Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Yahoo’s March Madness hoop dreams; recession brand lessons; data’s not everything; eyeing your agency, and more

Calling all bracketologists
March brings with it green beer, spring flowers and, of course, three weeks of hoops hysteria in the form of the NCAA college basketball tournament. This year’s Yahoo! Sports March Madness line-up is stronger than ever, beginning with our seasoned veteran, Tourney Pick ‘Em. The contest pits Yahoo! users against each other and the “experts,” with cash prizes of up to a million dollars on the line. Something new and cool for this year’s tournament is “Predictalot,” an experimental app from the brainiacs at Yahoo! Labs: Predictalot enables fans to make all types of prestidigitations, then assigns odds and lets users buy and sell them like stocks. Yahoo! has also created a dedicated mobile site just for your tournament picks, as well as a new web show, “Bracket Madness Live.” Picking begins this Sunday after the match-ups are announced, and the usual bracket-busting begins Thursday, March 18.

JWT’s top ten lessons recession brand lessons
Those JWT guys sure are into their “top tens.” The global agency spent a year surveying brand and consumer response to the recession, and came up with ten key brand lessons for surviving a downturn. And then they put them all in a book, which you can download for bupkis—well, in exchange for the usual name/rank/serial number data, anyway.

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Boyle’s Stop-Start Ten Commandments

Ten ways the ad industry needs to transform, according to JWT’s Sean Boyle

Editor’s Note: JWT’s Global Planning Director, Sean Boyle, was the bad-boy beau of the ball at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) “Transforming Advertising” conference in San Francisco last week. With wit and an Irish gift-o’-the gab, Boyle presented his “The Stop-Start Ten Commandments”—five things agencies need to stop doing and five things they need to start doing. It made the room so pregnant with nervous laughter—because only the truth is funny—that we asked him to write an excerpt for us. Listen up, creatives and agencies.

1. Start Telling the Truth
To each other.  To our clients.  About our brands.

2. Stop the Bloody Politics
Because we’re an industry run by bankers, it is the conniving crowd pleasers rather than the cream that tend to rise to the top. A general rule: in most agencies, those with vision who “get-it” are bullied and undermined at every turn by those with no vision, who don’t.

3. Start Having Fun Again
We used to be the envy of the salary-man. Why have we let it become so serious and dull?  The greatest work ever done in our industry, has always come from places where people like each other and enjoy—really enjoy—playing (and partying) together as a team.

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4A’s Conference Round-Up

The Yahoo! Advertising blog’s got you covered

This week, your indefatigable Yahoo! Advertising correspondents went on a field trip to the 4A’s “Transformation 2010” conference in San Francisco. (Those 4A’s stand for the American Association of Advertising Agencies.) While there, we did old the meet and greet, tweeted, and posted to Facebook our take-aways from some the smartest minds in the advertising world. We even did a little live blogging and took some video, too. (Lookin’ good, Carol!)

Below is a round-up of some the most interesting sessions, in case you couldn’t be there in person.

How Social Media Has Transformed the Communications Landscape
Who: Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, The Huffington Post
What: Huffington spoke with considerable humor about how the Internet in general and social media in particular have changed the way people interact with media content. “We”—meaning users as well as media outlets—“are consuming news, sharing news, developing news. We are all part of that story,” she noted. Online readership is up 34 million in the past few years, while newspaper viewership is down 7 million. The key for understanding and engaging the online medium for publishers and advertisers is  “transparency and authenticity.” At the 4A’s conference, she mentioned what she calls the “four E’s:” engagement, energy, empathy, enthusiasm, enrichment. These are the real drivers of audience behavior online.
So What?: The shift in attention to online presents a huge opportunity for advertisers and marketers because the most engaged consumers are the most loyal consumers. Notable quote: “If Carol Bartz is outspoken, what does it make me, a demure shrinking violet?” Probably not, Ms. Huffington.

More on this session via AdAge.

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Segmenting segmentation; bad tech predictions; activity streams are the new black; consumers using online search for offline research, and more

What segmentation is right for you?
“There are three main types of segmentation,” says ClickZ’s Neil Mason. “Demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation, and attitudinal segmentation. But which one is best? It really depends on what problem you’re trying to solve.”

The Internet’s doomed—and other bad tech predictions
Writing in Slate, Farhad Manjoo takes on the 1995 prediction that the Internet was doomed to fail, and discusses how you can avoid making bad predictions about technology in the future.

“Activity streams?”
It’s an idea for a new, free, more open Internet model, and it may just be the next big thing. And Yahoo! is right there, innovating. ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick explains what activitystreams are and what they may mean for the future.

Even if you’re brick and mortar, you still gotta be online
This comes by way of Greg Sterling over at Screenwerk. According to a recent poll, 94 percent of consumers did some research online prior to making a purchase. While e-commerce only makes up four percent of U.S. retail sales, people overwhelmingly (61 percent) use Internet search to research a purchase.

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Yahoo! and Twitter team up; advertising is good; ad groups 101; Yahoo’s head of search on the Microsoft alliance, and more

Yahoo! gets all Twitterpated
Last night we announced a new partnership with Twitter that integrates Twitter’s real-time social experiences with Yahoo’s global network of more than 600 million users. Together with the recently announced Facebook integration, this relationship is a key part of advancing our social strategy, transforming Yahoo! into a highly customizable social experience that lets people unify their activity from their many social experiences across the Web. Good for users. Great for advertisers. For more details, head on over to Yodel Anecdotal.

Affiliates beware: Cali sales tax looming
Many search and display advertiser run affiliate networks, whereby they become the middle-men between consumers and suppliers. It’s a good business and one that provides an essential service. But the State of California is considering imposing a sales tax on affiliate sites that have suppliers in the state. While aimed at the big boys like Amazon.com and Overstock.com, the law could affect any affiliate site with relationships in the Golden State. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carolyn Said explains.  

Online ads help shoppers save
Advertising is often taken to the pillory for being self-serving. That’s just not fair. Good advertising serves an essential need in society. Without it, how would you know that there’s a better—or cheaper—mousetrap out there? eMarketer explains how online advertising is helping consumers save cash in tough times.

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Demystifying Mobile, Part III

Mobile marketing measurement is important, but don’t panic

In the third of our three-part series, Paul Cushman, Director of Mobile Sales Strategy at Yahoo!, outlines the importance of measurement in any mobile strategy and offers a simple formula for doing it right. For Part I, click here. For Part II, click here.

I’m shocked by the number of clients who start a mobile campaign with no idea how they are going to measure success. I’m not talking necessarily about goals, as this is a new channel to many brands and setting benchmarks is a legitimate and relevant approach at the start.

But make sure you are measuring and that you talk to your mobile advertising vendors about this. There are good in-house and third-party solutions out there that can improve the data a campaign generates.

Why is this important? Say the client comes in and says “I want an iPhone app!” (Let’s ignore the fact that this is akin to walking into the agency and saying “I want to do radio ads” without first asking whether or not you should even be doing radio).

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Audiences on Demand, Part I

Demand-side platforms and why they evolved

In the first of a multi-part series, Marc Grabowski, Yahoo’s head of mid-market display for the North American Region, explores demand-side platforms, or DSPs, one of the most important current trends in the digital ad display market.  DSPs aggregate advertising demand and place media buys for audience-targeted inventory across multiple supply channels—such as exchanges and publishers—while controlling exposure of a message to the audience. Below, Marc uncovers the origins of DSPs and discusses why they have evolved.

Not too long ago, advertisers and agencies figured out that they could buy advertising by audiences—not just by editorial source or, for that matter, by their relationships. That change in buying has created ripple effects that have arguably helped display advertising become more complex than search.

As a result, today we live in a place where networks aggregate publishers. Exchanges aggregate networks and data informs the buy instead of simply justifying it. And the lines between agencies, publishers, and ad networks are blurring as each one shoulders additional burdens to earn greater share of ad dollars spent online.

Display advertising has arguably become more complex than search.

A brief history lesson
Four or five years ago, agencies came to the realization that they should buy beyond editorial adjacency and invest in audiences—so, instead of buying advertising from one group of online sites, they buy impressions among, say, 18-to-35-year-old males, regardless of publisher. Soon after that, the volume of impressions across the Internet spiked due to a proliferation of user generated content. Ad networks created one solution to this problem by aggregating many sites into a single buy. Agencies eventually began buying from multiple ad networks and publishers—up to 800 sites in some cases.

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Where the Kids Are

Today’s teens are more engaged than ever in social media and online games

This is the last of a three-part series on teen behavior online. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here.

We already know that teens—boys and girls aged 12 to 17—are online in massive numbers, with 97 percent of the U.S.’s nearly 25 million teens spending an average of 18.5 hours a month on the Internet.

But what do teens do with all that time online? Well, for one thing, they love their games. According to one eMarketer report, 78 percent of online teens in the U.S. play games online—all kinds of them, from massive multi-player fantasies like World of Warcraft to simple racing games and shoot ’em ups. Teens also love instant messaging, with 68 percent swapping stories in quick soundbites. And they are highly engaged by social media: According to eMarketer, 58 percent of teens have a social network profile (though 66 percent of teen girls have a profile vs. 50 percent for boys).

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Advertising beyond the Super Bowl; New Yahoo! ad formats hit the press; does social really sell?; Right Media’s future, and more

Advertising the Super Bowl, and beyond
Mitch Spolan, our VP of North American field sales, has just posted a point-of-view commentary on MediaPost, on how digital advertisers are seeing gold in big-ticket events like the Super Bowl, which have traditionally been dominated by TV, radio and print. “Cultural events like the Super Bowl still matter,” says Mitch. “The good news for online marketers is that people are increasingly turning to the Internet for coverage of these events, and audience size and engagement is beginning to reach—and sometimes exceed—that of the original broadcast.” That goes whether you’re a search or display advertiser. To see how advertisers are making the shift online and get some tips for yourself, click over to MediaPost.

New ad formats stop the presses
That Mitch Spolan is redoubtable and seemingly ubiquitous.  Last week he unveiled several new, flexible, creativity-driven ad formats. “Advertising is about telling stories,” says Mitch. “And these formats allow brand advertisers to do just that.” We’re not the only ones excited about these new formats. Check out the write-ups in AdWeek, MediaWeek and paidContent.

Social’s fine, but does it sell?
With all the hype around social media marketing and how it’s good for your brand and customer support, the question arises, “Fine, but does it sell?” AdWeek’s Brian Morrisey asks that question, and adds, “What’s a Facebook friend worth?” He answers with two telling case studies.

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Demystifying Mobile, Part II

Think of mobile marketing as Web marketing 1.0

In the second of a three-part series, Paul Cushman, Director of Mobile Sales Strategy at Yahoo!, shows that the best way to keep mobile marketing on-track in to keep it simple. For Part I, click here.

Many advertisershave, to put it simply, over-thought their mobile strategy. One agency pitched us this amazing (but complex) mobile site and app that would generate leads for a financial client. After listening for ten minutes, I asked if the client had a call center. “You know, it is a phone… they can call you, and thereby utilize that massive investment your client has already made, instead of spending hundreds of thousands more.”

Yeah, it’s not sexy. But who cares? It’s quick, cheap and can generate valuable leads. It uses all the tools already available to the marketer—in this case, the call center.

You can’t always get want you want (via mobile), but you can get what you need
Don’t try to get all your prospects’ data on mobile in one fell swoop. Try to get just what you need for the follow up, such as an email address. You don’t have to get your customers to fill out a long registration through mobile alone. Use all the channels. Do “acquisition light” (just an email address, for example) and then follow up via email with the registration, offer details, a brochure, whatever.

Agencies should be looking to maximize the lessons they develop for their clients. The smartest agencies I see out there are able to talk to clients about the average duration of visits users make to a mobile site, the number of pages consumed each visit, the cost per unique visitor and so forth.

Mobile and the retro Web
Try thinking of mobile today as the 1996 Web all over again. What were we doing then? We had a simple test matrix that mapped offers and placement. You “ran broad” at the start, evaluated performance using the rudimentary analytics solutions of the day, and then you optimized—and learned very quickly worked and what didn’t.

If I were an agency working on a campaign in the mobile space, I would design a test matrix like this:

1. Full registration in mobile: Target 25 percent of impressions to smart phones with “qwerty” keyboards.  Although I strongly doubt at this point that many people will “form fill” in mobile, it’s important to test and get your baseline for comparison.

2. “Smart” email grab:  Target 25 percent against smart phones, but this time the landing page should just be an email grab. Measure the engagement in mobile, and also the final completion via email. How does mobile registration compare to follow-up registration via email?

3. “Dumb” email grab—Target 25 percent against “non-smart” phones. What is the response rate from users who have to “triple tap” info into a device?

4. Call center—Target your last 25 percent at “non-smart” phone users who you think will use the call center to connect with you. (Actually, you should also target your smart phone users the same way smart phones for data consistency. You get the idea).
 
That might not be very cool and sexy, but it is very insightful, and you can layer different forms of device, demo, geo and behavioral targeting targeting on later stages, once you have defined broad benchmarks.

In short, keep the ideas simple, run simple test matrixes and accumulate as much knowledge as you can.

—Paul Cushman, Director of Mobile Sales Strategy, Yahoo! 

Next up: Paul talks about the importance of good measurement in mobile, and channels Douglas Adams.