By Marc Purtell | Director, SEO
Yesterday’s announcement by Facebook of its revolutionary new form of search — called Graph Search — has set the online marketing world abuzz with chatter about its impact on search. More specifically, whether Facebook will finally become the Google killer that so many have predicted it will.
While it’s unlikely that Graph Search will ever become a Google killer, the reality is that Facebook has just become a major player in the multi-billion-dollar search business. More importantly to brands and marketers, Facebook offers a bevy of new search and online advertising options that simply aren’t available with Google’s robust but often rudimentary search platform.
In short, Facebook’s Graph Search is just the latest milestone in an ongoing trend of the Web becoming more social. It’s the first true iteration of the social-search era that we at MediaWhiz colleagues previously predicted would come to fruition.
Let’s examine what the news means for the three parties most significantly impacted by the launch of Graph Search: marketers, brands and Facebook itself. (more…)
By Sultan Riaz | Marketing Coordinator
Over the holiday season I signed up to receive email newsletters and offers from several retail websites. Interestingly, when I received some of these emails for discounts, coupons or alerts for new items I was most likely to click on a link in the email and browse the retailer’s site. When comparing email to social media, TV or other forms of online media, the channel that most frequently grabbed my attention was email.
Not surprisingly, retailers agree that email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools that they have. Wait! Isn’t social media supposed to be the new medium that kills email while simultaneously generating sales? Not so, according to recent industry reports. Forrester tracked 77,000 sales during the recent holiday season and found out that only 1% of online sales came from social media sites like Facebook.
So please forgive me if I am not one who buys into the fact that in in the next two years 50% of retail sales will come from social media sites. (more…)
By Peter Klein | SVP, Media Services
Editor’s note: This is the second post in a two-part series on predictions in performance marketing in 2013.
In my last column, I offered my 2013 predictions for companies in the performance marketing industry and potential new regulations. This column addresses predictions for performance marketing media channels in the new year, as well as how certain vertical markets will fare.
Media Channels
Given all the opportunities and challenges, it will be critical for the performance marketing community to help educate and drive media-channel-specific results for clients.
Perhaps the easiest growth prediction is that mobile marketing will become a much larger piece of the advertising market. eMarketer forecasts 138 million mobile phone users in the United States in 2013, or 43 percent of the total U.S. population. That number will increase by 20 million users per year through 2016, reaching almost 200 million Americans (74 percent of the U.S. population). It will be critical for advertisers to optimize websites and lead-generation forms for mobile devices.
Agencies will continue to focus on branding and awareness for their clients in the digital space. This will mean the farming out of more performance marketing budgets to trusted networks. (more…)
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.
The New Algorithm of Web Marketing | The New York Times
In digital advertising, that formula is being increasingly tested by fast-paced, algorithmic bidding systems that target individual consumers rather than the aggregate audience publishers serve up. In the world of “programmatic buying” technologies, context matters less than tracking those consumers wherever they go.
The Original Social Networker? Your Insurance Agent | Advertising Age
Here’s an interesting thought: your insurance agent may be the most natural social networker you know. Why not? As this Advertising Age op-ed notes, insurance agents were educating clients, investing in long-term relationships and growing their businesses through word-of-mouth referrals long before social, mobile and digital technologies existed.
Online Marketing At The Crossroads Of Nature And Nurture | CMO.com
I’m sure you have been a party to animated debates about nature vs. nurture in the context of psychology. But how about as it relates to customer behavior and marketing? Nature, as I understand it, is the behavior that occurs without coaching. Nurture equates to behaviors that are learned. As marketers, our work falls somewhere between these two–understanding natural shifts in consumer behavior and shaping behaviors to achieve our end goal: engaging and selling to consumers. (more…)
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 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 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 Steve Goldner | @SocialSteve | Sr. Director, Social Marketing
Editor’s note: The following post was originally published in AllTwitter.
It’s easy to forget that Twitter isn’t a one-size-fits-all communications channel. What works for one brand isn’t necessarily the right strategy for another. That observation may seem obvious but tends to get lost amidst the various case studies of success that frequently capture marketers’ attention.
Every brand is distinctive. Its digital and social media marketing strategy needs to be customized in a way that matches its unique marketing needs and customer peculiarities.
I bring this up after reading a post in All Twitter last week by Percolate Brand Strategist Kunur Patel in which she advocates that brands tweet more often in order to acquire “millions of followers.” She uses @WholeFoods and its three-million-plus Twitter followers and multiple humorous and interesting tweets each day as a brand exemplifying that strategy.
Any brand can acquire thousands, if not millions of followers. But unless that effort fits within the ethos of the brand it has little value to its overall marketing strategy.
Tweeting all day for a brand like Whole Foods makes sense but it is not a holistic social media marketing strategy. Most brands do not benefit from tweeting that often. (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.
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…)
