Interactive marketing has long sold itself on the promise of accountability and ROI measurement. Yet, at the same time there continues to be challenges in solving John Wanamaker’s problem: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Indeed, the common analytics tracking for online marketing campaigns are simplistic at best. It cannot measure how display ads (seen as branding) can impact search (used mostly for sales). Nor can most analytics tracking attribute the multiple searches and visits a person did that ultimately led to a purchase (See image above).
Enter Havas Digital and Yahoo. Their panel, Search + Display—Moving Beyond the Brand vs. Direct Response Model, not only showcased Havas Digital’s solution to this question but show great case studies of the insight and optimizations gained from a better and more true multi-channel analytics. (Note: all of the images in this post was taken by the Havas Digita/Yahoo PowerPoint presented at ad:tech)
Mobile is quickly becoming a must-have component of marketing campaigns. The panel on Capturing Direct Response in Mobile Media: Entertainment and Publishing shared strong insights into mobile marketing and provided examples highlighting how to create a successful campaign.
Moderator:
Mark Donovan Senior VP of Mobile, Comscore
Panel:
Chip Canter VP Wireless Platform Development, NBC Universal Digital Distribution
Cheryl Lucanegro, Senior VP Advertising and Sales, Pandora
Niles Lichtenstein Director, Mobile Strategy and Integration, Ansible Mobile
What Are the Issues Facing Mobile?
Sharing some stats, of the companies with mobile currently in their media mix, all plan to continue. Of the companies which have never done mobile, 60 percent plan to include it. There is a barrier to entry in mobile marketing, however once a brand tries it they want to do it again.
Inventory is no longer the issue in mobile the two key barriers are the immaturity of the infrastructure and training.
This panel seemed to think so. The Future of Mobile: Adding Mobile to the Mix shared some great insights on how brands can effectively integrate mobile into marketing efforts.
Moderator:
Mickey Alam Khan Editor-in-Chief, Mobile Marketer Magazine
Panelists:
Sophia Stuart Executive Director, Mobile Hearst Magazines Digital Media
Tony Nethercutt VP of Sales, AdMob
Marcus Startzel – Senior VP of Sales,, Millennial Media
Mike Becker Executive VP of Business Development, iLoop
Matthew Valleskey Head of Marketing Communications for Mobile Services, NeuStar
David Katz, VP, Mobile Advertising and Publishing, Yahoo! Inc.
Quality vs. Quanitity
Marketers are used to mass marketing where reach is king. The focus of traditional advertising was heavy on the top of the funnel - “How many people am I reaching?”. Both the internet and mobile allow marketers to target in more meaningful ways and focus on reaching highly relevant audiences with the right message at the right time. This can result in better overall ROI by attaining higher conversion rates from a smaller audience vs. traditional mass marketing.
One of the interesting aspect of the “digitalization” of media is “traditional” media slow movement to become more trackable and targetable. Televisions, the grand-daddy of all mass media, is one of them. The “TV 3.0: Reach + Targetability” session covered this very topic. Unfortunately, the holy grail of targetable television has proven as elusive as the actual Holy Grail. From the case studies presented, we seem no closer to targetable television advertising than from what I saw from last year’s ad:tech session on the same topic.
MODERATOR:
Daisy Whitney, Host/New Media Minute and Reporter, TVWeek PANELISTS:
Mitchell Oscar, Executive VP, Televisual Applications, MPG
Joshua Herman, Digital Marketing Innovation Leader, Acxiom
Davina Kent, Director of Strategic Alliances, Comcast Spotlight
Display based advertising is so web 1.0. What’s hot now is connecting with consumers beyond traditional display ads through social media according to the panel at The Next Frontier: Advertising in Applications session.
Moderator:
Mark Naples, Managing Partner WIT Strategy Panelists:
Luis E Castaneda, Global Digital Marketing, Xcentuate LLC
Hooman Radfar, CEO and Co-Founder, Clearspring
Ira Rubenstein, Executive VP, Global Digital Media Group, Marvel Entertainment
Ben Pashman VP Sales and Business Development, Gigya
Social Media is Everywhere
Hooman Radfar kicked of the conversation asking “Is all media social? How do we integrate social features into all of our media?” People are social by nature. In the “real world” (ie. Offline) people are inherently social; web 2.0 is now enabling these social interactions to take place online. All online efforts should include the opportunity for consumers to interact with each other and the brand or content producer.
Measuring digital is hot right now and it was standing room only at the Media Boot Camp Power Session: Defining the New Media Currency – How to bring traditional media metrics online.
Moderator:
David Smith, CEO Mediasmith Panelists:
Jon Gibs VP Media Analytics, Nielson Online
Erin Hunter Executive VP, comScore
Young-Bean Song Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute, Microsoft
Scott Ernst President, Compete
Todd Teresi, Chief Revenue Officer, Quantcast
There is a pretty big delta between the amount of time, energy and engagement that people have online and the amount of money that marketers are spending online. One of the barriers is understanding how to track and measure online spending to show results.
The biggest learning that came out of the ad:tech Omniture Sponsored Workshop: Close the Deal—Techniques and Technology That Will Increase Your Conversion Rates panel was a quote from Jupiter Research which stated, “Although only one third of the market is currently testing…79% of these companies have increased registration per visit, 74% have improved customers’ satisfaction and 68% have increased conversion rates.”
Being a contrarian, I opted to attend the “Know Thy Customer: Hard Data + Fresh Insights” while next door, the “UGC + Social Media” session with CNN and Facebook had a standing-room only crowd. This decision was based on how the session intended to address challenges facing a modern agency of continual optimization: 1) how to derive insights from data analysis; and 2) how to connect insights to decision making.
The panelists included the following:
- Cindy Roche, VP, Site Experience, TripAdvisor
- Janet Eden-Harris, VP of Web Intelligence, J.D. Power and Associates
- Emily Sawtell, Founder and Managing Director, GradeGuru.com
The main topics of panel was centered around three main ideas: how to understand the customer, always tests, and use analytics for more than measuring ROI. Indeed, taken together, they can be taken together as three steps involved in optimization.
Working at an agency, e-Storm International, with long and old digital roots - the issue of defining the modern agency is a personal one for me. In last year’s session, I found myself with more questions than answers…
What is a modern agency? How does analytics change the nature of agencies? How can an agency be effective when so much of media is now fragmented? Can you “just” be marketing or creative agency and be effective partner for the client?
The panel included a strong selection of diverse backgrounds and known players in the interactive space: Neo@Ogilvy, Enfatico, Agency.com and Crispin Porter + Bogusky. This year’s panel proved very illuminating. Discussions were not so much defining what the “Modern Agency” is, but rather the external forces that are forcing agencies to change:
- Analytics required part of a company’s DNA
- Analytics enables the measurement of “return of objective”, not just ROI
- Creative and media integration, also requires alignment with technology
- Challenge is more than integrating offline and online media, online media is the most fragmented media
During the ad:tech San Francisco Keynote Roundtable “Innovate or Die! Great Brands in the Age of Disruption,” Nielsen Online EVP of Digital Strategic Services led a panel which focused on the need for brands to innovate as they move forward. Panelist Eric Feng, Senior VP of Audience and CTO, Hulu noted true innovation can come after a product is released and the end user feedback - which is now a real-time waterfall thanks to social media - is analyzed and put to use for future product releases.
Solicted : This would be when you’re prompted to enter either your current location or the location of your destination
Inferred : Locations picked up via the usage of the site or service, for instance doing a search on “cheap tickets from LAX to Las Vegas” would probably mean that the consumer was in Los Angeles but was in dire need to get to Las Vegas….and for cheap.
Computed - This is the most preferred (when available) method, it involves using the device to tell the service where it is located, using any number of different methods from GPS, IP location lookup to even partnerships with telecommunication carriers.
One of the strongest takeaways from this panel was that agencies as well as the companies they represent are starting to realize that products (and even store locations) should be linked with a location, both in the big search engines (which is something companies like Google are happy to help accommodate) as well as in their own marketing. Rather than the user first searching for where the product is sold and then being forced to perform a secondary search for where the closest locations are of that store, they should be able to find all that information through their initial product search. Google already does this to an extent with both business listings as well as that initial list of products for sale that you see if you perform a specific product search, but why should it stop there? Consumer sites and applications should be able to do the same.
What’s popular always changes. Not just in content, but also in categories of content and services. At the Chairman’s reception at ad:tech in San Francisco, Charles Buchwalter, SVP, Research and Analytics, Nielsen Online provided some eye opening research about the “Short Tail” in digital, which is defined as those online subcategories that achieved a reach of 20% or more.
In 2003, these categories were used by at least 20% of all online users:
Such was the discussion at the Chairman’s Reception on the eve of ad:tech in San Francisco. The moderator was Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Worldwide President of Babycenter.com. Her panelists included:
Here’s some of the insights about branding that came from the discussion:
With larger purchases we know the need for online (e.g. mortgages). But what about small purchases? Is digital branding necessary? Does it bring value to the purchase cycle?
Making that emotional connection allows the brand managers to make their art.
Digital has a higher threshold of proof than other media. When you spend money on TV it’s not a leap of faith. That’s because people know TV. You say you want to spend $2 million on TV and they don’t blink. But when you say you want to spend $2 million on digital then you get pushback. Give me some facts that this “digital” thing is going to work?
Digital has caught the American psyche (e.g. Oprah’s on Twitter). That’s why everyone wants to be on digital.
Casual free to play gaming has taken off in the past year. First week for a Wolverine game Marvel had over 2 million game plays within a week.
Don’t get too clever or caught up in the digital experience that you forget that you’re trying to make a connection with your audience.
If you are going to ad:tech San Francisco April 21-23, be sure to check out SMX @ ad:tech, a series of panel tracks focusing on search marketing. The panels will be led by search guru Danny Sullivan and cover topics such as trends in search marketing, search engine optimization tactics, paid search, mobile, local and video search tactics.
The panels will occur Wednesday, April 22. Speakers will include iCrossing EVP Jeffrey Pruitt, Conde Nast Digital Director of Marketing Sandor Marik, Match.com Search and CRM Senior Manger Jim McDonald, SearchEngineLand Editor Matt McGee, Rank Mobile CEO Cindy Krum The Search Agency Senior Linking Analyst Drew Hubbard and many more.
Designed to "feature the fundamental 'dos and don'ts' of today's digital media ecosystem while providing even the most experienced publishers, agencies and advertisers with the latest tricks of the trade," the Media Boot Camp series of sessions will make their debut at this year's ad:tech in San Francisco April 21-23.
Sessions will focus on improving accountability, using digital to drive brand preference, using data to improve improve marketing results, advice from the buy side on how the sell side can get a higher share of budget, how digital OOH fits into the marketing scheme and more.
Speakers and panelists will include iMedia & CMO Executive Summits Chief Content Officer and Editor at Large Brad Berens, Enfatico CEO Torrence Boone, Cisco Web Marketing & Strategy Director Michele GibsoncomScore Advertising Effectiveness VP Evan Neufeld, Forbes.com Chief Brand Officer Bruce Rogers, Microsoft Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute Young-Bean Song and many more.
Check out more information on the Boot Camp here and the full conference session line up here.
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If you are going to ad:tech San Francisco April 21-23, be sure to check out SMX @ ad:tech, a series of panel tracks focusing on search marketing. The panels will be led by search guru Danny Sullivan and cover topics such as trends in search marketing, search engine optimization tactics, paid search, mobile, local and video search tactics.
