Do Social Media and Ad Exchanges Deliver Quality Results?

“Social media and ad exchanges deliver clicks and conversions at the lowest cost of all channels, but networks and exchanges don't deliver high-quality, long-term customers, according to a new report from Aggregate Knowledge,” notes ClickZ. “When a marketer's goal is to reach new consumers and be able to message them consistently, social media and portals delivery the best combination of quality and value, the report says. Aggregate Knowledge's Global Media Intelligence Report, released today analyzed aggregated data for approximately 150 billion ad events managed by the company's Media Intelligence Platform. It looked at the largest digital marketing channels: exchanges, networks, portals, and social media, focusing on four key metrics: cost, reach efficiency, user quality, and funnel attribution. The data included 35 billion impressions and 780,000 conversions in Q4 2012.” Read more.

Mobile Ads Growing with Facebook

“Wall Street really wants Facebook to figure out mobile, and for the second-consecutive quarter, Facebook delivered. Mobile ads accounted for 23% of Facebook's revenue over the holiday season, a far cry from last summer when CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged it had a lot of catching up to do as users quickly abandoned PCs for tablets and phones. Overall, Facebook didn't do so badly, either, as revenue climbed 40% over the previous year to $1.59 billion, including $306 million in mobile revenue, topping Wall Street consensus of $1.53 billion” (Delo, 2013).

Delo, Cotton (30 Jan. 2013). Facebook turns in strong quarter on growth in mobile ads. AdAge.com . Retrieved from < http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-turns-strong-quarter-growth-mobile-ads/239498/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage>.

While mobile ads must look different than traditional web ads because of the distinctly smaller mobile screens, does that constitute a new medium? Do not mobile ads depend on the web as much as any website? In essence, the mobile display of advertising, marketing, and content does not constitute a new digital medium any more than does a broadsheet newspaper constitute a different media than a tabloid newspaper.

Facebook's Graph Search--The New Top Dog?

“Facebook's Graph Search has the potential to completely revolutionize search, enabling consumers to have a uniquely personalized search experience — based not only on what they want but what they like, and who their friends are, by extending the value of the social graph and first-party data to sharply differentiate Facebook's offering from Google. The new offering extends the value of Likes and the social graph to search, which can revolutionize accuracy, value, and relevance — especially as consumers perform more and more local searches using mobile devices, an area where Google has struggled” (Williams, 2013).

Williams, Daniel (31 Jan. 2013). How Facebook's Graph Search will dethrone Google Search. AdAge.com . Retrieved from <http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-s-graph-search-dethrone-google-search/239509/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage>.

Importance of Brand Sites

“Brands are spending more time—and money—engaging with consumers outside of their brand sites on the likes of YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook and many other channels. As marketing efforts move to social networks and to content sites such as BuzzFeed, what happens to the brand’s dot-com? Brand pages, although they are not very heavily trafficked as a rule, are still a primary resource for consumers seeking information about products and the companies that make them, according to a new eMarketer report, ' What's a Brand Site For? Engaging Consumers Across Multiple Channels.' An October study by nRelate found that 48% of online shoppers said they trusted content from brand websites. No other content type approached the trustworthiness of corporate sites, according to this survey—not even mainstream news sites” (Whither the brand, 2013).

Whither the brand website (7 Jan. 2013). eMarketer.com. Retrieved from <http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Whither-Brand-Website/1009585>

Mobile Advertising Increasing Worldwide

"Mobile ad spending around the world more than doubled last year, eMarketer estimates, and though growth will moderate this year, double-digit increases in mobile ad spending will continue in coming years as outlays approach $37 billion by 2016. In 2012, mobile spending was at $8.41 billion, according to eMarketer’s forecast—up from just over $4 billion the year before and $2.34 billion in 2010. eMarketer’s estimates of worldwide mobile ad spending include dollars going toward display and search advertising only, and exclude spending on messaging-based formats. Spending on tablets is also included” (Money goes mobile, 2013).

Worldwide, more money goes mobile (4 Jan. 2013). eMarketer.com. Retrieved from <http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Worldwide-More-Money-Goes-Mobile/1009582>

Mobile Advertising on the Rise

“Corporate awareness of mobile advertising is growing in the new year, according to a group of executives speaking at the Mobile Media Summit 2013. This year will see mobile ad agencies evolve the way they use the mobile platform for advertising. Things like branded apps and a better understanding of the way the industry works are starting to bring major brands [products, not companies, such as Coke as opposed to Coca-Cola Corp.] to the platform, according to the executives” (Dohnert, 2013).

Dohnert, James (Jan. 24, 2013). Mobile media summit: mobile advertising will grow. ClickZ.com. Retrieved from < http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2238591/mobile-media-summit-mobile-advertising-will-grow>.

Shaming People to Vote

"The campaigns have planted software known as cookies on voters’ computers to see if they frequent evangelical or erotic Web sites for clues to their moral perspectives," reports the New York Times. "Voters who visit religious Web sites might be greeted with religion-friendly messages when they return to mittromney.com or barackobama.com. The campaigns’ consultants have run experiments to determine if embarrassing someone for not voting by sending letters to their neighbors or posting their voting histories online is effective." Read more.

Maturing Facebook Strategies

"As Facebook marketing matures, so should strategies and best practices for plotting investment," reports Advertising Age. "Winning strategies will look very different in 2013 from previous years. Now that many brands have acquired sizable 'fan' bases, the focus is on leveraging Facebook's new ad products to grow loyalty and retention." Read more.

2012 Presidential Election Gets Social

"In 2012, it is not enough for candidates to shake some hands, kiss a baby or two and run some TV ads. They also need to be posting funny little animations on the blogging site Tumblr," starts a New York Times post. "If the presidential campaigns of 2008 were dipping a toe into social media like Facebook and Twitter, their 2012 versions are well into the deep end. They are taking to fields of online battle that might seem obscure to the non-Internet-obsessed — sharing song playlists on Spotify, adding frosted pumpkin bread recipes to Pinterest and posting the candidates’ moments at home with the children on Instagram." Read more.

Comments to help you think: Do not the presidential campaigns of Obama and Romney resemble marketing campaigns for products/services? Of course they do. Each man is attempting to build confidence and trust so that one of them can "run" the country for the next four years. 

People build trust by sharing information, and that information starts off benign--such as a vetted playlist, bread recipes, or staged family pictures. The sites create the illusion that each man--reality  an annointed volunteer or paid staff member--has posted this material, thereby conveying the notion that the viewer becomes "closer" with each man. How does this play a role in today's election? 

For 90 percent of Americans who say that they will vote in the election, it does not matter, according to poll samples. They will hold firm in their opinions. Obama and Romney are chasing after the 10 percent who remain undecided--especially in swing states such as Ohio and Florida, which have a few dozen Electoral College votes. 

Remember your civics classes. Members of the Electoral College in each state vote for the president. They have 538 voting members. The results of the Electoral College vote determines the next president--not the results of the popular vote. As a result, a person running for President of the U.S. could lose the popular vote but win the election. It has happened three times (Adams, Hayes, and Bush Jr.). 

Each candidate, therefore, wants to win in the swing states to ensure that they have those Electoral College votes. Do you not think that marketers also must find certain consumers to efficiently improve market share (the percentage of sales for a particular product category) in a given region or country?

Tweet a Conversation

"While Facebook is busy not counting clicks, Twitter wants us to sit down and have a chat – one-on-one – just you, me, and the millions of other people who check out the site every day. It’s more wisdom from the IAB MIXX Conference, this time from Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter’s vice president of global brand strategy, coming to you via TechCrunch," so goes the Marketing Pilgrim post. "Lunenfeld says that '88% of Twitter users follow at least one brand, and that more than half of users follow six or more brands.' Six or more brands! That’s a lot of people asking for daily advertisements in their stream. Some of them are hoping for discounts and freebies but others are genuinely interested in the brand and they want to be up on what’s happening." If you read more, you will discover ideas about the programs from Taco Bell and Old Sprice.

Tweets Fly with Presidential Debate

"Twitter announced on Wednesday night that the presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney was the most popular political event in the microblogging site's history," notes Brafton News. "For marketers, sharing interesting content related to any event driving major activity on the web can help boost brand areness and attract prospects." Read more.

Tweeting's Fun, but Give Content

"A report from AYTM Market Research found that consumers enjoy interacting with brands on Twitter, but many also want to see website content from these companies," reports Brafton News. "According to the study, 69 percent of Twitter users follow brands on the platform. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they monitor the activity of at least 10 companies on the network." Read more.

Customers Like "Liking" but Also Want Content

"A report from AYTM Market Research found that more than 73 percent of consumers have Liked at least one brand on Facebook. In fact, 31 percent of respondents said they have Liked 10 brands or more," reports Brafton News. "Perhaps more importantly, users who opt to Like brands typically interact with social content on a regular basis. Even with 25.5 percent saying they "never" pay attention, the overwhelming sentiment suggests that content that appeals to users is most likely to result in clicks, site traffic and eventual conversions. ...Compelling content is the key for social media marketing...Despite this interest in Facebook marketing content, 44 percent said they typically find the website of the brands they Like more useful." Read more.

Again, marketers need to discover with Internet marketing how and when to have a "conversation" with their customers, as reported in the HD Marketing Report. With most products or services, customers reach a point when the cutesy information on a social network site fails to pique their interest. They want "hard" content--meaning facts about the product, pricing, or shipping that aid making a buying decision. They typically find that information on a company's website. In other words, it appears that social network media works effectively with customers who are beginning their "journeys," as Demystifying Social Media notes. So could one argue the longer the customer's journey, the more content the need. Conversely, the shorter the journey, the more flash? In other words, compare the "content" needed to make a decision about a soft drink versus "buying" a college education. Do not let the idea drop at that point. What does this mean for marketers?

Do not copy the information that appears in brown. I intend it only as a means of sparking your thoughts for your short reports.

Small Businesses Getting Social

"In June 2012, LinkedIn analyzed the countries where worldwide small-business professionals with accounts on the site lived and found that, not surprisingly due to the site’s headquarters, the US was the top country, with more than 6.8 million small-business professionals. The UK and India were the next most popular countries, with 1.06 million and 1.01 million professionals, respectively," reports eMarketer. "It is not only small-business professionals who are jumping into social media. Small businesses themselves are getting more involved on these sites. August 2012 data from Newtek Business Services found that Facebook is seeing more activity from small businesses. The survey of independent business owners in the US found that 47% of small businesses had a Facebook account." Read more; see charts. 

Throughout the semester, I rarely have mentioned small businesses, emphasizing the marketing campaigns of companies such as Toyota, Coke, and P&G. Small businesses, meaning companies who employ fewer than 10 people, represent nearly 80 percent of all employer firms in the U.S. They tend to be local companies with less resources for broadcast marketing, meaning tv and radio. As a result they become ideal candidates for the use of Internet marketing. They also lack the resources to maintain extensive contacts in the business community and its necessary services, such as accounting and legal. A social network, such as LinkedIn, enables them to establish or to improve their connections in the business community while Facebook can help them market to local customers, therefore accounting for the increased usage of both types of social networks by small businesses. 

Do not copy the information that appears in brown. I intend it only as a means of sparking your thoughts for your short report.

Virtual and Real Worlds Collide--Yet Again

"Exponential Interactive...and MasterCard Advisors...have announced a partnership that will enable Exponential's brands [marketers/advertisers] to target their digital ads to audiences based on their offline spending behavior," says ClickZ. "Data on spending behavior, which the companies say is anonymous and not linked to any individual, will be extracted from the more than 25 billion transactions that U.S. MasterCard holders carry out at retail locations annually. Some 310 million people hold a MasterCard in the U.S." Read more.

By integrating the virtual and real worlds of consumers, marketers discover a distinction about their potential customers: how people behave online differs from how the behave in the real world. In other words, an individual, while surfing the Web, may scout out luxury car brands but walk into dealerships and buy an economy brand. By discovering these types of distinctions, marketers can more effectively target ads or change their marketing messages. Now remember the concepts of conversation in the HD Marketing Report and the journey concept found in the Demystifying Social Media report. Then ask: How does this partnership work with those concepts? 

Do not copy the information that appears in brown. I intend it only as a means of sparking your thoughts for your short reports.

Getting Customers to Return

"Google has recently announced a beta program called Remarketing in Search, which aims to take the benefits of remarketing and leverage them within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) environment. The idea is simple: create remarketing lists as you do with display, but leverage this customer knowledge to impact you’re messaging and bidding strategy within your SEM campaigns to improve performance," according to ClickZ. "Remarketing - or retargeting - is now an established tactic leveraged by many (if not all) digital marketers trying to maximize conversion activity. Retargeting, in its simplest form, is the practice of delivering display advertisements to users who have visited owned content in the past, in order to get them to come back and take action. Retargeting on its own has many layers of complexity, including, determining which pages to track and which to exclude, developing relevant “cookie pools” against the tracked pages, and what creative messaging to deliver to each cookie pool." Read more.

To understand how remarketing/retargeting affects marketers, you should read the remainder of the article. In summary and without detail, it dovetails into the Demystifying Social Media (DSM) report. Remarketing continues the "conversation" with the viewer as she/he continues her "journey" for purchasing a product or service.  Google's "Remarketing in Search" and DSM differ in one respect. Google's deals with search results, and the report covers social media.

Do not copy the information that appears in brown. I intend it only as a means of sparking your thoughts for your short reports.

Gimmicks Can Fail

"Engagement is a good thing, of course. The preference to be not bored is pretty universal. But with time constraints and information overload, getting and maintaining people's already short attention spans is harder than ever. So, marketers and content specialists are turning to gamification as the latest Holy Grail," according to Direct Marketing News. "Too bad they don't know what they're doing." Read more.

Internet Marketers to Spend $37 Billion + This Year

"eMarketer estimates that marketers will spend $37.31 billion on digital advertising in 2012. Digital ad spending will rise 16.6% this year, and will experience double-digit growth through 2014," says eMarketer. "Based on the Interactive Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers data for the first two quarters of 2012, and because the digital ad spending market is approaching maturity faster than expected, eMarketer has lowered the projected rate of increase for US digital ad spending slightly from its earlier forecast of 17.7% in 2012. However, eMarketer’s outlook remains optimistic—despite slower percentage gains, big dollar growth will continue." Read more.

Are Viewers Turning from Search Engines to Social Media?

Marketing Pilgrim reports that "every marketer would like to see their brand land in the top spot on a search engine, but is top worth what it used to be? Experian Hitwise UK just released some interesting numbers concerning search in the land of Lords. What it shows is a slow decline in the number of people using search engines across the board. They say overall visits are down by 40 million since August of 2011. That means this past August was the first time this year that search didn’t show a year-over-year gain." Read more.

Facebook Releases Its Marketing Exchange

"Three months to the day after it announced a beta round, Facebook has announced general release of its Facebook Exchange (FBX) real-time bidding (RTB) option," reports Marketing Vox. "FBX enables advertisers and agencies to use cookie-based targeting through Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) to reach their audiences on Facebook, with what Facebook promises are 'more timely and relevant messages.' For brands and agencies, it is a way to drive direct response goals on Facebook." Read more.

FYI: An exchange works similarly to the stock marketing (also called an exchange). Advertisers and/or advertising agencies bid for advertising space geared to individuals with specific demographics. In this case, it is based on the cookies that viewers' computers have collected, which frequently would reflect the type of products, movies, and even readings individuals view.