Good Read: Drake Morton

Google Gets Touchier

by Derek Gordon , Monday, Dec. 12, 2011

Google’s found new ways to bring advertising to your fingertips.  And it’s being pretty clever about it.

First, the clever part: Google formally unveiled its new Flipboard competitor called Currents last week.  The sparkly new news aggregation tool doesn’t quite look as good as Flipboard, nor is it as good at leveraging a reader’s social graph, but it does one thing most of the other “magazines” of this kind don’t: it offers an impressive array of full-text stories, thanks to an agreement with more than 150 publications.

You can choose content you want to subscribe to after downloading the app to your iPhone, iPad or Android device; you can also get content via RSS, Google+ feeds, Google Reader feeds, and video and photo feeds. One very cool thing it does: automatically sync all your subscribed content, so you can read it when you’re offline.
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by Bryan Boettger , Friday, Nov. 11, 2011

10 Factors Of Viral Propensity 

I don’t believe you can make a “.” There. I said it.

However, you can game the system. In a media landscape where earned media continues to gain greater and greater importance, we find ourselves consulting brands on analytical ways to judge a qualitative product. A way to judge propensity.

And, sometimes, you can do it by analyzing 10 factors…

1. Authenticity
. It can be planned out, but the video must feel in-the-moment. No one wants to be a shill for your blatant marketing.

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by Daniel Ambrose , Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011

Moneyball for Ad Sales

How many of you find yourself competing with the “big guys” on a smaller budget?

Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager, was determined to find a way for a low-revenue professional baseball team to compete successfully with teams spending two or three times as much  on top player salaries.  He found a way, with strategies vividly described in the book “Moneyball” — and now the much more widely consumed movie.

The defining scene, for me, was the conference room discussion of whom to draft, where scouts recommended players in part on how they looked, and if they had a good-looking girlfriend — an ostensible sign of their self-confidence.  The girlfriend line, as far as I can tell, was a scriptwriters’ device to summarize all the ways traditional baseball looked at the wrong things.  If you read the book you’d read a less-fictionalized account of the real process that is no less off-base.
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Fear Sells

by Matt Prohaska , Monday, July 19, 2010

Fear is one of our most powerful emotions. And it is often used to drive behavior, whether it’s a politician fear-mongering a constituency, a manager using that tactic with a subordinate, or a seller to a buyer.

A friend of mine from a major cable network recently told me, after his network completed its TV upfront selling for 2010/11, how amazed he was at how much selling could be done through fear and the perception of what defines premium inventory. We can visit the second part of that comment another time, but for now I’d like to focus on the first part, still common throughout TV ad sales: Fear sells.

This is true in most areas of the sales process. Not just what is being discussed here.

Check out this spot and guess what may be being sold (for good reason!!)

http://www.vistinemedia.com/c/image2000/email/index_image2000.html

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Paid Content?

by Daniel Ambrose , Thursday, July 15, 2010

“To charge for content or not to charge, that is NOT the question.”     

People is the world’s most profitable magazine.  But People achieves its profitability by giving away more content to more readers than any other magazine.  Yes, I mean People is giving away print readership. How can they make money when they give away so much free?  What can we learn from this about making money in online publishing?
Three million, four hundred and fifty thousand readers pay to read People magazine every week, and 40.08 million read it free every week.  I’m not writing about their Internet readership. Three and a half million People readers don’t want to miss an issue or an article.  In Internet parlance, they are “highly engaged.” They subscribe or buy People on the newsstand.  In the magazine business we call them primary readers.  There are another 40 million readers, about 10.8 readers per print copy as reported by MRI, who are somewhat less committed to People.  These secondary readers probably don’t read it cover to cover, and certainly not every issue.  If you measured the unduplicated number of people who read the four issues of People in a given month, it would be an even higher number.  These casual readers are a significant part of what makes the People franchise so valuable.  Advertisers want to reach them.
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‘Buying’ Audiences

by Chris Young , Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Thanks to a convergence of technology and consumer habits, both fueled by the advancements of the 21st century, there is a growing trend among digital advertisers to purchase their key audience rather than buying specific destination media — which is a positive development for marketers.

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Video Dominates Rich Media Tactics for

Online and Direct Marketing Professionals

March 27, 2010

According to the Unica State of Marketing 2010 study, video is the most adopted rich media marketing tactic today. Videos, created by marketing, rank first followed by streaming media, YouTube, podcasts, and ads within online videos represent the rich media tactics expected to be used most in the coming year. Year?over?year growth in the next 12 months for all these tactics is expected to be in the 20% range.

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E-Tailers Investing Ahead of Recovery

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Getting ready for consumers to open their wallets

Recovery from the recession is not yet in reach, but online retailers are ready to start spending all the same.

E-tailers know online consumers demand a top-notch shopping experience, and that difficulties navigating e_commerce Websites can lose them sales. Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp. found that more than seven in 10 Web merchants planned to spend more on advanced e-commerce applications and services this year.

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New Chart: Email Spending Sped Up

As the Economy Slowed

SUMMARY: Email has not only been spared the ax that fell heavily on most marketing budget line items, it seems to have actually benefited from the down economy. This boon wasn’t skewed by a few email-reliant sectors, it occurred in every industry participating in our benchmark survey.

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Add Direct Response To Get More

Out Of Rich-Media Ads

by Jason Tafler , Friday, September 25, 2009

As new technologies and more engaging content emerge on the Web, consumers expect more from online advertising and brands demand more value for their ad dollars. Many marketers struggle with creating cutting-edge ads that grab viewers’ attention and drive ROI in a meaningful way. Companies that are getting the most out of their ad buys are using new methods to deeply engage consumers with creative rich-media ads that also incorporate direct-response elements.

These do not have to be standalone strategies; each can play an important role in any comprehensive campaign. Depending on the marketer’s objectives, rich-media campaigns can include features such as data collection, lead generation, printable coupons, targeted product and pricing information, and ticket or product purchasing directly within banner ads, shortening the path to conversion. These capabilities not only provide marketers with more insight into their target audience, but increase consumer interaction time. According to PointRoll benchmarks for 2008, rich media provides a 562% lift in response/return over standard ads and 62% lift over flash banner ads. Depending on the campaign, including a direct-response element increases response by 42%, with an additional 3% increase in brand time.
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