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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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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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.

Search Innovation in Five Minutes

SearchSpeak 2010 video spolights Yahoo! search initiatives  

Earlier this week we blogged about SearchSpeak 2010, an event that took place at our Sunnyvale campus. At SearchSpeak, some of the smartest and savviest Big Cheeses at Yahoo! took folks through the search and search marketing innovations we’ve introduced over the past six months, and some of the innovations we’re working on for the future. This short video provides a synopsis of the coolest things that are going on here at Yahoo!

 For more, visit the Yahoo! Search blog.

—The Team

Ad News and Views from Around the Web

New Yahoo! Mobile blog; making the Internet safer; digital marketing trends for 2010, and more

Yahoo! Mobile blog launches
If you read Paul Cushman’s excellent entry “Demystifying Mobile, Part I” yesterday, you’re probably interested in mobile marketing. Well now there’s a new Yahoo! blog just for you. The Yahoo! Mobile blog will cover all aspects of mobile marketing, including case studies, new Yahoo! mobile features and products, and industry trends. Check out the La Quinta case study and see how you, too can up your mobile marketing ROI.

Safer Internet day
Safety first, right? On February 9, people and organizations around the world—including Yahoo!—took a moment to recognize the importance of safety on the Web. Visit Yodel Anecdotal to learn more.

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Demystifying Mobile, Part I

Four questions to ask before getting into everywhere advertising

In this, the first of a three part series, Paul Cushman, Director of Mobile Sales Strategy at Yahoo! explores some basic questions that advertisers should ask themselves before diving into the mobile marketing space.

In my role as Yahoo’s director of mobile sales strategy, I’ve met many clients confused by mobile advertising. But just because it’s mobile doesn’t mean that the laws of advertising have changed.  In fact, mobile advertising today follows much the same pattern and rules as traditional and Internet marketing. Below are four simple rules that I tell our mobile advertisers when considering and creating campaigns in the mobile channel.

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Goin’ Mobile with Yahoo! Mobile

Hit your customers where they live with Yahoo! mobile advertising options

You’ve heard the hit song by The Who:

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.

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

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. 

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Search or Display? Mobile or PC? All of the Above

Agency professional talks about finding the right mix in advertising

Kazi Ahmed, Account Director at Media Contacts, recently talked with Yahoo! about trends agencies are experiencing in the digital advertising space.  Keep reading for his perspective on topics such as the shift from offline to online advertising, mobile advertising trends, and innovative targeting ideas.  Media Contacts is an interactive arm of Havas Digital.

How do you and Media Contacts/MPG view the much debated relationship on overall campaign performance between search and display? From your perspective, how important is upper funnel activity to driving these online or offline conversions?

Our clients are sold on the idea that search generates results, no question. Where we struggle a bit is getting clients to understand that much of that performance is often being driven with the help of a display campaign. In other words, you need to fill the top of the funnel to ensure that a steady stream of conversions are driven via search at the bottom of the funnel.

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One Shining Moment

Norton hits a three-pointer with college basketball tournament campaign on Yahoo! Mobile

According to sports pundits, “defense wins championships.” This maxim is often true for the annual championship tournament of college basketball, commonly known as “March Madness.” The security software leader Symantec plays a different type of defense, but one that is no less vital to its legions of fans and customers. Over the years, the company’s Norton products have built a legacy similar to those of college basketball powerhouses like UCLA and North Carolina.

During the 2009 tournament, Norton promoted a free trial of its new product, Norton Internet Security 2009, targeting Yahoo!’s highly engaged mobile audience. The goal of the campaign was to generate awareness of Norton’s performance improvements, and to capture email addresses to build its opt-in database. Like a Final Four “Cinderella” team, Norton’s mobile campaign far exceeded expectations, and provided important learnings for future promotions.

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