The thoughts expressed in this blog post are not necessarily shared by eVisibility.

This week Rupert Murdoch boldly announced that he vows to charge for all content, and as a fellow Jew, I couldn’t be happier to welcome him to the tribe of the chosen people.

“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,” Murdoch stated to those very reporters that maybe on his payroll.

As with any negatively reinforced group or animal, users contest that they will not pay. I’ve previously mentioned in a post. People are averse to the idea of anything being NOT free on the internet because they feel like it is their birthright. It will be a struggle at first to launch this quixotic adventure with Murdoch, but an all too necessary one.

We (web folk) are in our heyday. The economic climate has wilted. The weak fold, while the strong grow even more so. But it will all catch up with us if we aren’t careful. Every advertising medium relished in its nascence had endured growing pains, will fail and die, and will rise again like a phoenix.

Remember that every time you catch yourself thinking that the Internet may one day be the sole advertising medium, with the platform being full multimedia consoles in the home, that you are probably right! These aren’t far from our reality, and even the socialization of our toasters and microwaves may one day lend itself to ad serving. The very stagnation that could one day affect our world has already plagued development in Radio, TV, Print, and Outdoor. Their time is long overdue to rise again, and reclaim their posts in a total marketing experience. Technology has been the great equalizer for the Internet. Nerds have brought us to the Promised Land, allowing us to triumph over the great dinosaurs through measurability and dynamism. The Internet has been fleet where others simply are not.

With the tides slowly resetting, Rupert Murdoch is approaching by way of a tidal wave.

The source of all that is media content is of course the major news affiliates, our friends in Radio, TV, and Print. News content begets blogging fodder, which inspires networking and bookmarking. Without strong, credible, and globally representative news content the internet is at a virtual intellectual stand still. Of course, the chance of no credible news sources surviving these times (in some embodiment) is very unlikely. But the dwindling is a familiar reality.

Even the grey lady has suffered major ills. Content is the utmost premium that can bring the folk, reliant on internet technology for ad serving, to their knees. This isn’t a new concept, but has resurfaced via the media revolutionary himself, Mr. Murdoch. Pay for subscription is the basis of all news outlets, but true security and protection of it is not. Google powered crawlers could likely scour the net hanging price tags on all indexed content originating from an LA Times reporter within a second’s notice. Everyone from the blogging community to The Onion would be on the hook. Linkbacks, paraphrased references within a certain percentage of matching, all paying to spread content that ‘we’ have felt we are entitled to. With any entitlement a price must be paid.

The move to completely wrap up news feeds is a wise one, even though it is reactive. Major news forces must re-instate themselves as a powerhouse with their own new identity. Newspapers will never be the Internet, so they should never try to be. Site monetization will only be worth so much at the end of the day (Facespace and Mybook will attest). Newspapers, the physical ones that kids use for paper mache projects and grill masters chuck on the fire for kindling, have been virtually unchanged in this country for 100 years. They got comfortable and stagnate. No advertising outlet should feel as though they are at the pinnacle of their development. Nothing in this world ever is.

The Old Formula

Some things simply don’t translate to the online world. Selling a piece of paper makes distribution to a mass audience cumbersome at best. Selling a single online subscription can open an Internet free for all. There was a point in the sales strategy where the news sources allowed for easy distribution to aid linking, linkback, and viral growth for their content distribution channels. The only viable outcome from such a strategy is to generate such a traffic influx that CPM’s are sold into slavery. This would be a likely scenario if it weren’t for intermediary sales outlets in the middle scalping content and repositioning it for their own user ship. This structure becomes a no-win for the papers. The ability to share does not distinguish between the simple daily news gatherer, the organic arbitrage specialist, or the freelance opinion journalist.

What may be in store?

A new system could allow for a more tedious subscription process, discerning between those labeled ‘Resellers’ and single family news readers. Intermediary news sources will be forced to open their feeds and data for third party review and be billed on a viewer basis. Sociability disabled; a certain criteria for all resellers. The same would hold suit for cheaters on the single subscription side, blocking all content socializing or opening up a tab for email sharing/link embedding. This process will be completely contingent on the Newsies to root out wrongdoers on the net like ornery truffle pigs. System hacks and cheaters will be a constant threat to this circle. But so is bankruptcy, which may be the only other option when doing business the old way. Dedicated teams will need highly specialized scraping tools.

The debate of Murdoch’s Zionist ancestry will be ignited once again. He is a revolutionary, a media mogul and a staunch businessman further cemented in the history of our great American news alliances with his recent outpouring of unpopular candor. Popularity may make you friends, but revolution begets ultimate legacy. As Murdoch forges a new path through the changing landscape of online content delivery, we wait for his tablets from Mount Sinai with open arms.

Sponsored content in general, and even more specifically sponsored tweeting, have spurred both misaligned and poignant conversation. The naysayers will always say nay and the advocates will have brown noses until they are hardly recognizable, but the majority of those who are considered thought leaders are skating in the middle (Cough… Lisa Barone). It’s as if people are waiting for sponsored tweeting to fail or succeed before they chime in and say ‘I told you so’.

“I thought sponsored tweets was the answer and I also disclosed that I have been doing sponsored tweets for the last year.” - Shoemoney

As a Media Director I am an equally unadulterated backer of sponsored content. I’ve used it, very effectively, to foster high performing and highly targeted online branding campaigns for many clients both big and small. Then just last Monday, alongside another agency, we were thankful enough to receive a preview of the sponsored tweeting platform from SponsoredTweets.com.

Read the rest…

Tips & tricks to ensure a total fail and to draw my personal ire & ultimate disgust.

Everyone hates banner advertising, right?

Perhaps; but I’m under the growing suspicion that the true disapproval of banner advertising has more to do with the thoughtless development focus and less to do with the success of the advertising medium itself.

There are so many poorly designed banners floating around the Internet and so little time to dismantle them, but I will do my best to outline some very case-in-point examples of creative methodology blunders, faux pas, and things that make my loins stir with delight.

What is the goal of interactive media as a figment of a total marketing mix? Banner placements (in the traditional sense) are most effective as a means of driving search, brand recall, and enhancing reputation. Even after taking advantage of the latest and greatest ad technologies (contextual, behavioral, etc.), click-to-conversions should be considered gravy on top of your mashed potatoes. Other site based metrics, namely branded search and return visitation, should be monitored as the core KPIs.

Here is a sample quantification of a successful banner campaign Read the rest…

There are new tools and platforms springing up everyday featuring “REVOLUTIONARY” ways to optimize ad placements both for the publisher and advertiser, specifically giving the ability to track engagement time with an ad.

Great, we can now waste time optimizing nothing from nothing. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like tools analyzing ad engagement time can be truly revolutionary; maybe a helpful reporting plugin at best. Rather than continuing to sort out the few remaining suckers and shove non-engaging ads down the throats of social networkers as if we are the patron saints of all that is right in the world, we need to re-think the marketing roles that we’ve carried since the birth of Christ and start involving savvy users in the game.

Imagine a world where the end user has their own ad controls.

What do you think?

Sitting on an OMMA panel, Daniel Redman was joined by approximately 300 peers all discussing scaling ideas and the many successes of Behavioral Retargeting. The topic of the conversation was ‘Retargeting to Scale’, exploring both the profit and pitfalls of Retargeting. As this marketing strategy begins to make a prominent presence in Internet Marketing, there are many things that could be taken from the panel.

Among Daniel, others at the discussion contributed their own inputs on the many advantages and qualities that retargeting has played in the online space. While the technology remains relatively consistent, many have found the benefits of retargeting to be extremely successful by employing a host of strategies and product couplings. As questions at the panel were being answered, those present and listening online were able to take away more than just responses from the panelists.

As Daniel stated in a response, “It truly is a double-edged sword, as you certainly want to isolate and segment your site traffic, however you don’t want to make your prospect pool too thin.”

The panel was moderated by Alan Chapell, Chapell & Associates. Below are Redman’s formulated responses/notes to the questions posed by the moderator and some additional ones that time could not permit.

As I think back to my days at DCLK with the Boomerang product, retargeting always sounded good in theory, but as a practical matter, it was so hard to find that shopping cart abandoner downstream. What are some unique and innovative ways that you’ve addressed the scale issue?

With the ability to segment your creative by site action, you can easily isolate behaviors such as abandonment. You can literally distinguish between any number of activities that are site usability deficiencies. Though, it truly is a double-edged sword, as you certainly want to isolate and segment your site traffic, however you don’t want to make your prospect pool too thin. The important thing is to continue adding segments rather than making them a singular campaign strategy. For example, rather than excluding visitors, who DO transact, develop an offer or cross-sell program for that group. This isn’t allowing for scale up, per say, but it’s at least keeping you from trimming to deeply. A method that eVisibility will be employing in 2009 to replenish Retargeting visitors with quality traffic is an integration with Social Media channels stimulated by organic traffic. In testing, this has rendered exciting results.

Provide an example of a how retargeting helped achieve one or more of your client’s goals. (e.g., driving sales, shortening the sales cycle) What is the metric for success?

An ecommerce client selling big ticket furniture had a sales cycle that turned 11% of all of his transactions after 9 days from first visit. As it’s a vertical with quite a few competitors, I expected that I would improve conversion rate after 9 days and see an increase in the long cycle transactions at the same time. That wasn’t the case; total sales cycle decreased, volume increased, and now even though we’re winning $1,600 average transaction values, we’re only picking up the post 9 day sales at a 2% clip.

As we are our own best client, eVisibility is achieving a 50% decrease on lead cost versus paid search. Coupled with what we call the ‘They’re huge’ effect, retargeting has been a stronghold in our approach. We’re earning more call-in leads and simple reconnections from lost prospects that attribute in part to retargeting.

The pattern here is that Retargeting seems to perform most startlingly well in a competitive space.

When thinking about conversions, what % of conversions are click thru vs View Thru conversions? And what are some of the challenges you see when addressing attribution – particularly with view-thrus?

Of course with view-thru, clients are concerned that they are paying multiple times for the same sale. There is some validity in this of course, depending upon what other marketing is concurrently taking place.

The message is simple on CPA campaigns; take into account click costs in determining a whole acquisition cost. It’s very nominal.

What impact are retargeting campaigns having in terms of increasing Search queries?

Ive certainly seen and felt an impact on branded queries, though it’s not a 100% infallible data comparison, because we have very little insight to the origination of a query string in most cases. It’s a near improbability to truly track the influence of marketing actions on a searcher. WE can gather a lifetime story and gauge tendencies with current technology, but until our brains have ‘Intel Inside,’ pinpointing actual influence is a pipe-dream.

How many segments (hp, search, product pages, and conversions) on average are you observing for any given brand and how does the message change for each user on these segments?

Retargeting is highly reliant on the quality and quantity of traffic and which goal or goals are established from the onset. Campaigns have been a success driving merely a few conversions a week. Others successful campaigns are driving over a hundred per day. 9/10 times clients aren’t seasoned enough to be able to take the next step with retargeting and allow for deep segmentation. Most are simply getting their feet wet with a basic retargeting model. Typically, clients run retargeting, experience great success, and aren’t interested in investing to get more from what is ‘already outperforming’.

What are some mistakes someone can make when running a re-targeting campaign?

I know we are having a conversation about scaling retargeting, but simply speaking, retargeting can fail when it is not coupled with a significant traffic source and all consistency/relevancy factors are ignored. For all intensive purposes, this is not a stand-alone marketing initiative. Retargeting provides a wealth of ways to customize in order to gain accellerated success. Landing pages, messaging consistency, frequency modification, etc. I imagine by dumb luck, sometimes you can have a well performing campaign by dropping a return visitor on the homepage with the same banners you were running in 1995, but it’s not likely.

During this down economy are pricing models changing? What % are CPM and what are acquisition/rev share?

As an agency, we are exploring more CPA driven deals. The more savvy prospect/client understands the mathematics of a CPA and will directly request CPM, but the majority of business owners these days really want to feel like they are getting what they pay for and CPA makes a ton of sense for them. If a client can sleep at night knowing that they are only paying for conversions, than more power to them and I will support that strategy 100%. CPA is really another way to attempt to play your cards against the house (a retargeting vendor). You’re challenging the technology vendor to ‘go ahead and beat me’, knowing that in your pocket is your site conversion rate (whether good or bad).

How do you see retargeting evolving over the next few years?

In the immediate future, I’d like to see greater integration across channels. The ability to control messaging in Paid search seems like the logical fit for me. More dynamic insertion capability, especially in use with sequential serving you could virtually create a new world for the end-user. Tag-teaming with the long but dead co-registration could be another avenue. Cookie lifespan is going to continue to be a hotly debated topic. How we, as marketers, can extend the life of a prospect and limit attrition will be critical as prospects become savvier. Overall, in the short term, retargeting shouldn’t try to second guess itself. It works; it’s great, let’s simply make a more efficient wheel and the keep the fed off of our backs.

What role (if any) does data play a role in the targeting process? And here I’m talking about data IN ADDITION TO the info typically used for retargeting (e.g., abandoned the shopping cart.) Is there value in pulling other data points, or does that become more trouble than it is worth? Why?

I recently delivered a webinar on data analysis. The summation of that was that data will set you free. This gets back to the point of isolation and segmentation. To give a specific application; a large volume publisher has an interest in retargeting but not an interest in footing a sizeable bill. By data-mining, it’s possible to identify the most engaged traffic by usability cues, isolate from outside navigation as much as possible, and retarget only the group that you can really knock out of the park.

Similarly, what role does creative play in retargeting? How much testing (e.g., A/B, sequencing, multi-variet, Etc.) is really going on at this point? Why / Why not?

In my experience, messaging and destination are the two critical elements in a retargeting campaign. Aesthetics finish 3rd by a great distance. Relevancy should be your grabber, not the imagery. This has been the problem with Myspace advertising in the past. You can serve a ton of impressions and if you use wild rich-media with in-banner vids and games, you’ll grab clicks; but they are empty clicks. A/B and multivariate are both valuable and should be taken advantage of. But, I can’t say that I am a poster child for doing so. It’s difficult to squeeze banner costs out of a client when they are already succeeding with their current set and their prospect pool is recycling frequent enough to not saturate.

Put simply; in 2009, the Internet will find its way back to the people.

There’s been a constant struggle between capitalism and progressive sharing of information on the Internet since Licklider and/or Roberts (depending upon whether you believe in the chicken or the egg) picked up that first microchip and said “Let there be global data.” The role of marketers in our era is to expose segments of people, and match them to products and services through what we all commonly refer to as advertising. This creates a symbiotic relationship between marketers and consumers; though many consumers wish all marketers would go away and stop bothering them, marketing actually serves (though it may seem inane) an important role in the distribution and introduction of products to a virtual marketplace. It’s the old adage that people don’t wake up in the morning wanting a toaster with multiple settings; they are first shown the benefits of it and people just like them who are already enjoying the freedom of toasters with multiple settings.

So how does this directly apply to you and I

(and the collection of social mediaphiles) surfing the net, not for new toasters, but rather for members of the opposite sex and going on MySpace to make silly picture comments? One hyphenated word: Banner-blindness. In other words, it’s the phenomena apparent in generation X/Y and younger, which renders certain third party advertising relatively ineffective. This is a subconscious trend prevalent with the youth that have grown up net surfing, emailing, friending, etc. and have conditioned themselves to ‘pay no attention’ to online advertising, thus breaking the symbiosis between advertisers and consumers online. Myspace and Facebook are losing major advertising dollars due to failure of performance. Per Business Week, Facebook had initially hoped to generate between $300 million and $350 million in revenues for 2008—but lowered that forecast to $250 million to $300 million. MySpace ad revenue forecast was cut for 2008 by more than 22 percent—from $755 million to $585 million. Projections have dramatically reduced for 2009 to boot. Of course the economy has seen better times, but so has traditional offline advertising. Marketing dollars are flying to the net faster than the swallows to Capistrano. Search ad revenue (14.9%) and video revenue (45%) are poised for substantial growth on the net in 2009. One of the major question marks of the coming year is the performance of Social Media Display Advertising (recently approximated at 10% growth according to eMarketer, which was projected as high as 15% growth for ‘09 in August. To the waking world, social networks are pointing to the economy as a crutch to their feeble projections. In the trenches, there is a much different story.

“We have to really limit our buys on the social networks. Impressions are exorbitant, but our advertisers are reporting exceptionally poor CTR’s and conversion.” –Display Ad Network Representative (remaining anonymous to keep her job)

Businesses need marketers for the progress of product development and a reasonable brain washing in their respective customer base. Consumers need new products for the development of pop culture gains in human efficiency (and better tasting toast).

So how can both entities overcome this struggle of blindness vs. product consumption and co-exist?

I prophesize that advertising will be put in the hands of the consumer.

Campaigns, product recommendations, and blank endorsements will be the new M.O. and marketers will be at the core of it.

Marketers will provide the means, but ‘we the people’ will provide the ends; hence, the much needed symbiotic relationship to push business. Platforms will be built to allow everyday Internet users to spread good will to citizens of New York on 9/11 (sponsored by Ford), trash talk geo-targeted segments after a major sports victory or loss (brought to you by the NFL), and tell all of their friends the secret to shiny hair is L’Oreal Shampoo (brought to you by L’Oreal shampoo). Advertising will take the back seat to independent consumer-bred messaging.

This is not to say that marketers will be depleted of their reason for existence. On the contrary, they will still play the key role of matching products to segments; but it will be minimized. They will own and create the technology and platforms that publishers and advertisers can directly adopt, even with little to-no prior experience or investment. From there, it’s up to the consumer to make it viral (or desirable).

Viral campaigns are most successful when they are able to breathe and are not smothered with peanut butter and impression sandwiches. Skeptical? Search Google blogs for the first consumer product that comes to mind and count how many times on the first page you find a review, recommendation, or plea for advice relating to that product. Singular marketing is the most effective in gen X/Y.

What that means for the typical holier-than-thou Internet marketer that dreams of being Donald Draper, is that the room is about to get a whole lot nerdier. Previous difficulty in communicating with traditional agencies will become more of an adaptive environment for the offline folks than all of our crazy widgets, gadgets, and cookies that have riddled them for the past 3 or so years.

The outlook isn’t bleak in 2009, it’s liberating.