Guerilla marketing tactics

Advertising can be so boring sometimes. It's far more engaging to create an advert that makes your prospective customers stop and stare while they try to figure out what it is you're trying to market to them. Then the moment of realisation kicks in when they figure out what your product or service is and that's when it gets stuck in their minds and advertising recall pays off.

Here's some great examples on these two pages (link 1 and link 2).

My favourite I think has to be this one advertising a casino in an airport:

A widgets masterclass

Here's an interesting series of articles and audio/video from Business Week on the subject of widgets. The series is designed to help influence CEO's as to whether it's worth dipping your toes in the waters of widgets (I'm a believer so I'd say yes, go for it).

Building a brand with widgets gives a good overview as to why it may be important to your brand to embrace new technologies and distribution channels such as widgets in order to promote your brand and discusses the viral aspects that can make brands fly online.

Widgets: The future of online ads is a piece singing the praises of widgets and all they stand for. On the flip side Why widgets don't work is a counterpoint playing devils advocate.

A widget mogul in between classes is about the up and coming Facebook app developer Ankur Nagpal who's made six figures at the age of 19 creating apps for Facebook.

When Facebook ads flop introduces us to some of the many unused Facebook applications and gives reasons for their failure. What's good about this piece is the fact that most of the apps are from large companies with mature marketing strategies and yet they've still got it wrong, should be a warning to us all.

The CEO guide to widgets is a podcast talking about the use of widgets for advertising on social networks.

Finally, Making money from widgets is a video interview with VideoEgg CEO Matt Sanchez discussing how to go about monetising the widget world.

Great series of articles, definitely recommend sending this to your CEO (or manager...) if they really don't seem to get it yet!

Top online marketers rate SEO and behavioural ads

Marketing Sherpa has quizzed 420 top digital marketing experts about what they feel are the most effective methods for advertising online and which give the best ROI.

Search engine optimisation came top, this is not surprising as the ROI is incredible. Some changes take such little effort and can return such amazing gains that SEO will always be the top in a survey like this.

Second came behavioural targeting for adverts, slightly more surprising this one as I wasn't aware the technology was quite there yet to get a better ROI than other ways of advertising such as paid search.

Paid search (or PPC) showed quite a drop in confidence in delivering ROI, however marketers said that the biggest increase in budgets would be in the paid search arena.

And the biggest trend in measurement for this year was voted to be the integration of search and email analytics with your standard onsite analytics thus completing the tracking of the customer journey. Integrating offline and online campaign tracking came second here, now that's a holy grail and I don't believe will be truly possible for a year or so longer.

Interesting study; more available here.

Yet another reason banners don't work quite as well as marketers think

A study by ComScore, Tacoda (behavioural ad network) and Starcom has turned up some not wholly unexpected results regarding the profile of users who are frequent ad clickers in the U.S. online population.

It turns out that measuring your banner campaigns performance on click through rates may not actually signify brand engagement to the level that you've been expecting.

There is a small group of consumers out there who account for the vast majority of all banner click throughs. These heavy handed individuals make up just 6% of the online population in the U.S. and yet they account for 50% of all display ad clicks. Worse still, this small group is not fully representative of the public at large, rather it is made up on predominantly users between the ages 25-44 and with a household income of less than $40k. These people spend a lot more time online than the rest of the internet population but at the same time their spending online does not proportionately reflect this heavy usage.

What does this mean for marketers? Well, it could suggest that good click through rates do not correlate strongly with good brand awareness for the ads subject.

Time to diversify! Banners have their place, best used as a response mechanism to attempt to acquire or convert users, and that means best measured for effectiveness using other metrics than click throughs. Conversion rate and acquisition numbers are a far more accurate measure of success. A brand specific measure may prove to be engagement and their are now ways to measure engagement with banners and online adverts. Diversifying your online spend into other mediums is key, making sure you are represented well in search, more viral types of advertising and offline will have a better overall effect on your brand equity.

It's up to web people to educate your marketing departments, many of you will have understood or suspected this for a long time!

AOL buys into the affiliate model

AOL has bought Buy.at the affiliate network. This is the first affiliate buy I've seen by a major portal like AOL, there's been a lot of other ad network buys but it's good to see an affiliate network securing such a deal. Affiliates were always going to be huge in 2008 as technology advances and publishers get onboard more, perhaps this is a sign of things to come?

Affiliate Marketing growing rapidly

45% growth in the last year is being reported for the affiliate marketing sector (according to Marketing Charts). The total value of online sales by affiliates was around £3 billion in 2007.

While that's some very strong growth year on year it's still a drop in the ocean compared to total online sales. I'd expect to see affiliates continue to grow at a rapid rate and other referral marketing channels such as paid search slow or even begin to drop in a year or two. As affiliates hone their skills, and retailers get more strategic they are going to become a far more cost effective way to get leads and sales for your website.

Top sectors for affiliate marketing in 2007? Financial services, Retail, Telecoms and Travel (travel attributes nearly 18% of online sales to affiliates).

The power of Google

Google's power and influence in the online world has been demonstrated again today with the news that IncrediMail has had it's Adsense deal with Google stopped abruptly.

IncrediMail received a large amount of its revenue from displaying Adsense adverts to its users. Now this has suddenly stopped and IncrediMail is feeling the ramifications reflected in its share price which dropped 40%.

No real news as to why the deal has ended but the Adsense account that was used has been suspended so it's looking like it could be less than amicable.

This really shows the power Google holds over many websites that are considered to have good revenue streams. Switch off the major source of that revenue and what is left for them to survive on. Perhaps some of these websites find they are making so much off Adsense that they neglect other revenue sources and leave their eggs in the one basket.

Yes Google does get DoubleClick!

This just in...

After my post earlier today about the murmurs that Google would get DoubleClick approval I can now inform you that it's happened!

That was quick! The FTC voted 4-1 in favour of the deal and concluded that the deal would not substantially lessen competition.

Well done Google! Look forward to seeing the first development come out of this partnership!

Googles Ad Review Center to give publishers more control

Techrunch carried a post the other day highlighting the way publishers have little control over what adverts Google Adsense puts on their websites, using an example of the U.S. baseball/steroid drama. It's always been a bit of an issue for publishers that they could end up carrying advertising that isn't really suitable for their content, and as usual Google have an answer.

Google's just announced the Ad Review Center. This allows publishers to review the ads targeted for your site and lets them ensure they get suitable content related adverts. This should help publishers increase their revenue from Adsense as any adverts that are totally unrelated to their content are more likely to get clicks. Feedback from the publishers will make its way back to the advertisers as well, thus allowing advertisers to target ads better and get hopefully more qualified referrals.

The NY Times technology blog surmises that this could reduce Googles revenue but I highly doubt that as this could encourage wider take up of Adsense by those who've found it poorly targeted in the past.

It's another added value tool from Google that makes Adsense still the most viable ad serving solution for small publishers everywhere.

Top five viral videos of 2007

According to viral marketing specialist Go Viral.

1. Cadbury - Gorilla Drummer, launched online in August; agency: Fallon. Views on YouTube 5M+
   
   
   
2. Smirnoff - Green Tea Partay, launched online in August; agency: JWT, New York. Views on YouTube 3.4M
   
   
   
3. Ray-Ban - Catch Sunglasses, launched online in May; agency, Cutwater. Views on YouTube 3.2M
   
   
   
4. Blendtec - Will it Blend? launched online in July. Views on YouTube for the whole Will It Blend series 20M+, iPhone version scored 2.7M views
   
   
   
5. Lynx/Axe – Bom chicka wah wah, launched online in May; agency BBH, Copenhagen. Views on YouTube 2.6M
   
   

All fantastic examples of creativity and viralness being used to gain massive brand exposure!

Widget advert networks coming of age; good or bad?

So, after attending a widgets conference I'm now gripped by all things widgety and waiting to see the latest developments in this area of the web marketplace. I didn't have long to wait...

Clearspring have just announced the launch of a widget ad network called (wait for it) WidgetAd Network. They've been serving adverts as widgets for a while but are now offering a network to widen the distribution possibilities.

It's the next in a line of widget ad announcements. Advertising.com launched WIDGNET as a network to serve widget ads last week.

My concern would be if widgets end up being seen as the new MPU. They have so much more potential than that, I've got a list of applications I want to embed in a widget for my employers benefit, and all will show a decent ROI. Brands need to think differently.

A widget is not just a display point (like a traditional banner)! It is an interaction point, an engagement point, an application container and a way to automagically seed your websites functionality onto other websites quickly and easily. And all this is down to the user to say, yes please I'd like to grab your widget and embed it in my page/site. It's direct response with user permissions thrown in for good measure, you can't get much better than that.

So please, don't just embed a flash banner in a widget and think that you can get away with it. You could seriously damage the potential of widgets and give users the wrong impression.

Keep them smart, keep them engaging, keep them useful and you'll see real ROI and drive the kind of brand loyalty and qualified visitors that we are all looking for from these networks.

Link of the day: Internet Marketing Mind Map

Just in case you haven't covered all the bases here's an excellent reference for all you online marketers! It's in the form of a mind map as well, so really useful!

Top marketing opportunity... SEO??

A report has been released by Anderson Analytics as the results of a survey of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (a 1,700 strong network of marketers at VP level or higher). The survey asked what marketing concepts these executives thought were going to be the top trends and concepts in 2008.

Worryingly, when asked which marketing concepts they felt were going to be most important the second highest answer turned out to be SEO!

Now, I don't know whether marketers are unsure what search engine optimisation is or perhaps this was a particularly 'offline' group of marketers, but SEO is already hugely important and in my eyes if you haven't grasped that yet then it's a bit late. Saying that it will be the second most important concept next year is amazing to me. It's been part of my life for 12 years and is really just part of the routine I go through for any digital project.

Here's the rest of the list:
If you had to ask me what some of the concepts I thought were important for next year were (in digital), I'd say:

• Offline/online translation (getting your offline campaigns translated in a seamless manner onto digital media, something that really isn't being done very well at the moment)
• Viral (campaigns should always be thought of as viral if they touch the web)
• Widgets (cross pollination of marketing campaigns online using widgets)
• Social media (yes, it's huge this year, but next year should see it mature and the launch of OpenSocial will make it more important than ever)
• Banners (controversial one this but we are now at a stage where banners should become more like widgets and really start to become properly engaging, whether this will happen I'm not sure as most agencies who design banners aren't particularly forward thinking)

Underpinning all of those, and every other online marketing concept, should be SEO.

What do you think the key concepts of 2008 will be?

EU to look into targeted web advertising

Reuters reports that the EU is planning to look into targeted web advertising with increased scrutiny. They're concerned about the increasing risk to privacy and protection of data that some of the new advertising developments bring with them. The Article 29 working party will be looking into the issues, that's the same working party who got Google to limit the amount of time it stores web searches to 18 months.

This potentially doesn't bode very well for companies like Facebook. Their new beacon advertising system is getting enough scrutiny from users, the last thing they need is someone official looking into it too. This also doesn't bode too well for the Google-DoubleClick acquisition.

Facebook may end up carrying Google adverts

Part of Facebooks game plan seems to have been to create an illusion of openness while at the same time ensuring that their platform is actually closed to anyone who could tread on their toes in the areas that drive their revenue. Now admittedly they don't have much revenue right now but that is going to change very soon with all the new advertising options available to brands who want to be promoted on the social network. So with this increasing revenue should come an increasingly closed approach as they try to prevent others from stepping on their toes. Right?

Well, it seems Google may have a way in to the Facebook platform, and it may be something that Facebook can't do anything about.

Bring forth OpenSocket; a Facebook application that allows you to run any OpenSocial application on your Facebook profile. Now, as OpenSocial gains traction I can very well see developers looking for ways to monetise their efforts on this new platform. Of course, with Google at the helm one of the obvious options would be to carry Adsense adverts on your OpenSocial app. So that is how Google can potentially make advertising revenue out of Facebook without striking any sort of deal.

Will this happen? Well, I'd imagine Facebook will try to block Google ads from appearing, but if a lot of developers start using OpenSocial the demand to allow this may be overwhelming and actually more in Facebooks interest to allow this than to try to block it.

Word of mouth marketing to grow rapidly

A study from PQ Media shows that word-of-mouth marketing has grown by 35.9% in 2006 (to $981m) and is expected to be well over $1B in 2007 (maybe as much as $1.3B). Now, over 90% of word-of-mouth marketing is offline still but that's changing and with the new opportunities for communication and engaging your customers on the web I'd expect the shift from off to online to be pretty dramatic over the next year.

In 2006, word-of-mouth marketing was still the smallest of the main segments of marketing activity, however it grew almost five times faster than the overall marketing services sector, demonstrating that this is a market segment that is maturing rapidly.

I wrote some time ago about the power of word-of-mouth and how it had been rated as the most trusted form of advertising by consumers. Recommendation is highly valuable to any brand and likewise getting the wrong kind of PR from consumers who don't like your product or service can be extremely detrimental to a brand.

The rise and rise of social media and networking on the web is going to help the online medium become the biggest platform for word-of-mouth marketing in my opinion. There are a multitude of ways you can interact with your consumers and they can feedback to others on your behalf. Facebook is proving to be huge for word-of-mouth, getting a strategy to utilise this new exposure is really important for brands right now as if they don't control this themselves to some extent it will happen anyway without their input (which could be bad news for some).

Good news for the viral industry as well! I expect viral to take off in a massive way in 2008 as agencies and marketers work out how to integrate a good viral campaign with platforms such as Facebook and OpenSocial. This will open virals up to a much larger audience and facilitate much larger community conversations about brands.

Brand protection has never been more important so I hope you have your social media monitoring in place?

GOOG - DoubleClick not yet a done deal

The European Union regulators have said they will be thoroughly investigating the Google DoubleClick deal after their preliminary investigations found that the deal could raise competition concerns. A deadline of 2nd April 2008 has been set to make a final recommendation.

Google has said it will work with the Commission to demonstrate the value a deal like this will give to publishers and advertisers alike.

With all the other deals happening in online advertising I'm beginning to think they should just let this deal go through. Every major internet player has had a deal go through with an ad network apart from Google, and with the likes of Facebook now launching advertising networks it is actually beginning to feel like Google is the one being hurt by this being stalled for so long.

I wonder whether Google might pull out of the deal if they can get OpenSocial moving quickly and use the demographic, social and behavioural data that they will garner from it to create their own network (or extend Adwords/Adsense)?

Facebook news of the day

A few tidbits of insight from some of the webs best blogging reporters here today. As I'm busy I'm just going to link to them and let you read at your leisure:

The Facebook Ad Backlash Begins - an insightful look into the beginning of a possible backlash against the latest Facebook advertising announcements. My opinion; it will take time for users to understand the enormity of having their personal data in the hands of an advertising network of this scale. Expect to see the noise around this backlash grow.
Erick Schonfeld - Techcrunch

Why Is Google Afraid of Facebook? - a decent look into the reasons Google should be worried about Facebook. Traffic is only half the story, the main points are around the lack of access the Google spiders have to this data. Do Google feel shut out? Sure they do, otherwise why OpenSocial?
Om Malik - GigOM

Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare? - a closer look at the reasons the new 'beacon' advertising tool from Facebook could be a privacy concern for users.
Om Malik - GigOM

I expect many more articles about the issues surrounding privacy and personal data with Facebook in the coming days, I'll continue to post and comment on the best. I also expect the focus to switch back to Google as more news emerges about OpenSocial and it's integration with Adsense and once the DoubleClick deal goes through it'll probably be Google taking all the flack!

Facebook to use cookies for an ad network

Both Techcrunch and Venture Beat have posts about the forthcoming (still rumoured though) ad technology from Facebook. Word is that it will use cookies to track users data and activity on Facebook and then serve them ads based on that data when they leave the social network and browse other web properties.

Sound idea! Facebook profiles carry a wealth of data that could be of use to ad serving technologies.

Now, this won't work unless there is a third party cookie involved which is tied to the ad network and not Facebook. Otherwise the cookie would only be of use to serve ads while on the Facebook site. So will this cookie be part of Microsofts ad serving technology, another third party ad network who Facebook could sell the data to or will Facebook go it alone and set up an ad network?

It's an opportunity for Facebook to make some serious money, although I really doubt the valuation touted by Venture Beat. $100 billion will not be seen from an online company in the near future I'd be willing to bet. The ads served through this technology will be very targetted though (potentially more than ever before), great news for those of us in online travel who suffer high CPM's and low clickthroughs due to the lack of targetting data available currently.

Only issue with this is the prevalance of cookie blocking technology. Any ad network using this cookie will get listed on all the blocking sites and software very quickly and also the knowledge that this is happening could turn off a large amount of Facebook users very quickly.

It's supposed to be announced on the 6th November, so I'll reserve final judgement until then. Perhaps Double Click will be the partner of choice ;-)

Google outshines ITV in advertising war

Google has now overtaken ITV1 as the biggest recipient of advertising revenue in the UK according to the Times.

It's been coming for a while as Google have been raking in the pounds as they expand their advertising into other sectors and functions. Google are expected to overtake the whole of ITV plc by the end of 2008.

What would make this interesting is the Doubleclick deal. The deal has just been approved by the Australian competition regulator, a first step for Google to get the deal as a whole approved. Now it just remains for the U.S. and EU regulators to okay it. The addition of Doubleclick revenue to Google's advertising coffers could make it one of the biggest recipients of ad revenue in the world!