Going Local

We've all heard of localvores, people who are committed to eating locally-produced food. And now more and more consumers have started putting stronger effort into buying locally-produced items. How does this trend translate for us online marketers? Well, how about focusing on locally-produced ads? Or buying more local-specific media?

A study by the Online Publishers Association states that local online media offer significant ad advantage (see Marketing Charts article). Apparently, consumers are more likely to trust and be persuaded by ads found on local newspapers, magazines, and TV sites. According to the article, "the new OPA report looks at consumers who get local information from online city guides, classifieds, magazines, newspapers, portals, television sites, user review sites, or yellow pages." It also took note of the fact that local sites attract higher concentrations of influencers.

This is not surprising at all, and from personal experience, we do seem to be more inclined to click on interesting offerings that are happening locally... Let's put it this way: let's say you're an events marketing company advertising a food tasting event in Boston. Which ad you think is more likely to get clicked on - an ad on the Yelp.com Boston Restaurants section, or a Run of Site ad on MSN.com? Granted, the Yelp ad will have tighter, more focused targeting, but isn't that precisely the point of local advertising?

Whether it's display, video, rich media ads, or search ads, local advertising should have a place in every online marketer's plan. So let's jump on this localvore phenomenon and think about supporting not just local food and local items, but also local media.

So hello, Boston.com.

Labels: Online Media, POV, Search

posted by Bianca Garcia @ Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 5:17 PM

Facebook Working to Create the Ultimate User Experience

Today, popular social networking site Facebook.com hit the milestone of 100 million users worldwide. Over the years it has taken for the site to reach this milestone, Facebook’s creators and engineers have kept themselves busy constantly updating features and capabilities, fighting security and privacy battles, and trying above all to improve the user experience.

In the face of this extreme growth and popularity, something they’re doing must be working.

On one hand, there is the advertising capabilities on Facebook.com. Our CEO, Harry Gold, very nicely summarized the advertising opportunities on Facebook in his recent ClickZ article, which you can read at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630553.

The newest addition to this list, according to Mark Walsh of MediaPost, is called Engagement Ads. Engagement ads, currently in testing, are focused on increasing click-throughs in the social space. Like the typical Social Ads on Facebook, Engagement Ads feature a headline, body copy and an image or video. Unlike the Social Ads, however, Engagement Ads allow people to post and read comments, see other fans of the page that is being promoted via the ad, and share virtual items (Facebook gifts) that the brand has released with friends - all within the ad unit. These ads also appear to the right of the News Feed, unlike Social Ads which actually appear in the News Feed. Currently, these ads are in Beta testing, with a select few advertisers being able to utilize them for testing. See the image below of a current Engagement Ad.

This new ad unit is further propagating the feeling that Facebook is genuinely concerned with social networking at its core. With the rollout of Engagement Ads, Facebook users will not only be able to engage in the social conversation with one another, but they will also be able to more easily engage in this conversation with brands and marketers. With the sense that this is “opt-in”, since a user can choose whether or not to engage with the ad, this new form of social advertising represents a significant opportunity for marketers interested in engaging their brand with users in the social space.

Another recent addition to Facebook, which is both helping to grow Facebook’s own community as well as increase marketing opportunities, is the development of the Widget. In fact, the Engagement Ad platform is essentially using Widgets as ads. A Widget, also known as a Gadget, is a dynamic, rich-media ad unit that can be placed on blogs, websites, or computer desktops, and can be “shared” from one user to others within the ad unit itself. Widgets are increasingly growing as a marketing device, especially for movies and TV shows, since these ads can contain video, interactive content, streaming RSS feeds, and quite a bit of other functionality that really leaves the door wide open for marketers to entice users into the Widget, and then providing users with new, innovative, relevant and useful functionality for interaction.

Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst At Forrester Research, recently said, “Brands will only succeed with these 'WidgetAds' if they create content that puts community first, lean on new interactions, integrate with other tools, plan for the long haul, and change how they measure success--traditional Internet advertising tactics won't apply," in a post on his blog about the Facebook Engagement Ads.

Even aside from the Engagement Ads, Facebook is increasing its use of Widgets in other areas. Whereas previously, Facebook allowed users to add user-generated Widgets to individual pages; now, Facebook has developed a number of Desktop Widgets for its own applications, to make the overall Facebook user experience stronger. See the snapshot of some of the most active Facebook Desktop Widgets below.

For example, Facebook Exporter for iPhoto allows seamless integration between iPhoto, where a user likely stores all of his/her photo content, to Facebook, where this user can share his/her photos with friends and other users. This and other applications like it are one way of Facebook internally promoting itself, by developing external applications to drive users to use the site often. Also, this functionality opens the door to marketers being able not only to create a Widget for Facebook, but this same Widget could be applied to a user’s desktop, and to multitudes of other locations, putting the brand right out there and accessible to users wherever they prefer.

Overall, with its increasing growth in both users and features, Facebook is really growing as a strong and influential social networking platform. It is becoming increasingly quite useful and powerful to marketers looking to promote brands in the social space, and provide the best possible user experience.

To check out the most recent updates on Facebook, visit the Facebook Blog.

Labels: Facebook, Social Media

posted by Melanie D'Acchioli @ - 11:51 AM

Seven Ways to Advertise on Facebook

OK, I've previously examined the different ways you could advertise on Google. To be fair I asked Bianca Garcia, one of our media planners who specializes in social media, to help me compile a list of the advertising opportunities on Facebook.

What's interesting about Facebook: most of the units are non-traditional and are often incorporated in with the content that consumers are actively reading when they login -- mainly the social ads that show up in the Facebook feeds.

Plus, the larger social network sites allow you to get super granular with targeting. They have enough users that you can still hit a large audience even with a bunch of selects. Targeting parameters include: country, state, city or town, age, gender, interests, activities, music, TV shows, education, high school, college, major, workplace, relationship status, profile keywords, and books.

Now there are a many different things to do on Facebook and I may be inadvertently omitting some because new features are being added. The things we are focusing on here are paid advertising opportunities that media planners might take advantage of except for setting up a corporate profile. I'm also not going to get into talking here about applications. Using Facebook applications for advertising and branding is a pretty huge topic and certainly will be the subject of a future column.

How to Optimize an Ad Campaign on the Fly

At many larger agencies, the role of running an online campaign is fragmented. Typically it's broken up between planners, buyers, traffickers, and analysts.

The problem with this model is who is going super deep on the account? This model assumes that optimization is simply about moving media and turning banners on and off at the banner server. Which begs the question: How are real-time decisions made? Do all these people have to meet to get a high-level idea of what's going on in a campaign? How often do they meet or talk? Are they making real-time decisions? Candidly I have heard stories where optimization at some firms is more like run, track, report, meet, decide, and finally optimize. As opposed to real-time optimization, a more old-school see-what-happens approach is taken and many impressions and dollars are wasted in these protracted optimization cycles.

OK, I know everyone is going to say to clients: "Of course, we optimize real-time." But do you really? If you have a fragmented team, is a lower level traffic manager with her fingers on the banner server keyboard authorized or able to kill a site, placement, or piece of creative? Or, does this person need to wait for the analyst to see that it's not working, report that to the team, and then ask the buyer to cancel the contract or renegotiate the deal? That's a lot of hops and meetings to do something as simple as cancel a site, placement, or piece of creative.

The only way I have seen this work is when all of these people are working together in a tight little pod where meetings don't have to be scheduled to make decisions and inform clients of those decisions. One easy question to ask your agency if it has a fragmented media management team is, "Where do all these people sit in proximity to each other?" If the analysts are in another department, office space, or even floor away from the campaign managers, then it's unlikely your optimization is real-time.

Ex-Googlers Launch New Search Engine: Cuil

Watch out - a new search engine has been launched by a staff of ex-Googler's who helped build Google from '04 on. Pronounced 'COOL', Cuil (http://www.cuil.com/), it is one of the three search engines to keep an eye out for (the other two are http://www.mhalo.com/ and http://www.wikia.com/).

This engine has real potential to gain momentum (once some bugs worked out- B2C OK, B2B searches severally lacking) for the following reasons:

· Biggest search engine out there — Indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3x more than any other search engine.

· Unique results — Ranks results by the content on each page, not its popularity. Cuil offers a semantic relationship of all indexed pages defined as it crawls a domain not done post crawl using the page cache. The idea being it will cut the time to understand the “general” meaning of each page and domain.

· Privacy protection — Does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories, which Google currently does and has privacy groups up in arms.

· Organized results— The magazine-style layout separates results by subject and allows further search by concept or category. It’s rather different and will likely take time for users to adjust.

Only time can tell what kind of impact Cuil will have on the search space, how it will monetize and how advertisers react to the new engine. Stay tuned...

Labels: Paid Search, Search, SEO

posted by Laura Ragno @ Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 1:53 PM

Seven Google Tools to Manage Media Campaigns

One of the things I'm always talking about is how the line between search marketing and online media is blurring. Indeed, they've crossed over right into offline.

Clearly, search marketing is a form of online media, but consider this: when you turn on content targeting for your PPC campaign on Google, are you now running online media even though your ads are targeted by keywords contained in the content the ads appear next to? Of course you are. Add in Google Image and click-to-play ads, and you're now actively running an online media campaign.

Every once in a while, Google visits our office to give us the full update on all the kinds of media that can be managed by both media and search professionals through its system. Here's a quick breakdown for search marketers, online media planners, and offline media planners of all the things Google has to offer. I'm not writing this because I'm trying to promote Google. It certainly doesn't need more promotion. I just find it interesting and useful to understand what can be obtained through the Google interface.

ESPN and MLB Strike Out Looking When it Comes to Search and the 2008 Home Run Derby

Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers put on a spectacle during the 2008 MLB Home Run Derby as he hit a single round record 28 home runs in the first round of the contest. I am not quite sure how the ratings will end up, but ESPN, the MLB, and their partners have to be optimistic for decent numbers based on the record breaking performance. And although this year’s derby was probably lacking the star-power of recent derbies past, the network could at least rely on promoting the historic venue-Yankee Stadium in it's final year.

With all of the effort surrounding the promotion and coverage of this event by ESPN, the MLB and their partners, it's hard to believe they could have missed out on the opportunity with search, integrating online opportunities, and driving relevant traffic to a destination where further brand engagement could have occurred.

One missed opportunity was not capitalizing on the spike in searches on “Home Run Derby” that would expectedly occur around the all-star break.

Searching “Home Run Derby” resulted in NO paid ads...

...so it’s clear there isn’t much advertiser competition surrounding these terms. The cheap clicks could have been driven to a special Home Run Derby landing page or microsite with stats, blogs, past Home Run Derby highlights, pictures or even interactive games.

But the good news is- it's not too late! The big game isn't until tomorrow night. It's as simple as coming up with a destination and some ad copy, and bidding on the term "all star game"-there is no advertiser competition here either. And the spike for "all star game" is also pretty high in mid July.

Labels: Google, Paid Search, Search, Strategy

posted by Shane Kelly @ Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - 12:03 AM

You Drive Less. Shouldn't You Save More?

Everyone is concerned about ever-increasing gas prices and one of our clients, GMAC Insurance, has a program that offers substantial insurance premium discounts to low-mileage drivers. To support this program, Overdrive Interactive recently launched a landing page for GMAC Insurance called "The Commuter Calculator".

Using the site's online calculator visitors can find out how much their weekly commute costs and whether they are above or below average in the number of miles driven for their particular area of the country. Site links take visitors to the GMAC Insurance corporate site for more information about their low mileage discount program.

Even though the insurance discount program is only available to drivers who have an OnStar-equipped GM vehicle, go to the site and try out the Commuter Calculator for yourself!

Here's the URL for the site: http://www.lowmileagediscount.com

Labels: Agency News, Landing Pages

posted by David @ Friday, July 11, 2008 - 1:02 PM

Why Pay for Online Audience Metrics When You Can Get Them For Free?

Everyone loves getting something for nothing, particularly when that something has a pretty decent price tag associated with it. What am I talking about here? It’s online audience metrics, which until now were primarily available to organizations willing to subscribe to comScore or Neilsen Online.

So who’s out there shaking things up? It’s our old chum Google!

Yes, in the very near future, Google is expected to announce its own online audience measurement tool aimed at helping advertisers identify the best places to reach their target audience and purchase online ads by telling them which sites they visit. Not only will the tool be free, but it will also have a different means of collecting user data than either comScore or Neilsen Online, which many believe will make it better and more accurate.

Specifically, Google’s tool will be based mostly on data from Web servers, which will allow for a more in-depth and broad-based view of internet use. Comparatively, both comScore and Neilsen Online gather usage data by tracking panels of people and what they do online or by conducting surveys. This methodology has the ability to make results inconsistent and incomplete as you are in reality measuring a small segment of the online population and then aggregating those results to make more broad-based observations about the marketplace as a whole. In comparison, Google’s tool, which will still rely on some data gleaned from panels, will measure a much broader segment of the population as it will be deployed across their entire very, very expansive ad network.

While Google’s system does not appear infallible (it's cookie-based and users can delete cookies), the sheer size of Google’s user base and network has the potential to make this a very revolutionary system and shake-up the way online activity is measured. And because it’s being offered for free, it will make this kind of intelligence more of a commodity and level the playing field in terms of online media planning and buying.

What do I mean by “leveling the playing field”? Simply stated, services like comScore and Neilsen Online cost money and are available only to those who can afford them. However, by Google making audience data free of charge, it will enable everyone to leverage it and make more intelligent decisions about how they plan and buy online media. Therefore, while such intelligence has primarily been available to big agencies or companies and touted as a competitive advantage that smaller rivals just don’t have access to, this will no longer be the case. Hence, what is exciting about Google’s forthcoming tool is that it will enable everyone to make more accurate and confident decisions about the buys being executed and the targets being reached, which should in turn lead to an overall increase in the ROI associated with online advertising. And in an era of heightened accountability, this will likely only make advertisers more comfortable with committing more dollars online.

But the true value that I see in a tool such as Google’s coming to market, is not just that it’s going to level the playing field, lead to increased budgets and provide free access to data that was previously only available to those with the means to pay for it, but that it’s going to force us as marketers to become better at what we do. In order to be competitive, we’re now going to be forced to further evolve our thinking.

So in the online media planning and buying space where will the competitive advantage now come from? Simply stated, it will no longer be enough to say you have access to and spout audience statistics, as soon everyone will be able to do this. Rather you will need to demonstrate that you understand and know how to use and apply this data.

The truth is, while everyone likes statistics, people love it when you can demonstrate that you know what they mean and apply this knowledge to solve real business issues. With Google’s forthcoming tool, we’ll all soon be able to know who is going where and doing what. But now, to truly differentiate your plans and buys, you’ll need to demonstrate that you not only have the data, but understand what it means and the business benefits derived from it, and this is what will separate the leaders from the pack.

Labels: Google, Industry, New Business, Online Media, POV, small business marketing, Strategy

posted by Ty Velde @ Thursday, July 10, 2008 - 11:26 PM

Good News for Facebook Advertisers

According to a quick poll by Mashable, readers think that Facebook is the social network that delivers the best ads. "Best" is described as "“most accurate, interesting and engaging.” Facebook ads seem to be considered the most relevant, which is no surprise with its unique advertising platform that lets advertisers target users not just based on the usual demographic data but also based on specific terms found in the user's profiles (interests, hobbies, favorites, jobs, etc.)

This is definitely good news for us online marketers who advertise on Facebook, but what about our ads on the other social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, and so on? My opinion is that we should not be discouraged, and instead work even harder on making sure that our ads are relevant, engaging and reach the correct target audience. We can rely on technologies such as MySpace's hypertargeting, or try out ad networks that focus solely on Social Media such as Lotame.

However, whether we are advertising on Facebook or Google or any other property, we want to make sure that our online ads get clicks, and these clicks convert into actions. Because ultimately, our role is to encourage desired behavior - and great ads are always part of our strategy.

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