The ability to run a display advertising campaign that can match the ROI of my search marketing spend is a potentially game-changing proposition

What is Marketing? Is marketing about tricking the mind to pay attention to a brand, or about delivering content that is relevant. Is it about finding out of green or blue works best to have the call-to-action stand out? Or is about bringing value to the customer and establishing a conversation?
New Technology from Yahoo apparently deliveres 20x ROI on Display campaigns, and is similar to Search campaigns for HP ... let's for a second assume that this is true. This means that we have users that are not actively searching for a brand becoming 20 times more likely to stop what they are doing and click on a display ad, a trick of mind I say. People that search are the very bottom of the purchase funnel, and anyone that claims display is close to that have misunderstood the value of a display campaign. On the other hand, standing out from the clutter is of outmost importance.
Here's how I think it works. Premium inventory equals brand awareness, and brand awareness equals conversions of paid or organic Search.

I do believe in and applaud the Yahoo Smart Ads as they are likely to help their ROS and DR clients, but HP?

Thanks,
Troels Smit - http://bizmondo.blogspot.com/

iPhone and Blackberry apps, how to create adoption

An interesting story on MediaPost today talks about whether or not marketers should be developing apps as part of reaching certain market segments.

The question is, how do you create adoption? A good answer might be: Run a mobile display campaign to create awareness and installs. However:

How do I measure and optimize my mobile campaign with regards to installs and downloads?

The issue here is that mobile devices don't cater for the same cookie technology as online. So custom solutions must be developed for the mobile market. 3rd party ad servers have made little progress on this front, but the first one to solve this and package a solution will have a big advantage in taking over the mobile market.

Who will be the first ad server to provide conversion based optimization technology for mobile?

Send me an email if you want to partner with EB on developing this solution.

If print is not dead now ... I'll buy you a beer

Amazon has announced their new Large-Format Kindle. Looks like the price will be more than $450.

Will it be 2009 or 2010 that we see a free ad based version ?

Thanks for reading, Troels Smit
http://bizmondo.blogspot.com/

That almost gets us to what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago

Just had a chance to read up on Wolfram Alpha, the new Search Engine.
Link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/



Doubt that it works, if it does then it needs to be combined with Augmented Reality ASAP. Geeking aside, this might be a great opportunity for contextual and low funnel, high ROI, advertising.

How can they differentiate themselves from Google in terms of advertising?

-Troels Smit

Are you ingesting mass quantities of low-quality information?

Speaking about Twitter, the starting point of a powerful global conversations relevant to your network of followers, I today noticed the majority of AdAge articles mentioning this service.

The reasons I don't like twitter are many, more than anything the high amount of infobesity brought to the internet through the service.

"Ingestion of mass quantities of low-quality information"

In addition the fact that there is nothing innovative or new about the whole ordeal makes my toes twitch. For example see the screenshot of BBS services doing the same thing 15 years ago.

What other "soups cooked on old bones" opportunities VCs will bring the internet?

On this note I would like to mention a campaign from "Dentyne" - The Times. The campaign talks about the value of interacting and having a conversation, not in the midst of autonomicity and infobesity, but face to face.

Going back to the roots, this is new, this is hot, and we know it works!

-Troels Smit

Don't watch this at work

Creativity at is finest including quite a leap of faith from the brand, have to love those guys down in Brazil.

The ad won't do anything until the video plays, upon play the video is so hot that it heats up the banners. Linking content and ad makes a lot of sense.

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2008/07/nissin_hot.php

Is there a way to scale out these ideas?

-Troels Smit

How Coke's new compensation system works

http://adage.com/article?article_id=136266

BEFORE: Agencies and Coke negotiate in advance how much profit the former will see on a given project.
AFTER: Agency is guaranteed only recouped costs, with any profit coming only if certain targets are met.

BEFORE: Agency decides what Coke should pay for a project based on the time it expects to expend on it.
AFTER: Coke tells agencies how valuable a project is based on strategic importance, whether other agencies could deliver the same outcome, and other factors.

How do they expect to accurately measure the success of offline, cable, display in building a brand "other factors" doesn't seem like a business I would involve my best talent with?

-Troels Smit

Ad Retargeting Misunderstood

Interesting article from FetchBack comparing the ROI of Search to Display.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104840

Very relevant when looking at how marketing dollars are spent but also completely missing the point.

The mindset of someone seeing a display ad and a search ad is simply not comparable, it belongs in completely different parts of the purchase funnel.

If a display ad can change the user from consuming content to clicking and converting then it is doing 10x the job of search which is ... honestly mostly used as a navigational tool for consumers ready to buy.

Marketing 101:
When targeting people already aware of your brand and product and with purchase intent use Paid Search.
When targeting consumers unaware or uninterested in your brand, use a display channel to change this perception.

Why are we comparing Search to Display, shouldn't we be asking our selves how much the channels support one another, and how to optimize across channels, instead?

One comment to the article nails it:
"research that suggests a push medium outperforms a pull medium defies basic logic"

-Troels Smit

Augmented Reality for Media

Augmented Reality has a ton of opportunities for Marketers.
Consumers all want to be able to turn on extra information - where is the nearest starbucks, what is that monument, is this product green? Most consumers are already using these technologies, especially when shopping for expensive goods such as Plasma TVs, Ipods, etc - we tend to googled the price in other stores using our mobile phone. The next natural step in this cycle is barcode integration, which has already been done with the google phone and marketers now need to be on top of the results.
Looking forward, I think this will soon turn around and it will be the monuments and products that will recognice us! When walking into a random super market...

"Hi Troels, I'm your favorite chocolate, you haven't bought me in 2 days, are you ok?"

A version of Augmented Reality ... that I to be honest don't see the full purpose of, other than being extremely cool is what I call "positioning based creativity". Carmichael Lynch recently developed a version of this for "Jack Links": http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=136287.
When a standardized app for using this technology comes out it will be more interesting. Imagine this, you point you mobile phone's camera on a Target Store - on the phone a 3D Store Clerk comes up, showes you around the store and points to good offers that will match you. If standardizing technology hadn't been a constant issue over the last 200 years, I would have invested heavily in this technology.

Take care,
Troels Smit

The bottom of the purchase funnel

Sometimes it surprises my how much focus the bottom of the purchase funnel is getting. The IAB released a study stating that paid search owned 45% of the digital budget in 2008. Add to this Organic Search optimization and you are looking at +50%.

I wonder if you wouldn't get better results from focusing on "why do people search"?

-Troels Smit

The display ad opportunities you’re overlooking

A couple of very decent insights from Dean. More than anything I agree with the need to differentiate between how you measure Display and Search. Using and measuring display advertising on it's abillity to build brand awareness and purchase intent is key.

Is standardizing the metrics the real challenge?



"Discussions around Digital Advertising from iMedia’s Branding Summit in Florida, February 2009. Looking at innovative campaigns and conversions in trying times."

-Troels Smit

Following a brand

I think most of us have been using Google Alerts for a while to follow the brands we are the most interested in. The newest evolution on this tree is "Google News Timeline", it allows you to see the development of the PR around a certain brand and topic. Great for research, great for helping brand managers knowing whats going on, and awesome for following a news story.

Will these technologies move beyond "news" and allows you to follow a person?

Read more on http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
Have a great week,

-Troels Smit