Integrating Search and Display for Data-Driven User Experiences

Six months into 2010 and things are looking downright sunny, unless you’re BP, or want to swim in the ocean anytime in the next five years. So far the economic outlook is good and recent reports suggest that the digital world is poised for growth. Agencies are hiring again, staffing up new roles, and expanding teams. Clients are cautiously coming back to the digital world. Life is good in the kingdom…or so it seems.  A small storm is brewing. It’s not a client or budget problem; it’s an integration problem. Every agency is facing the problem of matching their user engagement strategy with their data-driven search efforts. How we approach this problem is key to organizing our agency resources to work with emerging trends and avoid the pending storm.  Search has always fallen into the category of algorithm-driven strategy, but with the rise of ad exchanges, demand-side platforms, and trading desks – the water has gotten murkier. With this “new” way to buy, agencies aren’t only educating clients on this new format, but also aligning an organization to deliver against it.

Read More: ClickZ

Apple’s Next Disruption: Advertising

If anything is clear from the punches being thrown by Google at Apple over mobile advertising, it is that the search giant understands what is at stake.  As mobile advertising comes into its own, Google should be well-positioned to grab a big piece of it. Prospects for other large media companies, online or traditional, are less sure.  It is easy to underestimate the importance of mobile Internet and advertising. ComScore estimates 48 million people had smartphones in the U.S. in the three months to April, of whom only 5.4 million searched the Web on the devices on a near-daily basis. In contrast, the firm counted 214 million people searching the Web generally in April.  Estimates from eMarketer put mobile advertising at $593 million this year, compared with about $25 billion for total online advertising.  But eMarketer’s numbers were issued last September, before the release of the iPad. The Apple tablet’s strong sales so far confirm consumer demand for tablet computers and suggest consumers’ online behavior is likely to become a lot more mobile. That is likely already the case for owners of smartphones with robust Web browsers like iPhones or Android-powered devices.  Android and iPhone devices commanded 37% of the smartphone market in the first quarter between them, according to Nielsen, against 35% for Research in Motion‘s BlackBerry. Nielsen’s data also show that close to 90% of iPhone and Android owners used the mobile Internet in the previous 30 days, compared with 73% for all smartphones. Browsing the Web on a BlackBerry can be a frustrating experience. So as RIM’s market share declines and iPhone, iPad and Android devices become more common, mobile Web use will take off.  Data are scarce on how mobile browsing affects online behavior at a PC. But the ability to do Web searches anywhere likely reduces those done at a desk. Searching could become less important as people rely on apps for certain functions.  All this should spark an ad shift to mobile, particularly to apps. Admittedly, advertisers can take years to respond to changes in consumer behavior. But Apple’s plunge into the ad market with iAds, which serves advertising inside apps, is likely to accelerate the change. That it drew $60 million in second-half 2010 commitments from such marketers as General Electric, Unilever and Nissan Motor indicates mobile-ad estimates are too low.  Who will suffer from the advance of mobile advertising? TV networks, potentially, if the caliber of big-brand advertisers snagged by Apple continues. As the mobile audience is likely to fragment among applications, big Internet portals also may be at risk. Regardless, mobile likely will cause a bigger, faster disruption to the ad world than is generally appreciated.

Read More: WSJ

Vivaki CEO Talks With AdExchanger

AdExchanger.com: What announcement do you have in regards to inventory partners?

CH: We’re the first holding company to be procuring inventory through AdECN. We were able to make that integration happen via Invite Media.  I was with Microsoft’s Darren Huston last week and he is quite pleased with the quality of advertisers he’s seen come through due to the integration and [the quality] of our brand marketers. We’re excited by that. It’s by no means exclusive and wouldn’t expect it to be. But, it now makes us interoperable with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. And we’re working hard on AOL which will hopefully happen in the near term.

AdExchanger.com:  What kind of inventory do you see through AdECN?

CH: AdECN is focused first on Hotmail. And I think as they understand how performance looks, we’ll expand from there. But, we’ve started with Hotmail.  The other good piece of news about this is the fact that it is through Invite Media, and post‑Google acquisition – [Google] has been very supportive.  Google realizes it’s for the DFA stack, away from media, and they appreciate that it works just like search bid management or serving ads. it’s a good thing for the industry that they’re taking the interoperable view.  You were asking [earlier] how we felt about the Invite Media acquisition. I think it’s great that what you’re seeing is some consistency where Omnicom (Click here for OMG CEO Matt Spiegel’s thoughts) and InterPublic Group (Click here for Cadreon CEO Brendan Moorcroft’s thoughts) – I believe through AdExchanger.com – they both have come out supportive and positive.

Read More: AdExchanger

Five Ways Foursquare Advertising is Getting Less Interesting

Foursquare, the geolocation social tool, has been a media darling as of late. Not only is it growing, but people innately understand the monetization model, which is not something you can say about every social site and tool. As people “check in,” or report where they are to their network, Foursquare serves them offers from nearby businesses. It’s a win-win-win situation: Businesses can market to people who are able to immediately take action; Foursquare earns revenue; and users get valuable offers they can use.  But Starbucks’ current program on Foursquare may kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or at least demonstrate how that goose may die a slow, lingering death of neglect). I believe (and I’m curious if you agree) that Starbucks’ ubiquity combined with the offer’s difficult redemption is decreasing attention for Foursquare’s other offers. If other large chains follow suit with similar promotions, those “Special Nearby” tabs within Foursquare’s mobile apps won’t get as much notice, and that means problems for advertisers on the Foursquare platform.  If you’re a Foursquare user, you’ve undoubtedly seen Foursquare offers, but for those who are not yet acquainted with the joys of mayorships, here is how it works: When you check in at a location, Foursquare will alert you when an offer is available in close proximity. With a click, you can view that offer. The first couple of times I saw this, the offers were interesting and immediately relevant. For example, I checked in at SFMOMA and was alerted I could get free entry to an art museum across the street.

Read More: MediaPost

The Global CMO Interview: Lorraine Twohill, Google

Google is not known for its marketing; the product markets itself. But as Google attempts to translate its one mega-success — search advertising — into other lines of business, marketing is becoming a more important part of what the search giant is all about.  Lorraine Twohill heads marketing for Google on a global basis as VP-global marketing, which means a lot more than most people think. It encompasses everything from TV and billboard ads in Japan — one market that Google doesn’t dominate — to videos for products such as Chrome or Docs and Google’s first TV ad, a Super Bowl spot called “Parisian Love.”  Google’s marketing takes different shapes all over the globe and must be relevant to countries with high broadband penetration rates, such as the U.S. or Korea, as well as places where people predominantly access the web using mobile phones or in internet cafés. It has no agency of record, but rather works with several agencies, including Wieden & Kennedy Japan and Bartle Bogle Hegarty in the U.S. and Europe.  Ms. Twohill joined Google from European travel site Opodo seven years ago, and assumed the global marketing role two years ago. She currently manages marketing teams in more than 30 countries.

Read More: AdAge

Jobs Predicts iAds Will Steal 48% of Mobile Advertising Market

Move over, AdMob and Millennial. Apple CEO Steve Jobs presented a slide at this morning’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco that claims that 48% of spending on mobile advertising in the United States from July through December of 2010 will go to Apple’s iAd advertising system for its iPhone and iPad portable gadgets.  “We’ve got advertisers committing to sixty million dollars,” Jobs told the assembled crowd of software developers and journalist. Among the committed advertisers, Job said, are Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney.  What iAd offers advertisers is guaranteed reach across a wide audience. That’s why big brand advertisers are signing up. So far, Apple hasn’t demonstrated that iAd will have the sort of personalized “long tail” targeting that made Google’s AdWords and AdSense a multi-billion-dollar business.

Read More: VentureBeat

The IAB Sets Up Tablet Task Force

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that it has formed the Tablet Task Force, a group comprised of publishing and interactive industry executives, in order to “help create an infrastructure that would support a variety of rich new advertising opportunities for the emerging technologies of tablets and e-readers”.   In reality, it’s all about the iPad, as evidenced by the focus on Apple’s device in this industry report on ‘tabvertising’ (PDF).  Also noteworthy: the IAB actively tries to kill the “myth” that lack of Flash support on the iPad is going to be a problem for advertisers, saying it “incredibly intensive on any computer to run, burning through batteries faster”.

Read More: TechCrunch

Audience Reselling: Does It Drive Profits?

In audience selling, a publisher sells impressions of a specific target audience to an advertiser.  In audience reselling, a publisher sells the audience data to an advertiser via an aggregator or network.  The decision to sell the data vs. the impression should be based on a financial model and expected returns.  Interestingly, I haven’t found any models that help publishers make this decision.  So here is my take.  Using the math set forth by GCA Savvian, data aggregators on average get $0.50 of every $10 CPM, and publishers receive $3.60 of every $10 CPM.  Let’s assume group of advertisers wants to buy 1,000,000 impressions ($10,000) to a specific audience demographic.  Let’s assume there is a publisher that has the data to target the impressions.  By selling only impressions to the advertisers based on their data, a publisher would receive $4,100 (their $3.60 cut and the $0.50 that would have gone for data purchase).  Now let’s look at this same scenario but selling data and impressions.  Assume a 60/40 split for data royalties to publisher.  At 40%, the publisher would get $0.20 CPM for their data. 

Read More: Blog.ScoutAnalytics.com