A recent study by e-mail service provider Mailchimp indicates that purchased, rented or scraped e-mail lists offer no return on investment for marketers.
Image source: Mailchimp.com
Most of the popular e-mail service providers maintain strict policies against sending e-mails to users that have not opted in to receive messaging. Beyond the obvious legal reasons to avoid this practice, e-mails sent to purchased lists have miniscule open rates and sky-high unsubscribe rates.
In short, spam does nothing to help your business (and has many negative ramifications). Just don’t do it.
LinkedIn announced today the launch of Direct Sponsored Content, an expansion of its year-old Sponsored Content ad product. The new feature is currently only available as a pilot for select partners, including Comcast and NewsCred.
Image Source: marketing.linkedin.com
Key features of Direct Sponsored Content include:
Content can be posted directly in the News Feeds of a target audience, and does not have to be posted on the Company Page
Content can be A/B tested to multiple audiences and with limited duration
With approval from the Company Page administrator, other business users and stakeholders can post and manage content
LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates product launched a year ago, providing advertisers the ability to run native-style ads in the form of articles, blogs or videos on a user’s feed. The ads encourage users to follow companies or like/comment/share content. The new “Direct” feature allows companies to test posts that won’t clog their company page, similar to Facebook’s dark posts offering.
The launch of Direct Sponsored Content comes just after LinkedIn’s acquisition of Bizo, a B2B advertising platform, which the company announced on Tuesday.
The race to capture marketers’ mobile dollars is in high gear as Yahoo allegedly purchased mobile analytics firm Flurry today, according to TechCrunch and MarketWatch. As written on Flurry’s website, “Flurry Analytics is the industry standard in mobile, and provides more than 170,000 developers the business data they need to understand their audience, usage and performance.
Yahoo’s latest purchase is one in a string of mobile acquisitions made by tech giants Google, Twitter and Facebook in recent months. In October 2013, Facebook acquired mobile analytics firm Onavo. Twitter acquired native mobile ad platform Namo Media and mobile commerce firm TapCommerce in June. Google acquired mobile analytics company Adometry in May. Amazon developed its own mobile analytics platform. (You get the picture.)
These recent moves are part of each company’s effort to increase offerings in the mobile advertising space. An estimated 1.75 billion people will use Smartphones in 2014, with usage growing every day. Mobile ad market spend will hit $18 billion this year. Everybody wants a piece of that pie, and a majority slice to boot.
Facebook announced yesterday it’s testing a new “buy” button available to advertisers via ads on News Feed and Pages. This will allow consumers to make online purchases directly within Facebook, with the option for Facebook to store a user’s credit card information for future use.
The new feature brings Facebook closer to a head-to-head competition with e-commerce giant Amazon. Currently, the buy button on Facebook is limited to select small and medium-sized businesses in the US. Before this announcement, Facebook allowed for payments via third party apps.
In related news, Twitter is also edging into the e-commerce space with its purchase of CardSpring, which allows users to claim coupons or special deals via Tweets. In May, Twitter announced a partnership with Amazon that allows users to add items to their Amazon shopping cart using Twitter hashtags.
Most digital marketers are familiar with the term “retargeting,” a tactic that allows us to show ads to individuals who have visited our website or exist already in our database. Retargeting can be done through display ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as on Facebook via Facebook Exchange or Custom Audiences.
Retargeting can be particularly effective, if not creepy, for prospective customers in the e-commerce world. Many of us have had the experience where we placed a pair of shoes in our virtual shopping cart, then abandoned the site, only to see that exact pair of shoes following us across the web for weeks.
But how effective is retargeting, really? In an article published yesterday on AdAge, Tom Goodwin – CEO of London-based agency Tomorrow Group – argues that retargeting is not effective, and the way of the future is pretargeting. Goodwin argues that retargeting is based on actions users have already taken, and these users are not likely to act again. He writes, “There is no time in my life I am less likely to buy some white pants, a toaster or a flight to Los Angeles than after I’ve just bought these items, yet that’s precisely the time I see ads for these products or services.”
Goodwin also claims that Paid Search, while it is the only opportunity to address people at their moment of need, will be trumped by “converting needs we don’t yet know we have.” Enter: predictive advertising, or pretargeting.
Prospective customers are painting accurate pictures of their lives, Goodwin claims, by liking posts on Facebook and sharing information across devices, among all of the other ways they transmit information across the web. Data that we share about ourselves through online behaviors can be used to show us ads with the right message at the right time. Goodwin gives several examples:
— “It will be the coffee shop suggested when you have time and it’s about to rain; the Taxi2 ridesharing app telling you someone else wants to go the same way as it thinks you do; the car garage that will repair the problem only your car knows it has; the train times when snow blocks your route to work; the meal special offer when your friends are close and your calendar is free.”
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Some ad companies are already taking advantage of new technology that enables predictive targeting. ViralHeat provides “sophisticated predictive social analytics” to uncover users who are mentioning a brand in real-time. Nugg.ad used various data sources, both internal e.g. surfing behavior on publisher client’s site, as well external data to develop statistical models of a target audience group.
If all of this sounds a little complicated, and unproven, that’s because it’s so new and constantly evolving. Mr. Goodwin writes that we should “accept that privacy is a lost battle” and embrace the act of sharing information to further general acceptance of pretargeting. The benefit for marketers is obvious, but what about for consumers? Take a look at Nugg.ad’s Consumer Portal, where it allows users to opt-out or in to its advertising:
—- Yes, I would like to continue to have advertising relevant to my interests displayed and I consent to theme-based analysis of my surfing habits by nugg.ad. This consent is restricted to one year (“Opt-In“).
No, I do not want nugg-ad to continue theme-based analysis of my surfing habits on websites. This Opt-Out is stored as a cookie in my browser and has a lifespan of ten years. The user is responsible for ensuring that the appropriate cookie is not deleted from his browser as long as he wishes the Opt-Out to be valid. The (“Opt-Out“) is stored in a cookie with the name “nuggstopp“. —
The argument is that most consumers will want to share information in order to see more relevant ads. But the consumer consensus on this has yet to be seen.
—- For the first time, advertisers will be able to see how many times users have viewed and engaged with organic Tweets, so that they can more effectively optimize their content strategy. The Tweet activity dashboard is now available to all advertisers, Twitter Card publishers, and verified users around the world.
With the new dashboard, you can:
See how your Tweets are performing in real time.
Compare impressions (times a Tweet is viewed by anyone on Twitter web and Android or iOS apps, including logged-out users), total engagements and Retweets month over month.
Use the Tweet details page to see how many Retweets, replies, favorites, follows, link clicks and embedded media clicks each Tweet received.
Export your Tweet performance metrics into a CSV file, which now includes both organic and promoted data.
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Only advertisers, Twitter card publishers and verified users have access to the Twitter analytics dashboard. Previously, impressions and engagement data on the dashboard was limited to Promoted Tweets.
In recent months, Twitter has rolled out several new features to complete with advertising giants Facebook and Google. In April 2014, Twitter reported that it beat its ad revenue expectations for Q1 with an estimated 119% increase year over year. However, Twitter is still playing catch-up with its competitors, as its new organic Tweet feature is similar to a feature already offered by Facebook for some time.
With new insight into organic Tweets, a challenge for marketers has become apparent. MarketingLand.com’s Danny Sullivan reports that, “Just like Facebook, what you share on Twitter isn’t seen by all your followers.” Marketers’ frustration about Facebook’s algorithm may now spill over into Twitter campaigns, as well. Organic reach on Facebook has fallen in recent months, leading to frustration for marketers who have come to rely on that mass reach of organic Facebook content. Only time will tell how Twitter will face the same criticism.
A recent post on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network written by Alexander Jutkowitz, vice chairman and chief global strategist at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, explores the significance of content marketing, which he says is “more than a mere marketing fad.”
Content marketing has reinvigorated brands and the agencies that manage their communication with consumers. Marketers are are increasingly shifting budgets from traditional marketing efforts to content, and the Content Marketing Institute reported 90% of B2C marketers use content marketing in 2014, compared to 86% last year. Mr. Jutkowitz says content marketing has taken off because it “responds to consumer preference.” Consumers are more likely to engage with content than with traditional marketing messaging. Increasingly, consumers gravitate away from “Buy now” and “Click here” or product benefits messaging, so these tactics have become less effective. Today’s sophisticated consumers prefer content — text, video or image — that resonates with them.
Thinking about the daily habits of consumers and the competition for their attention, the shift to content marketing makes perfect sense. Consumers are surfing the web on computers, chatting with friends on Smartphones and streaming TV on iPads. People are inundated with an infinite number of things to watch, read and engage with across the web. Brands are not just competing with each other anymore, they are also competing with the influx of YouTube videos, Facebook feeds and iPhone apps that steal the attention of prospective customers.
Mr. Jutkowitz says content marketing is an opportunity for brands to produce ideas and become thought leaders—to become more than salespeople. From Mr. Jutkowitz’s blog:
“Brands are no longer merely peddling products; they’re producing, unearthing, and distributing information. And because they do, the corporation becomes not just economically important to society, but intellectually essential as well.”
He makes a great point. The ability to communicate ideas, not just product benefits, is a new world for brands of every shape and size. The trick is finding a way to do this authentically, with content that ties back to the organization’s bottom line.
Read Mr. Jutkowitz’s full post from July 1st 2014 on the HBR Blog Network.
Many marketers are sick of hearing the term “programmatic buying” by now, but it’s still a hot topic in the industry. Programmatic buying is touted as one the most efficient ways to buy online media, both in terms of cost and time. However, there are questions about its value, as cautioned in this WSJ CMO Today article from June 2014.
Programmatic buying is an automated way to plan, buy and optimize online display ad campaigns. Settings for the campaign are automatically adjusted based on a marketer’s budget and goals. Real-time-bidding (RTB) is one way to buy ads programmatically, but the term “programmatic buying” encompasses the full spectrum of technologies that allow for campaign automation and optimization.
Some of the benefits of programmatic buying for marketers include:
It can be less expensive. Technology will automatically optimize ads based on performance goals set by marketers. The waste is cut out and so is costly manual labor.
It’s time-saving. No more hours staring at spreadsheets and manually pulling levers to manage campaign optimization—this is all done through technology.
So where’s the controversy? Well, for one, many marketers still don’t understand what programmatic buying is and why it’s valuable, as reported by CMO Today in March 2014. Some marketers associate the term “programmatic buying” with low-cost, auction-based inventory that means your ads will end up in the worst placements (ad placements are cheaply bought, but never seen). With new technologies emerging every day, programmatic buying is much more than just auction-based RTB. Marketers can now buy guaranteed impressions from specific publishers, and even layer in behavioral or demographic data to target the ideal audience.
Image source: blogs.wsj.com
Another challenge is that programmatic buying can leave marketers in the dark about where their ads are placed. This is a big issue for brands who wish to be associated only with specific websites and publishers (and more importantly, who wish not to be associated with others). The lack of transparency has some brand advertisers wary.
Regardless of the controversy, it’s clear that programmatic buying is top-of-mind for many marketers. Check out some further reading below:
For those who market mobile applications, Facebook’s introduction of mobile app install ads in 2012 opened a new world of opportunity. Facebook would certainly agree, as they reported mobile accounted for 59% of their ad revenue in Q1 of this year, up from 53% the previous quarter.
Facebook’s mobile app install ads promote mobile apps within a user’s Facebook newsfeed, sending users directly to the iTunes store or Google Play store with a single click to download the app.
On June 30th, Twitter officially joined the mobile app install game and began offering their own version of the ad format through Promoted Tweets with App cards and Install notifications. Twitter announced the rollout of these units to advertisers globally after it ran a beta with select partners in May and June. Here’s a breakdown of how the new units work, pulled directly from Twitter’s blog:
—– Mobile app promotion leverages Twitter’s existing powerful targeting capabilities, including interest, keyword, TV targeting and tailored audiences to help you reach your desired audience. You can also layer on gender, geo, language and mobile platform targeting to pinpoint the users who are best suited for your app.
Once you’ve set your targeting, we offer a number of ways to customize the creative aspects of your ad using Promoted Tweets and App Cards, including:
the ability to automatically use your app’s icon and description from Google Play or the App Store, or customize them;
your choice of deep link to enable users to open your app directly from Twitter; and
the ability to customize your Tweet copy to provide additional context about why users should download your app.
In addition, App Cards on iOS will also include install notifications, a prompt that occurs on Twitter once your app is fully downloaded. The notification is designed to drive activation of your app when user intent is highest.
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After the success of Facebook’s mobile advertising offerings, it will be interesting to see how Twitter fares in the space and whether this tool can prove real ROI to marketers. Importantly, marketers must not forget the key to measuring the ROI of app install ads across both Facebook and Twitter is to apply the technology of mobile measurement platforms such as AD-X, AppsFlyer, and Kochava.
For more on this topic, check out the articles below:
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The idea for aspiringCMO was born out of Elizabeth’s drive to become an executive-level marketing leader, and her interest in staying informed on the latest industry news. While social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn provide access to a variety of news sources, there is an ever-growing amount of content to weed through. Our goal is to provide a selection of the most valuable, actionable and need-to-know ongoings in the digital marketing space.
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