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Overdrive Interactive Wins 2007 Internet Advertising Competition Award for Best Online Events CampaignOverdrive Interactive, a Boston-based full service search engine marketing and online media agency specializing in lead generation, brand building and customer acquisition, announced today that the agency has been awarded the Best Online Events Campaign Award in the 2007 Internet Advertising Competition (IAC). Overdrive received the award from the Web Marketing Association for Outstanding Achievement in Internet Advertising for the online media campaign that was designed and developed for client, Las Vegas Motor Speedway. See the creative here. Now in its 11th year, the IAC Awards are produced by the Web Marketing Association (WMA) and is the premier event for web developers and marketers each year. The Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards are produced by the Web Marketing Association to honor excellence in online advertising, recognize the individuals and organizations responsible, and showcase the award winning Internet advertising. This is one of the only competitions to recognize only online categories of advertising. IAC Award entries are submitted by advertising and interactive agencies or corporate marketing departments worldwide. "We are delighted to be recognized with the prestigious IAC Award. To be recognized by a jury of your peers is definitely validating and an acknowledgement of the great work that Overdrive is doing on behalf of our clients," commented Ty Velde, Director of Client Services. The online banner campaign utilized eye-catching imagery from previous, memorable races and was accompanied by straight-forward, witty copy. The goal of the campaign was to target NASCAR fans to buy tickets to the Spring Cup Weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. For more information on Overdrive's online media services, click here. About Overdrive Interactive: Boston-based Overdrive Interactive (http://www.overdriveinteractive.com/) is a full service online marketing firm that specializes in branding and lead generation services using search engine optimization, paid search management, online media planning and buying, email marketing, and web and application development. The agency serves a wide range of consumer and B2B Fortune 500 companies. Labels: Awards, Overdrive News Using Meta Search to Make Intelligent Travel ChoicesEveryone who has ever spent any time traveling for business or for pleasure has an airline horror story: “They lost my luggage and I had to buy all new stuff when I got to the hotel!” ‘We sat on the tarmac for three hours and then they canceled the flight!” “My plane was so small you couldn’t even stand up in the aisles!” What if you could find out which flights were almost always late? Or see the type of aircraft you were going fly? Or access what the load factor was for a particular flight before you purchased that non-refundable ticket? You can get this information now if you’re willing to spend a fair amount of time on multiple web sites to ferret it out but wouldn’t it be nice to find everything related to the speed, comfort, and ease of your flight in one spot? Take a look at InsideTrip.com (http://www.insidetrip.com/) when you’re planning your next flight. The site is still in Beta so there are limits on the carriers listed and the type of passengers (adults only for now) but the real value here is in the depth and breadth of useful information available to the average airline traveler. The interface is simple and very familiar to anyone who has ever booked a flight on any of the major travel sites or through an individual carrier’s site. Pick your departure and arrival cities, enter your travel dates, and decide on the time of day you want to fly. Click on the search button and in addition to seeing the results of your search in a listing of carriers, flight times, and connecting flight numbers you get a flight dashboard that assigns a quality score to each flight. The quality score is determined by a dozen preset variables you can modify to ensure that the flight you choose matches your preferences. Always carry on your bags and never check anything? De-select the “Lost Bags” variable and ask InsideTrip.com to recalculate the trip quality score. Know that you get habitually get to the airport more than an hour ahead of the time the airline recommends so security wait time isn’t an issue for you? Again, a simple mouse click removes that variable from the quality score calculation. This redefinition of meta-search for the travel industry has implications for search marketing as well. The move away from simple text listings and toward more all-inclusive results for searches is already well underway: Google’s Universal Search now includes images, videos, and other items in their search results while Ask.com and other search engines provide site thumbnails as a standard part of their results listings. This expansion of types of data in search results means sites need to implement a consistent approach to tagging their site content because being “search-friendly” now applies to more than text-only keywords. Imagine you’re searching for a software tool to help make your sales force more productive and when the results come up, one company’s listing shows only a few of lines of text describing their product while another company offers not only the few lines of product text but also access to their deployment metrics, pricing matrix, and a few customer testimonials relevant to your industry? Which site do you think you'd click on first? Labels: Integration, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Overdrive Interactive Receives MarketingSherpa 2007 Email Award for Webinar CampaignThe 2007 Email Awards were presented at a gala awards ceremony on Monday, March 5 in Miami. This is the second year in a row that Overdrive Interactive has been recognized for its marketing campaigns for Symmetricom. Last year, the company received a 2006 Email Award from MarketingSherpa for the campaign that launched SyncServer® S200/S250, high-performance GPS (Global Positioning System) network time servers for Next Generation Networks. “We are delighted to be recognized with the prestigious MarketingSherpa Award. To be recognized by a jury of your peers is definitely validating and an acknowledgement of the great work that Overdrive is doing on behalf of our clients.” commented Ty Velde, Director of Client Services. For more information on the MarketingSherpa Email Awards, visit: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/. About Overdrive Interactive: Boston-based Overdrive Interactive (http://www.overdriveinteractive.com/) is a full service online marketing firm that specializes in branding and lead generation services using search engine optimization, paid search management, online media planning and buying, social media marketing, email marketing, and web and application development. The agency serves a wide range of consumer and B2B Fortune 500 companies. Labels: Awards, Overdrive News Quick Affiliate Marketing POVHey there – as you may know by know I like posting my POV emails to clients when I actually manage to say something interesting or insightful. So here is a recent one regarding affiliate marketing. The client basically asked me if we managed affiliate programs and what my thoughts were on them. My response: Hi XXXXXXX, This is not our sweet spot but we do know a lot about it and can help you get one going with one of the top platforms. (Commission Junction or LinkShare.) Our Search Department Supervisor used to work at Commission Junction and I would be glad to set up a call between me, you and him so you could pick his brain. From what I know there are three main factors that drive the success of an affiliate program: 1) The universal appeal of the product and the stature of your brand a. As of now you have the universal product appeal covered 2) The offer you are making to consumers and how easy that will be for affiliates to sell it to their audience a. Basically the offer always subordinates the bounty b. A $5 bounty for no credit card required/free trial signups may actually have a higher adoption rate by affiliates than a $50 offer for signups that require a credit card – the affiliates know they will get exponentially more conversions that way and make more money 3) The zeal of your affiliate advocate that is recruiting affiliate members a. We typically recommend that people pay Commission Junction’s $3k fee to have an assigned advocate to their program (I am not sure what LinkShare charges for an advocate) b. CJ Advocates tend to know the environment really well and have relationships with sites in the CJ network c. Especially for a company like yours it is very important to have extremely strict affiliate compliance guidelines - showing up on questionable sites or in spam emails could really damage your credibility I hope this helps and do let me know when you would like me to line up a call with our resident CJ expert. See you soon, Harry- Labels: Online Media, POV, Strategy Overdrive Interactive CEO Harry Gold to Speak at NEDMA ConferenceHarry Gold to present a seminar on search engine, blog and social media marketing at the NEDMA conference on April 30 Boston, MA (PRWEB) March 6, 2008 -- Harry Gold, CEO and Managing Partner of Overdrive Interactive, will present his seminar, Search Engine, Blog and Social Media Marketing: Accessing the Critical Moment and Joining the Customer Conversation, at the upcoming NEDMA (New England Direct Marketing Association) Annual Conference on April 30, 2008. The conference, which will be held at Bentley College in Waltham, MA, is called 'Direct Marketing 3.0: Multi-channel marketing, social media, other opportunities…and threats.' Its goal is to teach marketers how to understand and leverage the latest strategies and tactics - online and offline - while protecting brands. Mr. Gold's seminar will focus on the statistics, strategies, tactics, and benefits of search engine, blog and social media marketing. It will also detail the linkages between search engine optimization and a strong presence in blogs and social media sites. The seminar will include valuable information for marketers on accessing prospects as they are researching or discussing various products and services. "There are many firms that want to keep how to do things on a tactical level to themselves, and then there are those firms who scream how to do things from the rooftop. We are the latter," said Harry Gold. He added, "It is our experience that the more you educate the market on the best way to do things the more they value the care and detail we apply to our services." NEDMA managing director Beth Drysdale said, "We're delighted to have Harry back. He has been a staple speaker at our conferences for the past seven years and his sessions are always very highly rated by the attendees." To register for the seminar and read more about Mr. Gold's Search Engine Marketing and Blog Seminar, please visit http://www.nedma.com/annual-conference/search-blog-workshop.asp. ### About Overdrive Interactive Boston-based Overdrive Interactive is a full service online marketing firm that specializes in branding and lead generation services using search engine optimization, paid search management, online media planning and buying, email marketing, and web and application development. The agency serves a wide range of consumer and B2B fortune 500 companies. Labels: Events, Overdrive News Overdrive Interactive Wins IAC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Internet Advertising Working on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway campaign was a great opportunity to work on some cool creative concepts for one of the fastest growing sports around- and the best part was going to see the race in Las Vegas thanks to the the folks at LVMS! Check out the IAC Awards Page or view the creative concepts below: Las Vegas Motor Speedway Banner Campaigns: Labels: Awards, Overdrive News Seven Ways to Boost Campaign PerformanceYou may have heard me say this before, but I'll say it again: when it comes to online media, always say it's a branding campaign until the client looks at the report. What I mean by this is, of course, it's a branding campaign. But short of an awareness study, clients (and we agency people) are trained to judge the success of an optimization campaign by a narrow set of KPIs (define) -- basically impressions, clicks, CPCs (define), actions, and CPAs (define). While home page buyouts and premium real estate get you the high-visibility placements, they're more often than not very expensive from a CPM (define) standpoint. As a result, they typically have very high CPC and CPA stats. When a client sees those stats on a report, the placement's branding value often goes out the window. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Online Media International Social Media MapOk - so this needs to be translated into English but I think you will all get the point when you look at it. Pretty interesting:
Click here or on the image to see an enlarged view. Labels: Social Media Immersive Media brings 360 degree viewing to online motion videoJust came across a very interesting company – Immersive Media Corporation (http://www.immersivemedia.com) – and their products and services are going to change the way you view online motion video. Everyone is familiar with the 360 degree views of hotel rooms, new autos, and house tours but these images all suffer from the same problem – they are static because they are really nothing more than a bunch of carefully shot still images stitched together with software. You can pan around your potential hotel room as many times as you like but the images are lifeless because there is no real movement in the frame. Immersive Media has changed all that with a hardware and software platform that allows a viewer full control over what they see. Their suite of cameras, image capture hardware and processing software creates a seamless motion video file that can be streamed over the Internet or distributed through more conventional means. (Demos are here: http://demos.immersivemedia.com) The implications for the travel and tourism industry are obvious but the Immersive Media platform also offers new options to the gaming, transportation, and regulatory industries. Their platform ups the ante for online marketers as well. Everyone loves hitting the “play” button on their screen. Rich media ads that use flash movies built from static images or simple video clips look like yesterday’s news when compared to a full motion video sequence that allows the user complete control over what they are seeing. Take a look at their site and their demos and then weigh in with your opinion: Is this the next big thing or just an interesting technological angle in search of a big break? Labels: Online Media, Video WWE Smackdown!Bill and Shane mentally prepping for the evening's festivities.  His & Her Overdrive gear - get yours today ;) Bill and Stephen sampling some specialty brew at Boston Beer Works before the event. Mel has us intrigued with her real life 'smackdown' experience...I kid I kid...  Helidon and Ty ready to check out the action!  This guy is ALL business. I swear he was looking directly at us...I was shaking in my boots. The women got pretty fiesty. Where does one get an outfit like that? This guy broke out his secret weapon - the luck of the Irish! Too much action - not sure where to look first!! Guess this is what they call the 'grand finale'! Labels: Campus Life Custom Phone Numbers Tell An Important StoryI think it’s safe to say that most online marketers are ‘data junkies’. I know I am, particularly when it comes to Pay-Per-Click programs. The more granular the data, the better. If it were up to me, all clients would have unique tracking elements tied to everything they do. For Pay-Per-Click going as granular as the ad group level with tracking is ideal. Unfortunately implementing unique tracking at the ad group level is not attainable for all clients (at least at the onset, there’s always hope!). Often times the same landing and thank you pages are used for multiple ad groups, and even campaigns. So we ‘data junkies’ must align our expectations accordingly and take our data successes when we get them. I was lucky to have one recently that I’m sharing here in hopes that the other ‘data junkies’ of the world can use this case study to inform and encourage more successes. The Situation At the beginning of 2008 we launched a new Pay-Per-Click campaign for a client of ours. At the time the majority of their business came from an 800# that was included on all marketing materials. Their belief is that using the same 800# in all communications makes it more memorable to their customers. While this is a very valid concern, we felt it was very important to have a unique phone number tied to our PPC campaign so we could effectively measure the calls being generated from our efforts. With some convincing the client conceded that using a unique number upon the initial contact would not damage their opportunities to reinforce their 800# once the customer was engaged. So, a unique number was implemented on all our landing pages. The Result In the first two weeks we were able to see that 61 calls came in via the custom 800# tied to our PPC program. During that same timeframe 240 calls went into the 800# that was used for ALL other marketing efforts, including direct mail, in-house emails, brochures, and the general website contact. So, in a two week timeframe approximately 20% of the calls were related to the PPC program. If we look at the marketing dollars spent in a related timeframe on other efforts, specifically direct mail, we can safely say far less than 20% of the marketing dollars were spent on PPC. This was a HUGE aha moment for our client. The Takeaway Pay-Per-Click programs DRIVE leads at a much more efficient cost than offline efforts. The numbers don’t lie! Labels: Paid Search Overdrive at NASCAR in Vegas for LVMS Sprint Cup Weekend! Overdrive's client, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, was nice enough to give us a couple of All Access Passes to Sprint Cup Weekend at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I must admit that up until this event I would not have called myself a true NASCAR fan, but after seeing a race live and up close all I can say is WOW! I can see why people go wild over the sport and I am hooked! 99! The passion of NASCAR fans is unrivaled and from a marketing standpoint, what a powerful event! It truly is a sport that provides a unique opportunity to bring together crowds, media, brands and product in one arena. As a marketing guy my creative gears were really turning! Our passes got us into a very comfortable luxury suite, the roof deck and even the pits! The picture above is of Shane and I down in the pits watching the drivers and listening to the roar of the engines up close. A special thanks to Ricky May for hooking us up! Also, all you NASCAR fans, make sure to spread the word and help LVMS get a second NASCAR race! Could there be a better place to see the action than Las Vegas?! Labels: Campus Life, Overdrive News Mapping the Complete Path to SuccessOK, I know I'm supposed to be an online media guy and this is supposed to be an online media column. But, I just have to speak up here. Far too often, advertisers who base the success of their online campaigns on hard conversion and action metrics forget that media will only do one thing: put your ads in front of the right people. It won't make people, desire, click, or convert. It's the job of the creative to encourage desired behavior -- and it is some form of desired behavior (clicks, actions, or conversions) that success is typically based on. The funny thing is when our firm just does the media buy for our clients, and doesn't do the creative (banners and landing pages), we can usually tell whether something is going to work before the first impression has even been served. We can always tell when creative was done without the final metric for success in mind and wasn't mapped all the way though to the desired action or behavior. Read more... Labels: Analytics, ClickZ, Online Media Google Subscribed Links Offers Powerful Branding Opportunity in Search ResultsThere are a few things constant about Google - frequent acquisitions of cool companies, an increasing stock price, and an ever expanding catalog of products. Google Subscribed Links, the latest tool to roll off the Google widget assembly line, allows webmasters to connect with previous visitors to their site through search results. Google Subscribed Links works like this:
 Of course, designing and managing the site feed requires at least a minimal command of XML and HTML. Additionally, you’re going have to induce your visitors to subscribe to the link (market the marketing tool); however, the potential opportunity for visitor retention and branding is just too good to pass up, particularly if your website ranks highly for frequently searched keywords. View examples of Google Subscribed Links. One application of this new product that springs to mind is to serve as a complement to paid search campaigns. You could post a Subscription Link button on a landing page for a pay-per-click campaign. A visitor in the early stages of their search may not be prepared to convert right away, but assuming your site ranks organically, e-marketers could conceivably push customized natural listings to the prospect at every stage of their search and entice a conversion at a later time. Labels: Google, Industry, Integration, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |
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