August 2009 Archives

Wi-Fi Access Points Could Be Ad-Targeting Goldmine

by Laurie Sullivan, 1 hour ago

Behavioral targeting may no longer mean that the advertiser buys media armed with a browser-based cookie and a pixel tag. It appears that public Wi-Fi access hotspots can tell more about a person than some initially thought.

A study released by JiWire on Monday analyzes Wi-Fi access trends between January and June 2009. The report, which highlights market trends for advertisers, provides a snapshot of trends and the type of people who access data over public Wi-Fi.

Knowing the specific longitude and latitude of a person builds the foundation to serve up an ad as the person sits at Starbucks on Market Street in San Francisco, but integrating demographic data, data collected from local surveys, and prism clusters based on "ZIP-code-plus-six data" from Nielsen Claritas provides specifics.

Targeting consumers over public Wi-Fi access points has become more appealing for several reasons. For starters, past research shows that people spend on average of five hours daily outside the home or office, although many stay connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi, according to David Staas, senior vice president of marketing at JiWire.

Out-of-home marketers that reach out to consumers through billboards have been relying on a similar type of strategy for years. "With the shift, marketers want to know how this change impacts consumer lifestyles and behaviors, and the best methods to reach consumers who stay connected," Staas says. "We also see a 70% increase in the number of mobile devices accessing public Wi-Fi in the first half of this year."

Since June 2004 through June 2009, there has been 400% growth in public Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide. New York ranks No. 1 with 887 access locations for the top U.S. cities, followed by San Francisco at No. 2 with 872 and Chicago at No. 3 with 792.

In North America, public Wi-Fi access users jumped to 18.4%, up from 5.4% in March 2009. The majority -- 55.3% -- of people access public Wi-Fi through hotels and resorts, followed by 27% at airports, 10.5% at coffeehouses, 4.4% on cruise ships, and 2.7% on metro.

Most people who connect through public Wi-Fi in coffeehouses are upscale males in management positions, according to the JiWire study. In fact, 74% are male and 40% have management titles. About 80% of Wi-Fi café users connect locally. Forty-one percent connect for both work and fun. Of the 38% of Wi-Fi café customers who make purchases, 51% buy personal items, 15% make business-related purchases, and 34% make personal- and business-related purchases.

JiWire also looked at how people who frequent coffeehouses differ in different cities. So, the company analyzed coffee shops in San Francisco and Dallas. People in both cities had many of the same attributes, such as age, whether they owned a home or banked online.

Things that differed included household income. People who frequent coffeehouses in Dallas are 41% more likely to have a household income of more than $200,000 compared with San Francisco. In Dallas, 28% were likely to have a home valued at more than $500,000, and 17% more likely to have management titles.

Mobile has promise, but is largely seen as experimental. There had been concerns about tracking metrics, Staas says.

JiWire has built partnerships with more than 30 network providers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, to deliver media and advertising across 30,000 public Wi-Fi locations, from coffeehouses to college campuses reaching about 20 million unique users monthly.

Staas says the industries that have had the most success targeting consumers over Wi-Fi include travel and hospitality, automotive, consumer electronics, entertainment and telecom. For example, Hyatt experienced a 39% click-through rate for a promotion that required people to take a virtual tour of the hotel demonstrating amenities for business travelers in exchange for free Wi-Fi access time.

The results from the survey reflect 2,057 randomly selected people connected via Wi-Fi in more than 6,500 coffee shops across the United States.

Point-of-View

20 Seconds To Live Or Die

by Ted Mininni, Yesterday, 2:32 PM

When consumers make purchase decisions, they're spending anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds - according to surveys and research conducted by consumer behavior experts. Studies show that consumers ignore up to two-thirds of category products when they shop. That kind of statistic points to just how difficult it is to successfully package products. And clearly demonstrates why so many products fail at retail.

No matter how compelling consumer product marketing might be, the actual sale is made at the retail shelf. Packaging is the tangible representation of brand and product, and if it fails to make an impression, it adds up to numerous lost sales.

The first thing we need to realize is that packaging is about selling first. Communication and persuasion is job No. 1. Not aesthetics. Package designers and marketers may ooh and aah over beautiful packaging, but remember: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's subjective, and each consumer responds differently to aesthetics.

Communication sells but it has to be the right kind of communication. It has to be grounded in an effectively conceived and managed brand strategy. When consumers approach the retail shelf, even brand loyalists are increasingly assessing which product to buy, seeking the optimal value for their money in a tough economy.

They need compelling reasons to choose one brand over the rest, especially when they're spending fewer dollars. Unless they're die-hard loyalists for a particular brand, the product has a few seconds to live - or die - that's how important it is to get the messaging and key packaging elements right.

Here's what matters:

• Use one simple, overriding message that really resonates.

• Develop key product points that are direct and simple to assimilate.

• Uncover core messaging the consumer immediately responds to on an intellectual and emotional level.

• Strive for an ownable, unique package structure, color, and/or strong graphic cue as differentiators.

• Develop a well-planned package design system; one-off package designs lead to a lack of brand cohesiveness.

• Effective product segmentation makes the product line more convenient to "shop"; conveying value to consumers; making purchase far more likely.

All of these strategies lead to increased consumer visibility and brand recognition. Great packaging refers back to the brand in convincing fashion; making the differences between it and its competitors plain to see in a scant few seconds.

Examples? Method cleaning products - for breaking the structural mold in a crowded category. Garnier Fructis hair care - how effective is that lime green packaging when color blocked at retail? The "K" on Kellogg's Special K products - how effective a brand identifier is that on a simple white package? How well has that been used to extend the brand into new product categories besides cereal?

There is a "first moment of truth" when the consumer "votes" on the brand by purchasing it. Engaging with packaging leads to a "second moment of truth." Adding convenience features, easy handling or storage properties go a long way in this regard. Or adding an element of surprise or enjoyment helps packaging deliver the product in a memorable way.

When product and package come together to deliver on the brand promise, magic happens. The consumer either affirms a brand if a first-time user, or reaffirms it in their minds because it continues to deliver a positive or enjoyable experience.

Ultimately, packaging has to be judged on how it affects consumer purchasing behavior. If packaging isn't a huge asset in selling product and cementing brand loyalty on the retail shelf, it simply isn't effective, no matter how pretty it is.

Study: How Web Changes Patient-Doctor Relationship

by Kevin O'Malley, Yesterday, 5:44 PM

Immediately following a doctor's diagnosis, nearly half of consumers report using a search engine to further research their alleged conditions, according to a new study conducted by About.com.

What is driving this behavior? Disconcertingly, only 35% of consumers say they completely trust their doctor's diagnoses, the June study of nearly 1,900 About.com users found.

For better or worse, "the patient-doctor visits are no longer just one way conversations but rather on-going dialogues," the study concludes. "People are going online to educate themselves and confirm doctors' diagnosis."

What does this mean for marketers without a specialization in search? According to the study, respondents said they were interested in ads that make them aware and educate them about different treatment options and symptoms, as well as those that make it easier to speak knowledgeably with doctors and other professionals.

What's more, 57% of participants said an ad with information about certain conditions -- including specific signs and symptoms -- and medication side effects and safety would grab their attention. As a result of seeing a health care ad, over 35% of respondents talked to their doctor and researched the advertised drug in more detail online.

"Visitors are looking for health ads that help educate them about the condition and treatment options," according to the study.

Furthermore, about six months after their doctor's diagnosis with an ongoing condition, over 40% of participants reported searching online for coping/management tips with regard to financial, emotional, and physical matters.

The study canvassed About.com users who visited the site's parenting, health and food channels with a pop-up invitation to participate in a survey. The majority -- 64% -- were female, while 36% were male. The majority were between the ages of 35 and 54 -- 36% -- while 29% were 55 or older, 19% were 18-24, and 16% were between the ages of 25 and 34.

Social Media Vehicles Being Used (Multiple responses allowed)

Social Media

% of Respondents Using

Facebook

80%

Twitter

66%

YouTube

55%

LinkedIn

49%

Blogs

43%

Flickr

16%

Wikipedia

24%

Yammer

11%

MySpace

8%

Digg

3%

Delicious

7%

Second Life

1%

Other

9%

Source: Russell Herder And Ethos Business Law, August 2009

How Ad Position Affects Conversion Rates

by Laurie Sullivan, Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 3:32 PM

For marketers wondering how conversion rates change depending on where ads appear on Web pages, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian appears to have an answer.

Varian calls the problem "tricky," because Google ranks ads by bid times and ad quality, so ads in higher positions tend to have higher quality. These higher-quality ads tend to have higher conversion rates. He writes in a post on the AdWords blog that this means marketers may see a correlation between auction position and conversion rates.

Another fact that influences conversions: marketers increasing bids might see their average position move lower on the page. That's because when bids increase, ads appear in new auctions, and tend to work their way up from the bottom. This can push down the campaign's overall position, he writes.

"We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that -- on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad," Varian writes. "For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions."

An ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average, Varian writes. He explains that ads above search results convert within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

Didit VP Mark Simon says the New York company sees similar conversion rates occurring with its clients. "Not all traffic is converting traffic," he says. "The trick is to offer the creative and post-click experience that draws in the right searchers and drives them to convert, while also targeting the right market segment to convert on a given term."

Retort

A Brand's-Eye View of Behavioral Targeting

by Jaffer Ali, 1 hour ago

A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself
without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
-- Michel de Montaigne, Renaissance Essayist

I have been writing a lot about behavioral targeting lately. As click through rates, according to Doubleclick, have cratered at .1% on an industry average, everybody is looking for a solution to the performance crisis befalling our industry.

Is behavioral targeting (BT) the solution? The answer is a resounding "No." From faulty underlying assumptions of rational human behavior to the additional costs imposed on the marketing process, behavioral targeting is not a solution. In fact, it may very well be the problem.

One must look at BT from all angles to really appreciate its impact on the marketing ecosystem. So let's begin where the BT buck literally starts and stops and view behavioral targeting from the perspective of a consumer brand.

Could it possibly be the case that executives from well established brands are impervious to the dangers BT represents? It's not only possible but highly probable that brand stewards have little understanding of BT methodologies. Heck, they're just the poor saps paying for this folly. They lost control the moment they deferred to the legions of agency quants with no brand DNA whatsoever in their veins.

Here is the working definition of BT as offered by the FTC:

"... the tracking of a consumer's activities online -- including
the searches the consumer has conducted, the web pages visited,
and the content viewed - in order to deliver advertising targeted
to the individual consumer's interests."

Those selling BT technology would have brands believe that the seemingly innocuous goal of delivering relevant ads washes clean any fundamental creepiness arising from the stalking tactics involved. Stalking? Yes, this is a loaded term.

But what does it mean to scrutinize every website visit, every search, and every blog post other than to invade one's digital private life? Is it reasonable to sacrifice privacy on the altar of efficiency? Yes, the fascists got their trains to run on time. But at what ultimate cost to humanity?

BT peddlers seek to avoid government regulation, a relatively empty concern given the collusion between the two in the collection and dissemination of personal data. It is always the case that the private sector does things more "efficiently" than the government. Orwellian snooping is no exception. The fact that our tax dollars fund this obscene espionage of ourselves is proof positive of a technology run amok in both theory and practice.

The real shortcoming of BT is in its misplaced focus, and in its resulting inability to convey the honest value of a brand.

Obviously a brand's number-one asset is its relationship with its customers. It is the trust between brand and consumer that develops over time and accrues value. Simply stated, brand value is achieved when you create a positive emotional connection with your customers.

Now ask yourself an overwhelmingly simple question: Will scrutinizing and stalking your customers enhance your relationship with them? How about doing it under stealth conditions? What they don't know won't hurt them...right?

Relying on stealth is not a strategy. The database is too large and consumers too inquiring to keep the genie in the bottle forever. History tells us that it won't be long before a consumer flash mob, utilizing Twitter, Facebook and other social media discover that they are being VIOLATED.

Once this happens, there will be a public hue and cry that will resonate throughout the corridors of corporate America. And there will be backtracking and finger-pointing galore. Case in point: When Jeff Bezos was off buying Zappos, some knucklehead at Amazon decided to digitally invade Kindle users and erase copies of 1984 and Animal Farm., leaving Bezos with digital egg on his apologetic face and more fodder for the growing ranks of BT skeptics.

The truth is that brands are exposing themselves to a consumer backlash unlike any other in history. This will happen sooner rather than later. Good relationships are not created by abridging freedoms. It was Justice Douglas who said, "The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

I am aware of the trouble in which brands find themselves. They are at the crossroads of their intentions. One road leads to certain consumer backlash. The other road leads to the opportunity for enduring relationships based on trust, quality, and creativity.

The road to success requires that we champion the causes of freedom, dignity and respect. It's not easy. But it's the only path ultimately worthy of our time and consideration.

What we all need is a healthy dose of common sense. And that leads me to one of my all time favorite quotes from Thomas Paine's Common Sense, penned more than two hundred years ago:

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like
men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Search Engine Satisfaction Study Ties Branding To Search Experience

by Laurie Sullivan, Yesterday, 7:04 PM

·                                  

A consumer satisfaction report on search engines and Internet portals released Tuesday could shed a little light on where to allocate budgets for search engine optimization, paid search and display ad campaigns.

It turns out that the experience consumers have on search engines can influence loyalties to brands that advertise on engines. Ads running on sites that consumers like tend to produce better results, according to Larry Freed, president and CEO at consulting firm ForeSee Results, which produced the study.

The advertiser feels the backlash, "guilt by association" if the consumer doesn't like the search experience, "but that's nothing new," Freed says. He adds that ForeSee has begun to study the influence that search engine satisfaction has on marketing and ad campaigns, as it relates to conversions and sales.

In the "American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), Annual E-Business Report" released Tuesday, AOL sits in last place, but improved its score most from the prior year compared with other search engines on the list. Google stands out as being the "most liked," followed by "All Others," which could indicate that consumers are turning to niche engines more often, Freed says.

As more information is uploaded and indexed, the challenge to navigate through the muck has promoted higher satisfaction ratings in some niche search engines and portals, Freed says. "If financial news is important, or local news is important, you might go to one or the other to access the information from the smaller search engines or portals," he says.

Google remains No. 1, with an 86% satisfaction rating -- no change from last year. "All Others" ranks No. 2, with 78%, up 2.6% compared with a year ago. Yahoo follows with 77%. AOL gets a 70% satisfaction rating, improving by 1.4%, but placing last.

This year's e-business report also may provide guidance to investors based on a link between ACSI scores and financial performance, according to the report. Google's revenue and profit growth have remained steady, along with consistently impressive ACSI scores since 2002.

"Even though AOL rose 1 point, at the end of the day trailing Google by 16 points is a problem they need to overcome," Freed says. "High satisfaction leads to more use, more loyalty and higher customer retention. This will translate to improved revenue, regardless of the model they use."

Satisfaction drives higher revenue, which will drive better financials and improved stock performance, although Freed does not suggest that investors use the model to buy stocks.

Overall, Internet Portals & Search Engines scored a satisfaction rating of 83% -- up 3.8% from last year.

Google has led the customer satisfaction survey for each of the past seven years, except one. Yahoo temporarily overtook the Mountain View, Calif. giant in 2007, but Google rebounded in the following year by posting the highest customer satisfaction ACSI score ever recorded in the e-business survey. Even this year, it secured the second-highest score of any non-manufacturing company, online or offline, measured by the ACSI.

The Index, produced by ForeSee Results and published by the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in partnership with the American Society for Quality and CFI Group, was conducted before Microsoft announced its new search engine Bing, as well as the search deal with Yahoo.

Freed says there's a possibility that later this year, another study will be released that looks at Microsoft's Bing.

First Medium In, First Out For Newspapers

by Jack Loechner, 1 hour ago

According to Borrell Associates, print newspaper ad revenues are expected to increase 2.4% next year, and then in single digits over the next few years, through 2014. According to Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, the outlook for the industry will improve even more after next year. By 2014, newspaper income will be up a total of 8.7% over the 2009 figures, to slightly more than $39 billion (not including online revenues).

But this doesn't mean the old business model is coming back, the group said. "Even at 2014 levels of just under $30 billion, newspaper advertising won't be anything near the $55 billion we saw earlier this decade. Nor will it ever return to that level."

Smaller local newspapers are better positioned to do that than large urban dailies. The Virginia Gazette, in Williamsburg, says that "... newspapers (must) find ways to become more interesting, more relative to their audiences.... the 'major daily newspaper' is turning into a smaller, more delicate, colorful local magazine, with fair prospects for growth... providing rich local content that people seem to prefer in print. rather than screen, format."

The top five reasons why Borrell Associates thinks newspapers will rebound, according to a Marketing Charts summation:

• Newspapers were the first medium that the internet forced into a "period of adjustment," and they will be the first to emerge from it.
• The revenue decline has been much less severe for the majority of the US's smaller newspapers. Borrell expects growth for these papers to come from geographical targeting to non-classified, non-department-store local advertisers, even as larger papers continue to experience layoffs, abbreviated publication schedules and closures in order to "right-size" themselves.
• Newspaper sales and marketing teams are evolving in earnest by becoming proactive about discovering and meeting customer needs, selling against the competition, and taking no client for granted, especially in local ad markets.
• As the country's economy begins to improve, and the auto, real estate and recruitment sectors resurge, newspapers will capture a bit more of the resulting growth in ad spending than their current share. This will come in part from growth in pre-print and free-standing insert revenue from advertisers migrating out of direct mail.
• Newspapers are using the web to generate a significant portion of their revenues and profits. Borrell Associates forecasts that side of the business will begin to provide more support to the print side.

Additonally, related to the newspaper industry recovery, Borrell says:

• The papers that will do the best are the ones that can serve smaller advertisers on the marketing side by actively pursuing customers that have never done business with newspapers before.
• Successful papers will do a better job on the editorial side by focusing on unique local content and less on wire service feeds.
• If national advertisers could make a single newspaper buy, it would make an important contribution to newspaper growth.

For more information from the Marketing Charts summation, including graphic data, please visit here.

Mobile Advertising More Personal In 2020

by Mark Walsh, Friday, August 14, 2009, 4:17 PM

What will mobile advertising look like in 2020? A new report from OgilvyOne and messaging company Acision predicts mobile advertising in 11 years will be far more personalized as users exercise control over the types of messages they see, and when, on their handheld devices.

"Mobile advertising in 2020 will be mobile directed advertising which is selected and chosen by the individuals themselves. It is the individual who will be the pivotal player in the mobile advertising domain of the future and the mobile device will be a technological representation of them," according to the study.

The projected transition to more highly tailored mobile ads outlined in the report will change how agencies and wireless providers operate. For agencies: "Pushing messages out to unwilling consumers is replaced with producing ideas and content that individuals will seek out and incorporate into their own world," states the report.

This sounds a lot like the consumer-in-control rhetoric of the last few years encouraging marketers to embrace user involvement in online ad campaigns. Whether it actually leads to more relevant advertising on mobile phones by 2020 is another question. What if most people opt not to have any advertising at all? (The OgilvyOne study does foresee an opt-in model for receiving mobile advertising becoming a global standard by then.)

By 2020, the wireless industry will not be dominated by a handful of mobile operators, but become segmented by service specialty. "This operator segmentation should ultimately be a positive transformation for the future of mobile advertising. It will enable the operators to excel at what they deem to be their core capabilities."

The report also envisions technological advances -- especially the proliferation of 4G networks -- propelling the growth of mobile advertising by blurring the line between wired and wireless connections and ensuring better security.

"This will allow us to decide which screen we would like to receive the advertisement on: the mobile device, the screen on the back of the airline chair, in the game which we are playing or e-book which we are engrossed in, etc., etc."

So will 2020 finally be the Year of Mobile? The study does not explicitly make that prediction, but says we will know when it's arrived when users do more with their mobile phones than anything else. "It is when the mobile device is truly used for all touch points in your life." Some smartphone users may already feel that time has come.

Media Preferences & Behaviors (% of Respondent Classification, Mobile Viewers Watch Mobile Video at Least Once a Week)

Mobile Video Viewers

Non-Mobile Video Viewers

Rely on mobile for up to the minute info

78%

19%

Prefer to receive info via mobile Internet

71

13

Get news from mobile more than any other source

58

10

Spend more time away from computers than in front of them

50

21

Source: Transpera & InsightExpress survey, July 2009

Streaming of TV Shows and Movies (% of Online Americans, previous 30 days)

Streaming Medium

Sept. 2008

April 2009

TV Streaming

   Age ≥12

11%

26%

   Age 18-24

18

51

Movie Streaming

   Age ≥12

6

14

   Age 18-24

18

30

Source: Ipsos, July 2009

Newspapers Still Send Consumers To The Store

by Jack Loechner, 48 minutes ago

According to early data from MORI Research, announced by the Newspaper Association of America, 59% of adults identify newspapers as the medium they use for planning, shopping and purchase decisions, making newspapers the leading advertising medium cited by consumers for these activities.

NAA President and CEO, John Sturm, says "... while new technologies have their place in any total marketing program... newspaper advertising remains the most powerful tool for advertisers who want to motivate consumers to take action... "

In a series entitled "American Consumer Insights," early results indicate:

• 73% of adults regularly or occasionally read newspaper inserts
• 82% have been spurred to action by a newspaper insert in the past month

While 82% of those surveyed said they "took action" as a result of newspaper advertising, including:

• Clipping a coupon (61%)
• Buying something (50%)
• Visiting Web sites to learn more (33%)
• Trying something for the first time (27%)

Preliminary data also reveals that other media trailed well behind newspapers as the primary medium for checking advertising. The closest competitor, the Internet, trailed newspapers by 20 percentage points, direct mail gained a 14% response in the survey, and television was cited by only 8% of respondents.

MORI Research conducted this phone and Internet survey of more than 3,000 adults for the Newspaper Association of America representing the $47 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada

For more information from the NAA Press Center, please visit here.

How-To

Optimizing Web Sites -- Not Just For Brand Image, but For Revenue

by Matthew Conlin, 1 hour ago

Online advertising continues to grow despite the downturn. It's flexible, cost effective and every consumer -- in every demographic -- has interaction with the web at some stage. With Web sites getting millions of hits every day, there is a tremendous opportunity for their owners to take under-performing or under-utilized inventory and turn it into bottom line dollars.

Companies with Web sites are able to boost their revenues by monetizing the traffic that passes through their pages on a daily basis. A Revenue Path can be the ideal tool for an organization to adopt in order to make the most of the revenue generating opportunities that they have at their fingertips.

Implementing any kind of sales or advertising campaign on a Web site can be as simple as taking a banner and planting at the top of the page. However, if you want to optimize the revenue through the site and increase eCPM (revenue per 1000 impressions), the selection, design and placement of campaigns has to be more considered.

Every ad a Web site carries should be specific for their individual pages. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, but with more up-side for the Web publisher.

Matching the campaign to the traffic
Selecting the right campaign requires two things: firstly, you must have an understanding of who the visitors to the site are. If you have had customers signing up for membership of the site, this information is accessible and can be used in many ways -- not simply from registry of interest in different subjects, but also demographic information submitted.

The second thing is a wide variety of different campaigns available to chose from. If you are working with a Lead Generation company that doesn't carry many offers, or only specializes in one or two areas that aren't relevant to you, it's more difficult to find campaigns that will appeal to your visitors. Working with an Online Ad Company that covers hundreds of different advertisers and campaigns is very important.

Design and place the campaign
Once the campaign is selected, it is important that it is deployed in the right way.
Every campaign that's placed on a site should be designed to look and feel like it belongs there. This can either be done through the bespoke design of every campaign for every site that takes it, or through the design of a highly flexible template, which can be tailored in terms of size, color, font and any other variables to fit any specification.

This effort to integrate the offer into the site will strengthen the association between a customer and the brand being advertised, as well as the website itself.  

Collecting revenue
There are different ways to collect revenue through the inventory and traffic on your website. One example is through a Revenue Path, a tool for Proactive Online Lead Generation. The online campaigns are designed to promote a specific product or service and can collect a variety of customer data -- name, age, telephone number, email address and any other additional data points if needed. This makes the lead far more valuable and therefore lucrative for the Web publisher that collects it.

If you measure the monetization of Web traffic by eCPM, the Revenue Path can deliver higher results than almost any other alternative. Some sites can achieve an eCPM of up to and over $1000.

There are alternatives to this approach. Affiliate Marketing for example. But most of these are inflexible in how they can be deployed -- which often gives your site the appearance of an overly corporate, advertising-driven page. Customers are known to dislike this appearance. In addition, the eCPM for click-through advertising is far lower.

Website publishers can add a significant revenue stream to their business through approaches like the Clash-Media Revenue Path -- importantly, they can do this without affecting the user-experience of their site.

Traditional TV Viewing vs. Online Activities (% of Respondents, May 2009)

Screen Viewing

Hours Per Week

Non-business hours online

12.9

Hours watching traditional TV

11.8

Source: ChangeWave Research, July 2009

One Paid Subscription Service Most Likely To Give Up If Necessary (% of Respondents, May 2009)

Subscription Willing to Sacrifice

% of Respondents

TV service

44%

Home telephone

23

DVD/Movie rental

11

Internet

5

Newspaper

4

Magazines

3

Cell phone

3

Source: ChangeWave Research, July 2009

Video Advertising vs. Broadcast Advertising (% of Respondents Willing to View on Computer Compared to Broadcast TV)

How Many Ads

% of Respondents

As many

3%

Not as many

18

Dramatically fewer

47

None

22

Source: ChangeWave Research, July 2009

Profile on Social Networking Service (% of Respondents Using Social Network Websites, May 2009)

Network

% With Profile

LInkedin

57%

Facebook

55

Classmates

22

Twitter

16

MySpace

12

Source: ChangeWave Research, July 2009

Spending on Word-of-Mouth (WoM) Marketing ($x000)

Category

2008

2009

2003-2008

CAGR

2008-2013

CAGR

WoM - Content & Service Providers 

   Spend

$1,257

$1,375

   Growth %

13.0%

9.4%

37.3%

13.6%

   Share %

81.5%

80.9%

WoM - Ancillary Products 

   Spend

$286

$326

   Growth %

19.7%

13.8%

39.1%

18.4%

   Share %

18.5%

19.1%

Total WoM Spending

   Spend

$1,543

$1,701

   Growth %

14.2%

10.2%

37.6%

14.5%

Source: PQ Media 

% Share of WoM Spending by Marketers in 2008

Brand Market

Share of WoM Spend

Consumer Goods Products

17.4%

Food & Drink

12.2%

Finance & B2B Services

9.5%

Electronics & Telecom

9.4%

Retail

9.2%

Auto & Transportation

8.6%

Entertainment & Media

7.5%

Apparel & Accessories

6.2%

Health Care & Pharma

4.1%

Sports & Gaming

3.6%

Travel & Leisure

3.3%

Home & Garden

3.2%

Other

5.8%

Total

100.0%

Source: PQ Media, July 2009

Fulgoni: The Bottom Line Is Online Ads Work For Branding And Sales

by Laurie Sullivan, Friday, July 31, 2009, 3:27 PM

Get rid of the click as the de facto standard to measure the success of an online campaign. It's outdated and doesn't represent real success. So says Gian Fulgoni, chairman and co-founder of comScore, at the MediaPost OMMA Metrics & Measurement conference in San Francisco, Calif., Friday.

In the keynote, Fulgoni told attendees the Internet is far more successful in increasing sales. And it may be the most measurable medium, but not everything measurable matters.

So, what now? Fulgoni says advertisers and marketers need to forget the click, focus on the sales impact on campaigns and conduct post-buy analysis. They also need to realize that display ads help search advertising succeed and vice versa. Don't forget the power of creative display ads. Online branding campaigns can be effective. Internet advertising has had an impact on retail that is on par with television.

Advertisers and marketers just want some type of metrics that show the online campaign reaches the demographics and promised target segments. Fulgoni says that in any new medium, it's easy to make promises that exceed the ability of the technology. And to some degree, Internet advertising has done that. "One problem is, it's too easy to exaggerate the promises and claims that can be delivered," he says.

Fulgoni believes the industry has failed to eliminate the click as a metric because it once worked well, and search has had great success as a measurement tool. While the click rate for display ads has dropped to 0.1%, this does not mean that online ads don't work. It just means the metrics that the industry uses are wrong.

Still, far too many CMOs think the click matters. "If we want to move those dollars from traditional advertising to the Internet, we can sit here and complain about the percentage of time spent online and not getting our fair share until we're blue in the face, but I don't think that will influence the CMOs of big companies," Fulgoni says. "The CMOs need to know before they change the way they spend money that they will not have degradation in their ROI. Because God forbid it happens -- all hell will break loose."

There are major problems with using the click to measure the success of online ads. A comScore study of Yahoo and DoubleClick cookies that was conducted several years ago revealed that 30% of Internet users delete cookies in a month. A recent study suggests that rates are up 10%. The original metrics did not take into account that people use multiple computers. Nor do they take into consideration that people now delete five different cookies for the same site in a month on one computer.

Cookie deletion creates major problems -- such as 2.5 times overstatement of unique visitors in a server log, depending on frequency of site visitation, as well as up to 2.5 times overstatement of reach and a similar understatement in frequency in ad server logs.

Traditional brand marketers still want metrics on creative, reach and frequency. The cost-effectiveness of online advertising will speak for itself if the industry can determine and better understand the impact that campaigns have and use the correct metrics.

So, comScore combined traditional metrics with a type of ad-serving technology from Microsoft Atlas to create metrics that looks at ad placement. It combines Microsoft's ad-serving data with demographic information from comScore's panel. The Reach and Frequency Planner, or RF Planner, aims to help advertisers determine and predict how consumers will respond to their digital ads.

Richard Huff, senior analyst at Atlas Institute, who leads the project for Microsoft, told attendees in a later panel discussion that it's critical to have an accurate audience measurement tool, and it's important that the industry finally realizes it's time to make a change.

Several comScore studies have confirmed that online campaigns drive offline sales, according to Fulgoni. In the first study, comScore took four categories, 53 brands and 200 of the most trafficked sites. The company looked at people exposed to display advertising and what they did in the month following. Findings reveal that 18% searched on the brand advertised and 29% went to the advertisers' sites. Consumers who were exposed to the display advertising spent 55% more time than the average visitors to these sites the next month. The rise in time spent is matched by a similar increase in page views -- about 51%.

Rather than use the click as a metric, comScore looked separately at the impact of how search and display advertising might change consumer behavior, as well as search and display working together. During the four-week test, the research firm analyzed the increase traffic display ads give to brand sites. The patterns were consistent across automotive, finance, CPG, retail and apparel, media and entertainment, electronics and software, and travel.

Then, comScore analyzed the impact that online campaigns have on retail sales by matching the name and the address of consumers to retail loyalty card databases. The supermarket Kroger, for example, has issued about 60 million loyalty cards, which provide a massive data set to understand the degree that online search and display campaigns drive retail sales. The findings suggest a lift that is five times stronger when people are exposed to search ads alone, compared with display. Search alone produces an 82% lift, compared with display at 16%, and 119% when search and display are combined. About 82% of online ad campaigns measured by comScore have generated an average lift of 22% in CPG brand sales in retail stores.

Consumer Email (January through June, 2009)

Result

% of Mail Sent

Delivered

79.3%

Missing

17.4%

Junk/Bulk

3.3%

Source: Return Path, July 2009

B2B Email (6 Months 2009)

Result

% of Mail Sent

Delivered

72.4%

Missing

21.5%

Junk/Bulk

6.1%

Source: Return Path, July 2009

Non-delivery Rates by ISP (US, 1st 6 Months, 2009)

ISP

% Mail Not Delivered

Cox

8%

USA.net

11%

Road Runner

12%

BellSouth

14%

Netzero

14%

Yahoo!

15%

AOL

16%

Comcast

17%

MSN

20%

Hotmail

20%

Gmail

23%

Source: Return Path, July 2009