Posts Tagged ‘Digital Marketing’

Huffington Post Gains Steam

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Since the Huffington Post merged with AOL last year, it has been able to expand its services significantly. There has been a 47% monthly increase in users to a current 36.2 million active users. The news service has also added editors and reporters, which more than compensates for the initial layoffs after the merger.

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Huffington Post has also been successful over the past year launching 44 vertical services, which are services geared towards certain sectors like environmental sustainability and the gay community. The other big advance for the news service will be coming. The Huffington Post will launch a streaming news service whose aim is to take down CNN and otherwise help cord cutters.

All of this means increased outlets for advertisers on the Huffington Post network. The internet marketing agency can expect The Huffington Post and AOL to demand increased inventory of advertisements. Impressions will increase with the launch of he new services and the accompanying push for increased stickiness of its current users will help advertisers make conversions. The increased user base as well as a diversification in content options will also allow AOL’s advertisement targeting to improve as AOL learns more about what its users are interested in.

Huffington Post Streaming Network

Customers Do Care About Data Collection

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

A study produced by Forrester Research shows that customers do care and are increasingly concerned about data collection methods. More than 37,000 US and Canada residents were surveyed and more than 70% said they were concerned about sensitive data such as social security numbers and credit cards. The number drops to less than half when it is about phone numbers and the results finally taper at 17% when the data in question is about online reviews. Customers are able to discern qualitative differences about types of data.

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The age of the customer is also relevant to the concern about data collection. Almost half of 55-64 year olds are concerned about data collection of their online behaviors. The percentage of 18-24 year olds concerned is a third. These numbers are increasing when compared on the long view from year to year.

The most important issue for the digital agency is that almost half of customers have cancelled a purchase because of something they read in an online privacy policy. This is the easy lesson for the digital agency. Customers do read these and do make use their privacy as a factor in deciding with whom to shop.

Brands need to be careful what they do with data. They need to be vocal about what is done with their data and they need to be careful to abide by those statements. It is too easy these days to run afoul of the right person with the right Klout score if privacy concerns are handled haphazardly. The SOPA protests should reaffirm the power of symbolic protest on the internet when privacy is concerned.

Data Collection Concern

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.

Businesses Need to Go Mobile First

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

2011 was such a good year for mobile advertising that businesses now need to go mobile first in their digital marketing presence. Smart phones are now so integral to a shopping experience that it often begins on the smartphone and ends if there is no mobile presence. Of smartphone users 79% use the mobile device within the shopping experience: searching, map-searching, price comparison, etc…

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Tablets have also become nearly omnipresent in the shopping experience. It’s now a third screen that all marketers need to address. All of these trends point to not only a need for firms to be online and mobile optimized, but they need to be focused on mobile devices first. That is now the first priority. As more and more people acquire mobile devices over the holiday season 2012 will only have intensified the 2011 trends. Mobile campaigns are also able to drive engagement. Mobile not only brings customers to conversion sites, but it also brings consumers into the brand’s fold for future conversions.

Businesses going mobile

Relevance Is the New Trick For Engagement

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Dynamic creative optimization is a new trick for digital ads that allow the advertiser to tailor small differences into an ad depending upon some specifics of the user. Some ad platforms are even allowing tailoring of the ads to be as specific as a single user. Normal usage, however, is about broad demographic knows of the user or about location.

MediaMind reports dwell rates of theses optimized ads jump from 3.5% to 3.7%. Dwell rate is the amount of time a user spends engaged with an ad after initial engagement with the ad. Another new and interesting approach is to sync the ads on a page into a single cohesive call to action. These synced ads can add an additional percentage point to the dwell rate opposed to non-synced ads.

The final new piece of data from the MediaMind study is about video versus rich media ads. Even though rich media ads can better engage the user by allowing more opportunities for input, the data shows video ads engage users on average 5.2 seconds longer than rich media ads do. Increasing relevancy helps these ads boost engagement levels.

Delivery costs will obviously be more for the higher producing ads, but the internet marketing agency can maximize ROI by keeping up with the industry numbers and holding its clients and advertising platforms accountable to those standards. Metrics will vary across ad servers, but the industry numbers are an important benchmark to keep in mind.

Google Maps Goes Indoors

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Google Maps has finally gone indoors. As of now there are limited locations available. Some airports (San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago) and some vendors (Macy’s, Home Depot and Bloomingdale’s) are the only currently available maps, but that will change. The new service allows people to see floor plans as well as the locations on those floor plans of certain areas (as in the vendors) and certain vendors (as in the larger maps of airports and malls, etc.). For now the update is only available on Android versions of the service, but eventually it will be available on desktops and iPhone versions as well.

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The obvious effect for the digital agency will be the growing importance of Google Maps. Google Maps had already been established as, at the least, an equal to AOL’s Mapquest. This change will make Google Maps much more consulted and much more important in the local search market. A synergy between Google’s search service and Maps will also help propel Maps.

The digital advertiser now has an ability to help its clients that may be located inside a large building like a mall or airport or skyway system. The new indoor function allows those smaller businesses to be represented whereas they remain invisible to non-Maps services. A proper campaign for a client will now need to involve Google Maps whereas it was potentially irrelevant before this update.

Before this update Maps was drawing 8.6 million users per month to its mobile site. The Maps app ranked third behind FaceBook and The Weather Channel among all smartphone platforms.

Indoor Maps

WordPress launches Own Advertising Option

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

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WordPress has announced that it will soon be launching its own advertising service. The service will be called WordAds, which is not to be confused with Google’s AdWords service. WordPress says that users have been asking for a way to monetize blogs for some time now, but the company has resisted because AdWords seemed to be a good fit for most of those users. What has changed for this new venture to happen is not clear.

There is not yet a discussion of the differences between WordAds and AdWords. WordPress for now is merely directing interested users to a form for completion. WordPress hinted at this change in October at its developer conference. With 50,000 new blogs coming online everyday this move can be quite the lucrative venture for WordPress and its partner in this venture Federated Media.

WordAds will be 100% optional for bloggers using WordPress; they will be free to remain with AdWords. There has not (yet?) been a response from Google. AdWords brought in $2.6 billion for Q3 of 2011, which represents 27% of Google’s income.

This is good news for the internet marketing agency. WordAds will be similar enough to AdWords that learning it will probably be simple, possibly as simple as keeping straight the name of the service being used. Because WordPress has such a large potential draw this service can be large and push a number of ads to viewers. While it will not replace AdWords it will help soften up the market from AdWords’ dominance. Bloggers will also probably find the new service easier to use because the widgets will be more seamless. This should help increase the number of niche blogs pushing ads that might have otherwise gone without any ads whatsoever.

Wordpress Ad Program

WordAds

Yahoo! Changes Its Search results

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

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In preparation for the holiday shopping season Yahoo! has updated how it reveals search results. The intention is to provide answers and not just links. Whenever a user conducts a search that might yield results about shopping, recipes or entertainment Yahoo! will then produce at the top of the search results information about the product instead of links to others.

This change will help its users better find what they are looking for. This should also attract more firms to beef up their budgeted dollars on Yahoo!. Where a firm could normally hope to be represented in Yahoo! search results or on advertising space with the network, now a firm’s products can be displayed at the very top of the search results. This premium spacing is not a paid-for space, but having a strong presence on Yahoo!’s rankings can help with placement there.

Holiday Results

Tablet Users Watch More Video

Monday, November 14th, 2011

A new report from Ooyala.com offers some interesting data for the digital marketing firm. Comparing tablet viewing to desktop viewing, the tablet viewer watches 30% more videos. Not only is the tablet user watching more videos, but also the user is more likely to watch videos to completion even if they are longer. Of all videos played on tablets, 56% of them were 10 minutes or longer. That is a shocking amount of patience and good news for firms that integrate creative video into advertising campaigns.

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This is significant for the digital agency because it provides clues about video ads and linking ads to videos. If the ad is pushed onto a tablet device, then that user will be more likely to follow an ad into a video playing mode than if the ad is pushed onto a desktop.

Some other data provided by the report is about cord-cutting video devices. Last quarter saw a tripling of the number of video seen by Boxee and video enabled gaming consoles. These devices still only account for a small portion of video consumption, but they are growing. Not only are more people owning the hardware for but those who do own are watching more and more content.

The report is offered as a free download once registered with Ooyala.com.

Video Report

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