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OnLine Video Ads

info — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:17:25 +0000

You Need To Understand: Drake Morton

Video Ads’ Greatest Hits

How we watch Web videos and the ads that surround them By Lucia Moses

he spread of broadband and more viewing devices means more people watching online videos and more opportunity for the advertisers who want to reach them. Nearly half the U.S. population and 65 percent of Internet users watched online video in 2010. Accordingly, online video/rich media was the fourth-biggest category of online advertising in 2011, representing $3 billion, and the category is expected to grow rapidly through 2014. One big reason for advertisers to like online video ads: consumers seem to be watching them. Eighty-eight percent of ads placed in long-form content (10 minutes or longer) were watched to completion, while 94 percent of those played mid-roll are watched to completion.

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eMail List Building

info — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:47:13 +0000

Good Read: Drake Morton

Four Question Every eMail Capture Page Must Answer

By: David Kirkpatrick

This week I’ve been reading the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook featuring W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, MECLABS (the parent company of MarketingSherpa), as the lead author.

This handbook is full of great and actionable email advice, but Jeff particularly pointed me to the section on providing new subscribers with explicit expectations on what, when and why they will receive email after opting in.

Since it applies equally to B2B and consumer marketers, I wanted to share those tips and tactics with you, along with a fourth email element — privacy.

Here is the set-up straight from the MarketingSherpa handbook:

The time spent researching and developing eye-catching and memorable promotions that attract new subscribers is an enjoyable process for most marketers. However, equivalent effort and energy needs to go into reassuring the potential subscriber that your company is reputable and trustworthy. This is because after you have caught the consumer’s interest, and they are listening attentively, the new subscriber needs to feel safe to exchange their email address for a “special” offer.

Setting expectations right from the start of the relationship will reduce anxiety in the registration process and enable you to collect more qualified leads. Taking the time to inform new subscribers of what you will deliver yields more long-term subscribers. Adding a “join my mailing list” box with just a space to type in their email addresses will not effectively communicate expectations.

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How To Think Like a Brand

info — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:55:37 +0000

Good Read: Drake Morton

How To Think And Act Like A Brand

by Todd Vernon, Thursday, April 12, 2012

Conversational media has become an increasingly important component of marketing. As part of this initiative, marketers look to the publishing community to create or curate engaged conversations between publishers and their readers. These conversations live deep within the Independent Web, an area where like-minded people congregate to share thoughts, experiences, and recommendations. This is where buying opinions, and ultimately decisions, are made.

John Battelle, founder and executive chairman of Federated Media Publishing (which recently acquired my company, Lijit Networks), is an expert on conversational media and often talks about how “all brands are publishers.”

On the flip side, I like to say that “all publishers are brands.” Publishers need to think of themselves as a brand in order to attract the top-quality marketers who are interested in working with the most influential publishers to deliver their message — from standard IAB-sized media buys to more creative, conversational campaigns.
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Higher Quality Leads

info — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:00:54 +0000

Good Read: Drake Morton

Solving Common B2B Problems,

Part 3: Getting Higher-Quality Leads

By: Bryan Brown

At the recent MarketingSherpa B2B Summit, I was honored to be named Lead Gen Apprentice for my innovative solutions to three common business problems. This is the third part of a three-part series in which I elaborate on each problem and my proposed solution. (Read part one and part two.) While the dollar amounts and company details may not exactly match your specific scenario, the strategies and tactics outlined here should prove useful for addressing these common challenges.

The business problem: An authentication solution company has no problem winning over IT practitioners, but they keep losing to larger competition with executive relationships. Channel partners with executive relationships who have a high close rate only bring the company’s name into the mix when asked to do so. VC investors are becoming nervous and scrutinizing the company’s pipeline, so they need to bring in more executive-level leads in a one-month period.

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Cutting Through the Web Clutter

info — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:46:44 +0000

Listen Up: Drake Morton

Take a Lesson from Print Media:

Clean Up Web Layouts

By: Matt Sanchez

Amid the Clutter, With Too Many Entry Points,

Viewers Can’t Focus on the the Content

5,000. That’s the average number of ads and marketing messages Americans are exposed to each day, and if you’re online reading this, I’d skew that number higher. That’s because too many media sites are beginning to resemble the houses of compulsive hoarders: a jumbled mess of headlines and stories piled on each other with links, icons and ads thrown on top. Put another way: Clutter is killing digital media.

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Social Search and SEO Strategies

info — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:48:04 +0000

Smart Read: Drake Morton

The Social Search Revolution: 8 Social SEO

Strategies To Start Using Right Now

By Jordan Kasteler

Google’s searchbots have long relied on humans to endorse relevant and useful links. Recently, however, Google upped the human ante by introducing Google Social Search.

Google recognizes that one personal endorsement from someone we know easily outranks endorsements from 10,000 strangers. The same applies for a trusted authority: a blogging link shared by Darren Rowse or Brian Clark carries more weight than something a casual user shares.

So as a result, we have Google Social Search: meaning a site can jump from #30 to #3 in the SERPs just because someone in your Google+ circles shared the link. Getting an RT from The Huffington Post can jump your blog post from #8 to #1. It’s a brave new world of social SEO – and it’s one that no SEO can afford to ignore.

Leveling The Playing Field

Under traditional SEO practices, a modern startup would have no chance at ranking for highly competitive keywords. The other sites have been down in the trenches too long; it’d be nearly impossible to knock them off their SERP pedestal without years of campaigning.

Social SEO makes it easier for smaller fish to compete with the big guys. A tweet that receives a viral-size number of retweets can mean as much as a link from a top-ranking site; a +1 from a friend can send your site to the top of the social SERPs for that friend’s entire network.

Social media should already be a part of your business strategy. Now it’s time to harness the power of those social media accounts for your SEO strategy – or risk falling behind while your competitors cash in on their social chips. (more…)

Understanding Your Data Collection

info — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:00:29 +0000

Marketers Must Read: Drake Morton

Data Today, Data Tomorrow

by David Baker, Monday, March 12, 2012

As Colin Powell suggests, “Experts often possess more data than judgment.” I could spend all of this column listing simple forms of data that could in some way be used to target, segment or prescribe an experience. Yet I believe we’ve grown past simple recognition of data, and data management doesn’t adequately describe the problems we face in this industry. We are at a point of intermediation where decisioning meets judgment. I foresee some events in our space over the next few years that we’ll have to shape to our advantage to survive.

The Big Four may own ALL the data. Yes, Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon! Google’s virtual, complete horizontal integration of the consumer experiences, the sheer breadth, engagement and depth of Apple, the community within Facebook, and the scale of intent and purchase information Amazon is compiling – all this is dizzying. Is there going to be a co-opetition/sortium? Will we all share and buy data from each other — and how will marketers make the most of their own data assets in this virtual triage of the customer experience? The cost of data will not get cheaper, some will be more transient, but these companies are really close to putting it together. These trends are inspiring in many ways and I believe will be valuable to marketers, yet brands will cede control over time without major investment.
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Facebook Opportunities for Marketers

info — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:56:34 +0000

Must Read for Brand Builders on Facebook: Drake Morton

How Facebook’s New Timeline Brand Pages

Affect Email Marketing

by Mike May, Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Facebook has announced that it is moving all brand pages to Timeline at the end of the month, leaving marketers with only a few weeks to rework, redesign and otherwise recast their existing Facebook presences. So far, the brand feedback on Timeline is largely positive, though the new design does present some challenges to email marketers. Principally, the biggest functional difference in the Timeline design is that brand pages can no longer designate an alternate home page, and must rely instead on various elements on the main page to merchandise content. Brands that relied on this functionality to drop first-time visitors on a Like-Gate or an email subscription page are now pressed to revamp their approach within the confines of Timeline.
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Increase Your Click Through Rate

info — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:52:29 +0000

You should know: Drake Morton

Some Of The Best Points From SMX West

by Janet Driscoll Miller, Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Last week I was out at the SMX West show, where, as always, there were many great nuggets of information to glean from some fantastic speakers. Here’s a brief recap of some of the best points I heard.

How Schema.org, Rel=Author, and Meta Tagging

The first question many people might have is whether webmasters should bother with semantic marukup, like schema and rel=Author. According to Dennis Goedegebuure, one of the speakers on this panel, rich snippets and rel=Author can improve your click-through rate on organic listings by as much as 38%, and AJ Kohn, another panelist, indicated that rel=Author can improve CTR by 36-400%!

The four ways to implement rel=Author are (you only need to use one of these):

1. Put your name and email address on every post.

2. Implement a Google+ badge.

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Content Rules The Social Media Roost

info — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:33:48 +0000

Good Read: Drake Morton

Content Rules The Social Media Roost

by Paul Kontonis , Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

There’s been a lot of talk about the growth of the digital content industry, particularly in online video. Marketers now have a wide range of opportunities available at scale, from original Web series to content platforms. This sea change in the perception and power of online content has opened the door for digital content upfronts* to make a meaningful impact on the advertising dollars that are normally squirreled away in traditional media buys. But the deals transacted during these digital upfronts will be more than just media buys –- they’ll include original content and social activations that drive considerable earned media.

These earned media enhanced deals are possible because the heart of online video’s success is social. Not only has the growth of both social and video happened concurrently, but the futures of both social and online video are highly intertwined.

The fact of the matter is that content needs social, and social needs content. Social allows for the discovery and sharing of content, whereas video gives people something to share and discover through their social graphs. Considering the fact that almost an hour of new video is uploaded to YouTube every second, it’s pretty much impossible for people to find new content easily without social sharing and conversation.
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