Web Wednesday Singapore 14.0 - 'How To Get Luxury Brands and Other Big Categories Advertising Online' - Wed. April 29, 2009 - 6:30pm - AT BREWERKZ

Hello Singapore Digerati,

It is now Web Wednesday time again. This month we have a great speaker and a fantastic topic!
Geert Desager, the regional Trade Marketing head for Microsoft, will be speaking this month on "How To Get Luxury Brands and Other Big Categories Advertising Online". Geert plans to share some interesting research that MSN has done on Luxury Brands and share some of the lessons on how to get these and other big categories to advertise online. Geert has also planned to share some cool new Microsoft advertising technologies with us.

Geert is a great speaker and has lots of interesting thoughts on the industry, check out his blog at http://brandopia.wordpress.com/

This month we return to Brewerkz across from Clarke Quay. As usual the event is from 6:30-8:30 (and onwards) in the Trophy Room.

For those of you who like to plan, over the next two months Web Wednesday will be on May 20th and June 3rd.

See you this Wednesday!

Best,
Kevin, Joe and Andy
www.webwednesday.com.sg

Paid Search and Branding

Back in January, I put up a post on how Display Ads Boost Search Performance. ClickZ has an article on how Paid Search Builds Branding.

According to the ClickZ article: "Turns out that search lifts brand metrics, particularly when paired with other media. "

I guess what they did was took a survey of people who were not exposed to the search ad (control group) and those who were exposed. Of those exposed, they kept track of who clicked and who didn't. So the results are:

1) There was a 1% lift from people who were on the page where the ad displayed remembered the CAMPAIGN. (hmmm....), and their was a 20% lift in campaign awareness when they actually clicked on the ad (duh!!).

2) There was a 6% lift from people who were on the page where the ad displayed remembered the BRAND top of mind awareness (ok, that's better), and a higher TOMA score for those who clicked (of course). I guess the lift in TOMA is not as high as Campaign awareness is because, many people already know the brand even without the search ad. So while the score is higher here, the absolute number of eyeballs is lower.

3) There was a 6% lift from people who were on the page where the ad displayed remembered what the brand was all about (hmmm.. not sure how this works unless the ad copy has brand value keywords), and a 19% life in brand value recall from those who visited the site (again.. duh!)

4) "The study also defined effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness combined the branding effect, multiplied by reach; efficiency was effectiveness divided by the spend for that media. By dividing by spending, the efficiency number was normalized to reflect the efficiency per exposed person, regardless of the size of the media buy." I guess I can buy that....
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"The results in lift are significant and, because PPC search marketers pay only for the click, the lift in branding due to the sponsored link is free."

FREE??? Nothing is free. It's part of the package. Impression is part of the metric for any PPC campaign.

"The huge branding metric lift as a result of visits is powerful and should be taken into account when the overall campaign objectives include branding."

All search campaigns should include branding as an objective. Do whatever the heck you want to do with the search ad copy, but at least put a proper Link URL that says who you are.

US Online Advertising Projections

eMarketer collated projections from a number of different sources who were speculating (more or less) on where digital advertising would be heading this year and the next few years.

These projections were all over the place.

"Due to the rapidly changing economic conditions, a number of the leading sources that track—and predict—online advertising have been revising their numbers, too. It can be difficult to keep up. So here is an overview of what everyone is now estimating. To start with, eMarketer had predicted an increase of 8.9% for 2009, but now predicts that the rate of growth for US Internet ad spending in 2009 will be approximately one-half the rate of growth for 2008—only 4.5% this year."

eMarketer does what they do best, put it all on a chart or graph:


The above ranged from -6% drop by UBS in 2009 vs 2008 to an optimistic 18.1% growth prediction by ZenithOptimedia. Of course UBS guessed in Feb 2009 and Zenith made their bets in Dec 2008.

For a reality check, we can look at the 1Q 2009 numbers put out by The New York Times Company for 1Q09 vs. 1Q08:

• Total Advertising Revenue decreased by 27.0%
  
• Total Internet revenues decreased 5.6 percent to $78.2 million from $82.9 million
• Internet advertising revenues declined 6.1 percent to $67.6 million from $72.0 million.

FYI: "Internet businesses include NYTimes.com, About.com, Boston.com and other Company Web sites".

Wow, if this keeps up, even UBS might be a tad on the optimistic side. Anyhow, everyone knows that Q1 was going to be bad. And that Q2 will likely be the same or worst. The recession should bottom out this quarter and digital should start to see modest gains in the last 2 quarters of the year. Let's keep our finger crossed.

"ROI May Be Measurable in Facebook, MySpace After All"

"Package-Goods Brand Earns $1.28 Million in Sales From $1 Million Social-Media Campaign".

This is according to a study done by Comscore, MySpace and Dunnhumby. The article was in Ad Age, but the link is now going to a paid subscription page. Anyhow, I will grab the salient points for you all...

Case Study
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MySpace marketing ROI for unnamed personal-care brand:

• Total consumers exposed: 76.9 MILLION
• Percentage of internet population: 40%
• Total impressions: 1.1 BILLION
• Media outlay: $1 MILLION
• Offline sales generated from campaign: $1.28 MILLION

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And this is what they did together:

"Generally, the ROI tool of choice for consumer package goods -- marketing-mix models that rely on econometric analysis of changes in retail scanner data -- can't pick up the impact of the relatively small five- and six-figure outlays package-goods brands make on digital media.

To overcome that, MySpace teamed with ComScore, which uses a panel of more than 1 million people in the U.S. to track internet usage, and Dunnhumby, which runs loyalty programs for supermarket retailers and has access to loyalty-card purchase data from 59 million people in the U.S. The two panels include 60,000 people who are part of both databases, creating a single-source database that allows a definitive look at how internet ads affect offline purchases."

The details: (And I am going to just CONTROL-C and CONTROL-V)

"One of the first studies was for an unnamed personal-care brand that ran a $1 million campaign on MySpace last year, including a contest in which members submitted videos of themselves and friends for others in the network to vote on, said Heidi Browning, VP-client solutions at MySpace. The program also included online couponing.

By the standards marketers sometimes use to measure digital-ad effectiveness, the MySpace effort wasn't overwhelming. Of 76.9 million people exposed to the campaign in four months, as estimated by ComScore, only 765,000, or fewer than 1%, visited an advertiser page on MySpace, though roughly half who did (358,000) visited the advertiser's website.

But by the measure that matters most, sales, the campaign appeared to pay off nicely. It produced $1.28 million in offline sales, as measured by Dunnhumby, which compared purchases among shoppers not exposed to the campaign with purchases among those who were. That amounted to a 28% return on investment, not counting returns from repeat sales among consumers the brand won via the campaign. Only about 17% of the sales were of products advertised in the campaign; the rest of the sales lift went to the parent brand, in what's frequently called the 'halo effect.'"
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I don't know about the ROI calculation, but this kind of thinking starts to move us back to square one. Digital is a very measurable marketing channel, but you need to measure the right things. And it is not always about sales and revenue - especially for consumer package goods sold offline.

We need to move management away from thinking Digital = Sales. Digital is a great branding and marketing channel because you can measure the effectiveness by metrics like pageviews, time spent, product views, repeat visits, etc. at campaign level. But just because it is digital, it does not mean we should expect ROI metrics.

Having said that, our round table discussion at iMedia Brand Summit last week brought up an interesting point. Brand marketers are currently using consumer research companies (IRI?) to measure effectiveness of TV, Print and other offline marketing efforts. They have not done this with online campaigns, and hence are not able to internally justify increasing digital spend for brand marketing. In which case, the above is a great case study of how to measure the marketing effectiveness of digital on offline sales.

Web Wednesday KL v 2.0 TODAY! @ Souled Out

Jordan is holding the second Web Wednesday Kuala Lumpur. This is going to be another networking event.

Host: Jordan Khoo
Start Time: Wednesday, April 22 at 6:30pm
End Time: Wednesday, April 22 at 8:30pm
Where: Souled Out in Desa Sri Hartamas

iMedia Weekly: Costly Mistakes, Data, Agile Marketers, iMedia Brand Summit

OK just to put all the above topics into a single train of thought, we have:

Costly Mistakes made without Data by not-so-Agile Marketers who did not attend the iMedia Brand Summit

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Published: April 21, 2009

1) Note that 3 of the 6 ways listed in the article below mentions Google. 'Nuff said...

6 ways to avoid making costly mistakes on the internet

By Adam Franklin

Online advertising is being hailed by many as the best way to promote your company, but beware -- there are some nasty traps to avoid. Here are six tactics to avoid wasting your hard-earned cash.

2) Hallelujah!!! Preaching to the choir. "So what do we do with all this data?". Love it.

Making better use of online data

By Andy Chang

Companies can leverage data to serve customers and drive results by having pre-planned courses of action and automated responses matched to well-defined customer segments.

3) How to become a behavioral targeting yogi...

Becoming an agile marketer

By Jason Juma-Ross

Customers are interacting with companies in powerful new ways through the web. Many companies have been slow to respond, but a handful are using agile marketing techniques to improve performance.

4) A well-deserved "pat on the back" by brand marketers who attend...

Thumbs up for region's first iMedia Brand Summit

By Marcel Lee Pereira

Great networking, excellent presentations and invaluable insights from peers -- that's what some top brands had to say about the first iMedia Brand Summit held in South East Asia.

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Hope for non-Japanese eCommerce on Mobiles

Over a year ago - on another blog - in another life -, I blogged about how mobile eCommerce was not going to happen anytime soon (despite what Phocuswright was saying at the time). I am starting to change my mind now.

A Wall Street Journal Blog post talks about "Shopping on cellphones–long a dream among e-commerce companies–is not yet a mass-market phenomenon. But some new tools could help change that picture."

Amazon is going down this path:

• Amazon.com just launched free software for BlackBerry handsets that "allows users to browse for products, read reviews, and buy on the go"
• Amazon launched a version for Apple’s iPhone last December
• “All the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. The networks are faster, the devices are better, and as a result, customers are using it more,” said Sam Hall, the director of Amazon’s mobile efforts.

EBay is also on the bandwagon: "EBay also came out with a popular app for the iPhone last year that lets users browse, buy and track auctions. EBay’s iPhone app has been downloaded 2 million times since it was released nine months ago."

While I agree that devices have gotten better and usability has certainly improved with the iPhone and other smart phones, it is not going to be the reason why people are going to start using their mobiles to buy things.

The main reason why m-commerce works in Japan is because they got the payment gateway down pat. When they buy something on their mobiles, it gets tacked on to their monthly phone bills. Easy as pie. So when they surf around and see something they like, they just click on it to buy. Maybe put in a PIN, but no need to key in 16 digit credit card, expiry date, CVV number, delivery address, etc. It's simple.

This is where Amazon and eBay come in. These apps they have already have your account on them. Remember the "One Click purchase" patent. It's simple. It's easy. The ease of purchase is what's going to kick-start mobile commerce outside of Japan.

"Does a Brand Become Big Brother when it Monitors Social Media?"

I ran across this post on iMedia Connections Blog.

With SalesForce.com announcing Twitter integration (twitter again!), "Some are enthusiastic, suggesting that the tool will be useful for lead generation. It also has some fearing a Big Brother backlash – customers reacting negatively to brands as Big Brother. "

The author goes on: "If a greater number of brands jump into their conversations on social media, consumers might be more likely to feel that they are being watched. When advertising via interactive media that is highly personal, like social media and mobile, marketers have to be careful not to deliver too much advertising or risk turning people off. Monitoring conversations and butting in might have the same affect."

Now, all I have to point out is... if the consumer does not want to watched, listened to, and monitored, then stop yapping, stop blogging, stop twittering. Once you post your opinions on the web, it's a free for all. That should be lesson #1 for all social media activists. Me included.

"... At what point do brands cross the line and become seen as Big Brother? Will marketing on social media sites force customers to other platforms? Time will tell, but as monitoring tools become more advanced and integrate with market analysis and CRM systems, brands should pay close attention to what level of interruption is appropriate."

All right, so here's the line: Monitoring vs Marketing.

If you are a brand, monitor as much as you can. Go nuts. It's actually your job to listen to the chatter.

Marketing via social media? Be smart. Figure out what your objectives and goals are before you start. It could be a waste of money. And if you spam, you will get slammed. Nothing new here...

How does Twitter make money?

Just following Wednesday's post on Twitter. Here's a few ideas for Twitter from the folks at The Joy Of Tech:

And just when you thought you had seen (or read) it all, Gizmodo writes about a man who invented a chair what automatically tweets "Pffft" whenever he farts. I am totally serious. Click on the link and see. Sorry Twitter, but it is all downhill from here.

iMedia Brand Summit - Pictures

iMedia put up 71 selected pictures from the iMedia Brand Summit in Kota Kinabalu last week. The link to the page is here. I grabbed a few familiar faces and put the pics here:

Twitter, Twitter everywhere.....

Since the recent media coverage that Twitter has gotten in the last month or so, so many people in Asia have become twits. Andy Tu even got on the bandwagon and blogged about it... twice!

Last week, Silicon Alley Insider put up a post: "Alarming Twitter Trend: Real-World Friends Are Joining". How so true. Within the last 2 weeks, I have had more people signed up to follow me than I have had since January leading up to it --- and many of these are people I know in real life. I remember when this happened with Facebook.. ah the good old days of 2-3 years ago.

Around the same time, Comscore puts out release: "Twitter Traffic Explodes...And Not Being Driven by the Usual Suspects!".

First off, there are millions of non-US twits out there: "Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, up an impressive 700+% vs. year ago. The past two months alone have seen worldwide visitors climb more than 5 million visitors. U.S. traffic growth has been just as dramatic, with Twitter reaching 4 million visitors in February, up more than 1,000% from a year ago." See chart below if you don't believe me.


Then there is the age demographics of the twits. It's not just the silly teenagers, lost twenty somethings, and blabbering 30-ish "micro-influencers". "...45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely."

This seems to be totally in line with what Kim Walker was talking about last week at the iMedia Brand Summit: "The Rise of the Silver Surfers".

Comscore goes on to explain:

"The skew towards older visitors, although perhaps initially surprising for a social media site, actually makes more sense than you might think at first. With so many businesses using Twitter, along with the first generations of Internet users 'growing up' and comfortable with technology, this is a sign that the traditional early adopter model might need to be revisited. Not only teenagers and college students can be counted among the 'technologically inclined,' which means that trends are much more prone to take off in older age segments than they used to. And with those age 25 and older representing a much bigger segment of the population than the under 25 crowd, it might help explain why Twitter has expanded its reach so broadly so quickly over the past few months."

Well, if nothing else, this gives me hope that I can still remain "relevant" when my kids graduate from college...

iMedia Weekly: Obama Virus, Micro-Influencers, Mobile and Social Media

This week's iMedia Asia articles focuses on:

1) The man behind Obama's transition from virile to viral:

How Obama went viral

By Marcel Lee Pereira

How was new media used to help Obama connect with Americans, and what lessons can marketers take away from his success? We meet Scott Goodstein, external online director for the Obama campaign, to find out what went on behind the scenes.

2) Celebrity wanna-bes of the digital media (like me!)

The rise of the micro-influencer

By Shalabh Pandey

The marketing game has changed, and an individual's circle of influence can create a collective ripple that is stronger than the influence of celebrities and movie stars.


3) Aahhh.. What mobile could be like if it wasn't for batteries and roaming charges....

4 trends that may make mobile the first screen

By Jennifer Wilson

As a generation used to handheld devices grows up with larger screens and simpler interfaces, the mobile may increasingly become the number one screen we turn to, regardless of what other screens are available.


4) A history lesson on coffeehouses (pre-AmericanColumbian, post-Arabic, --- circa Parisian-Venetian)

Make mine a double-shot grande social media, please

By Patricia Law

A useful way to understand social networks is to see them as coffeehouses without geographic boundaries, where like-minded people gather to interact with each other when they feel like it.

Digital Marketing Certification - via ADMA

I just recently got an email from our friends at the Asia Digital Marketing Association(ADMA) about the Digital Marketing education programs that they are running in association with IDM (the Institute of Direct Marketing, of course!). Here are the details:

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Professional qualifications in Digital Marketing

The Asia Digital Marketing Association is now offering professional qualifications in Digital Marketing.

In partnership with the IDM, marketing professionals may enrol on an online Certificate or Diploma in Digital Marketing.

The Certificate in Digital Marketing is designed for marketers who implement digital campaigns and those who specialise in managing internet, email, iTV, mobile, search and other online marketing communications.

The Diploma in Digital Marketing is aimed at senior marketers who plan, manage and resource digital marketing programmes.

The syllabus and online courseware provide participants with a thorough understanding of today’s digital technologies and their marketing applications; including topics like search marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, planning and integrating digital campaigns, resource management and digital strategy development.

Both IDM qualifications are internationally recognised and can be studied over 12 or 18 month durations.

The next intake starts end of April and enrolment is now open. For more information, email education@asiadma.com or visit the ADMA website. To download the course brochure directly, click here.
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Disclaimer: Note that this is a public service announcement and does not reflect in any way our opinion that our readers (YOU!) need or do not need to be educated in Digital Marketing.

Peace, out!

Who controls the news online?

It's been a while since I posted... Just been a bit busy with quarter end, EyeForTravel Asia Conference (1st and 2nd April) and then iMedia Brand Summit last week in Kota Kinabalu.

Excuses, excuses. Well, I hope to get back on the wagon and start posting more regularly again...

First up is a post from TechCrunch titled: "Does Google Really Control The News?" They answer themselves quickly saying that Google does not. That the real controller of news (in the US) is Yahoo and New York Times.

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"Google News is overshadowed by both Yahoo News and even the sites controlled by the New York Times (which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, HeraldTribune.com, and several other newspaper sites)...

...Yahoo News is three times as large, and Yahoo sends even more traffic to newspaper sites from other parts of Yahoo through its online newspaper consortium.
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According to Comscore's report, "Google News attracted 16.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, compared to 42.3 million for Yahoo News and 46.2 million for the sites operated by New York Times Digital." Here's a chart.
A few more tidbits on fact that Google is making ad-revenue from news related search is kinda like stealing food from the news organizations.:

"Google search is a very important middleman indeed. Does that make Google like Wal-Mart a middleman of such might that it squeezes everybody else’s margins? Does that give it 'monopoly control over content distribution,' as Scott Karp tries to argue? Not exactly. Information economics work slightly differently than retail economics."

"Google does not control the news, it exposes it."

"The retail/distributor analogy is all wrong.... That is not how it works. Google doesn’t force suppliers of information to charge less for it as Wal-Mart does with suppliers of packaged goods. The money Google makes from its search ads is not necessarily money that would have otherwise gone to a “news” or content site. If Google didn’t exist, those ad dollars might have gone to an e-commerce site or a travel site or a real estate site or any number of other places. News sites have no claim to those search advertising dollars. It is incumbent upon each of us to attract an audience by having something original or interesting to say. When news sites do that, other sites link to them, and then they rank more highly in Google search results, which sends new readers their way."

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting read.