Determining how and when to monitor publishers and ensure compliance can be a slippery slope. When these irresponsible parties get blacklisted, will the volume of companies and affiliates contract? This question needs to be carefully considered. Still, FTC involvement levying fines, handing out lawsuits, and assessing future regulations will go a long way toward instituting best practices across the varied media courses.
Compliance and self-regulation are issues of great personal importance. Having spent fifteen years working in direct marketing, I fully recognize the role I played in promoting such practices. But it is this level of understanding that has caused me to reevaluate my prior philosophy and establish better ways of doing business. For example, instituting improved monitoring tools and best of breed practices can diligently protect the brand image of the client. Making branded offers available exclusively to a select group of trusted partners who directly control the media promotes transparency and builds confidence.
Additionally, I believe that creating online governing boards is an idea whose time has come. Global blacklists, standardized regulations, and even scoring affiliates would advance financial and ethical responsibility among Internet marketers. Gravitating toward this limited inclusion model is something of a corrective shift by us “old timers” who expanded the online space over the past decade and remain committed to it for the long haul.
As more dollars pour into the online space, it is time for marketers to unite if we want to avoid the government regulations currently impacting the radio, TV and print mediums. Once that happens, progress will be slowed and all moves will be long-term by default.
Those who have spurious short-term monetary goals are often envied and, at times, held in high esteem. But in my opinion, it is more estimable to execute your wealth building strategy the right way: through compliance and self-regulation.
miércoles, 14 de abril de 2010
Tweeting for Cha-Ching
Twitter has announced its intention to enter the world of advertising, posting ad tweets to searches. When word broke, a collective tweet of horror emanated from Twitter’s vast online networking space. But are the alarm bells unwarranted? If there was a tweet for the word yes, this would be the perfect time to make that little blue birdie sing.
Twitter’s simple, non-invasive advertising plan goes like this – brands with websites on Twitter or those interested in developing such an online presence will be able to purchase what Twitter’s calling Promoted Tweets about their products; the goal being top placement on search engines. In actuality, Twitter has been an unofficial advertising medium for some time. Unlike those informal ads, Promoted Tweets will be obvious enough to get noticed but understated enough to ward off mass user hysteria.
Twitter’s marketing model seems like a well-executed no-brainer but if you read between the lines, you’ll grasp its underlying significant message – Twitter needs loot. And their mechanism for generating profit should prove fruitful for both the social media giant and advertising brands, especially if the latter are wise enough to acquire Promoted Tweets on trending topic searches.
Promoted Tweets, as currently constituted, is a PPC system, charging companies for every 1000 people who view a tweet. So how does this news positively affect performance marketing? Perhaps the question should be posed as follows – How can savvy marketers effectively incorporate Promoted Tweets into their marketing spend? Our agency needs to strike while the ad tweeting is hot to help advertisers recognize precisely when potential customers are seeking information on desire products or services, thus, enabling them to get the highest return on their marketing spend.
Twitter’s simple, non-invasive advertising plan goes like this – brands with websites on Twitter or those interested in developing such an online presence will be able to purchase what Twitter’s calling Promoted Tweets about their products; the goal being top placement on search engines. In actuality, Twitter has been an unofficial advertising medium for some time. Unlike those informal ads, Promoted Tweets will be obvious enough to get noticed but understated enough to ward off mass user hysteria.
Twitter’s marketing model seems like a well-executed no-brainer but if you read between the lines, you’ll grasp its underlying significant message – Twitter needs loot. And their mechanism for generating profit should prove fruitful for both the social media giant and advertising brands, especially if the latter are wise enough to acquire Promoted Tweets on trending topic searches.
Promoted Tweets, as currently constituted, is a PPC system, charging companies for every 1000 people who view a tweet. So how does this news positively affect performance marketing? Perhaps the question should be posed as follows – How can savvy marketers effectively incorporate Promoted Tweets into their marketing spend? Our agency needs to strike while the ad tweeting is hot to help advertisers recognize precisely when potential customers are seeking information on desire products or services, thus, enabling them to get the highest return on their marketing spend.
martes, 16 de marzo de 2010
25 and Just Getting Started
25 Years Ago on March 15th, 1985, the first ever .com was launched, Symbolics.com. But it wasn’t until roughly 10 years later, when Netscape launched the Netscape Navigator, the first widely adopted web browser, that the Internet and the World Wide Web took off. In 1995 VeriSign handled 18 billion website and email connections. Today VeriSign does the same amount of transactions in approximately eight hours. In 1995 there were 16 million Internet users. Today there are over 1.7 billion, amounting to 25% of the world’s population. In 2010 there will be more than 12 million .com addresses. The Web will help drive more than $1.5 trillion in global commerce. The explosive growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web came about when Netscape made it more usable, when their browser made it possible for the average Joe to easily get the content they wanted.
The power of the internet as a communication tool is unprecedented. Where else can a tech geek chair dance to an obscure Romanian pop song and become a global sensation? But the power of this medium is still under leveraged by the marketing community. In 2010 despite digital media accounting for more than 30% of individual media time, digital ad dollars will represent roughly 10% of total advertising spend. Given the increasingly complex online marketing landscape (think social media, ad exchanges, DSP’s, mobile integration, etc.) this gap is understandable. But, just like the tsunami of usage that followed Netscape helping people figure out how to get what they wanted from the Internet, a tsunami of ad dollars are on the way to the Internet as marketers figure out how to take full advantage of the target-ability, customizability and real interactivity that make digital media the best communication tool ever.
The power of the internet as a communication tool is unprecedented. Where else can a tech geek chair dance to an obscure Romanian pop song and become a global sensation? But the power of this medium is still under leveraged by the marketing community. In 2010 despite digital media accounting for more than 30% of individual media time, digital ad dollars will represent roughly 10% of total advertising spend. Given the increasingly complex online marketing landscape (think social media, ad exchanges, DSP’s, mobile integration, etc.) this gap is understandable. But, just like the tsunami of usage that followed Netscape helping people figure out how to get what they wanted from the Internet, a tsunami of ad dollars are on the way to the Internet as marketers figure out how to take full advantage of the target-ability, customizability and real interactivity that make digital media the best communication tool ever.
Performance Marketing: A guide for CMOs
Chris Trayhorn of MThink.com and Peter Klein, GM of MonetizeIT, the MediaWhiz Affiliate network sat down for a Q&A recently. Chris's blurb below summarizes the article that can be found by clicking on the link below.
bit.ly/97MLCX
Chris writes "After a year in which the performance marketing industry had to deal with controversies ranging from Oprah to the FTC, many of the larger, smarter networks are trying to move to higher ground. They’re seeking to attract more quality, brand advertisers, but that means selling performance marketing as a solution to Chief Marketing Officers who may have no experience of it."
bit.ly/97MLCX
Chris writes "After a year in which the performance marketing industry had to deal with controversies ranging from Oprah to the FTC, many of the larger, smarter networks are trying to move to higher ground. They’re seeking to attract more quality, brand advertisers, but that means selling performance marketing as a solution to Chief Marketing Officers who may have no experience of it."
miércoles, 10 de febrero de 2010
Managing social media amid real-time search results
Along with the rise in the importance of social media is the rise in the need to manage your social media presence on search engines. Google has recently begun to include listing from the likes of twitter and facebook in their SERPs, and our Director of Search Marketing, Adam Riff penned a great article on the topic for DMNews that can be found here.
Look for more great thought leadership in the coming days from the Mediawhiz team
Look for more great thought leadership in the coming days from the Mediawhiz team
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