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Paid Search and its role in the 2008 Presidential ElectionIf the truth is that America is shifting media usage from traditional media to online, and media does, in fact, affect voters in a national election, then Senator Barack Obama is making strides toward becoming the next President of the United States. According to many web marketing newsletters, Obama’s technology usage and internet savvy in the 2008 Presidential Election is spectacular. Obama used text messaging not only to announce his decision on a vice presidential nominee to registered mobile users exclusively, before anyone else knew; but also, to build up this list of mobile phone numbers for use in the campaign down the line. He even created his own social networking site, My.BarackObama.com. However, according to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Obama seems to have missed the boat in one of the most vital, if not THE most vital, of internet marketing tactics behind Senator John McCain: Paid Search. In this day and age, when just about half of the Internet population use search engines on a daily basis, and around 60% of higher-income and/or more educated Internet users perform searches daily (PEW/Internet 2008), it is extremely important to utilize paid search strategies and tactics as part of an online marketing strategy for the presidential campaign. Aside from the sheer statistics of search engine users, according to a recent PEW Research Center study, 24% of Americans get at least some of their information about the 2008 political campaigns from the internet, up from 13% in the 2004 election. In light of these facts, McCain has found a loophole in Obama’s supposedly superior internet marketing strategy. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article described, "As of Wednesday, a Google search for "Joe Biden" or even just "Biden" resulted in a prominently displayed ad labeled "Joe Biden on Obama" that links to Sen. McCain's site. There, a video begins playing that shows Sen. Biden criticizing Sen. Obama during the Democratic primaries." McCain is utilizing a common strategy of paid search advertising, buying competitor’s brand names, product names, etc. (in this case- actual names). This strategy is useful not only so that a marketer can be sure to show up on the results page when a competitor’s term is searched on, but more importantly because with paid search, the advertiser has control over where to send users who click the ad. Thus, McCain’s use of a landing page with an “attack ad” video at the forefront is a smart use of competitive paid search tactics. And McCain didn’t solely focus on this “ambush” style of paid search. He also bought terms such as “U.S. economy” and “housing crisis” and sent users to landing pages explaining his platform on key issues. While Obama is ahead in the use of the extremely new, innovative, savvy technology such as social media and mobile advertising, it seems that he may have lost sight of some age-old, potentially more important tactics on the way. A spokesperson for the Obama campaign said, "Thanks to our millions of online supporters who frequently visit our Web site and other social-networking sites, unlike other campaigns, BarackObama.com already has extremely high organic search engine rankings, which helps us limit the number of terms where we need to use paid advertising to have a presence.” While this may be true, he is still missing out on the opportunity to utilize the benefits of paid search- its versatility and ability to drive users with specific messaging to a specific location and funnel them exactly where the campaign wants them to go. And with the emergence of this criticism in such a highly esteemed paper as the Wall Street Journal, and the benefit of the immediacy of paid search advertising, it will be interesting to see how the internet landscape of this Presidential election continues to play out. Labels: Obama Campaign, Paid Search, Social Media Marketing The Facebook MovieComing Soon: The Facebook Movie* Yes, you read that right. There will be a movie about the history of Facebook, and it's going to be directed by Aaron Sorkin (some of his works include The West Wing, A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War). And of course, there is already an official Facebook Group about it. I guess given Facebook's popularity, there will be no dearth in audiences who would want to see this movie and learn even more about Facebook. But I'm not entirely sure what's going to be featured in the movie - will it show Mark Zuckerberg (or an actor playing him) brainstorming in his Harvard dorm? Will it show the millions of people using Facebook and how obsessed we truly are? Will it show how users find out about their friends' relationship statuses and parties trough Facebook, thereby decreasing the need for email, phone calls and evites? Or how about brands and corporations creating Pages left and right? And more importantly (at least for me) will the movie show the success of (and criticisms for) the Facebook advertising platform? I myself will probably watch the Facebook Movie, and I'm actually already a member of the Group... Something to note: Aaron Sorkin admitted that he is VERY new to Facebook and doesn't know anything about it - which may explain why he created a Group, and not a Page... Well, paging Mr. Sorkin, the producers, and the marketing people for this upcoming movie - drop Overdrive a line. We offer fantastic social media services and could give you success stories, insights, and more ;) What do you think about the upcoming movie? And when will The Google Movie get produced?? See some more news and views about the Facebook Movie from MarketingVOX, Internet News, Mashable, MediaBistro. And expect more news and views all over the Net in the coming days! *Title not finalized yet. Labels: Facebook, Industry, Social Media Going LocalWe've all heard of localvores, people who are committed to eating locally-produced food. And now more and more consumers have started putting stronger effort into buying locally-produced items. How does this trend translate for us online marketers? Well, how about focusing on locally-produced ads? Or buying more local-specific media? A study by the Online Publishers Association states that local online media offer significant ad advantage (see Marketing Charts article). Apparently, consumers are more likely to trust and be persuaded by ads found on local newspapers, magazines, and TV sites. According to the article, "the new OPA report looks at consumers who get local information from online city guides, classifieds, magazines, newspapers, portals, television sites, user review sites, or yellow pages." It also took note of the fact that local sites attract higher concentrations of influencers. This is not surprising at all, and from personal experience, we do seem to be more inclined to click on interesting offerings that are happening locally... Let's put it this way: let's say you're an events marketing company advertising a food tasting event in Boston. Which ad you think is more likely to get clicked on - an ad on the Yelp.com Boston Restaurants section, or a Run of Site ad on MSN.com? Granted, the Yelp ad will have tighter, more focused targeting, but isn't that precisely the point of local advertising? Whether it's display, video, rich media ads, or search ads, local advertising should have a place in every online marketer's plan. So let's jump on this localvore phenomenon and think about supporting not just local food and local items, but also local media. So hello, Boston.com. Labels: Online Media, Paid Search, POV Facebook Working to Create the Ultimate User ExperienceToday, popular social networking site Facebook.com hit the milestone of 100 million users worldwide. Over the years it has taken for the site to reach this milestone, Facebook’s creators and engineers have kept themselves busy constantly updating features and capabilities, fighting security and privacy battles, and trying above all to improve the user experience. In the face of this extreme growth and popularity, something they’re doing must be working. On one hand, there is the advertising capabilities on Facebook.com. Our CEO, Harry Gold, very nicely summarized the advertising opportunities on Facebook in his recent ClickZ article, which you can read at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630553?page=3630553. The newest addition to this list, according to Mark Walsh of MediaPost, is called Engagement Ads. Engagement ads, currently in testing, are focused on increasing click-throughs in the social space. Like the typical Social Ads on Facebook, Engagement Ads feature a headline, body copy and an image or video. Unlike the Social Ads, however, Engagement Ads allow people to post and read comments, see other fans of the page that is being promoted via the ad, and share virtual items (Facebook gifts) that the brand has released with friends - all within the ad unit. These ads also appear to the right of the News Feed, unlike Social Ads which actually appear in the News Feed. Currently, these ads are in Beta testing, with a select few advertisers being able to utilize them for testing. See the image below of a current Engagement Ad.
This new ad unit is further propagating the feeling that Facebook is genuinely concerned with social networking at its core. With the rollout of Engagement Ads, Facebook users will not only be able to engage in the social conversation with one another, but they will also be able to more easily engage in this conversation with brands and marketers. With the sense that this is “opt-in”, since a user can choose whether or not to engage with the ad, this new form of social advertising represents a significant opportunity for marketers interested in engaging their brand with users in the social space. For example, Facebook Exporter for iPhoto allows seamless integration between iPhoto, where a user likely stores all of his/her photo content, to Facebook, where this user can share his/her photos with friends and other users. This and other applications like it are one way of Facebook internally promoting itself, by developing external applications to drive users to use the site often. Also, this functionality opens the door to marketers being able not only to create a Widget for Facebook, but this same Widget could be applied to a user’s desktop, and to multitudes of other locations, putting the brand right out there and accessible to users wherever they prefer. Labels: Facebook, Social Media Seven Ways to Advertise on FacebookOK, I've previously examined the different ways you could advertise on Google. To be fair I asked Bianca Garcia, one of our media planners who specializes in social media, to help me compile a list of the advertising opportunities on Facebook. What's interesting about Facebook: most of the units are non-traditional and are often incorporated in with the content that consumers are actively reading when they login -- mainly the social ads that show up in the Facebook feeds. Plus, the larger social network sites allow you to get super granular with targeting. They have enough users that you can still hit a large audience even with a bunch of selects. Targeting parameters include: country, state, city or town, age, gender, interests, activities, music, TV shows, education, high school, college, major, workplace, relationship status, profile keywords, and books. Now there are a many different things to do on Facebook and I may be inadvertently omitting some because new features are being added. The things we are focusing on here are paid advertising opportunities that media planners might take advantage of except for setting up a corporate profile. I'm also not going to get into talking here about applications. Using Facebook applications for advertising and branding is a pretty huge topic and certainly will be the subject of a future column. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Social Media How to Optimize an Ad Campaign on the FlyAt many larger agencies, the role of running an online campaign is fragmented. Typically it's broken up between planners, buyers, traffickers, and analysts. The problem with this model is who is going super deep on the account? This model assumes that optimization is simply about moving media and turning banners on and off at the banner server. Which begs the question: How are real-time decisions made? Do all these people have to meet to get a high-level idea of what's going on in a campaign? How often do they meet or talk? Are they making real-time decisions? Candidly I have heard stories where optimization at some firms is more like run, track, report, meet, decide, and finally optimize. As opposed to real-time optimization, a more old-school see-what-happens approach is taken and many impressions and dollars are wasted in these protracted optimization cycles. OK, I know everyone is going to say to clients: "Of course, we optimize real-time." But do you really? If you have a fragmented team, is a lower level traffic manager with her fingers on the banner server keyboard authorized or able to kill a site, placement, or piece of creative? Or, does this person need to wait for the analyst to see that it's not working, report that to the team, and then ask the buyer to cancel the contract or renegotiate the deal? That's a lot of hops and meetings to do something as simple as cancel a site, placement, or piece of creative. The only way I have seen this work is when all of these people are working together in a tight little pod where meetings don't have to be scheduled to make decisions and inform clients of those decisions. One easy question to ask your agency if it has a fragmented media management team is, "Where do all these people sit in proximity to each other?" If the analysts are in another department, office space, or even floor away from the campaign managers, then it's unlikely your optimization is real-time. |
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