Google strategy to target ads using email addresses

Yesterday we had an article in WSJ stating that Google will allow marketers to use email addresses to target customers on Youtube and Google Search. Termed as 'Customer Match', this product allows marketers to display specific content to specific email addresses while they search on Google or Youtube. So marketers can submit the email addresses of their customers  (marketers may have collected when customers shop or visit their websites) to Google and Google will then allow such marketers to post very specific content to these customers. Only caveat is that customers should have their Gmail mailbox open while surfing the web.

I see this as a huge market for Google because marketers would like to fully leverage on the information they already possess about customers. The fact that they received the email addresses from customers themselves shows that such customers are potentially high value targets for these marketers. Having the ability to successfully filter out potentially interested customers would naturally be of a huge interest to these marketers. And Google itself benefits as they can charge better premium for content posted using this product because marketers know that the customer sample has a potentially better conversion rate.

The article notes that Facebook already has this product called 'Custom Audiences' and it is apparently a very popular product among marketers. The fact that even Google has launched this product validates that the market for such a product is very big.

You can read this article here:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-will-target-ads-using-email-addresses-1443468445?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_NeedToKnow

Facebook and Google, Two Giants in Digital Ads, Seek More

This NY times article does a good job of summarizing (in a simplified way) the extent to which Facebook and Google dominate the digital advertising world. Both companies took center stage at the first day of this year's Advertising Week, introducing tools that will enhance their share of the digital advertising revenue pie. Perhaps most importantly, through Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings, Nielsen will get involved in the measurement of ad performance in the digital space as it has in the TV space for several years. According to Nielsen, 88% of tablet owners and 86% of smartphone owners use devices while watching television. New Nielsen tools will make it easier for advertisers to plan their marketing spend on Facebook in the same way in which they have on TV for many years. Google also revealed a product that will give marketers the ability to target ad campaigns at consumers using their email addresses. Facebook announced it was introducing mobile polling, allowing marketers to measure ad effectiveness of their mobile ad campaigns. With projected ad earnings of $7.7 billion and $23.3 billion in 2015, Facebook and Google (respectively) are set to maintain their roles as market leaders for some years to come.

Link to full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/business/media/facebook-and-google-two-giants-in-digital-ads-seek-more.html?_r=0

In a country that is just warming up to the concept of e-commerce. I am excited to see how the support of Facebook for the Digital India Initiative will change the way products are marketed. Indian firms still allocate a much larger part of their budget to traditional advertising mediums like television.

PM Narendra Modi was at the Facebook HQ on Sunday, Sept 27th where he and Mark Zuckerberg answered questions about this initiative at the town hall meeting.


http://thelogicalindian.com/news/we-support-pm-mods-digital-india-vision-but-not-facebooks-version-of-digital-india-free-basics/

http://mashable.com/2015/09/27/zuckerberg-modi-townhall/#pdt8HNufFSqs

The end of rented set-top boxes?

As the number of customers using subscription based services over traditional set-top box shift, so does the importance of digital marketing. The FCC (along with the major subscription providers Netflix, Hulu, Amazon) may be pushing for a "new, national consumer-friendly standard that will allow consumers to choose their own video box".

Today a consumer cannot purchase their own box without renting it from a major cable TV provider, an arguably archaic practice. If the FCC passes the new regulations consumers could essentially pick & choose both subscription services and pay-TV services -- further customizing the TV experience to the consumer. This could have large implications for the digital advertising field, as a hybrid cable-top box may allow for more demographic-specific customization of marketing messages for traditional pay-TV.

source: http://adage.com/article/media/google-break-cable-s-grip-set-top-boxes/300617/

The Low Quality Ad Traffic

This week's feature on Bloomberg Businessweek is an investigative article that asks the question - "How Much of Your Audience Is Fake?"

We've learned in our recent classes that advertisers should bid high on keywords to get ahead of competition, but it turns out the quality of audience is also a huge component in the clearing price of ad placement auctions.  It turns out, in this wild west of advertisement, what you pay is what you get.  Whereas quality "human"-initiated Google keyword search may cost several dollars per ad click to the advertisers, brokered traffic can be bought for often less than $0.01 per click.  However, the article uncovers that some of the shady source websites that sells supposed "visitor" traffic through brokers  are in fact massively inflating its unique visitor counts via automated programs that run behind servers and infected desktops.  These sites often have just enough stale and outdated contents to appear like a badly managed website, but as much as 95%+ of its visitorship could be non-human.

Google and Facebook are listed as some of the safer bets for advertisers where there are much higher likelihood of a real person behind the screen.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-click-fraud/

New Taco Bell Website

Taco Bell is improving its digital experience and showing its digital marketing prowess with a new website ta.co. The new website has cool features like menu customization options, online ordering, and “The Feed” which adds a social “collaboration” element. This update comes on the heels of their widely successful app, “Live Mas,” that was launched last year. Clearly, Taco Bell is very dedicated to digital initiatives.

I checked out the new website myself and was very impressed. For one thing, it really didn’t look like a usual restaurant website I would normally go to. It felt very tech savvy, youthful, and “fresh” – I was impressed. It made it clear that Taco Bell is trying to improve its user experience – and given that fast food restaurants aren’t normally known for their customer service, I thought that was pretty cool. As explained in the article, the company is clearly targeting millennials, and this refresh made that very clear.

I recommend you check it out! If nothing else, it will definitely make you crave a taco (which I guess is the point!)

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/taco-bell-tries-reinvent-fast-food-website-mobile-centric-taco-167206

Facebook Brings Free, Powerful Demographics To Mobile Analytics

Facebook Insights is a pretty powerful tool for those wanting to track user interaction on their Facebook Fan Page. Facebook Insights can be seen by all the admins of your page and it can help you track the number of active users to better understand page performance.

By using Facebook Insights you’ll be able to determine the best time of day to post, the best day of the week to post and what type of content is most popular. It is important to note that the Facebook Insights tool is constantly updated to reflect your page’s developments and any patterns that may form. So you’ll need to keep checking back to keep in the loop

Read more:
https://developers.facebook.com/products/analytics

THIS AD IS REAL.

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) is rolling out a "Feal the Real" advertising campaign today, emphasizing that people still see outdoor, brick and mortor ads, trying to reinforce marketers fears whether people actually see digital ads. Unlike conventional ads, it is difficult to tell if digital ads are noticed by the consumer, outside of the extremely small percentage of people that click on them in the corner of pages, in contrast to outdoor ads that can be in front of peoples faces for several minutes at a time.

I think that the OAAA is right to point out that their ads should not be viewed as replaceable by digital ads, depending on what the marketers goal is of the ad. Outdoor ads serve a very important place in the advertising space, especially for marketing to local stores that are near where the ad or brand awareness. In the future, a truly complete advertisement operator (digital or not) should be able to offer their clients a complete advertising portfolio to meet their needs.


Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/outdoor-ad-industrys-pitch-real-people-see-billboards-1443438000

VW Doesn't Want Anyone to Think About Them Right Now

In the midst of the much publicized Volkswagen emissions scandal the company has suspended most national advertising because according to VW's VP of Marketing, "Ongoing press coverage and negative consumer social sentiment in the marketplace has effectively drowned out any positive messaging." The constant feedback loop that is social media is resulting in the perpetuation and magnification of the story in a way that didn't exist before. The Volkswagen scandal would have gotten some news coverage before being considered old news by media outlets and petering out. Now they can't even advertise because any reminder of them sets the public off on another negative social media rant. In the information age a screwup like theirs which only impacted ~5% of cars sold this year is killing their reputation as a company and destroying customer faith and trust in the brand. It is likely that sales will suffer from this loss of trust for years to come. 

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/vw-puts-u-s-ads-hold-amid-emissions-scandal/300584/

Grab the chance when buy buttons in social media take over

Instagram and Pinterest, originally as social networks, have both launched “buy button” to expand their functions and make more profit by cutting out the middle man and letting users directly buy from the App.

Take Pinterest as an example, as many as 93% of its users plan their purchases with the platform after searching on it. This is a large opportunity for brands, because it means a new advertising avenue and also budget-friendly. This is also a challenge for marketing in this quite new area. I think companies first should try its best in presenting carefully designed pictures. Secondly, SEO inserting in the pictures should be paid attention to. SEO for traditional search engine such as GOOGLE are already mature. However, “SEO” for social media need to be explored more. Last but not least, companies are better to keep itself surrounding everyday hit and dig the relations to always make the products in front of the public.

http://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-and-pinterest-get-buy-buttons-what-this-means-for-your-business/

https://blog.pinterest.com/en/buyable-pins

Mobile fraud

The problem of fraud in advertising, particularly on mobile platforms is what interests me a lot. Companies operating on a good-faith basis suffer because of the actions of unprincipled competitors or pranksters, investing millions of dollars into a bottomless pit. The article I found on adage both presents a shocking statistics about 38% of the mobile app ad inventory being fraudulent and inspires confidence and optimism about the future.

Apparently, there's an Ad-prevention firm that created a mechanism for monitoring fraudulent traffic in mobile exchanges and using that mechanism to create an independent ranking. Now, that ranking in itself is a powerful tool, but in order to solve the problem the next step is required: these exchange platforms need to incorporate that mechanism into their day-to-day activities to filter out the fraud.

More at http://adage.com/article/digital/pixalate-launches-trust-index-mobile-app-exchanges/300473/

Facebook covertly pursuing a not so hidden agenda?

Most internet users are now gaining awareness about search engines and other websites gathering and using their data for economic benefit.

Facebook appears to have taken this to another level. After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi' meeting with Mark Zuckerberg a couple of days ago, Zuckerberg's display picture promoting Modi's "Digital India" campaign spread like wildfire among the Indian community. 

Little did the adopters of the new display pictures know, that by using Facebook's service to convert their existing display picture into the "Digital India" format, they were allegedly automatically voting in favor of Facebook's internet.org initiative. Many believe this initiative is inherently against net neutrality, the subject of a raging debate in India at the moment.

More at the link below.

http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/fb-screwed-you-over-changing-you-display-pic-means-you-just-voted-against-net-neutrality-245657.html

Content Marketing's Clickbait Problem

I found this article on Mashable brief but interesting. It details the clickbait problem of digital advertising that we all know too well.. Display ads popping up that promise an interesting article/content and then once you click, direct you to something completely different. This results in distrust and frustration among users, and hurts the site's reputation as well.

Many sites are cracking down on clickbait with Facebook recently announcing new measures to eliminate clickbait and Buzzfeed backing a no-tolerance policy. Content creators have also begun to support new metrics versus the standard click through rates. These new metrics are based on things like number of shares, time spent on site, etc. These developments may be an indication of the future of digital advertising metrics and payment plans. Clicks may not be enough and may not be the right way to measure the effectiveness of ads.

http://mashable.com/2014/12/10/content-marketing-clickbait/#djZ1Gvjvp8qS

Google Announces Customer Match: Upload Email Lists For Search, Gmail, YouTube Ad Targeting

Customer Match marks the first time advertisers will be able to set bids and create specific ads tailored to customer audience segments built with first-party data

Google is on the cusp of rolling out an anticipated and in-demand product feature in AdWords: the ability to upload and target audiences built from advertiser email lists.

Customer Match will let advertisers bid and create ads tailored to customer segments in search as well as with YouTube Trueview ads and Gmail ads.

Advertisers will be able to upload email lists manually or through the API to AdWords. Emails are matched against Google sign-in emails and anonymized.

The ability to set bids and create ad copy based on advertiser data on their customers can be much more powerful than doing so based on site visitor behavior. As George Michie, Chief Marketing Scientist for Merkle RKG, told Search Engine Land this spring when rumors about such a move were first published, “Browser behavioral targeting is a pretty crude tool – better than nothing, certainly – but pretty crude. The ability to fold in real customer insight, understanding all the brand’s interactions with a person online and offline going as far back in history as you want is a gigantic leap forward. Understanding which customers prefer to buy online or off, which physical location they prefer allows for a level of personalization we just haven’t had in the walled-garden of Google.”

The company is announcing the new capability during Advertising Week in New York City in a presentation on Monday. For more details about Customer Match and the additional Similar Audience targeting rolling out along with it, see our full coverage on Marketing Land

http://searchengineland.com/google-announces-customer-match-upload-email-lists-for-search-gmail-youtube-ad-targeting-231737

http://recode.net/2015/09/28/with-new-ads-features-using-youtube-mobile-and-gmail-a-step-closer-to-one-google/

Unethical or not, the Internet should take concrete actions to prevent the use of Ad blocker software

Among other benefits, the existence of digital advertising makes it possible to have free content on the digital media space. Advertising also subsidizes the cost of apps, which can take hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, but are often free or low-priced.

However, ads have become more and more intrusive for the internet users and, as always that there is a problem to be solved, some companies found it and developed softwares to block ads, and 34% of U.S. adults are using them.

This is clearly impacting the revenue of many digital content producers and publishers and most of them claim that it is unethical to block ads and not paying for content at the same time. However, unethical or not, it is challenging to rely on individual consciousness on whether to use these softwares or not. The internet should take concrete actions to prevent the usage of these softwares. But, what is the appropriate action?  Should websites “curate” ads and only show the least intrusive to the users so to provide a better experience to them or should they block access to their web sites to people that block ads altogether, or both?

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-blocking-unnecessary-internet-apocalypse/300470/

The rise of ad-blocking could herald the end of the free internet

Recently, more and more people are using software to turn off irritating website ads.
Apple allowed to install the ad block apps and people are downloading them now. 

There is, alas, no such thing as a free lunch. What’s even more depressing is that there is no such thing as a free internet service. Most people nowadays probably understand that in relation to, say, social networking services, if the service is “free” then the users (or, more precisely, their personal data) are the product. But this also applies to stuff that you haven’t signed up for – websites that you browse, for example. The site may be free to view, but there’s often a hidden cost.

One part of that cost comes from surreptitious tracking of your browsing habits by outfits that sell that information to advertisers. (If this is news to you just install the Ghostery browser extension to see who’s monitoring your browsing.) The other cost comes from ads that are placed on a webpage either directly by the site owner or as the outcome of a real-time auction that goes on in the depths of the internet.

And as the web has evolved, and more of our lives conducted online, internet advertising has steadily increased. It’s now at the stage where it’s really annoying. Webpages that used to load relatively quickly suddenly take ages to appear. Videos pop up unannounced and – worse still – start to play without your consent. And there’s a lot of hidden downloading going on before the page finally appears. Scrolling down becomes unaccountably jerky. And so on. This is bad enough on fixed-line connections; on mobile connections it is truly infuriating – and it eats into your data plan as well.

So it’s not surprising that internet users have been going for ad-blocking software like ostriches go for brass doorknobs (as PG Wodehouse would put it). One reportclaims that ad-blocking has grown globally by 41% and in the US by 48%. Since these estimates come from sources that have vested interests in this area, they should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt, but there’s no doubt that ad-blocking is now a big deal.

And, as with all of these things, it’s led to an arms race between those who create ad-blockers and the people whose products they seek to exclude. But now Apple has stepped on to the battleground. The new release of its iOS mobile operating system contains some hooks that enable programmers to create apps that block content (aka ads) within the Safari mobile browser. Last time I looked there were nearly 20 of them available on the App store.

Because Apple is such a dominant company, this new ad-blocking technology has stirred people up. My hunch is that the impact of the iOS change itself will be relatively small: the iPhone is very profitable, but it has only about 15% of the global smartphone market, and the content-blocking facility only works on the newest model – the iPhone 6.

The real significance of the Apple development is that it puts the weight of a giant company behind the idea of content-blocking, which means that the use of ad-blocking software is likely to accelerate. And this, as Jean-Louis Gassée (a former Apple executive, incidentally) points out, might be a mixed blessing.

“The good news: we’ll soon have ways to streamline our browsing experience and avoid being pimped to advertisers. The bad news: marginally profitable websites, which is most of them, will lose advertising revenue and plunge into the red. The big guys that have paywalls in place, sites such as the New York Times, Financial Times, or Le Monde, will be much less vulnerable.”

Pervasive ad-blocking will dramatically undermine the predominant business model of the “free” web, which is that the price of freedom is exposure to ads. Without those ads, online publishers will have to find a new business model or go under. And currently, there are not that many alternative models out there.

One is the subscription/paywall route – the option that the publishing giants mentioned by Mr Gassée are already employing with considerable success. But that option is not available to most of the smaller publications that are the glory of the web and enrich the public sphere. For them, donations are probably the only way of paying the hosting and other bills. And, as all charities know, donations can go down as well as up.

The rise of ad-blocking will force us to confront the fact that the free lunch provided by advertising is not long for this world. The good news is that the ensuing crisis will compel us finally to look for what we should have invented decades ago, namely sustainable business models for the web. For example, it’s possible that cryptocurrencies might enable the “micro-payments” that would make users to pay a tiny amount for any article they read. We need more ideas like that, and I’m sure we’ll get them. Necessity is the mother of invention.

How to exponentially grow your email list?

How to exponentially grow your email list?

To help your own channels such as email marketing you have to constantly add new subscribers. Why use email? Because emails are controlled by you, while Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms are not. 

• Think big (10x), ambition is very important.
• What works for one company may not work for other companies, so learn by doing. The faster you start the faster you’ll get there.
• Create metrics that are predictable and scalable. 
• Don't do one offs, be consistent. Be regular in how often you send out emails to your list.
• And, use the AAA formula:

1. Ask: ask your people to go to your newsletter through other social media platforms.
2. Assets: your email signature is your asset. Add a link to your signature that goes to a landing page where people can sign up for your mailing list. Join slack groups and comment on them, organize your key people and influencers that should always know about your new launches. The emails you are sending already to your base have to encourage your subscribers to share and forward your emails.
3.  Acquisition: boost post Facebook and then retarget your content. No one wants to click adds, people like to click when they know they can learn something new and different. 

Sources: hubspot, presentation by Noah Kagan (founder of SumoMe)

Apple promotes China to first wave of markets in iPhone 6s launch

A new wave of iPhone is hitting Apple's largest market-China. Ever since the launch of the pink iPhone 6s on September 12th, my friends in China, especially ladies, started to post their new gifts either from boyfriends, husbands, or parents. What makes Apple products, particularly iPhone 6s, so popular in China? This week's article solves the puzzle.

In a telling sign of the times, Apple announced Wednesday that China will be among the first wave of markets to get its new iPhone 6s smartphones on September 25. Apple also said that transit information in its Maps app will be available in more than 300 cities in China, including Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai. Meanwhile, the country’s three major carriers — China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom — are expected to continue to support iPhones (now including the 6s) on their 4G/LTE networks. Apple truly understands who to cooperate with. The three giants of telecom carriers in China will open up the market widely because they almost cover the entire telecommunication network and services in China.
Although there are launching markets for the iPhone 6s in Asia, such as Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, none of them presented a purchase-ability that is as strong as in China. Take India as an example, with about the same size of population, “it is expected to be the second-largest smartphone market behind China by 2017”, but still lagging behind as the sales record is not decent.

Another important feature that attracts China consumers is that “Apple offered a nod to China during the iPhone keynote when it included the country’s most popular mobile messaging app, WeChat, in a demonstration of how its new 3D Touch display technology works, showing how a user could launch straight into WeChat’s “iSight Camera” mode from the iPhone 6s home screen.” As WeChat became the most popular mobile messaging app ( I would say it outperforms WhatApp), Apple make the target so clear that it want to utilize the advantage of cooperating with WeChat to broaden its market range and aggrandize the market size.

Aside from the technical advancement, the most crucial marketing strategy that Apple used on the iPhone 6s is the innovative color- Rose gold. “The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus in rose gold have drawn significant attention in China already, “according to a news report, with the new color aimed at making an impact on the over-saturated smartphone market in China. The release of gold-colored iPhones led the current trend, with the introduction of rose gold likely to duplicate the success and seize the attention of Chinese women in particular. It has been a trend that Chinese ladies prefer pink over any other color, with the fact that they prefer iPhone over any other cellphones, the sales of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is unlikely to disappoint Cook. The marketing strategies that Cook uses seem simple, yet sophisticated and efficient. Simply by changing the color and releasing advertisements, Cook has successfully enlarged the appetite of Chinese consumers and generated lucrative profits for Apple.

Sources: 
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/10/apple-promotes-china-to-first-wave-of-markets-in-iphone-6s-launch/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-6s-6s-plus-in-rose-gold-caters-to-chinese-demand-cook/