ITZ Publishing

Read the original post here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/175592/beeing-seen-chasing-viewability.html#ixzz1vurOswLn

Being Seen: Chasing Viewability

by Steve Smith

The theme of ad viewability came up again and again at last week’s OMMA RTB event in New York, After a decade and a half of Web advertising, -- and in retrospect -- it seems downright daft that the problem of viewable impressions was not front and center long ago. Now that it is top of mind for many buyers and publishers, the consensus seems to be that proving viewability will be part of the reporting, verification and accountability process in short order. Not surprisingly, products are emerging to address this concern.

It seems to me that viewable impressions are also an opportunity for the display industry to take more seriously a host of other issues about ad impact. Time spent with an ad, page design and clutter are all related issues.  I raised some of these issues with Oren Netzer, CEO, DoubleVerify, which just released its own AdView product that addresses viewability from a number of perspectives. According to the company, one of the leading ad verification platforms that is already evaluating ads on pages, only 54% of the impressions served by 26 media sellers analyzed met the IAB’s standards of a viewable impression. And the IAB sets a pretty low bar, with viewable meaning  50% of the ad for a second. In its study of a select group of advertisers and media, DoubleVerify found that if we used the one second standard, then the best performing media seller had a 83% ad visibility rate, while the worst had an 18% rate. As the time spent standard rises to 3 seconds or more, then only 43% of ads were considered viewable.

There has been a lot of discussion thus far about how changing to a viewable impressions standard over a served impression standard can change radically basic metrics like click-through rates. C3 reported earlier this year that the effectiveness of an ad may be grossly underreported if viewability isn’t taken into account.  In essence the figurative references to the purported “invisibility” of banner ads to many users may be literal. You can’t click what you don’t see. When a viewable impressions only are measured, CTRs can be appreciably higher.

Netzer points out that brand-lift evaluations are also affected. Most post-campaign branding studies assume that the ad-exposed group of people were going to pages where the ad was visible. By culling the surveyed group, “it could reduce the number of people who saw the ads by 30%,” he says. “And then the campaign may have performed better than we thought it did.” Moving to viewable impressions could have a positive effect on many aspects of the online ad ecosystem. “This has been a disservice to the publishers and to the industry,” he argues. “It means advertising may be working better than we thought.”

While publishers who have been tossing as much ad inventory at a page in order to monetize every pixel may demur from measuring viewability, Netzer maintains that the standard will help most sellers in the end. Planning tools that compared sites across a number of different parameters can add another differentiation, rate of viewability. But that metric can include more than a flat rate of ads view and also account for time spent with viewable ads. Hi company is measuring beyond the IAB standard into 3, 5, 15 and 30 second increments. In comparing sites, buyers can set their expectations and placements against the typical page hang times of users of a site or section. After all, one second of viewing time isn’t enough for some of the animated and rich media creative to cycle through their show.  

Measuring for viewability is not a light tech lift, Netzer says. “We have to identify the exact location of the ad on the page and then identify the size of the browser window, scrolling, to calculate if the ad is in a viewable area. And if multiple tabs are open, we have to take focus into consideration.”

Like all aspects of digital advertising, viewability measurement requires an achingly complex process to get at what should be basic accountability. But let’s hope it also moves publishers and advertisers to think harder about other basics like the look and feel of a page. A tech-driven medium in which all interaction occurred within a geeky browser interface left us with a Web with a terrible design aesthetic. The primacy of efficiency and utility over experience, the ability to measure revenue per page, led to Web sites that had all the visual appeal of NASCAR stock cars.

In my mind, there is a very good reason why so many of us have moved our content consumption to mobile smartphones and tablets. The experience is less cluttered and in many cases more enjoyable and engaging. These platforms remind everyone that design and experience matters, that whimsy, engagement and entertainment are all important. They remind us that Web as we have known it was built for business machines, experienced on desktops in offices first and foremost, and lived in an interface designed by engineers. The Web has always been incredibly efficient, useful, informative, deep, flexible and quick. Honestly, it has never been much fun.

 

Steve Smith is the editor of Mobile Marketing Daily at Mediapost where he covers all aspects of the mobile landscape and writes the daily MoBlog and regular Mobile Insider columns. He also programs the OMMA Mobile/Display/Data and Behavioral series of shows and the Mobile Insider Summits. A recovering academic who taught media studies at Brown and University of Virginia, he spent the last decade as a digital media critic for numerous publications and as consultant. He also writes for Media Industry Newsletter and eContent magazine. Contact him here.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/175592/beeing-seen-chasing-viewability.html#ixzz1vurvQoiT

Google’s consumer surveys are bringing in one publisher $5,000 a month

Read the original post at: http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/04/12/googles-consumer-surveys-are-bringing-in-one-publisher-5000-a-month/

12TH APRIL 2012 by NANCY MESSIEH

Back in March, we told you about one of Google’s latest products – self-serve consumer surveys. According to Journalism.co.uk, one small US publisher has added a neat $5,000 a month to its revenue, thanks to the product.

In case you missed it, this is how the the service works, available only to US publishers for the time being:

1. You create online surveys to gain consumer insight
2. People complete questions to access premium content
3. Publishers get paid as their visitors answer
4. You get nicely aggregated and analyzed data

Google gets $0.10 per question from market research companies, while online publishers walk away with half of that. Google does place a condition, that if readers don’t want to answer the question, the publisher has to provide an alternative such as signing up for an email alert.

The Texas Tribune is one of about twenty publishers who have signed on to use the service, along with Pandora, AdWeek, The New York Daily News, and others.

The Texas Tribune, however, has actually been using it for the past eight months, long before Google publicly announced it.

The surveys have been placed in the newspaper’s Data section which brings in 60% of the site’s 600,000 unique visitors per month, mostly through search engines. It’s that 60% of the Texas Tribune’s readers, coming in specifically via a search engine, who will see the Google-powered survey.

To gain access to the content they were looking for, readers can either answer one question, or if they choose not to, they can provide their email address, to receive a minimum of one email alert. They are of course left with the third choice of not doing anything at all – but that means no data for them.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, the Texas Tribune’s April Hinkle defends the choice saying that readers “have to give to get”, adding, ”All the information on our site is free, and we thought this would be a good test.”

Despite what may appear to be a somewhat controversial tactic on the surface, the Texas Tribune hasn’t received any complaints. Most readers don’t seem perturbed by the idea of handing over anonymous data of their own in exchange for data they’re looking for.

Publishers are not the only ones who stand to gain from Google’s product. It provides a cost-effective way for researchers to come by the data they need, and for the end-user – you – it seems like a far more appealing alternative to the increasingly common paywalls used by major publishers.

Unlike paywalls, however, according to PaidContent, it doesn’t take much more than using a Chrome extension like AdBlock to bypass the survey. So while the Texas Tribune’s figures certainly do speak of the potential the product has to bring in money, it certainly may need a tweak or two.

 

Prescription for Patch: Become an All-in-One SMB Marketing Solution

See the original post at:

http://streetfightmag.com/2012/04/20/prescription-for-patch-become-an-all-in-one-smb-marketing-solution/

 

 20 APRIL 2012 BY KIRK CARAWAY

Kirk Caraway is a guest author.  

There has been a lot of criticism hurled in recent months at AOL’s hyperlocal news experiment Patch. It seems that some new “dramatic” tidbit is always showing up in the trades about how Patch is failing.

Some of this criticism is deserved. I don’t think the folks at Patch would claim there haven’t been mistakes made. But part of the reason it’s in focus is that the company makes an easy target for those in the news business who are shell-shocked by the changes transforming the industry.

I think there is a lot of value in the network approach to hyperlocal news. Many small startup publishers are challenged by the technical details of web publishing — and by the need to offer the kind of polished, powerful, digital product that online readers have come to expect. Tech and design can suck up huge amounts of time and resources. By centralizing the technical details, Patch achieves an economy of scale, and frees its local editors to concentrate on content.

Putting content aside, though, it seems the big problem for Patch is sales. With only $20 million in reported revenues for 2011 across the 850+ sites, it’s clear that something is missing. This report from Business Insider quoted a Patch sales team member who said that 70 percent of salespeople were not hitting their targets. Another report estimates that the average member of Patch’s 152-person outside sales team is only bringing in $52,022 a year in ad revenue.

Patch’s problem is the same one that affects many other local news operations: in pinning its focus so heavily on display ads, the company isn’t offering local businesses the kind of comprehensive marketing service they really need.

Let’s back up a minute. Before the web, newspapers were the kings of local. If a you had a local business and needed to get the word out, you just called up the newspaper to place an ad. It was that easy. But newspapers don’t have the monopoly they enjoyed in the past. Not only are there many other sources for local news, newspapers also have to battle for readers’ attention against Facebook, YouTube and the entire Internet, as well as 500+ channels of television, Netflix, video games, etc. The days when a local business could successfully market itself to new customers by simply buying an ad in one publication are gone. Yet online news organizations — including Patch — are still by and large using the same old newspaper advertising model.

The mission of any newspaper or other advertising-supported media operation is this: Help your clients communicate. That is what they pay for. In today’s media world, display advertising is just one method of communication. These days social media, public relations, search engines and other online marketing vehicles all play a role as well (in addition to advertising). Those in the local news business might despair at this fragmentation, but they are actually missing a huge opportunity.

If you talk to local business owners about all of these online promotional vehicles, you will find that most of them are confused and frustrated. They know they should be using Facebook and Twitter, or updating their websites, or doing more PR, or sending out email blasts. They are constantly hit up by salespeople promising to put them on the front page of Google, or selling them Yellow Pages listings online, or a hundred of other types of advertising. But they don’t have the time or the knowledge to handle all of these things. Too often they fall for scams, or rely too heavily on one vehicle, only to find that it doesn’t pay off.

Unlike other local start-ups, [Patch] has the resources to build this kind of integrated system, and can use the power of its network to create effective marketing and sales programs to push out to all their sites.

Businesses don’t need more online advertising options. They need a solution. The real opportunity is to offer businesses a service that bundles together as many of these promotional vehicles as possible into a simple, low-cost package that makes it easy for them to communicate with their customers.

The service I envision is one where a business manager can do something as simple as writing an email, and have that message pushed out through multiple channels. He or she can write, “Hey, we’re having a sale today!” and have that message automatically formatted into an advertisement on the news site. In addition, it could also be pushed out to his or her blog, as well as posted to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. In the process, that same message could be emailed out as a press release to all the local news media and/or blasted out to the business’ customer email list.

The next step would be to integrate this message into the news site. Press releases can be automatically imported in the site, and displayed as sponsored blog posts. Those messages that have dates tied to them can be included in the site’s event calendar. Messages could also be marked as coupons or specials, and given different display options, or included into the news site’s email newsletters and social media pages. The service could even create local advertising networks to place these ads on other sites, or allow clients to book and manage ads on Google, Facebook, Bing and others.

If business managers are too busy or not savvy enough to pump out the messages themselves, then a fully managed service could be offered to do it for them. Now, you have something that is worth a lot more than CPM-based banner ads.

There are other services available that try to make it easy for business to update different social networks in one step. But the advantage local news publishers would have with a system like this is the ability to combine their clients’ communications with advertising and content, and present them to a local audience. Just as advertising alone is not the answer, neither is social networking. This is where local news sites like Patch can offer a service that others can’t.

If Patch decided to go this route, the company would be well-positioned to make the service work. Unlike other local start-ups, it has the resources to build this kind of integrated system, and can use the power of its network to create effective marketing and sales programs to push out to all their sites.

But to get there, Patch will have to change its advertising-centric mindset and focus on providing a service with real value to local advertisers. No business can be successful unless what it offers to its target customers is something they need. Solving their clients’ communications needs would go a long way toward patching the hole in AOL’s ship.

Kirk Caraway is founder/publisher of CarsonNow.org, and mother site of the Nowtown Network that includes SouthTahoeNow.com. He grew up in the newspaper business, and is an award-winning writer and editor. He started building and managing local news websites in 1994, and has witnessed firsthand the evolution of local online news. He can be contacted atkc@carsonnow.org.

 

Study: 40% of SMB Sites Lack Phone Numbers

Read the original post at: http://www.screenwerk.com/2012/04/16/study-40-of-smb-sites-have-no-phone-number/

By Greg Sterling

Implied Intelligence is a company that generates and enhances local databases. I spoke to founder Marc Brombert several weeks ago about the company’s services and capabilities. As an illustration he offered to perform a number of tests. I suggested a comparison of the accuracy of local search sites.

Implied Intelligence completed that study and sent me the results a couple of weeks ago. I wrote up the methodology and results of that test at Search Engine Land. Here’s a brief recap . . .

Using a data set of 1,000 local businesses (with websites) in the US, Implied Intelligence compared a number of leading local search sites along several criteria:

• Coverage (was the listing present)
• Number of duplicates
• Accuracy of information
• Richness of information (presence of additional information beyond business name, address and phone)

The results were a surprise: Superpages and YP.com beat Google Maps for overall accuracy and completeness. However, reviews were not part of the content comparison. Here’s the final, overall ranking:

As a separate exercise, Implied Intelligence looked at more than 8 million local/SMB websites in March of this year and found that most had relatively little content. Indeed, 40% didn’t feature a phone number and half didn’t have an email address:

–One page websites: 22.4%

–Websites with email addresses: 49.6%

–Websites with e-mails from same domain: 30.5%

–Websites with e-mails on first page: 23.8%

–Websites with phone numbers: 60.4%

–Websites with local phone numbers: 49.3%

–Websites with phone number on first page: 32.4%

–Websites with local phone number on first page: 24.8%

More than 15 years after the mainstreaming of the Internet most SMB websites are still weak and thin. These businesses are under-utilizing their sites and undermining themselves by failing to give customers multiple obvious ways to contact them.

 

About Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is the founder of Sterling Market Intelligence, focused on the Internet’s impact on offline consumer behavior. He is senior analyst for Internet2Go, an advisory service from Opus Research tracking the evolution of the mobile Internet. Sterling is also a contributing editor for  Search Engine Land, the leading online publication about the search marketplace.

Until he left in 2006, Sterling ran BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media program. Before ILM he was a producer at TechTV. Prior to TechTV, Sterling was part of the pre-launch editorial team at AllBusiness.com. And way back in the 1990s, Sterling was a practicing attorney — before leaving law to join the manic world of online marketing.

He is frequently cited and quoted in leading US publications regarding the search, local and mobile markets.

Follow Greg     Connect with Greg on LinkedIn.

5 Mobile Advertising Myths

Read the original post at:http://mobileadvertisinghub.com/5-mobile-advertising-myths/

 

Spending on mobile advertising is growing fast, but many companies are still wondering if mobile advertising is a fad, an expensive experiment, or whether it’s a new way of reaching customers for the long-term.

Just as with any new innovation, there are often confusing myths and misconceptions surrounding the technology and often obscuring people’s view of the opportunities.

Don’t let these myths hold you back from pursuing mobile advertising:

• “It’s too expensive.” Reality: mobile advertising is among the most cost-effective and accountable marketing that you can do. Admob recently moved to a market-driven model where advertisers bid for ad space, and the result was that clicks are now as low as $0.01. In addition, there are plenty of options for advertisers to build a customized mobile advertising campaign that delivers the right results at a cost-effective price. You can choose from Cost Per Click (CPC), cost per impression (CPI) or cost per thousand Impressions (CPM) to align your mobile advertising budget with your goals.
• “Customers won’t buy on mobile.” Reality: The size of the U.S. mobile advertising market reached nearly $800 million by the end of 2010, and the worldwide market for mobile advertising is expected to grow to $13.5 billion in 2015. Surely all of these advertisers aren’t spending money without expecting to see a return. More importantly, customers are becoming increasingly comfortable with buying on their mobile devices. Just as people used to say that “Amazon can’t make money because people aren’t comfortable with buying online,” people are only going to get more comfortable with making purchases from their mobile phones and mobile devices. Mobile advertising is going to be a big part of the future of eCommerce, and the companies that embrace this medium now will have an advantage.
• “People ignore mobile ads.” Reality: in many cases, mobile ads are harder to ignore than online ads and can have a higher click-through rate. According to a recent study of mobile ads for the financial services industry, mobile ads achieved a 19% click-through rate (compared to a click-through rate of less than 1% for desktop banner ads). One reason is that people relate to their mobile devices differently than they do to a desktop computer – a mobile device creates a more intimate and personal relationship with the user, serving as a guide and almost like an extension of the person’s personality and interests. Instead of being one of several banner ads competing for a person’s attention, mobile ads can get “up close and personal” in a way that other online advertising cannot.
• “Mobile advertising only works for apps.” Reality: some of the most powerful mobile advertising campaigns have been for products and services other than applications. Companies from Starbucks to Diesel jeans to Coldwell Banker Realty have used mobile advertising and mobile marketing to build awareness, promote products and strengthen customer relationships without the goal of selling apps.
• “Mobile advertising is complicated.” Reality: any new marketing technique can be tricky when you are trying it for the first time. Fortunately, there is a fast-growing array of tools and service providers to help companies leverage mobile advertising. This is a fast-growing market with many mobile ad developers seeking to serve the growing demand, and various platforms available to deliver your company’s messages to mobile device users.  Another important application of mobile advertising is the possibility of location-based mobile advertising to put highly relevant messages in front of customers based on where they are located and often, what type of buying decision they are considering.

As more companies get comfortable with the realities of mobile advertising, we expect to see more brands capitalizing on the opportunities to connect directly with customers with mobile ads. Don’t let outdated myths and misconceptions hold your company back from these new opportunities.

What’s your take on this? What myths and misconceptions about mobile advertising have you encountered, and how did you overcome them?

How to do Keyword Research

 See the original post at:http://www.affiliateprograms.com/blog/how-to-do-keyword-research/

 

Apr 16, 2012 by Karol K in Getting Started

 

Keyword research is the most crucial task for every affiliate marketing campaign you might conduct. No matter if you’re after the natural search rankings or the paid listings (like Google AdWords), your road always starts at keyword research.

 

There’s only one main rule to keywords research, actually – you simply need to find some keywords that are both popular and low on competition.

 

Popular means that many people are searching for the keyword on a daily basis. Low on competition means that there aren’t many competing sites for the keyword.

 

There are different opinions circling around, but generally a popular keyword is one that gets more than 400 searches a day, and low on competition means that there are 30,000 competing sites or less. However, your experience may vary.

 

When you do keyword research we advise you to focus on these five main tools:

 

Google Trends and Google Insights for Search

 

Both of these tools give you a broad look into a given market, so you can see what the major trends are, and what you can expect in the near future.

 

(Let’s use “lose weight” as an example.)

 

Google Trends will let you know what the overall trend for this niche is, and point out some of the important events on a timeline.

 

 

 

Google Insights for Search will show you some more info about the geographical distribution of a given niche’s popularity and the top related searches for your keyword phrase.

 

You can filter the results by region, country, date, and category. On top of that, you can compare two or more searches.

 

 

Google Keyword Tool (GKT)

 

This is the most popular keyword tool online. Once you have your seed keyword ready – a keyword from which you want to start your main keyword research – you can go to this tool to do the main part of the work.

 

GKT lets you filter the results by location and language. Plus, there are also some advanced customization features. When you search for a phrase you’ll get a table containing various pieces of information about your keyword and others related.

 

The features GKT provides make it the place where you can do your research from start to finish – to the point where you have a number of popular and low on competition keywords.

 

 

Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Tool and Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

 

You can use this last pair of tools to make sure that what you’ve found in GKT is indeed valuable.

 

How To Build a Keyword Universe

 

Wordtracker’s tool is a web based app – like you’d expect. Microsoft’s, however, is an Excel 2007/2010 add-in. You can download it for free, but you need to sign up for an adCenter account in order to use it.

 

Once you have your keywords ready you can finally launch a search engine campaign or an advertising campaign, whichever you have in plan.

 

What’s your favorite way of doing keyword research? Feel free to share.

Cratering Search & Display Sectors Drove U.S. Ad Market Into Decline in Q4

Read the original post at: http://paidcontent.org/2012/03/13/419-cratering-search-display-sectors-drove-u-s-ad-market-into-decline-in-q/

By Daniel Frankel 

  

Driven down by big fourth-quarter declines in digital advertising, the total U.S. ad market grew only 0.8 percent for all of 2011, a report released Monday by research firm Kantar Media said.

According to Kantar, which is owned by global ad-agency conglomerate WPP, the fourth quarter of 2011 was the worst three-month period for U.S. advertising growth in two years. In fact, since growing 8.7 percent in the third quarter of 2010, ad revenue growth has decreased every month since, actually declining in the fourth quarter by 1 percent (see chart).

With traditional sectors like broadcast TV up 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter and cable up 2.4 percent, digital sectors were singled out by Kantar for stymieing growth of the overall market. Paid search, for example, fell 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter, and 2.8 percent for all of 2011, with financial, insurance and local service providers investing fewer dollars.

Meanwhile, internet display advertising decreased 5.9 percent in Q4, dragged down by smaller budgets from auto manufacturers, telecom providers and travel companies. For the entire year, display increased 5.5 percent.

Kantar attributes the decline in digital revenues to the migration of dollars into less mature markets like mobile.

“Some mature digital media formats were touched by the year-end tide of reduced spending. Whether this is an isolated occurrence or an early sign of digital dollars moving more quickly towards emerging and unmeasured digital platforms bears watching as 2012 unfolds,” said Jon Swallen, senior VP of research for Kantar Media Intelligence North America.

 

Frugality is the New Black?

Originally posted here:  http://promotionalcodes.net/pages/frugality/

Frugality is the New Black

Quick cost-cutters like couponing, buying generic and repurposing are more popular among American families today than they have been in decades. For instance, last year, Americans redeemed an unbelievable $3.7 billion in coupons. That’s $300 million more redeemed savings than they earned in 2009 when the economy was still reeling from recession.

It’s no surprise that U.S. consumers tightened budgets on more than just luxuries during the downturn. Beyond foregoing vacations and remodels, Americans also reduced budgets for gas and groceries to make ends meet. What is surprising is how these habits have only increased despite the steady return of the economy and consumer’s faith in its growth. Hopefully, these smarter spending trends signal more than just a frugal fad. In the meantime, families can continue to enjoy couponing up to 25% off their monthly grocery purchases and finding alternatives to blowing transportation budgets at the pump.

Economists often consider drops in spending on necessities like food and gas as an indicator of consumer cynicism over the health and prospects of an economy, but vibrant frugality-minded online communities say otherwise. Borrowing half as much and quadrupling savings rates, the average American consumer is building a post-recession portfolio that puts their family’s security first.

Check out our infographic visualizing the encouraging frugality trends that have endured the recession:

 

 

Source: Promotional Codes

The metrics you should be using

Read the original Post at Imedia Connection here:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/article_full.aspx?id=30946

 

• Jarvis Mak
• Contact

Web Analytics Posted on February 15, 2012

"You can't manage what you don't measure," is an old management adage. However, by the same token, just because you can measure something, does not mean you should manage by it.

I authored a previous iMedia article about why clicks are the wrong metric. In that article, I alluded to the view-through effectiveness of display advertising despite the absence of clicks. In the spirit of that conversation, I want to discuss the relevance of other metrics in determining campaign success.

Use: Brand measures like lift in awareness or consideration

You can't click on a billboard, radio, or TV ad but we know they impact awareness, consideration, even purchase intent. Of course, the same is true of online ads. If the campaign has a branding objective, then optimize to it, ideally with a real-time data-driven approach.

Brand marketers want solutions that demonstrate improvement over time, transfer learnings across campaigns from top of the funnel to mid-funnel, and finally, result in sales. Everyone loves search for converting in-market folks but don't always remember to widen the funnel. As a marketer, if you rely on offline media (namely, TV) to be your lone awareness vehicle, then you're subject to over-saturation in television and missing out on cross-media optimized exposure. Complement offline with a digital awareness initiative.

Use: Ideal customer composition

Most advertisers know their customers inside and out, or at least they think they do: They have detailed customer profiles, even personas of Jim the Technophile or Susan the Savvy Bargain Shopper. However, when it comes to reaching those audiences in media delivery, the richness of the Jim and Susan personas are often lost to become coarse gender and age descriptions of "men 25 to 54" and "women 18 to 34," respectively.

Publishers that have personas that perfectly match advertisers' personas are one step ahead of the game. For advertisers, you trust that the targets those publishers claim to have are good proxies for your ideal customers. If there are no publisher persona targets, then we've seen agencies often default to the age and gender target as the next best proxy.

Why use a proxy though? Optimize segment composition in real-time. How? With a survey-based approach. We tried this with a couple CPG brands, with excellent results. The first advertiser wanted to reach previous brand customers. Utilizing real-time survey input to optimize segments, targeting of previous customers increased by 50 percent over the course of the campaign. The second CPG advertiser wanted to reach frequent users, and the same technique resulted in the target composition of this audience growing by 40 percent during the campaign. Results were validated with an offline sales impact study from Nielsen with a 250 percent return on ad spend.

Use: LTV (Lifetime value) of acquired customers

For direct response advertisers, especially in finance and retail, customers acquired cheaply are often low-value customers, especially when promotions are involved. The value of more expensive leads (as measured by account balances or subsequent basket size and purchase frequency) ends up much higher than cheaper direct response leads. An agency that is maniacally focused on low CPA without regard to LTV is doing their advertiser a disservice.

To advertisers, this means arming your agencies with visibility into these LTV measures. It means you need to do homework about customer behavior and transactions so that agencies can also pass information about customer value along to publisher partners, even anecdotally. We once executed a campaign for a bank but we didn't have access to back-end metrics like deposit amounts. As the campaign slowly auto-optimized toward the metric we had, CPA, the agency provided us feedback that we should go back to what we had been doing before day 45 because after that point, although CPA improved, the average starting balance amounts started shrinking considerably. With that bit of feedback, we were able to rejigger settings to pre-day 45 and go back to acquiring higher value customers.

Ignore: CTR

See the aforementioned iMedia article. We almost always provide data about how optimal segments are negatively correlated with CTR. For many agencies, they are glad to get this analysis to provide back to their advertisers as part of ongoing education.

For example, we demonstrated to a customer that pursuing segments that demonstrated higher CTR for the campaign would have led to incorrect optimization. Trying to maximize CTR would have led to a lower quality audience, since "clickier" segments were not the ones with the highest target composition.

Ignore: Ad interaction rate

It is not universally true that ad interaction rate doesn't matter. When the rich media unit has rich functionality like lead capture or submit, some other transactional feature, or a product catalog based on recently shopped items, then interaction is highly relevant. This is usually accomplished with dynamic creative and an XML feed.

However, when ad interactions are really opportunities for an expanded canvas that tell a more elaborate brand story, the benefit is dubious at best. At Rocket Fuel, we repeatedly see that thesimpler ads are, the better. In fact, we have run static ads for a campaign alongside the long-looping Flash versions and find that performance is 50 to 300 percent better with simpler creative. 

If advertisers want to understand impact of ad interactions, work with your publisher partners to instrument their pixels in ad unit expansion frames. Get ahead of the game and work with your creative partners before the assets are finished. Then the publishers can do the same type of correlation analysis with a brand metric, as well as optimize in-flight if there really is a positive correlation.  

Ignore: Video completion rate

This is in the context of in-banner video. It is a natural extension of the other two "unimportant" metrics. Does it matter that a video plays all the way through to completion? How much does auto-start inflate the metrics? It really doesn't matter what percentage of ads went all the way to the end unless it was all reaching the desired customers. As a marketer, I'd be happy with static ads shown to the right audience over a 75 percent video completion rate to the wrong audience.

A very notable exception to this is when video completions are well-documented to correlate directly with sales, like movie trailers for theatrical releases.

Conclusion

In general, we almost always see that metrics about online ad engagement or interaction (alone) not translate to bottom line results as effectively as lifetime value, ideal customer targets, and changes in brand measures. Ad metrics can definitely be a part of the overall story of the campaign; however, I wouldn't recommend them in isolation. It happens too often that an agency measures (and eliminates) partners along a single dimension like ad interaction rate.

Instead, the advertiser and agency should compare partners along a multitude of dimensions. Better yet, go the extra step and attribute value along all these dimensions. Here are some thoughts to get you started on attribution. It is important to review and compare partners but measure in ways that give you a comprehensive view of their overall campaign impact.

Jarvis Mak  is VP of analytics for Rocket Fuel.

 

7 Hyperlocal Tools to Increase Business During Off-Peak Times

Read the origianl post at :

http://streetfightmag.com/2012/02/07/7-hyperlocal-tools-to-increase-business-during-off-peak-times/

 07 FEBRUARY 2012 BY STEPHANIE MILES

The employees are present, the tables are bussed, and the shelves are stocked. Now where are all the paying customers? Most businesses have slow periods or times of the day when they’d be willing to sell their products or services at a discount rather than let their inventory go to waste. The challenge, it seems, is finding the best way to do that.

New hyperlocal platforms aim to address this problem with real-time deals and offers targeted to potential customers in the immediate vicinity. By offering limited-time promotions during off-peak periods, small businesses get new customers through the door without displacing faithful regulars. Local merchants are often willing to accept the trade-off — which involves taking significant cuts off the prices of the goods and services they sell — if it means putting employees to work and unloading perishable products before they go bad.

Here are seven platforms that can help drive business during off-peak times.

1. ThinkNear
Developed as a way to help businesses attract the right customers at the right times, ThinkNear is a great solution for SMBs looking to increase foot traffic during certain hours of the day. Merchants tell ThinkNear what types of discounts they’re willing to offer and what hours are typically the slowest, and ThinkNear uses this information — combined with an algorithm that takes weather, holidays, and special events into account — to send targeted deals to people using smartphones nearby. In exchange for paying a $99 monthly fee, merchants are guaranteed that their ads will be seen by at least 5,000 mobile phone users. ThinkNear CEO Eli Portnoy says the service works best for restaurants, salons, spas, and other businesses in large-margin industries.

2. Chalkboard
Chalkboard is a hyperlocal network that uses mobile ads to help small and medium-size businesses increase foot traffic. Businesses experiencing a slump in sales can visit their Chalkboard account and type in the name of a new promotion, like half-off drinks or a 2-for-1 spa special. These promotions are instantly displayed on third-party mobile applications (like Friendly for the iPad) being used by people within a “few mile radius” of the merchant, as well as websites in the Chalkboard network. Merchants can run as many promotions as they want for a flat fee that ranges from $0.99 to $2.99 per day.

3. Closely
Small business owners interested in real-time marketing efforts are perfectly suited for Closely. The daily deal, social promotion, and mobile marketing platform gives SMBs the tools to publish offers and sell purchase-ready coupons on demand. Closely then delivers those deals to nearby consumers and promotes them on relevant social networks. A nail salon suffering from a rainy day sales slump can publish an instant deal to boost immediate traffic, while a restaurant that seems slow on Mondays can set up recurring deals that only run on that day each week. Closely doesn’t publish its exact pricing, but a rep for the company says it provides merchants services in the $50 to $200 per month range, with a 25% to 35% share of deal revenue.

4. Groupon Now!
Merchants who want to take advantage of the Groupon craze without getting in over their heads are using Groupon Now! to post limited-time deals for customers nearby. Local merchants can schedule their deals in advance to run during slow times of the day — like 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., for example. Once a deal closes, merchants get a check for the proceeds of the promotion, minus Groupon’s commission fee. Customers who fail to redeem their vouchers during these limited time slots can get full refunds, which means businesses don’t profit from unredeemed deal vouchers like they do with traditional Groupon deals.

5. LivingSocial Instant Deals
Remarkably similar to Groupon Now!, Instant Deals is LivingSocial’s take on real-time promotions. The service is best for merchants who’ve worked with LivingSocial before and enjoyed the experience. Deals are live for a short period of time, and they’re sent out to people using the LivingSocial mobile app within a half-mile radius. Merchants using Instant Deals don’t have to offer discounts as substantial as they would with a traditional deal, although LivingSocial still recommends that businesses offer deals that are at least 30%-off. Like Groupon Now!, LivingSocial Instant Deals requires no upfront costs and sends merchants their cut of the deals once the redemption period has closed.

6. Foursquare
Businesses that already use Foursquare as a loyalty rewards platform can leverage the service to attract customers during certain days or times by varying the check-in rewards and incentives they offer. Cafes wanting to boost their early morning sales can offer time-sensitive specials between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., while retailers looking to get more people through their doors on a holiday weekend can offer charity donations for each check-in on specific days. Foursquare’s tools are free, which means the only costs merchants incur are based on the specific discounts and rewards they give to customers.

7. Qwikon
Most text messages are read within four minutes of receipt, which is why Qwikon believes that SMS marketing is the single fastest way to get real-time promotions in the hands of loyal consumers. The company provides merchants with all the tools necessary to gather contact information from customers in their neighborhoods. Once this information has been collected, merchants can blast out SMS offers any time they’re slow. Qwikon says 95% of these offers are opened within minutes, and the response rate ranges from 10% to 20%. Pricing for Qwikon is based on the number of messages sent per month, and varies from $49 to $249.