The Furture of Mobile As Told By the Giants
May 28th, 2010
This week, our friends at TechCrunch.com hosted Disrupt in New York City, a conference dedicated to web innovators disrupting media and technology and the handful of executives successfully navigating these disruptions to talk about how to turn change into opportunity. At one roundtable, Facebook’s Chris Cox, Google’s Vic Gundotra, and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley chat up a storm regarding the future of mobile, privacy controls, and the hit or miss nature of this new leaf in consumer technology.
“Your phone should be a personal assistant. That’s clearly where we’re going,” says Chris Cox of Facebook. ‘Ambient awareness’ was used multiple times to describe device relationships (rather, the necessity thereof) in our near future. But when quizzed on specifics for what phones of the future will look like and how consumer interaction will differ in the coming years of innovation, Cox had this to say:
“People overestimate what’s possible in a year, and underestimate [what's possible in ] 5 years. These devices are going to be magical in 5 years.”
Some even speculate that ‘mobile’ will be come a meaningless word soon because we are inherently always connected. “The real frontier is what’s local,” speculates one commentator, citing the popularity of groundbreaking platforms like FourSquare. “I think Foursquare has done some amazing work with check-ins, but it’s early,” says Gundotra when asked if there is a clear winner in the location game.
“I think we’re building great stuff — there is no winner,” pipes FourSquare’s Crowley. “Think of where we are now to where we were 2 years ago. We’ve made the space more interesting. We’ve pushed things in a different direction. It’s experimenting in the space.”
Speaking of experimentation, Gundotra was asked what he thought Google TV will do what for mobile apps and his answer reads a bit like an upsell, stating that “the most exciting thing about it is that the same Android apps you use will work on the TV. Like Pandora, play it on the TV.”
Facebook’s Chris Cox got a little heat regarding the ever changing privacy controls pleging the platform. He was happy to report, though, that this week, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” privacy controls in an attempt to remedy what Facebook CEO Zuckerman has publicly called “missed marks.” Facebooks next challenge? “It’s hard to know what to invest in — a better Android app or Facebook Zero.” Facebook Zero is their new, “fast, free, global and mobile” data service. 
Posted in Creative Development, Display Advertising, Events, Online Marketing, Research, Social Media by Lindsey E. | | 0 Comments
Promoted Tweets: And Now A Word From Your Sponsor
April 14th, 2010
In an effort to “optimize value before profit,” co-founder Biz Stone has explained, Twitter has intentionally kept the traditional web advertising model at arm’s length. But yesterday the micro blog FINALLY announced its new ad platform: Promoted Tweets. As we await the release of additional details scheduled for later this week, we do know that user searches will trigger these ads to appear at the top of that users timeline as a traditional Tweet. Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America will be among the first to launch campaigns.
Interestingly, the lives of these Sponsored Tweets are reliant on user engagement in a whole new way. “If users don’t respond …by re-tweeting, favoriting, or replying… [the ads] will be pulled from the search results,” PC World reports, adding that “only one promoted tweet will be displayed per search results page.” This almost puts one in the mind of how Google rewards PPC and organic search results with PageRank and Quality Score based on relevancy and activity. Biz Stone insists that these Promoted Tweets should be useful to users, not burdensome and disruptive and some have noted that the limited screen real estate could make for very expensive ads.
Comparisons to Twitters new platform have been to that of radio ads: you’re “listening” to the conversations of your friends (and pundits you may follow) and BOOM! Virgin America chimes in with their two cents. Then more chatter from friends and pundits, seemingly uninterrupted. The difference here is that, unlike radio ads, Twitter ads are more present (read, persistent) and will contain links – way more effective than radio ads. It’s true that these ads will be easy to ignore but in considering Twitters unprecedented engagement and interactivity users will end up reading them because they are so ingrained in the experience. Promoted Tweets may even be confused with “regular” tweets as “not a single ‘ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform isn’t already an organic part of Twitter,” says Stone. “This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.” Promoted Tweets will also appear organically in the timelines of those who already follow a particular brand. See below for our first look at a Promoted Tweet!
Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media by Lindsey E. | | 0 Comments
Top Takeaways from SES NY
March 26th, 2010
Here are my top discoveries from SES NY ordered from “Hey! Good idea that’s interesting” to “Boom! What was that?! That was my mind being blown!”
- No two advertisers have the same attribution model. Use attribution to see what media mix gives the highest ROI for your product.
- Don’t just measure a video’s success on CTR – do an engagement analysis. How many people started the video? How many people hit the :30 mark, 1 minute? How many people rewound, fast forwarded, paused?
- When it comes to link building it’s more important what others say about you than what you say about yourself. This is true in real life too by the way
- Successful link building comes from finding the authority on your keywords, seeing who links to them, and then getting those sites to link back to you.
- CTR increased 94% if the user was exposed to social media before searching.
- SEO results are moving closer and closer to the fold. Search for ‘lamp table’ and expand all the product boxes, you’ll see what I mean.
- YouTube is the #2 search engine.
- 4% of internet users never search. Don’t ask me what they’re doing. I guess they have a URL directory in their brain which updates in real time.
- And….a glimpse into a crystal ball……There’s an app for everything why would anyone open a browser?!
Posted in Events, Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Video Ads by Erin M. | | 0 Comments
Putting Social Media on the Map
March 10th, 2010
Evidently, frequent updates of what other users are merely doing at all times no longer enough, so social media outlets are integrating mapping software to allow users to attach their locations to their posts as well. All of the biggest players are unveiling new geolocation features and some businesses are incorporating this into their customer service strategies as well.
Twitter’s geolocation feature went live through its application programming interface (API) last November, yet there wasn’t been any sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. The screenshot (above) from TechCrunch shows that tweets with the location tag will have a placemarker next to the source. When the user hovers over the icon it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a miniature Google map showing the location the tweet was sent from. The user can view these maps as overlays both on other user’s Twitter pages and on tweets in the main stream.
Next, according to several people briefed on the project, Facebook plans to unveil their new location-based feature in late April at the company’s yearly developer conference, f8. These sources were not authorized to discuss unannounced services, so they spoke only under the condition of anonymity.
Last November, Facebook updated its privacy policy in preparation for this new feature. Now, the policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.” Essentially, like all other Facebook user content, when a user posts a location they should consider the fact that this is now fairly public information.
Finally, Foursquare is a service that allows users to share their location with a group of friends as they check in to a restaurant, business or any other supporting venue upon arrival. Foursquare encourages the businesses to recognize users’ loyalty in some fashion, such as rewarding the most frequent customers with complimentary items.
With this tool, businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to their clients’ business locations, what time they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers. This research will allow business owners to offer instant promotions to engage new customers and retain current ones, similar to the loyalty cards that many retailers typically offer.
“If a restaurant can see one of its loyal customers has dropped off the map and is no longer checking in, the owner could offer them incentives to come back,” said Tristan Walker, director of business development at Foursquare.
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments
Facebook Officially Graduates to Marketing Channel Status
March 3rd, 2010
On Wednesday March 3rd, Facebook and Omniture announced a new platform for businesses utilizing Facebook as a promotional medium. By joining forces, the two companies can provide marketers using the increasingly prevalent advertising and social medium with the ability to analyze its impact. The two companies will begin by automating the media buying process and then allow companies to better analyze their viewership with a handful metrics. Ultimately, Omniture will help companies utilizing Facebook to reach specific users based on segments.
By utilizing Omniture tools such as SearchCenter Plus, interested companies can buy ads similar to those found in a more traditional SEM function. Also, other tools in the Facebook/Omniture arsenal will allow marketers to identify and reward their loyal customers from a comprehensive dashboard.
The prominence of Facebook as a marketing channel shouldn’t be surprising since it is now the second most utilized online service below Google with 133 million users. By achieving the number two spot, advertisers are typically confident of the ROI they can expect by investing money into Facebook as a marketing channel. Now, with the improved analytics, it might be easier to extract incremental marketing dollars from the C-Suite by flashing some strong preliminary numbers.
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments
Follow Me If You Dare
February 13th, 2009
Admittedly, NETexponent was a little late to the game using Twitter. With everything we have been working on in 2008 we just did not have the time. However, after launching a personal twitter account at https://twitter.com/figueredo I now have some good learning and a much better understanding of how NETexponent friends and family can benefit from a company twitter stream. I made the time in 2009 and we quietly launched a company twitter account recently. You can follow us on twitter by visiting https://twitter.com/netexponent.
This blog will continue to be your main source for information related to NETexponent, our clients, and issues concerning the performance marketing industry. We will use twitter to provide quick updates on relevant topics and some of those topics will be discussed in more detail on this blog. So please continue to read this blog but also feel free to follow us on twitter.
Posted in Meet Us, Social Media by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments
Sponsored Videos on YouTube
November 13th, 2008
The day has come! Advertisers are now able to post sponsored videos on YouTube and it holds many of the same attributes as Google Ads.
- Operates on a CPC bidding model.
- Video is triggered by designated keywords.
- Promotion text has the same character limits as Google ads (25, 35, 35).
Here’s a great video demonstrating how to create ads and also how they are displayed.
Google search ads have a tendency to be used heavily (or solely) by direct marketers and are not really applicable for aspiring artists and the like. However, YouTube ads provide the starving artist an outlet for greater visibility and comfort in knowing their video will be seen. The trick is, they need to be able to afford it. Will the garage band down the street use YouTube ads? Will YouTube ads become viral or will the community view them as sellouts (no pun intended)? My guess is the garage band sticks to their MySpace page, and YouTube ads stay that way, as ads.
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Video Ads by Erin M. | | 1 Comments
Even the Military Loves Social Networking
November 12th, 2008
In honor of Veteran’s Day (ok – I’m a day late) I’d like to give a round of applause to TroopTube.com, a YouTube-like site that connects soldiers with families and friends, keeping them up to date on the little things in life.
In addition to those serving our country, members not in the military can create an account as a civilian friend or family member and can easily upload and share videos. TroopTube does say that members have the option to share videos with everyone or only with a select few, but I couldn’t really tell how a member chooses who can view the video, or if a member can have “friends” to choose from.
The site is only in its Beta version and was created by Military OneSource, an authorized Department of Defense program that provides support to Active Duty, Guard, Reserve, and their families. There are few videos, but I am sure that is only because the site just launched.
I love how social networking has made its way into every nook of society and even the armed forces see its value. I just hope as the hunt to monetize social media continues TroopTube is left alone. It embodies the core values social networking started with – finding a way to connect when you’re not there. To me, a TroopTube member is going to the site for one purpose, most likely with limited time, and wouldn’t be interested in anything other than new videos from friends and families, so what’s the point to try and monetize if they can’t be easily distracted? We’ll see what happens…..
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media by Erin M. | | 0 Comments
Twitter Me Surprised
October 29th, 2008
I should not be admitting this, but I am pretty late to the game on Twitter. I fully embraced other social networking vehicles like Facebook and LinkedIn but for some reason I could not do the same for Twitter. After a long meeting with our advisory board I was convinced that I should try it out for a bit. One of our board members is a big proponent of Twitter and our social media services team talk about it often. It’s been a few days now, and while still not 100% convinced I see the same value others see…I have to admit I do enjoy using Twitter. It just goes to show that you should usually test something before forming an opinion.
If I were forced to choose between Facebook and Twitter I would still choose Facebook in a second. Initially I could not see the point in updating my status on both Facebook and Twitter but then I discovered the Facebook app that feeds Twitter updates into my status. Now I only need to post to Twitter and it automatically updates Facebook for me. That eliminated one hurdle. Another hurdle was eliminated when I downloaded TwitterFon for my iPhone which made updates pretty simple.
I thought I would post my initial thoughts:
Twitter Pros
- big community of users
- simple to use
- focused on doing one thing and doing it well
- lots of buzz
Twitter Cons
- lots of noise (it is very hard to cut through the Twitter clutter since everyone is talking at the same time…how do you navigate this mess?)
- Facebook offers the same service plus much more (granted Facebook has its share of noise too, but new functions allow users to control what they see and how much)
So while I may not be a Twitter fanatic, I think it serves a purpose because it does one thing well and has built a strong, loyal user base.
Feel free to check out my Twitter posts (as boring as they may be):
UPDATE
I just came across Nielsen data showing Twitter as the fastest growing social network sites in terms of audience. (but Facebook is much bigger currently)
| Rank (by Sept. YOY UA growth) |
10 Fastest Growing Social Networking Sites: Sept. 2008 |
Sept. 2007: Unique Audience (in 000s) |
Sept. 2008: Unique Audience (in 000s) |
% Growth: Year Over Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Twitter.com | 533* | 2,359 | 343% |
| 2 | Tagged.com | 898 | 3,857 | 330% |
| 3 | Ning | 842* | 2,955 | 251% |
| 4 | 4,075 | 11,924 | 193% | |
| 5 | Last.fm | 850 | 1,879 | 121% |
| 6 | 18,090 | 39,003 | 116% | |
| 7 | MyYearbook | 1,422 | 3,056 | 115% |
| 8 | Bebo | 1,299 | 2,418 | 86% |
| 9 | Multiply | 592 | 941 | 59% |
| 10 | Reunion.com | 4,845 | 7,601 | 57% |
| Source: The Nielsen Company, Custom Analysis (September 2008). | ||||
| *Note: These websites do not meet minimum sample size standards. Projected and average measures for these sites may exhibit large changes month-to-month, as a result. | ||||
Posted in Social Media by Peter Figueredo | | 2 Comments
Social Networking Sites + Social Ads = Revenue!?
August 25th, 2008
Word on the street is Facebook is working on a variety of social ads that may become the secret sauce for monetizing ads in social networks.
The 3 key ingredients allow users to:
- Post comments about ads
- Send out virtual gifts designed by brands that function as ads
- Become a fan of brands and spread the word to their network. Users will also be able to see their friends
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media by Erin M. | | 0 Comments
