It’s a pretty common question among online advertisers: How do I use all the marketing metrics I’m inundated with? In an article posted yesterday on Ad Age, Scott Burke, our VP of engineering, user data and analytics, tackles that question with some pretty detailed answers, and talks about what’s important now—whether it’s clicks, time spent, the delta between search and display analytics, and much more. Click over to Ad Age for all the details.
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).
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.
Quantifiable creative; blogging enhances SEO; search surges; kids more plugged in than ever; celebrating Guy Day, and more
Three simple steps to better creative Let’s face it, a lot of agency creatives like to blather on about “inspiration” and the “creative process.” But, says iMedia Connection blogger, Robert Boman, (who is also Javelin’s Interactive Creative Director), “Marketing is a profession, not an art show. Your work’s got to be far more than just eye candy. It needs to be smart. It needs to be trackable.” He offers a handy, three-step process for creating measurable marketing.
Survey says: Blogging enhances SEO Writing on TopRank’s Online Marketing blog, Lee Odden reveals the results of a TopRank survey that asked 326 marketing pros if they thought blogging had a positive effect on their SEO. Most did. In fact, more than 87 percent of respondents said blogging had “successfully increased measurable SEO objectives.” A common reason why some companies don’t blog or quit blogging? Resources.
Search usage jumps 50% in one year
According a new PC World report, Web search jumped a full 50% from 2008 to 2009. In fact, last year there were more than four billion searches each day. “We knew this was going to happen,” says Tribble Ad Agency blogger TheFounder, “and it’s going to get bigger and bigger for quite some time. Search has become the definition of marketing and advertising.” All true, but you heard it here first.
There’s a scene in the first season of “Mad Men” in which advertising anti-hero Don Draper asks his boss, “What do women want?” The answer he gets is flippant to the point of rather ugly sexism. But in the male-dominated world of early-1960s advertising, Draper was on to something. He knew instinctively that to reach America, you had to reach out to America’s new, emerging, liberated woman, a fact later borne out by daytime shows from “Phil Donahue” to “Oprah” and beyond.
Today, the audience to reach is teens, both male and female. Last time, we discussed some salient general facts about teens, their buying power ($125 billion and climbing) and the time they spend online. Today we’ll talk about who these teens are, what they want, and how advertisers like you can reach an audience of nearly 25 million Americans.
In the first of a three-part series on teen trends, we discuss today’s teens and what they’re doing online
Ah, the kids these days. They’ve been pilloried and misunderstood—and striven to be understood—by their elders even before James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo portrayed them with such affection in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
But today’s teens (those aged 12 to 17) not only have tremendous buying power, they also have dramatic influence over what goes on online. In 2008, teens represented nearly 25 million people in the U.S. alone, according to MRI, and, says a report by TRUStudy, pumped some $127 billion into the U.S. economy last year. In fact, according to a recent study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, today’s youths spend about seven-and-a-half hours with electronic media each day.
Put your arithmetic cap on, because we’re going to run a few numbers past you.
Personal social media ROI; embeddable live social media counter; Yahoo! social science; “mobilizing” your website, and more
Your personal social media ROI
Twitter and Facebook can be a time-suck. We all know that by now. But there must be a pay-off, right? Maybe, maybe not. AdAge’s Simon Dumenco explains how to gage your personal social media ROI.
7 reasons you don’t need to justify ROI for social media advertising These days, Web advertising is all about the math—click-through rates, open rates, engagement modeling, registrations, etc. But, iMedia Connection’s Clyde DeSousa argues, social media advertising is a different animal, and he offers seven “justifications” for social media advertising that you can use when trying to convince the “suits” in the corner office to go for it.
Social media hall monitor Social media gadfly, Gary Hayes of Personalize Media, has just released a widget that counts social media in real time: stuff like new blog posts, members added to Facebook, the amount of money spent on virtual goods globally, Tweets and more—what’s happening now, for the last day, the last week, the last month and the last year. That’s one impressive widget, according to this, the 330 jillionth blog post this year. You can embed the widget, as we have below.
I’m goin’ home
And when I wanna go home
I’m goin’ mobile
Well, I’m gonna find a home
And we’ll see how it feels
Goin’ mobile
Keep me movin’
Back in the early 1970s, goin’ mobile usually meant being out of touch except by pay phone or postcard. If you wanted to take “home” with you, you had to buy an RV, or be a tortoise. The neat thing about goin’ mobile today is that you can take home with you, right in the palm of your hand. That’s a boon for users—and for advertisers who want to touch potential customers at home, wherever that happens to be at the moment.
Real moms; weird ad stories; online video tips; world’s worst B-roll, and more
The rise of the “real mom”
The redoubtable researchers at Ad Age have put together a pretty compelling white paper on today’s mothers—focusing on Gen X and millennials. They’ve come a long way since Virginia Slims said that they’ve come a long way… “baby.”
10 weirdest ad stories of the month
The six or eight weeks after Christmas is usually a slow time for most businesses, but it’s a busy time in the ad world. You’ve got the holidays themselves, plus the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day coming up fast. BNET’s Jim Edwards recaps some of the oddest agency and advertising stories of the last 30-odd days…and those days have been pretty odd, ad-wise.
ClickZ’s round-up of round-ups from ’09 It’s not the end of the decade, people! That happens Jan. 1, 2011 (look it up). But it is the end of the year, and that means it’s round-up time. ClickZ looks back at the most interesting items from its ’09 oeuvre and finds that digital is—surprise!—big, and that mobile’s looking more and more grown up. This, we applaud.
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…
Yahoo’s Scott Burke answers your questions
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, 
Three simple steps to better creative
There’s a scene in the first season of “Mad Men” in which advertising anti-hero Don Draper asks his boss, “What do women want?” The answer he gets is flippant to the point of rather ugly sexism. But in the male-dominated world of early-1960s advertising, Draper was on to something. He knew instinctively that to reach America, you had to reach out to America’s new, emerging, liberated woman, a fact later borne out by daytime shows from “Phil Donahue” to “Oprah” and beyond.
In the first of a three-part series on teen trends, we discuss today’s teens and what they’re doing online
You’ve heard the 
