Finally something positive for Zynga???

      On November 30th, Zynga and Facebook announced changes to their relationship. Zynga can now host its web games outside of Facebook - Zynga will be less reliant on Facebook. This might not be such a bad thing.

      Zynga now has an incentive to expand the reach of its most popular social games beyond Facebook and Zynga.com and be able to offer additional payment options, likely resulting in additional payers who are not Facebook users.

      Wall street did not like this at all, shares dropped 6% on Friday. Zynga shares recently fell to $2.46. The stock, which originally priced at $10 in December and peaked in early March at nearly $16, hit a record low of $2.09 earlier this month.The problem was not that Zynga was going to loose the Facebook relationship, but the potential for Facebook to compete against Zynga. 

      Facebook competing with Zynga is remote, while its competitive advantage is not online gaming Zynga is Facebook's biggest ad customer. The companies are changing the terms of their relationship, but not ending it. These changes will better allow Zynga to pursue its multi-platform goals. This might be a positive for both Zynga and Facebook.

      Zynga is due for some good news, hopefully this will be a catalyst.

Mobile Marketing for Black Friday

      Although the term was first coined in the 1960s, it wasn't until 2005 that Black Friday became a the busiest shopping day of they year. Thanksgiving being the official start of the Christmas holiday season could be one of the main reasons for shoppers to get a head start on their holiday shopping. Retailers caught on this phenomenon early. Macy's with its Thanksgiving day parade has been attracting shoppers since 1924.

     Getting the best deal on Black Friday usually requires waiting in line for hours before the store opens. In the begging of the internet age, blogs and forms were dedicated to help shoppers make a plan of attack for the big day. Today shoppers might find their smartphones to be the best tools to save money.

     Shoppers have plenty of price comparison and review apps to help them determine what to buy, precisely where and when. There are three types of Apps that help the shoppers:

1. Price - Comparison Apps: According to Nielsen, nearly 40% of smartphone owners use these apps for in-store price comparisons. Amazon had made a big push in this category last year. Their app lets the shopper check for a lower price on Amazon while shopping in a competitor's retail store and order it online.

2. Product - review Apps: Comparison apps include expert and peer reviews that help customers plan their purchases

3. Discount Apps: Most retailers are beefing up their deals for the holiday season, these apps aggregate the discounts in one place.

      One common theme in most of these apps - they help market products to customers that are willing to buy. This is a great new medium for marketers to reach a targeted customer base. 

Ad campaigns spawn from tweets

Samsung's latest TV ad that mocks Apple's new iPhone was partly crafted by mining consumer comments on Twitter and incorporating them into its pitch. 

The spot shows people talking about different features of the new iPhone as they wait in line for an Apple store to open. One of the customers says: "I heard that you have to have an adapter to use the dock on the new one." Another young man chimes in: "Yeah, yeah but they make the coolest adapters."

According to Samsung, those lines and other parts of the ad's script were based on Tweets complaining or poking fun of specific features of the iPhone 5 such as the need for an adapter if a person wants to use the phone with older speakers, chargers or other accessories in the house.

The other advantage of using this for ad campaigns is the "On Demand" style of the process. Advertisers can change the content in the ad in real time based on feedback from Twitter.

The Samsung commercial, which drew more than 32 million views in two weeks, is just one example of how social media are helping marketers shape their ad campaigns. Essentially this process is going directly to the consumer to source creative ideas than the traditional Madison Avenue which  compromises creativity.

Social media audiences can offer more than the traditional focus group of about a dozen people that marketers typically use to guide their thinking. Social media mining could be the new "focus group" in the near future.

Ethical Email Marketing Methods

                Email marketing can be used to reach current or potential customers. Below are some of the ethical ways to be a successful email marketer

      1.       Generating an Email List: Purchasing large number of emails without finding the authenticity of those ids could get the senders email blocked or flagged as a spammer. Taking time and effort to build email lists is the only ethical method. This will be the best list for the marketer, because its members have explicitly opted to receive that marketer’s messages.

      

      2.       Opt-In vs. Opt-Out: Customers should have an option to subscribe or unsubscribe. Using a double opt-in system could make sure you are sending the email to an actual person interested in the message. All email messages should have a link to manage / unsubscribe.

      3.       Language: Stay away from using misleading subject lines, capital letters, usage of marketing lingo, etc. This not only discourages the user from clicking through, it also runs the risk of begin flagged as spam.

      4.       Content and Frequency: If emails are designed to be informative, saves time and money to the customer, it has a higher probability of success. Make sure the message in the email is consistent with the brand message. Also, too many emails to a single customer will not only inconvenience them but will only increase the odds of unsubscribing.

      5.       Protect email lists: Do not sell your email lists to third parties. Customers should be assured of protection of their email address. They should believe that you will not let their email addresses fall into wrong hands.

Needless to say spamming is unethical and a big no no.

Real Time Bidding in Mobile Increases

Real-time bidding (RTB) is the next generation for online ads. The online space has grown tremendously in the last 3 years; RTB is projected to cover 50% of all online ads by 2015. Mobile advertising is soon going to be a major part of all advertising dollars. RTB could be the next big breakthrough in mobile ads.

There are a few differences in the way online and mobile ads work. In the online space, the ads are displayed in the browsers (ie, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc), but the main medium in the mobile are the apps.

RTB is already picking speed in the mobile space, as of June 2012, 44% of all iPhone auction volume was RTB. According to a MoPub report, demand for mobile ad impressions through RTB rose from 0.4 bids per impression request in January to 1.6 in June. Everything from Android to social networks saw an improvement in metrics.

Other Observations in the report:

·            iPad full-screen landscape ads saw the greatest increase in price, with CPMs of $4.47 in June, up from $3.61 in April.

·            Banner ads continue to dominate, with 86% of auction volume in June. Horizontal full-screen interstitials declined in auction volume, as did gaming volume impressions.

·            While impressions with unique device identifiers continue to command a premium over those without an identifier, CPMs are beginning to converge.

·            Increases in overall auction volume with location information increased by 154% month-over-month in June, and those with gender data rose by 127%.

Are we crossing the line with marketing!!!

Retailers spend a lot of time planning the placement of products. Marketing candies to children is not new, but are we crossing the line.

With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, marketers are finding innovative ways to reach targeted customers. U.S. food companies are reaching children by embedding their products in simple and enticing games for smartphones and tablets. The new medium is far cheaper than Saturday morning TV commercials and could prove as effective. The mobile games demonstrate how new technology is changing U.S. commerce, drawing tighter bonds between marketers and young consumers.

Makers of snacks, sweet drinks and candy have long been under government and public pressure to limit advertising to minors on TV and the Web. They are now finding the unregulated medium of mobile devices an effective substitute to trigger demand and cinch brand loyalty.

Young children can master the largely intuitive touch screens well before they read. A recent survey by research firm NPD Group found that 37% of 4- and 5-year-old Americans were using such mobile devices as a smartphone, tablet or iPod Touch, compared with less than a quarter of children that age who used a laptop computer. The food-industry games generally have rudimentary graphics and objectives simple enough for small children to understand. They have raised debate over who should be responsible for their impact on children—parents or the government.

No federal regulations govern how advertising is presented to children on the Internet. Some consumer advocates argue rules are needed, given that the Federal Communications Commission already regulates TV advertising directed at children.

We should be careful about how these adds impact these young consumers, Marketers should be wary.

Google misses earnings – Mobile advertising could be the reason

Google reported earnings last Thursday afternoon, hours before the planned release (due to a glitch). Shares plunged as a result of earnings missing analyst estimates significantly. After the earnings announcement, shares fell 8%, trading was halted shortly after the announcement at Google's request.

Among many issues, profits slid 20% from a year earlier to $2.18 billion, or $6.53 a share. Revenue rose 45% to $14.1 billion, thanks to the incorporation of Google's new Motorola hardware unit. At the crux of Google's profit slide was the growth rate of its biggest and most profitable revenue engine: ads on its Web-search engine and video site YouTube. The growth rate of those ad sales has steadily dropped since mid-2011. In the latest quarter, sales of the ads rose 15%, but that was down from 39% growth a year ago.

The growth rate for such ads fell not because advertisers were buying fewer of the ads (Google sold 33% more ads in the third quarter). But the average price paid by Web-search advertisers to Google per click dropped by 15% in the third quarter. According to wall street analysts, the decline in prices for ads was the shift by marketers toward mobile ads. Mobile ads cost less than desktop ads, therefore, this change is hurting Google.

It seems that advertisers aren’t really willing to pay big bucks for Mobile; there isn’t a lot of buying behavior on smart phones for markets to invest yet. Some analysts predict the price differential will be minimal by the end of next year.

To conclude IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Google all had disappointing Q3 results. The economy on the whole and the tech industry is in an important juncture. There are a lot of macroeconomic issues to be resolved, namely (1) the elections, (2) Europe and (3) the fiscal cliff. Tech spending and the overall economy should see positive signs once these issues can be resolved.

Where to focus in the purchase funnel

      The purchase funnel is the path on which a consumer starts by learning about a brand and that ultimately leads them to make a purchase. The funnel is a useful tool in coming up with a good and effective marketing plan. Along with the highly quantitative digital media, the use of a Purchasing Funnel could be the difference between a good and a bad campaign.

      The purchase funnel below defines five stages in using the digital environment to move individuals from a lack of knowledge of a brand all the way to intending to take action. The digital medium lends itself to zeroing in on the marketers goals.

1. Aided Branding Awareness: Measures the level of aided familiarity respondents have with a brand
2. Online Ad Awareness: Measures the level of “breakthrough” of online advertising by gauging ad recall
3. Message Association: Measures the extent to which respondents can match the messages to the brand
4. Brand Favorability: Measures the extent to which respondents have a positive  opinion of the brand
5. Purchase Intent: Measures the likelihood of respondents to make a purchase

Marketer can use the following checklist to gauge their audience level:


1. Aided Branding Awareness: Does your audience recognize your brand when presented with its name?
2. Online Ad Awareness: Does your audience recognize that you’ve advertised online recently?
3. Message Association: Does your audience associate your brand with its value perception?
4. Brand Favorability: Does your audience appreciate, respect or otherwise carry favorable opinions about your brand?
5. Purchase Intent: Does your audience intend to purchase or take action because of your brand?

Answering the above questions can help marketers zero in on the right approach

Source: DoubleClick and Dynamic Logic

Optimizing Display by using Search

Measuring the success of the display ads has always been challenging. To justify display, marketers often mention the synergies between the display and search. There is no simple solution to measure the brand impact of display advertising combined with the paid search.

Companies like Google and Microsoft perform such studies to justify their pricing of their packages. One of such case studies by Microsoft concluded that Display combined with Search deliver optimal results. Additionally, the presence of organic search results along with the paid links resulted in double the clicks and the combination of display and search resulted in nearly three times higher awareness than just display.

Link to Microsoft case study: http://advertising.microsoft.com/display-search-casestudy

Facebook SEO

    According to Media Bistro, an average person spends 7:45Hrs⁽¹⁾ on Facebook per month. Facebook is increasingly becoming a must have for most marketers; Facebook SEO should be a major part of their online marketing plan.

 
    The following article outlines 10 steps that markets can follow to optimize their Facebook pages:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/07/13/seo-facebook-pages-10-key-strategies/

    The SEO for Facebook is still in its infancy, some of the techniques that don't work on Google anymore still work on Facebook:

       1. Suggestion #3 advises to use the "About" box to insert Keyword dense sentences

       2. Suggestion #4 similarly uses the "Info" tab

       3. Suggestion #5 - Use of "Static FBML"

       4. Getting more links to the Facebook page

   All these techniques used to work on Google search as well, but Google evolved to get more authentic search results. In time, Facebook will also evolve, marketers need to be a step ahead of the Facebook curve as well.

(1)  http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/online-time_b22186