Facebook Stores: Is this the future of business web sites?

It has been a while I am following social media marketing and browsing many e-Stores on Facebook, however it seems like Facebook is actively partnering with some key consumable product brands like Procter & Gamble (P&G). P&G recently announced launching 6 Facebook Stores which will bring a whole new business segment for Facebook. Well if this is a start, what to expect in near future. Amazon, JCPenney, Urban Outfitters, Old Navy and hundreds others have already opened theirs. Even the companies like Amazon, Ebay, Apple cannot live without the integration with Facebook anymore. The value proposition for companies like P&G and others is simply the voice of the customer i.e. sharing the feedback about the products with friends and family. At the same time the biggest challenge would be how the companies overcome the negative marketing that will in other words called bad reviews. Would those bad reviews will be filtered and if it does happen than it does not seems to me a transparent review system.




It is expected to be a billions of dollars business for technology innovators. These innovators developed innovative technology solutions that help companies develop their e-Stores on Facebook and them integrate with twitter and other social media sites like foursquare, livingSocial, Groupon, etc. Many of these e-store developers offer customized solutions as well as subscription based solutions starting from 9 dollars based on number of products.



Paul Marsden at socialcommercetoday.com has compiled a great list of 20 innovators ecommerce solutions developers and also a list of top 50 Facebook Stores.



The interesting trend here to see its that would the business need to manage and maintain different web sites when there core requirement of selling more is achievable through this new type of social e-commerce solutions. If you ask me I would go with one simple Facebook store web site and enhance it to optimize ROI. A domain will directly take you to the Facebook store where you will not only be able to buy products but also share experience across your network.



For more interesting posts like this, visit my blog at Web Technologist.

Netflix 1 : Cable 0

Even since I have started Graduate school I hardly have time to watch TV let alone watch the 3 Netflix DVDs I have sitting on the shelf for the past 3-months. I know, I am not a smart customer, but between a full-time job and classes I don't even find the time to cancel my cable or reduce the number of DVDs I get from Netflix.

I am sure you will all agree with me that Netflix is a wonderful service. When I first came to the U.S. from Israel and heard about it, I thought to myself "this could never work in Israel" - people would just 'forget' to return the DVD, copy it or the mail service would lose it. I was amazed every time how perfectly the system works. Ever since I got an iPad I find myself using the Netflix app almost every time I travel, or sometimes even when I am sitting in a coffee shop.

What only occurred to my now about this service and why I like it so much is the fact that it doesn't have any of the annoying commercials that usually pop-up every time I am watching a stream online or of course on T.V.. Due to the success of Netflix I recently wondered if Netflix would become even more successful would they compromise and start allowing advertising on their site.




In an article published yesterday in NYTimes Bits Blog "Netflix Helps People Cut Cable Cord, Report Says" by Nick Bilton, turns out many people (as one would expect) have been canceling their cable service favoring watching video or streaming on their home television.

"The report found that people who use Netflix to stream Internet video to their televisions are twice as likely to cancel, or slim down, their cable television options."


With this in mind, I couldn't help but think what is happening to all this audience, especially for advertisers who mainly advertise on T.V. Will this shift in audience mean even more online advertising? Although the majority of the people surveyed reported economic reasons as their main reason for canceling cable, 34% said that the growing use of online video was their rationale with Netflix being the main content provider.

As Netflix continues to grow, offering its content on a variety of platforms like smartphones, Apple TV and Boxee it is not unlikely that eventually Netflix will open up for advertisers. I would be interested to hear if you agree with me, do you think online advertising would eventually 'hit' Netflix as well?

Instant Pages - Google new Search Tool

There is no doubt that Google is a Search Engine leader and the reason is simple. Innovation and Wisdom of Crowd. Google introduced a new idea of instant pages that means they will start caching the web results locally instead of sending it to the final destination. The core reason to come up with this idea is to compete with other search engines by offering optimized search speed. It will save searchers 3 to 5 seconds of download time that in computer processing time matters a lot.








This new tool sounds interesting for searchers but what about the companies who own the sites. Will Google face legal issues because of this move? Possible as I remember archive.org also known as way back machine had many legal campaigns for not only copy right violations but also for keeping the records/old versions of web sites.



I have raised this question in our last class "Is this possible to develop a real time live search engine?". I think this instant page is one step ahead of same direction. Wouldn't that be great if we get what we expect live from the web sites. Well the only think that makes it hard is the processing time and a powerful multiprocessor architecture. May be by using quantum computing it will soon no longer be a myth.



This article was originally posted on Search Engine Land that was re-posted on my personal blog at Web Technologist.

Google Local Search and Mobile- The Way of the Future?

Today, Google announced plans to revamp its mobile search, combining two of the important components of the future of paid search advertising we discussed yesterday. New features include the ability to speak what you're searching for into the phone with Google Voice Search and the option to search by clicking and dragging an image into the search box. With Google Goggles, you can point your phone at words in any language to get an instant translation.

What do you folks think about the importance of mobile and local in the future of search? I rarely search for things locally because I feel the information I want is hard to find and inaccurate. Maybe big improvements in the area will help change my mind. However, I definitely agree that mobile is the way of the future. I even find myself searching the web on my iPhone when I'm at home and just too lazy to walk over to the computer. Do you have any other opinions?

What does the AdMeld Acquisition Mean?

Quite simply it means Google is consolidating it’s overwhelming dominance of display advertising. From my initial glance at the acquisition, it appeared that Google was simply growing its already massive analytics toolbox, but I now believe that this is only a small part of their acquisition rationale. The more significant byproduct of the acquisition is the growth Google’s display ad presence.

Admeld’s technology, most notably its yield optimization service, will undoubtedly be incorporated into Google’s own DoubleClick. This does not preclude the possibility that Admeld will continue to operate its original service; the future development efforts will most likely be redirected to doubleclick. Maintaining Admeld will certainly be part of the strategy to retain Admeld’s publisher client base, which is certainly a larger part of the acquisition.

However, a much more powerful and less intuitive benefit of the acquisition is the boost Admeld will make to Google’s display ad presence by increasing their queries per second (qps) volume. Queries per second is a direct measure of the volume of display ads), and these queries are generated by Sell-Side Platforms (SSPs) like Admeld.

I anticipate that Google’s acquisition of Admeld will boost the value of the remaining Sell-Side Platforms, and we even may be seeing Microsoft looking to acquire one of the other major QPS generators.

Facebook and Politics

Facebook is proving to be an increasingly useful tool for politicians. A campaign was conducted recently by SocialCode to measure how many times a potential presidential candidate was “liked”, where the voters were from, and what issues are important to them. Using this information, SocialCode was able to come up with a ranking by importance of issue for potential candidates. They were also able to identify the popularity of potential candidates in a given state. This will prove to be extremely useful in predicting the outcome of the elections. Candidates can use Facebook as a mechanism for measuring where they should focus their energy in the campaign. This is yet another way that social media may prove to have a real effect on world politics.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=152236

Groupon Vs Living Social – Their Approach to Advertising

At the end of Q1 2011 Groupon had 83 million total subscribers compared to 26 million for Living Social. At first glance it seems that Groupon and Living Social have the same business strategy but the way each company approaches its audience is vastly different. Both companies spend heavily on advertising but rely on different channels to get their message across.

“LivingSocial concentrates the vast majority (73%) of its display ads on the top five U.S. Web properties, especially Yahoo and MSN. Within those sites, the ads run chiefly in email and news sections. The rest of LivingSocial's ads are scattered around the Web. Groupon takes the opposite track, running only 31% of its ads to the top publishers' site and spreading the bulk (69%) across mid-tier and long-tail sites.”

The reason might lie behind the demographic and geographic make-up of their audience. Geographically, Groupon's user base lies towards the Midwest and Pacific regions, while LivingSocial is stronger in the East. Which makes sense as Groupon is headquartered in Chicago while LivingSocial in Washington, D.C.

Demographically, Groupon users are younger than its rival’s (25% Groupon users are in the age bracket of 18-24 compared to Living Social’s 10%). Also while Living Social users are more gender balanced, Groupon users are primarily female.

Another reason for the difference in choice of advertising channel might lie in the retail categories that the companies focus on. More than half 50% of Groupon's offers are for restaurants, while more than 40% of the LivingSocial's deals are for books and magazines.

It is worth noting that both companies heavily rely on display marketing instead of search marketing (SEM or SEO) due to the nature of their business model which relies heavily on interruption marketing.

At the same time the differing strategies of both companies raise the question as to who is smarter and why? And what is the brand impact of these strategies. Does LivingSocial benefit from being more selective about its ad placement or is it just a matter of targeting its older audience who read more books and magazines more effectively? Is Groupon chasing its younger audience when advertising in niche websites or is the game simply about achieving the lowest customer acquisition cost?

Another thought to ponder in this discussion might be whether these companies intially used these advertising channels because of their target audience or whether their choice of advertising channels has created their unique audience. I guess it is the case of the chicken or the egg…

Source: Online Media Post

Google Correlate

Given our introduction into cool tools on the internet (i.e. Google Insights, The Wheel) in our digital marketing class – I set out about trying to see what else Google has to offer in this space. Primarily, I was curious to understand what other insights we could gain from people’s search patterns and behaviors. I will focus on one tool that particularly intrigued me – Google Correlate.

It was officially launched at the end of May on GoogleLabs and essentially flips the concept of Google Trends and Insights in that instead of entering a search term and seeing the trend, you enter a trend of a real world activity and see which search terms best match that trend.

The Google Correlate journey actually started with analyzing flu trends. Google compared time series for millions of search queries with the actual influenza data to find the queries that best correlated with flu trends...they found that certain search terms were surprisingly good indicators of actual flu activity. Google correlate allows you to use your own time series data and the output is a set of search queries that are best correlated with the your ‘real world’ time series data.

Now you are thinking ‘ well what if I don’t have time series data – just a term I’d like to check’. Of course there is a solution for this too. Lets say we type in ‘sunglasses’ the correlation data shows that the term ‘fossil sunglasses’ is most highly correlated with this term. Fossil is actually a brand of sunglasses so we might infer that they recently launched an ad campaign which influenced search behavior. See the results by clicking on this link: http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=sunglasses&t=weekly

Like all other things Google – the beauty is in the simplicity of use yet the wealth of information and insights you can draw from the output. An interesting question posed by a web article on this topic was when hedge funds will start using this – any digital marketers/financiers in the class want to take a punt?

Google AdWords: let the buyer beware

No journalist out there has done a better job of keeping a sharp eye on Google's monstrously successful AdWords product than The Register's Cade Metz. He is a must read. Here's why:

For the uninitiated, Google AdWords is the product that makes Google most of its money -- it's the monetization engine behind its search engine, which in a very real way is actually a loss leader. AdWords takes your searches, matches it with bids from advertisers, and then displays ads next to your search results. It's actually a great way for small, low-budget and relatively unsophisticated ad buyers to get access to advertising -- without having to hire a media-buying firm.

Sounds simple enough. But Google can trick you in many small ways. For example, default settings can actually be pretty dangerous for your budget, being allocated to words that sound like or are spelled like the ads you've purchased. If your ad is for "Hello Kitty", then "Hi Kitty" isn't quite the same thing.

But, of course, Google has an incentive to move inventory, and these little problems for you are profits for them. So if you're spending any money with Google AdWords, keeping abreast of Cade's latest articles about AdWords is a very good idea.

Hulu Tries to Mitigate Declines in Summer Viewership

This summer Hulu is exploring new ways to increase viewership over the summer months. The company has experienced the same decline in viewership that networks have historically faced in the summer and is looking for innovative ways to turn that around. As part of their strategy they have acquired 3 new shows that will be available in the U.S. exclusively via Hulu. Historically, Hulu has not held exclusive rights to content and as such they have been an alternative viewing platform. This could prove to be an interesting approach for Hulu and we will see how it plays out in the U.S. market. The question is: are they actually finding a solution to increase summer viewership with this strategy? I am skeptical that these three shows will offer something unique vs. the “counter-programming strategy” that has been used by television programmers for years with little success. I find it highly unlikely given the nature of the shows acquired that they are going to make up for the historical drops in percent viewership over the summer months. Even if the content is extremely compelling and results in a slight boost in the number of viewers this will not spill over into the other content Hulu is offering. It makes sense to think of the television industry as cyclical and while it is an interesting approach on Hulu’s part exclusive rights to these shows will not be the end of their summer woes.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-hulu-20110611,0,7294936.story

The User Journey: Understanding your Visitor to Optimize your Website

There sooner you understand who is visiting your site, the better you can guide them through the user experience. The better you guide them through the user experience, the more effective your site and ultimately your campaign will be.

Personas are an effective tool that allows you to internalize the differences between individual users. Jessica, a kindergarten teacher and mother of 4, who married her high school sweetheart and still lives in the same town where she grew up a half hour outside of Pittsburgh may visit Gilt Groupe, the same deeply discounted luxury brand website as Michaela, who recently graduated top of her class from Yale Law and is a young associate working 100+ hour weeks at Sullivan & Cromwell. While these two women are the same age and ethnicity, they have very different motivations for visiting this same site.

Jessica may be browsing pictures of pretty things and day-dreaming of a different life outside of the only one she has ever known. Michaela, on the other hand, is using her only free moment between 2 and 2:30 am to order that perfect dress for her best friend’s wedding that she is desperately hoping not to miss because she is tied up in depositions and at the bottom of the totem pole at work.

The sooner you segment the Jessicas from the Michaelas on your site, the more effective you will be in selling that perfect dress to Michaela and the perfect dream to Jessica.

Can new companies compete with "tech giants"?

Here is an article written for all of those aspiring tech entrepreneurs out there. The author offers some notable examples of companies that have held a stake in the market despite competition from the “tech giants”. We are operating in an extremely competitive environment with a handful of very innovative and powerful players. This can be discouraging for entrepreneurs interested in entering the market. New ventures are often dismissed too soon because of the competitive threat of these companies. Often this is justified given the resources the large players are working with but there are the exceptions where small companies really can provide a better product. The author suggests that while these major players can’t be ignored, it is important to note that when it comes to specialized products small companies can prevail.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/tech-giant-eats-your-lunch/

Is Twitter a social media or a social game?

Twitter announced that it has already have 175 million accounts by May, 2011. Although according to some reports, the active user number is about 85 million, it is a huge number and more people treat twitter as one part of their lives. People not only use twitter to follow celebrities as well as friends, but also use it to let the WORLD know what they are doing, e.g. what restaurants they are going, what thoughts they have etc. A question come to my mind, is Twitter really a social media website, that people use it to gather information/build up relationship, or it is also something else? I found it interesting that Twitter also looks like a social game to me. Different people use it differently. It is just like you are playing a role in the twitter game, you are playing a "twittered you" online. You decide what kind of information you want to twitter. Because people can not twitter every aspect of the their life online, they choose what they want to say and what kind of image they want to show to others. Although these information is true, I would say there is still a sense of acting in the twittering behavior. Someone always twitter what books they read. They maybe are true book-lovers, but it is also possible that they want to establish themselves as book-lovers. It is just like playing a game. Just my two cents here after I heard my friend said that is easy to find out what kind of person a people is from his/her twitter account.

Arrival of "The King" to the world of financial transparency

According to a CNBC report released today Facebook is very likely to finally enter the arena of publicly traded companies sometime early next year. The arrival of the "King of Social Media" to the world of financial transparency will be the biggest test of all social media.

As more and more social media companies go public to finance their growth, the more attention investors and the world pays how well these companies can deliver the expected financial results. Companies like Groupon that is going public with a valuation around $20B while still being in the red despite its $713 million revenue, or LinkedIn at $7B IPO valuation that quickly doubled in the first day of trading will be under scrutiny from investors.

Facebook has been the success story of the post-dot-com-bust era and the icon of the new online business opportunities. The big test of these social-media-fueled business models has just begun and the arrival of "The King" will accelerate this process to a great extent. The question is not whether social media provides viable foundation for a business model but whether investors assess the potentials in those business models with a cool head. If they don't, I recommend everyone to buckle up and get ready for the ride, it's gonna be rough...

http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/13/report-facebook-planning-100b-ipo-for-q1-2012/

The Value of a Good Domain Name

Since our last two classes have revolved around SEO, I will share some thoughts on the value of a domain name as it applies to search. Based on my experience, the three most effective ways of earning rank in Google's search results are by earning back links from relevant websites, titling your pages properly, and using a domain name that includes your targeted keyword.

I spent a few months pursuing traffic from the keyword "Bored." It turns out that "Bored" and "I'm Bored" are two very common search queries, driving hundreds of thousands of clicks from Google every day. After a painful negotiation, I secured the domain name ibored.com as a way to tap into the popularity of those searches, and made it to the first page of the results for the above queries.

However, over the past few years, the rise of social media and apps have made search a little less relevant for media sites. Media consumption has become more passive than active -- users consume by seeing what their friends are sharing on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr rather than seeking it out. As a result, the value of those top results on Google have become slightly less important, and the real value of the domain name has slightly decreased. This trend is only growing, and is a strong threat to both search and entrepreneurs who invested in buying top tier domain names.

The Evolution of Internet Goes Beyond Search

Although I find the tools learned in class extremely helpful and beneficial for increasing website visits, search-ability, and therefore profits, I wanted to focus on how the evolution of the Internet and social media goes beyond business. In the TedTalk: Robert Ebert: RemaAlthough I find the tools learned in class extremely helpful and beneficial for increasing website visits, search-ability, and therefore profits, I wanted to focus on how the evolution of the Internet and social media goes beyond business. In the TedTalk: Robert Ebert: Remaking My Voice (20min. on Hulu.com), Robert Ebert describes the process by which he communicates now after several surgeries and the loss of his voice.

At first he wrote messages in notebooks, but found he was able to type faster than write, and moved on to typing words into a laptop and using a built in computer voice. Ebert describes the process of trying out different computer voices and the odd sense of speaking through someone else’s voice. His favorite voice is currently the Alex Voice by Apple because it knows punctuation and is able to integrate it into the fluctuation of the computer voice. Most recently Ebert contacted a group in Scotland who makes custom computer voices. He sent them several clips from his TV shows and commentaries. The company was able to piece together a voice that sounds much more like Ebert’s however, the fluctuation and emphasis of each word is a bit sporadic, which makes for an uneven sounding sentences. Ebert continues to use the Alex Voice as the Scotland-based company continues to tweak Ebert’s voice based on pre-recorded copies.

The most touching part of his story was his description of how the evolution of the Internet, along with Facebook, Twitter, email, and Blogs have given him back his voice – he can speak again and relies on these tools for his daily existence. Another point he makes is that online – everyone speaks at the same speed – not all people are patient enough for Ebert to type his thoughts and wait for Alex to speak them outloud in real-time. This is irrelevant for Internet use. Ebert concludes by reflecting on the terrible isolation he would feel if he was not living during this time, with these tools. He describes how his ability to think and write has not changed because technology has given him the ability to express himself.

I was very touched by this presentation and began to think…how can we expand this? How can businesses, hospitals, nonprofits, etc. maximize their use of these tools not only for business purposes but for the benefit of human health and communication? Thoughts? Experiences?

Personas - Threat or Opportunity for TV?

My background is in cable TV ad sales and I'm nowhere near fully aware of what potential the digital world has...I just know that it has a lot. I've been hoping to find out how digital marketing capabilities are better than TV and I've found the first of what I imagine will be many in the form of the personas discussion.

TV's strength has always been its combination of sheer scale and offering of a collective viewing experience. That said, a hit show can pull in a ton of viewers, but it's one-size-fits all. As a marketer, you just have to hope that the spot you spent six figures on will be seen by some of your target audience...and you only get to pick one target.

...which is where personas come in, because they allow you as a marketer to offer each of your target segments a tailored experience. That's something TV simply can't match and it strikes me as an amazing opportunity to apply psychological / psychographic research to highly targeted marketing. So, I wonder if there's a way to apply the persona approach to TV so advertisers can merge scale with customization. For all the talk of interactive TV being the future, there's very little insight into how it'll play out. Could it be something like programming with different, selectable perspectives or commentary, each tailored to a specific niche? Sort of like a DVD special feature on overdrive? I think that could be a cool idea; what I know for sure is that TV dinosaurs could learn a lot from ideas like personas if they're going to cut through all the clutter.

Branding for Digital vs. Non-Digital Companies

I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend and fellow entrepreneur who is starting a beverage company. I was telling him how hugely helpful our graphic designer (who also built our brand) has been at Sportaneous (www.sportaneous.com), and suggested that he find someone good in-house to take care of his branding and graphic design like we did. I said that given the number of ongoing graphic needs, it's worth finding someone good (if you can) and offering a small equity chunk in exchange for high-quality ongoing work. My friend responded that for a more non-digital, traditional company like his, he was inclined to just hire somebody contractually rather than give them equity, since he didn't see them having the same kinds of ongoing needs that a digital company like mine has.

This raises an interesting question: do non-digital, more traditional companies, like a beverage company, have less significant needs for their digital branding? I think this question actually hints at a larger question: do these traditional companies need to "go digital" at all or will there always be a place for such companies in tomorrow's world, regardless of their digital presence? I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts...

Customizing to Customers

Here is an interesting article on TellApart which was started by to ex-Google engineers. The service helps to take the users cookies and customize their experience based on their preferences. We touched on this some in class. The interesting thing is the parallel they draw between old marketing and new when discussing the fears of privacy. The team argues that using the cookie information is no different than direct marketers keeping tabs on household information for catalog mailings. Somehow, I think it's not exactly the same thing. Here's the full article.http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/tellapart-raises-money-to-help-online-retailers-advertise/?ref=technology

SEO and Social Media for Non-profits

Coming from a non-profit background, learning about digital marketing has me thinking about ways that these methods can be used for non-profits as well as for-profit companies. My experience with non-profits is that they have a long way to go in terms of SEO; it’s not something I hear people thinking about and I’m sure that most of them (the smaller ones anyway) are not tracking analytics. I’ve noticed in e-mails I get from various groups, for instance, that many links say “Click here for more information” or something along those lines as opposed to information about where the link will take you. It seems like this could be a big area of growth and improvement for non-profits and those that do focus on SEO should gain an edge. However, they have fully embraced social media and this is an area where non-profits have an advantage over for-profits. It makes more sense to friend or follow an organization whose activities align with your personal interests than a corporation who is trying to sell a product. Successful non-profits know this and have done a lot to increase their visibility and promote their agenda through Facebook and Twitter. Text message donations have also been a huge boon for larger non-profits and are an interesting and exciting fundraising strategy. It will be interesting to see how they are able to innovate in the years to come in order to use social media to their advantage, and to see if SEO starts to become the buzzword in non-profit circles that is for for-profits.

FTC regulations and Digital Marketing

A substantial amount of data collection activity on the internet seems to rely on information placed on consumers device (a cookie).

The Federal Trade Commission has published a report and offered a frame work and also testified on a proposed legislation by congress women Jackie Speier, on allowing consumers greater control on what kind of data is being collected by sites.

From the congress women's site:
"The Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011 would direct the Federal Trade Commission to develop standards for a “Do Not Track” mechanism that would allow individuals to choose upfront to opt out of the collection, use or sale of their online activities, and require covered entities to respect the consumer’s choice. Failure to do so would be considered an unfair or deceptive act punishable by law. The covered entity would have to disclose its collection and sharing practices, including with whom the information is shared. The bill would allow the FTC to exempt commonly accepted commercial practices like the collection of information for billing purposes..."

There is a lot written about this topic but I have'nt seen any mention of how data collection tools and marketing agencies plan on countering this if it does become a law.

Any thoughts on how to effectively plan to reduce reliance on tools and strategies which are dependant on tracking cookies placed on consumers' devices?

The power of mobile internet

Since the first lesson of this course I could not avoid thinking that here in US digital marketing is very powerful also because internet penetration is already very high and growing. Looking at small countries in Europe such as Italy, Austria and Portugal, not to talk about the majority of developing countries, we see a very different situation. Even if internet users and their average time online is growing, internet penetration is still low, and in the majority of developing countries the quality of the network is still very bad and the computer penetration is very low. How will digital marketing approach those countries? I guess the answer is mobile internet. Cell phone penetration is incredibly high almost everywhere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use) and many telecom providers are now heavily investing in this business. This will definitely give digital marketing the possibility to reach millions of people everywhere in the world. How the communication is going to change? Customization is going to become more and more important and highly dependent on the country’s language, culture and type of mobile devices available. Websites mobile optimization, word-limited advertising messages, smartphones applications are all going to be country specific? Mobile internet would probably become the most used marketing vehicle along the entire marketing funnel, more widespread then TV and newspapers. Mobile digital marketing will have to find ways to become more and more effective in creating awareness/building the brand and activating the demand, also considering the fact that the benefits of halo effects will be significantly reduced due to the low penetration of the other media vehicles. Will digital marketing be able to successfully exploit this multi-billion dollars opportunity!?

Can Social Media be more effective than SEO for startups?

While doing a search on Search Engine Optimization(SEO), which I figured could have been like “googling” Google, and was worried about some sort of implosion, I came across an interesting blog post on SEO for startups. The article “SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups”, was written earlier this year and takes the view that SEO is very 2008 and that using it as your single marketing strategy is not effective enough in getting users to your site.

I agree that using SEO as the only marketing strategy will generally not be very effective but the process and use of the tools to make sure your site is optimized is now more of a cost of entry into the market than something that is going to get you in front of the competition. Although many of the search engine algorithms are kept secretive, it is still important for these websites to have the correct labeling, inserts, links, captions and keywords to make sure that their site gets indexed. That way, if the spiders are only looking for those items, then at least your site should appear somewhere in the results. It would be expected now days, that any website that is a major player in the market is using these tools and therefore you would be even further behind if you decided not to use SEO for your site.

Looking further at the costs of entry and as part of setting up your site, it would seem to be more important to register your own Facebook page, Twitter account and Blog linked to your site. Building on that, working on creating more social buzz, by blogging, tweeting and posting on Facebook to get fans, followers and readers, can be a more effective tool for getting users. Getting others to repost, retweet and link into your articles and effectively market your side for you could be the better, more value play. After all, external linking into your webpage is supposed to get you higher ranking on the list for search engines. So rather than hire one of the many SEO experts, it might offer more value to hire a more rare social media expert.

Does this mean that the SEO of 2008 is now the social media of today and leveraging those tools are the better more viable startup strategies?

Beware of Groupon

We are all familiar with Groupon's business model: selling discount vouchers to restaurants, spas, etc., at a major markdown—up to 90 percent off a retailer's usual prices—and then requiring the retailer to pay a big chunk of the voucher revenues back to Groupon. As one of the fastest growing businesses in history, Groupon has done extremely well and is set to go public by the end of the year. However, as more competitors or "copycats" start to emerge, the holes in the groupon model start to become more noticeable. For example, although groupon is an effective marketing tool for some businesses, it is certainly not for everyone. Jessie Burke, owner of Posies cafe in Portland, announced via twitter and Facebook that using groupon was the single worst decision she ever made for her business. She ended up losing money and attracting customers who werent likely to be regulars- which is an issue when you are running a neighborhood/ local coffee spot. In addition, she had an unfavorable experience with her groupon sales rep who wasn't helpful, providing little or no information on logistics- for example on how to prevent customers from using the groupon several times. An increasing number of dissatisfied small business owners with similar complaints have since come out of the woodwork. On the consumer side, groupon buyers have also become agitated with the fine print on many groupon deals. So I am curious if Groupon has implemented any new tactics to improve the relationship between it's sales force and the small businesses or if Groupon has become blindly focused on attracting big corporate clients. Or is groupon finding a sustainable way to successfully retain both types of clients by recognizing and fulfilling very different needs. There is still a lot of excitement around groupon, and while it will be interesting to see where the company goes in the next few years, groupon needs to be careful not to lose any more consumer trust which can damage it's public perception permanently.

Tell Apart raises $13 Millions to bring personalized display advertising to a new level

TellApart helps retargeting customers, i.e. showing display ads to potential customers who visited but abandoned their shopping on e-commerce website. More than 95% of visitors are not buying… Basically TellApart is offering a second chance to Digital Marketers of E-Commerce websites . TellApart Transactional Retargeting helps bring them back through the use of dynamic, personalized banner ads which show your products to the right visitors. Simply put, it turns lost shoppers into return customers.

Not only does TellApart helps follow potential customers, but also it evaluates each individual shopper, based on the data collected from previous customer behavior. This is then used to decide which customers have the most potential value to the business, and to serve them product-specific display ads.

I think the value proposal of TellApart is very exciting; it gives the chance to Retailers and E-commerce websites to study the user journeys and their personas during and after their visit to the website. If this company is able to come up with truly efficient Customer Quality Score, the use of both personalized display ad and personalized website experience could really help improve conversion rates. Plus the two former Google founders are going with a low-risk, high-return pricing by opting for a pay-for-performance model. To be followed…

Online deals move to cars

Today's news: Edmund.com, an online auto research and shopping site, is launching a program - "Edmund Exclusives" - that will basically apply to cars the daily deal model that sites like Groupon and SocialLiving created for more "small ticket" items. The program is currently in beta in one market - South Florida - but the company will probably run it out nationally this summer.

Essentially, Edmund Exclusives will offer geotargeted deals for new and used cars to consumers. As said by Edmunds.com's VP of business operations Michelle Denogean, the program will give people access to local deals directly at Edmunds.com, where people go when they are at the bottom of the purchase funnel and ready to buy. It will give automakers a topical sales ointment to treat inventory problem flare-ups that might not be responding to a more systemic treatment of national or regional incentives: "It helps automakers and dealers who have excess inventory or oversupply of specific models, or have a need to get rid of the past model-year vehicles through additional discounts," she says. "So it is intended to be very targeted to areas that need that focused conversation around certain vehicles," she says.

The program will offer cash-back, financing and leasing deals to people from dealers in their market. It may also expand to include deals on repairs and parts, maintenance and body shops, aftermarket audio dealers and auto broker services.

The company, she said, had been considering a program like this for a while, "When the Daily Deal took off, it became clear that at some point someone would do this for cars. Why not Edmunds?"

Let's see.

Infographic on How Advertising Dollars are Spent

Here is an interesting infographic from Mashable.com about how advertising dollars are split among internet, television, newspapers, radio, etc. The graphic shows, as Professor Kagan explained in the first session, that while internet spend is growing, television still makes up the vast majority of advertising dollars spent.

The infographic also shows how while internet revenue dipped during the recession, it has basically recovered and is expected to reach $28 billion in 2011.

In my opinion, the most interesting fact contained in the infographic relates the time consumers spend on a given medium to the dollars advertisers spend per hour. The graphic shows that for every hour consumers spend reading the newspaper, advertisers spend $0.53, but for every hour consumers spend on the internet and mobile, advertisers only spend $0.12 and only $0.01 respectively!

This last statistic regarding the amount spent on mobile advertising is staggering. There seems to be enormous room for growth in mobile advertising. However, it is hard to ignore the vast differences in physical size of medium. A newspaper's expansive surface area allows for tons of ads, but an iPhone screen can become cluttered extremely quickly. Similarly, frequently changing and moving mobile ads can be extremely disruptive. How will marketers increase mobile and internet spending without cluttering the page and overwhelming consumers? Or will the targeting of ads become so precise that it will be possible to spend much less than $0.53 per hour for the same results?

An alcohol brand that knows how to engage young people...

I was thinking last class in creative ways to make people visit a particular website and engage them in such as way that they recommend this website to other people. Particularly I remember an example of a beer brand in Argentina called “Quilmes”. Somehow they always manage to have the best advertising on TV and online. A fun experience I had in this website was a game where you chose an argentine celebrity, selected from a set of options what you wanted the celebrity to say and then included a friends’ name. The idea was to send this video to a friend by email or post it on Facebook and they would receive a “private” message from a celebrity. This was a campaign for the “friend’s day” we celebrate in Argentina; basically a day where all friends get together and celebrate their friendship. Your friend would receive a tempting proposal and decide whether they wanted to spend the day with you or with the celebrity.

Anyway, after one day, I had received several videos and Facebook was flooded by the brand “Quilmes”. I believe the added value of Internet and especially social communities lies behind understanding what you and the people that surround you find as fun. Thus, by thinking creatively you can engage the community and enhance traffic.

Check this link to see the ad! (After minute 0:37)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxZBRnFH5W0

Advertorials - Good or Bad?

My fiance just got an iPad, and so far I feel exactly about it the same way I did one year ago....I'm not sure if it adds any value to my life. Yet, digital marketers are always running to keep ahead, or rather keep up, with emerging technologies, and the iPad presents yet another channel for advertising experimentation. As companies seek to maximize presence and format across the burgeoning types of screen devices, I am always questioning the effectiveness of advertising across all these channels. I know there are very sophisticated strategies developed to help guide professionals in terms of their budget allocations, but as I've stated before, what I find interesting is that to some degree, advertisers are still limited by the templates provided by each medium. Enter advertorials. What is an advertorial?

An advertorial or is an advertisement designed to simulate editorial content, while at the same time offering valid information to your prospective clients.

Advertorials have always existed, and I've had many clients jump at the opportunity of adding this type of advertising to their portfolio mix. It makes sense....who doesn't want curated content next to their products, seamlessly integrated deep within the folds of web content? It's a great way to break free of the IAB molds. It's a great way to reach out to customers in a more engaging way, and it's a great way to validate your advertising.

BUT, what is different about the Internet, in my opinion, is that we expect a lot of content writers to write for free (i.e. bloggers, editors, etc.), and not only that but we pretty much get the news for free, whether it be a limited version of the New York Times, or a news aggregation site like HuffPo. Are we comfortable with the idea of bloggers and the like getting paid to write about about products, and are we comfortable with nondisclosure about such agreements?

Monetization on the Internet is...complex, so it fits sensibly that advertorials help grease the wheels, but are we comfortable with posts blending into advertorials? Can there be a balance achieved where content providers get remuneration, companies can have more advertising options, and the integrity of news content remains steadfast?

Mobile MKT = 1:1 MKT

We all know that traditional MKT was based on mass MKT, and marketers used CPM to measure how 'many' people were exposed to certain messages and the cost of doing so. I guess that the basic concept of reaching out for more and more people was not different in internet MKT.

There are clear pros and cons in mass MKT, but in terms of effective resource allocation, 1:1 MKT was the ultimate goal for these marketers who always had tight budget. They wanted to send messages to 'customers' (who pays, or will pay), not to bunch of other people who had zero interest.

However, nowadays, I have a strong belief that the monster called 'mobile MKT' can be the ideal ways to achieve 1:1 MKT. It automatically tracks where you are, where you have been, and when you move around. Also by checking twitter or facebook mobile, marketers can find out what you wear, where you eat, and what you have bought for your girlfriend. They do not need regression analysis to find 'middle point' for everyone.. they only need to 'sort' from the data base that is updated by mobile devices, on time.

As Binhe said in the previous article, this is really a shift in MKT history. Now the technology is sending us to the stage where no marketer even have dreamed of, the 1:1 MKT.

Clustering the ideas

After reading a dozen of project names and ideas, i am amazed by the creativity of entrepreneurs in this vibrant city. With the Internet and other new media, it is easy to invite anybody to provide new ideas. When judging a new idea anlytically, we evaluate ideas if it is big enough and it would acutally work. Big think ideas have big impact. They change markets and transform industries and the companies that launch them.

Apple's iPhone was an idea that had great potential for major business imapct. When it was launched, this idea had the potential to transform Apple's already huge iPod business and to break dowsn the barriers between the lucrative mobile phone business and the broader consumer electronics category. Google, Facebook and Groupon are some other good examples.

Ideas come from everywhere. The trick is creating a process that will contactly capture new ideas. Right ideas often have the potential to generate strong communications. When new idea get customers talking, the word-of-mouth impact is more significant in online world.

Traditional against digital marketing

As I sit into both Marketing Managing Program and Digital Marketing class this term, i am intrigued in comprehending the difference of tradtional marketing from digital marketing as both classes evlove. Tradtitional marketing seems to be a canon of principles, concepts and methodolgies that have amassed through the last few decades. These concepts have essentially unchanged and not developed in response to the information, branding and communications and revolutions we are facing today. Traditional markeing is largely focused on functional features and benefits with product category and competition narrowly defined. The emergence of digital marketing unveils a completely different path with incredible accuracy of analytical methods and tools. It alos requires a very different type of brain power. Lots of consumer goods companies still rely on tradtional marketing and tend to perceive digital marketing as an additional format to what they focus on. But personally i believe digital marketing should be the revoluntary force to drive the fundamental change in marketing principles not only for technology companies but also for tradititional industries.

The social search

Last week I blogged about how facebook seems to be better positioned than Google to reap the benefits of the global surge in online ad spending. On a related subject, Bing (Microsoft's search engine) launched its social search a short while ago integrating facebook (which Microsoft owns a minority stake in) into the search results. While Google replied last month by announcing that it will globally roll out its social search functionality, Bing's integration with Facebook is priceless.

Facebook is essentially becoming part of Bing's methodology to rank search results and also gives a better user experience since people can see what their friends have liked in the search results. While Google intends to provide similar features it will always show more social results from strangers since it does not have the integration that Bing enjoys.

As against the flow as this might sound but Google is taking another blow while Microsoft is scoring a point. Microsoft is still way behind Google though on online services and particularly search.

Plug and Play

I just read about Plug and Play, properly Plug and Play Tech Center, a startup accelerator in the Silicon Valley, similar to its famous counterpart Y Combinator. What's Plug and Play? A startup accelerator that in the past five years has built a community of over 280 tech startups, ranging from Web 2.0 to cloud services to systems and telecomms. As of the economics, Pug and Play in these five years has helped the startups in raising more than $750 million in venture funding.

A couple of info that can be not only interesting but also useful for all of you:

First, Plug and Play is offering a 10-week summer program name Plug and Play Startup Camp designed to immerse young startups and entrepreneurs into the Silicon Valley environment, through workshops, speaker series, mentor sessions, as well as coaching to help entrepreneurs cement business models, prototypes, and so on.

Second, Plug and Play organizes 4 EXPOs at the end of each quarter and 2 University EXPOs, in which it hosts a selection of startups presenting their businesses to 100 VCs and investors. In these EXPOs, the judges vote on the top three companies, which then will have the opportunity to raise funding and - hopefully - go on to fame and fortune. As an example, the winners of the last EXPO were Aisle411 (an in-store retail navigation app that allow consumers to search for and navigate to products in stores), Creaza Inc (an online video production platform for users willing to produce and share their videos), and XYZ Interactive (a company developing low cost sensors to be used for example to control devices without touching them).

It all seems very interesting. Sounds like - why am I not that genius? Why am still here?

Well, let's wait and hope - maybe it will be our chance soon...

Digital Marketing and the Restaurant Industry

When was the last time you actually used flyers and catalogues to find restaurants? Gone are the days of trial and error, walking block to block to locate a restaurant only to find that you would’ve been better off fasting that night.
In our lives, the internet plays a critical role in determining our daily diets. It has revolutionized the restaurant industry in that now, every restaurant invariably has an online presence. From restaurant lists, to menus, reviews and even reservations, the internet provides numerous outlets for restaurants to engage with their customers. And the advent of social media platforms has only taken this a step further – you can receive automatic updates with reviews and menu recommendations from friends every time you ‘check-in’ to a restaurant. As much as this is a boon for restaurant owners, it is also a bane.
Think about the (sometimes unfair) power that lies in the hand of the media. It can make or break a restaurant (and many other businesses) with a couple of damaging words fed to a hungry and burgeoning online community. The slightest slip-up could be exaggerated, which could blacklist the restaurant forever. The competition was always stiff, but now it’s gotten stiffer.

A social whirl

After years in the doldrums, the IPO market for technology firms has suddenly sprung to life again with a number of web outfits in pipeline such as Groupon. Shortly after Linked-In's stunning debut, web companies from China and Russia are also rushing to list on American exchanges. Yandex, Russia's largest search engine, floated its shares on the NYSE with price soared by more than 50% ont he first day of trading. Renren, a Chinese social network with a recent listing in America, has even higher value per user than Facebook. Compared with Facebook's over 500 million users, Renren only has 31 million. However, its value per user exceeds USD165, at least USD10 higher than Facebook. Do we see these social-media firms more champagne or bubbles?

What Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Nokia Said, and What They Really Meant

Nice article that will help you understand what is "really" happening in the Media and Technology industries .... Funny!

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/7-biggest-ceo-secrets-accidentally-revealed-allthingsd/228012/

Google analytics in political realm

My team works on a business plan for Introduction to Venturing class, seeking to cross over many concepts from different fields like finance (portfolio allocation theory) and statistics (regression) to the political realm. The ability to track and conduct A/B test, as illustrated by those Google tools in class, inspried me to apply it to our optimized election case. Apparently, the social media offers a new world of tracking and analytics. The popular pay-per-click option comes by Google Analytics, showing real-time feedback about visits to sponsored websites and even easy pricing estimates before the purchase. In a way, it could optimize election through utilizing public records and propriatary polls to test, refine and update its political economic models. The data age in contemporary political campaigns has been marked by the emergency and evolution of digital marketing. Therefore, tracking online could be increasingly attentive to offlline activities such as traditional benchmark and tracking polls.

Facebook behavior vs. real-world behavior

I ran across a very interesting article this morning; this article discusses how certain social networking behaviors online are perfectly acceptable...when they are done online. Yet, these same behaviors are not acceptable at all when conducted in the real world. In fact, if you try these, you'd come off borderline insane and downright creepy.

I decided to share a few instances here with the class:

1. Someone said something interesting in class - five classmates followed by raising their hands and said "Like". They proceeded to write their comment on the classroom "wall"...WOMP WOMP

2. Walk up to someone in class and asked "Can I be your friend?"

3. Ask a classmate if he/she has a twitter account. If yes, ask if you can "follow" him/her but then literally follow this person around the campus.

Pretty interesting, huh?

You may check out the actual video in this link below:

http://gizmodo.com/5810731/facebook-behavior-makes-you-look-insane-and-creepy-in-the-real-world

Mint.

Why digital marketing?

Recently, a fellow classmate poked fun at me for taking an easy class, aka , Digital Marketing Strategy. He is a dear friend and along with several other classmates, they took nothing but finance courses this summer. In defense of not taking any finance course, I refuted by saying finance does not solve every problem a company faces. If customers can't find you, you won't generate any sales. No sales = no money = no use of finance. $0 = $0 no matter how you mess with it.

I rested my case. Finance is important, but com'on, there are too many people in this world that knows finance. Why not take the opportunity to learn something new? This knowledge may one day help me set up my own online consulting company.

Reputation and the Internet

All the scandal in the last week about Rep Weiner goes to show just how the internet has changed both the definition of scandal and how reputations can quickly be changed. In many ways, the internet has opened up a whole new medium for inappropriate behavior that, despite best efforts, is really hard to make private. Perhaps the comedian Andy Borowitz said it best: “Thanks to technology, politicians can now wreck their careers without all the bother of having actual sex.”

Of course, this has relevance to digital marketing. Companies’ reputations can be brought down almost as quickly as a politicans with poor customer service or some poorly handled incident. Just as the women who received Rep Weiner’s tweets will now forever have their online reputation linked with this event- (can you imagine googling these women 20 years from now and NOT having this incident come up as the #1 hit?)- so, too, does a failure on a part of a company stick around for longer now. All the bad PR still lingers, searchable, on the net, even with any subsequent good PR trying to offset it. Also, surely it must be easier to generate negative reviews, reactions and posts from customers than positive ones?

Additionally, this reminds me of an article in the NYTimes several months ago. An eye glass company in NYC intentionally treated its customer terribly, essentially stealing money from them and providing low quality products. Their motivation? To generate so many poor reviews and posts that they would come to the top of a Google search!

Content is King in Brand Awareness

Despite all of the focus on keywords and catchphrases, the single best way to optimize your copy for search is to have great content with motivation and substance.

It can be hard to convince a company to put money behind content they are giving away for free. But the days of people coming to visit a website or a facebook page just because they're there are over (if they ever existed at all). Users have to see more than just marketing blather on a page to want to visit a site more than once. Meaningful content also acts as 'link bait', improving SEO for the company not just because keywords appear, but because people find it valuable enough to share.

Of course there are mechanics that can be learned to help with SEO, but the core values for creating a great brand awareness promotion are no different than they are for 'traditional' media. Create a branded promotional item that is useful, and people will remember your company's name. Think of the recipe for Rice Krispie treats that made the cereal both a breakfast and a desert food. The Maxwell House Haggadah continues to make the coffee brand a must-have at seders, and a product to remember throughout the year. The Betty Crocker cookbook has cemented the brand as a go-to cooking resource.

There are sites that are doing this very well. One of my favorites is King Arthur Flour, which offers a wealth of recipes that serve a variety of needs -- including a whole section on gluten-free baking -- plus a baking blog that updates regularly. Stride Rite offers a section on keeping your child's feet healthy, as well as a downloadable sizing chart. On the non-profit front, the NRDC has a treasure trove of link bait, including sections on 'Smarter Living' and 'Smarter Business' that offer practical tips and suggestions for improving health and environmental well-being in the lives of people.

The idea of offering free value to build brand awareness isn't new. But it is more powerful than ever. Online distribution is cheap and allows for previously unheard of viral spread of useful material. Keywords are important, but even more important: create a promotion that people want and need.

The Information Cocoon

“The Filter Bubble: What Internet is hiding from you”, is a book just released by Eli Parisier with a very interesting view of SEO. According to the author, actually search engines are not optimizing our search since the information displayed for us is subjective of our tastes, interests and background. Since the real magic of SEO is that the system follows our paths through the Internet and thus selects the information that would probably most suit us, we are trapped inside an “information cocoon”. As Eli Parisier says it so brightly, “personalization filters serve up as a kind of invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiar and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown.”

For Parisier, we should actually have more control of the data and Google should be more open with its algorithms. In my opinion, this is an oversimplification of how SEO works, since if interested, any type of information can be found online. Maybe it is not found in the first search, but the system can easily understand what your goal is after a few tries.

Other Forms of Digital Marketing

I was recently playing a video game (not a usual thing for me) and while the game was loading, an advertisement popped up. I never knew that this digital medium was used to sell ads. I think it is a very effective way to market a product because a) you can tailor the ad to the user depending on the game or other data collected from the console and b) people are basically forced to watch the ad because they are waiting to play a game.

I think this type of advertising will continue to grow. If you can display ads while people are waiting AND those people can't just turn off the ad, you are more likely to grab their attention. One example of this is digital signage at queues for a store (grocery, electronics, pharmacy etc.). The downside is that you could alienate customers or cause them to completely tune out the ad if they feel it is too intrusive. Another example of this are screens that display ads at urinals in men's restrooms. I have even read that some of those ads are interactive.

As the world gets more digitized, marketers will continue to innovate the way ads are consumed. Clearly my examples have been around for a while but I'm curious to know what others think will be the next big thing in digital marketing (outside the realm of the internet).

We focus on Digital Marketing Growth... but how secure is really the web?

In this decade of great internet development and expansion, we focus everyday in creatingnew platforms and ideas to fulfill a need or bring a solutionto the digital market, but have we ever stopped to think the most importance of the foundation of this massive platform and how it can impact us in the future. Consumer who navigate the web explore new sites, new services, new options and trust their information to unknown companies and people behind those sites. Now, with social network, not only we trust our basic information, but share with great level of details our private life... our interests... the place where we ae at the time that we are among other crucial information. An even us, when we are coming very tired from Columbia and we open out fridge and see that is empty directly think of ordering delivery online or doing online grocery shopping.... All great short term solutions but can represent a big threat. With the recent hacking of the IMF site, its clear that even one of the most important organization is not able to stop the fast development of hacking tools. Not only the IMF, but also this year Citibank and Sony were largly affected by hackers activities and million of peoples identity and personal informatio were stolen. Even Google and Nintendo were victims of an attempted attack by major hackers on the web... So my point with these recent events is shouldn't we stop trying to further develope the web and instead focusing to make it more secure? with the development of new applications aren't we creating a bigger possibility of a hacking attack? Is there a trade off here or we can continue to develope the web at the same time that we are making it a more secure place?

How does Baidu do differently in providing organic search result?

Baidu (the largest search engine company in China) was criticized heavily several years ago because at that time, Baidu was very active in promoting its advertisement service. Baidu seemed combine advertisements with organic search results together. It was not clear to the user, on its search result page, which portion of the results was appeared because of paid advertisement and which portion was the organic results. As we all know, when people search in Google, the results appear below the search bar is what called the organic results, which are the most popular pages related to the key words. Normally, there will be no advertisement appear at this place. But Baidu did differently.

Because of this strategy, Baidu faced a lot criticism from the public for its misleading. So Baidu changed gradually, and now a days, you could clearly find out which results are for advertisement. It is important for search company to insist on the ethical issues because the search algorithm is not apparent to individual users and is easy for search company to manipulate the search result to help its advertisement service.

The Power of Social Gaming

Social Gaming is becoming an increasingly important way for people to engage with brands, according to panelists at the OMMA Social conference last Thursday. (MediaPostNEWS) Among the panelists was Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe, which provides brand marketing services through engagement ads. Calling it “a great medium for storytelling,” Samit considers social gaming valuable because it offers consumers the chance to engage with a game while accessing virtual goods at the same time. "We call it value exchange," he said. "It used to be that 100% of all advertising was interruptive. Here, it's the opposite. A person has reached a point in the game where they can't progress, so they say, 'Yes, I'll engage with brand.'" Samit added that average engagement time is 63 seconds, and that as many as 40% of consumers then share the experience via social media. Richard Muncaster, president of corporate strategy for KlickNation, which focuses on role-playing games targeting men 25 to 45 years old, said that players engage with games three times per day, for 17 minutes each. Social gaming is particularly effective with entertainment properties, such as movie theaters; SocialVibe found that 40% of users who engaged with a movie via social gaming bought movie tickets online.
Social gaming has become an extremely effective way for online marketers to engage audiences in brands. The response rate of social gaming is particularly high due to the addictive nature of online games and also the uninterrupted flow of information to users.

MLB.com's Segmentation Shows Baseball's Wide Appeal

Web technology enables web publishers to change, or segment, their message for different users. This capability increases Return on Investment by making the experience better by appealing to the individual user's needs and delighting the customer.

MLB.com includes links that appeal to different user experiences, or journeys:

International - Japanese, Spanish, Chinese and Korean language links

Low Bandwith - Easy to navigate page

Commerce - Ads for Father's Day presents

Statistics - Scores and information about current and past games, players and teams

Video - Highlights and live games

Commerce - Tickets, directions and weather reports

Audio - Highlights and live games

Each of these links represents a different, if possibly overlapping, agenda for each fan. Some will be going to games and need to buy tickets; others will just be looking at the latest scores and there will also be visits from people who aren't into baseball at all but are just buying a present for someone who is.

MLB.com's landing page seems to conveniently address every possible value proposition for fans. The site also makes baseball widely accessible through multiple language and low-bandwith versions as well as extensive audio and video offerings.

By making its site easily consumable by all levels of fans in most every location, MLB.com is getting the most out of its audience, by helping local, international, the casual and the ardent and perhaps even a few fans with disabilities who need a less complicated screen as on the low-bandwith version.

Google not delivering links?

                Last week Eric Schmidt of Google proposed his new goal of having the search engine giant delier answers without having the user click on a link. In an interview he said, "... we're trying to move from answers that are link-based to answers that are algorithmically based, where we can actually compute the right answer."(neimanlab.org) And we now have enough artificial intelligence technology and enough scale and so forth that we can, for example, give you -- literally compute the right answer." On way they managed to acheive this was through their acquisition of ITA where they are now able to provide accurate up to date flight information.
              The goal of this move is to increase their revenues by tapping into the end-user e-commerce spending. Currently, Google charges a small commission to deliver customers to the online retailer who benefits from customer purchases and visits. Google is now eyeing that pie and is looking to gain a larger chuck of the e-commerce revenue. This fits in with the other ventures that Google is entering including their acquisition of Sparkbuy, launch of Google offers and Google Advisor where Google collects a commission on sales that occur through that site.
            These steps not only enlarge Google's overflowing coffers but also allows them to compile information on their competition that is inimitable.

Notes from Nathan Newman on Huffingtonpost.com

Real Time Web Analytics Not Google

In class last week, we were exposed to the power of Google Analytics. GA is free and for the most part it is easy to setup. Having information on what users are doing and how they are getting to your site is important information that can be used to determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. But what if you're looking to do something that is more interesting on your site - like showing promotional deals based on their clicking history in real time?Simply put, GA doesn't do real time. Not now at least.

However, there are other great cheap and free alternative web analytics services out there. I personally have been using Piwik for the past several years. I typically use Piwik in conjunction with GA. What I like most about Piwik is the ability to host it on your server and it does real time tracking - having access to the your data in real time is priceless. I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the other analytics services that are out there.

Google plays both sides

On May 22, Google told the FT that display advertising is heading for a big boom, with an especially strong increase in real-time bidding platforms for this type of advertising (similar to the way it works with search).

Today, Google showed that it takes its own predistions seriously. Rumors abound that Google is going to buy AdMeld for USD 400 m. AdMeld is a so-called Supply Side Platform, that helps publishers navigate the real-time bidding (RTB) process and (presumably) command higher prices for their inventory. Interestingly, only last year Google bought Invite Media (as the article notes), which is a demand side platform, i.e. helping advertisers and ad agencies in the RTB process.

So now Google owns both sides of the equation! Google really seems to be approaching world domination, can a fair market place arise from this.

Ford using Twitter

On todays's news, I just found out that Ford will be using Twitter in its social media promotion "BET Award Ford Focus Sweepstakes", linked to Ford's sponsorship of BET Award show taking place next June 26.

Ford will dangle a 2012 Ford Focus as the final prize in its promotion and will use Twitter during the final process to select the winner during the June 26 live show.

How will that work?

To those who signed up online (at www.fordurbam.com and www.bet.com/FordFocus) to win the new Ford Focus Titanium, Ford will send a Twitter message confirming participation to the context and the official hashtag regarding the BET Award 2011. Participants will post on Twitter using the hashtag until June 26, when during the show selected tweet will be selected and the grand-prize will be assigned and communicated to a winner.

What moved Ford to do that? According to Said Shawn Lollie, Ford Manager of Multicultural Marketing: "The opportunity to not only showcase, but also give away, a Focus during one of the top five cable award show programs was a natural fit for us ... a large number of young adults are using social media tools like Twitter in order to engage with their peers on a daily basis. We thought that incorporating Twitter as part of the vehicle sweepstakes would further resonate with our core audience as well as provide an additional level of exposure for the brand."

(http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=152092)

It is probably a new and interesting way for the company to get in touch with Twitter users, to reach broader audience, and to rejuvenate its brand and image

SEO and Reputation Management

Having spend the majority of class time so far on SEO, I thought I would talk about reputation management. Though only 1 point amongst many, this is a REALLY important one considering that social commentary, be it through blog postings or reviews, is having a larger and larger effect on page rank. For many sites, this is good. They don't have the history or traffic to beat out the plethora of other sites out there so simple things like reviews on Yelp can give them share of voice they may not otherwise have had. For some sites, this is very bad.

Putting aside for a moment whether reviews are true or not, imagine the case of a doctor who happens to see 1 patient that happens to be very hard to please and very vocal on the internet, and suddenly this review shows up under his/her name search. Sure, the medical professional community is getting more savvy re: technology and the ways in which to leverage it, but let's not kid ourselves...we're asking people with very little time, and a completely different focus, to acquire skills for the internet that they may not have the desire, time, or capability for.

Ok, so fine, their environment has changed and now they must adapt. What if they don't have the budget to hire an SEO professional? What if they are busy saving kids in India? What if they simply can't beat the bad review? Is it ethical for them to have patients sign a mutual privacy agreement that prevents patients from blogging about their experience? I know your reaction is no, freedom of speech, but I ask you to just think how quickly reputation can be damaged over a lifetime's investment, and what if it is not true?? Search engines have made this possible overnight...how do we combat this?

Personal anecdote - I have a friend who got divorced and someone wrote some very false and reputation damaging things on a hate website, that now shows up when you search his name, and there is nothing he can do about it.

The Origin of the SEO Rapper

The SEO Rapper from class was hardly the first to originate the rapped instructions or "rapstructions". In fact, if you take a look at this clip here from the 1980's you will see that it was none other than fast food purveyor Wendy's who may be able to claim the origins of this little used medium. Take a look for yourself at the link below. I promise, it's worth all 3 minutes and 52 seconds of your life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnkW6JJZSgE

Silicon Valley talent fight - Who is moving where?

Not sure how they were able to get the stats but it seems real based on the over all media hype specially for Facebook. Two interesting results I was able to figure out, first, very few are leaving MS, FB, Google, Apple, Linkedin and moving to Yahoo, Inc. and second turnover rate for FB talent is very low. FB and LinkedIn seems winner to me and we all know why.

Social Media Bubble...



http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/talent-fight-silicon-valley/

This article was originally posted on Wired that was re-posted on this blog and my personal blog at Web Technologist

Digital strategy – an industry in the making?

Having no previous background in digital marketing, I am amazed with the tons of tools, data, and opportunities that arise on the web. We have received so much information in the past classes that I don’t know whether I am just overwhelmed or there really is a business opportunity to use these new tools of digital analytics and the enormous amount of data generated to create value beyond what is already happening now.

The low hanging fruit has already been addressed by freelancer consultants, niche software companies, and agencies focused on digital. Everything related to search engine optimization, web page and ad design is already happening. But there is a need for specialization, a B2B model that integrates all the tools, processes, and experimentation related to digital marketing and that offers a cohesive service.

Several business lines come to mind. The obvious first is website optimization, improving content and design to generate the desired user behavior. The second one is market research and customer insight generation. Data mining techniques coupled with the data gathering potential of flexile websites (i.e. temporarily modified websites in order to gather the required data) can provide customer insights for much narrower sets of customers. It is also fertile ground to experiment with prospective theory and any ideas that shed some light on client behavior. Other experiments and data gathering features can be designed to do conjoint analysis, calculate price elasticity, and reveal other customer preferences and trade-offs. The third is digital Public Relations, that is, how to manage your image on the web, for example managing the open communication channels (e.g. social media) and the potential disasters that can arise when clients complain. Finally, the fourth business line is product development through open innovation.

In conclusion, on-line presence allows companies to experiment at very low cost, gather a lot of information, and use it to add value. A company that can successfully integrate and offer all these services can pioneer a new industry.

Mobile Advertising Network Comparison

I would like to share this great statistical report that Mark Fidelman put together to compare different mobile advertising networks. Google with their AdMob Platform is leading with 56% of market share followed by Apple's iAd with 8.7% of market share. This tremendous grow trends shows that more and more companies will invest in mobile advertising as mobiles are getting smarter. Hand held devices like iPad, Smartphones, Android supported Devices and Tablets are capable of integrating ads for Apps as well as browser based web sites.

My experience with Android and iOS Apps is that most of the free apps make money through those advertisements. However, I will be curious to know how it works when it comes to CPM (Impression based) verses CPC (Click based) campaigns. I am hoping professor Kagan will cover this in his future lectures. (Click the image to follow the article)

Visualizing Successful Website Design

Is simpler better for website design? I have held to this maxim for years now, but after today's class I'm not so sure it's true. Today we discussed website design with the many personas of potential viewers in mind. Website design has often been regarded as more art than science, but I believe that in class Professor Kagan successfully demonstrated that the design process is scientific and can be accurately measured and tuned to optimize the viewer's experience.

The key to successful design is a combination of researching past design (using tools like the "Way Back Machine"), using proper keyword and link allocation that we discussed in class, and leveraging available optimizer tools like Google's Website Optimizer. There is really an overwhelming amount of information that one can use for web design, yet it does not lead to one clear layout or template for perfect design.

I think this is because designers are catering to all potential visitors and their various viewing habits and idiosyncrasies. Even broken down by visitor's personas, there are various possible viewing patterns (such as the one shown above). It stands to reason then that though we cannot please everyone, there is a happy medium to be found that covers the majority of the website's target visitors by combining the dominant patterns into a website that is a mosaic of the various styles dictated by target viewers' personas.