DOES SIZE REALLY MATTER?

As I "re-imagine" interactive advertising design as part of IAB's new task force to update their new standard ad guidelines, I ask myself, "Does Size REALLY matter?". The answer is less than you might think.



I have a feeling that more people will jump to the conclusion that increasing ad sizes will magically reverse the trend of declining online metrics. Not so fast my friends. The answer is in positioning, not size. Think about it. Where do you see most large rectangle units? Homepages and within content/stories. Now, where are the smaller units? They are on the peripherals within the navigations - where no one is looking. It's not about the ad size of a takeover ad. It's about the take over itself. Same thing with a Welcome Ad. To this point, there has been chatter of getting rid of the leaderboard unit based on performance. The size isn't obsolete, the position is. Hey, I've been on the publisher side, so I undertand the need for buttons, leaderboards, skys. But if we want to really improve the performance of the online channel, then we'll put our thinking caps on and come up with better positioning and user experiences.

Quick quiz: Without looking, which one of these is in the header of this blog? A. Clouds, B. Trees, C. Birds. Don't know? Thought so, but I bet you saw the ad for the Entertainment Book.

(Media Buying Tip: Ad networks or any buy that involves remnant inventory will charge the same rate for a bundle of ad sizes (468s, 160s, 728s and 300s) compared to portals or contents site, which put a higher value on the bigger sizes - as well as they should. So take advantage of this and opt to run only the bigger sizes, or the 300s only. You'll end up with better metrics and more importantly, better positioning as well.)

Night On The Town With WWE

So, face it - as an interactive agency, there are some perks that come along every now and then. The latest adventure was a M2I's group outing to fantasy land....Wrestling fantasy land!

Thanks to WWE.com and our online sales rep Stacy (she was the BEST hostess ever) for the opportunity to witness in person one of the top U.S. spectator sports.

You know the saying, you learn something new every day? Well, here's my learnings from the field trip...

1. I got a totally different perspective of wrestling fans. From my observations, I would guess the demo is: Middle America: 18-54, Middle Income, Single Men and Married Couples w/ Children, High Propensity for Brand Loyalty (Am I even close Stacy??)
   
2. Giants DO exist....check out these guys...I am having nightmares that Kane is coming for me and that Batista wants to be my friend
   
3. I knew that I was being drawn-in and wrapped up into the soap opera when I heard myself yelling "Bring It On!" and chanting for the defeat of someone dressed like J.R. Ewing in speedos. Again, the nightmares continue...

Happy Hump Day Everyone!!

Google Ad Planner

There has been a lot of hype around the launch of the Google Ad Planner. Many questions have surfaced; Will it replace ComScore and/or QuantCast? Is Google trying to steal agency business, etc., etc., etc.....

Well, I've gained access to the Beta for Ad Planner and I am here to voice my opinion. First of all, I don't see it replacing anything or anyone - I'm sure most online strategists will agree - the more the merrier. Each tool - @plan, AdRelevance, Hitwise, ComScore, QuantCast, Alexa, QuantCast and Google Ad Planner all have their role to play in a media strategy. A good media strategy takes information from all of these sources into account and looks for the most effective way for the advertiser to achieve their online marketing goals and objectives.

Once the strategy is in place, the media plan itself should be based on data (and a pinch of planner intuition). First there is the publisher data -placements, pricing, creative formats. Next, publisher data needs to be paired with forecast data; either from historical client results, Media Two historical results or planner experience. Once the plan is compiled using the numbers, it is usually clear which pubs have a shot at being successful in meeting the goals.

Most importantly, no online direct response campaign should be left alone, the real work is "after-the-buy ". This is where the best interactive agencies distinguish themselves and where Media Two prides itself. Third party ad serving provides the data, but it takes human experts in interactive to continually optimize the campaign.

So, my opinion, Google Ad Planner is just another tool, use it to compile your research. It will never replace the human factor that is necessary to run a smart online marketing campaigns.

Everybody's Doing It, Why Aren't You?

I have been thinking recently about Media Two Interactive, our current clients and future clients. This reflection involved me asking "What Advertiser Would I Want to Work With", as well as, "Who Do I Think Media Two Can Help" take their business to the next level. It is somewhat the same question, but there is a difference. I was able to put together a solid Top 10 list of companies that I would love to help grow their business online. This list read like the "Hobbies and Interest" section of some online dating site (Interests - Golf, Fitness and Wellness, Technology, Long Walks O... ok, not that). So, if anyone from ClubCorp happens to stumble across this blog, call me! We could do great things in the online space, as two of my passions come together, Online Marketing and Golf.

As for the second question, Who Can Media Two Help? That's simple, any advertiser who is not spending the industry average of 10% of their marketing budget on the Internet. The trends speak for themselves (Online Ad Spending Should Grow 20% in 2008). Online ad spending has already surpassed Radio in the overall marketing mix (Internet to Surpass Radio in 2008), and will soon leap Magazine advertising. The time is now to get onboard.

Maybe you handle your online marketing in-house or maybe your longtime agency handles your "one-off" online initiatives. That's fine, but if you marketing mix doesn't include a 10 - 20% budget allocation to online marketing, then you're a candidate for expanded efforts. With one of our most successful clients, Media Two grew their online budget from less than 1% in 2006 to 49% in Q3 2008. I think that's worth repeating. 49% of the total marketing budget went to online in Q3. So, jump on in, the water feels great!

MOBILE MARKETING with a catch...

Although I hate to push Nick's "Thank You" blog down the page, I wanted to share some thoughts on Mobile Marketing and how it translated to one of our most direct response clients. As a sidebar, Nick is right. Media Two gives all the avenues for personal and professional growth. But Nick, don't sell yourself short, you already possess the skill set foundation of a media strategist, but you just may not know it yet or give yourself enough credit.

Ok, back to Mobile Marketing. It seems like everyday I peruse the industry news and there's always an article on Mobile Marketing and how to best utilize it to reach your audience. So, after multiple exposures, I decided to take notice of this article in iMedia Connection called Top 5 things to know about SMS advertising. Obviously, Mobile offers several formats to advertising, but this article focuses on SMS (Short Message Service) or text messaging. As I'll always preface an article I reference by saying that most of these industry articles are written by an expert in the particular channel being discussed, as it should be; however, most of these articles, like this one, are written from the publisher side. So, take this agenda into consideration and I'll show you what I mean later on.

The first three points of the article of excellent and very true. The channel does offer mass reach, easy implementation and enough targeting to be "in the ballpark" with your target. From a direct marketing standpoint, this is all we need for a test (get an aggressive out clause first). And this is exactly what we did for one of our clients, and the results were mixed, hence the reason for the blog.

In the article, Zaw Thet's first point was "big reach, and audiences are already opted-in". Both are true, but... The reach is dictated by the cost model you negotiate with your mobile partner. In our case, we negotiated a Cost Per Call program, which offered a massive amount of reach, and to be honest, a little bit of spam too. However, the benefits of a performance cost model on our ROI outweighed this negative. The other part of the statement, "audiences are already opted-in" is loosely accurate, with the key word being loosely. Very loose, almost deceptively loose. This is what I mean. Let's say I'm watching an NFL draft special on TV and see something asking me to text a shortcode to a number to receive draft updates to my phone. I'm not going to be able to watch it live, so this is perfect for getting my fix. Well, some conditions apply in small print on the TV screen that I may or may not have seen. In our experience, the user does not see this and just focuses on the shortcode and number to text it to. So, what they don't know is they've "opted-in" to receive sports alerts AND ADVERTISING. Also, within this fine print is their OPT-OUT language, which I'm guessing, most of the time, the user isn't paying attention to that either. So to continue my example, I get my draft updates to my phone, but I also keep getting sports updates well past this event and pretty much whatever else the mobile partner wants to send to me, including ads. And unfortunately, I can't remember how to make them stop (opt-out). Listen, I understand and am fine with the process described, but that's because I'm in the industry. Think of the general public. Two months from now, they have forgotten that they signed up for draft updates, they are getting addition text messages which they think are random, advertising is included, and on top of all that, it is costing them money if they do not have unlimited texting. So, this is exactly what happened in our case when we thought that "audiences are already opted-in". Within our ads, we included our 800 number to call to schedule an appointment, and we had a number of these types of complaints where users didn't have any idea where or when they "opted in" to receive these messages, and unfortunately, the CSRs were not able to help them because of their lack of recollection. So, you, the advertiser, are left cleaning up the mess of a flawed sign-up process and a consumer that doesn't pay attention. Fortunately, we were able to put a process in place to combat these occurrances and still show strong results, so we would do the program again.

We all know that targeting is a key component of any media strategy, and mobile is no exception. Zaw offers two great ways to achieve this, content and messaging. In our case, we used a performance cost model, which made the content targeting less important, although we were able to choose some verticals to test. The copy or message targeting is an excellent point with him saying "one size fits all ad copy is one of the most common reasons for poor campaign performance." Now, I don't know if this is the "most" common reason, but it behooves any advertiser to heed his advice.

Lastly, I'm not disagreeing in the last two points, because I do think that the channel can be an excellent CRM tool to build a relationship with your consumer, but the idea of "participation media" goes against at least 2 of his first three points. These custom games and surveys to engage the audience does require legwork, lacks reach, and what Mr. Thet fails to mention, is expensive, meaning more commissions for him, which is part of the reason why it conveniently made it's way into the article.

What Influences You?

My last post was inspired by a recent article on eMarketer, and to continue with that theme, this post is too. In this article called E-mail Marketing Still Works, the main focus was that “permission-based email is great at getting consumers to buy”, with the key word being permission-based. What they are really saying is CRM emails convert at a high rate. Yes, we knew that. There are still some interesting points regarding email marketing that you may fancy, so take a look. I’d like to take a more general view of the data and provide some feedback.

Let’s focus on the research from the “Green Marketing Study” by Opinion Research Corporation with the chart titled Type of Advertising that Most Influences US Adult Online Buyers When Making an Online Purchase. Another layer of this data that I like is it’s segmented by age and US region. There are several ways to use this information, but the two most obvious are landing page development and media buying.

According to the aforementioned study, younger folks like to have assurance from others before making a decision and older folks consider search results their pied piper leading them to a decision. This makes a lot of sense as I made several recent online purchases based on customer reviews on Amazon.com and other consumer report sites beforehand. They did not have any effect on purchase intent, but did influence my decision on the brand.

Speaking of reviews, we recently incorporated video testimonials into our landing pages, and although it may be too early to tell, the initial results have been positive. So, give it a try when developing your next landing page. Although ideal, it doesn’t have to be a video, just tie in some reviews and written testimonials … to go along with your kick-ass value prop in the upper left hand corner and call to action button strategically and prominently placed on the page.

I rarely use an email to initiate purchases unless the offer is phenomenal, but the results don’t lie. It does show that you can have success with a very qualified list rental, or even better, remarketing efforts via email. This is a whole other blog entirely, but CRM is an area that, more often than not, the client is neglecting and failing to utilizing these qualified leads to the best of their ability. The biggest problem is the turnaround times are just too slow. If I’ve made the effort to raise my hand, don’t contact me back in two weeks or worse, two months. I will have already started a conversation with your competitor or made a decision already by then, and now, you are just spamming me.

Lastly, it is surprising that display on social networking sites is at the bottom of the list. For a service or product targeted to a younger demo, social networking sites have worked well in the past, mainly because the inventory is inexpensive. On the other hand, I am not surprised about Blogs. From a direct response standpoint, these do not work, as well as, you run the risk of creating a negative forum that could harm your brand.

Search Account has “Hit its Limit”?

Some people will tell you that that can never happen…but anything is possible…and exhausting your keyword universe is definitely possible. People only use certain keywords…and only so many of them…and if you have a high enough budget to test ALL of them, you could find yourself at the end of your rope, not being able to drive anymore traffic (or should I say…relevant traffic).

If you have ever found yourself researching keywords that are as far-fetched as your budget or CPA goals can often be, here are a few initiatives you can test that will help in growing your search marketing campaigns, at the very least allowing you to increase visibility in the hopes of driving additional traffic and, in turn, conversions:

1. Create separate campaigns for content-network targeting:

This will place your ads on sites related to your product/service. You'll typically see a large increase in impressions, but as long as you use your best ads (from a CTR standpoint), you should generate an increase in traffic as well.

These campaigns should mirror your existing sponsored search campaigns and only use your top 30-50 keywords (based on conversion volume)

2. Create a separate placement-targeted campaign:

Generate a list of sites based on category, demographic, topic, etc straight from AdWords. Within this campaign, you are able to use image ads and video (depending on the site) for enhanced branding.

One campaign should target your demographic profile and the other should target sites relevant to your product “topic” or category.

3. Yahoo Search Submit Pro (aka. Paid Inclusion):

This is a cheap and relatively painless way to get your site indexed in the organic search results on Yahoo.

4. Ad Text testing:

I know this is like beating a dead horse, but if you can manage to alter your ad verbiage to garner more consumer interest, you will drive traffic and increase your spend without too much effort. Of course, there is no guarantee (as your new ads may actually turn consumers off), but it’s always worth a shot.

Thoughts on Media Optimization

I was glancing over one of my favorite Marketing & Advertising publications, Adrants, and I came across this article with an interesting perspective on media optimizations. The name of the article was Media Optimization Has Trumped Creative Optimization. The theme of the article spoke about how we, as online marketers, are forgetting the importance creative plays on the success of our campaigns with flaws in our campaign implementation, thus limiting our ability to gain learnings from a creative standpoint and act swiftly to optimize based on those results.

This brings up a good point, but before I give you my perspective on the subject, let's quickly define what it means to optimize an online campaign and some best practices. The definition of optimize means to "make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible". So, as direct marketers, we are responsible for driving desired actions as cost-effective as possible. We look at "Cost Per" metrics (CPA, CPC, CPM). We look at frontend and backend response rates (CTR, Conversion Rates). We also look at post click activity volume and traffic trends. As mentioned, based on these learning, we swiftly make adjustments.

Getting back to the article, technology has come so far to do some of the work for you. By setting rules within an adserver, the campaign will be delivered and optimized in real-time based on the aforementioned factors. This still does not cut out the manual aspect of going in and using your expertise to make the necessary tweaks.

In an ideal world, the online marketer can let the campaign ramp up and gain data to evaluate. Again, in an ideal world, the progression of optimizing a campaign would start on a creative level, then placement level (even certain creative on the placement level), and then if that fails, then the optimization would be done on a site level, which is another way of saying cancel the site.

Unfortunately, we may not have the luxury to follow this progression. A site is going from bad to worse, and your campaign goals are dots in your rear-view mirror as you head towards CPOutofcontrol. So, getting back to the question, Has Media Optimization Trumped Creative Optimization? Unfortunately, I think it has, and in many cases, by necessity to keep our promise to our clients. The promise as direct marketers to deliver conversions as efficiently as possible, and as a result, it requires us to skip steps one and two, and have the conversation that nobody likes to have with our new test partner. Let's face it, it's more work for us to start and cancel a campaign, then to start a successful campaign and let it run. But, if all campaigns were a success, then Media Two wouldn't need 48 hour out clauses.

Lastly, the article fails to mention two addition factors to rolling out a campaign with "10 or more versions of a creative unit" to go along with the incremental cost. Good design is time-consuming, which can easily become a bandwidth issue. The benefit of Media Two versus other shops is our ability to meet agressive deadlines, but creativity doesn't happen overnight. And once the concepting is done, getting your assets through the client's legal team is a full-time job in itself. My best advice is to plan ahead. Start concepting for Q3 now...sound crazy? Save yourself the headache and trust me.