Display Ads Lift Searching

According to 12 months of proprietary Specific Media Ad Effectiveness data, by comScore, display advertising significantly lifts Online search activity. The study demonstrates that consumers exposed to display advertising were more likely to search for brand terms (i.e. automotive manufacturer), and segment terms (i.e. vehicle class), than unexposed consumers.
Chris Vanderhook, COO, Specific Media, said “… unique post-campaign reporting tools show how display campaigns impact search, site visitation and engagement…”

The study shows that display advertising has a direct impact on both paid and organic searches and clicks.

Display Advertising Lift on Online Search Activity

Advertiser Category
% Search Lift (Brand & Segment)

Automotive
144%

CPG
22%

Health
260%

News & Media
144%

Personal Finance
206%

Property & Real Estate
125%

Retail
69%

Travel & Tourism
274%

Average Lift
155%

Source: comScore Ad Effectiveness Data, December 2008

David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer agreed that “There is a connection between display and search ads… often it’s not the search ad alone that gets consumers to act, but the context of all the marketing that preceded it.”

And complementary data from eMarketer says that search and display ads will retain the highest share of online ad spending formats through 2013, and will be the only formats to maintain double-digit share through that period.

US Online Ad Spending by Format (% of Total $ in Billions)

% Total Ad Spend

Format
2008
2010
2012

Search
45.3%
48.7%
47.8

Display
19.6
19.1
19.4

Video
2.5
4.4
8.1

Rich media
8.0
7.9
8.0

Classifieds
13.3
10.3
8.0

Lead generation
6.8
5.9
5.4

Sponsorships
2.5
1.9
1.7

E-Mail
2.0
1.8
1.6

Total (billion $)
$23.6
28.5
37.0

Source: eMarketer, November 2008

Wallpaper Video

The Hidden Social Networks Are Most Influential

If you’re a marketer trying to spread an idea through online social networks, you may be better off disregarding people with the greatest number of connections.

That’s according to Daniel Romero, a scientist at the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, and HP Labs, who recently sent me his team’s latest paper on the online social networks that “truly matter.” According to the report, the volume of social network connections a person has is a weak indicator of how prolific a poster someone is. What really matters are actual friends. This was based on an analysis of 309,740 Twitter users, who, on average, published 255 posts, had 85 followers, and followed 80 other users.

The authors explain: “Even when using a very weak definition of ‘friend,’ we find that Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. (A friend here is defined as anyone who a user has directed a post, or ‘@username,’ to at least twice.) This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends. On the other hand, users with many followers or followees post updates more infrequently than those with few followers or followees.”

The authors concluded: “[S]cholars, advertisers and political activists, see online social networks as an opportunity to study the propagation of ideas, the formation of social bonds and viral marketing, among others. This view should be tempered by our findings that a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. As we showed in the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view. Thus the need to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on word-of-mouth to spread an idea, a belief, or a trend.”

To me, a marketer observing all sorts of attempts to crack the code of influence and message dispersion, the gem in this report is the statement that “a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them.” This presents serious challenges to popular assumptions (and sometimes blind conviction) of influence and link authority. These assumptions have severely informed social-media marketing over the past five years.

To be sure, Twitter is not reflective of all social networks; each has its nuances. However, most are vulnerable to false assumptions that have haunted traditional media venues for years: mainly, that audience and engagement can be implied through opt-in or subscriber status. Think of the dozens of magazines and newspapers piling up on my living room coffee table. I suppose those print publications count me among its followers, and they tout that to advertisers and target me accordingly. But the fact is they have little meaning in my life because I barely pay attention to them; I don’t recall even passively opting into most of them. (However, they do a good job of getting the fireplace roaring.)

And the same goes for Twitter. As of this writing, I have 955 followers, and I have little knowledge about who most are. Conversely, I’m following 584 people, and I pay meaningful attention to around 100. My social connections are not indicative of my merit or propensity to spread an idea. For me, core Twitter value comes mostly from the 50 or so friends with whom I regularly interact. Upwards of 3,000 posts, I write mostly for this group, and they’re most likely to respond to me. That’s the network that resonates — the one that truly matters.

Social Networks: Millions of Users, Not So Many Marketers

Consumers love social networks—but advertisers are still standoffish.

Anyone still questioning the efficacy of social network marketing needs to look only as far as the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama rode a wave of social media support to the White House—using both established social networks and homegrown networking site My.BarackObama.com to build a database of millions of supporters.

“Sen. Obama’s social media activities were not only grassroots, his campaign also advertised on social networks,” says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Social Network Marketing: Slow Growth Ahead for Ad Spending. “Through October 2008, 6% of the campaign’s $8 million in online ad spending went to Facebook—over $450,000, by some calculations. Factoring out Google, which garnered $3.5 million in Obama campaign ad spending, Facebook netted 10% of the online dollars.”

The New York Times’ roadblock ad campaign on Facebook’s home page commemorating Obama’s victory reached 68 million people and tripled the newspaper’s Facebook “fan” count in 24 hours. In addition, 400,000 images of the Times’ front page were sent in the form of virtual “gifts,” and the newspaper generated a return on investment of 4.3 times what it spent.

But despite these and other success stories, the social network ad market is suffering. In fact, eMarketer significantly lowered its forecast for US social network ad spending.

“In 2008, companies will spend $1.2 billion on US social network advertising, down 14% from our previous estimate of $1.4 billion, published in May 2008,” says Ms. Williamson. “Even in 2009, spending will rise barely $100 million to $1.3 billion.”

There are three primary forces driving the lowered forecast:

* The economic recession will hit experimental ad formats especially hard, including the ones on social networks.
* MySpace revenues are growing more slowly than eMarketer had expected.
* Social network sites will start to wane as destinations once networking becomes a feature of Web browsing. However, targeting advertising to Web users based on their online social interactions or “social graph” will be extremely difficult to scale.

“No matter what the obstacles are, however,” says Ms. Williamson, “marketers still need to be where their customers are, and consumers remain heavily involved in social networks.”

Advertising is not the only way for marketers to participate in social networks.

Social Advertising

The development of successful social advertising/marketing programs is not only possible, it will be required. This statement has spawned an industry of social media vendors, tools and experts. The socialization of media is a true shift in control from media outlets to individuals and it is incredibly disruptive. As consumer attention is increasingly directed to nontraditional or social media, consumers using traditional media are getting harder to reach with marketing messages (thanks in no small part to TiVo). But the really interesting part about the shift to social media is that it is forcing marketers to reevaluate their relationships with individuals, in many ways for the better.

In a recent New York Times piece by Jack Hitt titled “Multiscreen Mad Men,” R/GA’s Robert Rasmussen put it pretty succinctly: “[It used to be] a brand could tell people what was cool because there was less freedom of choice in media. A brand could say, ‘This is the latest thing, and everybody’s doing it,’ and if the message was persuasive enough, you might believe it. Now you can check on that on the Internet and see whether everybody actually is doing it. Brands have become transparent, and that’s changed the tone of advertising. Now you have to try to be more authentic — even if it’s just authentically acknowledging that what you’re doing is advertising.”

So we are back at the beginning. Want a successful social marketing campaign? Build a better product. And then use the fact that social media is a two-way dialogue with the people you want to reach to ensure that you continue to outpace your competition in delivering what the market wants.

Then turn right around and use social media to spread the news of superior product and service like a wild fire. And don’t just hope a fire starts on its own and then let it burn itself out; provide the fuel and the match. Give people a reason to spread your message, then make it easy for them to do so.

Finally, use social media to ensure a continued positive brand experience, because people expect that every brand or product they engage with comes with a lot more than the tangible good, or primary service. Know the difference between a widget and an application (widgets are stand-alone content that can be taken anywhere, applications are less portable but tie directly into people’s existing social graphs) and know when your strategy might call for one or the other or both.

I think we can agree “The Widget Is Not A Strategy,” but packaging your content appropriately for social media distribution cannot be ignored. Still, as Bob Garfield pointed out l ast week and Brian Morrissey points out this week, it’s easier said than done.

When you hear people talk about successful and innovative marketing today, it’s most likely marketing that provided a service. Think about the implications of “marketing as a service” to the people it reaches. Marketing is inherently social. Brands are inherently social. There is no reason why they would not belong in social media.

I’ve been hearing that I can come off as though I mean to give agencies a “hard time” in these weekly columns. The reality is, I think the agency is going to hold the answer to meeting marketers’ needs in a world where people are in control of the messages they receive and, more importantly, the messages they share. The problem is that there is something inherent in the marketer-agency relationship making it hard for the agency’s role to evolve the way it should. I’m just here to provide sparks and

Read this and loved it….

http://publishing2.com/2008/05/24/why-traditional-advertising-formats-fail-on-the-web/

Delivering Good Online Video

 

 ONLINE VIDEO CAN OPEN NEW streams of revenue or new ways of connecting with customers and other constituents. But delivering multimedia online represents an investment that goes beyond initial production costs. It’s not enough to make a video — you need to be sure that the content you created is the content your visitors actually see, without delays or disruptions that disappoint viewers, and undermine the value of your investment.

In addition to creating the original content, business management must be attentive to three key areas: identifying important streams; establishing performance targets; and comparing your performance to your competitors’.  But operations professionals have equally important roles to fulfill:  defining the right technical delivery methods; quantifying performance targets; and ensuring adequate capacity.

1. Identify high-value streams. All Web elements are not equal. Your attention should be concentrated on the content streams that matter most, such as those that:

 

·        Drive revenue, as in a pay-per-view model of business.

·        Fulfill contractual obligations, like training seminars delivered as part of a service package.

·        Represent risk, such as areas in which failure to deliver (or to deliver with a minimum of errors) could expose your company to lost revenues, lost contracts or lost customers/clients.

 

As management focuses on the most critical streams, operations must examine the means for delivering them: What’s available in-house? Are additional investments required? Does the organization need to consider third-party vendor relationships to meet current technical demands or to expand capacity?

 

2. Quantify your performance targets. You cannot reach what you do not aim for. As a matter of policy, your multimedia performance levels must be measured against an acceptable, objective benchmark. Establishing the benchmark should be a joint effort between management and operations, with the former contributing business goals as the latter confirms realistic expectations for achievement, and is responsible for the method of monitoring.

 

In our experience, the minimum standard for delivery is 97% error-free multimedia performance. Anything less represents a risk of angry or lost customers. Areas of concern include:

 

·        Up-time: the percentage of time your multimedia content is actually available for viewing

·        Start-time: a measure of the amount of time it takes for your content to launch

·        Rebuffer ratio: the percentage of time lost to delays as customers wait for content to buffer and/or rebuffer

 

3. Compare your measurements. Your customers’ expectations are also formed by their experiences at other online sites. In addition to capturing your own performance measurements, you need access to comparable measurements for similar content — both those of your competitors and of industry leaders, such as YouTube, that set the standard for Web content delivery.

These comparative indications give you precious insight on where you stand with your Web users: as an acceptable content provider; as a champion who beats the averages; or as an under-performer who risks increased dissatisfaction and decreased revenues.

As your commitment to multimedia grows, so too will your investment in technologies — in-house or with third-party vendors — to help you deliver your content effectively and consistently. Without careful planning, these investments can spiral out of control — a ‘hodge-podge’ of ad hoc efforts engineered as short-term solutions.  Make sure your organization has a rational process that meets growing needs while validating the merits of each investment.

Companion ads?

IMAGINE YOURSELF AS A DIGITAL media planner for a Fortune 100 client (pick your favorite one – we don’t need to get that specific for this exercise to work). You have been asked to develop an online video plan for Q4 2008, with a significant budget to boot. Easy enough as there are several quality publishers and a couple of ad networks that are on your short-list for this client. So you send out your RFPs with the usual requirements: professional content only, frequency capping, clickable player, ability to place trackers, accommodate 15-second ads and companion ads, etc. You get your proposals back, and something’s not quite right: several of your potential partners can’t run companion ads with all or some of their video inventory. What do you do?

The above scenario, while imagined, is factually based. As publishers strive to add more video inventory to their pages, some of it is taking the form of placements outside the “video” sections of sites, such as on the homepage or as a supplement to an article. As long as certain quality controls are in place — user-initiated video and sound, mainly — this is still very valuable inventory. Arguably, it’s even more valuable from a targeting and relevancy perspective. For a good example of this, check out Walt Mossberg’s iPhone 3G review on Dow Jones Corporation’s AllThingsD. The video is largely the same content as the article, but seeing the product live and in action along with Walt’s commentary makes for a completely different, richer experience. However, due to the nature of the site, the video plays within the page and not in a dedicated video section or within a separate player. And thus, no companion ads.

Companion ads have been part of the pre-roll video package since the format emerged years ago. They make sense, as companions serve as a perfect way to encourage the user to further engage with the brand when they want to — be it before, during or after the video content plays. They are clickable and oftentimes passed along as added value by the seller. Therefore, companions have become mandatory for most online video buys. But should they be?

In the Mossberg example, I would assume that advertisers would be highly interested in running a video ad prior to the review, but if the plan insists on companions, this site wouldn’t qualify. And with more and more of this type of inventory emerging, does it make sense for it to be excluded because of the lack of an adjacent companion ad? Perhaps there is another solution, such as a follow-up ad on the next page. Or does there even need to be a companion or follow-up at all, with the higher brand recall and awareness that pre-roll delivers? Either way, it’s something that should be examined further as we continue on the path to the ideal video solution.

Most Agencies & Publishers Fail To Offer Real Ways To Embrace Social Media

If there was one trend that came on strong during this year’s Advertising Week festivities, it was advertising agencies and media companies jumping on the social media bandwagon.On the agency side, you had an infinite line of digital, creative and planning agencies making social media the latest add-on to their legacy competencies and services menu. In very little time, they’ve become full-fledged “experts” with offerings galore. On the media side, you had a host of traditional and newer publishers with varying degrees of social components, scurrying to monetize by selling inventory in a traditional media-buy campaign framework.

To be sure, there are a lot of promising attempts on both the media and agency sides. But most are short-sided. In fact, most seem disingenuous or uninformed, as evidenced by the advertising community’s excessive and ambiguous use of words and phrases like “conversation,” “viral,” “engage with your customers” and “let the community do the work for you.”

The problem with so many in the advertising community is that the most important, strategic opportunities and liabilities around social media really have nothing to do with outward marketing communications, media or campaigns. Those are bottom-tier tactics.

So what are the real opportunities at this stage of the game? For 99% of companies –small, medium and large — the imperatives lie in deconstructing and rebuilding their cultures and attitudes toward customers and the marketplace. That’s a fundamentally different challenge — and one still sorely lacking viable solutions and services.

I’m now in my second run as a vice president of marketing since social media became so important and began transforming business. I lived through many of the issues and opportunities that keep my fellow marketers up at night. While these issues are often prompted or amplified by social media, social media is rarely the answer. The real solutions are rooted in education, organizational change, market outlook, self-truth and humility.

Here are some of the issues most frequently on my mind as our business scales:

Customer Experience – What is the quality of experience among our customers and prospects? As we’re frequently reminded, customer experience frequently manifests as media. We see customers try us out, then review us on their blogs, in infinite columns, and in semi-private groups and community forums. Customer experience is the new media department, the determinant of customer love or detraction. So we must shape experience accordingly.

Company Values – You can’t talk about customer experience without talking about values. While no product or company is perfect, the values of a company directly impact the good will our customers grant us. Do we set realistic promises and execute against them? Do we acknowledge imperfection, but compensate with relentless drive for improvement? Are we a culture focused on solutions, because that is what we want our customers to associate with us? Company values have wide-ranging consequences – among them, a huge impact on customer experience and your credibility with customers in social media venues.

Listening – Do we actively listen not only to what our customers say, but what they really mean?  The act of listening is one of the biggest ways to demonstrate that we care and engage with costumers. But no company should be exclusively concerned with listening to customers in social media venues, if it isn’t prepared to master customer listening overall.

Humanizing Voice & Confidence – With so many corporate barriers separating companies from their customers, it’s actually a very big deal for a company to find its voice (or voices). On one hand, it’s not always easy for company managers to stop speaking in corporate-speak, and, instead, communicate like real humans. On the other, it often takes a lot of work for controlling managers to let go and empower employees, and get used to the idea of more personal and highly exposed communications and interactions. It takes confidence, trust, patience and diligence. Social media venues are often where this tension comes to a head.

Organizational Silos – If social technologies have done anything, they’ve exposed outdated organizational silos. Social media represent open customer expression and interaction, and impact all sorts of different company departments. Consider customer service, product development, quality and testing, legal, HR, sales and marketing. Are disparate company operations coordinating and effectively managing social media interactions? Are they allocating line responsibilities and centralizing intelligence in CRM databases to optimize relationships — and then actually acting?

As you can see, the issues I’m thinking about have very little to do with advertising, media or campaigns. However, these are the real opportunities emanating from social media, and require a different type of solution. They’re important challenges and require big solutions, as well as openness to new ideas. At this stage, help exists not so much in agencies or media companies, but within – through personal experience, experimentation and support from marketing peers who are leading the heavy lifting themselves.

Who are the pioneers leading your organization as it adapts to a world transformed by social media?

Health A Hot Topic On The Internet

comScore, Inc. recently released results of a study showing that the health information site category has grown 21 percent during the past year, more than four times the growth rate of the total U.S. Internet population. In June, more than 1.5 billion display ad views were seen by nearly 54 million people via sites in the health information category.WebMD Health topped the list of display ad publishers, delivering 290 million display ad views and reaching nearly 15 million people at an average frequency of 19.3 times per visitor during the month.

Three other health networks boosted the overall growth of the category, each attracting more than ten million visitors:

• Everyday Health with 14.7 million (up 63%)
• Revolution Health Network with 11.3 million visitors (up 182%)
• AOL Health with 11.1 million (up 88%)

John Mangano, senior director, comScore Pharmaceutical Marketing Solutions, said. “… sites have become vibrant online communities… sharing experiences and advice, rather than simply being one-way information resources… Improved site functionality, increased content personalization, and consumer acceptance of the Internet… for health information… breathe new life into the health information category,”

While Everyday Health and Revolution Health Network both achieved significant organic growth on their core Web sites, their recent partnerships with several smaller health sites, as well as some strategic acquisitions, have also contributed to their respective gains.

Top 10 Health Information Sites (Unique Visitors July 2008 vs. July 2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations)
	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Jul-2007	Jul-2008	% Change
Total Internet: Total Audience	180,078	189,134	5
Health – Information	56,865	69,008	21
WebMD Health	16,829	17,277	3
Everyday Health	9,009	14,703	63
Revolution Health Network	4,014	11,329	182
AOL Health*	5,913	11,095	88
About.com Health	6,947	8,682	25
Yahoo! Health	7,445	8,496	14
MSN Health	8,833	7,813	-12
NIH.Gov	8,545	7,315	-14
Righthealth.Com	2,424	6,160	154
Quality Health Network	N/A	5,822	N/A
Source: comScore Media Metrix

* July 2007 AOL figures reported in the above chart are for AOL Body while the July 2008 figures are for AOL Health

 Though the number of unique visitors exposed to advertising at both Revolution Health Network and AOL Health were significantly lower than for WebMD Health, they were reached with a higher frequency. Also noteworthy is that despite Weight Watchers International delivering ads to just 2 million unique visitors, each ad-exposed visitor saw an average of 31 display ads during the month, the highest frequency among the top ten publisher sites in the category.

Top 10 Health Information Publishers (June 2008 Total U.S. Home/Work/University Locations)
?  Publisher	Total Display Ad Views*(MM)	Share of Display Ad Views	Advertising Exposed Unique Visitors (000)	Average Frequency
Health – Information	1,556	100.0%	53,556	29.0
WebMD Health	290	18.6%	14,992	19.3
Revolution Health Network	201	12.9%	8,320	24.1
AOL Health	186	12.0%	8,780	21.2
Everyday Health	154	9.9%	10,355	14.8
MSN Health	109	7.0%	7,751	14.1
About.com Health	98	6.3%	7,242	13.5
Lifescript.Com	92	5.9%	3,406	27.0
Weight Watchers International	61	3.9%	1,962	31.0
Yahoo! Health	59	3.8%	7,902	7.5
AARP Sites	34	2.2%	1,696	20.3
Source: comScore Ad Metrix, September 2008   * Excludes house ads and very small ads