Video: Industry Experts Share Tips for Targeting Women Online
Listen to key insights from The Women Connectonomics Study
Did you know that women will control $28 trillion in annual spending globally by 2014?
We did. That’s why Yahoo! researchers surveyed thousands of women to create The Women Connectonomics study. It’s a definitive look at the needs the Internet fulfills for women, why they turn to certain online channels and how receptive they are to advertising messages on various sites. Key study findings include:
The top needs for women revolve around personal growth and their interdependencies on others.
Women’s lifestyle sites like Yahoo! Shine and special interest sites fulfill the most needs for women.
Women are three times more receptive to marketing messages on lifestyle, specialty and review sites.
The study was released in late July at a Chicago event attended by industry leaders like top bloggers, CMOs, and key agency executives. Check out their expert tips for helping your brand connect with women online.
How social media helps heritage brands capitalize on their history and stay relevant
Laura Brooks’ email signature contains links to no less than four social media sites, which may seem odd for someone working for a century-old company, L.L. Bean, which got its start making waterproof duck boots. In charge of the company’s social media efforts,
Brooks avidly communicates with her more tech-savvy customers via Facebook, Twitter, online video and de.licio.us. “It’s the goal of every marketer to attract a younger customer,” she says, “and more so for L.L. Bean, since we are a hundred-year-old company and we’re seeing our customers age along with us.”
Giving old brands new life online
Heritage brands—those with 50 or more years of history—are generally pretty good at adapting, otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted. Many don’t make sexy products like the iPod, but everyday staples that people consume without really thinking about. We’ve previously examined how brands like Quaker Oats (trademarked 1877), Butterfinger (launched 1923) and Macy’s (founded 1858) partnered with Yahoo! to infuse themselves with new life. And, of course, the buzz in the ad world in recent weeks has been all about how Old Spice (founded in 1934) has re-invigorated itself with a stunning viral video and TV campaign.
Now we take a look at three classic apparel companies that are using the Web and social media to re-invent themselves, and their relationships with their customers.
L.L. Bean’s mission was to attract younger customers, and, in the process, to overcome its staid image. The Web, and social media in particular, turned out to be the perfect vehicle. To get people to see the brand in a hipper and fresher light, Brooks began posting shots from fashion magazines, where stylists would often juxtapose classic L.L. Bean products with edgier items.
Facebook also turned out to be a great way for a heritage brand like L.L. Bean to share its most valuable asset—heritage itself. “Our customers love to look at archival images like old catalogs and products, and hear the stories behind them,” says Brooks. “They also love talking about things like their Bean Boots or the barn coat that they’ve had for 30 years.”
Brooks originally thought social media would allow Bean to interact with younger customers, but in fact, its Facebook demographics are skewing older—and more female. The company’s Facebook fans have gradually shifted from equal numbers of males and females mostly aged 18-25, to being 75 percent female, with the majority of the now 28,000 fans in the 25-40 age range.
Connecting with customers
On March 15, 2010, the company launched a hip new line called Signature, which represented something completely different than anything the company had done before. Its marketing was entirely digital and driven largely by bloggers. “We didn’t do any formal advertising at all,” says Brooks. She quickly learned, however, that the customer for the new collection was different than the old. She had to create a separate Facebook page when older and more traditional customers left negative comments about the more youthful and slim-fitting new items.
Study finds that combining tactics can creep people out
Advertisers want people to remember and have a response to their messages. Even hating an ad is okay if it’s persuasive and memorable. What advertisers don’t want, however, is to squander money. Yet a team of researchers discovered that’s what some expensive campaigns are doing.
A recent study looked at sales-oriented online advertising to determine the effectiveness of different approaches. The researchers confirmed that matching an ad to a website’s content increases purchase intent. They also looked at formats like takeover ads, pop-ups and video players (which the study calls “obtrusive”), and confirmed that those work too.
The surprise came when they looked at ads that combined being obtrusive with being related to the content. Instead of increasing effectiveness, those ads were relative failures. Since the researchers estimate $664 million is spent on those combination ads, there’s a lot of money possibly going to waste.
Privacy concerns Figuring out the reasons behind these results is more difficult to prove, but the researchers have a theory—people may simply think it’s creepy when an obtrusive ad matches the content being viewed. They notice the combination of tactics, start to wonder if their privacy is compromised, and become suspicious that they’re being manipulated. These negative feelings may even get projected onto the company, product or service being advertised.
On the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, everyone deserves access—even to digital ads
Twenty years ago, busy intersections had steep, dangerous curbs onto the pavement. Today they boast gentle ramps that help those with impaired mobility move smoothly into the crosswalk. This is thanks in no small part to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law on July 26, 1990. And just as the ADA has helped make the physical world more accessible, Yahoo! is helping make the cyber world more accessible.
Enabling the physical, digital and advertising worlds
Some 650 million people around the globe live with disabilities. Enabling everyone to move smoothly online lets users, regardless of their abilities, get the information they need, when they want it. In fact, according to the National Organization on Disability, 48% of Americans with disabilities say that the Internet has significantly improved the quality of their lives.
And with the potentially vast scale of this audience, no one can afford to say, “You can’t do that.” The purchasing power of people with disabilities tops $1 trillion, including $220 million in discretionary income, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
To demonstrate Yahoo!’s commitment to inclusion, we’re running a pair of display house ads on Yahoo! Travel: one on how to find the best sushi in your area and another for the new Hollywood summer movie, “Grown Ups.”
To learn more about the art and science of accessibility in online advertising, download our .pdf, “Making Ads Accessible.”
DSPs and Yahoo!—Developing your advertising supply chain management strategy to get the “right media”
Over the past six months, the term “demand side platform” (DSP) has been disturbingly overused, becoming the online advertising industry’s favorite catch-all term for any company that buys on behalf of an advertiser but resists the monikers of “network” or “agency.” The troubling fact is that the industry has not settled on a reliable definition. Even more troublesome is the fact that “DSP” may not represent the true opportunity in the ad industry, as the need is much bigger than simply a platform to manage demand.
DSP vs. supply chain management
We may be getting into semantics, but a more accurate descriptor might be “advertising supply chain management,” and such a need may not be fully addressed by the players in the DSP space today.
You may have seen Terence Kawaja’s “Parsing the Mayhem” presentation in one form or another. You have may have even used his “buy flow” slide (slide Number 3 from the link above) in a deck at some point.
The most interesting aspect about that slide is not just the fact that you may be pulling yield out of the rates originally intended to pay for an impression, but rather, that you would need a tree of elves to manage the end-to-end process of a campaign, including an agency, trading desk, optimization technology, data inputs (third-party or advertiser-owned), inventory aggregators and inventory originators, to name a few. Most advertisers do not have these resources, hence the need for a supply chain management solution.
A brand is the message, image and promise that your business, product or service consistently, persistently and repeatedly communicates to consumers.
A business blog is an amazing tool for building your brand. Not only does it give you the opportunity to put a voice to your brand, which allows you to develop and meet customer expectations for your brand, but it also allows you to extend your business’ Web presence exponentially. Each new blog post you publish on your business blog becomes another entry point, and with each new entry point comes the potential for more traffic.
As the traffic to your business blog increases, so will the number of loyal readers that your blog attracts, the number of incoming links that your blog receives, and the extent of your business’ online presence. Increased traffic leads directly to building the awareness of your brand to a wider audience who could talk about it, link to your content, tell friends about it, and so on.
View a photo of Ben Stiller and Yahoo!, help build a school
Did you know that your click could be worth a dollar for charity? You can raise a dollar for Ben Stiller’s StillerStrong Foundation if you view a photo of Hollywood powerhouse Ben Stiller, Yahoo! chief marketing officer Elisa Steele and advertising legend Jeff Goodby taken at today’s Cannes Lions advertising festival.
Ben joined Elisa and Jeff on stage today in a beyond-packed session that maxed out the festival’s viewing spaces. The three participated in a wide-ranging discussion about creativity and storytelling, which covered how technology is changing the creative process on Madison Avenue and in Hollywood. (For more about Ben, Elisa, and Jeff’s session, check back later.)
At the end of the session, Ben posed for a group photo with Elisa and Jeff and a crowd wearing StillerStrong headbands, and uploaded it to Flickr. He asked everyone to view it and share it with their friends. For every click, Yahoo! will donate a dollar, up to $50,000, to Ben’s StillerStrong charity. StillerStrong is raising money for the Haitian School Initiative, an effort to help provide temporary schools for Haitians displaced by the earthquake in January 2010.
$50,000 will pay for one temporary school. Your view pays for part of that school. So click on it, and pass it on!
Cannes, France — The first day of Cannes Lions was a bit of culture shock—not just because everyone was speaking French and I could barely order a sandwich, but also because of the degree to which everyone had gone beach-y. For example, there was the head of JWT’s Continental Europe operations, wearing shorts—and a jacket—on stage, looking like a 12-year-old prep school student.
But even with the laid-back vibe of the crowd, the ideas kept pace with the buttoned-down—or at least, shoe-wearing—world of advertising outside of Cannes. Here are four ideas you should know about, even if you weren’t here: (more…)
New study helps us learn about our fathers
With the Web continuing to evolve as both a marketplace and source of entertainment, Yahoo! sensed a new storyline was emerging about how individuals use the Web. To better understand this story, Yahoo! surveyed roughly 8,000 consumers across the globe to assess their online needs, attitudes and behaviors. Working in partnership with Scalable Insights and Insights Marketing, we also did extensive qualitative analysis and observed real online panel behavior.
The result: 2010 Yahoo! Audience Insights, a comprehensive look at how key audience segments spend their time online. In this ongoing blog series, we’ll share the exclusive insights that emerged and tips for better targeting key demographics. And in honor of Father’s Day, we are kicking the series off by giving you a glimpse at how dads spend their time online. (more…)
Probably nowhere, says Yahoo! scientist at Internet Week
Yahoo! Labs research scientist Duncan Watts brought some serious thinking to Internet Week yesterday when he explained for the Mashable audience the science behind social media.
Yahoo! has extensively analyzed Twitter streams—what gets tweeted and retweeted—and found that “99% of tweets don’t go anywhere,” Duncan said. While that may seem like bad news, it actually can be good news for marketers if they learn how to harness the power of a lot of average tweeters rather than one big powerhouse.
Duncan said that Twitter makes a great environment for social scientists, because it involves human interactions that are measurable. He talked about how difficult it can be to predict what will go viral on the Web or not—but that the data gathering made possible by Twitter is making it easier to know what might succeed. For more on that, watch the video below:
Making advertising part of entertainment Meanwhile, at the IWantMedia “Future of Media,” panel discussion at New York University, Jimmy Pitaro, Yahoo! VP of North America Audiences, held forth with Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post (more…)
Over the past six months, the term “demand side platform” (DSP) has been disturbingly overused, becoming the online advertising industry’s favorite catch-all term for any company that buys on behalf of an advertiser but resists the monikers of “network” or “agency.” The troubling fact is that the industry has not settled on a reliable definition. Even more troublesome is the fact that “DSP” may not represent the true opportunity in the ad industry, as the need is much bigger than simply a platform to manage demand.
Editor’s Note: This article is excerpted from 
Cannes, France — The first day of Cannes Lions was a bit of culture shock—not just because everyone was speaking French and I could barely order a sandwich, but also because of the degree to which everyone had gone beach-y. For example, there was the head of JWT’s Continental Europe operations, wearing shorts—and a jacket—on stage, looking like a 12-year-old prep school student.
