Many of you have both Display and Sponsored Search campaigns. For our Sponsored Search customers, we’re offering a free webinar that explores two important features of Sponsored Search: Network Distribution, which allows you to target marketing campaigns to the entire Yahoo! Network, and Import Campaigns, which lets you import your Google AdWords campaign data into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. For more detail on both these features, visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog. Or, to register, click on the link below.

When: Thursday, Feb. 4, 2009, 11 A.M., Pacific Time
Where: The Internet—go here to register. Note that  you will need the password you created when you registered for Sponsored Search. Don’t already have a Sponsored Search account? Click here.
Why: Because it’s great stuff to know for improving your campaigns and results through Sponsored Search

A trip through “Adland”
Former Young and Rubicam creative James P. Othmer has a new memoir out, “Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet.” In it, he describes his trials and tribulations in the business. In this AdWeek Q&A, he talks about the many ethical dilemmas faced by ad folks today, as well as other hot topics and ripping yarns. Check out Amazon.com’s promo vid for more.

Selling the Super Bowl
This Sunday is arguably the biggest sporting event of the year, Super Bowl XLIV. Advertisers, according to AdWeek, have shelled out nearly $3 million each for 30-second spots during the big game. “The game is the only significant TV showcase for commercials left in today’s media-fractured environment, and advertisers are frantically putting the final touches on their plays for the day,” writes Eleftheria Parpi. How are they are building buzz around their creative? Hint: the initials are S.M., and we don’t mean the naughty kind.

We’ve got good news and bad news
Remember those old good news/bad news jokes? (Like, the good news: the captain aboard a Viking ship doubles rations for the guys on the oars. The bad news: he wants to go water skiing.) Well, the good news for digital marketers is that two-thirds of marketing execs in a recent CMO.com/Society of Digital Agencies survey say they’ll up their digital budgets in the face of current economic conditions. The bad news? Those conditions still suck.

Keeping it simple
Savvy marketers know that people are suspicious of complexity—and they know that the way to get people to engage is to keep the message simple and straightforward. The Boston Globe’s Drake Bennett shows how “cognitive fluency” can help you to get into people’s psyches because, in people’s minds, “easy = true.” 

Tips for promoting corporate blogs
Last week in this space, we took note of a recent TopRank survey that showed how blogging can enhance SEO. This week, TopRank blogger Thomas McMahon follows up by offering several useful tips for promoting your blog and keeping it alive. All common sense, but sometimes we all need to be reminded just what common sense is.

Creative Spotlight: Doggie dentures?
OKy, this is a little creepy, but funny. Dentastix, a doggie oral care product from Pedigree, worked with TBWA\Chiat\Day to create a TV spot featuring doggies with dentures—human dentures.

Want to give your own doggie virtual dentures? There’s an app for that. Check out Catapult Marketing’s “Denture your Dog” Web app. A tip ‘o the hat to Tim Nudd over at AdFreak for turning us on to this freak-out.

—Michael Mattis

I can’t possibly be the only person that remembers the line “just set it and forget it”.  Those were the good ol’ days—the same days as when you could just set up a search marketing campaign and leave it alone. 

Not anymore. Users are more sophisticated in their searches now, and we’ve seen that up to 20% of searches in any given month can be search queries never seen before by a search engine.  This means if you leave your campaign untouched, you could be missing 20% more traffic.

So what’s the best way to keep up to speed with the changing search tide while maintaining your sanity?  Here are our four simple steps that will help your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign keep pace.

For more, visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog.

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.

The 10 habits of highly effective CMOs
You’ve probably heard of the perennial self-help bestseller, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” But what’s it take to be a top Chief Marketing Officer? Jim Stengel, the highly effective former global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble, offers 10 tips, for free.

Kids: Plugged in or couch potatoes?
A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that kids aged 8 to 18 are more plugged in now than ever, spending 7 ½ hours a day, or nearly 53 hours per week, with electronic media. How does that daily usage break down by media and minutes?

• TV: 270
• Music: 151
• Video games: 73
• Mobile phone chat: 33
• Texting: 90
• Computing (non school): 89

Creative Spotlight: Bye, Guy
Today’s Creative Spotlight is not about a piece of creative. It’s about a creative. Legendary ad man and Chiat/Day co-founder, Guy Day, who brought us such compelling creative as Apple’s infamous “1984″ Super Bowl spot, has died. He was nearly 80 years old. Hats off to one of advertising’s greats.

Here’s a clip of the original “1984″ ad. For those old enough to remember, it was just about the darndest ad anyone had ever seen on TV up to that point. Enjoy. And thanks, Guy.

 (Logic-Creative image by RabiD Son, via Flickr, CC 2.0)

—Michael Mattis

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.

Smells like teen spirit
First off, how to teens think of themselves? According to a Horatio Alger Association report, American teens are more hopeful than ever before, with 81 percent describing themselves as “ambitious” and 88 percent as “confident,” while 70 percent see themselves going to college. They’re also a career-oriented and community-dedicated generation, with nearly 50 percent considering careers in education, 42 percent considering the military, 33 percent thinking about careers in government, and no less than 20 percent thinking about actually running for public office. That’s a pretty ambitious crew. And there about more than just

Not only are today’s teens ambitious, the Horatio Alger Association report says that they are also more engaged in what’s going on than any generation since the 1960s. A year ago, 78 percent of teens were “very concerned” about the outcome of the presidential election. No matter which side they were on, teens were very, very interested in who their next president would be. They’re also highly concerned about the environment. According to our research, 72 percent of teens described “global warming” as “an urgent or serious problem.”

OK, so the kids are cool and they care and they’re ambitious. So what? Well, Ninety-seven percent of American teens are currently online, according to MRI. That’s the biggest slice of Internet pie of any generation thus far. The way that American teens engage with the world today is online.

A long engagement
Want to reach ’em? You have to hit them where they live online, with messages that resonate with their hopes, dreams and considerable ambitions—and preferably, with a sense of situational humor that they understand. (Oh, by the way, 72 percent of U.S. teens 12 to 17 years old, or about 14.4 million people, spent time on Yahoo! in 2008, according to comScore.)

But the real, practical upshot from this data is that today’s teens are more involved—and crave to be involved—than ever before. Advertising as a one-way street—where advertisers disseminate messages through mass media—is all but dead, especially with teens. To reach and, more importantly, engage teens, you have to develop interactive campaigns that involve young people like never before. For a prime example, see our case study on Butterfinger, a campaign that drove engagement and helped sell product, while giving users a creative voice, one that they were eager to share with others via social networking.

Next time: How teens are using social media and approaching online gaming.

Sources:
Horatio Alger Association: The State of our Nation’s Youth, 2008
MRI: TwelvePlus, 2008
comScore: Media Metrix, April, 2009

(Image by frerieke, CC, 2.0)

—Michael Mattis

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.

Key teen facts (2008)

• 19.9 million: Total U.S. teens online (MRI).
• 97: Percentage of U.S. teens online, the most online of any age demographic (MRI).
• 10: Percentage of the total U.S. online population consisting of teens (comScore).
• 368.4 million: Total hours spent online monthly by U.S. teens—18.5 hours average per visitor, per month (comScore).
• 23: Percentage increase in the average amount of time spent online per week by U.S. teens, from Autumn 2005 to Autumn 2008 (SRI).

That’s a pretty impressive market. So where does Yahoo! fit into all of this? We thought you’d never ask.

Teens on Yahoo!

The fact is, Yahoo! has a very strong position for advertisers who want to reach the teen audience. Here are some more facts and figures, courtesy of comScore.

• 14.4 million: The number of U.S. teens on Yahoo! in April 2009.
• 2.2: The average number of hours spent on Yahoo! per month per U.S. teen visitor.
• 52: The percentage of U.S. teens online that the Yahoo! front page reaches.
• 17: Average number of monthly visits to Yahoo! per teen visitor.
• 9: The percentage of time online that U.S. teens spend with Yahoo!

In short, if you are trying to reach teens, Yahoo! is a great place to be. Want to know where your teens are? Yahoo! offers an industry-leading demographic targeting solution to help you target specific messages to your most important audiences, including teens. For more, visit the Demographic Targeting page on Yahoo! Advertising.

Next time: What teens want online, and how you can help them get it.

Sources:
MRI: TwelvePlus, 2008
TRUStudy: Teens, Spring 2008
comScore: Media Metrix, April, 2009
SRI: Knowledge Networks, MultiMedia Scan, Fall 2005 vs. Fall 2008 Based on Teens 12-17

— Michael Mattis

(Image by mikebaird via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Shift happens
According to the New York Times “Bits” blogger Nick Bilton, the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien late-night slap fight is an indicator of the coming shift from TV to the Web. In fact, Bilton thinks Conan should ditch TV and go straight to the Web. But is the world ready for anytime O’Brien? And can the Web match TV in ad dollars? iMedia Connection’s Mario Sgambelluri wonders. May we politely suggest a smarter mix of both?

Social media: Where the gals are
TopRank’s Lee Odden names the top 25 women in social media. We’re happy to see our old FoY (“Friend of Yahoo!”), Charlene Li make the list. Congrats to all 25. You go, gals!

Jaron Lanier says you are not a gadget
Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier—that dreadlocked brainiac who brought you the cool robotic glove—has a new book out, reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times. “You Are Not a Gadget” questions whether the social media trend is really such a good thing after all. Among other criticism, Lanier says that the so-called “wisdom of crowds” might not actually be so wise, especially when designing new products. Listen up, manufacturers and advertisers. Sometimes going with your gut can work better than design by committee. Just look at the iPod.

When social media works, and when it doesn’t
Lanier’s not the only one questioning the wisdom of crowds. Writing on Mashable, Joshua-Michéle Ross, a senior VP at Fleishman Hillard, says that social media might not be the right strategy for every marketer. Who is it good for? Those who can best keep it up, keep it fresh, and keep it honest.

Creative Spotlight: McCann’s powerful Haiti PSA
Volunteers from McCann worked day and night to put together this heart-rending PSA on behalf of the survivors of the Haiti earthquake, which may have killed as many as 200,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless and hopeless. We salute the caring creatives who created it and urge everyone to give—until it hurts. Text Haiti 25383. And here’s how Yahoo! is helping.

Last fall, I answered the question “Does search still matter to Yahoo!” with a definitive YES.  But words only go so far, which is why Yahoo! is rolling out new search enhancements for users and advertisers.

All about control
Next week, we’ll update our Sponsored Search product with two new features aimed at giving advertisers more transparency into and control over their accounts. Our Network Distribution feature will let you run your ads on Yahoo! search pages, our partners’ sites, or both.  If you run your ads on our entire network, you can also set different bids for Yahoo! or its partners.

For more, visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog.

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.

Social science meets computer science at Yahoo!
Demographics are so 20th Century. The future’s in psychographics. And Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz is leading the charge, says the San Francisco Chronicle.

Is your website ready for mobile?
If you haven’t already, get your geeks on this right now. Mobile’s already big and it’s only going to get bigger, so you’ve got to get your website ready. TopRank’s Thomas McMahon provides these important tech tips on how to do it.

Creative Spotlight: Aussie Yahoo! Video’s 10 best video ads of 2009
Brought to you by the thoughtful folks at the Australian branch of Yahoo! Video, here’s a playlist of their picks for the top ten best video ads of 2009. Keep your eye on the koala bear.

—Michael Mattis

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.

For users
For users, Yahoo! Advertising offers a continuous experience between the Yahoo! Frontpage on their PCs and their Yahoo! Mobile Homepages, allowing them to access and aggregate the most meaningful content.
Just like the Yahoo! Frontpage, Yahoo! Mobile lets users:

• Access top stories and hot searches
• Get to their email, IMs and other personal data
• Log onto their favorite social networks
• Access award-winning mobile search
• And all sorts of other stuff they want

For advertisers
For users, this makes Yahoo! the essential mobile starting point. For advertisers, Yahoo! Mobile offers unique opportunities to reach customers when they’re on the move. In fact, Yahoo! is the number one site in mobile, with more than 39 million unique users visits to Yahoo! Mobile each month in the U.S., reaching 51 percent of the mobile Internet population in the country (comScore, September 2009).  Here are some other more-than-fun facts about Yahoo! Mobile:

• Yahoo!’s Mobile homepage is available in 33 markets around the world on more than 1,900 devices (Yahoo! internal data)
• Yahoo! has the highest mobile brand reach in the “instant messaging”, “e‐mail’, and ‘entertainment news’ categories in the U.S. (M:Metrics, September, 2009)
• Yahoo! has more than 100 global mobile partnerships with carriers and OEMs including Apple, RIM, AT&T , Nokia, Telefónica and América Móvil (Yahoo! internal data)
• Yahoo! powers search services for more than 80 mobile operators globally (Yahoo! internal data)
• Yahoo!’s mobile search service is available in 43 countries and 18 languages around the world (Yahoo! internal data)
• In the U.S., the mobile Internet audience grew over 45 percent annually between June 2007 and June 2009 (M:Metrics—U.S. only)
• During that same time period, Yahoo!’s audience grew 54.8 percent annually—outpacing the overall U.S. growth rate during the same period (m:metrics—U.S. only)

Here are some of the ways that Yahoo! advertisers are reaching their audiences:

Mobile homepage take-over
The Yahoo! Mobile homepage take-over  gives you exclusive ownership of all Yahoo! mobile home pages and an estimated three million impressions. In addition, expandable ads are available for your customers who use the iPhone. And Yahoo! Advertising offers landing page and creative development.

You also have the option to combine your mobile campaign with a PC frontpage campaign, creating a consistent advertising experience across devices, building frequency and extending your reach to create instant awareness and drive responses—no matter where your customers are. For more information on what can be achieved with a Mobile homepage takeover, please read this case study on Norton security software.    

Mobile Homepage marketplaces
This cost-per-click (CPC) option helps you reach your audiences—whether you are a brand or performance advertiser (or both)—in a cost-effective way. It’s a bidded marketplace that links to your mobile site, one that includes options for special offers, travel, chat, social networking and more.

Mobile marketplace advertisers have two options to choose from and benefit from the cost efficiency of CPC and easy, online campaign set-up and management. (See also our post on Mobile Sponsored Search.)

Today, people goin’ mobile live everywhere, and everywhere they are connected they can call home. With mobile ads, you can “hit ‘em where they live.”

For more, and to get in touch with a Yahoo! Mobile rep, visit Yahoo! Advertising.

—Michael Mattis

(Image by The Lightworks via Flicker, CC 2.0)

Three words: Content, content, content.

Over the past decade, cable TV has experienced tremendous growth because of its ability to develop programming for very specific audiences, telling the stories that those audiences love to hear. At the same time, it has provided opportunities for advertisers to reach their core audiences, telling the stories that advertisers need to tell. 

Like cable, online today is poised to do just the same, and more. Yet, despite the targeted programming capabilities available, online publishers and advertisers have yet to take full advantage of the medium in terms of content development. That’s where today’s announcement comes in.

Yahoo! has just announced a partnership with Electus, a new venture headed by Ben Silverman, former co-chair at NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, who has been involved with such hit shows as “30 Rock,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” “Saturday Night Live,”  “The Biggest Loser,”  “Celebrity Apprentice” and “The Office.” This guy knows how to tell a story.

The Yahoo!-Electus partnership is all about producing original programming, as well as giving advertisers new opportunities to integrate their brand messages—their stories—into the next generation of online programming.

We look forward to working with Ben and Electus, and getting your messages and stories out.

—The Team

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. 

10 ways to drive consumer action with online video
OK, so digital’s big and mobile’s big. How about online video? In a word: Huge. But online video’s a tricky medium. You’ve got to not only tell a story, but make it relevant, accessible and sharable. Marketing Prof’s Bud Rosenthal offers ten ways to make it work for consumers—and for you. So we guess this Bud’s for you. (Sorry, Mr. Rosenthal, we just couldn’t help ourselves.)

14 Things to help inspire your digital marketing in 2010
Not to be outdone on the New Years numbered lists, iMedia Connection’s Jonathan Richman proposes 14 tips on how to get your digital creative team inspired for the 12 months ahead. The synopsis: simplicity, technology, engagement, creativity, community and nine other things that mostly have to do with social media. (We hear social media’s big these days, too.)

Creative Spotlight: In need of some B-roll
Last year was pretty rough, so we could all use a laugh before we settle down with our spreadsheets. Advertising Age’s AdAges blog points us to a fun faux ad for a “B-roll” warehouse that looks like it’s staffed by WKRP in Cincinatti’s Herb Tarlek. It’s pretty chuckle-worthy.

—Michael Mattis

Well, it’s not quite like “Dear Abby,” but last year’s how-to posts from the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog and the Yahoo! Advertising blog are the next best thing. In the last year of the “aughts,” we tried to help show you the way to more effective Sponsored Search, and more effective Web advertising in general, with a bevy of posts that answered your most pressing questions—everything from how to develop strong keywords to how to keep those keywords and descriptions from facing rejection, to how to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to get your messages out.

For the complete list of tips, switch over to the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog.

(Image by awezmaz, CC, 2.0)