The Choice Seems Clear

Seems like a situation with easy logic: advertisers should spend their marketing dollars with the medium that offers the most audience engagement, right? Well, then someone tell me why Newspapers get 20% of the marketing dollars when they only deliver 8% of time spent between the media and their audience?

BusinessInsider.com shared 2008 research from JP Morgan via their Chart of the Day post:




The Internet tops the chart in disparity of attention vs. advertising investment by delivering 38% of time spent with the medium but receiving a mere 8% of total advertising dollars.

The other big missed opportunity is Radio, only receiving 9% share of advertising budgets, but delivering 19% of audience engagement -- a virtual mirror image of Newspaper!

Certainly something to talk to your clients and prospects about as you help them plan their strategies for 2010.

BusinessInsider.com notes the numbers are from 2008, so the ad spend on newspapers is lower today-- but go on to say "it's not low enough, considering how little we spend with them."

The Day The Media Died

Mad Avenue Blues

Who's Yer GoDaddy?

Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com is doing a great job of providing entertaining, yet informative, video content for his customers. What sort of content, advice, and expertise are you providing to YOUR clients?

Meaningful Online Engagement

Heard of a new book today called "Dot Boom" about how to created meaningful online messages that engage the Boomer generation. I visited the book's website (http://www.dotboombook.com/) and watched a 45-minute presentation by co-author David Weigelt. Definitely worthwhile...

My favorite bit was a quote he used from Albert Einstein:
"Not all that can be counted counts and not all that counts can be counted."
~Albert Einstein

What a great seque line to use the next time someone wants to focus on CPM pricing instead of achieving results!

Social network ads are tough sell to Gen-Y

Seeking to grab the attention of Gen Y's on social networks? Better put away the old online display ads if you're seeking to grab the attention of Gen Y's on social networks. A new study by the Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University shows traditional banner ads to be ineffective to young adults aged 18-24.

Researchers asked a group of Gen Y's if they notice ads at all when navigating through a social community, and if they approve of them. While 84% said they notice ads on social networks, only 19% said they find them "relevant."

Researchers also found that 74% of the young consumers in the study click on social network ads "infrequently," and 36% don't click on the ads at all.

There were a few signs of hope in the results --
62% of the respondents said they have "visited a brand or fan page on a social network" and 48% said they have "become a fan or friend of the company or organization" showcased on a brand or fan page.

The top three reasons respondents cited for joining a brand or fan group were: get product updates ( 67%), view promotions (64%) and view or download music videos (41%).

Read full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=29703

Are You Helping Your Clients 'Work the Room?'

...or are you just selling them advertising?

Nationwide Is All A Twitter

Meet Shawn Morton.
He's the Senior Consultant for Social Media at Nationwide Insurance.

Nationwide Insurance hired a full-time guy to oversee their social media. That's huuuuge. Shawn's job (according to his linkedin.com profile) is "establishing the enterprise social media strategy and advocating social media within the organization." (Watch your back Shawn. I want that job.)

Shawn recently held a Twitter 101 seminar for his Nationwide associates and was kind enough to post his slides on a (what else?) social website dedicated to sharing presentations.

Twitter 101

View more presentations from Shawn Morton. (tags: socialmedia twitter)

Slide 12 should be of special interest to any of you with 'boring old insurance accounts who cut all their advertising budgets this year...' It's a screen filled with some logos of corporate entities who are using Twitter. Among them: State Farm Insurance, Allstate, and of course Nationwide.

For any of you who've wondered why I send links to companies and articles and examples of businesses who are embracing new media as an option to traditional advertising -- THIS is the reason. Because, although they've reduced their spending on traditional media advertising, they are embracing and investing time AND MONEY into developing their social media efforts.

Become an expert in social media and apply the concepts of effective marketing principles to this new way of communicating to your audience and YOU will be the expert to whom they turn when they decide to reallocate advertising dollars to social media dollars. YOU can be the social media expert who gets rewarded for helping these companies strike up a dialogue with the audience that already loves YOUR brand and communicates through YOUR traditional media and social media tools.

Dismantling Trusted Marketing Strategies

Great post from Brian Massey at the Society for Word of Mouth Marketing.

Your Wake-Up Call...

• TV is not an effective way to communicate, video is.
• Radio is not an effective way to communicate, the human voice is.
• Print is not an effective way to communicate, words and images are.
• Web sites are not an effective way to communicate, solving problems is.

Do Ads Work?

A great post to kick-off the new year for anyone buying (or selling!) advertising. Forward this post to your favorite media salesperson or buyer.

Do ads work?
by Seth Godin

If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy?
Most rational people would say, "I'll take them all please." Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them.

So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?
If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don't work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you're not sure, that ads are risky, that you can't tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you'll get no argument from me.

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that's positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don't know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

When Amazon was at its key growth peak, the mantra there was $33. They would buy unlimited ads, of any kind, as long as they generated new customers for $33 or less each. There was a risk that $33 was too high a number for the business to sustain, but the ads were no risk at all. As long as they came in under that number, there was unlimited money to buy them.
How often do year the marketing person say, "that's a neat idea, but we don't have the budget this year"?

Shouldn't she say, "We have an unlimited budget for ads that work"...

$1 Billion in Sales. No Advertising Required.

Good article from AdWeek covering some of the reasons why Zappo's didn't need traditional advertising to create a company with $1 Billion (with a "B") dollars a year in sales.

Some insight from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh...
"One of our core values is being open and honest. It ends up creating more trust with our customers... It's the opposite of what most businesses do."

"One disgruntled or happy employee can write something on a blog and have that read by millions. It's the same thing with a customer. Our belief is a company's culture and brand are two sides of the same coin. You can't control every touch point like you could 50 years ago."

"About 75 percent of our orders are from repeat customers. We've grown from zero to $1 billion in gross sales in 9.5 years. The No. 1 driver has been from repeat customers and word of mouth. It lets us to spend less on customer acquisition."

"There will be less reliance on advertising for a long-term, enduring brand. Word of mouth is so effective right now."

"If you go to twitter.zappos.com, you'll see all the employee Tweets. We have lots of stories of employees meeting up with each other outside of work because of Twitter. With customers we find it's good for building a more personal, emotional connection with them."

"With most Web sites, it's hard to find any contact information. We put our 1-800 number at the top of every Web page because we want to talk to our customers. It's our best branding opportunity. We have 5-10 minutes of our customer's attention where we can let our true personality shine and develop that personal connection."

The scary part?
Zappos just started a consulting group specifically created to teach other companies their method of growing business using their (proven!) non-traditional means.

The takeaway?
It's more important than ever to be perceived as a marketing and promotions expert/consultant/resource rather than a plain old media salesperson.

Facebook is free.
Twitter is free.
Domain names are less than $10 each.
Site hosting can be had for $5/month.
YouTube hosts videos for free and a myriad of sites offer podcasting and blogging options at no cost. (And we all know traditional media costs are falling like a rock.)

Your value comes from having a sound strategy to grow profits and build business for your client.

Everyone has access to the same tools.
It's what you do with them that counts.

Traditional Media Drives Interactive Usage

Survey Uncovers Drivers of Digital Influence and Reveals How Information is Shared Online
A new research study gleaned from a field of nearly 1,000 digital influencers demonstrates traditional and online media are both important sources when it comes to sharing news. The study by IM MS&L finds that traditional media play a vital role in igniting the process that leads influencers to share information online and via word of mouth.

Eight in ten influencers often go online to find out more after:

• Reading something in a magazine or newspaper (84%)
• Hearing something on TV or the Radio (84%)

"This research supports the need for influencer marketing campaigns to leverage both traditional and online tools to connect with consumers."
~ Renee Wilson
Deputy MD of MS&L New York
Director of the agency's IM MS&L practice.


Source: MSL News Release, 11/16/08.
Full release:
http://www.mslworldwide.com/in-the-news/press-releases/traditional-media-sparks-word-of-mouth

Godin Delivers the Goods

Video recording of a live seminar with Seth Godin.
Well worth the investment of an hour to view.
Pass this opportunity up at your own risk!

Newspapers (Try To) Think Locally for Online Ads

Nice coverage in WSJ about challenges facing "The Dead Tree Society" as they seek to increase their share of local Web dollars.

Though the article focuses on Newspapers, one need only review the Borrell Associates chart to the left in order to realize Radio has the great potential for growth in Online Advertising.

Some of the article highlights...

Scrambling Cannibals

In an effort to make up for their plunging print-ad revenues, newspaper companies have been scrambling to train their sales teams in the intricacies of selling online ads to local marketers.
But in many cases they aren't selling a lot of ads and at least some of the new ads they are managing to sell are cannibalizing their print-ad revenues, industry analysts say. A common scenario is that a trusty local print advertiser -- a car dealership, say -- that used to spend $20,000 a year on advertising might now spend a quarter of that with the newspaper online and nothing in the print product. Thus, the newspaper company is now selling more digital ads, but the new sale is taking away from its bottom line.

Losing Their Edge

Whatever edge Newspaper may have had in capturing web revenue appears to have evaporated. Newspapers now control only 27.4% of the local online ad market, down from a 35.9% share in 2006, according to Borrell.

Cracks and Gaps

There are several reasons why newspapers so far have failed to crack this market.

• Online ads are far less expensive than print ads and thus offer lower commissions, making it difficult to get salespeople to focus on selling the digital products
• Newspaper is typically selling banner ads which don't meet the needs of local businesses
• Most local online revenue growth comes from small and medium-size local businesses -- a market segment that Newspapers have typically ignored

Read the entire article here.

Landing Page Video Piracy

Interesting take on providing engaging content on an advertising landing page:
http://www.vidsense.com/touchofgray/index.html#evtv1-2121

"Touch Of Gray" took video accessible from a video sharing site of a scene from "A Few Good Men" and embedded the video player on a promotional page. Since the video was actually provided via a social site using their embedded video player, I think this effective skirts the issue of licensing rights -- the infringer is actually the site that provides the video -- not the owner of the landing page.

We use similar reasoning when posting music videos from YouTube on the Mix site and sports videos on The Fan -- this example took it a step further by using a single advertiser. This could be a concept to exploit for advertisers of our own.

A Veterinarian landing page that displays a funny animal video...
A Sports Bar that displays a funny beer commercials...
A Travel Agency that uses a clip from the movie National Lampoon's Vacation...
An Employment Agency that uses video from Office Space...
An Insurance Agency that uses videos of catastrophes...

Lots of possibilities.

A Twist on Tips

Here's a nice twist I found on a "Top Tips" campaign...

Instead of a single sponsor, Yahoo used multiple continuing education programs (DeVry, Kaplan, etc.) to be 'featured schools' from a ten tips page that shared the best work-from-home job opportunities. To score even higher interest based on rising fuel costs, the tips article was additional tagged with the full title of "Stop Pumping Gas: Ten Hot Home Office Jobs."

Think about what multiple complementary businesses you could combine into a single Tips Campaign --
Pets, Auto, Finance, Travel, "Green", Education, Fashion, Cooking, etc... virtually limitless!

Here's a link to the full article/example:
http://education.yahoo.net/degrees/articles/featured_ten_hot_home_office_jobs.html

Web Terms in Plain English

I found a great resource that explains web terms in plain, simple english. Play the videos below for an easy explanation of some common terms that are integral to our client web strategy. It will be easier for you to understand, and better enable you to pass along that knowledge to your clients.

Blogs in Plain English


RSS in Plain English


Podcasting in Plain English

Knowledge is Power... and Profit

The Radio Audience Has Changed -- Has Your Marketing Strategy?
The two articles below paint a pretty clear picture of the evolution of the traditional Radio listener. Do your client proposals reflect these changes by incorporating effective Internet strategies to better reach your audience?

New ratings have been released, and a lot of stations have taken a hit. It's likely that analytics from your station website do not reflect the same data you're receiving from traditional ratings-by-sample-diary reports. Perhaps you've even seen a significant increase in Internet traffic. Do you know why? Do your clients? Are you educating them on the way today's Radio audience uses your broadcast and your website? Probably not.

The articles linked below provide valuable advice about your audience, but it's up to you to learn it and share it with your advertisers. Educating yourself on the new ways your audience uses media is the only way to continue creating more effective solutions to your client's marketing problems.

What's The Digital Application?
Interesting insights about how radio listeners -- in this case, members of station databases -- use other media and technologies, along with other revelations about how radio listeners' time is being sliced and diced by new media options.

Highlights...

• Nearly three in ten report they listen to AM/FM radio less or a lot less at home.
  
• More than 95% have access to a high-speed Internet connection.
  
• About 95% have a cell phone -- seven in ten text regularly.
  
• Nearly six in ten now own an iPod or a similar device.
  
• Four in ten have a TiVo or DVR.
  
• Over half regularly visit social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Classmates.com.
  
• More than four in ten have played Guitar Hero or Rock Band in the past year.
  
• Nearly one-fourth have participated in a fantasy league in the past year or so.
  
• More than two-thirds download/stream videos from sites like YouTube frequently/occasionally.
  
• Nearly half shop online each month.

Podcast Consumer Information
The Podcast Consumer Revealed 2008 is the third study in this annual series on podcast consumption, and contains data derived from the 2008 Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet and Multimedia study. Highlights of this study were originally presented on April 16th at ad:tech SF.

Highlights:

• The audience for both audio and video podcasts has grown tremendously since last year.
  
• Podcast listeners enjoy additional listening opportunities.
  
• Podcast consumers are extremely attractive advertising targets, though difficult to reach via traditional interruption models.
  
• Podcast consumers are heavily involved with social networking.
  
• Podcasting is a viable alternative means to target attractive consumers who are otherwise proving difficult to reach with traditional advertising.
  
• Podcasters should consider lifestyles, context and even potential 'dayparting' for their audiences.

Tuning Out TV

An Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research TV & Technology study says some marketers have concerns about television as an ad medium and are relying more on the Web.

Some of the details of the January survey of 78 major advertisers:

• 62% said TV ads have become less effective in the past two years
• 87% will spend more on Web advertising this year
• 44% are experimenting with TV ad models to work with consumer use of digital video recorders
• 49% are working on ad models for video-on-demand programs
• 87% said branded entertainment (such as sponsored shows) will play a stronger role in TV advertising in the coming year

An especially alert Radio Account Executive could probably name at least three opportunities that already exist in our Web tools that can not only take advantage of this trend, but provide valuable VBRs for contacting targeted prospects who could take advantage of the ideas.

CBS Radio Eyes Web Revenue Growth

Good article on CBS Radio and their emerging web strategy.

From the article...
Two months ago, when wildfires scorched hundreds of square miles in Southern California, forcing the evacuation of a half-million people, listenership spiked on KNX Radio, the CBS-owned outlet in Los Angeles. But the uptick wasn't for the station's on-air signal; listeners had instead tuned into the station on the Internet.

The average daily listenership for the newscasts on the KNX audio stream soared tenfold over the weeklong period that the fire dominated the headlines.

The online listenership spike experienced by KNX during the fires, and the real-time metrics available to quantify such digital audiences, reinforce the radio industry's need to expand its Web content. All 140 CBS Radio stations (in addition to 10 Internet-only outlets) are now streamed online to tap into today's fast-growing digital ad platform. And plans call for the development of much more Web content.

"Our digital revenue is growing significantly every year," said Mason. Those dollars are also helping radio counter a drain on the broadcast side, where spending has been flat at just over $21 billion (according to the Radio Advertising Bureau) for the last three years, as advertisers have sought better measured and more accountable media. Over-the-air radio ratings routinely have a three-month lag time, much to the dismay of clients and ad buyers.

Mason declined to say how much the digital revenues contributed to the division's coffers, but a media analyst at BMO Capital Markets estimates that 3 to 5 percent of the industry's revenue, (or roughly $640 million to $1 billion) are generated by online ad sales. Westerfield says the radio industry will continue to develop its online presence.

"The growth in media use is clearly growing on the Internet, and growth of advertising dollars is also migrating to the Web, so it makes sense for the radio companies to develop attractive commercial audio entertainment brands on the Internet."

Click here to read the entire article.

Best Way to Reach Business Decision Makers

The Internet is the best way for advertisers to market to business decision-makers, according to a poll. A survey of nearly 1,000 people by Minnesota Opinion Research found 60% agreeing the Web was persuasive. Fifty percent said it influenced them to make a purchase.

"Business decision-makers have told us that the Web is the best place to reach them," said Chris Schroeder, CEO of Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive. "Most importantly, they've made it clear that what they're seeing on the Web is leading directly to purchases."