Archive for the ‘digital agency’ Category

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Facebook Opens Up Sponsored Ads to Third Party Apps

Friday, February 10th, 2012

Brands that have a Facebook page have been able to turn a user’s actions on their content into a sponsored ad. The action, a comment or a ‘like’, would then appear on the sidebar of friends of that user.

Until this moment though the range of actions that qualified for this turn was limited to engagements on the advertiser’s Facebook page. Facebook has changed those restrictions and now allows sponsoring of engagement through third party apps using Facebook’s Open Graph. For example, The Rolling Stones are now able to sponsor when a user listens to them through Spotify and have that action show up as a sponsored ad.

Open Graph applications are seen as the future for Facebook’s efforts. The internet marketing agency can ride this wave. Anytime a brand’s content is read it can then be turned into a sponsored ad. Brands need not limit themselves to just their content though. Content that is similar or has some connection with the brand can also benefit from sponsored ads. There is ample room for creativity in this new allowance Facebook is providing.

Sponsored Stories

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Posted in Facebook, advertising, digital agency | No Comments »

Social Media Director - Ann Arbor, MI - Job Opening

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Leading digital agency seeks endearingly persistent and oddly charismatic candidate for opportunity in social media marketing. The Social Media Director will create and implement comprehensive social media strategies across a variety of platforms, in accordance with individual client needs and broader media trends. The ideal candidate must have a demonstrated passion for social media, digital culture, and college sports.

Responsibilities

The Social Media Director will coordinate with our digital team to provide cohesive and consistent branding strategies for a variety of clients utilizing platforms including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Youtube. In addition to monitoring current social media trends, the Social Media Director must possess the ability to analyze these trends and think critically about the possible ramifications for the social media landscape and, ultimately, for our clients.

The Social Media Director will work with the Ingenex team to create clever and effective campaigns to garner positive attention for our clients in accordance with their business objectives and brand strategies. The Social Media Director will develop manageable, cross-platform campaigns that will deliver measurable results, with a focus on creating and cultivating relationships between client and consumer.

The Social Media Director will also have the opportunity to attend and use social media at industry related events (TEDx, SXSW, LA2M, ETC.) representing Ingenex and its clients.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate is ambitious, enthusiastic, and innovative, with both the willingness to collaborate with a team and the ability to be autonomous. The candidate must have an intricate knowledge of the technical aspects of social media usage as well as the ability to use various platforms to successfully market products, build brand equity, and interact with consumers. Our ideal candidate is a leader, a listener, and a highly social person.

Rather than a specific number of years of experience, we seek in our candidate an eagerness to continually evolve with the medium. The ideal candidate must be able to adapt and react to an ever-evolving digital landscape quickly and effectively. Must be team-oriented and recognize the value of strong customer service. Our ideal candidate is flexible, confident, and communicative. Ability to recognize linguistic trends and utilize rhetoric to effectively market preferred, but not required. Client must be willing to work hard and have fun.

To apply, please send resume and cover letter to Derek Mehraban derek (at) ingenexdigital (dot) com @mehraban on Twitter. Applications will be accepted until Friday, January 20 at 5 PM. Thank you. Salary commensurate with experience.

About Ingenex

Ingenex is a full service Digital Marketing agency with offices in Ann Arbor and Chicago. Our mission is to be the world leaders in engaging digital media users in highly enjoyable experiences that deliver break-through results for our partners.

Ingenex Digital Marketing services include mobile application development, Interactive Branding™, web site design, search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, optimized public relations, direct marketing, new media training, social media marketing, email marketing, web-driven event marketing, generational marketing, podcasting and blogging.

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Posted in Digital Marketing, digital agency, google, social media | No Comments »

Augmented Reality Apps As Advertising

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

The augmented reality app has been around for a few years now, but until recently mobile devices were not powerful enough to make the most of their potential. There has always been a potential to place businesses inside the frame, so when a user looks through the app at a city scene he could see the businesses that are nearby. Certain layers would also help so a ‘pizza’ layer could be applied and the app would then show what pizza vendors are in the frame.

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Moosejaw, a retailer of outdoors wear, recently deployed another use for these apps. The app, when pointed to a Moosejaw advertisement, would show the models in the ad in just their underwear. The applicable ads could be old media or new media. The app drew a lot of attention, much of it negative. But the numbers show a 37% growth in sales from the same time period the previous year. Esquire and Starbucks have already used augmented reality apps in the past, but they did not report a growth in sales close to the level Moosejaw is reporting.

The internet marketing firm can take note of this creative use of augmented reality. Maybe copying this exact use is not appropriate, but it shows the power of a creative approach to already existing technology.

Moosejaw App

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Posted in Mobile, advertising, digital agency | No Comments »

Spotify Adds Radio Function

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Spotify did take the world, especially the US by storm a few months ago. While Spotify has a large catalog of music to stream to its users, there were some deficiencies. One of the largest was an ability to compete with Pandora. Pandora is the go-to music streaming service when somebody does not know precisely what they would like to listen to. Pandora allows the user to select a genre and then its engine will play music along those lines offering the user a thumbs-down option on specific tracks not being enjoyed.

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Spotify, by contrast, required people to know precisely what they wanted to hear or to know the playlist to be heard. To correct this gap Spotify has introduced a Spotify radio function, which will help it combat Pandora as the industry standard for discovering music. As of now, Spotify’s recommendation engine does not seem as capable as Pandora’s. Spotify tends to play artists that seem related without measuring the actual tracks’ similarities, which is a feature of Pandora’s recommendation engine. It is reasonable, however, to expect Spotify to improve its method and that will allow it to better compete with Pandora when all a listener’s needs can be satisfied within the same application.

The digital agency needs to keep music streaming services in mind as more and more people are increasingly tuning in. The bandwidth problem is increasingly being resolved and these services’ catalog make an affordable alternative to a locally based song library. This increased growth will make the advertising on these services increasingly attractive, especially as these services improve their abilities to target ads to users.

New Spotify

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Posted in Technology, digital agency | No Comments »

Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft Team Up Against Facebook and Google

Friday, November 11th, 2011

The three dinosaurs of internet advertising have decided to cooperate in an effort to take on the growing shares of Facebook and Google in display advertising. The partnership will begin in early 2012 by integrating their real-time bidding systems. All three publishers have some display advertising which is considered reserved and these reserved ads will not be part of the integration. Some of the non-reserved space is still considered premium and the integration should help make it easier for advertisers, especially younger advertisers, to push their ads with better visibility and lower prices.

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AOL may be the biggest winner in this merger. There was rumor that some AOL clients might be leaving because of dwindling numbers, but this integration should stymie that flight. This merger will also help AOL reach advertising spaces outside of its own media properties.

A concern for advertisers is the further consolidation of the publishing side of advertising. However, the integration of three separate payment options and methods will provide an immediate help to the digital marketing agency. The scale of the three publishers once merged is also quite staggering and might just be large enough to make a dent in the growing domination of Facebook and Google in display advertising.

Partnership

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Posted in Digital Marketing, Internet Advertising, Microsoft, advertising, digital agency | No Comments »

Sociable Labs Offers E-Commerce Sites a Social Option

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Sociable Labs emerged from its building phase on Tuesday to announce some potentially lucrative new products for e-commerce sites. The company has been dark for the past few years as it perfected its quest to bring social sharing and data mining to e-commerce sites. Sociable Labs claims its products, Sociable RSVP and Purchase Share, are 20 times more effective than a simple ‘”Like” or “Share”.

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The formula for how Sociable Labs is meeting these numbers is not disclosed. They do claim to use a combination of social apps, A-8 Testing (their proprietary models for driving traffic and conversions) and social expertise (a phrase usually notable for qualitative assessments and not quantitative computations). Whether or not it will be able to sustain these expectations remains to be seen. For now, however, Active.com uses the products and is experiencing 300% higher return rate than on Facebook Fan Page. Sociable Labs does have some other high profile clients, but they have not been as forthcoming about gains.

The internet marketing agency may be able to tap into Sociable Labs products or at least monitor them to learn something. The products for offer are probably beyond the range of the small e-retailer but with enough interest they may offer a scaled down version that the digital agency can also use to help clients.

Sociable Labs

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Posted in Digital Marketing, digital agency | No Comments »

Google Offers Personalizes Its Offers

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Last week Google Offers gave users a series of questions to help personalize the program. Users were asked about types of products they buy and what kinds of products they would like to receive news about. Users were then asked about where they go: neighborhoods they hang out, actual locations they go and locations they would like to go to.

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The digital marketing agency should already be using Google Offers as a place to push awareness of its clients. The personalization offered by Google Offers will help deliver ads and information that will increase conversion rates. Google Offers is also integrated with Google Latitude, a service that tracks the user’s location either passively or actively. This integration does two things: first it allows users to automatically receive offers when they are close to a participating vendor. The second benefit of this integration is Google’s ability to measure the user’s stated preference to actual preference. The questionnaire is filled out according to how the user would like to see himself, but Google Latitude can measure actual locations and make recommendations based upon that. Economists have long known that measuring actual preference solves the main problem of surveys, where a stated preference is a fantasy and not reality. Other daily deals companies cannot offer that level of accuracy.

Personalized Offers

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Posted in Digital Marketing, Online Shopping, digital agency, google | No Comments »

New Data About Advertisement Clicks: Who Doesn’t and Why

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

CrowdScience has released new data about clicks: who does click on ads, who doesn’t and why. The big surprise is that there are a lot of people who have never clicked on a digital advertisement. Only 58% of users between 15 and 24 years old have clicked on ad. That is the lowest percentage for the age based demographics. While the lack of a steady income seems to be the easy explanation, the numbers steadily track upwards with the user’s age, which hints that there is something else besides income at work.

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The survey offered a host of reason for why ads were not clicked: virus fear; not wanting to navigate away from current page; lack of trust about truthfulness of the ad; irrelevancy; spam fear; failure to notice; or a lack of clickable options. Shockingly, the leading explanation across all the age groups and for women is fear of a computer virus. The main explanation offered by men was not wanting to navigate away from the page, although virus fear was the second most cited explanation. The other explanations that signal a lack of trust are also front running explanations. The Internet marketing firm needs to understand that the industry suffers from a crisis of trust and that ads need to be coupled with a campaign to establish trust. An easy way to do this is engagement in a conversation. Comments involving the brand’s engagement of those comments on Facebook or other social media sites are great ways to build trust. A brand’s penchant for quality customer service is also important.

The data also shows that the older the viewer of the ad, the more likely he is to click on it. Except for viewers in the 55+ age group, ads are more likely to sponsor some other action than a click. Except for the eldest, all groups have a higher rate of researching the ad than clicking through the ad. This should help remind the Internet marketing firm that clicks should not be the only metric of success. In fact, sometimes the lack of a click still produces the desired effect of shopping for the product. The method is just sometimes round about. Ads that are designed to encourage external research may be particularly effective at this method of conversion.

New Data On Clicks

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Posted in Facebook, Internet Advertising, advertising, digital agency | No Comments »

Study Quantifies Multi-Platform Advertising

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Google and Nielsen have conducted a study of advertising to measure if there was more, and how much more, recall from users if they were exposed to ads on TV alone or in conjunction with other platforms. Users were shown an ad and those that were exposed to the ad across platforms were almost twice as likely to correctly remember the product and even details of the product. The reason this is news is because the traditional theory had been about exposure rates and not about the display of that exposure. Now the data shows a campaign that is seen on multiple platforms is preferable to the inundation method.

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There is also new data suggesting the tablet is really a consumption device. While there are some productivity applications, they pale in comparison to even the cheapest laptop. Most people are content consumers and not producers on their tablets. The data about multi-platform campaigns means the tablet needs to be a central component of the campaigns. The digital agency can to take this data to recruit new clients into a multi-platformed approach. Firms also need to be careful that their campaigns are seen in many locations. Banner ads need to be seen on desktops and on mobile devices. Video needs to also be seen on these varied devices.

Benefits of Multi-Platform Campaigns

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Posted in Internet Advertising, advertising, digital agency | No Comments »

Facebook Sets Up a Political Action Committee

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Facebook must be feeling defensive lately. Their latest small business initiative is a way to secure and increase their advertising base as well as to increase the use of their options for brands. Facebook has also announced the creation of a Political Action Committee, otherwise known as PAC, whose purpose is to lobby Congress about the importance of social networks and Facebook particularly.

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According to The Hill Facebook has already spent $550,000 this year on lobbying efforts. That number has been increasing every year for a few years now. The PAC will allow employees and the company itself to contribute to the political campaigns of candidates that support social networking and digital innovation.

As long as Facebook represents the single largest and most influential online destination, this move is good for the digital agency. Congress has yet to settle the privacy concerns in digital advertising and the PAC may help promote pro-advertising opinions in Congress. Of course, there is concern this influence may not work for the industry but instead specifically for Facebook as Google’s anti-trust concerns increasingly comes to Congressional attention. The big payoff, with few of the risks, lies in devoting the PAC to the future of the industry and not in the issues specifics of Facebook competitors. The digital agency can probably breathe a little easier as it looks ahead to Congressional involvement in the industry.

Facebook’s PAC

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Posted in Digital Marketing, Facebook, digital agency, social media | No Comments »

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