Predictions for 2012

I’ve been reading a lot of predictions for next year with regards to tech-media, strategy and audience.  After the past six months of planning, execution and follow up for Digital World Expo, I’m posting this just a few hours before midnight to get my input out there as well.

2011 saw A LOT of movement within the digital media and interactive marketing realm.  The mobile app space is literally exploding and the portability of media through gadgets and new products from the ‘big boys’ has become a sea of formats everyone is racing to accomodate.  The conference kickoff was a big success and we’re looking forward to an even better (and bigger) event in 2012… or “v201.2″ as we’ve been calling it. 

Anyway, back to the ‘predictions’.  With all the changes and advancements over the past few years, you can expect these areas of interactive media to grow and become a bigger ‘beckoning’ for your time and budgets… Read more

Last post for a while…

For those of you referencing this blog regularly, I must apologize.  But the next steps in furthering interactive marketing and media education for professionals will probably explain my absence.  Around October last year, I started to notice there to be a surge of offline/traditional media folks desiring more education around our digital media space.  For over a decade, it was always “oh, that’s internet, talk to our internet guy” or “digital stuff needs to be handled by our interactive group” when traditional media professionals were faced with opportunities they didn’t typically work on.  Not anymore.

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“The book” is posted – read it here …

Emerging Marketer was published in February 2010 (although the contents were finished by Q3 2009).  It was decided back then to allow the distribution to commence through commercial channels before publishing it for all to see for free if they wanted to.  75% of the book has been published here for your reading pleasure.  The book has sold a number of copies to professionals, including 4-5 universities who have made it “required reading” for their classes.  However, the intent for the publication was to educate.  Period.  No visions of granduer or anything like that.  It was created for those who love the world of interactive media, for those just now getting their feet wet in the space, and for those like me, who have been around for a while and are constantly looking for technological advancements offering more audience opportunity for our businesses.  Click here to start reading, it’s broken down chapter-by-chapter for easy navigation.  Would love to hear your feedback as always!  Enjoy!

Another acquistion to bite the dust?

I received a notice last week from Dapper who I’m a big fan of.  They specialize in dynamic ad units that adjust themselves based on different variables, assisting online advertisers with pushing the right message to the right “user”.  Seems they recently signed a deal with Yahoo! to be acquired by the portal which will help them leverage audience resources.  Details from WSJ here.

On the surface, good for them!  But in the back of my mind I recollect a few other recent acquisitions that seemed to go nowhere….  Read more

Simple Landing Page Optimization

I don’t feel that in most cases online advertising creative should be optimized based on revenue.  Your landing page and/or website is responsible for the conversions happening as a result of your ads.  With a properly optimized landing page, your advertising should focus on targeting the right users and generating as many clicks as possible.  To say that a particular ad unit was responsible for bringing in revenue isn’t accurate.  It’s the experience your users go through “after the click” that determines your ultimate sales. Read more

Cookie Age vs. CPM

As cookie usage continues to be applied toward campaign optimization and success, network advertising has grown to astronomical levels.  Behavioral Targeting practices use cookies to tag and uncover users that have traversed our sites and/or content relevant to our industry.  Javascripts recognize those users and allow us to present our online advertising specials, offers, discounts, etc to the user who has exhibited this behavior.

On the surface, re-marketing looks like a no-brainer for online marketers.  But as you dig deeper into cookie expiration dates, brand placement and view/click metrics you start to get a much more interesting picture.  Users that are re-marketed to are done so based on their behavior at a certain time.  Say, for instance, you are looking for a last-minute birthday present for your mom (as I typically am).  Several sites are visited with the purchase (conversion) taking place within a couple days.  How does this impact advertising expense?  A lot. Read more

Round and round we go with distribution…

This week an article was published by EyeForTravel reflecting a recent survey taken amongst airliners.  I thought this would be a good time to highlight a snapshot of where things stand in my opinion with wholesalers, online travel agencies and middlemen when it comes to distribution of product inventory – specifically within the travel sector.

First off, read the full article here: Airlines to sell the majority of tickets direct to passengers by 2013: Survey.  Next, be sure and at least subscribe to their newsletter.  I’ve been keeping up with them for a few years now and find several valuable nuggets of info with regards to the travel industry and digital media.  Okay, so back to the commentary.

For those of us involved with product distribution (whether it’s tickets, books, reservations, or other retail items), we’ve all seen the struggle between dealing direct with the consumer or pushing our offers through a 3rd party wholesaler.  I say “struggle” because it often times feels like a big pendulum swinging back and forth.  Over the past twenty years, we’ve seen it.  At first, distribution channels were tapped because companies were finding themselves behind-the-curve with their online presence and e-commerce.  Then, as the dotcom economy heated up after 2002, merchants gained a lot of confidence in their ability to sell direct.  They kept up with usability standards, tested different ecommerce platforms and focused on each user having a smooth purchasing experience.  3rd party sites and wholesalers still had their place, but the merchants were a little more bold and started to shift their inventory.  The scale was about to tip over in favor of direct dealings with online consumers when the economy really slumped in 2008. Read more

Social Behavioral Targeting

Recently an article entitled Ex-Googler Targeting Social Behavior was released on MediaPost commenting on the recent topic of BT advertising – not only based on user browsing patters, but on social networks as well.  Mapping ad units targeted to user behavior is old news. Integrating their social behavior is a new twist. Media6Degrees as many of us know has been working to develop systems that configure advertising in milliseconds in order to serve ads based on our social networks.  Advertising to “friends of friends” so to speak based on our surfing and buying patterns. Just as social media is the next layer for affiliate marketing, social behavior is the next layer for behavioral targeting. It’s still a “touchy” topic for consumers though as resonated by the first response to this article…. ouch!

“Hits” vs “Visits” – a tell-tale sign

Have you ever heard someone say, “We get over 100,000 hits per month on our site”?  Or perhaps you’ve heard this: “This page had 10,000 hits on it yesterday”.  As crazy as it sounds, these statements can be a tell-tale sign of individual experience with online measurement.  I remember listening to a number of sales professionals tell me they’ve got Read more

Social Media – The “Catalyst” for Entry

For those of you who have been “around the block” in the internet marketing world, take a step back and recollect 10 years ago the way you spoke to traditional “offline” media advertisers.  Remember trying to explain SEO, cookies, user behavior, etc?  How many times did you go home and beat your head against the wall because you felt (or at least many people you knew felt) you were crazy.  Well, those days are over… almost. Read more

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