By Marc Purtell | @MarcPurtell | Director, SEO
MediaWhiz’s SEO experts share their wisdom in a new white paper, “Leveraging SEO’s Brand-Building Powers.”
SEO is no longer just about driving traffic; it’s about building a brand.
When marketers consider branding, search engine optimization typically doesn’t come to mind. SEO has long been used as a vehicle for driving highly qualified visitors to brands’ websites. But SEO is no longer just about driving traffic; it’s about building a brand.
There is often a power struggle within organizations as to how advertising dollars should be spent on branding versus SEO. Rather than fighting that tug of war for SEO budget, marketers can position SEO as part of their overall branding effort rather than a silo marketing channel.
Marketers’ requests for investment in SEO are made easier when they make the case for SEO’s brand- and online reputation-enhancing qualities. With that in mind, MediaWhiz has written a new guide for marketers to use to tap into SEO’s inherent brand-building powers.
The guide represents a new and innovative way of thinking about how brands and marketers can best use SEO strategies and tactics to enhance their brand’s reputation, public image and search engine rankings.
Learn why brand authority trumps paid search. Explore how to use SEO tactics to improve your brand’s online and offline reputation. Round out your SEO knowledge with best practices for leveraging SEO’s brand-building powers. All that and more can be found in MediaWhiz’s new white paper, “Leveraging SEO’s Brand-Building Powers.”
By Sultan Riaz | @Riaz_MediaWhiz | Marketing Coordinator
Welcome to The Friday Five, curated reads about marketing, advertising and digital media from the team at @MediaWhizLLC. Read previous Friday Five posts here.
Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites | The New York Times
This article in The New York Times caused quite a bit of consternation among digital marketers. It reports that for many small businesses and websites that depend on their ranking in search results, Google’s secret — and frequently fluctuating — search algorithm can evoke a complex blend of admiration and fear.
In Sandy’s Wake: The Cost to Adland | Advertising Age
The effects of Hurricane Sandy will reverberate for weeks as marketers and agencies across more than a dozen states tally storm-related losses and make up for lost business days.
Is mobile-first becoming a cliché? | Mobile Marketer
Mobile-first is becoming a popular phrase that marketers have been using over the past few months. However, few have truly taken the key steps needed, and continue to see the medium as a great add-on instead of necessity. (more…)
By Sultan Riaz | @Riaz_MediaWhiz | Marketing Coordinator
Programmatic buying and premium display advertising were a big a topic of discussion this week at MediaPost’s OMMA Premium Display conference. Keith Trivitt, director of marketing and communications at MediaWhiz, moderated a panel, “Battling The Transformers – Can Media Maintain Its Value Against The New Ad Machine?” which focused on the state of premium display advertising among high-end publishers.
The panel was stacked with an all-star cast of speakers, including:
- Andrew Sollinger, Managing Director, The Americas, Financial Times
- Jason Oates, President, LiveIntent
- Bill Rowley, SVP, Business Development & Publishing, Martini Media
- Kathryn Kulik, Global SVP, Media Sales, CBS Interactive
- Kristine Welker, Chief Revenue Officer, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
Key Takeaways
- Premium display advertising is clearly helping publishers and advertisers adapt to their customers’ needs.
- Programmatic buying will not be completely eliminated from a company’s budget.
- The appropriate balance must be found between publishers using programmatic buying to sell their low-end display inventory and meeting the high end of the premium online advertising market.
- According to the Andrew Sollinger, managing director, The Americas, of the Financial Times, the biggest issue for publishers will be “moving [advertisers] from programmatic to premium.”
- Although ad exchanges and networks are beneficial to high-end publishers, the best way to keep advertisers happy it to focus on what they want; and what they want is premium display advertising that is designed with value to the consumer in mind.
High-end publishers and brands continue to value premium display advertising, even as the sector gets squeezed at the margins.
Here’s a recap of what was a spirited 45-minute discussion about premium display advertising.
Programmatic Buying: Friend or Foe?
While all panelists agreed that programmatic buying is an important, if not vital, aspect of the business, they differed on its impact on the value of premium display advertising. “Custom premium is here to stay,” noted the FT’s Sollinger.
Through the discussion the point being driven is that premium display advertising is focused on the consumer and provides content that both consumers and advertisers want. “Premium display starts with the consumer or it won’t work. Ad experience needs to be built around the customer,” according to Katerine Kulik, global senior vice president of media sales at CBS Interactive’.
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By Peter Klein | SVP, Media Services
Performance marketers are held to the highest standard of accountability possible – return on investment (ROI). We live and die by key metrics that make our clients successful.
If we must be held accountable for every facet of our campaigns, shouldn’t the President of the United States be held to the same accountability standards?
No matter who wins, performance-style metrics should factor into measuring the President’s success.
As I outline in a new white paper, “The CMO’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing,” there is a five-step process for performance marketing success. It’s a process that will benefit not only the next President of the United States (if he were inclined to engage a performance marketing campaign) but every CMO who is seeking an edge in the era of accountability of online marketing.
Let’s review each of the five steps as they relate to the work of CMOs and Presidential candidates.
Step 1: Define the Goal. For a CMO, this means defining the desired outcome of a campaign, be it a lead or a sale that generates a specific volume of consumers; specifically, which audience to target. For a Presidential candidate, this means the campaign or platform that he stands for, the audience he wishes to target and the overall deliverables to which he will be held accountable by the American people.
Step 2: Choose the Network. CMOs need to conduct due diligence before engaging an affiliate network. This is accomplished by comparing specific areas of performance, including an affiliate network’s tenure, financials, industry/vertical expertise, etc. A Presidential candidate’s most important network, of course, is his cadre of advisers, including his Vice Presidential running mate, all of whom will help him or her represent the views and values of their campaign and political party. (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
MediaWhiz’s performance marketing experts share their wisdom in a new white paper, “The CMO’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing.”
CMOs can no longer ignore affiliate marketing’s customer-acquisition benefits.
Long dismissed as a niche form of online marketing, performance marketing has become a powerful force in the digital media ecosystem. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau performance marketing generated $21 billion in online advertising revenues in 2011. Affiliate marketing comprised the largest share of revenue growth for this marketing channel.
For CMOs, performance marketing is no longer a marketing strategy that can be ignored or delegated to junior-level marketing managers. It is now a driving force behind many brands’ online growth and customer-acquisition efforts. It requires CMOs’ devout attention to properly utilize and scale in order to realize long-term customer-acquisition value.
With that in mind, MediaWhiz has written a new guide for marketers, helping them understand the brand-building and customer-acquisition value of affiliate marketing. The guide provides a how-to resource for senior marketers and CMOs who are looking to take their online marketing campaigns to the next level through affiliate marketing.
MediaWhiz’s guide to affiliate marketing provides practical advice on how CMOs can activate an affiliate marketing program for their brand. It’s a how-to resource for senior marketers who are seeking authentic and measurable ROI from their online marketing campaigns. (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
Welcome to The Friday Five, curated reads about marketing, advertising and digital media from the team at @MediaWhizLLC. Read previous Friday Five posts here.
What’s Premium in the Post Homepage Era? | Digiday
Search was first to put a serious dent in the primacy of the homepage. Now, with social and mobile gaining steam, publishers are left without the big, splashy homepage premium ad placements.
The fact is, most publishers see half or more of their traffic come in through the side door, whether through search, social or other means. That means publishers need to create new premium placements in a world where “every page is a home page.”
Coupon Sites Prove Attractive for Retailers Doing Affiliate Marketing | Internet Retailer
When it comes to affiliate marketing, coupon sites have proven far more valuable than content and comparison shopping sites for Bake Me a Wish, an online retailer of cookies, cakes and brownies, says says Joseph Dornoff, the merchant’s vice president of marketing and operations.
Why Big Bird Remains Powerfully — and Globally — Significant | Harvard Business Review
Big Bird has had a big presence in the collective conversation lately, thanks to mentions in the first two presidential debates. The outpouring of support for the giant yellow puppet that followed the first debate is a testament to his and Sesame Street’s continued relevance in people’s lives. Sesame Street, in fact, is a great case study of a brand that has managed to remain powerful over decades and across cultures.
Tweets Spawn Ad Campaigns | The Wall Street Journal
Consumers’ tweets are starting to influence and find their way into brands’ traditional, online and TV ad campaigns. What impact will that have on how brands engage with consumers online and the efforts they take to develop digital consumer advocates via social media?
What Red Bull Can Teach Content Marketing | Digiday
The marketing world woke up recently with Red Bull envy. At a time when brands talk of being publishers, Red Bull showed how this can be done on a grand scale: enabling Felix Baumgartner to complete a historic (and awfully cool) skydive from “the edge of space.” Red Bull’s bold sponsorship of Baumgartner’s historic jump shows a glimmer of the future of brand content marketing.
By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
Virtually everything in the world goes through evolution. Some are just faster and have greater impact than others.
Search engine optimization is no exception. It is a form of marketing that has evolved at light speed over the past 15 years.
Drastic changes beginning with the rise of Google in the late 1990s, and carried out through search engine algorithm updates, the growth of the World Wide Web and increasing expertise within the SEO community have become commonplace in how search engine optimization is handled.
In order to understand the future of SEO it’s important to first understand where it has been. For a visual representation of the evolution of SEO, download this presentation by Adam Riff, MediaWhiz’s SVP of digital strategy. (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
Welcome to The Friday Five, curated reads about marketing, advertising and digital media from the team at @MediaWhizLLC. Read previous Friday Five posts here.
Pinterest Fosters Unique Shopping Behaviors | eMarketer
A new eMarketer report delves into the retail activity spurred by the latest social network to make headlines — Pinterest. The visually focused, aspirational site has grown tremendously, and it offers a lot of promise for retailers, assuming they can get users to link images with product offerings and purchases.
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By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
Welcome to The Friday Five, curated reads about marketing, advertising and digital media from the team at @MediaWhizLLC. Read previous Friday Five posts here.
The ‘Mobile-First’ Fallacy | Digiday
Everyone and their brother talks about “mobile first” being the brand and marketing strategy of the future. But what does it really mean, if anything? Publishers and marketers aren’t cutting back their investment in desktop experiences. Consumers’ love for TV remains strong and marketers are happy to oblige that love with lots of ads. As Digiday’s Jack Marshall reports, “mobile first” is little more than a marketing gimmick.
Attention Digital Agencies: You Need to Monitor These Regulatory Issues | DMNews
As the online marketing industry evolves, more money is entering the space, leading to greater regulatory and consumer scrutiny. Digital marketing agencies and brand marketers need to be aware of the various legal and regulatory restrictions explicit in the industry, as well as those implicit guidelines that ensure online marketing’s integrity and value.
Mobile Wallets or Fully Digital Wallets? | eMarketer
Consumers are finally adopting mobile payment systems and mobile wallets — if slowly. But what if they need something more: a seamless experience that takes their mobile wallet to their PC and back again?
Twitter: Huge Mobile Use Makes Us Ideal For Real-Time Marketing | CNET
Twitter president of revenue Adam Bain and sales marketing chief Shane Steele shared statistics and anecdotes demonstrating that the service is an ideal place for brands to achieve better and more efficient advertising and marketing results. (more…)
Welcome to The Friday Five, curated reads about marketing, advertising and digital media from the team at @MediaWhizLLC. Read previous Friday Five posts here.
You Know What’s Cool? A Billion Users | GigaOm
It’s official. Facebook clocked its one-billionth active user this week. CEO Mark Zucerkberg announced the historic figure in a characteristically brief blog post. Since its launch in 2004, Facebook users have produced 1.13 likes, 140.3 billion friend connections and uploaded 219 billion photos. Most astonishing is that 600 million people access Facebook via a mobile device, putting the company’s mobile advertising struggles into sharp focus.
‘Native Advertising’: The Slope Gets Slipperier | MediaPost
If marketers learned anything from this year’s Advertising Week it is that native ads — in-stream digital ads delivered in the same wrapper as the content they accompany — will be the hot topic of discussion — and controversy — in 2013. But as MediaPost columnist George Simpson writes, the announcement this week that NBC News will join the likes of Forbes.com in encouraging advertisers to develop advertorial content for its digital platforms that looks and reads like editorial pieces is a slippery slope, not only for the media brand but for the advertiser, too. (more…)
