Tag Archives: marketing

How does the advertising industry get more involved with social media? By making a deal. Omniture has strengthened its partnership with Facebook to allow for the retrieval and study of more consumer data surrounding the behavior of Facebook users. The idea is to extend more optimized solutions for marketers looking to tap into Facebook’s large and still-growing user base.

The deal will first focus on the automation of Facebook media-buying, as well as providing access to analytics measuring customer engagement. The idea, however, is for the two companies to expand their relationship even further down the line. According to TechCrunch, that could very well mean some enhancements to Onmiture’s SearchCenter Plus, which is a client search engine tool for marketing management. It aids in purchasing Facebook Ads that will offer the best return for advertisers on the vast social network.

Acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion last year, Omniture will also be able to offer side-by-side metrics for Facebook and its other media channels, giving greater recommendations on how to best spread a given marketing campaign within the social media realm. This is a powerful tool for marketers, as the ability to dig into the data surrounding consumer behavior is a major obstacle towards the development of social media-integrated advertising.

As the very nature of advertising changes with the growing adoption of social media, consumer data and behavior is key to segmenting the necessary demographics. With advertising having to take on new methods of accessing users effectively, there will need to be more cooperation from the soical networks themselves. Of course, this really just boils down to Facebook being able to better monetize its users and their activity. All that free social networking going on, something’s gotta give.

More and more advertisers and brands are seeking ways in which to creatively integrate their message with user activity, which can sometimes be quite convenient on the users’ end. Other times, as with Facebook Beacon, the users fight back with a vengance. As Facebook continuously seeks the medium between its own initatives and the concerns of its consumers, there’s always room for improvement and backlash.

Yet deeper analytics for Facebook activity is increasingly important as Facebook looks to centralize even more of your behavior on the site. Facebook has already launched a hefty virtual goods marketplace, and it’s now looking to implement a site-wide currency that would simplify and aggregate a lot of what’s already taking place on its platform. In many ways this is a good development, particularly as such centralization makes it easier for users to interact with Facebook apps, as well as each other.

From my various mobile-oriented posts, you know that I’ve been playing with a lot of Verizon phones. In the beginning, I was pretty convinced that I was going to end up with a Pre no matter what. But Verizon has very smartly kept me testing out phones until the one they knew I’d want was released. I’m amazingly excited about the the new Motorola Android phone coming out at the end of the month. It’s been called the Sholes and the Tao, and they finally settled on Droid.

Verizon has really taken square aim at AT&T and the iPhone with their most recent ad campaigns. “There’s a map for that” makes me laugh routinely, considering how lousy my own AT&T service is. It’s worth noting that I have perfectly fine AT&T service – unless I’m in California, Ohio, and Kentucky. It was fine in Florida over the weekend.

But the ad campaign I’m really enamored by is the iDon’t/Droid Does campaign. They take on the iPhone and manage to cover everything I don’t like about my own iPhone (which are things that are perfect for other folks).

An Ad Age article wonders at whom the ads are aimed.

If the product and its message are crafted for a geeky and tech-savvy audience, though, the media buy is so far suggesting otherwise. Given how deep the commercial drills into the ways the iPhone falls short, experts said the messaging would mainly resonate with those in the deep know about the handset’s capabilities, which excludes the vast majority of people, iPhone owners included. These folks aren’t reading blogs about the latest and greatest smartphones, they said. Yet Verizon’s broadcasting of the message to viewers of a baseball playoff suggests the No. 1 wireless carrier wants to stir anticipation among a mainstream audience.

My gut feeling is that the ads are aimed at me: early adopters/geeks who are dissatisfied with their iPhones. There are enough of us. In fact, I think Verizon is banking on the fact that they have such a good network and that geeks everywhere will be interested in combining that network with an Open Source mobile phone. We’ll see how that pans out for Verizon.

What do you think about the new Droid ads? Interested in the new Motorola device? I have my fingers crossed I’ll be using one of these at the Social Media World Forum in November.

We all know that the right, easy to remember (and easy to type) domain name can be integral for marketing. One of my favorite tools for file/document storing and sharing is Dropbox. However, you could only access the Dropbox site through GetDropbox.com. You have no idea how many times I just typed Dropbox.com and got a 404 error.

TechCrunch is reporting, happily, that Dropbox now owns and operates Dropbox.com. So when you want your files from a PC that’s not your own, you now have an easy domain name to remember. Congrats Dropbox!

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Guest Post by Patricia Handschiegel: Follow her on Twitter | Read her blog

I have a background in Internet telecom and platform business, which is the business around broadcast, broadband, telephone, media, and radio communications systems. You may have noticed these things are blurring together in the market today, or are badly disrupted or fragmented. This is happening for a reason: The Internet is here to replace those old platforms. That’s why it’s already starting to happen. It’s not a scary thing – just look at what you can do with the web now, like watch TV on your phone and collaborate. But, for businesses it presents a lot of challenges. The hardest being how to adapt a business around a new platform (the internet) while somehow still handling the old one you still have to work on.

My company, 9, is adapted to all of them and currently does business and production in more than three, including internet, TV and media. It’s a market called “transmedia” that is talked about in Fast Company this month, and was called “the future of the business” by Variety magazine in July. Transmedia sits at the intersection between Internet, traditional television, print media (magazines and newspapers), mobile, etc. Instead of focusing on one or two platforms, we see the world as one giant circle containing all and operate seamlessly and effectively across them. The reason why transmedia’s getting the attention it has been is because it is the emerging future we’re all in. Few companies are in the position where they’re focused on just one single platform. In most cases, it’s two or more. Transmedia is the approach towards it.

For companies that have to deliver a message within this environment, transmedia methodology can also make sense. It’s the concept of having a single message that’s then broken into smaller, more customized bites designed specifically to fit each of the distribution platforms you’ll be working with. From there, it’s customized to fit the habits, needs and look/feel audiences for each platform. So, if it’s web it looks one way, if it’s TV it’s another but it all ties back to a single, unified look, feel and message. The ability to do this is creating a new and growing practice space for marketing and branding consultants. My company works with consultant and media CEO Meghan Cleary, who has co-created our first franchise project with us. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for PR firms to also expand into the space as more companies eye transmedia as a solution to current and future fragmentation of the market, particularly where marketing and communications is concerned.

BIO
Patricia is a serial media and entertainment entrepreneur who founded a pioneering social media site in 2004, which she sold in 2007. She is currently the CEO of 9, a transmedia production and consulting company that builds and consults on franchise projects for traditional and digital media, entertainment and internet business. She’s the co-creator of the popular Huffington Post series The New Power Girls and Thenewpowergirls.com blog, which covers news and profiles of women startups and existing companies in web 2.0 and beyond.

Last night as my husband was Tivo-ing through the football game and the commercials, I saw an Apple ad go by. We stopped, clicked back a few frames, and watched. It says something about an ad campaign when you stop fast forwarding and make an effort to view the commercial.

Apparently two new Apple ads debuted last night. I’m entertained by the ads, as I always have been. I enjoy John Hodgman and Justin Long – and last night, David Puddy, er, Patrick Warburton. The actors make me smile. I’m also entertained by the Seinfeld thing. Remember when Jerry did those strange commercials for Microsoft? Now we have Puddy shilling for Apple. I find it funny.

The ads seem to have received mixed reviews, however, as some people are just tired of the shtick.

Gizmodo: The ad reiterates the same played-out message we’ve heard in dozens of these ads: PCs get viruses, crash, push your grandparents down the stairs, whatever, so go buy a Mac and be hip or something. Apple’s amassing a really funny cast here; even Justin Long was great in Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and tossing Patrick Warburton in there could have been a golden opportunity to be, you know, funny instead of just smug. Too bad Apple seems content to stick with the status quo.

Cult of Mac: The ad isn’t funny, just like the rest of the ailing series. This joke has definitely run its course. Like Sieinfield itself, it’s time for Apple to pull the plug.

The ads directly target the Microsoft “Laptop Hunters” campaign, using girls who are similar to Microsoft’s (and now HP‘s) Lauren. The campaign drives home the fact that Macs are generally virus-free. Now, I know that most of you are smart enough to avoid viruses on your PCs, but that’s you. Every week, we have a different PC in our house that belongs to a member of our family. We’re always stripping them of viruses and malware. I hope my family watches these commercials. I could do with less computer fixing.

Below find both ads embedded from YouTube:

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Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.