July 17, 2008

Online Marketing Mavens Jump on the Online Video Bandwagon!

Posted by Sarah Zielie under Video, display advertising, online marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
1 Comment 

Us Mavens are instrumental in educating various groups on our respective fields. Lisa came up with the stellar idea to video tape some of these sessions to post on our blog. Here is the first of the series. Check back often for more on Search and Interactive Media!

What is rich media?

Rich Media ads have an added functionality such as expansion, floating across the page, games, and in banner data submission. There are limitless things that you can do with rich media. Rich media vendors like to refer to it as “a micro-site within a banner”. Rich Media vendors are third party servers that will actually serve the ad and help us build it. They also help us measure interaction rate, time spent with the video and what people actually did when interacting with the banner ads.

 

June 24, 2008

TV and Web Convergence The Third.

Posted by Sarah Zielie under display advertising, online marketing
[2] Comments 

The topic of web and TV convergence is becoming something of an obsession with me. My choices to watch long-form programming on my home computer are increasing rapidly, and I wish I had time to watch everything I want to. I’m not just an early adopter - just about 74% of the online audience tunes into some sort of online video every month, averaging to over 235 minutes each!

yep

While I have not had the pleasure of placing during the top TV networks on-demand programming online, I’ve been closely following the possibilities. There are different tactics used by the big three to keep people coming back including community features and mobile applications. These are the most attractive to me for many of the same reasons that TV is attractive to advertisers - great monitored content with large, loyal audiences. Now all we have to do is convince the clients. Breaking into advertising on the big three online isn’t extremely cheap, and targeting capabilities are fairly limited. One study shows that the Internet brings in 50% more GRPs than TV. Despite this, only 7% of ad dollars are allocated to web even though online usage accounts for 17% of time spent for the average person. The article referenced mentions that this must be because TV budgets are brand dollars and marketers have been trained to think online advertising as a direct response vehicle. I’ve been hard at work in hopes to shape my fellow advertising professionals and clients to stop focusing on CTR and start seeing all the great branding that can happen from a well-planned online campaign.

I’m crossing my fingers that some of the broadcast buyers at our agency will be offered make-goods online, as ABC recently announced they will be experimenting with. I just have to hope that they embrace online video professionally as much as they most likely do personally. Am I, Interactive Planner/Buyer and they, experienced Broadcast Buyers ready for the convergence that seems to be coming down the pipes? What does this mean for our jobs? Will I need to re-immerse myself in GRPs? Will they need to learn about impressions, ad serving, and behavioral targeting? All I know is I’m going to keep obsessing, researching and predicting. Think of this series that never ends…

If you missed them, here are parts one and two of my reports on the subject.

Now I’m off to watch my ninth episode of Dexter online this week!

 

May 19, 2008

I Heart Twitter, Vertical Ad Networks, and the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium.

Posted by Sarah Zielie under social media, social networking | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
[3] Comments 

I’m skipping the Family Guy re-run this evening to fuss about my new Online favorites. Giggity Giggity.

Although I’ve been reading about the micro-blogging site Twitter for years and have created profiles several times, they were typically abandoned after a few days of reading random Tweets. Now, with it’s popularity bang there are so many more interesting people to “follow”, and with the Twitter Facebook Application

I can feed my addiction to updating my Facebook status by text. Not new, I know, but new to Sarah’s List of Interactive Addictions. In fact, now you can follow the Mavens! Although we’re sometimes too busy to blog, we’re rarely to busy for 140 characters or less.

My newest addiction while planning Online Display campaigns is Vertical Ad Networks. While several more traditional ad networks make a number of different content channels available, I’ve found that when you are looking for something more targeted, Vertical Ad Networks are a nice way to gain some more contextually targeted inventory within one buy. Many times they have premium inventory and a shorter list of sites that are easy to relay to a client and ultimately sell through. While I still love my Ad Networks, it’s sometimes hard to illustrate their value to more traditional clients.

Some networks such as Martha’s Circle are a nice addition to a larger premium publisher buy on MarthaStewart.com. No more sneaking a high volume of text links and below-the-fold placements to bring that eCPM down! Other networks offer hard-to-reach audiences such as the Luxury Ad Network, Adcision. The one I’m most stoked about, as a girl with a lot of single market initiatives, is the Local Ad Network, such as what CBS is launching with providing local sites with a news widget wrapped around an IAB unit.

My third blog-worthy favorite du jour is the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium. As mentioned, as a gal with a lot of single market initiatives to plan for, I often have the single market budgets that prohibit me to run on some of the larger sites like Yahoo because of their spend minimums. As a result miss out on some of that great targeting. The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium has helped me ad reach to a few low budget, single site plans. Kudos to the people at Yahoo! for this great idea. Stay strong brothers!

TTFN!

 

April 15, 2008

It’s been a while… and a book review!

Posted by Sarah Zielie under online marketing, social media, social networking | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

Lisa and I have been up to our eyebrows in exciting field work, learning more so we can serve you better! Unfortunately, all this experience-getting has made a huge dent in our time for blogging. In passing, some ideas are being kicked around for blog posts coming soon. Lisa will be inventing a new product, I will be composing a guide for Interactive Sales Representatives, and someday when the spring planning storms die down will come a Web & TV Convergence The Third. But for now all I have to give is my bed-time blog post.

Lisa and I being the hyper-influential bloggers in the Online marketing field that we are, we were approached to review a book called “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook” by Darren Barefood and Julie Szabo. This book written for marketers gives an overview of the social nature of the Internet and the accompanying landscape and how to launch a social media relations campaign.

While busy doing rather than reading, it took me a while to get through this book. It was interesting, but I tend to be the kind of consumer that takes in her content in bits and snippets Online - much like the Internet community they talked about!

As an Interactive marketing geek, the overview was really a nice refresher course on recent trends in social media. The ideas on blogger relations were new to me, but unfortunately, I am unable to really put this to work in my job as an Interactive Media Planner/Buyer. They are still interesting to keep in my back pocket, though, for a future brainstorm, client, or position. Their views on transparency seemed in line and refreshing, especially since I’ve been hearing a lot about pay-per-post, etc. The new ideas were fun and noteworthy and there were lots of great examples. I would recommend this book for a small business owner (especially one with a strong web page) or someone at a large company that is in charge of reputation management or PR. While it would be beneficial for a range of marketers, I wouldn’t say that is a must-read in most cases.

TTFN

 

March 22, 2008

Evaluating Success of Online Display and SEM Campaigns

Posted by Sarah Zielie under PPC, online marketing, search | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
[6] Comments 

My blogmate has really learned how to motivate me. After weeks of being absolutely swamped in planning-buying-new business-reporting-competitive-POV-trafficking mode and unable to even think about posting, Lisa has finally found a topic I am jumping to write about in my spare time. One that all the research needed is my 4+ years of media experience with clients. She wants me to write about what success means for an online campaign!

Now success should be evaluated by the goals of the campaign, which it also should have been planned against. While Lisa and I are key educators in online media in general for many of our clients, it’s becoming apparent that many of them are comparing the results of Online Display and Search Engine Marketing against each other. While the strengths of each advertising medium should be compared at a higher level (which is a whole ‘nother ball of wax), here are our thoughts about how the individual components should be evaluated.

Online Display: Sarah
SEM: Lisa

Goal: Branding

Online Display Success: Brand alignment, ad placement (ownership, environment, etc) reach and frequency of target audience. If rich media involved - interaction rate, interaction time, etc.

SEM Success: For branding, the content network is great place to select sites to be served on. I’d select pay-per-click payment options (rather than CPM) and see how it goes. Increased visibility in search results may help to raise awareness and increase searches for your business. Using tools at Compete.com and Google Trends, you can see if keyword searches for your brand increase over time.

Goal: Site Conversions

Online Display Success: High CTR, can be tracked through to conversions by spotlight or floodlight tags.

SEM Success: Conversion tracking can be setup in Google and Yahoo to measure actions taken on the site. I’d also recommend, in addition to basic conversion tracking, use Google Analytics for pageview analysis, advanced goal definition, conversion funnel analysis, and various advanced conversion reports.

Goal: Mass Reach/Awareness

Online Display Success: Reach/Frequency of target audience, made easier by efficiency.

SEM Success: Mass reach can be achieved through search but you’ll want to make sure the traffic is still highly qualified. Widening a geo-target, increasing budget, and/or expanding keywords can increase the frequency the ads are served. Reaching the masses successfully to me would mean getting more conversions at an effective cost while branding through search.

*FAQs we all know and love:*

What is an average CTR?

Online Display: Since we are typically using display for brand purposes and paying for impressions, this is something I try to steer clear against focusing on, especially because even on a really good day 99.6% of online display ads will not get clicked on. Here is a must-have article on what to focus on instead, which cites .3 % as an overall average. Now in my experience with a wide variety of brands, I typically see more in a range of .05-.2%. In my book if it’s within that, no red flags are raised and the campaign could be “successful” based on goals, delivery, etc. And of course CTR all depends on a wide range of factors including creative, call to action, environment, competitive landscape, etc. A very passionate blog was recently posted by Cory Treffiletti about the topic that I couldn’t agree with more - please check it out!

SEM: For PPC search, the CTR can vary wildly depending on the type of business and keywords. For brand terms (you are bidding on your own brand name) I could see 5%-30% CTR. A high CTR is not necessarily a good thing. It could indicate brand confusion or poor natural search rankings. At least you’re getting them now.

For other terms, again, it can vary widely, but 1% and up would be an acceptable range. After all, the ultimate goal is not to get a CTR, but leads or sales.

What is an average interaction rate?

Online Display: Interaction rates can vary just like CTRs. Industry, creative, competitive environment, offer, advertising environment, etc, can obviously cause different outcomes, not to mention type of rich media. Also, unlike the hard data of a click (qualified or unqualified), interaction rates are measured differently. Some rich media vendors don’t account for accidental rollover for expandables. This can drive an interaction rate up but average interaction time down. What I’ve gathered from various rich media vendors are 5-11% interaction rate, 2.4-14 second avg interaction time. As mentioned, metrics vary on this, so know your goals, vendor, and variables!

SEM: Search begins with a user interacting with a search engine to find what they seek. Much can be learned from the keywords searchers use, as well as the action they take once on a site. In analytics, we can see how much time a visitor spent on a website by the keyword that led them there. Understanding how users search then linking that back to how users behave on the site can provide information to help shape search campaigns and other online marketing tactics.

 

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