Digital Marketing Commentary (Now With 15% More Snark!)

August 15, 2011

online video: engagement measurement

Filed under: Digital Media, digital media buying, Video — Tags: , , , , , , , — jilliantate @ 11:55 am

So I was just watching the below clip from beet.tv, and it raised a lively discussion between me and the offline research colleague who sits next to me. We’re both learning about measurement in each others’ worlds by osmosis, since we share the “R&D pod” with two other teammates. But the below clip really gave us some great points to exchange information on:

http://cdn.livestream.com/embed/beet_tv?layout=4&clip=flv_b3c43796-17d4-4117-a21b-7240a7d57d46&color=0xe7e7e7&autoPlay=false&mute=false&iconColorOver=0×888888&iconColor=0×777777&allowchat=true&height=340&width=560

Watch live streaming video from beet_tv at livestream.com

First of all, there’s some discussion in this clip about how GRP’s aren’t the best fit for online video measurement, since they measure eyeballs, and do not gauge engagement or involvement with the brand. What would a new metric, beyond GRPs or views, looke like though? What could be added on to gauge effectiveness, prove the engagement, and show that the advertiser has really connected to their audience?

I had a couple ideas on adding social connectivity to video. For example, in YouTube pre-rolls, it may not be enough to just rely on YouTube Trueview as a metric for engaged users. It would be awesome if Google added a +1 button to the pre-roll ads on YouTube, and gave an advertiser the opportunity to tie it to a +1 of the brand everywhere else. It would also be great if the +1 would positively affect the YouTube search for that video, and boost the commercial in YouTube search results, so it would gain more views as an independent YouTube posted video.

Similarly, it would be really helpful to add Gigya social sign in type functionality to online video, allowing for “Likes”, or other soft indicators of allegiance to a video. Assuming everyone’s logged in on some social network at all times, whether Facebook or Google+, why not take advantage of those logins to allow users to indicate interest in content?

My offline colleague and I agree that GRPs are the best broad, branded metric to measure any video content by, because it still gets in front of eyeballs. Even if the user isn’t paying attention (and they are more likely to pull up another window in front of an online ad), they still see or hear the brand name. But there does need to be a new school of measurement to gauge video effectively…especially since otherwise, all video media placements might be viewed as equal in quality. If video is only effective when it meets the “three C’s” (content, context and connectivity), what additional engagement metrics should be layered on to judge whether those three factors have been adequately met, and the video is indeed conveyings its message to an engaged consumer?

July 18, 2011

possible futures for google plus

Filed under: Digital Media, Google, Search, State of the Internet — jilliantate @ 5:00 am

I keep trying to explain Google Plus, and everyone keeps telling me it isn’t important. Well, I think it is. Or rather, it will be, once it is integrated into more Google products. So I put together some slides with my imagined future for Google Plus, and how it will be a lot more than “another Facebook” or “another Twitter” down the line.

Right now, Google+ is just a social network with some cool features: Circles, Hangouts, and instant photo upload being the closest to “killer apps”. But in the future, it will be a backbone for how people navigate the Internet through Google Products, and will include your Circles and social connections in every action possible. THAT is when people will start to care about it, and THAT is when it will hit critical mass. (Or at least, that’s what I think)

Let me know what you think in the comments.

July 15, 2011

update: the jetblue social media volume stats

Filed under: analytics, social media — jilliantate @ 10:48 am

Out of curiosity, I checked to see how big the JetBlue Carpocalypse PR stunt really was. Here’s the details, courtesy of Radian6:

Here’s the buzz levels for “Carmageddon” over the last week. You can see it escalating daily as more news channels pick up the stories, and more people re-post those links. However, it REALLY spikes on 7/13, when JetBlue’s $4 BUR -> LGB fares hit the social web:

Jetblue’s “bump” to an existing major news story was so extreme that I had to see how much of the “Carmageddon” volume over those two days was actually due to the airline promo, and not due to other factors. Turns out that because the JetBlue story ran so quickly, it was only 25% of the buzz on Wednesday and Thursday:

Granted, that is still A LOT OF TRAFFIC when you have the City of L.A. asking celebrities to tweet about the closure. 25% is a pretty big chunk of the pie when you have EVERY NEWS OUTLET IN THE COUNTRY covering this story. (Even the Economist wrote about it – and they are pretty selective in their “real news” coverage)

The question is: what does the conversion funnel actually look like? How much of that buzz resulted in traffic to Jetblue’s website, and how many of those links resulted in clicks beyond the $4 novelty fare page? I would love to see how many new visitors spent more than 10 seconds on their site…or what their branded search term volume looked like yesterday. Will people think of JetBlue when they’re traveling in future? They certainly got the message out that they fly in and out of Burbank, and Long Beach, which are WAY easier to fly in and out of than LAX…even on days when the 405 is open.

July 14, 2011

you go, jetblue

Filed under: Digital Media, facebook, social media — jilliantate @ 9:18 am

Yesterday, one of my colleagues sent out an all-staff email letting us know about the JetBlue Carmageddon flyover.

At the same time, multiple extremely popular people on my Facebook friends list posted the link:

multiple links to the JetBlue promo

I wonder if JetBlue monitored how much social media exposure they got for that publicity stunt? Regardless, today, the flights are sold out:

I can’t wait to see the AdAge articles on this next week.

July 6, 2011

the trending tag on twitter is trouble like tribbles

Filed under: social media, twitter — jilliantate @ 7:13 am

I’m not particularly surprised that the Casey Anthony trial prompted a 150% increase in online traffic. Nor am I surprised that the #notguilty tag took off like a shot yesterday. But I AM surprised that a PR agency for @Entenmann assumed it was a trend about stealing cookies or something, and used it to tweet:

Who’s #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?!

The Internet has so many inside jokes that you have to check every catchphrase BEFORE you use it. It isn’t that a PR agency used a trending tag to link Entenmann’s treats to an accused child murdered. It’s that someone who should know how to use Twitter and the Internet didn’t check the tag to be sure they understood the joke I have to agree with the guy who said he would have preferred bad taste to blatant incompetence.

But I think Entenmann’s is getting the benefit of the screw up here. The #notguilty tag today has more about Entenmanns than it does about Casey Anthony. They have 1,716 followers right now, but I bet they hit 3K+ soon. And, best of all, everyone knows now that they have a Twitter account. Seriously, who would think that Entenmanns would have a Twitter feed? They’re such a traditional supermarket brand, I would never have guessed. Now, they are getting thousands of free impressions about their PR company’s screwup. This honest mistake may actually end up in their favor, as the world is now watching their previously invisible Twitter feed. I sincerely hope their management recognizes that and doesn’t fire their PR people, who certainly seem sorry enough. You literally can’t buy this kind of publicity.

As a free suggestion, Entenmann’s and Likeable, I suggest that Entenmann’s immediately start making donations to abused children. Preferably money, instead of the diabetes-inducing products they usually sell. That would be a genuine way of showing their company culture while the spotlight is still on them. The folks at Groupon & Crispin Porter missed the boat when it came to highlighting Groupon’s charitable efforts regarding Tibet and the whales. I’m hoping Entenmann’s takes advantage of this.

Also, looks like the satirists did jump on this right away, but I’m sure they’ll have to give up soon. Unlike the @BPGlobalPR people last year, I doubt they can keep the one liners up ALL summer

April 25, 2011

The SEO Rapper = Awesome

Filed under: Uncategorized — jilliantate @ 9:06 pm

The SEO Rapper is combining two of everyone’s favorite things: coherent rap and inbound marketing. Last week, he paid a visit to Hubspot in Boston and seriously upped their street cred.

I first learned of the SEO Rapper when I ran across his video on page rank in the wake of the JC Penney scandal. Remember that? It was when JCP was busted using inbound links from spam farms to rank #1 on any Google term that correlated to an item they sold. Prom dresses? Samsonite Luggage? Somewhere, a link farm was making that term look relevant for JC Penney. The SEO rapper does not condone such things, and his “Page Rank” video explains exactly what kind of hard work needs to be done in lieu of those content farms. Of course, Google pretty much handled the spam link farms with their Panda update. Now, the methods espoused by the SEO Rapper are the only way to achieve top rankings in organic search.

I think the SEO Rapper is actually fantastic. He has a lot of excellent points, and has cleverly woven them into rap. The videos are also almost parodies of rap videos, but contain too much information to be mere humor.

BTW, speaking of parodies, THIS is a parody:

YouTube, is there anything you can’t give us?

March 21, 2011

Groupon Offer: Pay For One Controversy, Get Two Major News Stories

Filed under: Advertising — jilliantate @ 9:30 am

Fellow MDC Partners agency Crispin, Porter and Bogusky is starting a rough week. Groupon has announced that they are “firing” CP+B for the controversial Superbowl ads. After reading the AdAge article, I had to say something, because AdAge totally neglected to speak to how much extra earned media Groupon got in the wake of the controversy. Here’s the comment I posted to the AdAge site:


    The only big problem with those ads was that CP+B neglected to call attention to Groupon’s efforts to help those causes. If they’d called out Groupon’s matching donations to Greenpeace, Tibet et al, then the ads would have been seen as satire of society’s willful ignorance of world problems, not as insensitivity. Groupon’s “put our money where our mouth is” practices of donating their own profits to those causes could have changed everyone’s perception of those ads.

    Also, how much earned media did Groupon get from these ads? Any estimates? By publicly “firing” CP+B now, they get the proverbial “having and eating it too” scenario. They got exposure to a new audience through the Superbowl ads (and the ads DID clearly explain the product), plus millions of impressions in mainstream news as people responded to the ads. I find the timing of CP+B’s “dismissal” a little overly strategic. If Andrew Mason was really upset over CP+B’s treatment of his brand, and thought that he was oversold on the ads by his agency, he should have fired them two days after the Superbowl…not taken advantage of a wave of publicity that garnered him millions of impressions while he defended the ads. Now that the hullabaloo has died down, Mason gets to be BACK in the news publicly denouncing the agency. It seems like he’s double-dipping here on news coverage pertaining to the original commercials.

I’m not sure if I should actually be denouncing Groupon though. Impressions are impressions, and they have accumulated A LOT of them for free. In 2011, earned media is the only way to make a Superbowl investment back out. Could it be that Groupon saw this, and when their ads didn’t go viral for being clever, they decided to use news media to get those eyeballs and raise their awareness?

February 12, 2011

$2.7B Increase in Ad Spending This Year on Social Sites

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , — jilliantate @ 2:37 pm

As social networks grow in size, advertisers are also increasing ad spending on social sites. In 2011, 10.8% of all US online ad spending will go to social networks; and that number is expected to rise to 12.1% in 2012. IMS took a look recently at some of the factors helping to drive this increase in advertising across social networking sites and how this media channel can be adapted for direct response. Here are the top five reasons we see for the projected increase in social ad spend in 2011:
1) Increased social site user population. Facebook grew from 121M to 147M unique users in 2010. More users mean more impressions – and more potential for ad spending
2) Targeting ability. Social sites give advertisers the opportunity to isolate and target very precise niches. Marketers with profiling data can set up campaigns to only reach the most likely to convert consumers. For example, IMS recently ran a Facebook Ads campaign on behalf of Hair Club to promote their American Chopper show appearance. We targeted only men 35 to 55, who had listed any of a dozen chopper related interests in their profiles. With interest targeting and the event tie-in, the cost per fan was the lowest yet for an IMS client campaign.

3) New ad products, including in-app ads. Over 225M people play the top 5 games on Facebook, creating a huge audience for in-game ads. Sites are also developing more engaging ad types that give users the opportunity to take an action in the ad, such as “Like” or “Share”, without leaving the page they are on.

4) Local targeting and increased SMB spending. With the increase in location-based social networking (Foursquare, Facebook Places, Yelp Check-Ins), more small and medium business are using social networking sites on a geotargeted basis customized to their sales area.

5) More social networking sites following the “Facebook model”. LinkedIn has announced that they will begin running more social ads (above) which can be targeted to people based on their professional profile.
IMS is watching this space closely to establish where the best opportunities lie for our clients. As the audiences on these sites grow, we will continue to test new targeting and messaging to achieve and exceed goal costs-per.

February 9, 2011

AOL Buys Huffington Post – “Content Is King” Again?

Filed under: Digital Media, digital media buying, State of the Internet — Tags: , , , , , — jilliantate @ 7:05 am

You heard me. “Content is king.” Back when that was still a viable strategy, I was a teenager. It seems strange to see it come back as a viable strategy, let alone one that is driving both this AOL Deal, and the meteoric rise of Demand Media.

On Monday, February 7th, AOL and the Huffington Post announced the creation of a “New Media Universe” with the acquisition of the Huffington Post for $315M. Arianna Huffington will now transition from being the founder of the Huffington Post to being the leader of the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group. HPMG will cover all AOL content, including not only content on AOL and HuffingtonPost.com, but also on AOL owned content sites such as Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

Huffpo and AOL Universe

The "New Media" Universe

This new merger is part of AOL’s strategy to become a content based media group, attracting eyeballs – and advertiser revenue – by providing unique, proprietary and valuable content. AOL describes their content as “a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.” AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher describes the acquisition as part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s “aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse… For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.”

The move to premium content is part of AOL’s attempt to discover new revenue models. Over forty percent of AOL’s revenues are still coming from dialup subscribers, 75% of which have broadband service in addition to an AOL dialup account (the company’s failure to clarify that users can keep their @aol addresses without dialup service is to blame). With the acquisition of the Huffington Post, AOL gains traffic that is easy to monetize in three ways. First of all, the traffic increase is from HuffPo’s young, affluent audience and will allow AOL to increase rates on premium content (of which they will have more with the content expansion). Second, the Huffington Post’s practice of aggregating the first few paragraphs of stories from other sites has made HuffPo an SEO magnet. Digital executive Ian Schafer was quoted as saying, “AOL just bought SEO”. This will in turn increase traffic, which will create more display banner impressions to be sold. Third, AOL will increase non-display revenue through the influx of traffic by taking advantage of the millions of additional eyeballs to their other advertising products. It is likely that there will be an uptick in volume on Sponsored Listings (AOL’s search and contextual text ad products).

AOL may also begin to leverage their prowess in content in more revenue generating ways. IMS hopes that a focus on quality content means that more advertorial opportunities will be made available. It’s possible that AOL may also use a future reputation as a high quality content site to engage in revenue sharing with other sites. For example, AOL and Everyday Health announced a partnership last month where Everyday Health would be the destination for all AOL health traffic. AOL users interested in a health story will soon be driven through to an Everyday Health site to read it. For this traffic, Everyday Health shares revenue with AOL. If more users visit AOL for quality, trusted content, AOL could extend partnerships like this to other networks willing to pay for the quality traffic.

IMS will continue to watch AOL and HuffPo for further developments and opportunities. At this time, we anticipate the greatest opportunities for our clients to be in Sponsored Listings and contextual ad opportunities: two AOL products which have always performed well for us.

February 4, 2011

Dear Groupon: FIX YOUR LOGIN BEFORE THE SUPERBOWL

Filed under: Uncategorized — jilliantate @ 10:51 am

Last night, while updating my transactions on Mint, I saw an ad for Groupon’s version of the LivingSocial/Amazon deal. Groupon, in their second nationwide brand partnership, are offering $20 worth of merchandise at Barnes and Noble for $10. The only problem is that, while LivingSocial managed to handle their 80% traffic jump and sell over a million Amazon vouchers, Groupon is experiencing a “fail whale” situation at the login screen:

groupon failwhale

Groupon's Login Screen, as of 10:47AM PST February 4th

This started at 10pm PST last night, and is STILL happening over 12 hours later. This is kind of a shock. And a disappointment. Groupon’s screen says that users can purchase the Groupon using their account emails, and it will be added to their accounts later. But I happen to have a $10 credit with Groupon from when my DealBucks were converted last week, and I would very much like to use that to purchase this deal. Furthermore, Groupon redemptions will be on hold everywhere until this login is resolved, because being unable to log in also means being unable to access existing Groupons.

So now I’m waiting to find out:

1) When will Groupon be back up so I can download my voucher for cupcakes for a team meeting today?
2) How will this affect sales of this deal, and skew comparisons against LivingSocial/Amazon?
3) Is Groupon REALLY ready to run a $3M ad this weekend? If we’re getting the fail whale effect on Friday, will they be able to reap the benefits from the ad on Sunday?

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