Last week, I had the honor to speak and the pleasure to netork at this year's ad:tech. ad:tech is a digital marketing conference that attracts interactive agencies, clients, brand specialists and media planners. This is the 11th year of ad:tech conferences.
[Google Keynote]
Some snippets from ad:tech:
Every time when the 'G' index refreshes, 25% of the content is new
118 bio email & IM sent every day
Of all searches 67% are influenced by 'some offline', 37% by TV and 30% from Print
29% of Amazon sales come from partners
"It is about making domains social rather than making social domains" - Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo! Vice President of Communications and Communities (great title!)
[Google Keynote]
More snippets [via Andrew Agbay, Universal McCann]:
Question: Why do we need SEM if your brand is already the top result in organic search? Answer: "Sum is greater than the parts." In one study (iCrossing Search Synergy Natural & Paid Symbiosis, March 07), the % increase in clicks to the website when SEM is used with SEO was 91.8%
If there are ad networks in online advertising, there are also ad networks in mobile advertising
Users of social media are increasing, however, engagement is flat! Thus, making social media more "social" is critical. Social networking sites should start connecting to other websites the targets use
The most popular widget in the world is the...clock
"Here are some [more] random notes [from Fusionbrand] that were either sufficiently disturbing or interesting enough to merit being jotted down on the back of my speaker's badge. Also included are some hit-or-miss inspirations that occured to me during the event:
10 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each hour
Before long, 40-60% of all traffic on the internet will be video
New business idea?: centralized "dashboard agency," which would provide the necessary integration among multiple sets of numbers and linkages to corporate goals
No sleep?: 18-25 year olds were asked what they would do with an extra 15 minutes a day. A healthy percentage said they would spend it on social networks
[Google Keynote]
What's tired:
"Positioning": Amazingly, I did not hear this relic from the 1970s mentioned once
"360-degree marketing": The audience laughed when this term was heard
"1:1 marketing": Experts agreed that failures with 1:1 marketing were making it difficult to sell segmentation today
"Viral marketing": Usually referred to in the sense of a prehistoric ancestor to social networking
What's wired:
Engagment: Every speaker mentioned it at least five times. However, some speakers only mentioned in the sense that "we want customers to engage with us." Engagement must be a two-way street
Measurement: Once measurement was a dirty word among creative-driven executives and agencies. Now the entire marketing world seeks to be data-driven
Entertainment: The primary tool for engaging with consumers on the Internet
Mobile marketing: After a decade of hype, everyone kept promising that yes, really, I swear, this is the year that mobile marketing takes off
A lot of pokes: There are 530 million users on social networks worldwide
So that's why you need 15 minutes extra a day: 20% of all Internet users have visited a social network within the last 30 days
Three types of media: Owned (internal), bought (advertising, etc) and earned (WOM, etc.)
Emperor-has-no-clothes speaker insight: Why do we have campaigns with a beginning and an end? It just requires so much energy and money to start a new campaign. With social networks, promotion never ends.
New buzzword to learn: ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline)
Best quote heard: "A lot of companies think social networking means, 'We want you the consumer to tell us how great our products are.' -- Josh Sklar, Global Chief Creative Agency, BLUE
Best case history: Coke Zero in Australia. Coke tried to pave the way for a product introduction by mimicking an "underground" slackster/hipster movement. Of course, it was outed. Lesson: Always be authentic.
Most overused case history: The UGM effort to promote Tahoe. It backfired when environmentalists used the UGM effort to blast the Chevy gas-guzzler. However, Chevrolet won brownie points by letting the critical videos remain online.
Sign of times: Nestle in Philippines upped its digital marketing budget from 9% to 25% this year.
New boy toy: After the conference I bought the Creative Labs version of the hot-hot-hot Flip video camera. The New York Times called it "one of the most significant electronics products of the year." If this takes off like the iPod, pretty soon 80% of the traffic on the Internet will be video." [FROM Nick Wreden; EDITED]
The PubMatic AdPrice Index is a broad-based measure of ad network pricing information. It is based on anonymous data from over 3,500 publishers who work with PubMatic for ad network and layout optimization services.
The June PubMatic AdPrice Index indicates that the sputtering economy is still having an affect on the overall monetization of online advertising, while certain verticals, especially social networks and gaming, had a significant upswing in ad pricing.
The biggest surprises this month came from the social network and gaming verticals. Social networks showed a very sizable 66 percent average eCPM increase going from 19 cents in April to 32 cents in May. While this is an increase from April, this is still not back to as high as the March average. Gaming also experienced a strong surge, with the vertical's average eCPM increasing 51 percent. In April, the gaming average eCPM was 66 cents and in May, the average eCPM was $1.00.
Audience Intelligence is critical to developing and managing a successful search marketing campaign.
Validating assumptions about your keyword list and audience profile is the critical difference between success and potential failure
Predicting user behavior gives the marketer the insights to make strategic decisions and helps to improve ROI
Microsoft adLabs is developing advanced tools to better understand how to effectively aggregation keyword lists:
Context-based Acronym Resolution: expand acronyms and abbreviations based on related search keywords
Keyword Group & Mutation Detection: given a word or phrase, find a set of similar words. Detect frequent misspellings or alternative spellings of the same keyword in search query logs
Search Result Clustering: Cluster a set of documents, such as search results, into semantically related groups in real time
Your home page is Google," said Jarvis [Dell CMO]. "It becomes really important the right things are appearing on it."
Since then, the company has embarked on a concerted effort to turn around its image online, reaching out to consumers in blogs and soliciting advice on how Dell can improve. The end goal for Jarvis is not touchy-feely: He wants to spend less, not more, money on advertising. One way is to cut down on the need for advertising altogether by having satisfied customers spread positive word of mouth. "The Germans and British no longer believe anything you say in an ad," he said. That makes advertising pretty pointless. You have to think of how you're going to reach people in different ways."
One key way to achieve this is to move as many customer interactions -- Dell estimates it has over 2 billion per year -- online and away from expensive distribution like catalogs.
The numbers weren't pretty either: The company's own 2006 analysis of its "share of voice" online found 48 percent of chatter about Dell was negative. Its renewed focus on customer communications coincided with the rise of the social Web, as more people gathered online to share thoughts, rate products and contribute to a community Web experience. [now 21%]
Over the last two years, Dell has worked day by day rebuilding its ties to its customers. Its problems could not be solved by an ad campaign with a cheery message, Jarvis said, but a reorientation of its culture to solving customer problems and listening to their complaints and advice.
The searing experience of the battery recall and "Dell Hell" helped the company, believes Pete Blackshaw, evp, digital strategic services, Nielsen Online and author of the forthcoming Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.
"Social media is a grand experiment," Dell's Jarvis said. "It has a future. I don't see it crashing down. Social interaction, communities and participation are absolutely the fabric of the Web."
Brazil, India and Sweden are the biggest users of social networking sites with Holland, Denmark and Germany using them the least. Globally, young people have an average of 84 contacts in their social networks, with Brazil having the highest (239) and Japan the lowest at only 18 contacts.
Young people are generally aware of social networks – only 18% have yet to use them. 70% of 14-24 year olds use the sites and over half regularly update their profile. Young females (14-17 years) visit them the most – 63% visit weekly, compared with 54% of males of the same age.
How are Social Networks used?’ From flirting to ‘checking people out’, networks tend to be relatively small. Globally, social networks allow young people to ‘feel connected’ to their existing friends rather than to meet strangers. The idea of social networks being ‘open to everyone’ has less appeal than the idea of smaller communities among people they know. While they use technology such as IM to arrange their social life, the sites are forums to share and relive experiences.
Reasons for having a personal profile In the UK and US, where penetration is high, the sites stop them from ‘feeling left out’. They are on them because ‘all their friends’ are. In Germany, where there is low penetration, sites are used to meet people with similar interests. In China, youths use social networks to express themselves, keep a blog, upload content and meet new friends (many Chinese youths don’t have siblings).
What’s on their profile page? Photos are the most popular form of content to put on personal pages and over a third of youths add music and video. When viewing other people’s pages, 57% want to see content about that person to see what they have in common with them.
Are Social Networks here to stay? The jury is out! An ever increasing amount of time is being spent on social networks (36% claim to use them more than a year ago), more youths are joining (16% have recently joined), 48% think the sites are going to grow, and only 13% claim to be getting bored with them.
As more and more companies and brands turn to corporate blogging—or turn their employees loose to blog on their own—they're encountering some common challenges and opportunities along the way. This white paper examines the ins and outs of employee/corporate blogging, and includes a checklist for anyone who's turned to a colleague at work and suggested, "Hey! We should start a blog!" Should you?
Although influenced or stimulated by traditional marketers and marketing activities, online word of mouth is nonetheless owned and controlled by consumers, and it often carries far higher credibility and trust than traditional media, especially as media channels become more fragmented and less trusted.
Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) describes a variety of new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues.
Ninety percent, in fact, have used an Internet search engine to research a product or service (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, December 2005).
The Internet is significantly amplifying the power of brand apostles and owners, affording them many more venues and “megaphones” for sharing their views with others. This underscores the critical importance of companies and brands managing and nurturing customer segments. The Value Profit Chain (Heskett, Sasser 01/03)
Consumer-Generated Media consistently outranks other ad vehicles on the “trust” factor. As word-of-mouth platforms grow and traditional tools lose impact, the measurable propensity of a customer base to recommend products and services to others will be regarded as the single-largest measure of brand equity. Source: 2004 Forrester/Intelliseek Research
CGM vehicles are quickly evolving to higher-impact, multi-media formats. Digital photos and online videos are beginning to dramatically raise the stakes for brand/corporate reputation.
Hollywood's oldest talent shop, the 110-year-old William Morris Agency, is partnering with a triumvirate of digital media, wireless and advertising executives to create a joint venture called Agency 3.0, a digital-marketing-services company seeking to marry digital technology to strategically developed content.
In an interview with Ad Age, Mr. Johnson said TV advertising "is becoming less effective," in part because "it's highly disconnected from the creative process."
Time for a new approach "There's a whole new world in the marketing, distribution and monetization of digital media, with unique demands for new approaches to both design and implementation," said Jim Wiatt, William Morris' CEO. "We recently announced a digital-media venture fund, and now with Agency 3.0, we'll be providing services as well as making investments in this sector."
The purpose of Prodigious (Digitas Alliance) is to centralise digital production in low-cost markets. The model is simple: it has managers that work with marketers and creative agencies in their home markets, then offshore facilities that produce the work. It will build a presence in six cities in India, as well as Singapore. These join Shanghai, Costa Rica, Kiev and Sofia in the Prodigious line-up.
Interpublic's MRM Worldwide currently has a digital production centre in Bangkok, alongside Warsaw and Buenos Aires. Strategy and creative are handled locally, then bulk production is moved elsewhere. Work sent offshore includes web build, Flash projects and bulk volume banner produciton.
WPP is also looking at building its offshoring capacity in the next few months.
Excerpt from Forrester's Marketing Forum 2008. Forrester Research Senior Analyst Brian Haven says the four I's - involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence -- provide a framework for better understanding and measuring engagement with your customers.
Social networking is a quantum change in how we interact – with each other, with bands and brands, and with the entire media landscape.
Users recognize social networks as the best venue for the dance of attraction, connection, and retention that’s better known as “relationships”.
Future Shapers, those leading-edge consumers whose behavior tends to be a signpost for what’s to come, are showing signs of embracing activities like watching TV within social networks; visiting outbound links; and learning more about social marketing messages.
Both B2C and C2C co-exist and generate benefit for the brand, but until now, we have lacked a framework to analyze the value creation, forecast it and manage it. The work with EA and adidas on MySpace has validated many of the hypotheses, including demonstrating that SN marketing can enhance the nature of the product and build consumer advocacy.
Re-think the media mix to leverage the benefits of SN and the Momentum Effect Design ways to unlock or activate the Momentum Effect, using the following guidelines:
Worldwide – Approximately 6,000 Advertisers account for >80% of all ad spending (~5,000 in US account for >90% of US ad spending)
Advertising Needs Massive Automation
Market is manual (phone calls and email drive everything)
Market is opaque (no pricing transparency)
Market is inefficient (loads of remnant inventory drives prices lower – see #2)
Along comes the ad exchange:
Add transparency to the mix
Increase liquidity by letting all advertisers bid / buy across all networks
Drive market efficiency
In a world where exchanges exist, every impression can be evaluated and a bid price can be set – in real time
When this is possible, the price can be adjusted up and down based on confidence of driving a campaign goal
Campaign goals in search today are generally based on performance (Driving a sale)
In the future, the system can optimize against other goals – such as driving awareness of a brand, or changing perceptions of the audience, or changing purchase intent
The Brave New World of Advertising
Nano Technology drives more devices, more flexible scenarios
Hyper-targeting with personalized advertising
Personalized Product Offerings
Projectors, OLED and Disposable Video
Low Resolution Video Projectors are becoming incredibly cheap
OLED is printable and flexible
Siemens Printable Video Displays – with printable batteries
Tracking and Measuring Advertising Offline like Online
Who stole six million viewers? That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings. So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline.
One in four American households now uses a digital video recorder to time-shift shows and skip commercials. While they enable viewers to watch more hours of television, they hurt the rate of commercial recognition, as about half of all commercials are skipped in time-shifting modes.
Revenue for U.S. agencies -- advertising, marketing services and media -- jumped 8.6% in 2007 despite a tepid ad market. And for that, you can thank digital. While it comes as no surprise that revenue at digital specialty agencies rocketed last year (up 26.8% in the U.S.), it's clear that digital services have become a way of life (or a way to avoid death) for agencies of all disciplines. In fact, U.S. ad agencies reported an average 10.2% of revenue from digital in 2007.
The Big 4 ad firms -- Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Publicis Groupe -- last year generated 12.3% of worldwide revenue from digital services.
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