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Posted 1/13/2009 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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I've found myself in trouble before for liking Microsoft's ad campaigns. Apparently I was the only person in the office who liked the bill gates/jerry seinfeld synergy. In fact, I loved it!
So this time, I'll just put the information out there, and let you tell me if you like it. Take a look at CNET's opinion here. Here's a video and an image from the same campaign:
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Posted 11/25/2008 by Matt, Acct Mgr
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You know that famous evolution poster that you saw in your college lab where the progression of monkey to man was explained? If you do, that means that Darwin is running strong over 100 years after he kicked the bucket. I think there should be an updated poster that isn't "sooo two centuries ago."
I thought it'd be neat to put together an the explained the evolution chart of main stream advertising. I found it fascinating how not just information on how and where to buy razor blades, but how all information was dispersed. Although I didn’t directly major in Advertising, I did take a liking to it through MassComm classes
Yeah, I know the elections are over most places. However, the massive flow of information (positive and negative) that I have absorbed over the last several months is still singed into my brain like a brand on the backside of a cow. One class that this latest election made me remember was one geared around the history of the disbursement of political information.
Picture this: Its 1860 and you’re living in a ten-year old city called Los Angeles, California. Not only is it an election year, but you have heard through the grapevine that things are heating up back east between Northern and Southern states. You obviously have an opinion on these topics and possibly which party you think would do the best job resolving it would be. But wait! Who is running?? Back in those days, it was very rare for any individual from West of the Great Plains to have any political say in Washington. So we can only assume all the candidates running are from back East. But who are they? Our newspapers are always weeks late and our writers are often misinformed. The telegraph only has one major line to California and that goes up to the Gold Country. Marconi won’t send his first Radio wave signal for another 40 years! What do we do?! Well, we just got to live with it. Eventually we’ll find out about this tall fellow (some people lived through the entire Lincoln presidency and didn’t have a clue what he looked like) from Illinois who would end up winning in 1860.
So now that you have a small picture of what it might have been like for those who cared about early America politics, what are the steps we have taken to get the word out about modern views, services, and goods? There was the man who stood on the soapbox that gave the latest and greatest news. Then, came the telegram/pony express era, followed by the telegraph, and eventually more current means.
Radio, Television and the big “I” have made methods and tactics to get an audience to think a particular way endless. In an election, the way you advertise is equally, if not more important, to what you say in your advertising. Obama took this to a level we have never seen before in an election. An Xbox 360 game called “Burnout Paradise” sold the Obama campaign political space within the online version of this popular virtual racer. As you drive through the streets in your supped-up McLaren, you can glance up to see a road-side billboard asking you to vote for Barack. He did the same in EA Sports popular game “NBA Live.”
As the national demographics changes and America gets younger, not only political parties, but all walks of life that advertise are going to have to continue to “evolve.” Putting an ad on MSN.com already doesn’t cut it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think is next in the way news and advertising travels. The topic of text messaging is excluded. I believe text messaging will be a thing of the past before current freshman graduate. I want to hear what is NEXT, not just how we we’re going to change we use current services like texting.
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Posted 10/15/2008 by Donald, VP, Sales
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Well the markets are in turmoil; what once was up now is down (way down) and everyone is looking to see where the bottom will be. One of the largest growth sectors for the tech sector has been in search. This has been well documented when you look at all of the moves in the space including Microsoft’s failed bid to acquire Yahoo earlier this year. So what’s going to happen?
There is an interesting article in the NYTimes today that talks about two very different approaches to search and what will most certainly be two very different quarterly earnings reports for both Google and Yahoo.
Even with Google being down there are some analysts who think that Google will rebound back to the high $500’s at some point. This post on TechCrunch touches on this. That’s pretty ambitious to say the least, but that sort of upbeat prediction is not being given to Yahoo. The book hasn’t been finished on Yahoo, but one has to wonder what would have happened if the Microsoft bid was accepted. Personally I think that it’s not over yet for that possibility, but a lot of ego’s will have to be shelved to make it happen.
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Posted 4/17/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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So I posted yesterday about my test run of the new Facebook Pay Per Click ad system. You can read that here for some background.
Well after one day, I have some updates. The number of targeted impressions you get is great. The customer service, well, not so much.
When you create an ad you get the option of paying per click (PPC) or paying by the number of impressions (CPM). I chose to go the PPC route, since that makes more sense when you can a call to action that is on the Web as opposed to simply trying to increase brand awareness.
I created two different targeted ads: one that hits Microsoft employees in a certain age group and geographical location, and another that targets people working in metro Seattle, since we have an office there that serves both Microsoft and other businesses.
The results have been interesting. Not good, but also not bad. You see, I'm not getting any clicks but I'm getting a ton of impressions. If I'd chose to pay on the CPM model, I would've spent a bunch more. However on the PPC structure I've only spent about $3 for over 18,000 impressions. That tells me the ads themselves aren't worded well. They're being seen, but not clicked. Check out the details below:
The chart at the bottom shows the actual clicks. Terrible. However the impressions are pretty high for one day. Especially considering these ads are targeting specific people in a very specific region.
So now to the bad news. Facebook's has embraced its status as a technology company by offering customer service with no human interaction. As I wrote yesterday, I kept getting an error message when I tried to create an ad. Here's what it said:
The text of this ad contains spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or both. As per section 4 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, all ad text should be logical, grammatically correct, and in the form of complete sentences with correct spelling. This ad should not be run again in its current form. Please make the necessary changes to your ad before reposting it so that it adheres to the above guidelines.
After several attempts of trial and error, since they don't tell me specifically what the problem is, I discovered the problem: I was using the word Silverlight in the ad body. Even Microsoft Word, ironically, tells me that word is misspelled. So I emailed their customer service to figure out how I can use a product name in the ad (I can't wait to see what happens when I try ASP.NET in a future ad). Here's what I got back:
Hi Peter,
The text of your ad contains spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or both. As per section 4 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, all ad text should be logical, grammatically correct, and in the form of complete sentences with correct spelling. Please review our Terms and Guidelines if you have further questions. This ad should not be run again on the site under any circumstances.
In addition, your ad contains improper or unnecessary punctuation. All ads must end with a form of punctuation. As per section 5 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, all ads should include logical, correct punctuation.
Please let me know if you have further questions or problems. Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Pam
Customer Operations
Facebook
Look familiar? At least she took the time to sandwich the cut and paste text I'd already seen between a nice personal salutation and her name. I didn't respond with what I wanted to, but for therapeutic reasons, here it is:
Hi Pam,
Thank you for your prompt reply! However, your response failed to meet my guidelines for effective customer service. Please refer to the common sense guidelines for dealing with humans. As per article 1 section 1, you shouldn't regurgitate the same generic language to someone who is spending money with your company and actually reaching out to you to find out how to spend even more.
In addition, your response seems to have been created by a robot. This is also a no no.
Please let me know if you're actually alive, and if so, the answer to my question.
Peter
Human/Customer
In reality, I just restated my question to Pam. We'll see if they actually write back. In the mean time, I'm going to write some more engaging ad copy to see if I can get those clicks up. Hoping to break in to double digits by day's end!
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Posted 4/16/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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I've been a fan of www.facebook.com for awhile. I specifically use it more for business than to keep track of friends. I've friended several clients and have in turn been introduced to their coworkers, which has been a great success. The whole time I've been using the site, I've been waiting to see how facebook would monetize itself. Well now I know.
Sure, they have the occasional banner ad on their site, but it's not overdone at all. But the real money for them will come in the form of pay per click (ppc) ads. While the ads don't reach beyond their site like google or yahoo's, they have something that google will never have: precision targeting.
Here's an analogy to tell you what I mean. Banner ads are like the atom bomb. Effective at their goal, sure. However there is a ton of collateral damage in the form of people outside of your target audience seeing your ad and therefore costing you money. Google ads are more like the bombs of the Korean War or Vietnam. They are designed to hit their target and their target only. Would you want to be next door when one goes off? No.
In this analogy, facebook ads are the smartbombs, capable of following you home, opening your window, and moving the curtains aside before taking you out. At least this is my first impression as I gave it a try for the first time yesterday.
The Pros
So the pros are obviously the targets. I was amazed at how granular you can get, but it makes sense because you tell facebook where you live, when your birthday is, where you work, and where you went to school. So the pros are that facebook offers some of the most targeted ads around (assuming your target audience is in the facebook generation).
In my particular case, I decided to go after employees of Microsoft. They are far and away our largest client currently, and we've only scratched the surface of contacts there that can contract with us. With their push towards Silverlight as a development environment, and our expertise there, I decided to make that my call to action. That brings me to...
The Cons
Facebook has certainly embraced it's tech company status. By that I mean no live help is available anywhere, and boy did I need it. I tried creating my ad 6 different times before getting it right. The reason is was disapproved 5 times? Spelling. Or so they say. I say Silverlight isn't a word in their dictionary.
So after a bunch of trial and error, since I couldn't tell for sure if that was the problem and the interface didn't give you a live "characters remaining" count, here's what I came up with:
After creating the ad, I discovered what I feel is another Con. You can't seem to edit the ad beyond the title. All I see is the option to create another ad. In going through the process 6 different times, I apparently forgot to check one option for "adding social actions to my ad." Now I can't seem to add it in, though it does sound pretty cool according to their FAQ's:
What does choosing ‘Add social actions to my ad’ do?
Social Ads leverage the actions that users take with Facebook Pages and Applications to create highly relevant promotions. If you choose to add social actions to your ad, we will attach any relevant interaction that a user’s friends have with your brand or business on Facebook as the headline for your creative. When you create your ad, you will be able to specify which Applications or Pages should contribute social interactions for your particular campaign.
What are the two versions of Social Ads?
A Sponsored Story is how a business or brand can start to promote their product or service on Facebook. This ad unit is 100% branded by the advertiser with copy and image and does not include any social actions. It can link to a Facebook Page, Application or external website. An ad directed to a Facebook Page or Application can generate social actions for future campaigns.
A Sponsored Social Story is a Sponsored Story with a user’s friends’ interactions with a Facebook Page or Application as the headline. It includes the branded image and copy from the advertiser alongside the social action.
The other Con is just a lack of real education about the system. For example, I needed to key in some keywords, which I made Web Design. It auto fills in the terms based on a limited set of options, but I honestly don't get the significance of the keywords. Does my ad only appear on pages about Web Design, and if so, where are these phantom Web Design pages on facebook? Is it only to people that list that as a hobby? I don't get it.
The help says I'm shown how many potential people fall in to the categories as I pick them, but I haven't seen that feature yet.
In the same vein, the bidding system is pretty much a shot in the dark as it is. I am asked for my maximum PPC bid, but am given no frame of reference. Hopefully these kinks will be worked out as the system evolves.
I'm sure I'm not the only person dipping their toe in the water of social media advertising. I promise to update my blog with status reports about how this tool works out.
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Posted 3/31/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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I was sent a mail this morning from one of my mates, a link to youtube -- It was a video about “The Shining re-cut." I never watched the Shining, as it’s a horror, and im a big girl when it comes to scary movies. However, I clicked on another video by the same user
“The Wedding Crashers” – now this is a movie I have seen many times. By using specific clips all from the movie and adding different music in the background, they gave the movie preview a whole new persona – of which I would have never in a million years watched it or learned the word “erroneous”.
So its important to know your audience when you are marketing your product -- get it wrong and you will pay the price.
Update April 1st
It seems there is a problem with this video the full URL is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRbw_J2Kzh4
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Posted 3/19/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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I read this jewel of an article today...
Are Internet ads better than TV ads?
BURLINGAME, Calif.--Here's a figure you want to remember: 80 percent retention rate.
Approximately 80 percent of people who watched videos on the Web site of broadcaster ABC (through the company's player) could remember the sponsor/advertiser of the program, said Brad Davis, senior vice president of online media sales and marketing for the Walt Disney Internet Group, during a presentation at the Digital Living Room conference taking place here. (Walt Disney is the parent company of ABC.)
Read More >>>
So even though I've told you before that the Internet is a more powerful advertising resource than newspapers (here, here, and here), I guess never did mention how the Internet is better than TV. Well, it is.
So why is it better? Well, there are two perspectives that need to be addressed: the advertiser's and the consumer's.
Advertisers love cable channels, because they give access to very specific groups. I see that every time I'm hiding in my closet watching "What Not to Wear" on TLC. Inevitably a tampon commercial comes on, reminding me just how far I am from the target audience.
Well, the Web has basically millions of little cable channels. Sure, advertisers need to work with more sites the get the ads to the same number of people, but the result is well worth it. In most cases there is just one ad before a news story or other video. Unlike the new Tivo world we live in, customers can't fast forward. As the only ad with a captive audience, it's no doubt retention rates are higher.
Sure, we haven't begun to see how advertising will be most prevalent on the Web (overlays ala YouTube or pre-video ala CNN.com), but we can be sure they'll work the kinks out as more and more people more to the Web for entertainment. More than 154 million Americans will watch online videos this year. According to eMarketer, that's a 12.1% increase from last year.
For consumers I think it's also better. You control what you watch. You create the channel. And along with that the commercials are shorter. No need for the shotgun approach of plastering tons of ads on tons of channels like we see on TV. Highly targeted ads like you see online are more expensive for the advertiser, but much more effective.
I think it's a win win. I love what www.hulu.com is doing with their ad model. Short, periodic commercial breaks of no more than 15-30 seconds 5 or 6 times in a full length movie. Last time I watched a two hour movie on TV it took 3 and a half hours!
Look for more networks to go the way of HBO. With advertisers flocking to the Web, they'll need to make money somehow.
Or they could all just move online too. :)
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Posted 3/14/2008 by Donald, VP, Sales
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After hearing Steve Ballmer talk at Mix last week about Microsoft’s focus on Search and Online Ads; it’s not hard to think that it’s all just rhetoric. I mean this is the kinder, gentler Microsoft that doesn’t need to be the top dog in everything, right?
Wrong. Just over the AP today comes a story of Microsoft’s plan to but Rapt Inc., which will put them right in the mix for developers needing tools to help create their ad executions. These are the same developer tools that Microsoft got from buying aQuantive last year.
What’s so crazy about the aQuantive acquisition is that they also happen to get one of the largest interactive firms in the world in the process (Avenue A l Razor Fish). Normally this sort of thing would have sent shockwaves through the agency space, but to date Microsoft has been very hands off with Avenue A. So much so that I was surprised that the last question from the crowd at Ballmer’s keynote was from an Atlanta employee of Avenue A asking (paraphrasing) “what are you going to do with us?”
Steve’s answer was a welcomed one in that he basically said that they were going to continue to do what they do and be left alone.
So at least for now, little firms like us are safe from prospect of the big dog getting in our space. I for one like things the way that they are.
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Posted 2/18/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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I have 3 free tickets to the Detroit Boat show - Feb 16th to 24th, all you have to do to win, is reply to this post with your details and I will contact the winner Wednesday.
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Posted 2/1/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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Microsoft Corp. is making an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo Inc., the Internet icon and one the best known Web portals, in a move to boost its competitive edge against Google Inc. in the online services market. read on here
Not bad for 2 blokes back in 94 that started of in a campus trailor seeking a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet.
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