Digital out-of-home advertising on the rise in ‘10

Digital out-of-home advertising is one of the few media segments experiencing growth in today’s volatile economic environment. Digital out-of-home advertising ended 2008 with an 11% increase in advertising revenue and  in The “Digital Out of Home: Hyperlocal and Hyper Growth?” report from BIA/Kelsey indicates that digital out-of-home spending will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5% from 2009 to 2013, versus 1.4% for out-of-home. Digital out-of-home advertising includes the large digital billboard alongside highways and other forms of video advertising referred to as narrowcasting. Narrowcasting, another name for out-of-home video advertising is video content displayed and distributed to narrow audiences within a public setting. Examples of narrowcasting include retail outlets checkout lines, taxi cabs, shopping malls, supermarkets, movie theaters, bars, restaurants, hotels and gyms, just to name a few. Digital billboards are starting to pop up at any physical location where consumers are starting to spend a lot of time; a trend that is expected to continue to grow.

There are multiple factors working together to help spur the growth of digital out-of-home advertising. The first major factor is that consumers are starting to spend more time out-of-home and advertisers are following consumer lifestyle patterns. If consumers are spending more time out-of-home, then they are spending less time with traditional media such as television, forcing advertisers to think of unique ways to capture their consumer’s attention. Digital billboard offers advertisers some non-traditional ways to capture their audience’s eyeballs.

There are a number of unique places where digital billboards are starting to pop up. Some of the more recent success stories include the digital billboard company Gas Station TV. Gas Station TV operates digital screens at gas station pumps in over 800 cities nationwide and consumers filling up their cars with gasoline have nothing better to watch. Another example is Transit TV, one of the largest in-transit digital video systems in North America operating more than 8,400 screens in buses and trains throughout the United States. Finally, Captivate Networks is comprised of more than 8,200 digital screens located in office tower elevators in 23 of North America’s top markets. Each of these digital screen services provides advertisers with the ability to capture consumers attention in a non-traditional way while offering fairly effective measures of success. It is the growth and success of the companies listed above that have advertisers starting to make room for digital out-of-home advertising as part of the their client’s media plans.

The final factor helping to accelerate the growth of digital out-of-home advertising is the ability to repurpose already developed creative material. Advertisers and clients who have a number of 30-second television spots developed can simply redeploy the same spots in this medium with minimal developmental work. So in an environment and time when advertising dollars are shrinking and clients are demanding more for less, digital billboards are being seen as a positive influence on the advertising sector.

So when you are at the mall the holiday season or in an airport or even an elevator think of how these marketing mechanisms are shaping how you and others are buying or getting targeted information. I mean c’mon.. would anyone visit Times Square just because?

 

How Does Your Company Measure Success?

I saw this today and thought it was a great post for all to see who are in the Marketing biz.

Custom content good for ROI

Nearly three-quarters of companies have guidelines to measure the success of their marketing programs, and for one-half such measurements are a requirement for obtaining marketing funding, according to the King Fish Media “2009 Survey on Marketing, Media and Measurement,” conducted in partnership with HubSpot, Junta42 and the Upshot Institute.

The No. 1 metric of success for the marketing and sales managers polled was the number of new customers acquired. Lead generation and increased sales were also tracked by more than two-thirds of respondents.

The marketers studied considered their corporate Website the best method for achieving their top goal of reaching prospective customers. Social media and custom content and media were not far behind.

Fully 86% of respondents said their companies were currently creating or planned to create original content for customers and prospects, and 74% believed such content was more effective than traditional advertising at generating marketing ROI.

Respondents were very positive about the value of corporate efforts, with more than eight in 10 saying companies and brands could produce content as engaging and informative as media companies.

“Marketers have been aware of the effectiveness of building relationships and trust with content since long before the Internet,” said Gordon Plutsky, director of marketing and research at King Fish, in a statement. “Technological change has rapidly increased media channel options and the patterns of information consumption among consumers. More and more marketers are abandoning old media—and traditional advertising—to venture out on their own with original content.”

 

DR vs DR?

Direct response versus Delayed response

While display ad success has traditionally been measured by click-through rates, online marketers have begun looking beyond such direct-response metrics for ways to measure branding.

A panel-based study from comScore and dunnhumbyUSA set out to do just that, by monitoring online ad exposure and subsequent supermarket purchases.

The research firms found that online ads were more effective than advertising on TV for increasing sales lift for consumer packaged goods (CPG).

The CPG sales lift among US consumers exposed to online ads in 2009 was 9% over three months, with 80% of campaigns studied showing a statistically significant lift.

That compares to 8% lift over 12 months for TV ads, according to Information Resources Inc. (IRI).  Just 36% of the TV campaigns studied by IRI in its “How Advertising Works” research paper induced a statistically significant sales lift.

Early results confirm the ability of online advertising to successfully build retail sales of CPG brands on par with the impact of television advertising

The results should remind marketers that the click is not the only metric of success.

 

The “Last Click” Broken Record

Do we really have to continue and listen to Marketers who really believe there is a silo metric for all holistic programs called ‘Last Click’?

Coming from the client and now on the agency side it is a depressing feeling. CMO’s, VP’s, and Directors of very large organizations who only have their jobs due to attrition or who they know come in and screw up what the real knowledgeable industry players created.  These folks who only know what they knew back in early 2000’s feel that using a last click metric will provide them with the answers.

You know the saying about assumptions — they make an … This is especially true in online advertising, where marketers and publishers have relied on the idea that the final ad a consumer sees before clicking the buy button is the most important marketing message of all.

But giving credit for a sale to the last ad, at the expense of the life cycle of the campaign, is a marketing mistake Microsoft’s Atlas Institute wants to eradicate. Because the interest, intent to buy and final purchase occurs as part of a digital purchase funnel, says Esco Strong, senior group manager for the Atlas Institute, part of Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions division, which provides digital media technologies and tools for agencies, publishers and advertisers.

I am witnessing first hand marketers using last click in display marketing to search, to affiliate to CSE.  The results of this is ZERO attribution.

Recently at SES in San Jose some of the best Digital Marketing minds on a panel discussed this exact topic.

About 15 percent of media investment is in digital. Forrester also expects the number to go to 25 percent in the next few years.  Last click measurement may lead to poor investment decisions and slow the digital investment. Paid search is getting too much or too little credit.

Dependencies:

• Metrics set up as first/last/multi-click
• Organic: is it set up as a campaign?
• How do you measure affiliate?

They did a study to get an idea of how significant the cross-vehicle interaction is in terms of visitors and revenue exchange between marketing programs. They found about half of visitors came directly to the site. They probably heard about the URL elsewhere. About 30 percent is coming from a single touch point, like an affiliate program. 20 percent comes from multi-touch point approach, with the visitor seeing the brand in several places before coming to the site.

So what they learned is that they’re tracking last click as well as an attribution revenue stream based on lifetime value. Set your systems to measure last click and pervasive lifetime value of traffic. Consider third-party solutions to track. Implement a dashboard system for last click and participation revenue. Consider a split dashboard with revenue generation and influence programs.

If you think I am being harsh I went back to June 2007 article and study  by Matt Nelson on ClickZ:

The study found that two out of three consumers who eventually took a responsive action were reached by ads across multiple portal sites before actually going on to make a purchase, and that consumers reached across multiple publishers were twice as likely to convert as those reached only on a single publisher

And then 6 months later another article and data came from Matt Finch “RIP Last Click Wins”

The first step was to track all channels (impressions and clicks) through a single universal tracking tag. This meant regardless of the marketing channel, all user interactions were tracked to a single cookie.

By tracking the date and time of each impression or click, a report was produced to map out first interaction through to the final conversion on the  website he also found that of all customers that first interacted with an affiliate network, 23% ended booking via paid search marketing – proving affiliates had value in raising awareness.

Matt also looked at the creative impact. Did display banners advertising the Spa drive customers to search on Google for Spa Breaks or Spa Hotels? Did our Rich Media creative deliver a stronger uplift than standard banners?

Next he tried to understand how to impact future customers. They looked for opportunities to replicate successful journeys, strengthen messaging or even adding special offers to improve conversion.

It also allowed them to optimise media plans, by identifying which website placements were delivering positive uplift versus those not delivering any influence.

The final setup was to calculate  attribution modeling, sharing the CPA (cost-per-acquisition) back with all the channels that influenced the sale – a far more intelligent model than last click

Its not only me stating that this fallacy of a Last Click attribution does not and WILL NEVER work on all holistic Digital campaigns. Its time to learn real analytics and base your marketing on high, mid and low funnel programs and what these campaigns really mean to your overall.

 

BBB helps shoppers when stores go kaput

Over the last few months. major retailers such as Friedman’s Jewelers, Linens ‘n Things and Circuit City have filed for bankruptcy protection.

Customers of those stores want to know what that means for them. Can you still redeem gift cards? Will warranties be honored? How about returns?

Beverly Baskin, CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Eastern North Carolina, answered some of consumers’ most common questions.

Redeem gift cards immediately, she said.

“Don’t put it in the drawer. … Go ahead and use it because that’s your best guarantee that it’s going to be good,” Baskin advised.

Once a business is bankrupt, redeeming them is iffy.

“If they’re filing for Chapter 11 and they’re really trying to reorganize their business, a lot of those companies may go ahead and honor the card,” Baskin said, but that’s not a legal requirement.

Once a store closes, gift cards are worthless. Holders are typically too far down the line of creditors to get anything back.

Extended warranties, if they are provided through a third party, are still valid even if the store closes.

Baskin also warns that liquidation sales are not the great deal that they seem to be.

“You have to pull out that little cynical cap and wear it for a few minutes when you’re considering those deals,” she cautioned.

Some retailers raise prices before they discount them. And final sales are just that. If a store goes out of business, you can’t return something, even if it doesn’t work.

Baskin said shoppers can protect themselves before even going to the store, however.

“You have to do a little bit of research and figure that the company’s going to be around for a while,” she said.

As recent months have shown, even companies with rock-solid reputations can suffer in an economic downturn.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the end of that,” Baskin said. “I’m not being pessimistic here. I’m being realistic.”

When you choose to shop, you can protect yourself from faulty products by paying with a credit card. If the company goes out of business, you can dispute the charge with your credit card company and get it removed from your bill.

If you deal with a service provider, try to pay your deposit with credit as well. If the company goes out of business, you may be able to get the money back.

 

Visible World, Google TV Ads in Targeted Advertising Partnership

Along with my previous Director Gary Milner at Lenovo we were the facilitators of this over 18 months ago.

I am proud to say…while at Lenovo Gary and I developed Global Interactive Strategy and Implementation we brought these 2 companies together and in effect streamlined the Google TV process and Platform which today now has become part of the Google offering.

Case Study: Reconnecting with Television Advertising. Lenovo creates promotional flexibility with Google TV Ads, June 2008 http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/success/lenovo.html

See article below

New York-based targeted advertising specialist, Visible World (backers include Comcast Interactive Capital, Time Warner, Viacom and WPP) and Google TV Ads (offers an automated, auction-based system for buying advertising) announced Tuesday that they have formed a “working relationship” to deliver advanced TV advertising solutions. According to the companies, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform (note: those advertisers include Priceline, Lenovo, Buy.com and Jenny Craig) will now be able to dynamically customize and target their TV ads easily and efficiently through Visible World’s automated system.

The companies say that the partnership will enable advertisers to use Google TV Ads with Visible World’s automated message-optimization engine in order to deliver the most relevant messages to the target audience. This, the companies claim, will allow advertisers to get the most from their existing creative, while providing differentiation based on program, time and context to drive and measure audience response. According to the companies, for the first time advertisers will be able to automate multiple creative messages featuring a variety of offers, products and search terms based on the target audience, context differences and media performance data provided by new online and set-top box metrics. “Visible World’s services will help advertisers continue to get great value from Google TV Ads,” Mike Steib, Google’s director of TV Ads, said in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to work with Visible World so that our advertisers can place even better and more customized ads.” Added Visible World president, Tara Walpert Levy: “Google TV Ads is bringing a new level of innovation to television and the media buying process. Given our mutual commitment to targeting, flexibility, accountabil¬ity and measurability, we are thrilled to be partnering with them. Advertisers can now create, target, and optimize relevant ads that will generate improved marketing results on Google TV Ads and will also uncover insights that can be applied to the rest of the media plan.”

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Google TV Ads and Visible World agreed to collaborate at the request of Lenovo, a mutual client, and other advertisers. The newspaper reported that the deal between the companies will see Google TV Ads paying Visible World for its technology, which lets advertisers adjust their ads for specific audience segments by changing such elements as graphics, music and script, and which also lets them swap out ads on the fly.

Case Study: Reconnecting with Television Advertising. Lenovo creates promotional flexibility with Google TV Ads, June 2008 http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/success/lenovo.html

 

Microsoft, Yahoo agree on ad partnership

Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc have agreed to an online search and advertising partnership, in an attempt to rival Google Inc, that will be announced within 24 hours, a source familiar with the situation said on Thursday.

Microsoft will not pay an upfront fee to Yahoo, and the focus of the deal is on sharing revenue between the two companies, said the source, who did not want to be identified because a formal announcement has not been made.

The news and details of the expected deal were first reported by the AllThingsDigital blog and Advertising Age.

Microsoft and Yahoo declined comment. The two companies have talked for months about cooperating in the online advertising market, dominated by Google.

Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo last year but its $47.5 billion bid was rebuffed and Yahoo’s attempt to seal a search advertising deal with Google Inc fell apart under regulatory scrutiny.

Under the expected deal, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine will power Yahoo’s searches, according to Advertising Age, while Yahoo will handle the advertising sales, using Microsoft technology.

The deal should give Bing a giant boost in competing with Google’s search engine. Google’s search engine dominates the marketplace with 65 percent of U.S. Internet searches, according to figures provided by research firm ComScore. Last month, Microsoft had only 8.4 percent of the market and Yahoo 19.6 percent.

There is a chance a deal combining the powers of the second and third-ranked search engine companies would be blocked by antitrust regulators. Google and Yahoo dropped plans for an advertising partnership last year under opposition from the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

Back from the Basement…

I have been on a little hiatus and with all thats been going on in the world I find myself in a little place in the East Bay of NoCal at a Starbucks no less enjoying a sunset, calm, peace and of course the best window seat any man would enjoy.

So.. what has happened in the world since we last communicated?.. Well many big time deaths including the great.. uh ah.. not the King of Pop but one of the Marketing geniuses of this era Billy Mays.

Billy Mays was an American television direct-response advertisement salesperson (icon) most notable for promoting OxiClean, Orange Glo, and other cleaning, home-based, and maintenance products. This guy sold the Washamatik portable washing device to passersby, along with other “As Seen on TV” products. In Atlantic City,  and was taught how to sell by the older salesmen who had been there for years.

Billy was hitting it big with his cable TV hit ‘Pitch Men’ and was about to embark in a series of Taco Bell infomercial type ads starting in August.. God love the working man from Pennsylvania who learned from the old school merchandisers and succeeded in the new world.

I also took notice of how even the worst of the worst get a chance to be a driver of revenues through the web.

Scott Peterson.. yep! That Scott Peterson.. ya know of Lacy and Conner murder fame.  Although this *&%$bag has our tax dollars paying for his futile appeal his family has decided to go global and start a blog for donations. And get this.. Peterson himself wrote a blog post on the site last month expressing concern about delays in the investigation. Now.. I tossed and turned whether to post this blog address for about a minute and decided for the sake of those who perished it would be wise to just not go there.  you can figure it out pretty easy just take what you think it is and add a dot ORG. Other than that Scott .. you are on your own.

While in the basement I have had a chance to read a few books.

THE BIG RICH -The rise and Fall of Great Texas Oil FortunesBy Bryan Burrough‘The Long Tail’ and ‘Free’ both by Chris Anderson

And the final read which I am in the middle of cus I just started today is – ‘Golf Dads’ by Curt Sampson..

great for anyone who loves the sport as I do and finally had something in common with a parent which is the actual sport.

OK.. so there you are and sorry for being away for so long.. and just so I can share 1 more little interactive tid bit..

….Men were more likely than women to go online for business, entertainment and to keep informed on news and current events.

Women, in turn, were more likely to use the Internet to advocate for a cause or issue, express themselves and socialize.

More than two-thirds (69%) of young adults ages 18 to 29 posted comments on social networking sites, 55% played games and 50% went online “specifically to rage against a person or organization.”

Seniors were nearly twice as likely as young people to manage their finances, and 65% of seniors went online to be part of a community.

There you have it. and in the now immortal words of a man so richly accredited with providing every American the truth and information about the world  – Walter Cronkite, “Thats the way it is”…..RIP Walter

 

Amazon.com fights internet sales-tax

As revenue-hungry states eye Internet sales as possible sources of new taxes, Amazon.com Inc. is firing back by jettisoning advertising affiliates in two states to avoid taxing its customers there. Overstock.com plans to follow suit.

Internet Sales Tax is coming

Already, the nation’s largest Internet retailer has cut ties with its affiliate websites in two states to avoid legislation that would require the company to collect sales taxes from its customers there. And it is fighting similar tax proposals in several other states, including California.

At issue is the company’s Associates Program, which lets thousands of small businesses earn money by posting ads for Amazon and its products on their websites. If a consumer clicks through and buys something, Amazon gives a referral fee — as much as a 15% cut on the sale — to the third-party website.

Currently, states can levy sales taxes on Internet commerce only when the Web company has a “physical presence” in the state, such as a corporate office, store or warehouse.

Seattle-based Amazon, for instance, must charge sales taxes on purchases made online by Washington state residents. But Amazon customers in nearly every other state don’t have to pay sales taxes when they buy from the site.

Now several states are arguing that these third-party advertising contracts at Amazon and other Internet retailers constitute a physical presence. The states are looking to those companies to charge sales taxes

 

The Sad Tale of Abandoned Shopping Carts

Browsing and comparing products before adding them to an online shopping cart takes time and effort, but leaving those products is as easy as “click.”

And that’s a problem for online retailers.

According to an e-tailing group survey, nearly 60% of US online retailers survey are seeing cart abandonment rates of over 20% this year.

A study by PayPal and comScore found 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times in just three weeks.

Most importantly from the merchants’ point of view, the average cost of abandoned goods in those shopping carts was $109.

In the same study, 46% of online shoppers said high shipping charges were a “very important reason” for emptying carts.

Other reasons for abandonment included:

• Wanted to comparison shop: 37%
• Lack of money: 36%
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27%
• Wanted to shop offline: 26%
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24%
• Item unavailable at checkout: 23%
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22%
• Security concerns: 21%

“Merchants who don’t welcome back abandoners are leaving hundreds of dollars per shopper on the table,” said Eddie Davis of PayPal.

“Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”

And makes leaving carts behind a little bit harder.