Original Story: mediapost.com
Google has got it all backwards for its Google Contributor plan, which will ban ads for certain sites if users pay them $1, or $2, or $3 a month.
Nom Google. I don’t pay you; you pay me.
If you believe long-term customers are important, I propose that viewers will be friendlier, more engaged, and more likely to buy products, from publishers (and their advertisers) sites. All you need to do is pay them -- a little.
And perhaps I’d let Google offer up PBS- or NBR-like sponsored statements, those little brought-to-you-by announcements.
It’s all about subtlety in marketing. Advertisers shouldn’t be so apt to hit media users/viewers over the head with big advertising announcements, which are most likely to insult my intelligence.
Google, a dollar a month doesn’t sound like much to send to me. And considering that you have a nearly 70% market share when it comes to search marketing, odds are you are going to still get back your money, in a big way. You’ll net out doing fine with this customer.
A dollar isn’t going to make or break either one of us. But it’ll show your engagement in me. In turn, I might be endeared to you, a bit.
Native advertising? No, you won’t be slipping that stuff by me in your new non-advertising effort.
TV networks might wonder how to play the same game. Many TV networks have already trimmed back commercials on time-shifted airings of their expensive TV shows on video-on-demand, through mobile apps, or elsewhere.
You can, of course, see reruns of TV shows on Netflix or Amazon without TV commercials, also for price that can run around $10 a month and include a lot of other stuff.
Maybe TV networks might think of an advertising-free night, week or month for themselves. And for a select group of viewers, like what Google is considering, they might offer this to viewers for a price.
But right now, it’s time to pay up. I’ll be waiting by the mailbox, and maybe not watching much TV or using much digital media.
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Showing posts with label Advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advertising. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Tuesday, May 06, 2014
SOON ON HULU: AD THAT LETS YOU ORDER PIZZA
Original Story: Money.CNN.com
Just when you thought it couldn't get any easier to order pizza ...
Later this year, the streaming video service Hulu will serve up a Pizza Hut advertisement that allows viewers to order a pizza right within the ad.
The feature combines Pizza Hut's online ordering system with Hulu's interactive advertising system. It's the kind of thing that could become more common as companies take advantage of emerging interactive ad capabilities.
Mike Hopkins, the chief executive of Hulu, promoted the Pizza Hut ad campaign at Hulu's annual presentation for advertisers in New York on Wednesday. He called the ad an "in-stream purchase unit" and said other advertisers could use it to initiate product sales in the future.
Hopkins also promoted the fact that whatever TV show a viewer is watching will resume right after the order -- in this case, for a 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza or a comparable delicacy -- is placed. Pizza Hut is owned by Yum! (YUM, Fortune 500) Brands.
Hulu, which is owned by the parent companies of ABC, Fox and NBC, includes ads on both its free and paid streaming services. This differentiates it from the ad-free services of two rivals: Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) Prime.
Hopkins also promoted other ad innovations, including 360-degree ads for mobile devices. He showed an example for a car company that let a user look up, down and around from the drivers' seat of a car, taking advantage of the accelerometers inside some smart phones.
Hulu's free service is currently only available on desktop computers, while its subscriber service, Hulu Plus, works on phones, tablets and other devices. But Hulu said it would enable part of its free service on phones this summer.
Hopkins also confirmed what has been widely reported for months: Hulu is in what he called "active discussions" with cable and satellite distributors to "integrate Hulu Plus into their set-top-boxes."
Netflix is also in talks with distributors about making its streaming service available through set-top-boxes, and announced several deals with small distributors last week. To top of page
Just when you thought it couldn't get any easier to order pizza ...
Later this year, the streaming video service Hulu will serve up a Pizza Hut advertisement that allows viewers to order a pizza right within the ad.
The feature combines Pizza Hut's online ordering system with Hulu's interactive advertising system. It's the kind of thing that could become more common as companies take advantage of emerging interactive ad capabilities.
Mike Hopkins, the chief executive of Hulu, promoted the Pizza Hut ad campaign at Hulu's annual presentation for advertisers in New York on Wednesday. He called the ad an "in-stream purchase unit" and said other advertisers could use it to initiate product sales in the future.
Hopkins also promoted the fact that whatever TV show a viewer is watching will resume right after the order -- in this case, for a 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza or a comparable delicacy -- is placed. Pizza Hut is owned by Yum! (YUM, Fortune 500) Brands.
Hulu, which is owned by the parent companies of ABC, Fox and NBC, includes ads on both its free and paid streaming services. This differentiates it from the ad-free services of two rivals: Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) Prime.
Hopkins also promoted other ad innovations, including 360-degree ads for mobile devices. He showed an example for a car company that let a user look up, down and around from the drivers' seat of a car, taking advantage of the accelerometers inside some smart phones.
Hulu's free service is currently only available on desktop computers, while its subscriber service, Hulu Plus, works on phones, tablets and other devices. But Hulu said it would enable part of its free service on phones this summer.
Hopkins also confirmed what has been widely reported for months: Hulu is in what he called "active discussions" with cable and satellite distributors to "integrate Hulu Plus into their set-top-boxes."
Netflix is also in talks with distributors about making its streaming service available through set-top-boxes, and announced several deals with small distributors last week. To top of page
Thursday, March 06, 2014
WOLFF: YAHOO WANTS TO BE VOGUE? FAT CHANCE
Original Story from USATODAY.com.
Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, gave an extraordinary interview to The New York Times last week in which she said that magazine pages were better for advertising than digital space.
Referring to Vogue and InStyle, she said "The ads in those magazines are as interesting as the photo shoots and the articles." She added, for good measure, "I miss the ads when they are not there. I feel less fulfilled."
This says, I suspect, something about her own reading habits. Mayer, in the picture accompanying the interview, is wearing Oscar de la Renta, a favorite of Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour. (Vogue lavishly profiled Mayer in August wearing Michael Kors.) But it also says something about the nature of advertising, a business that is key to the company she runs, but one that she does not seem to know all that much about.
Putting aside that magazine advertising is in radical structural decline — hence, probably not what you want to emulate — high-end glossies specialize in the kind of brand and image advertising that is pretty much absent from most online venues, and certainly from mass market portals.
What exactly is Mayer's point?
Not, I'd suppose, that advertisers ought to return to magazines. Possibly that she'd like to see lots of fashion and luxury goods advertising on Yahoo, not a probable outcome.
More likely, she's voicing a general digital angst that Web and mobile advertising ought to somehow be something that advertisers want to pay more for. More integrated, more compelling, better at making people want to buy stuff. The example Mayer cited was Knorr, the dehydrated soup mix packets that are now advertised on Yahoo in space adjacent to Yahoo Food, something described as a "digital magazine," recently launched by Yahoo. (In general, the intermingling of ads like this with content is less about showcasing product than an effort to confuse Yahoo users with what's an ad and what's not an ad.)
Mayer, a technologist who made her career and fortune at Google, might perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the disconnect between Knorr and Vogue and Oscar de la Renta. Yet, of course, the subtleties of advertising and media, much more so than difficult algorithms, are now her primary responsibility.
Seldom has a CEO of a large company sounded so maladroit as Mayer does when she talks about her company's strategy in its core business.
Nor has justice been done to the company's failure in these areas. It's not just the ever-steady decline in its performance as an advertising-based company (many CEOs before Mayer have gone to the gallows for this). There's seeming total chaos among Yahoo's marketing and sales executives. In January, Mayer fired the company's top ad executive, Henrique de Castro, after just 15 months on the job, costing the company more than $100 million in severance. Mayer said she will lead ad sales efforts herself.
This is a peculiar, even ludicrous, state of affairs that goes on because most of Yahoo's value is not in its core business, but in its holdings in Alibaba, the vast Chinese e-commerce company. People invest in Yahoo to invest in Alibaba; the fact that they get a stumblebum enterprise in the bargain is of minor concern.
Mayer herself — in Vogue, in a recent profile in Vanity Fair, and in her recent Times interview — tends to get the benefit of the doubt, because Alibaba is holding up her stock price, because she once worked for Google and is otherworldly rich herself, and because, well, Oscar de la Renta probably helps.
Yet, the existential predicament continues: Yahoo, as an operating company, is a failed business.
There is, too, a much larger, perplexing question: How do you create advertising-supported businesses in which advertising doesn't seem to work all that well?
This is a mighty digital conundrum that is always clouded by Google's success. While Google's dominance is in advertising, it is not as a media company, but rather as a middle-man connector (in the great days of direct-mail advertising, Google would have been more like the post office). Everybody else, on the other hand, is for all practical purposes, in the media business — that is, having to create a propitious environment for seller to meet buyer (an exciting and commodious enough environment for buyer to seduce seller).
In this, there are two major hulking digital disaster areas: Yahoo and AOL. There are all of Microsoft's failed efforts with consumer media. There are countless content sites with ever-falling advertising rates. Then there are the digital ad behemoths, YouTube and Facebook, each with per-user revenue an increment of traditional media's.
The problem in a sense begins with the optimism or hubris of technologists who thought advertising was largely a problem of efficient connections instead of emotional connections. Marissa Mayer reads a magazine and thinks, why don't we do that? Easy breezy. In a sense, it is just a lack of obvious skill sets: You ought to have sold advertising before taking over a company whose job is to sell it. And, in another sense, it is structural; digital media has a fleeting and shallow effect on people.
Mayer is right. Magazines look pretty good.
Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, gave an extraordinary interview to The New York Times last week in which she said that magazine pages were better for advertising than digital space.
Referring to Vogue and InStyle, she said "The ads in those magazines are as interesting as the photo shoots and the articles." She added, for good measure, "I miss the ads when they are not there. I feel less fulfilled."
This says, I suspect, something about her own reading habits. Mayer, in the picture accompanying the interview, is wearing Oscar de la Renta, a favorite of Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour. (Vogue lavishly profiled Mayer in August wearing Michael Kors.) But it also says something about the nature of advertising, a business that is key to the company she runs, but one that she does not seem to know all that much about.
Putting aside that magazine advertising is in radical structural decline — hence, probably not what you want to emulate — high-end glossies specialize in the kind of brand and image advertising that is pretty much absent from most online venues, and certainly from mass market portals.
What exactly is Mayer's point?
Not, I'd suppose, that advertisers ought to return to magazines. Possibly that she'd like to see lots of fashion and luxury goods advertising on Yahoo, not a probable outcome.
More likely, she's voicing a general digital angst that Web and mobile advertising ought to somehow be something that advertisers want to pay more for. More integrated, more compelling, better at making people want to buy stuff. The example Mayer cited was Knorr, the dehydrated soup mix packets that are now advertised on Yahoo in space adjacent to Yahoo Food, something described as a "digital magazine," recently launched by Yahoo. (In general, the intermingling of ads like this with content is less about showcasing product than an effort to confuse Yahoo users with what's an ad and what's not an ad.)
Mayer, a technologist who made her career and fortune at Google, might perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the disconnect between Knorr and Vogue and Oscar de la Renta. Yet, of course, the subtleties of advertising and media, much more so than difficult algorithms, are now her primary responsibility.
Seldom has a CEO of a large company sounded so maladroit as Mayer does when she talks about her company's strategy in its core business.
Nor has justice been done to the company's failure in these areas. It's not just the ever-steady decline in its performance as an advertising-based company (many CEOs before Mayer have gone to the gallows for this). There's seeming total chaos among Yahoo's marketing and sales executives. In January, Mayer fired the company's top ad executive, Henrique de Castro, after just 15 months on the job, costing the company more than $100 million in severance. Mayer said she will lead ad sales efforts herself.
This is a peculiar, even ludicrous, state of affairs that goes on because most of Yahoo's value is not in its core business, but in its holdings in Alibaba, the vast Chinese e-commerce company. People invest in Yahoo to invest in Alibaba; the fact that they get a stumblebum enterprise in the bargain is of minor concern.
Mayer herself — in Vogue, in a recent profile in Vanity Fair, and in her recent Times interview — tends to get the benefit of the doubt, because Alibaba is holding up her stock price, because she once worked for Google and is otherworldly rich herself, and because, well, Oscar de la Renta probably helps.
Yet, the existential predicament continues: Yahoo, as an operating company, is a failed business.
There is, too, a much larger, perplexing question: How do you create advertising-supported businesses in which advertising doesn't seem to work all that well?
This is a mighty digital conundrum that is always clouded by Google's success. While Google's dominance is in advertising, it is not as a media company, but rather as a middle-man connector (in the great days of direct-mail advertising, Google would have been more like the post office). Everybody else, on the other hand, is for all practical purposes, in the media business — that is, having to create a propitious environment for seller to meet buyer (an exciting and commodious enough environment for buyer to seduce seller).
In this, there are two major hulking digital disaster areas: Yahoo and AOL. There are all of Microsoft's failed efforts with consumer media. There are countless content sites with ever-falling advertising rates. Then there are the digital ad behemoths, YouTube and Facebook, each with per-user revenue an increment of traditional media's.
The problem in a sense begins with the optimism or hubris of technologists who thought advertising was largely a problem of efficient connections instead of emotional connections. Marissa Mayer reads a magazine and thinks, why don't we do that? Easy breezy. In a sense, it is just a lack of obvious skill sets: You ought to have sold advertising before taking over a company whose job is to sell it. And, in another sense, it is structural; digital media has a fleeting and shallow effect on people.
Mayer is right. Magazines look pretty good.
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
FTC Has Lunch with Google Exec
Story first appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman took time away from a Southern California technology conference to dine with a senior executive at Google Inc., the subject of an intensifying government antitrust probe.
The FTC chairman had lunch yesterday with Google’s senior vice president of advertising, at Catalina Kitchen at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes. The pair were attending the D10 conference, put on by technology blog AllThingsD.
Google's senior VP of advertising spearheaded Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., an Internet-advertising company, and was involved in Google’s purchase of AdMob Inc., which specializes in mobile ads. Google’s advertising practices are part of the FTC’s antitrust investigation.
The agency is examining whether the company unfairly increases ad rates for competitors, people familiar with the matter have said. FTC officials have also asked rival shopping and review websites whether Google sells them prime advertising space on search results pages, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.
The FTC is seeking to determine whether Google is using its dominance to thwart competition among Internet companies. Google was used in 67 percent of U.S. searches in April, according to ComScore Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based market researcher.
There are certainly allegations that the search results have changed or evolved over the years. The FTC is trying to figure out if the evidence is there and what the theories are.
Investigation Intensifies
In a separate interview yesterday with Bloomberg, Leibowitz said he recently held meetings with executives at Square Inc., Reputation.com Inc., Zynga Inc. and Mozilla Corp. to discuss online privacy.
It’s valuable to keep lines of communication open” with leaders in the technology industry.
The investigation of Mountain View, California-based Google has intensified in recent weeks as agency lawyers prepare to question the company’s chairman and its chief defender against antitrust charges.
The agency in April hired a top Washington litigator, to run the antitrust investigation. The FTC CHairman states that when presented the opportunity to get someone of her stature and abilities, you would always want to take her up on it. It doesn’t mean that we’ve decided to bring a case at all, it just means that we have very competent counsel who can go toe-to-toe with Google's very competent counsel.
Google Shopping
Google said in a blog post yesterday that it’s starting a product-search service Google Shopping and will require retailers to pay for inclusion in the listings. Google rivals have criticized the company for giving preference to Google product listings in search results.
The charges to manufacturers and retailers represent a change in Google’s practices, an Internet search analyst, said in a column this week on the Marketing Land blog. In its 2004 initial public offering letter, Google said the company wouldn’t accept payment for including specific search results.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman took time away from a Southern California technology conference to dine with a senior executive at Google Inc., the subject of an intensifying government antitrust probe.
The FTC chairman had lunch yesterday with Google’s senior vice president of advertising, at Catalina Kitchen at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes. The pair were attending the D10 conference, put on by technology blog AllThingsD.
Google's senior VP of advertising spearheaded Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., an Internet-advertising company, and was involved in Google’s purchase of AdMob Inc., which specializes in mobile ads. Google’s advertising practices are part of the FTC’s antitrust investigation.
The agency is examining whether the company unfairly increases ad rates for competitors, people familiar with the matter have said. FTC officials have also asked rival shopping and review websites whether Google sells them prime advertising space on search results pages, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.
The FTC is seeking to determine whether Google is using its dominance to thwart competition among Internet companies. Google was used in 67 percent of U.S. searches in April, according to ComScore Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based market researcher.
There are certainly allegations that the search results have changed or evolved over the years. The FTC is trying to figure out if the evidence is there and what the theories are.
Investigation Intensifies
In a separate interview yesterday with Bloomberg, Leibowitz said he recently held meetings with executives at Square Inc., Reputation.com Inc., Zynga Inc. and Mozilla Corp. to discuss online privacy.
It’s valuable to keep lines of communication open” with leaders in the technology industry.
The investigation of Mountain View, California-based Google has intensified in recent weeks as agency lawyers prepare to question the company’s chairman and its chief defender against antitrust charges.
The agency in April hired a top Washington litigator, to run the antitrust investigation. The FTC CHairman states that when presented the opportunity to get someone of her stature and abilities, you would always want to take her up on it. It doesn’t mean that we’ve decided to bring a case at all, it just means that we have very competent counsel who can go toe-to-toe with Google's very competent counsel.
Google Shopping
Google said in a blog post yesterday that it’s starting a product-search service Google Shopping and will require retailers to pay for inclusion in the listings. Google rivals have criticized the company for giving preference to Google product listings in search results.
The charges to manufacturers and retailers represent a change in Google’s practices, an Internet search analyst, said in a column this week on the Marketing Land blog. In its 2004 initial public offering letter, Google said the company wouldn’t accept payment for including specific search results.
For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right
blog.
For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News
Room blog.
For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit
the Michigan Business News blog.
For more Health News, visit the
Healthcare and Medical News blog.
For more Electronics
News, visit the Electronics America blog.
For more Real Estate News,
visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
For more Law News,
visit the Nation of Law blog.
For more Advertising
News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.
For more Environmental News,
visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Mobile Ads The Future of Advertising
Story first appeared in USA Today.
Mobile ads are the Holy Grail of revenue for anyone with a social-media plan.
The market for the ads that dot smartphone and tablet screens is expected to soar to $10.8 billion in U.S. sales by 2016, from $2.6 billion expected this year, according to research firm eMarketer. That's a tiny slice of the $169.5 billion market for media ad spending in the U.S.
Yet mobile ads are crucial to the growth of many companies, including newly public Facebook, though few businesses have been able to capitalize on the promise.
Some speculate that the popularity of such devices, in part, comes from their lack of ads. Others think the larger screen expected on Apple's forthcoming iPhone is a concession to demands for extra space to accommodate content and ads.
Mobile Web traffic is up 35% in less than a year, while all Web-browser use on Windows-based PCs declined 10% in a six-month period from 2011 to 2012, says market researcher Chitika Insights. About 20% of traffic comes from tablets and smartphones, it says. Retailers such as Target, Best Buy and Macy's have noticed, and are charging into mobile ads, which will become staples as millions ditch PCs for smartphones and tablets, ad experts say.
Everyone 'gets' the implicit contract that free content comes with ads.
Sites such as Forbes have optimized the mobile experience with clean ads at the top or bottom of the screen, with content in middle.
Google has the early lead in the U.S. in monetizing mobile, with 51% of the market, largely due to its success with mobile search ads, says Noah Elkin, an eMarketer analyst. Phone numbers embedded in mobile ads on Google's click-to-call feature, for example, generate about 15 million calls per month.
Facebook barely registers yet, though the company has the potential to rake in $2.54 billion from mobile advertising, according to Chitika. Facebook Sponsored Stories — an ad that appears on a member's Facebook page, and generally consists of a friend's name, profile picture and an advertiser the person "likes" — now appears in a user's mobile news feed.
Mobile ads are the Holy Grail of revenue for anyone with a social-media plan.
The market for the ads that dot smartphone and tablet screens is expected to soar to $10.8 billion in U.S. sales by 2016, from $2.6 billion expected this year, according to research firm eMarketer. That's a tiny slice of the $169.5 billion market for media ad spending in the U.S.
Yet mobile ads are crucial to the growth of many companies, including newly public Facebook, though few businesses have been able to capitalize on the promise.
Some speculate that the popularity of such devices, in part, comes from their lack of ads. Others think the larger screen expected on Apple's forthcoming iPhone is a concession to demands for extra space to accommodate content and ads.
Mobile Web traffic is up 35% in less than a year, while all Web-browser use on Windows-based PCs declined 10% in a six-month period from 2011 to 2012, says market researcher Chitika Insights. About 20% of traffic comes from tablets and smartphones, it says. Retailers such as Target, Best Buy and Macy's have noticed, and are charging into mobile ads, which will become staples as millions ditch PCs for smartphones and tablets, ad experts say.
Everyone 'gets' the implicit contract that free content comes with ads.
Sites such as Forbes have optimized the mobile experience with clean ads at the top or bottom of the screen, with content in middle.
Google has the early lead in the U.S. in monetizing mobile, with 51% of the market, largely due to its success with mobile search ads, says Noah Elkin, an eMarketer analyst. Phone numbers embedded in mobile ads on Google's click-to-call feature, for example, generate about 15 million calls per month.
Facebook barely registers yet, though the company has the potential to rake in $2.54 billion from mobile advertising, according to Chitika. Facebook Sponsored Stories — an ad that appears on a member's Facebook page, and generally consists of a friend's name, profile picture and an advertiser the person "likes" — now appears in a user's mobile news feed.
For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right
blog.
For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News
Room blog.
For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit
the Michigan Business News blog.
For more Health News, visit the
Healthcare and Medical News blog.
For more Electronics
News, visit the Electronics America blog.
For more Real Estate News,
visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
For more Law News,
visit the Nation of Law blog.
For more Advertising
News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.
For more Environmental News,
visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Facebook Ads Useful or a Bother?
Story first appeared in USA Today.
Do they really, really like you on Facebook? Or did they click the "like" button because they got something?
The Federal Trade Commission holds a workshop today that will look at how companies should disclose incentives on social-media platforms that allow only short messages or a simple sign of approval.
Incentives for consumers to "like" companies on Facebook fall into a "gray area" that depends on whether the number of likes a company has influences consumers in choosing their products. The FTC's advertising endorsement guidelines require compensation to be disclosed, as with Twitter hashtags such as "#paid."
The National Consumers League's says consumers on social media need the same protections as with traditional advertising. Consumers need to be protected from false and deceptive advertising in new media.
Recent plugs with perks:
•Target was offering a free "beauty bag" with makeup samples last week in return for a "like." The company has 1.8 million likes on its Facebook page. The company would not comment about how many were received in return for the bags, but a spokeswoman says Target has given away a million beauty bags in this and another Facebook giveaway.
•Amazon was offering $3 instant video credits last week to people who sent out a pre-written tweet for them.
•Mattress Discounters in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, entered recent buyers into a drawing for a $100 gift card if they hit their Facebook "like" button, posted pictures of their beds and added comments. The page has 492 likes.
A resident of Woodbridge, N.J., clicked "like" on Target's page and tweeted for Amazon to get the freebies, but says social media doesn't affect her shopping decisions. She finds it "irritating" when her Facebook news feed is full of brand-related tweets when it is obvious that they are being paid.
But companies can't rely on loyal fans to spread the word about products, says Christopher Barcelona, of digital marketing agency Resource Interactive. That makes incentives more important than ever.
Do they really, really like you on Facebook? Or did they click the "like" button because they got something?
The Federal Trade Commission holds a workshop today that will look at how companies should disclose incentives on social-media platforms that allow only short messages or a simple sign of approval.
Incentives for consumers to "like" companies on Facebook fall into a "gray area" that depends on whether the number of likes a company has influences consumers in choosing their products. The FTC's advertising endorsement guidelines require compensation to be disclosed, as with Twitter hashtags such as "#paid."
The National Consumers League's says consumers on social media need the same protections as with traditional advertising. Consumers need to be protected from false and deceptive advertising in new media.
Recent plugs with perks:
•Target was offering a free "beauty bag" with makeup samples last week in return for a "like." The company has 1.8 million likes on its Facebook page. The company would not comment about how many were received in return for the bags, but a spokeswoman says Target has given away a million beauty bags in this and another Facebook giveaway.
•Amazon was offering $3 instant video credits last week to people who sent out a pre-written tweet for them.
•Mattress Discounters in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, entered recent buyers into a drawing for a $100 gift card if they hit their Facebook "like" button, posted pictures of their beds and added comments. The page has 492 likes.
A resident of Woodbridge, N.J., clicked "like" on Target's page and tweeted for Amazon to get the freebies, but says social media doesn't affect her shopping decisions. She finds it "irritating" when her Facebook news feed is full of brand-related tweets when it is obvious that they are being paid.
But companies can't rely on loyal fans to spread the word about products, says Christopher Barcelona, of digital marketing agency Resource Interactive. That makes incentives more important than ever.
For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right
blog.
For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News
Room blog.
For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit
the Michigan Business News blog.
For more Health News, visit the
Healthcare and Medical News blog.
For more Electronics
News, visit the Electronics America blog.
For more Real Estate News,
visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
For more Law News,
visit the Nation of Law blog.
For more Advertising
News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.
For more Environmental News,
visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
GM Ditches Facebook Ad Campaign
Story first appeared in USA Today.
General Motors just made a dramatic update to its status on Facebook.
Just days before Facebook's expected initial public offering, GM is reassessing the value of buying ads on the social network site. They regularly review overall media spend and make adjustments as needed.
His comments came after The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported today that GM would quit buying paid ads on Facebook and rely on engagement with Facebook users through content on its free-to-use profile pages. The sources said GM executives found the paid ads had little impact on car buying.
In terms of Facebook specifically, GM is reassessing our advertising and remain committed to an aggressive content strategy with all of our products and brands, as it continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers with the sharing of sharing images, videos and comments with users.
GM has spent about $40 million on its Facebook presence over about a year and a half, with about a fourth for paid ads and the rest to create and maintain content on free pages.
The GM talk comes at an awkward time for Facebook, as its business model investors ahead of its IPO on Friday, predicted to be the biggest Internet IPO ever.
The timing of the GM report seems like it's intentional. It reflects that GM does not know how to integrate social-media into a winning marketing play. And it shows Facebook has done a poor job of explaining how they are part of a social-media play.
GM's Facebook spending is a tiny slice of the social site's ad revenue. Facebook has said it had $1.06 billion in revenue in the first quarter, with $872 million from advertising.
Investors aren't likely to read much into GM's rethinking. Facebook is focused on making its site appealing to users and can work on its ad systems later.
However, Wedbush Securities says that GM's decision could prompt other marketers to rethink their paid ads on Facebook. GM is one of the bigger advertisers, and if in fact they did their homework, that is going to have a ripple effect.
Some large, brand-name advertisers already have made public doubts about the effectiveness of Facebook as a vehicle to sell goods. Gap, Nordstrom, Gamestop, JC Penney and Old Navy have shuttered virtual storefronts on Facebook when they didn't spur sales. Some snidely suggest the F in what some call F-commerce stands for failure.
Also, the Google Display Network is trouncing Facebook in key ad areas. Google banner ads, for example, are more than 10 times likely to be clicked on than Facebook ads, according to research from WordStream, a maker of search-engine marketing software and services.
Meanwhile. a new poll from The Associated Press and CNBC finds that 57% of Facebook users say they never click on ads or sponsored content. About another quarter say they rarely do so.
A better marketing choice may be to optimize a company website using a Top SEO Company, to capitalize on the Google keyword search engine.
General Motors just made a dramatic update to its status on Facebook.
Just days before Facebook's expected initial public offering, GM is reassessing the value of buying ads on the social network site. They regularly review overall media spend and make adjustments as needed.
His comments came after The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported today that GM would quit buying paid ads on Facebook and rely on engagement with Facebook users through content on its free-to-use profile pages. The sources said GM executives found the paid ads had little impact on car buying.
In terms of Facebook specifically, GM is reassessing our advertising and remain committed to an aggressive content strategy with all of our products and brands, as it continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers with the sharing of sharing images, videos and comments with users.
GM has spent about $40 million on its Facebook presence over about a year and a half, with about a fourth for paid ads and the rest to create and maintain content on free pages.
The GM talk comes at an awkward time for Facebook, as its business model investors ahead of its IPO on Friday, predicted to be the biggest Internet IPO ever.
The timing of the GM report seems like it's intentional. It reflects that GM does not know how to integrate social-media into a winning marketing play. And it shows Facebook has done a poor job of explaining how they are part of a social-media play.
GM's Facebook spending is a tiny slice of the social site's ad revenue. Facebook has said it had $1.06 billion in revenue in the first quarter, with $872 million from advertising.
Investors aren't likely to read much into GM's rethinking. Facebook is focused on making its site appealing to users and can work on its ad systems later.
However, Wedbush Securities says that GM's decision could prompt other marketers to rethink their paid ads on Facebook. GM is one of the bigger advertisers, and if in fact they did their homework, that is going to have a ripple effect.
Some large, brand-name advertisers already have made public doubts about the effectiveness of Facebook as a vehicle to sell goods. Gap, Nordstrom, Gamestop, JC Penney and Old Navy have shuttered virtual storefronts on Facebook when they didn't spur sales. Some snidely suggest the F in what some call F-commerce stands for failure.
Also, the Google Display Network is trouncing Facebook in key ad areas. Google banner ads, for example, are more than 10 times likely to be clicked on than Facebook ads, according to research from WordStream, a maker of search-engine marketing software and services.
Meanwhile. a new poll from The Associated Press and CNBC finds that 57% of Facebook users say they never click on ads or sponsored content. About another quarter say they rarely do so.
A better marketing choice may be to optimize a company website using a Top SEO Company, to capitalize on the Google keyword search engine.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Facebook Ad Marketing - Does It Work?
Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
Facebook Inc. has built a $3 billion-a-year advertising business by convincing marketers to buy new forms of advertising designed to create buzz around their brands.
But some advertisers with big spending accounts are wondering whether they're getting their money's worth.
The doubt lingers as bankers and prospective investors decide how to value Facebook for an initial public offering planned for May 18, said people familiar with the matter. Facebook executives will be pitching the company to big investors in an IPO roadshow starting Monday, these people said.
The question with Facebook and many of the social media sites is, 'What are we getting for our dollars?'
The Kia Motors Corp. has advertised on Facebook since 2009 and plans to increase its ad spending on the site. While building brand awareness on a site with 900 million users is valuable, Kia's VP of Marketing has said he's unclear if a consumer sees my ad, and does that ultimately lead to a new vehicle sale?
The concerns from Kia and other advertisers underscore the difficulties of measuring results of nascent-forms of social-media advertising.
Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. sell traditional display and search ads on their sites. Facebook also offers image and text-based ads, but it pushes new methods that haven't been fully tested. Another good marketing campaign is to optimize your company website, using a professional SEO Company.
For example, last year Facebook launched a "Sponsored Stories" feature that lets advertisers rebroadcast people's positive posts on the site's main news feed to highlight them. Advertisers pay a rate based on impressions, or views those posts get.
While advertisers can directly track the return from ads on Google and Yahoo, Facebook mostly doesn't permit third-party surveys on its site or allow ads to be tagged with "cookies," software that tracks what people do online after seeing an ad.
Last week, Facebook showed its advertising growth doesn't always go up. The company reported its first-quarter ad revenue rose 37% to $872 million from a year ago, but it was down 7.5% from the previous three months. Facebook blamed "seasonal trends" for the decline, as well as shifting user growth where the company generates less revenue per user.
The questions about Facebook's ad business also creates a dilemma for bankers and investors who must decide whether Facebook deserves a lofty valuation. People familiar with the matter have said Facebook will seek a $100 billion valuation.
At that figure, Facebook's valuation would also be about 33 times its advertising revenue, compared with 5.5 times for Google. The reason for the discrepancy is in large part due to the fact that Facebook is still a young company with faster growth than Google, which is worth $200 billion but had $36.5 billion in ad revenue last year.
Advertisers, are trying gauge their own performance on Facebook. In March, the chief executive officer of WPP, the world's largest ad company, told attendees at a conference that clients, for the very first time, are starting to question the measurement issue on social media.
WPP, which works on behalf of companies such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble Co., said it expects to double its ad spending on Facebook this year to about $400 million. WPP said it will spend "north" of $2 billion with Google this year, up from about $1.6 billion last year.
It doesn't help that Facebook has alienated some advertisers with what they perceive as a highhanded attitude that implies that marketers have nowhere else to turn. Some media buyers and advertisers said Facebook has stymied their attempts to get more ad measurement, for instance. There's a pretty high degree of animosity right now with Facebook because they have become so powerful. The tension is partly the result of how quickly Facebook has had to scale its business.
For its part, Facebook has made repeated attempts to quell marketers' concerns about the effectiveness of its ads. Last year, the company began working with research firms comScore Inc. and Nielsen Co. to offer tools that let big brands track their social media campaigns on the site.
Nielsen, for example, measures consumers who saw an ad on Facebook and compares them with a similar control group of Facebook users who didn't see the ad. It then matches that up against shopper data to see how ad exposure affected sales of the product.
Still, the research firm says not all types of ads are easy to measure all the way to purchase. They add it's particularly tough to get that level of detail from car ads, luxury goods and high-end clothing because such purchases aren't made regularly and often different emotional things play into those purchase decisions.
Some big advertisers have conducted research that shows social networking campaigns have boosted their sales. Ford Motor Co. said by using Facebook ads instead of Super Bowl ads in marketing its 2011 Explorer, shopping activity for the Explorer jumped 104% versus the average shopping lift of 14% following a Super Bowl ad.
A Ford spokesman said that more than 20% of the company's digital media spend is on Facebook. The number one trusted source of information for consumers is recommendations from friends and family. Facebook provides a reliable platform to leverage that insight at scale. Still, he said it's difficult to measure Facebook's value against other forms of advertising.
On Tuesday, research firm eMarketer released a study showing 84% of executives it recently polled said that social media campaigns had boosted the effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts. Yet eMarketer also said that while measuring followers and Facebook 'likes' provides marketers with a hard number, no one yet knows how those numbers translate into a quantifiable return for brands.
Some ad executives caution that a calculation of monetary returns is an incorrect way of viewing Facebook ads.
If a marketer measures return on investment as direct sales from the Web, then Facebook may not be the ideal platform. But if the goal is to move the needle on brand health metrics, whether its awareness or engagement, then Facebook should be a key part of the marketing mix for most consumer brands.
Some brands have figured out ways around Facebook's measurement limitations. They have hired ad companies like Buddy Media Inc., which can give advertisers a deeper understanding of how Facebook's promotions work, or install apps that offer advertisers the ability to track users by allowing people to opt in to cookies.
Kia, meanwhile, said it is working with Facebook to get better measurement of the effectiveness of its ads. Kia declined to provide ad spending figures.
For more organic SEO and web optimization related news, visit the SEO Done Right blog.
For national and worldwide related business news, visit the Peak News Room blog.
For local and Michigan business related news, visit the Michigan Business News blog.
For healthcare and medical related news, visit the Healthcare and Medical blog.
For law related news, visit the Nation of Law blog.
For real estate and home related news, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
Facebook Inc. has built a $3 billion-a-year advertising business by convincing marketers to buy new forms of advertising designed to create buzz around their brands.
But some advertisers with big spending accounts are wondering whether they're getting their money's worth.
The doubt lingers as bankers and prospective investors decide how to value Facebook for an initial public offering planned for May 18, said people familiar with the matter. Facebook executives will be pitching the company to big investors in an IPO roadshow starting Monday, these people said.
The question with Facebook and many of the social media sites is, 'What are we getting for our dollars?'
The Kia Motors Corp. has advertised on Facebook since 2009 and plans to increase its ad spending on the site. While building brand awareness on a site with 900 million users is valuable, Kia's VP of Marketing has said he's unclear if a consumer sees my ad, and does that ultimately lead to a new vehicle sale?
The concerns from Kia and other advertisers underscore the difficulties of measuring results of nascent-forms of social-media advertising.
Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. sell traditional display and search ads on their sites. Facebook also offers image and text-based ads, but it pushes new methods that haven't been fully tested. Another good marketing campaign is to optimize your company website, using a professional SEO Company.
For example, last year Facebook launched a "Sponsored Stories" feature that lets advertisers rebroadcast people's positive posts on the site's main news feed to highlight them. Advertisers pay a rate based on impressions, or views those posts get.
While advertisers can directly track the return from ads on Google and Yahoo, Facebook mostly doesn't permit third-party surveys on its site or allow ads to be tagged with "cookies," software that tracks what people do online after seeing an ad.
Last week, Facebook showed its advertising growth doesn't always go up. The company reported its first-quarter ad revenue rose 37% to $872 million from a year ago, but it was down 7.5% from the previous three months. Facebook blamed "seasonal trends" for the decline, as well as shifting user growth where the company generates less revenue per user.
The questions about Facebook's ad business also creates a dilemma for bankers and investors who must decide whether Facebook deserves a lofty valuation. People familiar with the matter have said Facebook will seek a $100 billion valuation.
At that figure, Facebook's valuation would also be about 33 times its advertising revenue, compared with 5.5 times for Google. The reason for the discrepancy is in large part due to the fact that Facebook is still a young company with faster growth than Google, which is worth $200 billion but had $36.5 billion in ad revenue last year.
Advertisers, are trying gauge their own performance on Facebook. In March, the chief executive officer of WPP, the world's largest ad company, told attendees at a conference that clients, for the very first time, are starting to question the measurement issue on social media.
WPP, which works on behalf of companies such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble Co., said it expects to double its ad spending on Facebook this year to about $400 million. WPP said it will spend "north" of $2 billion with Google this year, up from about $1.6 billion last year.
It doesn't help that Facebook has alienated some advertisers with what they perceive as a highhanded attitude that implies that marketers have nowhere else to turn. Some media buyers and advertisers said Facebook has stymied their attempts to get more ad measurement, for instance. There's a pretty high degree of animosity right now with Facebook because they have become so powerful. The tension is partly the result of how quickly Facebook has had to scale its business.
For its part, Facebook has made repeated attempts to quell marketers' concerns about the effectiveness of its ads. Last year, the company began working with research firms comScore Inc. and Nielsen Co. to offer tools that let big brands track their social media campaigns on the site.
Nielsen, for example, measures consumers who saw an ad on Facebook and compares them with a similar control group of Facebook users who didn't see the ad. It then matches that up against shopper data to see how ad exposure affected sales of the product.
Still, the research firm says not all types of ads are easy to measure all the way to purchase. They add it's particularly tough to get that level of detail from car ads, luxury goods and high-end clothing because such purchases aren't made regularly and often different emotional things play into those purchase decisions.
Some big advertisers have conducted research that shows social networking campaigns have boosted their sales. Ford Motor Co. said by using Facebook ads instead of Super Bowl ads in marketing its 2011 Explorer, shopping activity for the Explorer jumped 104% versus the average shopping lift of 14% following a Super Bowl ad.
A Ford spokesman said that more than 20% of the company's digital media spend is on Facebook. The number one trusted source of information for consumers is recommendations from friends and family. Facebook provides a reliable platform to leverage that insight at scale. Still, he said it's difficult to measure Facebook's value against other forms of advertising.
On Tuesday, research firm eMarketer released a study showing 84% of executives it recently polled said that social media campaigns had boosted the effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts. Yet eMarketer also said that while measuring followers and Facebook 'likes' provides marketers with a hard number, no one yet knows how those numbers translate into a quantifiable return for brands.
Some ad executives caution that a calculation of monetary returns is an incorrect way of viewing Facebook ads.
If a marketer measures return on investment as direct sales from the Web, then Facebook may not be the ideal platform. But if the goal is to move the needle on brand health metrics, whether its awareness or engagement, then Facebook should be a key part of the marketing mix for most consumer brands.
Some brands have figured out ways around Facebook's measurement limitations. They have hired ad companies like Buddy Media Inc., which can give advertisers a deeper understanding of how Facebook's promotions work, or install apps that offer advertisers the ability to track users by allowing people to opt in to cookies.
Kia, meanwhile, said it is working with Facebook to get better measurement of the effectiveness of its ads. Kia declined to provide ad spending figures.
For more organic SEO and web optimization related news, visit the SEO Done Right blog.
For national and worldwide related business news, visit the Peak News Room blog.
For local and Michigan business related news, visit the Michigan Business News blog.
For healthcare and medical related news, visit the Healthcare and Medical blog.
For law related news, visit the Nation of Law blog.
For real estate and home related news, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
For technology and electronics related news, visit the Electronics America blog.
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