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Archive for December, 2009
December 23rd, 2009 07:09 PM
Ad News and Views from Around the Web
Good, bad and ugly agency holiday cards; mobility is the game-changer in 2010; top ten marketing stories; Yahoo! reaps science awards, and more
Best and worst agency holiday cards of ’09
Holiday greeting cards have been a staple of ad agencies for decades. They give copywriters, designers and producers a chance to spread their wings a little and speak, for a change, solely to the like-minded—other agencies and clients. AdWeek’s AdFreak offers up the best and worst holiday greetings of 2009. Hat tip to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ “New School vs. Old School“. (Be sure to send your clients a greeting, but whatever you do, don’t send along this “souven-ear.”)
Four ways mobility will change advertising in 2010
If you haven’t gone mobile with your advertising yet, now may be the time. iMedia Connection’s Dave Courtney shows us four ways that mobile will change the game in the next year. Ready, set . . .
CMO’s top ten stories of ’09
CMO.com has listed the ten biggest marketing stories of 2009. Among the gems you may have missed: Forrester’s piece on how to get your company ready for social computing; how to manage your brand in the Twitterverse; five trends that have remade marketing during the recession, and more. This being the last year of the “aughts,” you ought to pay heed.
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December 21st, 2009 05:18 PM
Comparing Apples to Apples
Understanding how to use comScore’s hybrid methodology for measurement
Given the importance of online measurement to the digital media industry, Yahoo! wanted to take a moment to highlight a significant shift in measurement methodology currently taking place. ComScore recently moved to a “hybrid” measurement methodology, which combines traditional panel-based tracking with publisher-deployed beacons. As a market leader we think this shift will bring improvements to our industry’s ability to differentiate itself from other mediums, but there may be a short-term period of confusion as the industry becomes exposed to the changes throughout this transition.
Yahoo! applauds this combined methodology because we think it draws upon a medium strength that is uniquely digital: our ability to fully measure audience size and engagement on our content and services. The industry has called for improvements in the measurement space for some time now, and we hope this shift will foster more accurate measurement, and allow for greater transparency in media planning for agencies and advertisers. We believe it will also reveal that past methodologies have significantly under-represented Internet usage globally.
At the same time, Yahoo! highly recommends that anyone using third-party audience data as a decision-making tool take the time to understand the methodologies underlying the data. (more…)
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December 18th, 2009 07:29 PM
Top Toys for Boys, 2009
Video games, Legos and Transformers lead the way
With the holidays as close as they are, anyone still shopping for toys is either a great parent or a glutton for punishment. If you’re finding yourself in this conundrum, you might like to get an idea of the top toys for boys this season, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2009 Top Toys survey. Knowing these most-wanted boys’ gifts won’t make shopping any less insane, but it might save you a few precious minutes…
For the complete article, please visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog.
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December 18th, 2009 12:00 AM
140 Conf Meetup @ Yahoo!
The Twitterazzi talk sharing and caring on the real-time Internet
Social media lets people connect in new ways, and that means more ways to “share and care on the real-time Internet.” That was the theme of the 140 Character Conference’s L.A. Meetup, where Yahoo! hosted more than 200 enthusiastic tweeters at our Burbank offices.
A joint venture between Yahoo!, the 140 Character Conference’s Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver), Make It Work’s Eric Greenspan (@ericgreenspan), the meetup brought some of the top tweeters together to talk about using social media to build businesses and communities.
Greespan MC’d the proceedings, employing his signature wit and humor, getting laughs throughout the evening. Pulver kicked off the list of speakers, discussing how as a kid he used ham radio to overcome his childhood loneliness, reaching out to other ham enthusiasts across the globe—an effort that required an FCC license and a lot of expensive, specialized equipment. With social media today, however, Pulver notes it’s possible to reach out across the same gulf with nothing more than a PC and a phone jack, no license required.
“When you start to reach out and connect with people your feel their presence no matter where they are” says Pulver. “There’s a soul behind the voice.”
Pulver then set the stage for the evening’s charitable theme by relating an anecdote about how Twitter helped him get help in moving boxes of gear from one place to another. He put an APB out on Twitter and six strangers showed up to help with his move. “If you ask for a favor properly, you can get just about anything,” he says. “If you are willing to let your guard down, amazing things can happen.”
The evening’s speakers included:
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December 17th, 2009 07:21 PM
Top Toys for Girls, 2009
Barbie, Hannah and Dora trump the Easy Bake Oven
The other day I was on an elevator with three women who were discussing the toys their children wanted for the holidays. One woman expressed concern that her daughter wanted an iPod Touch, and said “a two-hundred dollar electronic item for an eight-year-old girl? Whatever happened to the Easy Bake Oven?!”
I chuckled (to myself, since I wasn’t actually part of the conversation) and recognized that the landscape of gifts for girls has changed a lot since the days when girls just wanted toy ovens that cooked cakes with lightbulbs. iPod Touch aside, here are the other most popular gift items for girls this holiday season, according the National Retail Federation’s 2009 “Top Toys” survey…
For the full article, please visit our Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog.
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December 16th, 2009 08:16 PM
Ad News and Views from Around the Web
BNET’s worst creative of 2009; surge in games sales; “buzz” is not a metric; measure your holiday social media mojo; ad networks for every fetish, and more
Ten worst ads of 2009 (so far)
BNET.com’s advertising blogger Jim Edwards names his ten least favorite ads for 2009. We won’t judge Edwards’ judgments, but you can.
Video games and consoles top sellers again this year
According to the Entertainment Software Association, video game hardware, software and peripheral sales climbed to $22 billion in 2008, a 22.9 percent jump over the previous year. For more deets, switch over to the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog.
Does buzz + awesomeness = social media success?
“It’s good to finally see a growing backlash against…self-appointed social media gurus, mavens and sherpas,” writes Peter Holmes in Reason Applied, citing a BusinessWeek article that calls into question current social media measurement theories that abandon solid ROI practices. “How can anybody claim to be expert in a field that’s still attempting to figure itself out?” It may be time to get the old sliderule back out.
Measure your social media mojo this holiday
More like a horoscope than a solid scientific measurement, Yahoo’s new holiday mojo measurer can tell you what kind of tweetster you are this season. Just enter your Twitter handle and follow the pipes! Don’t like the result? Console yourself by creating and sending your own custom snowman to all the folks on your holiday list.
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December 16th, 2009 07:28 PM
Getting into the Game
Video game console and game sales are through the roof again this year
When it comes to holiday gifts, video games have been at the top of many people’s wish lists since Pac-Man first started gobbling power pellets in the early 1980s. As gaming technology has grown, so has the demand for the systems, games and add-ons that it takes to keep gamers happily mashing buttons (until the batteries run out).
According to the Entertainment Software Association, video game hardware, software and peripheral sales climbed to $22 billion in 2008, a 22.9% jump over the previous year. And that record was primarily set by the strength of video game sales in December of 2008, which came to $5.3 billion. That’s somewhat staggering when you consider that as recently as 1997, the industry generated only $5.1 billion over the entire year.
For the complete article, please visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog.
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December 14th, 2009 07:20 PM
2009 Holiday Shopping Trends
As expected, consumers are tightening their budgets and looking hard for good deals
Though 2009 wasn’t the financial nightmare that many predicted it would be, there’s no denying that it hasn’t exactly been a pleasant night’s sleep, either. And while many pundits predict it’s nearing an end, the recession has changed the consumer landscape and forced shoppers to totally rethink the way they shop; how much they spend, where and when they spend, and, most importantly, why they spend.
Careful consumer spending will be in full effect going forward, and the 2009 holidays will likely be no exception to the “new normal” of consumer caution. Here are some of the trends being reported among shopping-savvy consumers this holiday season…
For more, please visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog.
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December 14th, 2009 07:02 PM
New Yahoo! Mail, New Advertising Opportunities
“The check is in the mail. “
We’ve all heard that one. But now it just might be true for advertisers, with Yahoo! Mail’s new, upgraded features and ad units.
More for users
Our new features make America’s number one email service, with an engaged audience of more than 100 million monthly users, even more attractive. New Open Applications make it easier for users to do essential stuff like sending cash via PayPal, share and edit photos, store big files, manage invitations, get birthday reminders, view updates from friends without having to visit other social media sites, IM and send SMS messages and other cool stuff. (For deets, see the Yahoo! Mail blog.
Naturally, making Yahoo! Mail more attractive for users makes it more attractive to you, the advertiser—de facto.
But we’re not done yet.
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December 11th, 2009 08:00 PM
Creativity for All
In the documentary “Art & Copy,” the creatives are the heroes
Last week we gave a nod to the film, “Art & Copy” a documentary about creative folks in the agency world. Well, we finally saw “Art & Copy” a few days ago, and what a wild ride it turned out to be. For agency creatives, it has to be the must-see film of the year.
Directed by documentarian Doug Pray, whose award-winning credits include “Surfwise,” “Scratch” and “Hype,” “Art & Copy,” follows the paths of some of the greatest creative minds in advertising of the last half century. Among the superstars of creativity who make the film work are George Lois (Esquire), Mary Wells (DDB Worldwide), Dan Wieden, David Kennedy (Wieden+Kennedy), Cliff Freeman (Cliff Freeman & Partners), Lee Clow (TBWAChiatDay; pictured at right) and Hal Riney (Publicis), among others. It also discusses their trials and tribulations in creating masterpieces of the Madison Avenue trade, such as “Where’s the Beef?,” “Just Do It,” “I Heart NY,” “Got Milk?,” “I Want My MTV,” and Apple’s ground breaking “1984” and “Think Different” campaigns.
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