Jan
29
2010
Measurement, Website By JR | Comments

Intel’s Effectiveness System for Web Marketing

Man, I’m getting slow in getting these posts up. This came out Monday, but it caught my eye:

Inside Intel’s Effectiveness System for Web Marketing – Advertising Age – Digital.

Thanks to AdExchanger.com for this story. This isn’t a novel approach – my former colleagues in analytics at MRM created a similar methodology. We were able to get it sold into MasterCard as a means of measuring their digital activities – similar situation to Intel in that they were heavy consumer marketers, but didn’t hold one-to-one consumer relationships.

Nonetheless, credit OMD and Intel with using their Value Point System as a means of attribution, i.e making sure the right web marketing assets get the right credit for conversions, whether that means an online purchase (B2C), lead generation (B2B), or even greater brand awareness and engagement (B2B2C environments like Intel or MasterCard).

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Jan
22
2010
Website By JR | Comments

It’s Official: New York Times to Try Another Doomed Strategy

TheNYTimes
Image by Adib Roy via Flickr

Updated: It’s Official: New York Times Will Adopt Online Meter—But Not Until 2011 | paidContent.

Yawn.

I’ve been telling people this for months: The New York Times is done. Finished. Kaput. Doesn’t matter which revenue model they’re playing with this year.

Why? It’s simple: media outlets that insist on cost-prohibitive newsprint operations cannot compete unless they have a high-end niche. The reason the Financial Times and The Economist can make money is that people are willing to pay to read them. Part of that comes from their excellent journalism, but just as much comes from the fact that both appeal to an affluent reader. The New York Times does neither. But hey, they appeal to everyone…which is a great way to lose money when you insist on using a printing press.

So the Grey Lady or Old Lady or whatever it’s called can roll out whatever monetization plan it wishes, but until it goes all digital or becomes something more specialized than “all the news that’s fit to print,” it doesn’t stand a chance in this day and age.

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Jan
14
2010
Gaming By JR | Comments

Wii To Stream Movies & TV From Netflix

And here I’d gone and gotten used to life without a gaming console:

Netflix And Nintendo Agree To Stream Movies, TV On Wii This Spring | paidContent.

I find this fascinating, as there is (and has been for some time now) a race between Nintendo, Apple, Microsoft and others to become the entertainment “hub” in the living room. But as we move from 3G to 4G and the mobile user experience continues to improve, will it really matter? If we can access content from wherever, the living room becomes less important, no? Or, are we going to have a hub-and-spoke model of accessing our content, with some central point as the hub and our various devices (e.g. – tablet, smartphone, etc) as spokes optimized for particular experiences (e.g. – tablet for reading & long-form video)?

One thing’s for sure: not having to deal with DVDs anymore makes me a lot more interested in giving the Wii another look…

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Jan
13
2010
Display, Measurement, Website By JR | Comments

Leading Search Marketers Into the Display Exchange

I read a really well thought-out piece on AdExchanger earlier from Tim Ogilvie of AdBuyer.com (demand-side platform focused on both display and search). “Roadmapping The Ad Exchange For Search Marketers” gives marketers experienced in SEM a series of steps to take to leverage data-driven targeting through display advertising exchanges.

A couple of Tim’s points stood out to me and inspired some additional thoughts:

  • “Phase Two: Build a target profile of your audience …To do this effectively, you’ll develop a profile of the audience that responds to your marketing. Identifying your highest potential customers will allow you to target your ads as tightly as possible. Highly targeted ads are more relevant and more likely to succeed. (Just like search.)”

This is an area where pre-existing customer data adds tons of value. Database marketers in particular have an edge – perform RFM and segmentation analyses on your customer data to determine who’s been most profitable and likely to buy. Look at the demographics and geographies of these customers to develop a starting point for a target profile.

  • “Phase Three: Find the most efficient way to reach your target audience …Should you target people or pages? You should use both! This is like asking whether you should use exact match or broad match in search. Targeting people, much like exact match keywords, provides access to a tightly defined audience but can be expensive and limited in scale. Targeting pages is more akin to broad match keywords: it’s usually only a loose proxy for the audience you’re trying to reach, but it’s easier to build scale and often more efficient.”

Targeting pages also allows you the opportunity to further refine your target audience profile. For example, say you’re a crafts retailer, and you initially set your target as “Women 34-45 who have at least one child and have been to a photo-sharing site.” But instead of just buying this audience, you also buy certain sites: Aol Living, NYTimes.com Home & Garden, etc. Let’s say performance via these sites show that “young single urban women 22-25” significantly outperform other audience segments of these sites – you can now refine your target audience and optimize the campaign to better reach this segment .

For anyone who’s ran a campaign: how hard is this in practice? Would taking the steps Tim prescribes help you better target your display advertising? Any success in leveraging your existing customer data?

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Dec
22
2009
Website By JR | Comments

The New News and Old Habits

Statue of a newspaper vendor at the Texas Pres...
Image via Wikipedia

Fascinating piece from Technology Review: The New News

The fact that some journalists actually claim that “routine” makes for good journalism is indicative of just how out of touch most news properties have found themselves. News doesn’t occur according to a routine, and now that we live in such a connected society, reporting of said news shouldn’t follow a routine either.

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Dec
18
2009
Agencies, Website By JR | Comments

Web Shops Go From Underdogs to Top Dogs

Web Shops Go From Underdogs to Top Dogs.

A couple of days old, but I found the story interesting, yet oversimplified. Oversimplified because there’s more than one route for digital agencies to follow – one is indeed becoming more of the “agency of record” for brands (as opposed to simply “digital agency of record”). I think an agency like R/GA is particularly well-positioned to make the leap here.

But digital agencies can also go a different route and double down on their digital expertise, going beyond marketing to fuel a client’s broader technology strategy – think everything from IT to enterprise collaboration to digital marketing. I think that was Sapient’s idea at one point – although now they seem to want to go the “agency of record” route. The agency that stands out above all others here is Razorfish: because of their strong technology heritage (and the manner in which they’ve inspired loyalty amongst employees, which CANNOT be overstated), they can address a larger range of issues than their peers. Does being part of Publicis change that? Not if Publicis is smart and continues to invest in and play to the firm’s strengths.

I’ll say this: the digital agencies that are poised to lose are the ones that don’t know their identity and as a result, can’t convey why a client should choose them over any other agencies out there. To borrow terms from Bain, you can build adjacent strengths around a core (as R/GA is doing), but that first requires you to know where your core lies.

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Dec
9
2009
Display, Measurement, Social By JR | Comments

Thoughts on digiday:TARGET

I spent most of yesterday at digiday:TARGET, another in a series of conferences that DM2 puts on over the course of the year. This was my fourth event, and it was especially nice to connect in person with folks I’d connected with over Twitter and the like.

The theme was, as you might guess, TARGETING…specifically, the promise of providing more relevant ads online and the ecosystem of companies emerging to help fulfill that. The day’s panels and sessions covered a number of topics – data proliferation, social media targeting, what it really means to “buy audience”, etc.

In particular, I enjoyed a late-morning panel on ad networks – interestingly enough, the, ah, interactions of a couple of the panelists showed me just how much publishers distrust exchanges. I liked the social media targeting panel as well: the participants cast more of vision for where things are headed versus where they are. Rob Key of Converseon talked about eventually being able to draw correlations between changes in online sentiment and changes in real business metrics such as sales. Probably a bit early to do this now, but once more data points exist, the thought leaders will be able to use econometrics and other advanced analytics to build causal relationships and ultimately integrate social media marketing more fully into the broader marketing mix.

As always, I liked the networking most. Digiday attracts a good conference crowd: when I was at MRM, I always felt that vendors were more interested in conversation for the sake of conversation (as opposed to for the sake of selling) than at other events. This time around, more folks stuck around for the happy hour than usual…not sure if there’s anything to take away from that, but it made for good conversation.

In thinking of what could make this an even better experience, I had a couple of thoughts:

  • I like the fact that they hand everyone an attendee list upon registration, but it would be nice to know who’s coming in advance of the event itself. In particular, I’m thinking that using an Eventbrite-like tool, where you can see attendees updated in real-time, would be useful. Eventbrite is especially nice because it allows attendees to enter their website and Twitter info – this could enable conversations in advance of the conference itself. Am I crazy, or would this be useful?
  • Digiday would benefit from audience participation going beyond Q&A at the end of each session. What if they crowdsourced an entire panel and discussion (both topic and participants), either prior to the event or at the event itself? Or, give the audience polling devices or a site by which they can give a quick 1-5 rating on each panel. All easier said than done, with the point being that more interactivity is a good thing.
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Dec
4
2009
Display By JR | Comments

Someone Else Read the Report…

Post from the Rob Leathern’s Zeronomy blog:

Wrong-headed Thinking about Publisher Inventory – Zeronomy.

I wrote on this a few days ago, but Rob’s post has the benefit of his experience and perspective. His last sentence says it all: publishers have to bring their own data to the table if they want to differentiate their brand. They’re not hapless victims being steamrolled by the big bad DSPs…or at least, they don’t have to be. It’s great that yield optimizers are helping protect the value of publisher inventory, but watching this industry, you feel like these guys aren’t using what they already know about their audience.

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Dec
2
2009
Display, Measurement By JR | Comments

Data with Dennis

A week ago, I had the privilege of sitting down one-on-one with Dennis Mortensen. Dennis is currently Director of Data Insights at Yahoo as a result of their acquisition of his firm, IndexTools, last year. I first met Dennis at a Meetup on data and insights here in New York, where he spoke about microformats, which can allow data to be processed and understood semantically.

In casual conversation at the meetup, Dennis had briefly touched on the proliferation of data, both online and offline, and how this proliferation is changing the way media is bought and sold. I wanted to get more of his thoughts here (and hear who he thinks is best-positioned to deal with these changes), hence the sit-down. Plus, he’s a super-nice guy.

11 26 08 Black Friday Bearman Cartoon
Image by Bearman2007 via Flickr

As we chatted about the future of analytics, Dennis pointed out that the business of collecting, storing, and retrieving data has become a commodity. As a result, being able to tell what happened and why is so…yesterday. Rather, the REAL opportunity lies in using a combination of business intelligence and predictive analytics to make forward-looking decisions using data. He used the example of a retailer who studied how weather impacts consumer behavior on Black Friday – do consumers shop offline more in good weather and online more in bad weather? This retailer used the results to adjust the amount they chose to spend on their AdWords campaign.

We also talked a bit about the state of online advertising. Dennis pointed out that a publisher can now know a lot about who’s coming to their site, so much so that they may have to be paid for their data. It’s an interesting topic these days – there seems to be disagreement about the value of publisher data, what it’s best used for (leverage in direct sales vs. extracting higher bids in ad exchanges), and how exactly to extract the value of that data. For his part, Dennis suggested that some smart publishers may decide to forego the ad exchanges entirely (focusing on direct sales), while putting their data on exchanges like that from BlueKai.

It was a really informative conversation, and I certainly can’t thank Dennis enough for taking the time to speak. Check out his Visual Revenue blog to get regular dose of his insight mixed with good humor.

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Dec
2
2009
Agencies, Display, Measurement By JR | Comments

Thoughts on the Rubicon Project’s Q3 Online Advertising Report

Image representing Rubicon Project as depicted...
Image via CrunchBase

The Rubicon Project published its Q3 outlook on the online advertising market last week (thanks to Ad Operations Online for summarizing and linking to it). It was certainly informative for a display neophyte like myself.  It’s awesome that companies put the effort into developing pieces like these (whether or not for marketing purposes) – I wish more companies in this space did it, and I wish I had more time to read them!

If I took one item away, it’s that I need to better understand how ad exchanges like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange or ADSDAQ work. I say this because, on the one hand, the report says “packaging audience effectively for display advertisers is a key means of differentiation for publishers.” But it then talks about the risks that publishers face in putting their inventory on an ad exchange, specifically with the emergence of real-time bidding enabled by demand-side platforms. Which, I thought, was meant to better enable advertisers to buy audiences rather than sites.

Maybe part of the answer lies in the report’s description of exchanges or demand-side platforms as being “designed for advertisers, and not designed to boost a publisher’s yield.” But I can’t see how exchanges will ever have enough inventory to reach scale if publishers don’t think they can get fair value through that channel. And it would seem to follow that the absence of exchanges weakens the value proposition of demand-side platforms.

Or, maybe publishers have work to do on capturing and leveraging data on their own audiences as they enter exchange transactions. But I’m certainly no expert on the inner workings of ad exchanges, so I’d love to hear someone get under the hood and explain what makes them inherently unattractive to publishers.

The other piece of the report that stood out to me was the Rubicon 20 Index, which combines metrics like CPM, traffic and revenue for 20 sites that having been Rubicon’s service for more than nine months. The growth in the index since January certainly suggests either a recovery in the display market, substantial lift in the publishers’ business metrics from their Rubicon relationship, or both. I’d love to see how revenue or CPMs for the Rubicon 20 compare with those metrics for a control group of publishers. A significant difference would certainly help validate the need for publisher advocacy in the form of optimizers like Rubicon.

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