Wither Digital Marketing?

Every so often I like to stop for a moment and look at the stats for online marketing, broadly defined. I’m such a believer, that I need an occasional reality check, positive or otherwise. Today’s eMarketer newsletter asking “How Much Marketing is Digital?” suggested this was a good time. And the news in terms of continuing spending and future estimates is positive. eMarketer forecasts (newsletter, March 31, 2008) online to be 10% of all media spend in 2009. Will growth in online slow as a result of poor economic conditions? At least some analysts don’t think so. According to Karsten Weide, of IDC, “A bad economy forces advertisers to save money by eliminating the least-effective forms, thus speeding up the adoption of new media advertising.”

Nielsen data for May (the most recent I could find) shows the Internet share at just under 7%. That’s a bit different from the eMarketer data, but there are lots of data sources, lots of definitions. There doesn’t seem to be any argument about the trend; it’s upward and the best argument seems to be the effectiveness one.

Today’s eMarketer article refers to the same Sapient study reported on by Marketing Charts on September 5. They quoted survey data that showed CMOs planning to spend more on digital with some of them inching up toward 50%. The main focus in this popular article was on agency relationships and the ability of agencies to meet digital needs. The CMOs surveyed weren’t confident they have that ability. According to the article: “More than one-third of marketers surveyed said they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising.”

What are the CMOs looking for from agencies? The article has a top 10 list, all worth considering. I’ll list just the top 4:

1. Greater knowledge of the digital space
2. More use of “pull interactions”
3. Leverage virtual communities
4. Agency executives who use the technology they are recommending

All this makes perfect sense, and agencies clearly have a major role to play in helping their clients navigate the choppy waters of new media, made even more difficult by economic conditions. Agencies have been struggling to service their clients in newest media and technologies (think direct and database marketing, for example) for as long as I can remember. And that will undoubtedly continue.

But it’s not enough to place the entire burden on agencies. Marketers have to understand the issues; they have to ask the right questions; they have to demand objectives and metrics that encompass the new media environment. Look at item #4 above; they want executives of their agencies to be users of the technology.

Marketers have to follow their own advice. I keep saying there is simply no substitute for using the media, trying out the technology for yourself. But marketing managers can go a step further.

I wonder how many marketing departments have any kind of a coordinated approach to who needs to follow which disciplines, newsletters, webcasts; who needs to spend some time on Facebook or MySpace or in relevant virtual worlds. None of us are going to learn to deal with the new media environment by staying in our comfortable traditional media cocoons.

More on that tomorrow.

Next Step in Behavioral Targeting?

Marketers know that segmentation is key to targeting which, in turn, leads to increased marketing ROI. From the beginning of the Internet savvy marketers have seen the potential for improved targeting that comes from tracking customer activities on the web, as indicated in the chart from eMarketer (newsletter, June 19, 2008). Behavioral targeting is well established, although not without issues from the consumer perspective. Remember the controversy over Facebook’s Beacon advertising program?

Consumers are wary that their privacy is being invaded by ad targeting efforts. eMarketer’s July 29 newsletter quotes a study from Harris Interactive that shows 55% of respondents “very” or “somewhat comfortable” with the privacy and security policies of sites that allow targeted advertising. That leaves 45% who are “not very” or “not at all comfortable” with those same policies. That’s an interesting split! In the same newsletter they quote a TNS study in which a large majority of respondents describe themselves as knowledgeable about both privacy threats and tools to deal with them. With due respect to our customers, I absolutely don’t believe they are knowledgeable. I know how much trouble behavioral marketers have in trying to explain behavioral analysis and targeting to potential customers. I also know how unaware my own graduate marketing students are of the basics of behavioral targeting on the web. Consumers think they are aware, but it’s highly unlikely that they understand the intricacies. If they knew, would they be more or less concerned? My guess is more, not less.

That’s not going to stop the unrelenting advance of technology though. In this iMediaConnection video Jim Calhoun of PopularMedia describes what his firm is doing to add data from the social graph to targeting models. Direct marketers have long known that people gravitate to others like themselves and have used that kind of affinity in segmentation and targeting. The next step may well be mapping out the social graph and using those connections to better understand consumers. The first 2 minutes of the video talk about the behavioral marketing developments; the second half is a bit of background on the social graph. Watch either or both segments—it will either fascinate you or creep you out—depending on your personal perspective!
View the video here.

Then think about your customers, and how they’re likely to feel. Then consider the following quote from Fran Maier, executive director of TRUSTe, the privacy organization.

“Education once again appears to be the key to finding a constructive balance between behavioral targeting and consumer privacy, because no matter how much we assure anonymity, there is still significant discomfort with the idea of tracking . . .We have a solid indication that consumers want us to find a way to get them the advertising that is relevant to them. In order to do this, behavioral targeting is one of the most promising methods, but at the very least, it has to be made more transparent, provide choices, and deliver real value.”

While I agree with that statement, I still have a question. Is “education” best done by a single enterprise or would it be better received from an objective third party? Third parties like TRUSTe have a major role to play, but so far it’s not clear to me that they are reaching the great mass of Internet users with any impact. I think businesses should worry about that. They should also make a herculean effort to let their customers know what they are doing and to explain the value that targeted advertising does bring. They have to do that in a way that’s comprehensible and not too self serving. That’s a tall order, but it’s necessary to build and maintain consumer trust!

Sears Goes Virtual

Sears is not known for being either fashion forward or a particularly desirable destination for teen fashionistas. An article in AdAge (subscription required) yesterday points out that they are trying to change that. They have created the ArriveLounge (I don’t have a clue about the implications of that name) as the centerpiece of the campaign for fall back-to-school. Here’s the top and bottom halves of the web page so you can look at it and make your own judgment about whether this will attract the teen and tween crowd.
The AdAge article points out that Sears is partnering with sites including MySpace and Disney for custom content and sponsorships, creating games with a number of partners, and that they will have events such as fashion shows in virtual world where teens can also create their own avatars and clothe them in Sears garments.

The virtual worlds aspect intrigued me, because there was a list of sites that—not surprisingly—I had never heard of. So here’s a quick rundown:

•Zwinky is a portal of the IAC division of InterActive Corp. It is fashion-oriented and offers a variety of ways to be creative and expressive.

•Meez, a brand of Donnerwood Media, promotes the creation of avatars, which would offer opportunities for trying on Sears clothing.


•WeeMee is a WeeWorld social network that lets members interact through their WeeMees. What’s a WeeMee? “It's a cartoon that looks just like you. Think of it as your own personal avatar or icon.”

•The N is a brand of Nickelodeon Kids and Family, which is part of Viacom. Nickelodeon has experience in experience in virtual worlds and has a robust strategy for creating and monetizing virtual world that feed off their successful TV series and characters.

•Poptropica is part of Pearson’s Family Education Network. As you can see from the graphic, a “Costumizer tool” is prominently featured on their home page.

There may be more social networks in this teen/tween space, but these are the ones Sears has chosen for the Arrive Lounge campaign. Their media choices seem reasonable. The key to success will be how well they engage their target audience.

Several months ago I wrote a series of posts for eBrandMarketing about the “Mommy Ecosystem.” This strikes me as the same sort of social and marketing phenomenon. These teens and tweens are highly social creatures, so social networking is a big part of their lives. Not surprisingly, a number of networks that are more highly targeted than, say, MySpace has grown up to take advantage of the phenomenon. Marketers who target the segment clearly want to make use of these networks, as they must do to reach their target audience. However, they have to reach these young men and women on their own terms, not the marketer’s terms. That’s not easy. Sears doesn’t seem to have made any major missteps so far. It will be fun to keep an eye on this campaign and see if it does connect with this difficult-to-reach target market.

DIY Advertising Takes Off

When I wrote about AdReady several weeks ago I set up an account to keep an eye on this interesting self-service display advertising concept. We’ve gotten used to this process with Google AdWords, and AdReady has services like a library of standard ads that make DIY banner advertising a reality. Following the model of AdWords, you can set your own advertising budget and monitor campaign results.
Because the system is easy to use, it’s easy to test competing ad messages. In their June newsletter, AdReady gave an example of running a test on an advertising button of its own. It’s a nice, clean test, with the only change being the call to action. I’d have guessed that “Click Here Now” was a fairly weak call to action, but personally, I’d have thought “Build it Now” would outperform “Get Started.” That’s why marketers should run tests! If you’d like a direct-response testing primer, please read the free testing chapter from Paul Berger’s and my direct marketing text. There is additional testing material in my Internet marketing text; I’ll do a post on that soon, because it’s an important tool.

So—with AdReady you can create your own ads and test versions. Now you can do it on the New York Times site. It seems like a no-brainer. Small advertisers are not worth the time of the advertising department, but, in the aggregate, they could provide another significant revenue stream. Why not give them self-service capabilities? Using the AdReady platform, that’s just what the NYT has done.

For publisher sites that need to add revenue streams—and who doesn’t—this is an interesting option. For sites that are free to the user, like AdReady and so many others, it has something interesting to say about monetizing the site.

That leads me directly to what I’m planning to write about tomorrow. Please stay tuned!

Collaboration, Technology and Culture

Over the past few weeks I’ve had conversations with several different groups of people about collaborating over time and distance. We’ve come up with several approaches. One of the simplest for a small group seems to be Google docs.

Not surprising, then, that an article in yesterday’s WSJOnline caught my eye. It focuses on interactive advertising on Meebo; I was taken by the site itself. So apparently are the VCs; it has just gotten third round venture funding.

The basic premise is that Meebo connects all your IM accounts in a single place and gives you a lot of options to connect with “buddies.” They have apps like a widget you can put on web pages, an iPhone app, and they are working on Meebo Rooms, which sound particularly appealing to corporate users. Meebo has gone out of its way to create interactive options for advertisers to connect with this wired (young?) community (see whe WSJ article also).

There are other web spaces that offer collaboration opportunity. Business Week has an article in the May 2 edition, “The (Virtual) Global Office,” that focuses on Second Life. Out of deference to their use policy, I won’t link to it; I’ll just let you find it for yourself. Or maybe someone knows someone at Business Week Online. . . This policy sure seems shortsighted to me! I do, however, agree with Norma’s comment that technology doesn’t make people collaborate better. “Process precedes technology.” Absolutely true. It seems to me that culture precedes process.

A recent post on the AlwaysOn network calls this the social era of management, which they define as follows:
1.characterized by, or inclined to working together in organizations and communities
2.Of or relating to the structure, organization, or functioning of the organization as a social organism.
3.Something worked out to explain, resolve, or provide a method for dealing with and settling a problem of performance and progress.
They go on to describe a model they call Socialutions that involves Priorities, People, Process, Products, Progress and Performance.

And here I thought it was only about people communicating over distance and time! Seems there’s a lot going on in this space that all marketers ought to be thinking about in pursuit of Progress and Performance!
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Auto Marketing Takes Sharp Web Turn

Auto makers all now have interactive websites that let prospective users examine and experience their models to some degree or another. Advertising also continues to move to the web. Just a few weeks ago GM let it be known that within three years fully half its advertising budget would be spend on the web (AdAge, March 17, 2008). Yesterday Chrysler announced that 29% of its budget for the new Journey would be spent on the web, with strong visitation numbers at the beginning of the launch.

It’s less of a surprise that BMW is spending half their budget for the US launch of their 1 Series on the Internet. BMW has been a leader in creative use of the web from the beginning with their BMW films series early in this decade followed by BMW comics. Their 1 Series is a lower-priced version aimed at a younger target market, so the emphasis makes sense. They cut their teeth on this type of strategy when they used the films to attract a younger, hipper audience. Now it’s an introductory video on YouTube. Take a look—it’s definitely not your father’s auto advertising!

Among other things, BMW is offering a Facebook app that will let users build their own BMW and send it to friends. Presumably that’s a repurposing of the functionality they have on the website. Makes sense to move it out onto the web where they can make it more visible, presumably by attaching it to advertising on Facebook and elsewhere on the web.

Another thing that isn’t new news is that young people spend most of their media time on the web, so that’s where you have to engage them. It takes integrated programs there, just like it’s always done in mass media. The difference is that we’re integrating a different set of tools; targeted online display ads, search advertising, microsites, videos, widgets and other specialized apps to name some of the main ones. Basic marketing principles still apply, but the execution is very different!
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Shopping is Now Social

Today’s eMarketer newsletter is about social shopping—a rapidly-growing phenomenon. The lead chart reminds us why it’s becoming so important. People have always placed a great deal of credibility in recommendations from their peers—that’s why WOM is so powerful. Social shopping is the electronic age manifestation. The article goes on to say that people contribute to social sites because they want to feel part of a community and they seek the recognition of their peers. I’d add that people simply want to help; they want to provide useful information to others who are engaged in the same activities/facing the same issues.


That being said, these sites have the potential to be incredibly volatile. I was under the impression that Kaboodle was the largest. According to the comparison I did on the Compete site, it has been left in the dust by a site called Pronto. The site attributes its explosive growth to the addition of social shopping tools, but it’s not clear why that has caused it to outdistance other social shopping sites that have similar functionality. My hypothesis is that it’s much more broadly based and therefore appeals to a larger audience. The diversity of search terms seems to bear that out.

Marketers need to use these sites by ensuring their products are listed and advertising on the sites. Pronto has a “certified merchant program.” The widgets available from Kaboodle let users make connections between things like their MySpace pages and the site. Are there partnership opportunities here?

Social shopping is another Web 2.0 feature that seems to be here to stay. Marketers, especially those whose target audience is young or family-oriented, need to be in the game.
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TV Commercials on Facebook?

I’ve been conflicted about this subject for awhile. I don’t go to Facebook for commercials, but I do go to YouTube. I love being able to play ads in class. Imagine being able to show a class of Vietnamese marketers ads from around the globe. So, wherever I am and whatever marketing subject I’m teaching, I love to be able to find ads on the net. What I wonder is, “Does anyone else?”

Josh Bernoff of Forrester pretty much agrees that people don’t generally care to watch ads. Why should they watch them on the Internet when they change channels on TV? There are a few exceptions—remember the Cadbury gorilla?

Note the ad on the screen capture then view the video here.

That essentially confirms Bernoff’s point—people don’t watch ads unless they are really special. But they do watch videos; we know they are doing that in large numbers. Here’s a list of the examples he mentions in the video:

•Blendtec. People enjoy a light-hearted look at products.
•RayBan. It’s just plain funny. Note it has spawned others.
•Dove Evolution. I’ve written about the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty before. It’s a wonderful integrated campaign.
•TIBCO. If you don’t look at any of the others, look at this. I apologize for not beliving that software engineers can have a sense of humor. They’ve created a whole world for this little guy!

Three of the four I found on YouTube. Each of the brands has created its own “channel”—essentially its own page on YouTube. TIBCO couldn’t have done what they have by just posting on YouTube; they needed a microsite. I was interested to see that Beet.tv, a video site, had its own channel on YouTube.

Here’s a bit more advice, quite accidentally from another Forrester consultant. Jeremiah Owyang created a corporate Facebook page for his brand—his Web Strategy blog. Then he took a small amount of advertising to promote it. The results weren’t overwhelming, but it worked. It's a great example of a social network marketing experiment that cost only $20 and some of Jeremiah's sleep time. Here’s his latest post on corporate Facebook efforts and if you search his blog you’ll find more. Thanks, Jeremiah!

The message? Well thought out campaigns on Facebook (or other social networks) can work. Engaging videos will be viewed. But only advertising instructors are likely to thank you for posting your run-of-the-mill commercials on the web!
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Customer Acquisition--How the Internet Has Changed It

As I wrote on March 4, the Internet has changed the core marketing communications processes fundamentally and forever. Marketers are still trying to come to grips with that fact and to learn how to leverage and optimize the power of the Internet in integrated marketing communications programs.

We all know what the Hierarchy of Effects looks like. We were weaned on it as marketers. Unfortunately, it’s still the mental model that many of us use. I argue that it is simply not the way marketing works today. It probably was never entirely hierarchical. Today it’s more like a maze with many ways of getting to the end goal—a trusted brand. That makes it hard to specify a process that fits all situations, much less make it one that is hierarchical. Earlier I described it as circular and I think that’s an improvement, but that still doesn’t express the complexity of the decisions marketers face.

In the mass media era we spent time and money to reach our target segment and create brand awareness. In the Internet era the more direct approach is to attract the target’s attention with relevant content. The Internet supports the acquisition process in two significant ways:

•Marketers can target an audience for acquisition with little of the wasted reach of mass media. Targeting by display advertising on carefully-selected web vehicles (sites, blogs, social networks) is similar to mass media and we know that it accomplishes brand development as well as generating action. PPC advertising based on contextual keywords targets to an individual’s current behavior. Behavioral advertising, based on actions already taken by anonymous visitors, offers more precise targeting and is consequently growing in favor with marketers.

•Marketers can incite to action, which usually requires driving people to their website. They must carefully consider the actions they want target customers to take on the website, how they will encourage them to take desired action, and the experience visitors will have while they are there and afterward—in the fulfillment and service process. They must also make decisions about how to measure success and how to capture data from newly-acquired targets.

The set of possible actions represents basic objectives that marketers may choose for their campaigns. They include, not in any order of priority:

•Drive first-time visitors to a retail location to make a purchase.
oThat may be as simple as offering store location information, often with maps and other ancillary information. It can include sales promotions like coupons.

•Encourage an immediate purchase on the site. This can rely on compelling content—from product descriptions to customer reviews—and a well-designed and maintained site that leads visitors through a planned, step-by-step process.
•Provide incentives to make an immediate purchase on the site.
oThe incentives can be part of the advertising—a free shipping offer, for example. They can be presented on a landing page as part of a formal conversion process. They can be presented on the site—an offer to “buy two and get a third for half price” shown, at a minimum, on the home/main product page and on the order page.

•Invite visitors to register by offering relevant content:
oAdditional product information—brochures or demos
oSite functionality—build your own product
oA newsletter or alerts with offers of interest
oCoupon downloads
oParticipate in brand community activities

•Encourage visitors to stay on the site longer
oContent like videos
oActivities like games and contests

•Give visitors a reason to return
oCompelling content, excellent experience, ongoing events

These generic objective types have an element that is familiar to B2B marketers but less so to most consumer packaged goods marketers. They imply a multi-step process, except in the minority of cases in which the first-time visitor makes an immediate purchase. If not, the visitor must be enticed to return. Successful retailers have been good at doing that; producers of mass-marketed products (and some services, insurance sold through agents, for example) have not.

The multitude of possible actions and the fact that not all culminate in an immediate sale pose two additional questions. First, how do we measure success? It is not enough to simply attract visitors to the website. We have to get them to make a purchase. Even though that may take several visits, the process is relatively easy to track on the web. Once it leaves the web for a retailer or a dealer, it becomes much more difficult

Second—and necessary for developing the correct metrics—is what is our working definition of acquisition? Is it merely getting an anonymous visitor to the site? Probably not; that’s the click-through dispute. Is it capturing an email address so you can begin to develop a dialog? If you are marketing a genuinely multi-step product—cars or real estate, for example—registration may be an acceptable definition of acquisition. In those two cases, conversion occurs off the site, so that argues for a more limited definition of acquisition. You may hold out for an initial sale as the only acceptable measure of acquisition. That depends on many things including the product itself and your ability to track through to the sale.

Acquisition is a complex task. The Internet hasn’t really made it simpler. It has, however, made it possible to target--even at the acquisition stage. It has made it possible to measure, not only success in ROI terms, but the path of getting there. Finally, it allows marketers to plan campaigns based on data, both consumer behavior data and programs results data.

The change in approach to acquisition is not an option. Marketers cannot afford to ignore the potential of interactive marketing in their total mix, both for reasons of cost efficiency and because consumers are demanding the relationships.

The changes in acquisition lead to a greater role for conversion. More about that in a forthcoming post.
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How Has the Internet Changed Marketing Strategy?

The answer is that changes have been great, but I don’t know of anyone who has verbalized the changes in a specific way. I’m going to cut off a chunk and give it a try.

I like to try to boil what we do as marketers, which often gets pretty complex, down into simple concepts. As far as I’m concerned marketers basically do three things. We acquire customers or sales leads. We convert leads into actual customers. We retain existing customers. There are many things we have to do in order to accomplish these three key goals. In addition, marketers of frequently-purchased consumer goods and services and some lower-priced business goods and services may not be in the lead conversion and generation business. With those provisos customer acquisition, conversion and retention form the core of what marketers do.
Internet 1.0 changed all those activities irrevocably. As this blog has often pointed out Web 2.0 is already here and the requirements for marketers are changing again before we fully came to grips with Web 1.0. This is a good time to sit back and try to organize the changes we know about into a simple, understandable form.

So, over the next couple of weeks I’m going to write a series of four posts, with this being the first. In the second I’ll discuss customer acquisition. Then over a few days I’ll write about conversion and then retention.

I keep being reminded that many of us who are now in the higher echelons of marketing were educated in traditional mass media marketing and it’s hard to get away from that and understand how fundamentally marketing has changed. Understanding the changes that have taken place--and maybe looking ahead a bit--is the purpose of this series of posts.

Please stay tuned!
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Parsing Facebook User Data Policies

Read part 1 here.
Third Parties and Facebook Data. Continuing on down the Terms of Use we find a section on Third Party Websites and Content that is inclusive, although once again they try to exclude offensive material and protect intellectual property. Just below that is a section called Share Service. This is a direct quote from that section:

Company offers a feature whereby users of the Site can share with others or post to their own member profile, videos, articles and other Third Party Applications, Software or Content from, and/or links to, Third Party Sites through the Service (the "Share Service"). You acknowledge and agree that your use of the Share Services and all links, User Content or Third Party Applications, Software or Content shared through the Share Service is subject to, and will fully comply with the user conduct rules set forth above and the other terms and conditions set forth in these Terms of Use.

Does that mean that “perpetual, irrevocable and distribute. . .for any purpose” apply here? I’m not a lawyer, but that’s what it looks like to me. It goes on to talk about Use of Share Links by Online Content Providers. Are these the 15,000+ widgets shown on Friday’s post? That’s what it sounds like to me. Here’s what it says:

By including a Share Link, Online Content Provider automatically grants, and represents and warrants that it has the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use the Share Service in order to link to, use, copy, publish, stream, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), summarize, and distribute the content, links and other materials of any kind residing on any web pages on which Online Content Provider places the Share Link.

That should drive potential developers to the Developer Terms of Service page, which is also quite extensive and technical. It seems to repeat the same data policies. There are many links, none of which I investigated.

Finally, I took a look at the Privacy page (from the top nav bar; the Terms of Use is one of the text links at the bottom of pages). This page allows users to set several parameters for the sharing of their data with other Facebook users. It’s user-friendly and when I’ve tried, it has worked as described. The introductory statement is designed to make users feel comfortable:

Facebook wants you to share your information with exactly the people you want to see it. On this page, you'll find all the controls you need to set who can see your profile and the stuff in it, who can find and contact you on Facebook, and more.

However, it is not their Privacy Policy, which is another text link at the bottom of pages. It is also extensive. This is a short quote from the lengthy Information We Collect section:

If you choose to use our invitation service to tell a friend about our site, we will ask you for information needed to send the invitation, such as your friend's email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email or instant message inviting him or her to visit the site. Facebook stores this information to send this one-time invitation, to register a friend connection if your invitation is accepted, and to track the success of our referral program. Your friend may contact us at info@facebook.com to request that we remove this information from our database.
Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.

There are lengthy sections on sharing information with third parties and advertising that I haven’t quoted. They are worth reading. Facebook’s Beacon service for advertisers has generated considerable controversy. This is the current statement:

Facebook Beacon is a means of sharing actions you have taken on third party sites, such as when you make a purchase or post a review, with your friends on Facebook. In order to provide you as a Facebook user with clear disclosure of the activity information being collected on third party sites and potentially shared with your friends on Facebook, we collect certain information from that site and present it to you after you have completed an action on that site. You have the choice to have Facebook discard that information, or to share it with your friends.
To learn more about the operation of the service, we encourage you to read the tutorial here. To opt out of the service altogether, click here.

From my perspective as a marketer, not a lawyer, Facebook seems to be honest in describing its policies, and the documents are detailed and inclusive. Does anyone believe that teenagers will read the material—only a tiny portion of which is quoted here? If you do, I have time-honored bridge to sell you.

Marketers should give these issues consideration from several perspectives. Do you want to participate in advertising on Facebook itself? There are numerous ad networks that serve the Facebook applications (widgets, etc.); that’s another alternative. Recent articles from Randall Rothberg of the IAB and Esther Dyson, IT maven, are both ad-friendly and give worthwhile perspectives.

Put all of it together and two things emerge. One is that marketers need to tread carefully as they consider advertising on social networks; both the contextual and the data privacy issues are troublesome. The second is that marketers may want to build their own networks. We’ve been doing that with email addresses. Why not extend permission-based activities to relevant networks? Either create your own or partner with an established network that is relevant.

Whichever of the several ways you choose to go, think carefully about how you want to inform and prepare visitors for the kind of advertising they will see or receive. We all want to do targeted advertising. But behaviorally-targeted advertising can get downright creepy—“How do they know that about me?” We don’t want to creep-out our customers!
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Parsing Facebook User Data Policies

Facebook and User Data. In Friday’s post I noted that I had actually taken time to read the Facebook Terms of Use. Since I’m encouraging people to set up Facebook accounts I have some responsibility to point out issues. The people who read this blog aren’t likely to post personal information as thoughtlessly as teens and young adults do, but we all still need to be aware. As I pointed out on Friday, at the very least we need to decide whether, as advertisers, we want to take advantage of profile data like Facebook’s. At best, we need to become advocates for policies and practices that will be in the long-run best interest of our discipline. Facebook is not the only site that puts these issues front and center, it’s just the largest and most visible and therefore a good example. Detractors of Google could question that statement, but my experience is that Google has a much more restrictive set of information policies and practices than what I’m describing here.

Facebook’s Terms of Use is several pages long and full of detail. In all fairness, it has good information and warnings. It tries to keep children under 13 off, although we all know how much good that does. It also tries to keep dangerous people and practices off the site, and it appears to have been taking that responsibility more seriously recently. They talk the right talk about intellectual property but we all know that is difficult to enforce.

That said, Facebook’s policy on data is eye-popping. This is a short quote from the section entitled User Content Posted on the Site:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

Some of the scary words are “perpetual,” “irrevocable,” and “distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise.” But there's so much more that it's gotten to long for a single post. Tomorrow I'll get to the third party/ad networks issues.

And, in the meantime, if you have teenagers you might want to talk to them about implications of sites like Facebook. Are they aware, for instance, that colleges and employers are searching social sites for information that might affect the future of users of these sites?
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Do These Blog Policies Make Sense?

A post on CNET news caught my eye a few days ago. I read Business Week online and in print. I’ve used their material in textbooks—with permission, which they are notoriously slow to grant). I’ve probably linked to their material on this blog. (No, I don’t ordinarily read user agreements.) I do, however, assume that online publications are happy to have links because they attract more people to the site.

So imagine my surprise when I read the CNET article which in turn referenced a post on the Gawker blog. This quote captures the issue perfectly:

Gawker points to the example of SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill, who writes in his blog that after being interviewed for a feature story in BusinessWeek, he was expressly told not to link to the story. "Yes, that's right, an ad-driven publication doesn't want us to drive traffic to them," he says in his blog. In addition, he was urged to review the company's user agreement. Mr. MacAskill also has critical words for the LA Times in his post.

Note how many links to various online publications have been generated by this dialog. As you well know, every time you follow one of these links you’ve upped their traffic and advertising rates. Why doesn’t any online publisher want that?

But I did check the user agreement and the Gawker post is exactly right. This is the item in the BW user agreement. Note that it does not say I can’t copy it (it’s well within the 100-word limit for direct quotes with attribution but without permission), but it does say that I can’t “deep link,” which is a link to any page except the home page. And every Internet marketer knows that if you want people to find things, you don’t just dump them onto your home page!

2. use or attempt to use any "deep-link," "scraper," "robot," "bot," "spider," "data mining," "computer code" or any other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, process or methodology or manual process having similar processes or functionality, to access, acquire, copy, or monitor any portion of BW.com, any data or content found on or accessed through BW.com, or any other BW.com information without prior express written consent of BW;
Source: BusinessWeek Online Terms of Use

The BW policy is even more ludicrous in the context of a subsequent announcement by editor John Byrne. He says BWOnline is going to use a new reader engagement metric, the ratio of comments to stories on the site. One assumes they can also use the metric for individual stores as one gauge of the most popular topics. So why would the publication shut off one source of traffic to their pages—and therefore potential comments? Beats me!

It makes about as much sense as this statement, attributed to Target:

“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

The owner of the ShapingYouth blog had complained to Target about an ad that it found demeaning to women. As I write this the original New York Times article (free registration required) has drawn 102 comments—pretty engaging! The comments show a fascinating divergence of opinion about whether blogs should be accorded the respect routinely given to traditional media outlets. Interesting and provocative!

Both Target and BusinessWeek Online seem to have policies that are counter to their best interests as a customer-friendly retailer and as an online publication that thrives on reader traffic. It might also be noted that the New York Times achieved a ratio of 102/1 on this particular article compared to the 23/1 average ratio quoted in articles about Byrne’s announcement. I did look on the Business Week site and couldn’t find a press release or other description of the policy—but then I couldn’t have linked to it anyway!

Enough bashing! There is a lesson here for all who participate in the new media space. The lesson is to be sure that all our policies are aligned in ways that promote our success instead of creating barriers to success.
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Whither Video Advertising?

I’ve made multiple posts on this blog and on the eBrandMarketing blog about the increasing importance of video. Every time I think I’ve beaten that subject to death some fascinating new data turns up to inspire me to write another post. That was the case with the eMarketer newsletter of January 28, which gives new insight into video use and to how viewers are handling advertising.




The industry is scrambling to establish standards for video advertising with the IAB taking the lead. Their recent report categorizes types of video advertising and identifies current metrics.A series of iMediaConnection videos, made at an iMedia Summit in March but only recently posted on their site gives an in-depth assessment of the state of the art in content and advertising.
It’s long; each of the three segments runs 15 to 17 minutes. The first segment looks at three very different types of video channels, the NBC Universal Digital Network, Bud TV and the Veoh service. The first 10 minutes is helpful in understanding why they are different and what the relationships are to NBC and Anheuser Busch. The second segment goes into more depth on the nature and production of their content. The third segment discusses advertising using the IAB framework.

The video space is only going to become more vibrant as mobile video (and advertising?) becomes available. eMarketer also published a chart on mobile entertainment revenues on January 28. It made me think about the video that accompanies the current WSJ special report on technology9subscription required). The video interviews a few consumers to get their technology wish list. I’d summarize their requests as “convergence” and “mobile content,” both of which seem to add up to wanting to consume content on the go.

Where content goes, advertising of some kind is sure to follow. The efforts of both leading-edge firms who are creating online content and of leading-edge advertisers who are experimenting with “what works” in the space should be followed closely.
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Podcasting for Marketers

In recent weeks I’ve been talking to two people in very different situations about adding podcasts to their marketing communications offering. The situations are different, but the common theme is the desire to provide detailed information and various perspectives to identifiable niche markets. I’ve been looking at both the mechanics and best practices for those who wish to podcast. For marketers who don’t want to podcast themselves, podcasts that successfully reach their target audiences offer another advertising opportunity.

A 2005 post on the O’Reilly digital media blog outlines the basics. It all still applies except that the hardware changes quickly, so you’ll want to look for latest, well-reviewed pieces of equipment. The good news is that not much is necessary—a mic for your laptop and podcasting software will get you started. Active podcasters like to record in the field and there are many cool new devices for capturing live events. You’ll also notice that there is more software available for Apple systems than for Microsoft—surprise, surprise!—but whichever operating system you use, you can find what you need, and free software will meet most needs. That said, it’s not the technology that’s the issue, it’s identifying the need for podcasts and integrating them into your overall marketing communications strategy. Christopher Penn, CIO of the Student Loan Network, is well known in the podcasting community for the success of his podcasts. He has a clear target audience—prospective and actual college students and their parents. They need the information in his podcasts and he makes it easy to subscribe, even pointing out that an iPod isn’t necessary. Most podcasters simply have a page on the main site. Chris has a well-organized microsite that is visually integrated with the main site while it focuses visitors on the podcasts. He podcasts on a consistent schedule and often brings in outside experts. His microsite is welcoming to parents who aren’t into the new media scene, while it encourages their children to do things like “add this to your Facebook page.” It also has other features that engage his high-school and college age audience such as links to “free stuff” and job search information. Brian Carroll offers good advice for beginning podcasters on Marketing Profs (free registration required).

Lesson #1: Producing your own podcasts must be an element of overall communications strategy. In developing a podcasting strategy, ask questions like “is this a customer acquisition or retention mechanism?” and “how am I going to attract listeners/subscribers to the podcasts?” Answering the second question will put the issue of integrated marketing communications squarely into focus.

It has been a couple of years since leading-edge marketers recognized that advertising on or sponsoring podcasts was a targeted advertising opportunity. One of the first to acquire sponsorship was MommyCast, still sponsored by Dixie. Since I was last on the site they have added a weekly Internet radio show to their product line. Young mothers rely heavily on the Internet for information and this successful podcast has turned out to be a great way to reach them. Ad networks Radio Tail and Wizzard Media help marketers reach the niche markets represented by podcasts and Podbridge/Volo Media offers metrics services. Here’s some advice for advertisers.

The conventional wisdom is that B2B marketers have been slow to adopt podcasts, which seem a natural for reaching customers with current developments. Current data about B2B podcasting is in short supply, but a directory called PodFeed lists over 600 podcasts that have the tag “business.”

Lesson #2: Marketers can sponsor individual podcasts or use ad networks to reach podcast audiences with their online advertising.

Podcasts probably aren’t for everyone (marketer or user!) but their ability to deliver information to customers and advertising to targeted audiences makes them worthy of consideration.
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Dayparting and Video Consumption

I enjoyed my time in Vietnam and I’ll be posting a series detailing what I’ve learned about marketing there and another about my travels. I’m also happy to be back and trying to catch up on what’s been going on in social media over the past three weeks.

Something that caught my eye while I was gone was the article in the New York Times on lunchtime video. That's not a surprise to those of us who have consumed Internet content, including video, over lunch at our desks for years! As a recognizable trend, it’s clearly something else that marketers need to figure into their media buys.

The most recent data I could locate is from comscore Video Metrix.Two issues are obvious:
1.Weekday video viewing is high during the core workday and from 8 – 11 p.m. but even higher in the 5 – 8 pm daypart.
2.The pattern changes markedly on weekends, with viewing high all afternoon but highest from 7 – 11 pm.

What are they watching? While the specific answer is obviously segment-specific, we can also make some generalizations about that:
•According to the Times article and the comscore data, they are “snacking” on short videos, leaving longer segments for evenings and weekends.
•There are numerous sites that offer popular lunchtime fare, including portals and large media sites. This list from a Canadian entertainment writer has sites catering to various segments.
•Last year Pew found that 57% of Internet users (74% of broadband users)had viewed or downloaded video. A study published this month found that 48% of users had visited a video-sharing site and that daily use of these sites has doubled in the past year.
•Mobile video is on the horizon; a recent study described by Media Post found that 41% of teenagers have cell phones with video downloading capability and half of them have actually downloaded videos. Since mobile translates to “on the go” that will shift the dayparting algorithm.

So video—on the desktop or on mobile devices—represents another advertising opportunity for marketers. First, they must understand the video viewing behavior of their target audiences. Then they will be able to take advantage of the dayparting being offered by publisher sites. Sites like Boston.com and CNN allow marketers to target video advertising demographically or behaviorally and then refine their ad buy with dayparts.

The voracious appetite for video on the part of web users is undeniable. It creates another opportunity for marketers to target advertising to a time and context that makes it relevant to the viewer. The next step is for marketers to factor video advertising into their media buying and scheduling activities.
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Beginning the Do Not Track Debate

Recent announcements by AOL and MySpace imply diametrically opposing stances on tracking of website users. AOL is supposed to be readying a Do Not Track service on their site, although it is not yet on either their main site or listing of betas. MySpace, on the other hand, plans to offer advertisers a targeting service based on the profiles and behaviors of users. TechCrunch has early details and a screen shot of the interface for the service called SelfService by MySpace.

While publishers are taking varying approaches privacy organizations including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and others have submitted a proposal for a Do Not Track rule. The Federal Trade Commission held hearings on the subject last week. They have posted the transcript in the form of webcasts on their site. Yahoo had a nice graphic of what the rule would look like a few days ago.

And no, I haven’t listened to 2 day’s worth of webcasts either, but they are well organized to locate subjects or speakers of particular interest. The usual suspects are, of course, arrayed in the usual formations—privacy advocates vs. advertisers and web publishers. The proposal is worth reading, especially page 4 on the recommendations for the rule. The NYTimes online notes that while Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL/Time Warner spoke at the hearing, MySpace was there only as an observer.

One thing that caught my eye was an element of user-generated content in the hearing. The Stop Badware.org project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School has sponsored a Cookies Crumble Contest and votes on the winning video were taken at the hearing. A first for the FTC. . .maybe for Harvard Law also?

Considering how slowly other privacy initiatives have moved since 9/11, this is a debate that is likely to continue for some time. While it does, technology will continue its inexorable progress.

I’ve watched the privacy issues for many years. I would call attention to the Do Not Call legislation. Could the industry have forestalled actual legislation by being more transparent and accommodating to the wishes of the public? Should the Internet industry begin (yesterday) to inform users in an open and understandable manner what they are doing and why they are doing it? History suggests it should!
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Internet Activity = Content Over Communications

I’ve been teaching Internet marketing from the very beginning. As any of you who teach, speak or lecture on the subject know well, it’s hard to keep up with developments. But one thing that has been a constant is that communications (primarily email) was the largest component of Internet user time. This is an important issue, and in August 2004 the Online Publishers Association launched their Internet Activity Index to track consumption of time by Internet users. Their four categories of time use are communications, content, commerce and search. Their initial data showed communications taking the largest chunk of time with content not too far behind. Marketers were probably paying more attention to commerce, which was pretty far down at less than 20% of total time.

Since then, without most of us paying a lot of attention, content kept moving up. Sometime in early 2006 content caught up with communications and by August 2007 the media buzz was the fact that content was about half of total Internet time use with communications far behind at 30%. Neither commerce nor search was showing sustained growth, again as measured by time use.


Current data from the OPA site shows the continuing dominance of content, although it is down a bit from the month before. According to OPA that was because users spent less time on social networking and children’s sites in August. On the other hand, they emailed and IM’ed more, especially from work. That looks like a clear seasonal effect. Search increased as a result of news activity, which is always true when there are major current events—in this case a hurricane, toy recalls and a bridge collapse.

Why is this important to marketers? For content and social media sites that want to monetize their content, the seemingly inexorable move away from traditional media to the Internet lets them sell more advertising for more money. For ecommerce sites it means that both online advertising and search bring users to their sites to make purchases. Large portals with vast advertising reach find it easy to sell out their inventory of advertising. But it also makes it possible to reach niche audiences cost effectively through niche sites and specialized advertising networks. Doug Weaver of iMediaConnection has an interesting take on the allocation of media $ to a more balanced online media model.


Click here to view video.

In the end it all adds up to the ecosystem of content that is the essence of Web2.0. The marketer’s challenge is using the right tool and the right time to reinforce the brand message with the target audience and then to be able to measure the sales results in multiple channels.
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A Good Marketing Video--and Why It's Important

Google recently announced a new AdSense product for video. It allows the owner of a website, blog, wiki, etc. to offer video from selected video channels on either a per-impression or a PPC basis. It’s an interesting site feature given what we know about the appeal of video and the stickiness it adds to a site.

What do we know? Recent research by the Pew Internet and American Life project finds frequent consumption and sharing of online video across demographic groups. They also find users unwilling to pay for video content.

Click here to view the complete report.

Even more compelling for marketers is a recent study by Advertising.com that finds viewers taking action as a result of viewing videos.

Click here to view the complete presentation.

The new AdSense product and the research on the impact of video combine to place a premium on doing video well to get your share of audience attention and action. The basic rules for good marketing video can be summarized as:

• Keep it short. Viewers are more likely to watch short videos all the way through. For ads, “short” is 15 to 30 seconds, with 15 being better. For content videos you can do as much as 2 to 6 minutes, but shorter is better.

• Engaging content is key. Remember the Cadbury gorilla? Don’t count on it going viral; only a small fraction of the videos on the web do that. But keep shooting for content that the audience will love.

• Encourage viewers and customers to submit their own videos. It supplements your content (and therefore your $) and they may come up with even more engaging content.

• A reasonable level of quality in production values is necessary for commercial videos. But there may be instances where content or timeliness have priority over slick production.

• Integrate your messages across media. According to Aimee Irwin, VP of Advertising.com, “You must create an integrated and consistent campaign without simply duplicating the same ads across media. Each channel—TV, online video, banner ads, even search—has its own success factors.”

• You’ll need to familiarize yourself with video ad formats. The IAB is a good place to start. Then you’ll want to find an agency that is familiar with both the creative and production complexities of video.

• Ditto for an advertising network that specializes in video. For anything other than a small test you need a network who can deal with a whole host of other issues surrounding the media buy, placement and execution.

• Measure, measure, measure! We are only on the threshold of the video era, and there’s much more to learn.

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Time for the Super Bowl Already?

It seems that the Super Bowl hype has already begun. FritoLay has already unveiled contest plans for this year’s event; this year you can create your own song. And it doesn’t even have to be about a Frito-Lay brand.

Click here to visit contest site.

If memory serves me correctly, 2007 was the first year that user-generated ads were aired on the game. Frito-Lay seemed satisfied with the results of their 2007 contest. The public vote for first place was apparently quite close, so they ran the top two commercials at an estimated cost of $2.6 million each. That’s quite an investment, but all the media hype and user attention probably made it worthwhile.

General Motors ran a similar contest after a bad experience with a Tahoe commercial promotion earlier in 2006. It was tightly controlled and included as many as eight “webisodes” including this one chronicling the winner. The webisodes are clearly aimed at the college student audience, the target of the contest.

Those are the only three user-created commercials to actually air during the game, as nearly as I can count. If you want to relive the experience, CBS still has all the commercials posted including Doritos “Live the Flavor” (first quarter) and “Check Out Girl” (second quarter) and the Chevy "Car Wash” (second quarter). The ads can be sorted by advertiser if you are a real history buff.

And if you are ready to get out your instruments, the Doritos contest goes live on October 25. It will be fun to keep an eye on it. It will be even more fun to watch what other advertisers do in the realm of user-generated advertising and content.

Perhaps the most fun of all will be watching what users do and say. A quick search for “Super Bowl 2007” on YouTube lists 1,160 posts, including banned advertisements from GoDaddy and Budweiser.

What does all the user-generated activity mean besides the fact that watchers seem to be posting video in addition to (instead of?) watching the game? How should advertisers monitor what is being said about them, especially at peak times like this? How can they listen to the voice of the consumer in this environment?

One final note. As I write this the baseball playoffs are taking place. Go Sox!! Verizon prepared for them in Boston by beefing up wireless service in and around Fenway park. They reported that over 267,000 text messages were sent during the Friday, October 12 game. Should we read meaning into this – or just relax and enjoy the game?
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