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

January 31, 2011

Expect More “Effective” Privacy Measures in 2011

Filed under: digital media buying, State of the Internet, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — jilliantate @ 9:26 am

By the way, I mean “effective” with quotes, like in the “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

FireFox and Google Chrome browsers made headlines this week when they announced new “plug ins” that would effectively screen users from being targeted by advertisers and marketers. The “Keep My Opt Outs” plugin for Chrome is an extension for users who aren’t “comfortable with personalization of the ads they see on the web”. Google calls it a “one-step, persistent opt-out of personalized advertising and related data tracking performed by companies adopting the industry privacy standards for online advertising.”

FireFox and Google Chrome browsers made headlines this week when they announced new “plug ins” that would effectively screen users from being targeted by advertisers and marketers. The “Keep My Opt Outs” plugin for Chrome is an extension for users who aren’t “comfortable with personalization of the ads they see on the web”. Google calls it a “one-step, persistent opt-out of personalized advertising and related data tracking performed by companies adopting the industry privacy standards for online advertising.”

This follows on the heels of the announcements made by the IAB and DMA to voluntarily self-regulate as part of the National Advertising Initiative (NAI). The NAI centers around an “Advertising Option Icon”, triangular icon indicating program participation, which is to be displayed in or near online advertisements or on Web pages where data is collected and used for behavioral advertising. By clicking on it consumers will be able to link to a clear disclosure statement regarding the data collection and use practices associated with the ad. Consumers will also be presented with an easy-to-use opt-out mechanism, so they may not be targeted by that advertiser in future.

However, while the NAI is an initiative adopted and paid for by marketers and advertisers on a voluntary basis, these new privacy plug-ins must be adopted and installed by consumers in order to be effective. At this time, only the Google privacy plug-in is available for Chrome, which is only used by 12.4% of the US online population. Firefox, which has 26.9% of the browsing population, does not have a definitive release date for their user-secured privacy technology. It’s unlikely that these kind of “opt outs” will be used by more than a very small percentage of the population, who is tech savvy enough to use one of these browsers, and install the plug ins.

Valleywag, Gawker Media’s tech blog, took an even more cynical approach to this show of privacy protection. A post written on January 24th observed that “Google itself is easily the biggest perpetrator of precisely the sort of tracking this software is designed to prevent. Its advertising wing, DoubleClick, has trackers on 70 of the top 100 websites, a ubiquity second only to Google Analytics. The DoubleClick tracker follows you around the web and targets ads at you based on your surfing habits. It also builds up a demographic profile of you and targets ads that way. Google trackers also target ads at you based on searches you’ve run on Google.com. Finally, the indiscreet configuration of Google’s search engine is essential in providing your search keywords to all ad trackers; Google stubbornly refuses to change this setup.”

The Gawker observation, while extreme, is likely more accurate, and therefore more relevant for marketers and advertisers. Google also seeks to bring back display advertising, an initiative for which the user of targeting and customized ads will be crucial, in order to show improved click through rates. Wide range adoption of privacy protection software could detract from display advertising success. Similarly, effective blocking of cookie and tracking data could prevent DSP’s and ad exchages such as Yahoo’s Right Media, or MDC’s Varick Media, from effectively targeting and bidding on impressions to consumers most likely to convert. Just as a low buy-in rate from advertisers has resulted in an absence of the NAI’s triangular icons “in the wild”, a similarly low install rate from consumers will likely keep these new privacy measures from impacting ad revenues in 2011.

IMS will continue to work with new anonymized targeting technology to find ways to effectively reach the ideal customers for our clients. We will also continue to balance targeting and effective personalization to ensure that it does not create the impression or perception of intrusion on consumers. Should new privacy measures arise that change our ability to reach a target market, we will advise on changes or alternate strategies.

Resource links:

http://searchengineland.com/browsers-to-offer-behavioral-targeting-blocking-62334

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5742225/dont-be-fooled-by-googles-fake-new-privacy

January 26, 2011

Facebook Sponsored Stories: You Are Now Endorsing Any Brand You Mention

Filed under: facebook, social media, Uncategorized — Tags: , , — jilliantate @ 9:21 pm

I wrote the below as a comment to David Berkowitz’ post on Mashable about Facebook’s Sponsored Stories.

David, did you see this article?
I was really surprised to see All Things D’s editorial take on this new program. I agree with your statement in your op-ed that your initial posts on Facebook “come from the heart”. In their initial posts, users, like you, are choosing to mention their association with a brand. The Sponsored Stories crosses that line from mentioning association to full-on endorsement. I may post that I’m at a Starbucks because I freely associate and identify with that brand’s image, but that doesn’t mean I want Starbucks to make that look like a recommendation to my friends. Also, I know most of my friends may miss my initial post in their Feeds, and blowing it up into a full on ad makes it very difficult to miss, and much less of the casual, organic mention I meant it to be.

As a user, I agree there should be an opt out. But as a marketer, I’m ready to get client ads up on there the second the option opens up to me in the self-service ads center. This is actually a fantastic fit for a brand who interacts well with people on their Facebook page, since engaging their customers in dialogue will give them lots of stories to sponsor. This could be part of really big Facebook strategies, and could help close the gap between paid and organic marketing on social media. It’s tough NOT to like it from a purely marketing standpoint.

Deal Sites Trending Towards National

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , — jilliantate @ 9:17 pm

[Excerpted from the IMS Digital Updates newsletter, 01/26/10]

One of the biggest trends in 2010 was the new “deal of the day” site phenomenon. What began with the startup known as Groupon, rapidly grew into a full scale phenomenon. By the end of the year, dozen knock-off sites had materialized, and established local sites such as Yelp and Zagat, as well as discount sites such as Gilt City and RueLaLa, had rolled out their own Groupon competitors. Now Google has even announced it is rolling out a Groupon-model deal site. How will the entry of major online powers, such as Google, or the Amazon buyout of Living Social, affect the category moving forward, and how will it change hyper-local marketing?
Last week, LivingSocial made headlines when the site offered a $20 Amazon.com credit for $10. Because of the broad appeal of Amazon.com, by the end of the 24 hour sale period, LivingSocial had sold over 1.2 million vouchers. This was a significant increase over Groupon’s most historically popular deal with GAP from 2010. Since LivingSocial is owned by Amazon.com, this was a deal that benefited both brands even more than the usual voucher deal.
The rising success of these deals is beginning to raise questions about whether they are a valid hyperlocal advertising opportunity. Groupons routinely sell a thousand or more vouchers in a 24 hour period, and Groupon charges 50% of the Groupon sale price to the business running the offer, for a total 75% loss off the voucher face price. Small business owners are also reporting that the Groupon voucher holders are less interested in discovering a new local retailer, and more interested in taking advantage of a one-time deal. Since the local deal sites are only as strong as the brands they offer, national brands who can afford to take major initial losses may become more prominent on the most popular local deal sites. The true local advertisers may begin moving to smaller daily deal sites, where they will have less risk of loss

This raises three questions for 2011: will these “second tier” startups survive? And, if the major deal a day sites continue to take on more national brands and attract more short-term deal seeking customers, will these smaller sites gain more of the hyper-local deals from retailers looking to invest in new customers? And finally, what new deal-a-day opportunities will come up that could take both the national and the hyperlocal markets?

December 27, 2010

Shocking: Customer Service from AT&T!

Filed under: Uncategorized — jilliantate @ 11:02 am

Four years ago, my husband and I moved into our apartment. I like to call it “the oldest apartment in L.A.”: four townhouse style units in a rambling 1917 building. It has high ceilings, hardwood floors…and wiring issues.

When we moved in, the most apparent of these was that none of the phone jacks inside worked. So we called AT&T. They sent a repair tech out who informed us that the test box was working, so our jacks should be. Therefore, it was our landlord’s problem, and they needed to re-wire the apartment. If we wanted further testing, we could pay $50 to have a tech investigate further. So we told our landlord, and jury rigged our DSL through the test box line instead, running the phone cord in a window, down the hall, and to the wifi router. And four years later, we still had that temporary solution in place.

This weekend, the DSL slowed to unacceptable speeds. I was working on a client project and had to be able to download and upload photos and video. Not exactly possible at 8kbps. Assuming the rain and possible AT&T node failures were to blame, I called DSL customer service, and actually got a solid rep…who spoke English…and was in the USA!  From Indianapolis, he checked our DSL, informed us it might be a bad line, and listened as I told him how we had rigged the line four years before.  He then offered to send a rep to look at the line on a Sunday.

When the rep showed up at 5pm last night, he went straight to work checking all the house jacks. He carefully went through and checked wiring on multiple inside jacks, and informed us the wiring WAS messed up…but he thought he could fix it!  And he actually spent an hour with us that resulted in a dial tone on an inside jack!  He took the time and care to find out what was wrong and fix it, instead of passing the problem on to us and our landlords. Maybe he was a better tech…but maybe AT&T had changed their policy for the better to allow him to be a better rep.

So. What does this say about AT&T?  It tells me they should be taking more credit for my experience. Reps in the US to handle customer service?  Techs that come out on a Sunday to fix a line?  I will pay extra to be able to work with their people, because they were empowered enough by the company to get the job done and fix my DSL. They weren’t hampered by policies that kept them from doing their job, and were allowed to take every step necessary. Maybe this is a fluke. But, if it isn’t, AT&T, you should be telling more people about how you helped me.

September 7, 2010

@AZHelps is Missing the Boat (But At Least They’re On The Dock)

Filed under: Pharma, social media, twitter — jilliantate @ 1:15 pm

I’m engaging in a discussion today with the insightful, knowledgeable John Mack, over on his excellent Pharma Marketing blog. He saw my tweet on how I was impressed with @AstraZeneca actually monitoring Twitter and selectively responding to people who mention their brands (albeit with “canned” tweets). John, however, made several observations on how this program is actually failing the patients. You can read the background in the original post, but here’s my reply – which expands the thoughts surrounding my original tweet.

John, my “wow” was a reaction to a pharma company actually monitoring the Internet and acknowledging that they do so. In my experience, pharma companies do not want to monitor user generated content, because the lack of clarity in the FDA guidelines suggests they would then be responsible for reporting any adverse events that they come across. The FDA has said that they don’t expect pharma companies to monitor and take responsbility for the entire Internet, does that apply when a company publicly announces that they are reading Twitter? I think it’s a big step for AZ to monitor Twitter for mentions of their brands, and reply even with a poor canned message.

Granted, this campaign could have been executed far better. I would have recommended reviewing existing posts across Twitter and other channels, and devising many more pre-written tweets for legal approval. If the copy in a tweet was pre-approved, then it would be easy to develop a “response path” chart and have someone at AZ APPROPRIATELY with the right paths. I totally agree that calling a 1-800 isn’t the right answer for everyone…if someone wanted to call a 1-800, they’d have called it already. But I also don’t know what goes on in AZ’s legal department, or what the rationale was for this approach. It seems like every pharma company’s legal department interprets guidelines differently, and convincing them of the benefits & risks of a campaign can be difficult.

My hypothesis is that AZ wants to track all the users they reach out to, and that’s why they’ve asked them to phone in, as opposed to just visiting the site. That way, they can be sure the conversation continues in an environment AZ is more comfortable in, which can be monitored and answered by trained AZ people. Directing patients to the phone may also be their way of guaranteeing that any adverse events are duly and appropriately recorded and reported.

Still, I think this whole thing is better than the GSK approach to Avandia (ie. ignorance). Yes, @AZHelps is dropping the ball in responses – but they may be monitoring on the back-end, and gathering critical patient questions & input for their product. I would sincerely hope that the questions & mentions they are picking up on Twitter are going towards future product site copy. Now that they know what questions & statements people are making about their product, they have more ability to re-do sites like AZandMe.com to be actually relevant to the users who need a reliable information source in the first place.

September 2, 2010

Tempur-Pedic’s CEO Talks About Their Facebook Page

Filed under: Digital Media, direct response, facebook, social media — jilliantate @ 10:03 am

In this video, Mark Sarvary, CEO of Tempur-Pedic, talks about the integrated strategy his company took. Their commercial, “Ask Me”, told consumers to ask on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube about the company’s mattresses. “Ask me about my Tempur-Pedic!”

But what if you don’t know which of your friends have a Tempur-Pedic bed? That’s why, when “Ask Me” launched, I initiated a strategy to catch all those TV driven consumers. We had set up a Facebook page and a YouTube channel for the client back in Q2 2008, but neither was gaining the kind of popularity that would make them central hubs for conversation. Knowing that a brand’s Facebook page needs a certain critical mass, we applied our usual DR media buying tactics to drive more users to that page. Using a combination of site-wide “become a fan” ads (which were less expensive than homepage ads), and the inherent evangelism in the product, IMS drove almost ten thousand new fans to the Facebook page inside of three months.

Now, when consumers shopping for a mattress go to “Ask Me”, they find a vibrant Tempur-Pedic Facebook page, with 13,000+ “likes”, where they can ask their questions and read other owners real, uncensored stories. In this video from February, when the page was just over 10,000 fans, CEO Mark Sarvary talks about how more and more people are coming to that Facebook page every day, and how that fits in with the overall Tempur-Pedic strategy.

If the video doesn’t show up, above, it’s here on CNBC.com”

Pharma Info & Responsibility

Filed under: Google, Pharma — jilliantate @ 5:05 am

I was chiming in on the #socpharm Twitter chat tonight, and the topic came up: how do patients find the right information?

We all know that patients are turning more and more to the Interwebs for their health research. Ever since the first people self-diagnosed on DrKoop.com, millions of people have relied on the easily accessible Internet as a source of information. But how do you find the right information on it? It’s one thing to turn to the reliable sites like WebMD.com, but even there, it’s easy to get sucked into communities and user posts by non-doctors that may not be the best reference. It’s another to do a blind Google search, especially when it comes to pharma products. There’s a lot of for-profit sites out there. Cheap drugs! Canadian pharmacies!*

* As a Canadian, I apologize for the Canadian pharmacy ads

So how do the pharma companies provide that clear & concise information? How do you just make sure that patients get the right information? My suggestions were:

- Standardize the information on product pages. Make the information on both benefits & risks clear & concise.
- Accept questions from patients. Allowing patients to submit questions will ensure they get that info from a reliable, accredited source – NOT from a non-doctor on Twitter.
- Work with Google to be sure the ‘official’ site for a product is marked as such, and imitators or false claims are not listed
- SEO enhance product sites so they are easy to find by patients

And that’s just a start. How much responsibility do pharma companies really have to disseminate the correct information about their products though? What are your thoughts? (And note that I don’t say “their conditions”, because I know pharma commentary on conditions will be biased)

July 20, 2010

New Skype Click to Call Ads

Filed under: Uncategorized — jilliantate @ 5:01 pm

Calls are more valuable than e-leads. They convert better, because an inbound call is always going to be more interested in buying than a user who submitted a form and is being called back hours later. Call center reps can close a deal better on an inbound call than they can on a form-fill lead that they’re calling back. Inbound calls, like PPC search leads, are the cream of the crop of DR marketing

That said, Skype is now selling a click to call product through Marchex. The article in AdAge on it today just forgot to mention one TINY LITTLE DETAIL. Users ONLY see the “Free Call” button if they have the Skype browser plugin installed. I’m a geek, I use Skype daily, and I don’t even have that plugin. So how many people are ever going to see that “Free Call” highlighted link? Skype/Marchex still haven’t told me.

This is a great idea, and if everyone who just had Skype installed on their computer (or smartphone!) would see this link, then it would be huge. But because it requires a browser extension to be installed, and it’s probably a very small market. Is this worth the time to set up & test? Depends on the size of the client. But if your Google click to call gets less than a dozen calls per month, you’re probably not going to get too many here.

July 7, 2010

Twitter Announces New Advertising Model

Filed under: digital media buying, direct response, social media, twitter — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — jilliantate @ 9:18 pm

I just sent the below out to my team, for distribution to clients. We may not use a lot of Twitter here at my DR focused agency, but this may actually be a viable ad model…when Twitter figures out how much to charge.

Digital Breaking News: Twitter Releases “@Earlybird” Advertiser Channel

July 7, 2010 – Twitter today announced the release of a new advertising channel: the Early Bird Twitter feed. This Twitter account is owned and operated exclusively by Twitter, and will be used to promote deals and discounts which are exclusive to Twitter users. As of 2pm PST on July 7th, 2010, the @earlybird account on Twitter had over 16,000 followers, with approximately a thousand more following every hour.

For Twitter, this gives the site a real means of advertising income, without having to deviate from their community culture. The plan for Twitter to begin offering sponsored tweets was first announced April 13th, 2010, at AdAge Digital, when the site founders, taking a cue from sponsored search, promised to only place sponsored tweets at the top of Twitter search result pages. However, the model was experimental, and still being tested to be sure the tweets “resonated” with the audience. Now, Twitter has a dedicated advertising feed, one where users are given incentive to join through deals and discounts. Since following @earlybird is entirely voluntary, Twitter is able to keep their users happy, and avoid any model which could be considered invasive advertising.

For advertisers, this now provides a new opportunity to introduce their brand to new customers. Deals and discounts are proven incentives for users to sign up to receive advertiser offers. In a recent eMarketer study, 37% of users who “Liked” a brand on Facebook, did so because they were incentivized with coupons or exclusive discounts. Deal based sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial also command huge mailing lists of subscribers who receive daily offers via email. The promise of financial incentives has proven very attractive for the online audience, inciting thousands of people to sign up to receive regular communications featuring a variety of advertiser offers. The @earlybird stream on Twitter is very likely to command a similarly extensive following of highly responsive users.

While Twitter has not been a significant part of Integrated Media Solutions campaigns to date, this new advertising opportunity may prove to be an option for clients in future. This will be a national advertising opportunity, with over 100,000 “followers”. Recommendations will be made based on pricing and campaign goals, in keeping with IMS’ practice of media portfolio management

More information on Early Bird from Twitter can be found at:

http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/208505-what-is-earlybird

Jillian Tate
Director, Digital Strategy
jtate@imediasolutions.com
@jilliantate

June 9, 2010

Am I The Only Person Who Is Confused By Google’s Caffeine Diagram?

Filed under: Google, Search — Tags: , , , , , , — jilliantate @ 5:02 am

Here’s the diagram Google put out in their actual official blog explaining how Caffeine works:

My research chemist husband says that apparently Google is now a boron atom.

Seriously, in this case, the picture isn’t worth 1,000 words, but it may take 1,000 words to explain it.

At least Google included a series of fun facts to help me understand how much data is being processed:

    Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles

I’m still kind of confused, so I’ll hope this isn’t a question on the next Google certification test.

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