How digital technology will change the way brands market in the future

For those of you interested in new thinking and innovation especially around marketing and branding, I recommend ‘Co-Exist’, a section of the magazine Fast Company.

This week they ran a thought-provoking article by Tom Adams (Global Head of Strategy at FutreBrand) titled “The Brands of the Future will help you Consume Less.” In the piece, Adams argues that the evolution in digital technology and enhanced aggregation of personal consumer data will drive a major shift in the way brands market to and define their relationship with their consumers. 

At present, branded products and services know lots about us, but often it is relatively fragmented and piecemeal. They collect data through diverse means – web presences, online marketing, interactive games, mobile services and apps – and then use this knowledge to target and push ever-greater consumption – what Adams terms a single-minded focus “on increasing penetration and frequency.” In other words, they use the info they have about us to get us to buy more and more stuff that we don’t really need.

Adams argues that in the future, this model won’t hold. As platforms evolve to allow us as consumers to merge a range of personal data, including on how much we eat, spend, exercise, recycle etc, we will be able to create a “lifestyle dashboard” to produce a more holistic view of our lives and consumption needs. Adams argues that smart brands of the future will re-think their marketing and digital strategies to more effectively use this kind of profile data. Their approach will be to attract consumers by helping them “understand how much they consume, and what this means for their health, wealth and happiness.” 

This is more than enhanced personalization. It is helping consumers manage - and potentially change - their lifestyle. 

Adams believes the net effect is that we will in fact consume less, but may pay more for it. In addition, he believes that the new engagement model will build stronger loyalty to brands than ever before. 

In terms of who will be the providers of the “lifestyle dashboard,” Adams argues the most likely are current “aggregator brands,” which he defines as search engines, multi-brand retailers and software service providers.

With this in mind, the next time you visit Google to search for the new season’s lip gloss from your favorite brand, consider that in future Google may preface its list of search results with the question: “Ali, you already have 3 tubes of Chanel lip gloss, 5 tubes of Lancome and 3 of Dior…. do you really need another one?”

Grand Theft Auto Sales Record

Grand Theft Auto's V destroyed gaming records by selling more than $800 million in just one day (http://mashable.com/2013/09/18/grand-theft-auto-v-800-million/) and has surpassed $1 billion in 3 days (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/grand-theft-auto-v-sales-blow-past-1-billion-three-4B112169000. This is a record rate of sales, higher than any other game, film or entertainment property.

This just goes to show the influence and reach of the gaming industry which is often overlooked in a world now flooded with social media outlets.  Gaming is growing in popularity and users are incredibly loyal and engaged.  It has proven to be a highly successful channel for marketing programs, especially when the marketing is intertwined with the game itself.

Gaming is proving itself relevant and growing and something we should continue to keep our eyes on.

- Mallory Godwin 9.21.13

Mobile platforms will reach US$ 40 bi in 2014

The number of companies that are migrating their services and content to mobile platforms is growing. According to a study by Tata Consultancy Services, in partnership with Perfecto Mobile, the tendency is for this market to reach USD40 Billion in 2014.
The study also shows that about 50% of the companies are changing the way they develop relationships with the market as their employees require it and about 43% do so in order to increase competitiveness.   
According to Yoram Mizrachi, CPO of Perfect Mobile, using mobile platforms can be about 63% cheaper than other resources available to impact clients and users on the web.  

Source: Tata Consultancy Services

One Way to Enhance Business Blogging

Part of my reason for taking Digital Marketing was to gain exposure to how businesses, particularly small companies, can create an online presence and effectively reach and communicate to their respective target audiences.  One clear way companies do this is through blogging and trying to improve their online “status” so that they can be seen as an influencer or expert in their field.  If done well, their content should rise closer to the top of Google searches and more people should click on their information.

 

One small way to enhance the chances that you or your company will get noticed is by attaching your picture to the content that you create.  The way you do that is through Google Author Markup, a system that is a part of Google Authorship that links your Google+ profile to whatever it is that you create online.  It appears that Google likes “seeing” people’s faces.  It brings credibility to what you produce by simply being a real person and not a robot, and it also benefits Google’s users by showing them what they feel are better quality search results.

 

This tactic can bring a number of benefits to you or your company.  According to entrepreneur.com, attaching your picture results in 1) higher click-through rates, 2) content protection and brand building, 3) more page views, and 4) a larger social following.  These benefits will ultimately help build your customer base and hopefully drive more activity to your business.

 

Despite these positives, however, I think there could be a couple of potential challenges and risks.  Firstly, I am not sure how easy it is for someone to use your likeness for his or her own (potentially harmful) purposes, which could weaken your standing online.  Secondly, depending on how quickly this strategy catches on, if at all, the competitive advantage can diminish fairly rapidly and your online growth could slow.

 

Nevertheless, it seems like it could be a good strategy to use at least in the short-run.  For more information, please see http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228399. 

With increased use of smartphones to shop, search and buy, mobile advertising has been getting increasingly important. But who ever clicks on the mobile banner ads? So many brands are terrible at this! What are the best ways to be a better mobile advertiser?
- Share interesting content - users are on their phones all day long, and want to be entertained, laugh and find out neat things. Engage with them through videos, interviews, games, music...
- Give them information that they will WANT to share, that they can participate in (like the Dive billboard in times square that encouraged users to share pictures of themselves on social media).
- Be exclusive and offer the greatest deals to your most loyal customers, helping make them feel important to you. Victoria's secret did this by offering an exclusive shopping night for loyal customers
- Get the right offers in front of the right people by using geofencing: connect local advertising to user's mobile experience

source: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/five-ways-to-be-a-better-mobile-advertiser-without-using-mobile-banner-ads-022535.php

Pinterest Announces First Ad Units

On Thursday, Pinterest announced that it will test its first ad units.  This is a big stepping stone for the company which has achieved very little revenue to date.   Pinterest has already successfully engaged and retained a substantial user base who are accustomed to not viewing any advertising.  It will be interesting to see how Pinterest integrates advertising and if it receives any backlash.  CEO, Ben Silberman also noted that there would be no banner advertising nor an inundation of promos on the site – the goal is not to interrupt the user experience.    Instead, they will have paid pins related to user interests and clearly marked as promoted.  Since Pinterest has a lot of data on its users, it will be interesting to see how effective its advertising can be and whether it can generate substantial ad revenue.  One would think they would be able to effectively target and that it’s a long time coming for them to introduce advertising on the site.    Initially the site is only going to introduce ads on search results and category feeds.  I think this is a good idea to test the waters and see user reaction to advertising and to be very cautious on the rollout.  It looks like Pinterest has plateaued in growth through desktop uniques (3% growth from last year to 26M users ), but has generated enormous growth in mobile from 9M uniques in January to 24M uniques in July.  Time will tell if Pinterest will take the Facebook route and have heavy advertising throughout its site.    

Source: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/pinterest-will-test-first-ad-units-promises-transparency-152530

Pinterest explores advertising with "promoted pins" test strategy

After much speculation, last Thursday, September 19th, the ever so popular digital bookmarking platform Pinterest announced its foray into advertising. Pinterest's Co-Founder and CEO Ben Silberman made this highly anticipated announcement via Pinterest's "Oh, How Pinteresting!" blog, both to publicize the new experimental strategy, as well as to dispel worries of a tarnished customer experience filled with flashy banner ads. Silberman's claim is that the new promoted pins will be:

• Tasteful, aka no banners or pop-ups
• Transparent so that promoted pins are clearly differentiated from regular user pins
• Relevant based on search queries or user content
• Improved based on user feedback

As both a Pinterest fan and a devoted pinner, I am torn. The passive, "pin-observer" side of me is not looking forward to any interference as I continue to use the Pinterest platform. To me, Pinterest always has been and should continue to be a visual content-sharing site; not another e-commerce outlet. On the other hand, the 25.6 million unique monthly visitors present a significant monetization opportunity for a growing company that accounts for 23% of all social media-driven e-commerce sales, despite being a significantly smaller social network than Twitter or Facebook. It is also a huge win for many retailers, not only because of the opportunity to highlight their products, but also because of the reaffirming fact that Pinterest users make the largest purchases among customers referred to e-commerce sites by social media - $93 in average order value to be precise. 

Analysts are commending Pinterest with this effort, saying it's fine as long as the paid content is integrated tastefully and does not "stick out like a sore thumb." As one industry analyst stated: "Pinterest is not a charity, it's a business...They have to monetize their site one way or another". 

Of course, I agree with this and am optimistic that Pinterest's strategy will be a successful business model for the future. However, I still wonder whether it will be possible to integrate promotional pins without any detriment to the currently seamless and user-driven experience of the site. Only time will tell.

P&G embraces digital media

Consumer packaged goods mainstay Proctor & Gamble is now spending over a third of its U.S. marketing budget towards digital media, a dramatic shift that portends the further decline of traditional advertising media such as print or TV.  The company's spending on online ads, social media, etc. ranges from 25% to 35% of its marketing budget across various markets, and the company is on the high end of that range for the U.S., its largest market.

P&G executives cited several reasons for the company's recent shift towards digital media:

• Faster
• Cheaper
• Quick feedback loop
• Consumers' increased consumption of digital media as compared to traditional media

On the last point, a P&G spokesperson commented, "The bottom line is we need and want to be where the consumer is, and increasingly that is online and mobile."  The average daily time that consumers spend with digital media per day is expected to surpass TV viewing for the first time this year, according to research firm eMarketer, which estimates that the average adult will spend 5+ hours/day online as compared to ~4.5 hours watching TV.

In the U.S. overall, digital ad spending is expected to grow 14% per year to $41.9B, while TV ad spending is expected to grow at only 3% per year to $66.4B, according to eMarketer.  P&G's move towards digital media is but one example of this broader trend.

Source: http://on.wsj.com/19zRK0d (WSJ subscription required)

The Scarcrow and Chipotle

In the days before the digital world the key in the world of fast food was ease of access, location of, and sheer numbers of these restaurants. To raise awareness these chains sponsored events, both nationally and locally, to keep their band in the mind of the customer. Now with digital marketing these fast food brands are exploring different ways to remind customers of who they are, and in the case of Chipotle, their ‘organic’ food; that their food is fresh and not tampered by science.

Chipotle’s release last week of a viral video which also includes a game: The Scarecrow, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScS is a hunting animation reminding us of all the processed food which we as a society take as the norm. It reminds us of the battery  farms where animals never see light, are packed together in spaces which they cannot move and injected with growth hormones etc.

If you already familiar with the brand then as soon as you see the chilli pepper appear then you would know what the advert is for. However, as someone who has never eaten at Chipotle and is not very aware of the brand I only knew who the video was advertising at the very end when the Chipotle stamp appeared. But by that point I felt like rushing to wholefoods and never eating at a fast food restaurant again.

It is an extremely fine line to tread – to create a video which they hoped would go viral ,with a message similar of the movie Food Inc. and countless books and articles, to help differentiate their brand to other fast food companies. During the video a piece of meat is shown with the title of ‘beef-ish’.  Yet, seeing as Chipotle is owned by MacDonald’s I wonder if this was a sly dig at Chipotle’s ultimate boss. Even if not intended, it was enough to make me want to stay clear of companies like MacDonald’s forever.

Hashtag eCommerce - Tweet to Buy

A start-up called Chirpify is allowing consumers to make purchases via tweets and posts using a new kind of hashtag called "action tags." How it works: A business uses a hashtag like #Buy #Oreo in a TV or online ad, then consumers would post that action tag to their social network and a transaction would be executed through PayPal.

According to Nielsen, almost 50% of all smartphone users claim to use their devices while watching TV and almost nine in 10 homes have at least one smartphone or tablet that can be used as a second screen. Furthermore, Chirpify is seeing a 4% sales conversion rate on the 10,000+ products it's already offered, which is significantly higher than traditional web display conversion rates.

I think this will appeal to brand marketers for several reasons. First, it's instantaneous. Brands can translate the excitement and interest created by a great ad into sales simply and easily. Second, it will also serve as an opportunity to better measure the impact of TV advertising, which has historically been difficult due to the time lag between seeing the ad and the purchase. Third, it's a great way to engage with customers and can multiply the impact of the original ad.

However, I also think that there are some drawbacks that could limit the success of this concept. First, in order to compel consumers to make that purchase right away, I think the products are going to have to be limited edition or include some sort of discount. Second, I think the products will also need to be relatively simple and less expensive because if consumers need to research the product, they will be less likely make that instant purchase. Lastly, I just wonder whether this idea will actually catch on and people will purchase enough through this S-commerce platform for it to be viable. I'm a slow social media adopter, I'm not convinced I would ever buy this way...what do you think? Would you tweet an action tag to make a purchase?

In conclusion, this is a very interesting idea with great potential, though it does have some drawbacks, as every medium does. As a brand marketer, I'd be interested to test this, but I'd first need to understand the ROI implications, which I think are pretty complex given the multiple mediums (TV, online display, social) as well as the potential word-of-mouth that a brand could get out of a successful campaign. They've just signed several big brands, so it will be exciting to follow the new campaigns and see how well they perform.

For more information, read the Mashable article here.

IBM Launches Digital Marketing Network

IBM has launched the cloud-based IBM Digital Marketing Network to give clients easy integration between more than 100 ad tech vendors. The network allows organizations to share analytics data with their other advertising and marketing solutions to inform media buys based on individual buyer behaviors in real-time.

The network harnesses Digital Data Exchange, IBM’s tag management solution, that enables marketers to use a single tag to relay information to all partner platforms. The single tag simplifies implementation and eliminates the weight of having multiple tags for each solution.

Craig Hayman, IBM’s general manager industry solutions said in a statement, “The IBM Digital Marketing Network eliminates the complexity and difficulty involved in placing third-party tags, enabling our clients to improve results, and personalize the digital customer experience in real-time.”

The network is part of IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative. In the interface, marketers can link marketing services together in as few as two clicks. Dashboards are customized for mobile and ecommerce to give clients views into how campaigns are performing across paid, earned and owned channels.

Current clients include promotional business gifts site Myron.com, which IBM cites as using the network to re-engage customers with display ads in real-time and learn more about onsite behaviors. Mark Pepin, vice president of global ecommerce at Myron.com said the network “reduces the dependency on aligning multiple partners. It also improves the implementation time-lines of our digital efforts and we see the immediate impact and results.”

Partners include solutions from across the digital marketing spectrum including: ad networks such as Google and Advertising.com; DMPs like BlueKai and x+1; DSPs such as The Trade Desk and Turn; gamification, privacy management; search marketing platforms including Marin Software and DoubleClick Search; social engagement and loyalty services such as Bazaarvoice and CrowdTwist; as well as social media marketing and customer experience services such as Shoutlet and OpinionLab.

Network integrations are available immediately to IBM’s Digital Marketing Optimization users.

To Read More: http://marketingland.com/ibm-launches-digital-marketing-network-offers-single-tag-integration-with-100-vendor-partners-58900 

Airbnb Neighborhoods

In the past few years, I have become a huge fan of Airbnb. I truly believe that it is the future of travel accommodations and will soon replace hotels and hostels for a large majority of us. As a peer-to-peer rental service, Airbnb gives users the ability to virtually tour and rent apartments from real owners. Recently Airbnb has been considering a move into travel and city guides through Airbnb Neighborhoods. This move is, of course, a smart one as it is a great accessory to their core business. However, it is not without its fair share of entrenched competitors like Lonely Planet, Trip Advisor and Rough Guide.

Airbnb Neighborhoods has launched numerous interesting digital marketing campaigns to promote this new content including the following:

-         Airbnb TV hosts original videos ranging from testimonials to guided tours

-         Airbnb Lifestyles exclusively focuses on peer’s Airbnb stories and adventures

-         Airbnb Connections allow users to link their social media profiles and connect beyond the Airbnb virtual walls

All of these ideas are great examples of an online hospitality company leveraging the personalities of their typical customers to promote peer-to-peer marketing and content. Most Airbnb users are young, travel enthusiasts who love taking photos, creating videos, writing blogs and making friends during their adventures. Airbnb is now allowing them a space to do all of this.

Most recently, Airbnb Neighborhoods launched “The Hollywood and Vines Campaign” to crowd source short clips from Vine and Airbnb users which will be used in creating a travel and adventure film. One quick upload of this video onto Facebook and Buzzfeed will be all it takes for this film to eventually go viral promoting Airbnb almost as an afterthought.

Twitter bets on mobile advertising

In the midst of the big IPO news, Twitter has also recently bought a company by the name of MoPub for an estimated $350mn. MoPub is a start-up that helps mobile publishers manage their ad inventory, and essentially makes the monetization process simpler. This seems to have been a smart move for Twitter because it will only provide another avenue to build it's advertising business on mobile platforms, especially given the fact that last year Twitter started making more money on mobile advertising than desktop advertising.

MoPub was founded three years ago by Bryan Atwood, Nafis Jamal, and Jim Payne. They previously worked together at mobile ad-network AdMob (owned by Google). Over the years, they have raised ~$18.5mn in capital and have been backed by Accel Partners, Jafco Ventures, etc.  

Twitter has commented that they will continue to invest in and improve MoPub's business, however, it is currently unclear whether Twitter will become an exclusive customer of the service or not. CEO of MoPub, did state that he will become Twitter's vice president of exchange. 

Net-a-porter Launches Social E-Commerce Strategy

According to Women's Wear Daily, this month, luxury 'e-tailer', Net-a-porter, launched a social e-commerce strategy that specifically targets the mobile channel. The app, aptly named The Netbook, was inspired by a feature on Net-a-porter's website called 'Live' which live-streams what customers are buying, letting everyone know what's 'hot' in real-time.   

Net-a-porter's Live feature.

The Netbook app takes the streaming concept and socializes + commercializes it in mobile form. Users have two Instagram-style feeds from which they can follow: 1) a global feed which streams what everyone is buying on Net-a-porter, world-wide and 2) an 'admirer' feed which streams only items purchased by those who the user selects to follow. Unlike Live, The Netbook breaks the wall-of-anonymity by displaying who bought what. Users have profiles (picture and mini-bio included!) and other Netbookers can see who each user is following/being followed by. Yesterday, Net-a-porter's President, Alison Loehnis, bought this Valentino sweater at 6:37pm! And it got 112 likes. She has 46 'admirers' and is admiring 30 fashionable people. These stats are pretty powerful and give a now-measurable weighting to the intangible cool-factor of the purchase. Not only was the sweater bought yesterday, but also the person who bought it is 'cool/popular and in-the-fashion-world' and a lot of other people, 112 at the time, added the sweater to their wishlist; it must be really worth $1,690, possibly more. 

Loehnis snaps up this Valentino sweater.  

Net-a-porter rolled out the app to a select few influencers (bloggers, designers, stylists, etc.) during London Fashion Week in what I imagine is an effort to build a foundation of fashion-savy users that the rest of company's customers will want to follow once they have access to the app. It will be interesting to see if this concept takes hold as a viable retail channel and social network.

Sources: Econsultancy, Women's Wear Daily. 

Lexus introduces live ads during late night TV

Lexus has announced plans to air live tv ads during “LateNight with Jimmy Fallon” on NBC.  The ads will air on Thursday nights until October 10^th and will be influenced by viewers’ ideas, which can be submitted through #LexusIS. The ads will be based on the theme “It’s your move after dark.”  Improv performers will be featured in the ads in order to incorporate the viewer generated content and the ads will run during the final commercial break of the show.

This seems like the latest in companies’ efforts to interact with users in real time, integrating social media and traditional advertising.   It will be interesting to see how successful Lexus’ new advertising approach will be with consumers and if this concept will take off as the next big trend in digital advertising.

Flu season is going viral

I came across an interesting campaign that I wanted to share with you. Kleenex has taken advantage of flu trackers such as Google Flu Trends to create an app which will predict when their customers will start sneezing.

Come late September, customers will be able to see the top 10 cities to be the hardest hit by the flu season on Achoo. In addition, customers will be able to enter their zip codes to get regional cold and flu forecasts. The concept will be reinforced by a TV campaign from JWT showing people who have had to come up with creative alternatives when they ran out of Kleenex (e.g. wiping your hands on Comet, the family dog).

Achoo is a great example of a traditional company staying ahead of the curve by using digital marketing. By using trends collected through search to created targeted marketing campaigns, Kleenex is able to innovatively promote its brand whilst adding value to their customers. 

One of the most valuable marketing tools employed by Rent the Runway, an online dress rental platform, is “Our Runway”, a collection of customer-submitted pictures of themselves wearing dresses rented from the website.  Indeed, peer-to-peer reviews and recommendations are one of the most valuable tools online retailers use to drive conversion and generate sales.  

Many other brands, particularly in the fashion space, are trying to take advantage of the communities of loyal customers and followers that have sprung up organically and effectively serve as brand advocates.  Enter Olapic. 

Olapic is a New York-based start-up that searches and aggregates user-generated images via hashtags posted to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and integrates them directly into the e-commerce sites of its clients.  So far, a number of well-known fashion companies have signed on as clients, including Coach, New Balance, Nasty Gal and Lululemon.  Olapic-powered user-generated image campaigns have lifted conversion rates by an average of over 30 percent, according to data provided by the company.    

I think this is a fascinating concept that harnesses the power of social media communities to further these brands’ storytelling and drive deeper engagement with their customers.

Source: http://mashable.com/2013/07/30/olapic-5-milion-series-a-retail/

justdelete.me: a directory of direct links to delete your account from web services

Courtesy of this article at slate.com

I have two Expedia accounts. I'd like only one Expedia account, because, well, why would I need two?  Deleting that second account is (for a person like me) nigh on impossible because it includes a phone call and an extended wait in a hold queue (I did wait in the hold queue for 10 minutes, which really is a long time to be in a hold queue to delete an account off the internet; avoiding human contact like this is why we created the internet in the first place).

So here enters JustDelete.Me, a website that tells us how to delete our web accounts from various popular web sites.

In an era where customer information is incredibly valuable (so too are ongoing consumer communication channels), we should expect that rational, self-interested companies will make it relatively difficult for us to delete our accounts. 

Perhaps though, unless the industry self-regulates (unlikely, given the fragmented and global nature of e-commerce), we will see something similar to the regime imposed by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 which ensures that Americans, with relative ease, can unsubscribe from commercial emailing lists. 

Maybe.  Until then, I guess I'm going to have two Expedia accounts.  And an unused old Skype account.  And an abandoned Hotmail account.

Nordstrom revamps mobile ads to boost conversion

I was browsing my favorite magazine on my iPhone the other night and saw an ad for a pair of shoes that I liked at Nordstrom. I clicked on the ad and was suddenly browsing the product line directly from the banner ad. Much to my surprise, I was never taken to another browser site to browse; the experience was so seamless that it sparked my curiosity. 

                                        

According to a post written by Fashion Notes on August 28th, Nordstrom recently redesigned their mobile banner ads so that when customers click on a product in the ad, they are taken directly to the product page for browsing. From there, customers can continue browsing, just as they would on the store's website. 

As Fashion Notes indicates, "the idea behind this strategy is that if consumers don’t lose their original page, they are more inclined to continue browsing and ultimately make a purchase." Just another reason why Nordstrom is one of my favorite places to shop online! 

Sear engine optimization in real wok

I am now doing a part time job in a small startup, whose product is the online app about interactive children's book. it's aimed to educate the kids about the sense of global citizen, 21st cencury skills, and social responsbility. One of my work is to do the search engine optimization (SEO) for the website. before, I have no idea on who to do this, so have to learn online and read materials on such topics. I have heard previously that the SEO is not a good thing and if you're caught by the search engines, you're done. In fact, however, it's not all in that case; Google actually guides you on how to do SEO in a meaningful way. Then, a lot of my time was spent on first define a set of key terms that we want to promote and then revise the content of the webpages to make it more conformed to the terms. It's not that quantative (or maybe I haven't met the quants work yet), but it's also a lot of fun. hopefully that we can increase our traffic in this way.

Quantifying Google AdWords For Non-Transactional Websites

I was curious today, like most days, so I decided to google "Columbia Business School" (CBS). As an educational institution that encourages applicant research, I wanted to know if CBS paid for Google AdWords. It turns out, CBS does. And so does every major business school. They show ads for their school's keywords. It is a common practice in paid search to actually pay for your own keywords. Why? Do a search for "Stern Business School". On top of Stern coming up in the ads section, so did Daniel Webster and Columbia's EMBA program. If Stern didn't pay for their own term, then Columbia would be the most visible NYC school on the page. Companies risk losing prime placement on Google AdWords if they don't buy their own keywords.

But now I'm curious how CBS quantifies their paid search spend. A typical eCommerce site is able to slice and dice the data to determine if a click directly resulted in a purchase. They have an ROI and other key metrics to measure against. However, CBS is a school. It generates revenue in several ways, but the two primary revenue streams that are likely results of paid search are application fees and tuition. However, the anonymous data that is compiled by Google AdWords and Google Analytics (or Omniture) prevents a direct correlation from being analyzed. This is a challenge that any physical business may face. You have an ad spend, but you can't measure the effectiveness of that spend. What do you do now?

There are several options - you could just accept that the ad money must be spent in a defensive move, try to compare M-O-M or Y-O-Y revenue, or offer savings codes. With a defensive strategy, you are just blindly believing that you HAVE to spend money on ads to maintain your market share. You just throw money into a black hole and hope that it is appropriate. This could work, though it's easy for this strategy to get out of hand. You would probably be better off trying to benchmark your monthly revenue and profit performance (accounting for a typical customer growth rate) and then seeing how a daily ad spend affects that benchmark - adjusting as appropriate based on a net profit basis (not just revenue). Or, you could offer a savings code that provides a discount based on a special code that allows the school to track the effectiveness of an ad campaign.

Granted, the special code can easily be manipulated (posted on MBA application message boards, etc), but the concept of trying to quantify success is important when managing an AdWords (or any paid search) campaign. The ads are only as good as the data they can capture, and as a current student, future alumni, and potential endowment donor, I hope to learn more about how CBS spends their marketing budget and quantifies their paid search campaign.