Disney Decorates for Halloween

DMNews reports "Disney Online is decorating its four mother- and family-targeted websites to promote Halloween ideas and products for parents and families. The company is promoting costume, craft and recipe ideas through the end of October on Family.com, FamilyFun.com, BabyZone.com and Kaboose.com, as well as running a contest."

JetBlue Goes Digital

"JetBlue is launching a online, social media, in-flight, print and out-of-home campaign that will highlight the customer service discrepancy between it and other airlines," according to a MarketingVox post.

GE's YouTube Campaign to Reach Goal

"GE has scored more than 2 million views in the first week of its Ecomagination YouTube challenge, putting it well on track to reach its goal of 10 million views within the first three-months of the campaign.
The contest follows an increasingly familiar structure: Pay established YouTube celebrities to make creative videos centering on your brand that in turn ask their fans to get involved on their behalf," goes the post on ClickZ. "In this case, GE has recruited 15 video stars, including Brittani Louise Taylor, DaveDays and Barely Political, to make videos in which they ask their fans to suggest a "green" activity they can perform in a subsequent video. They are also asking their fans to take pictures that showcase their commitment to sustainability and upload them to Flckr."

Pepsi Said to Have Great Social Marketing Campaign

"Looking for evidence of a top-notch social campaign? Look no further than the Pepsi Refresh Project. When PepsiCo decided this year to forego the customary Super Bowl advertising for its Pepsi line of soft drinks, many industry observers were surprised. But the real shock was what the company pursued instead: a $20 million social media campaign that enabled people to submit and campaign for ideas (proposals to "refresh" their communities), and then empowered the public to vote among the submitted proposals," writes CRM.

Online Ad Spending Up in 2010

"The first six months of 2010 represented the largest on record in terms of online ad spend, according to the IAB's bi-annual Internet Advertising Revenue Report," says a ClickZ post. "The research, conducted in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers, estimates advertisers spent a total of $12.1 billion during that period, representing 11.3 percent growth compared with the first half of 2009. Based on the report's findings, David Silverman, a partner at PwC, said online ad spend is on course to reach at least $24 billion in 2010, which would represent the industry's healthiest year since the IAB began conducting its annual spending research in 1996."

Data Highlights from IAB

($ millions if not indicated)
Advertising Formats:
Search and display-related ads continue to be leading formats.

	FH 2010	FH 2009
Search	47% ($5,747)	47% ($5,148)
Display Related:	36% ($4,356)	34% ($3,759)
-Banner Ads	23% ($2,744)	22% ($2,394)
-Rich Media	6% ($743)	7% ($704)
-Digital Video	5% ($627)	4% ($477)
-Sponsorship	2% ($242)	2% ($184)
Classifieds	10% ($1,262)	10% ($1,116)
Referrals/Lead Generation	5% ($642)	7% ($728)
E-mail	1% ($120)	1% ($149)

Retailer Tries to Fense In/Out Customers -- Digitally

"The North Face is testing geo-fencing in a serious fashion, as the retailer has rolled out the strategy across each of its 31 locations in recent months. Geo-fencing allows stores to offer an opt-in "auto check-in" service to their patrons, no matter if they use a smart phone or regular cellular device," according to a post on ClickZ.

Two Automotive Marketers' Digital Marketing Campaigns

• Mitsubishi Motors North America has created the Mitsubishi Live Drive, an online test drive. "The virtual experience, involving the new Mitsubishi Outlander Sport, is to be available on a microsite from Nov. 1 to Nov. 10. Beginning next Thursday, computer users can sign up at the microsite — outlandersport.com — where they will be given codes that can be used to line up for the live test drive. The effort is being created by an agency and a production company, working with Simon Cave, a Web designer, and James Brighton, an engineer who specializes in robotics," reports a blogger for  NYTimes.

• A few days ago ClickZ reported that "Chevrolet has been appearing in a targeted paid Twitter promo today as the top listing in the site's "Who to follow/Suggestions for you" section, following up Xbox's and Rock Star Game's appearances earlier this week. Part of the 'Promoted Accounts' platform unveiled via Twitter's blog on Monday, the ads are served based on users' individually shown interests via an algorithm."

Young Adults Prefer to "Discover" Brands for Themselves

"Subtlety is the key to winning a slice of Australia’s $68.56 billion youth market, a report by Lifelounge and Sweeney Research claims.
The ‘Urban Market Research’ (UMR) study analysed the spending and brand behaviours of 16-30 year olds study and found self-discovery marketing, where consumers feel like they have discovered new products, brands, and artists in their own time, is preferred to ‘interruptive’ marketing tactics," according to a post on MarketingMag. Could you not say the say of America's youth?

Data Upon Data about Digital Marketing

MarketingPilgrim notes that "If you like stats and graphics, you’ll go positively mad over a new website by custom research agency TNS. The website is called DiscoverDigitalLife.com and it’s a public repository for the massive amounts of data collected in regard to consumer’s online behavior and attitudes." I couldn't see the page because my screen (10 inches) was too small. The site should open for someone using a typical laptop or computer.

GE Turns to YouTube Stars

AdWeek reports that General Electric is "leaning on 15 YouTube 'stars' to kick off a campaign about sustainability."

Health Care Providers/Care Dealers Turn to Social Web Networks

Check this out from the BaltimoreSun: "Monica Dillon wasn't happy with her eye care provider, so when she saw an online deal for an exam and glasses for $50, she clicked on it...'The timing was right so I jumped on it,' she said about her purchase via Groupon, a deal-of-the-day e-mail sent to tens of thousands of people in the Baltimore region and millions nationwide....'This worked out; they found a problem with my prescription.'Katzen Eye Group, the company behind the deal, is among the growing number of health care providers testing the latest in social media.


Meanwhile, TK Carsites’ Power Social has created "four packages for auto dealers to boost leads... through automotive social media marketing....[T]he packages integrate social media with auto dealers’ websites. The advanced packages also offer a custom, branded setup of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, along with daily updates. Dealers with premium packages can add inventory, specials, coupons and other applications to Facebook."

The Future of Location-Based Ads

Technology Review notes that "the spread of smart phones that track their owners' precise location seems like a wonderful development for advertisers. These devices could enable completely new kinds of digital marketing that make ads more relevant, meaningful, and effective," but adds that the reality of such a development is more complicated than it may seem.

Games that Change Behavior on Social Networks

"Can your social network make you healthier? It's a question that health organizations are asking more and more--as part of a wave of new gaming experiments that aim to persuade players to think and act differently while having fun," asks Technology Review. The answer: yes, assuming that the individual is already motivated to change. See how organizations are making use of this.

Read How Digital Marketing Works

Pizza Hut and the Queensland tourism board show how web and mobile campaigns can yield real-world business results, according to Fortune Magazine.

Acuvue Changes Promo from Email to Facebook

Contact lens company Acuvue's results from its email campaign aimed at teenagers lagged in the past few years. It turned to Facebook. Initially the company could not get the results it needed, but "since January, ...[the] contact lenses brand's Facebook 'likers' have jumped from about 10,000 to 41,000." The figures jumped because the company converted its teen e-mail subscribers to its page on the social site, according to a post on ClickZ.

Indie Rock Group Signs--Not with a Record Label but a Digital Ad Agency

ClickZ notes that "With the music industry becoming more and more digitized and record labels reluctant to sign artists who aren't already a proven commodity on YouTube, it was only a matter of time before an aspiring rock star trusted his fate to a digital ad agency. Such is the case with AM, an indie solo artist from Los Angeles who has struck a unique collaborative deal with Razorfish. AM already has a record label (Filter) and a management team. But Razorfish will be filling many of the roles traditionally handled by a record label, as well as a few that only a digital ad agency would think of."

Google's Push for Display Ads

Real Time Bidding (Ad Exchanges) Changing Marketplace

"Publishers generated significantly higher revenue from real-time bidding campaigns in comparison to non-RTB campaigns, across all advertising verticals, by an average of 64%, according to a new study by PubMatic. It also found that RTB outperformed traditional run-of-network non-RTB media buying methods by an average of 749% and that audience targeted non-RTB campaigns outperformed run-of-network non-RTB campaigns by an average of 324%. Visit PubMatic after Oct. 18, to download a copy of the report," according to MarketingVox.

Here's a great description of real-time bidding that appeared in the NYTimes:

Now, companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears. The technology, called real-time bidding, allows advertisers to examine site visitors one by one and bid to serve them ads almost instantly.

For example, say a man just searched for golf clubs on eBay (which has been testing a system from a company called AppNexus for more than a year). EBay can essentially follow that person’s activities in real time, deciding when and where to show him near-personalized ads for golf clubs throughout the Web.

To be clear, the search engines do not provide real-time bidding. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft own ad exchanges that work with ad networks. The ad exchanges, essentially algorithmic software, place the ads.

Google Experiments with a New Search Results Page

Taking a page from Bing's search results format, Google is experimenting with a new format. You can see an image of the page on Blogstorm.

Ford Creates Online TV Show to Market Focus

"Ford will launch a reality show on Hulu to promote its critical 2012 Ford Focus compact car. The show, Focus: Rally America, will have six teams of two competing against each other for the chance to win $100,000; the show is being produced by the same group that produces CBS’s The Amazing Race, reports the Detroit Free Press. The post appears on MediaBuyerPlanner. You can read more about the campaign at AdWeek.