Why Companies Trust TV Over Display

comScore's Natural Born Clickers surveys threw digital marketers into a tailspin a couple of years ago by indicating that monthly clicks on display ad had shrunk by 50% --from 32% to 16%. However, if we see display as a branding tool, akin to television commercials, measuring 'clicks' isn't the right metric.

In fact, the lack of confidence in display is confusing relative to the faith in traditional television. Neither allows for accurate conversion measurement, but both clearly have significant branding value. Why is it that television, the more expensive of the two options by far, seems like a better proposition to many companies?

In part it has to do with creative: it's difficult to develop a great message in the limited real estate offered by traditional display sizing, particularly if conversion is a goal. Television, in relative terms, offers a luxury of time and space. Part of the reason that display appears to be a less successful advertising channel is that messaging has often been poor -- though there is infinitely more opportunity to tweak an online ad than there is a commercial.

For some, television may also seems like a 'sure thing.' While costs are high, there's a sense that there is proven value in large, targeted reach. Comparable reach in the display space may require getting your ad onto hundreds, if not thousands of sites, each contributing a small piece of the pie. This means risk. On TV your ad is associated with a few very particular brands; online an ad may end of on a number of smaller websites that make the brand seem like small potatoes.

The final analysis? The data supports the idea that a multi-channel strategy works best. Don't give up TV, but well designed and thoughtfully placed display ads can do a world of good in boosting total reach and upping brand awareness. A good campaign won't require the marketer to make and either/or choice.

Trusting "Customer" Reviews

I came across an article on www.paidcontent.org regarding the supposed independence of the top reviewers on Amazon.com. It is evident that reviews from other people are powerful in helping buyers shape decisions; good reviews for your product or business on Yelp or Amazon inevitably help drive more business. This is because buyers trust people like them as opposed to professional marketers. However, it seems that the top reviewers on Amazon, and probably Yelp, are not necessarily people like them. The freebies that go to top reviewers, who aren't paid, are strong encouragement for those reviewers to keep the positive reviews flowing. Anecdotally, a friend of mine told me that Yelp began punishing top-rated restaurants who chose not to pay to show up in their "Sponsored Results" section in their search. Apparently, he said that those restaurants ratings immediately began to drop or show up lower in the search results. I don't know if that's true but it does raise a larger issue for customers - can you really trust reviews? On the other hand, it raises an avenue for us as marketers - if providing free products to top reviewers results in positive reviews, it could be a good marketing investment.

WOM

In Professor Toubia's Managing Marketing Programs class, we discussed Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing campaigns (think reviews on Yelp or Amazon). These types of campaigns can be very beneficial but the difficulty is in measuring success. Some firms pay people to post positive comments or hire consultancies (like SheSpeaks) to create communities and monitor comments. There is enough data to extract from these discussions but concretely evaluating WOM campaigns can be difficult. Another issue with this type of marketing is that the firm can lose control of the process. Angry customers can post very negative reviews which could hurt brand image more than glowing reviews could help it. On top of that, 90% of all WOM takes place offline. The key is to bridge offline and online commentary. The next evolution of WOM will be tapping into the large Facebook/MySpace communities in order to get more targeted and relevant commentary based on the situation/person. This could be a great source of revenue for Facebook and could actually be the launching pad for a WOM consultancy embedded in Facebook (Zynga but not for games).

Shoppergirl26 - who are you really?

A recent article published by MarketingMagazine.co.uk revelead that 37% of Internet users are not willing to provide personal data online and 31% will not provide real information about themselves to brands online.
As we have discussed in class, much of online advertising today is heavily influenced by the information users share online. Thus, ads are segmented and targeted at specific users. The results of this study are sure to reshape the way advertisers build their online marketing strategieis.
For example, some studies have shown that on average there are more women online than men. Perhaps we could conclude that women are less trusting than men? If this is the case, advertisers should seek to create incentives for women and online users in general to provide their REAL personal information.

Facebook Dominates Just About Everything

Last class Professor Kagan noted how Facebook is now the top earner in the digital ad space, over even Google and Yahoo. This indicates that Facebook is the champion of the dominant strategy of CPC advertising, but what about new forms of advertising or variations on CPM?

Sponsored content and guerilla marketing is the future of advertising on the web. Facebook absolutely dominates shared traffic and they should be exploring options to monetize this stream. Facebook is already motivating purchasing decisions, using content generated from product and brand pages. If Facebook could find a way to seamlessly integrate product reviews or other advertising (that users would find valuable) into the social stream, they will have struck gold and forever changed the face of digital marketing. The next generation of digital marketing and monetization will be bringing users new content, that they would find interesting, from brands that they are not already familiar with.

Behavioral Targeting for Online Ads (SEM) and Display Ads

I would like to talk about the Behavior Targeting that Prof. Kagen At Columbia Business School covered in last session.

Google is now actively enhancing their ad word architecture by implementing behavior intelligence in users ad campaigns where as an advertiser you will be able to identify interests and segments you want to target. In 2009, Google launched its beta version and now improving it to compete with the social marketing.

Through this ad campaign system Google who already knows "who is browsing what" will be able to identify visitor's interests and show them relevant ads based on their interests. The example might be if I am looking and browsing to buy a car, I will be most likely get 7 out of 10 times the automobile ads.

At present there are 30 main categories (Interests) and with 600 sub categories to further filter ads. The interesting thing is that if you opt out to interest-based ads you will still see ads not related to your interest.(Really, why not no ads just blank space)

This phenomena is also known as Interest-based ads that is well explained by Shuman Ghosemajumder at youtube video.



The idea of "who is browsing what" is now named as Behavior Targeting but I am not sure where are we heading when it comes to privacy. Google knows who is browsing what and Facebook and Twitter knows "who is doing what" and Linkedin knows "where you work". Combining them all one can almost know half of a person's personality and interest. That means in today's world, we know much more about potential buyers, the need is to identify the best ways to convert them into costumers.

Related Links
http://searchengineland.com/google-introduces-interest-based-advertising-beta-16855
http://searchengineland.com/google-rolls-out-behavioral-targeting-to-all-adwords-advertisers-82976


This article is also posted on my blog at Digital Web Specialist.

Presidential Election Campaign - 2012 Style

Many people attributed Obama's campaign success to the clever use of online campaigning in 2008. Many political analyst or pundit asserted that the Obama camp mastered campaigning to the Facebook generation. He raised money via Facebook, spread his message all over Youtube, and appealed to the younger voters who were otherwise disinterested in "just another election". All political issues/belief aside, his campaign worked like magic.

Now with the 2012 presidential primary going in full-swing for the GOP, one can't help but notice these candidates campaigning all over the internet. In fact, can they afford to NOT campaign, promote, and raise fund through the internet? Most likely NOT.

Online streaming videos, along with news site that streams live debate videos, are wonderful. These sites enable users to check out the presidential debate at their own leisure. No more worry about missing the show. It's a beautiful thing.

Xbox and the Ultimate Impolite Ad Campaign

Microsoft announced today that they will be creating interactive ads for their Xbox video game console. This will allow them to run interactive "in game" advertising which they hope will grab the attention of the avid gamers. Doesn't this seem a little ridiculous? If you were a consumer who had just paid $300 for a console and then $50 for a game, would you then want advertisers trying to sell you stuff while your play that game? I get it that in tv the advertisers revenue pays for the content, but here, the consumer is paying for the content, so why should they be forced to receive advertising? I can't imagine this will be well received. Here is the full article below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/business/media/21xbox.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Hulu Advertising - Breakthrough?

Due to a newfound obsession with reruns of Modern Family and Glee, I have become acquainted with the fascinating 0nline media platform that is Hulu. As a reminder to most of you, birthed in 2007 as a joint venture between News Corp and NBC, Hulu is an attempt at a competitor for Youtube. Although they experienced initial trouble raising advertising revenue in 2008 and 2009, the site has become a dominant advertising platform.

How did Hulu go from noteworthy struggles in 2008-9 (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090330_571175.htm) to kicking the proverbial advertising a*$ today?

What did they do?

From a quick perusing around their site for specifics on their advertising, it is clear that they decided at some point to invest a lot of effort into innovation and for adding value for them and for advertisers themselves.

Hulu created much smaller increments of videos during the shows on the site that are accompanied by Like / Dislike boxes that both attract viewer attention as well as supply a new and valuable metric for advertisers. When crossed with the sign-up information of the user, these likes/dislikes are valuable demo/behavioral info.

Hulu also created free content that can help advertisers use their services: there are case studies on the site.

The last thing that exemplifies the sleak style and technology of Hulu is their gallery and ranking system for this past year's Superbowl Commercials: http://www.hulu.com/adzone2011#50120562

Check it out

Search Engine Advertising and the Importance of Landing Page Optimization

If your company is willing to pay a premium to vie for one of the top three ad spaces that are placed above the google search results, it would be logical to bring the searcher to the relevant page on your site and to have your site be relevant in the first place. As a digital marketing novice, I hadn’t given this concept much thought, but upon further reflection it makes intuitive sense. I set out to put this theory to the test, while also plotting a much needed summer vacation, and conducted a search on “vacations to…” various European cities.

When it came to London, this concept lined up very nicely. The top google ad was one by Icelandair who brought me directly to their optimized landing page that displayed a casual group of soccer players resting in the shade of a Chelsea side street. While it did not have Buckingham Palace on the first page or the Houses of Parliament either, the site made it obvious that you were very much in the right place. The next two ads by Virgin Atlantic airlines and vacations were equally calibrated, although far less understated, with hero shots of iconic London sites on their landing pages.

Everything seemed to go according to plan, when I decided to try “vacations to Madrid.” I immediately noticed a difference. Not only were the landing pages not optimized, but the ads themselves were not directly related to my search. The ads suggested I visit Paris and London or Cancun instead. The one ad that was relevant listed all of the different places in Spain I could visit and did not have any pictures of landmarks like the Plaza Mayor or the Palacio Real that announced that I had arrived in Madrid.

Needless to say, the user experience for my London search was significantly better. These two searches and associated search engine advertisements perfectly illustrated the value in having an optimized landing page and ads that were relevant to my search. London and Madrid were weighted equally in my mind when I began my search, but the ads that appeared in the London search were far more likely to convert me than their Madrileño counterparts.

Today's top earner: Facebook!

According to an article in Adage, Facebook has officially surpassed Google and Yahoo in digital ad revenue. FB is projected to earn $2.19 billion in ad revenue this year, relative to Google's $1.15 billion and Yahoo's 1.62 billion. Most of FB's revenue is coming from the long tail of spenders, whereas bigger companies continue to devote their budgets to traditional forms of media, like TV. As FB's user base approaches 700 million, it is easy to see that pure scale of reach may be tempting to small businesses. What I wonder though, is how companies measure the effectiveness of their ads on Facebook. FB's ads have much lower click through rates than Google's, and most seem to fail in effecting a call to action amongst consumers. Does the pure quantity of FB's user base outweigh the need for quality in targeting and messaging?

Not all votes are considered equal?

I was directed to a very good article on Search Engine Optimization entitled “Selling SEO to CEOs”, which raised some interesting points on the value SEO brings and how best to describe its service offering to a non-technical audience. The analogy that the author uses is a comparing SEO to a candidate that is running for president and the importance of “optimizing” the stages of the campaign.

In the first part of the campaign, the candidate needs to put out their message telling the audience what they are looking to achieve; it needs to be clear, focused and unambiguous. The message needs to contain buzzwords or key topics that the public is listening out for, that relate directly to the voter’s needs. This part of the campaign is what the author refers to as onsite SEO, and translates directly to the layout and design of a website. It shows you how your website should be compiled so that it is readable to the right audience, has the right keywords and that it stands out from the crowd.

The second part of the part of the campaign is actually getting elected and that involves getting the votes from outside (offsite SEO). In order to get those votes, you need share your message with others, get it published by credible sources and have them quote and reference you which would generate a following and get you a vote. Taking this back to the web world, those votes or links into your site hold value and this is one of the ways the search engines determine the popularity of your page. However, it is not only the number of links that these search engines look at, but the quality of the link as another determinate of the rank of your page in its organic search. This shows that having better quality links can push you further up those rankings, showing the importance of being endorsed by the right people and also showing that not all votes in this game are considered equal.

House Music + Social Media

Social networking site and social media fundamentally change the way musicians market and promote their music. In my opinion, the impact to the House music genre is the most noticeable. I digress.

House music was initially through vinyl, then CD, since most of the music are mixed and edited live at various clubs in Europe. As this music caught on fire with mainstream audience throughout the world, and as the music industry evolved to .MP3, or other popular digital format, the dance music industry exploded.

These days, music are distributed online and it can be purchased via iTunes, Amazon, beatport.com, and among many others. Further, musicians started promoting their music on social networking sites such as MySpace.com, Facebook.com, their own music sites, and of course most recently, YouTube.com. With the help of internet, a music fan from Hong Kong such as myself can purchase and listen to music produced by DJs in Sweden, Germany, France, and Brazil. It's amazing. Without these web medium, this music industry would not have exploded as quickly as it has in the last five years.

Changing the Apple Economy

This is less about marketing, more about the strategy side. It was big news when Apple recently relaxed the rules for publishers of iPad subscription apps but, aside from friends who have the Amazon Kindle app, I haven't seen much commentary about the two companies and how their little e-reader chess game is going. So here's an interesting take from Forrester on how Amazon should continue to pursue Apple customers with its e-books even though Apple's history suggests it will do everything in its power to retain control over software developers.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-what-amazon-should-do-with-its-kindle-ipad-app/

Display Ad in My Gmail

Trust and the illusion of non-commerciality are the foundations of Google's non-search services. Google must perform research to make sure that users don't find the ads distracting, probing or otherwise annoying. As a longtime and frequent user of Google's Gmail service, I was surprised to see a display ad next to my list of messages that reminded me of previous, lesser services. A quick Search on Google (of course) yielded a few results from January 2011 saying that the idea was under a beta test and would be rolled out gradually.

The ad was a vivid mix of blue and green and was selling flights to Nigeria right next to my list of messages and below convenience features like isolating an email to its own page, printing and links to add events to Google Calendar. The ad probably appeared because Google found references to African music in my emails, so I would consider it relevant albeit distracting.

Having emails scanned for keywords and other data is the price we pay for Google's services, but I also feel that these ads diminish significantly from the experience. Google benefits from our frequent use of Gmail and other services through the ability to show more ads based on time spent on the site, but if the experience feels exploitative or distracting to users, it will have the opposite effect. Google must take its Beta tests very seriously, especially from a data/user-journey point of view.

Metric standardization in digital

Thinking of digital advertizing, a common association is of a space where things are highly transparent and measurable and ROI is relatively easily determined, as compared to more traditional media. Metrics are rampant as is data, and everyone is measuring every last click. I was surprised therefore, to see that a group of advertizing trade groups are advocating measures to make digital ad metrics better and (paraphrasing) "more like TV". You can read the press release.

Basically, the release comes down to five principles that have to be implemented to make comparisons between different on- and offline media more meaningful and help ad buyers make better decisions about allocating their entire marketing budget. The principles are:

Move to a “viewable impressions” standard and count real exposures online. Like Nielsen trying to adjust its metrics to account for DVR viewers fast-forwarding through commercials, ad metrics should consider how not all ads load completely or are evn seen by viewers of sites.

Online advertising must migrate to a currency based on audience impressions, not gross ad impressions. TV metrics are highly specialized, showing not rating points, but rating points in a particular demographic. The prevailing online metrics still deal with impressions, however, which make cross-media comparisons problematic.


Because all ad units are not created equal, we must create a transparent classification system. We touched upon this in class a few times: there are standards for different display ad sizes, but how do we value each type? Again, comparability aided by standardization is key here.

Determine interactivity “metrics that matter” for brand marketers, so that marketers can better evaluate online’s contribution to brand building.While click-through rates are great for ecommerce sites, more relevant brand-building metrics are not easy to compare across sites.

Digital media measurement must become increasingly comparable and integrated with other media.

Interesting to see some of the limitations of online measurement and the steps being taken to address them...

Brand experience advertising and the Internet

Conventional advertising wisdom goes something like this: search advertising is best for online businesses seeking conversion (i.e., making users do something, like buying a product), while banner advertising is best for brand awareness. And traditional advertisers do little of either; they have few online products to push, and they believe that banner advertising is an insufficient medium for a brand experience. Instead, brand experiences continue to be sold on television, one of the most expensive mediums for advertising.

I suspect these biases are contribute to higher advertising costs than is necessary. Take car companies as an example. They are prototypical users of television brand advertising as part of campaigns designed to raise awareness of new models and increase the appeal of models new and old. But what about new versions of longstanding models? For example, the Toyota Camry has been one of the best selling cars in the United States for decades. Perhaps some low-cost display advertisements announcing the arrival of the new model year would be more cost effective method to alert potential customers, who are likely to consider the car regardless of what the new model looks like. Similarly, Honda has an established promotional cycle every year -- why not run those advertisements online?

For those looking to get started, Wikipedia has a decent summary of the extraordinarily complicated web advertising ecosystem. Check it out.

Social Media as a customer service tool..

Is this a bad idea?
I looked at a number of facebook pages for some prominent brands, and it looks like they are being used by customers to vent. The brands get sucked in and turn their pages into customer service outlets or help desks. Various departments within large organizations (Corporate Communications, Marketing, Customer Service, Help Desk) need to get aligned on what Social really means for the Brand. Customer service alignment with the rest of the organisation should be a part of the digital marketing strategy to avoid getting into a food fight with your consumers.
I think brands should realize that social is a less formal way of communicating and stock customer service replies simply aggravate consumers even more.

Social Media Campaigns

I know that we haven't reached Social Media in class just yet, but I came across a list of interesting Social Media Campaigns that sparked my interest. I have a friend who worked for a company that specializes in managing a company's digital relationships. This particular company's competitive advantage is a tool that generates high quality polls and sweepstakes on Facebook. The idea is that the sweepstakes offer prizes that consumers can only be eligible for if they "like" the sponsoring company's fan page. This action then guarantees that any updates or further promotions offered by the company will appear in the users' news feeds.

The list above catalogs some more interactive methods of engaging users through social media outlets. One of the examples is the Old Spice campaign that we discussed in the core MBA class, Managing Marketing Programs. The campaign started with a popular television ad and then branched out to mini-video ads that were made in response to fans' comments and requests via Facebook. While this kind of marketing can definitely be hyper-targeted, it seems like it could potentially take up an enormous amount of time. The Old Spice people put out 180 more videos after the initial commercial!

A new “war of domains”?

An expansion of addresses available in the Internet has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Although this has not been implemented yet the idea is to approve the use of other extensions besides the typical .com, .org or .net. This means that if I want to put .sophia or .mygrandothersnameisMary, I will be able to do so!!

This of course has brought a huge controversy.

On the one hand, it is a positive motion since nowadays it is hard to find a good domain for a new entrepreneur since most of the good names have been taken. This could also lead to innovations in online marketing, since powerful names such as whatsfor.dinner (quoted in the NY Times) can easily be remembered by Internet users.

But, on the other hand, critics say that there are already sufficient choices and that there is no need for this expansion. As well they argue this could lead to the old “war of domains” we’ve experienced in the past. This war consisted of people buying domains with trademarks and then selling them to corporate businesses. This lead to intellectual property abuses which critics don’t want to experience again. Anyway, many measures have been created to avoid these abuses. For instance, corporate businesses can claim the names of their addresses before the rollout period. As well, these addresses cost as much as $185,000 with a $25,000 annual fee.

Anyway, since this new motion would open the doors to endless addresses I believe there are many factors which we are not able to predict. For instance, big players need to stay alert since new domains will probably lead to great confusion!