Archive for December, 2007

Digital Marketing Roundups are always curated by a member of the PMA’s Digital Center of Excellence

What’s going on in digital marketing this week?

Glad you asked. A very good, and a very bad contextual ad as chosen by the CopyRanter, MediaPost highlights Quiznos’ successful loyalty and promotions programs, and pieces from the New York Times on Webkinz’s shift to accept advertising on its portal site, while MTV/Viacom tests the waters with an ad supported free video stream of Jackass 2.5.

Contextual Ads: The Very Best & Very Worst [CopyRanter]
Quiznos Serves Up Hot Loyalty Building Programs [Mediapost, Reg. Required]
A Chapter of ‘Jackass’ as Web Test [NYT, Free Reg.]
Shift Away From Ad-Free Has a Price (Webkinz) [NYT, Free Reg.]

A quick update on what is going on in the world of social networks:

There’s been a huge amount of activity on the blogs and in online press on the Social Advertising front, regarding the implementation of the controversial Facebook Beacon feature.

A quick synopsis for those unfamiliar with the feature or the subsequent uproar it produced. When a member of Facebook has the Beacon feature enabled, that person’s friends and contacts will be notified every time the member takes an action or makes a purchase on a partner site (Fandango, Overstock.com, GameFly.com, etc.)

The benefit to integrated & digital marketers seemed clearly obvious: thousands of trusted micro-endorsements for your product or service delivered to your target audience from some of their closest contacts. To Facebook users, not so much.

The backlash began with users claiming Facebook Beacon ruined Christmas by revealing online purchases to friends and family. Making matters worse, the program was enabled for every user by default, was difficult to opt-out of and was difficult to manage. On Nov. 20th, online activist group MoveOn.org took up the issue as well, drawing attention to privacy concerns raised by Social Advertising. This and continued negative publicity led Overstock and several other partner sites to drop the program entirely, culminating in a public mea culpa from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a spot on parody of Beacon itself from one user. Is this an isolated problem related to Facebook’s specific implementation of social advertising, or is this a bellwether for what people will and won’t put up with in social marketing?

On the executive Networking front, Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that TheLadders.com is standing by its revenue forecast for 2008 ($60 Million) while LinkedIn has reduced its own revenue forecast ($75-100 Million, down from an initial projection of $100 Million). Lots of hype for TheLadders on SAI lately, could it be because they are one of SAI’s advertisers?

Elsewhere, It was announced this morning that Sprint will enable users to access MySpace’s mobile site via Sprint’s new mobile portal.

MediaPost’s Online Media Daily is drawing attention today to Click Forensics’ October 19, 2007 Q3 Click Fraud Index:

“IN THE THIRD QUARTER, MORE than one of four clicks on ads running on content networks like Google’s AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network was fraudulent, according to new stats from Click Forensics.

The Austin, Texas-based click quality monitoring firm released its quarterly Click Fraud Index… While overall click fraud inched up by less than 1%, click fraud on the content networks hit 28.1%–about a three-point increase from the second quarter and an almost 10-point surge from the end of 2006.”

Notice they are talking about click fraud on Google & Yahoo’s extended content networks, like Google AdSense, not paid search like Google AdWords.

Accurate numbers, or clever marketing from Click Forensics? You can decide for yourself by checking out the abstract here.

If the methodology is sound it begs a number of interesting questions: Will the industry drive price down and shift away from content network advertising in favor of paid search? Will Yahoo, Google and MSN be forced to discount the contextual ads it places on partner sites or will they need to beef up their anti-click fraud tech?

Digital Marketing Roundups are always curated by a member of the PMA’s Digital Center of Excellence

A couple choice pieces from the blogs and online financial press this week, including PSFK’s first impressions of Paypal’s new facebook / typepad e-commerce widget, Fortune’s take on Google’s plans to become a one-stop shop for media buyers, notes on Fox / NBC digital video platform Hulu and more.

(Pay attention folks, these will be on the test…)
Fortune Techland: Google’s Campaign To Become One-Stop Ad Shop
Research Brief: Cyber Monday Sets One Day Spending Record
Dead Air Space (Radiohead): Radiohead ending “pay what you want” downloads for new album In Rainbows December, 10th
PSFK: Paypal Introduces Paypal Storefront E-Commerce Widget [Via TechCrunch]
Silicon Alley Insider:Hulu indexing competing network’s video content to gain user base

Special thanks to everyone who turned out for today’s PMA Web Seminar: Road to The Reggies , it was a great success.

If you haven’t already, you should check out the Nov. 21st post in MediaPost’s Marketing Daily featuring PMA President, Bonnie Carlson. Marketing Daily praised Carlson and the PMA‘s new focus on Integrated Marketing:

"The Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) has stepped up to lead marketers into the digital age, where in-store signage electronically transmits product information to cellular phones, and marketers experiment with giving consumers perks for engaging at online sites like Facebook.

‘Consumers will integrate a brand into their lifestyle, choosing it against another brand, going to another store if they can’t find it,’ she tells Marketing Daily. ‘Every marketer’s dream is to have a consumer believe in their brand completely, but it doesn’t happen until you’ve integrated the entire marketing strategy.’

You can view the entire post here (MediaPost Registration Required)
Promotion Marketing Group Leads The Way On Integration

Previously on MediaPost:
New PMA Chief Discusses Integrated Marketing