Tag: marketing

October 18, 2001

  • Thought

    The battle to use mass advertising metrics online continues.

    Tom Hespos’ ClickZ article about the New York Times offering “session” ad buys rather than impressions is very interesting.

    Basically I’m against mapping frequency, reach, GRPs and other mass ad concepts onto the Internet because they were initially created as crude approximations to overcome the lack of exactness that the Internet should provide marketers with. I’d rather see us use DM pricing models for most online advertising.

    Still, I do understand that some marketers want to use the Internet as a branding tool and studies have found online ads are in fact an effective way to brand. So the NYT new model of allowing one brand to “own” a session (one unique user travelling through five pages of the NYT site) offers a unique way of measuring the “brand exposure” provided by the site. Since ALL ads the user sees on ALL the pages of a given session belong to one brand, it is hard to see how the user could miss the message.

    It’s also good to see that publishers have not given up on innovations that aren’t anti-reader (see previous anti-pop-up ad rants).

  • Thought

    Word of mouth is a powerful tool.

    Last week I posted my “Big Red Fez homework” comments on the AIMS Discussion List (see below for BRF details). I included an Amazon.com associate link so that I could track the effectiveness of my recommendation.

    Here is how we did in the three days after the posting was published:

    1. ADL sent to 3200 AIMS members includes link to Godin book.

    2. 49 people clicked on the link (5 people clicked more than once).

    3. 21 people bought the book and downloaded it.

    4. To date no one has sent me their homework.

    That means I had a 1.7% clickthrough, and a 43% buy/browse ratio. Not bad I’d say. I made US$2.02 in referral fees by the way.

  • Thought

    The IAB has published a useful guide to some of the more common industry terms.

    You can find it here.

October 14, 2001

  • “Big Red Fez” Homework

    The e-Book version of Seth Godin’s new book “The Big Red Fez” inclines me to give all imho* readers some homework:

    1. Buy the Big Red Fez e-Book through Amazon.

    You should do this for three reasons: a) to experience online shopping via Amazon.com — some of you STILL haven’t done this, b) to experience an e-Book (yes you can print it out, but use Adobe eReader to understand the e-Book concept), and c) it only costs US$2 (no shipping or customs to worry about).

    2. Read the book:

    The book provides a screen capture of something that either impressed or irritated Seth on one page, and his analysis on the opposite page. These real world examples are very powerful and many will leave you shaking your head at how any company could be so bone-headed.

    3. Think about YOUR site:

    Now turn this new found knowledge on your own site. I’m sure if you can look at YOUR site with the same critical and customer focussed eye that Seth would, you’ll find MANY things you could easily improve on your site.

    4. Report back:

    Tell me what you found wrong on your site, what you did to fix it, and what the results were.

September 11, 2001

  • Sometimes Marketers Get Carried Away

    Sometimes marketers get carried away and forget why they are doing what they are doing.

    Take for example the E-mail Sign Up Page you get at KraftCanada.com after clicking on the “Recipes by E-Mail” link.

    My guess is that someone at Kraft thought that e-mailing recipes full of Kraft products would be a good way to increase use in the kind of consumers that care enough about Kraft to visit there web site. Then someone else suggested make the page “interactive” by collecting information on my particular interests and the kind of Kraft products I use.

    Probably the next person to look at the page said something like “why don’t we make this the core of our integrated offline/online CRM initiative.” At that point they added a lot of demographic and geographic questions.

    So now when a consumer clicks to get recipes by e-mail, they have to answer over 30 questions on their household and shopping habits. To make matters worse, the form requires that you tell them if you have kids at home, what your age is, whether you are female or male, and (sin of sins) what your street address is!

    So, instead of making consumers value them and their products for the many new ideas they email each week, Kraft probably alienates 90% of the people who attempt to sign up. A wasted opportunity.

    Compare this to the P&G run S Mag sign-up (you need to click on the “subscribe” link near the top).

September 6, 2001

  • Thought

    Move over Viral Marketing, “False Memory Marketing” is the next trend.

    This extremely disturbing article in the Guardian points out that marketing can actually create false memories in consumers. Consumers “remember” using products that didn’t previously exist or having other childhood experiences because of advertising or product branding. For example, consumers report drinking bottles of Stewart’s root beer in childhood when it’s only been bottled for the last ten years. The bottles are marketed as “original”, “old-fashioned” and “Since 1927.”

    Scary quote:

    “This brings forth ethical considerations. Is it OK for marketers to knowingly manipulate consumers’ past?

    “On one hand, the alteration will occur whether or not that was the intent of the marketer given the reconstructive nature of recall.

    On the other hand, there are ways in which the marketer can enhance the likelihood consumer memories will be consistent with their advertising messages. At the very least, consumers ought to be aware of that power.”

    Then again, maybe this isn’t news. I vaguely remember reading this same article when I was young. Someone, please reassure me that “Joe Louis” existed before 1975!

September 4, 2001

  • Ads in Context

    Jakob Nielsen always has good advice in his Alertbox newsletter and this week’s article called Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data is no exception.

    Jakob offers some interesting real world experiences on running a text ad on Google. I think the analysis is spot on, suggesting that aligning the ads goal with the user’s goal in visiting the page make the ad more effective. I’ve been talking about building context into online marketing for a while now and this is a great example.

    One exception I take is that Nielsen feels this is only effective on search engine results pages. I think context will improve an ad on any page on any site, and it will be of particular value on pages that people go to for help. If I’m looking for information on getting stains out of clothes and see a link to download the Tide Stain Detective on my PDA so I’ll always have this information on my finger tips, that ad is in context and should out-perform generic “run of site” ads.

    I’d also suggest that the Tide Stain Detective download would also do well to advertise on Palm app download pages. The last place I would go would be a cooking page based on the assumption that whoever is cooking is also doing the laundry and will therefore be interested. This is weak context.

August 16, 2001

  • Thought

    E-mail marketers need to consider how the fight against spam may in fact be hurting their ethical e-mail campaigns.

    Editor And Publisher has a really good article called Spam Fighters Block Legit E-mail that gives real world examples of what can happen to a perfectly legitimate e-mail as it winds its way through increasingly strict filtering systems on the web. Definitely worth a read for anyone managing an opt-in list.

  • Thought

    Maybe I should pick up a Pepsi with those Lifesavers…

    The new issue of the revamped Business 2.0 (merged and melded with eCompany Now) has a great article on Pepsi’s use of the Web (and Yahoo) in their PepsiStuff promotion.

    I think we’ll see more of this online/offline promotion blending as it lets the web do what it’s good at — instant access, database building, cheap content distribution — and let’s offline promotion do what it is good at — build brand, increase trial and impulse purchases, and create word of mouth.

    I also thought it refreshing (pardon the pun) that Pepsi didn’t start sending the 3.5 million people who registered the Pepsi corporate newsletter, but rather built another great promotion around voting on the all-time best Pepsi ad. 320,000 people watching your ads online is not bad!

August 15, 2001

  • Examples of Beyond The Banner Ads

    I have to go buy some Lifesavers.

    As you can see from this MediaPost article Lifesavers has come up with a GOOD way to go “beyond the banner.”

    Essentially what they’ve done is pay About.com to change their logo so that the “o” in About is replaced by a Lifesaver, like this:

    Clicking the logo launches a large graphic pop-up for a Lifesavers contest.

    This to me is inventive and consumer friendly as it adds a little serenpidity to surfing but doesn’t really interfere with the task at hand the way pop-ups/unders do.

    Of course the idea is not a new one. We’ve seen Yahoo and Excite do this type of stuff back in 1996 with “101 Dalmatians” spots on the background of the home page. More recently MarketWatch has been selling “wallpaper” as an ad space (the jury is out on that).

August 7, 2001

  • Thought

    MarketingSherpa has a nice case study on Norm Thompson that is worth checking out. This is a good example of how direct marketing discipline can really help the overall development of a Net Marketing and e-commerce strategy. These guys took their time and did things right. They measured everything and focussed on adding value and creating loyalty instead of following trends and making a quick buck of newbies. Well done.

August 1, 2001

  • Playing Whack-a-Mole with Online Ads

    This whole pop-under thing is getting ridiculous.

    I just went the New York Times site and watched as this pop-under loaded:

    Here we have the Grey Lady, the newspaper of record for the entire planet, resorting to sneaky ads that look like Windows systems messages. This can’t be good for the image of the NYT or for the concept of online advertising as something that people might actually want to look at. More and more online advertising is looking adversarial to consumers. This pop-under actually goes to the effort of trying to hide the window title by adding lots of spaces and dots so that it shows as a blank box on your toolbar rather than revealing itself as a browser window!

    I can’t believe this is going to do anything but harm in the long term.

    My suggestion is that all publishers immediately stop accepting anything that is designed to trick visitors into clicking. That includes fake error messages or non-functional interactivity that just causes you to go to the advertiser’s site.

    Now I’m off to play “whack a mole” with more pop-up ads.

July 19, 2001

  • Thought

    The Online Journalism Review has a great article on the effectiveness of online advertising. How refreshing.

    I particularly like this quote from a Pepsi exec…

    The advantage of advertising on the Web, DeCecco said, is that “you can’t get a database off a TV commercial.”

    We need more success stories! If you’ve got one, send it to me and I’ll post it for the world to enjoy.

July 18, 2001

  • Thought

    There isn’t much point in developing a web strategy and not knowing what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you will know that you did what you set out to do.

    Web Analysts can help decode the gems of knowledge in the flood of data that a typical web site generates in a day (look a TRIPLE mixed metaphor!).

    ZDNet: eWEEK: Analyzing a good Net career

July 13, 2001

July 5, 2001

  • Every Cabbage Has Its Pimp

    Every once in a while you find a quote that seems to mean something totally different from what the author intended. Since the following quote is from Jean Giraudoux’s 1945 play “The Madwoman of Chaillot”…

    “I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage — unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, … every cabbage has its pimp.”

    For some reason this made me think of affiliate programs on the web. I have a strong preference for contextual links from content that allow you to find stuff or buy stuff. I guess sometimes a cabbage should just be left to be a cabbage though.