Advertising & Marketing Blog

In a recent article on MediaPost, Click Forensics announced that they are launching a new service to qualify impressions / traffic from display ads. I’m not sure the extent to which how they will be measuring fraud and validity of impressions from display advertising. I’m curious to know whether it’s fraud on the part of the ad-network or the publishing site that is of gravest concern. I’m most interested in the scenario in which consumers are to blame for re-posting links from display ads across the web, influencing sales either online or in-store, whereby sales data is attributed to the original display-ad impression. That would certainly be a form of non-malicious activity that has in many instances hurt the validity of display advertising. More by clicking to the full article here.

In a recent article on MediaPost, Tremor Media announced that they are improving their ad targeting by using more real-time audience data. Although a much needed improvement, this trend across the web certainly continues to blur the line between customer-privacy and ad-targeting… Check out the full article here.

Google recently announced a deal with TiVo to use their anonymous user data from shows people watch via DVR and incorporate it via Google ad measurement system. The terms and details of the deal have not been disclosed but I wonder if Google is matching up IP addresses via TiVo and a user’s computer/internet connection via the web / search browser to match up online search ads with TV viewing patterns. This would make a lot of sense. People who have concerns about Google’s growing power and consumer data might be on the right track…

In a recent article by MediaPost, consumers have reported that they would prefer not to receive gift cards this holiday season on the whole. What I mean is that gift card popularity is on the downward swing. Consumers would simply prefer to receive other types of gifts in lieu of gift cards; only 15% of consumers have reported that they would prefer to receive gift cards as a gift. The study focuses on the decline of store gift cards but does say that general purpose gift cards for gas, grocery or VISA etc. Either way, the gift card business is a big one to the tune of almost $90 billion dollars in cards sold a year. This year, analysts expect gift card sales to drop from about $93 billion to $87 billion. We’ll have to see if the trend continues.

The quote of the week from this article is that “Gift cards are still better to get than to receive.” This is probably due to the hidden fees, the unused card value, and the loss/forgetful factor.

In a recent study by BIGresearch, mobile marketing is expected to exceed $2 billion in 2010. The issues remaining around Mobile is simply that it doesn’t have a critical mass of users/consumers yet, although the growth in mobile users, especially smart phones, is growing at double digit rates. The demographics are also in question, since a majority of consumers being targeted with mobile marketing are male. Marketers risk turning of mobile consumers if they market the wrong product / message to the wrong demographic. Check out the full article and press release here.

Google recently released a study showing that online search queries for coupons is up 30% over last year. That may not come as a surprise; however, that increase is over and above a record number in the history of online coupons. 2008 was supposedly the biggest year ever for online coupons, so the significant increase this year over that number further illustrates the U.S. Consumer’s need/desire to find bargains and the overwhelming popularity of the web as the means to research and find those bargains. Check out a more detailed article on the state of the 2009 holiday shopping season and how this holiday is being affected perhaps more acutely by the recession than last year. Very interesting read…

In a recent article by MediaPost, Nielsen is predicting that by 2011, most cell phone users will be using a smart phone rather than a “regular” phone with less functionality and capabilities. The implications for this are huge for marketing and commerce. Smart Phones have way more functionality and can enable everything from mobile “apps” to mobile commerce to mobile marketing and digital media. One of the coolest applications is digital loyalty, whereby people will be able to utilize their cell phones with bar codes for their favorite grocery and retail stores in lieu of carrying plastic cards on their key chains, as long as the retailers upgrade their scanners.

I can’t help but be a little scared with how important my cell phone will become in the next three years (as if it doesn’t control my work/life/schedule today…). The idea of having my wallet on my cell phone with contactless payments, loyalty cards, contacts, schedule, email and more becomes the proverbial “having all your eggs in one basket” and makes me cringe upon the thought of losing this device somewhere. Either way, the adoption of smart phones has been the single biggest hold-up (in my opinion) for a lot of mobile marketers and brands that want to engage consumers with communications and rich media via their mobile device.

In a very interesting blog post, which you can find here, Gavin Dunaway talked about how Social Media is spurring a new generation of “coupon clipper” that is replacing the more ambitious person who used to spend every Sunday clipping coupons from the newspaper. Today’s savvy consumers are “following” brands in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter in order to get the deal. The article talks about how brands engaged in social media are potentially too liberal with providing offers to their followers in order to build loyalty. I’m not sure I agree that providing offers is a poor way to reward loyal shoppers. However, let’s not confuse loyalty with dependency on offers. Brands want to build dependency but only to a point. Brands should be realistic that consumers are deal-hungry and may not be “following” the brand for anything else but a good deal. However, I’m not sure that the brand has much of a choice in today’s economy and a loyal following, regardless of how it happened, is still better than giving up customers and market share to the competition.

Just to continue the thoughts from the previous blog, that can befound here. ..

A lot of brand marketers are still dabbling with the internet and are not quite sure whether spending big dollars on the internet the way they do with print/tv/radio will drive the results they need, typically as measured for retailers by same store sales growth and foot traffic. Also, the web provides so many different ways to reach consumers that it requires traditional marketers to “re-tool” in order to understand the vast array of opportunities and options.

We’re seeing a shift for retailers in their direct marketing budgets. A lot of retailers are interested in moving direct mail budgets to the web, eliminating enormous cost centers for production / mailing etc. The issues direct marketers face via the web is that their options are limitless. Segmenting and analytics are often daunting and most marketers don’t really know where to start. It is super important that direct marketers retain the same level of control over their digital channels the same way they do via print, which means preventing things like coupon fraud and consumers sharing offers via social networks and email.

People used to share coupons in-person back in the day with shopper-clubs and other informal social networks, at times evening trading coupons and other offers so that the final allocation of offers between members of the club were optimal. These coupon-clubs have evolved into facebook groups, blog, and coupon message boards, which take the control-factor of 20 people in a room sharing coupons to the WWW with the ability to share an offer with millions of people within minutes. While both scenarios are viewed negatively by marketers who wish to reach their intended audience with control and measurement, the latter example clearly presents severe issues to direct marketers with a need for control, measurement and security.

I think that we’ll see marketers migrate to digital in even greater droves when they have these problems addressed, and they get up to speed with all the latest ways to reach their customers…

Great recent article describing the mechanism by which media dollars are starting to shift towards digital media during the current recession. There are several reasons for this described in the complete article you can find by clicking here. I’ll try to summarize my own key findings and points to shed some light on this phenomenon.

I think two key reasons for the shift to digital is (1) advertisers want to reach their customers, who are increasingly flocking to the web for everything from reviews, products, editorial content, offers, etc., and (2) advertisers need to make budgets go farther and drive higher ROIs, which are more feasible with the performance-based marketing and tracking/analytics available on the web.

More to come on this tomorrow…