Matt Kapko

Twitter Serves Up New Targeting Options for Small Brands

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:54:40 -0700

Twitter is unwrapping new targeting features, a revamped interface, and more detailed analytics on its self-served ad platform. While the company positions for broader interest in its paid media products, it is expanding the tools and services it offers marketers to encourage more small- to mid-sized brands to increase engagement on the platform.

Twitter doesn’t provide exact numbers, but says “thousands of business” are using the platform today. Although a year has passed since Twitter made room for more paid content in users’ timelines, the service is still only available by invitation in the United States. It is unclear whether Twitter prefers to hide growth patterns, tamper expectations, or maintain control over which brands or marketers gain access to its burgeoning ad platform, but it’s likely a combination of those factors and others.

For Doug Schumacher, co-founder of Zuum, it was “just an option, a click, and we were in,” he says, adding that the process may have been streamlined because he had an existing campaign running on Twitter at the time.

“Twitter is making its native advertising portfolio approachable to small- to mid-sized businesses because it needs to,” says Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group. Having studied the promoted and sponsored space for quite some time, it’s clear that businesses of all sizes can not solely rely on earned or owned media in social channels.”

As for the new features now available to self-serve advertisers, Schumacher tells ClickZ that targeting by device type is the most exciting and potentially rewarding for marketers. “That’s a pretty big step for self-service advertising, and for the right businesses - like mobile app developers - it could give them some great efficiencies in connecting with the right target,” he says. His interest wanes from there, however.

“Beyond targeting by device, I don’t think there’s that much that will surprise people. Self-service platforms like Google and Facebook have a lot of great features, so the bar is high,” adds Schumacher. “But for the right brand, with the right audience, being able to target effectively on Twitter will be tight-enough targeting. Twitter has a distinct platform and audience, so by delivering targeting and campaign management tools that are comparable to other platforms, they can still give an advertiser a distinct capability.”

In addition to targeting by device or platform, brands can direct their promoted tweets to users based on gender, interests they share with others (similar to Facebook’s lookalike audience targeting), or 350 specific interest categories.

While Twitter has made improvements to its interface and began offering deeper analytics, reporting and real-time campaign controls, Schumacher tells ClickZ that the analytics are not a high point. “I don’t find them very intuitive, and they seem to be missing some obvious ways that marketers would want to view their creatives. Categorizing creative messages into groups seems like an obvious omission,” he adds.

“Paid media allows every business to expand their reach, but it takes more than money,” adds Solis of Altimeter Group. “It takes a unique understanding of the culture of the network and the ability to engage users in something more interesting than a tweet or post, but instead a story or experience. Twitter’s self-serve platform is making promoted products something for almost everyone to evaluate easier and with greater access and metrics.”

Microsoft Advertising Defines the 4 Pathways to Multi-Screening

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:12:18 -0700

Microsoft Advertising has identified four pathways to multi-screening in a quest to better understand the primary reasons or behaviors that drive consumers to engage with content across multiple devices. A new survey of 3,586 consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, and Australia seeks to move beyond tracking behaviors and gain deeper insights into the motivations and needs that drive those behaviors in a multi-screen world.

“The one thing I have found over time doesn’t work is when you do a lot of disconnected pieces of research that don’t sync up. We decided to shift the way we were doing behavioral research,” says Natasha Hritzuk, senior global director of research and insights at Microsoft Advertising. “So not just to move beyond the behavior and focus on the why, but to really focus on driving two core consumer insights frameworks that had relevance not just from a media planning perspective but also from a content development perspective.”

The four pathways identified by the survey - content grazing, quantum journey, investigative spider-webbing, and social spider-webbing - are certainly relevant to marketers, but consumers don’t stick to one path 24/7. Consumers will transition from one pathway to another throughout their day, depending on where they are, what they’re trying to accomplish, and why they’re engaging with a screen in the first place.

“Unless you understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, you can’t really drive the content successfully across those screens, because if you think I’m trying to be productive, but I’m actually being social from an experience perspective there’d be a profound disconnect,” says Hritzuk. “Consumers are not thinking in a discreet device way. They use these devices very interchangeably and almost subconsciously…they’re actually being driven very much by the experience that they’re seeking across the screens.”

Content grazing, the most common of the multi-screening pathways with a 68 percent incidence reported by those surveyed, occurs when users move between multiple screens to access or move between unrelated, disconnected pieces of content. The behavior primarily occurs in the evening and although it can provide users with an illusion of control, it is more of a habitual form of distraction.

Investigative spider-webbing, with a 57 percent rate of incidence, occurs when an immersive moment with content compels users to seek more information or content that complements the primary screen experience. In some contexts, “this is to make me feel like I’m making a better decision,” explains Hritzuk.

The quantum pathway, a 46 percent incidence rate, occurs when consumers jump from one screen to another over time to achieve a specific goal. It is a sequential journey driven by ease and productivity wherein each screen is taking consumers closer to completing that task, objective, or transaction. “Each screen is taking you closer to the goal of fulfillment,” says Hritzuk.

Social spider-webbing, a 39 percent incidence rate, is a less solitary and more extroverted version of the investigative spider-webbing pathway. “It’s basically multi-screening in the social world,” Hritzuk says. This pathway occurs when content shared via social media sparks consumers’ interest and encourages them to add their voice to the conversation.

“The big game change for this year and working into next year is we’re starting to use those frameworks for how we develop product and solutions internally,” Hritzuk tells ClickZ. “We’re taking these frameworks actually straight to R&D. And the engineers are using these frameworks to build targeting solutions, to build measurement solutions, and we’re going to be moving in the direction of building advertising product off the back of these consumer insights frameworks.”

Microsoft Advertising wants to “drive experiences that tap into those motivations and facilitate decision-making or fulfill some kind of core need,” she says. “If you’re not developing products that are anchored in that then there is in my mind a big disconnect between what you’re building and it’s very difficult to say that you’re driving genuine ad experiences for consumers.”

Old Navy Buys Into 'Brad World' on Bravo

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:48:51 -0700

Well before the rise of smartphones, Bravo made a bet and began investing in interactive or participation television. What began as simple text messaging polls has become a cross-platform experience that transcends live, and now taped shows that encourage engagement with viewers, fans, and followers alike.

The opportunity to connect the traditional sit-back-and-relax TV viewing experience with mobility is one of the more promising side effects of multi-screening. Bravo’s view of this ever-converged world has led to ongoing rollout of Play Live, a technology that first premiered live in November on “Watch What Happens Live.”

Now brands are stepping in, beginning this month on “It’s a Brad Brad World” with Old Navy as a flagship sponsor of live broadcast content in the form of an interactive commercial, animated logos, its spring tagline, and other branding across the Play Live platform on mobile, tablet, and online. The clothing brand is also exclusively sponsoring four of the show’s episodes this season.

“Bravo’s particularly blessed because our shows really lead themselves to participation,” says Lisa Hsia, EVP of digital at Bravo. “There is no more avid fan than a ‘Housewives’ fan with a mobile at the end of their hand.”

She calls Play Live “a new phase in interactive TV in what we’re calling participation TV.” The cable network is particularly excited about the new integration on “It’s a Brad Brad World” because it marks the first time that live results will be embedded and updated in real time during a taped program.

Play Live drove an average engagement span of 10 minutes across web, mobile, and tablet during “Watch What Happens Live,” Hsia says, adding that it also drives live viewing of the show, which of course increases the value of interactive ads running during the program.

“It not only allows the fans to play along with the show in an easy way without downloading an app or logging in to (a social site)…it also allows the ad to be interactive,” says Hsia.

“We’re still at the baby steps of what the interactive ad could become,” she continues. “Theoretically, it could make our promos real time…This technology could overlay so you could make them more real time.”

After being approached by Bravo to be one of the first advertisers on Play Live, Brent Mitchell, senior director of marketing at Old Navy, tells ClickZ that the clothing retailer specifically chose “It’s a Brad Brad World” and then quickly decided to take the partnership even further with Brad Goreski, the show’s lead character. “It went beyond just the opportunity to participate in Play Live,” says Mitchell. “We took the partnership with Brad even further. We created some custom ads with him that premiere on Bravo and we’re doing in-market events with Brad” acting as an occasional spokesman.

“Right now everyone is thinking about social TV and we all know that when people are at home watching TV they have another device out,” says Mitchell. “What is exciting about this opportunity is our advertisement being interactive is part of the experience as well…We’re actually able to be part of the interaction on the mobile device and be part of that whole experience.”

During the commercial spot, Goreski shares styling tips featuring Old Navy’s collection of hoodies for spring and viewers are asked to vote on questions such as their favorite place to wear hoodies. Results are then displayed live during the 30-second spot.

“Part of it is just to engage our customer in a more meaningful and more exciting experience than you’re maybe used to from Old Navy,” says Mitchell.

Marketers React to Facebook's 'Delicate Dance' Between Users and Ads

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:48:00 -0700

Facebook’s redesigned and filtered news feeds have failed to draw major accolades or critiques, but numerous questions as to what the changes portend for Facebook’s future linger. Beyond the obvious improvements to the user interface, the most pressing questions following last week’s news revolve around the need for new revenue, and for Facebook that means advertising.

If Facebook truly wants to become a “personalized newspaper,” as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press briefing, it will have to fill more space on those virtual pages with ads. And although Zuckerberg says Facebook doesn’t want to “push more stuff into the home page” because the site is already running at the optimal ratio between ads and content, brands will certainly want to take advantage of the more immersive timelines with equally engaging ads.

“We haven’t changed anything in regards to advertisers other than what the stories look like, and that wasn’t necessarily due to advertisers,” Julie Zhuo, director of product design at Facebook, tells ClickZ following the announcement. “It’s just that across the board we wanted to make the stories richer and more visual, and we think that’s what users will like so all stories are going to get that richer treatment.”

By enabling users to filter news feeds by content type or source, Facebook could eventually be opening up the more targeted feeds to ads, but there are no immediate plans to show ads outside of the primary news feed. Leaving the news feeds - friends, photos, music, and following - unchanged means users now have access to ad-free timelines of content that they’ve implicitly requested to receive on the platform.

While Chris Cox, VP of product at Facebook, says it would be easier to have ads appear in all the feeds, Facebook is still thinking about how it can allow advertisers to place media in certain feeds based on their target audience. He declined to provide more insight into how Facebook might leverage the custom feeds for new ad revenue, but did not dismiss the notion outright.

“I think that companies always play a very delicate dance between user experience and ad dollars,” David Steinberg, founder and CEO at XL Marketing, tells ClickZ.

“If you look at what’s happening right now, Facebook and the ecosystem that exists around it is totally and completely focused on building a better user experience,” he adds.

Steinberg also takes into account the numerous features that Facebook borrowed from its mobile products for the redesigned news feeds. “I don’t think they’re reorganizing for a mobile-only experience, but I think they’re reorganizing for a large percentage to be mobile,” says Steinberg.

Although mobile ad revenue “might not catch up” with online ad revenue “for a very long time,” Steinberg says that Facebook has also “rolled out this new platform that allows you to do a better job of behavioral targeting in mobile.”

Instead of highlighting how the redesign might impact a particular ad product, Steinberg says advertisers are more interested in how Facebook is improving its ability to track and target behavioral targeting overall.

“Visual content is extremely important for brands on Facebook, and these changes emphasize this even further. Images will now be much more prominent, challenging marketers to stretch their creativity,” notes Jordan Stone, strategy director at We Are Social. “That said, increased visibility means that brands need to be more relevant than ever. They still need to work hard to make the experience more immersive and engaging. A stream of irrelevant content or ill-conceived sponsored posts will be noticed quickly by consumers.”

While Facebook’s latest moves may have little to do with brands or advertising on the surface, marketers and other executives in social media are filling in the blanks and focusing on Facebook’s need to maintain its leadership position in social without alienating its core user base.

“They’re evolving their product based on users,” says Damien Patton, CEO and founder of Banjo. “Most people have tried Facebook that are going to try Facebook, and now it’s about retaining those users.”

Facebook Hopes to Remove Clutter With News Feed Redesign

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:19:08 -0800

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook is breathing new life into its news feed, the primary point of entry for most users, by reducing white space and increasing the size and range of rich media displayed to its users. The cluttered, all-encompassing news feed of yesterday will be stripped down, as users gain access to four new feeds - all friends, photos, music, following - to help them filter through the junk and find the content they care about most.

“What we’re trying to do is give everyone in the world the best newspaper we can,” says CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announcing the redesigned news feed here at Facebook headquarters. “We think there’s a really important place for a personalized newspaper like this.”

As he revealed the new design coming to Facebook’s home page beginning later today, Zuckerberg called it “a design that we think reflects this evolving face of news feed” in a “mobile-inspired, consistent UI.”

“The story we’re trying to adhere to here is getting Facebook out of the way as much as possible,” says Chris Cox, VP of product at Facebook. “A lot of what you’re seeing here is a very mobile-inspired design.”

Facebook brought more than 1,000 features from its mobile and tablet interfaces to the web, he says, pointing to three major pieces of the redesign - richer stories, feeds filtered by content type or source, and a consistent experience across every platform. “Feeds, you’ll notice, will look the same wherever you are,” he adds.

Chris Struhar, the tech lead of Facebook’s news feed, says the changes empower users with more choice and control over the content they see on Facebook. “Sometimes I want to see every event that my friends are going to, or every photo that my friends are uploading or every song that my friends are listening to,” he says. “Now you have more control over which of these feeds you see on your home page…You can jump to any of these different feeds using the switcher at the top of the page.”

Stories “deserve to be displayed with more than just text,” Zuckerberg adds. “Because news feed supports such a broad range of content types,” he believes the redesign “builds a foundation for the best personalized newspaper.”

With photos claiming up to 30 percent of an average news feed, it’s no wonder Facebook wants to bring photos “front and center,” giving them prime real estate and more room to pop on the busy home page.

“They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Today’s design is probably like 500,” says Julie Zhuo, director of product design at Facebook. By taking design cues from mobile and making it consistent across other platforms, she says Facebook is aiming for a “richer, simpler, more beautiful news feed on desktop web and mobile.”

She and other executives were reticent to discuss any advertising changes as part of the redesign, focusing instead on the visual appeal of more content-heavy feeds. “In this new design we’re really about taking all the content you see and making them richer and more immersive,” adds Zhuo. “That goes across the board for everything including ads…everything across the board is going to get this richer, more immersive design.”

The main news feed or top news, which will remain separate from the four new feeds introduced today, will continue to be the most used like the home page of any newspaper, Zuckerberg says. “We don’t necessarily want to push more stuff into the home page…Right now the goal is just to make it so people can find the content they want and more of that stuff can be surfaced to them.”

Urban Airship Repositions to Deliver Mobile Relationship Management for Brands

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:10:19 -0800

Urban Airship is expanding its direct relationship with brands as it wraps more mobile relationship management (MRM) solutions around its core push-messaging platform, ClickZ has learned. The company has been on a tear of late, acquiring SimpleGeo in late 2011, Tello last December, and then raising $25 million in new funding last month. With $46.6 million in total funding to date, a 400 percent spike in revenue, and doubling of its staff last year, Urban Airship is now adding new products and services to target a growing class of marketers and brands interested in mobility.

At least 75 percent of the deals that Urban Airship lands with enterprises are now being signed and negotiated by chief marketing officers or other high-level marketing executives, says Scott Kveton, CEO and co-founder of the nearly four-year-old company based in Portland, Ore.

Urban Airship got its start with app developers like Tapulous (its first customer), but has widened its scope across mobile to brands and agencies as marketers increasingly become the lead decision-makers for brands’ mobile strategies. It now has at least a dozen featured agency partners like AKQA and app development partners like Bottle Rocket who can walk brands through new campaign initiatives and help them through the labyrinth of features and practices best suited to their objectives. Mobile shouldn’t only be a part of a brand’s strategy, mobile should be at the center of every brand’s marketing strategy, Kveton tells ClickZ.

“With any channel, there’s this potential for fatigue,” he adds, explaining why brands are still nervous about the complexities they might encounter in mobile and want to be careful about how they connect with users.

“After 30 days, most apps languish on an iPhone,” says Kveton. But if that app oversteps its boundaries and inundates users with too many notifications, users’ first instinct is to delete the app, not turn off the notifications, he adds.

In addition to its rich push-messaging platform, Urban Airship is now offering consulting services for the first time, encouraging brands like Walgreens to adopt deeper engagement with customers. Whether that calls for a paid advertising product or better managing of its relationships with customers on mobile, Urban Airship wants to be at the center of that entire process, from ideation to execution and analytics to results.

With a new push to extend marketing and more traditional CRM systems in the enterprise onto consumers’ mobile devices, Urban Airship wants to put a greater focus on solving core business objectives. The new consulting services are being testing by some customers in a pilot phase, but eventually Urban Airship will take it commercial and establish new fees for MRM consulting on a case-by-case basis.

As it expands into the much wider realm of MRM, Urban Airship has redesigned its user interface, increased access to data, and refreshed its Apple Passbook management service to simplify design and execution for its customers. Consulting services fall under three parts - implementation from code review through launch, planning and optimizing engagement strategies, and managed services for ongoing campaigns. The company also now supports Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, delivering push messages to live tiles, toast notifications, and apps like NBC News’ recently launched app for the new platform.

“With MRM we’re expanding the value we bring to organizations through broader business-user-friendly solutions coupled with best practices services that will help unlock the value of customer data and keep their connected customers closer,” notes Kveton.

“With more mobile devices than people on the planet, it is critical that organizations move quickly into this new world by putting the consumer front-and-center,” notes Peter Roybal, head of mobile product management at ABC News Digital. “Mobile sets a high bar for relevancy, and long-term success depends on you handing controls to users and using everything you can, including location, to serve and delight them.”

Mobile Trailblazer: Ben Beyda, Morpheus Media

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:01:16 -0800

Mobile is the fastest growing, and most widely adopted media channel of all time. But it hasn’t always been perceived that way by agency suits, brand experts, and mass-media marketers. Just as brands were getting into a groove with digital, cellphones went from talk and text to pinch, snap, flick, and zoom. If the Internet revolutionized communications and media, mobile is fulfilling that promise by putting these tools and features into the hands of billions.

Today, mobile is so much more than a device or technology that makes this experience possible. It is a concept, a growing framework of always-connected things. Mobile increasingly drives changes in user experience and interfaces across the digital realm. While the industry at large pays lip service to the opportunities that mobile brings to the game, the channel remains woefully neglected and underserved.

Before the rise of smartphones, mobile marketing and advertising was way out on the fringes. That also holds true for the men and women who embraced mobile early. These trailblazers didn’t just cop out and check the box on mobile under their emerging or experimental budgets; they pushed toward mobility while most held back.

Here at ClickZ, we wonder where these Mobile Trailblazers are today. Was it worth the struggle? After going against the grain for so many years, are they finally beginning to see the world they always imagined? These are their stories about all things mobile.

Ben Beyda was pursuing a doctoral degree in clinical psychology when he first heard of search engine optimization. Soon enough, he was hooked, seeking how to apply his understanding of human behavior to SEO strategies and emerging technologies. Now, as the associate director of mobile strategies at Morpheus Media, Beyda is fusing his passion for neuropsychology and behavioral psychology with mobile marketing. “I think mobile has really connected the entire world in different ways than we’ve ever been connected before, and for me that’s what really excites me, just how accessible information is or can be to everyone around the world,” he says. “Everybody just wants whatever they’re looking for to be in the moment - however that moment may be defined.”

ClickZ: Your background is uniquely fascinating. How did you make the leap from a graduate degree in clinical psychology to SEO, and now mobile marketing strategy? How is psychology fusing with mobility today?

Ben Beyda: The transition definitely was gradual and unexpected at the same time, but has really been pretty amazing. When I was at grad school, my uncle actually sort of got me involved in all of this to begin with by asking me to help manage his paid search campaigns. He had an e-commerce site and just needed assistance there in understanding how it all works. I started doing that and eventually took on some other side clients to earn a little spending money while I was in school. Eventually I found about this organic search optimization aspect, not only doing pay-per-click, but doing SEO for, I guess, free if you will. That instantly interested me more because it seemed like a really challenging venture to identify the ranking factors for SEO. Just trying to figure out that black box of ranking factors was really interesting to me.

While I was taking classes, I was interested in neuropsychology and behavioral psychology, so trying to understand why people behave in certain ways and different triggers that could change behaviors. And so, I started actually applying that to search strategies, particularly what would get people to click through on a given ad. It was a really loose application, I admit, but I approached search marketing in almost a Pavlovian way. You can predict that if you do this, people will behave in that way. So, an ad copy of this will solicit a response or click-through rate of that…As my understanding of the full digital marketing mix expanded, with mobile it just became increasingly harder to ignore the impact smartphones were going to have on the industry…Psychology has fused really well with what I do today.

Everything I learned in graduate school I’ve been able to bring back to the work I do today. Specifically for mobile marketing, I think it’s important to understand how somebody’s mindset changes between devices and between different contexts…How are people going to behave differently with the same device if they’re on the go, versus if they’re watching let’s say the Super Bowl on their coach using Twitter on their phone? I wake up in the morning and I might check the weather versus afternoon or evening when I might be shopping. Those kinds of things really interest me and that’s how I guess I went from psychology to marketing, and used that foundation of neuropsychology and behavioral psychology to help the marketing strategies that I come up with now.

ClickZ: What are the psychological ramifications of mobile that you find most compelling today, and how does that contribute to your view of mobile?

Beyda: I think it’s actually prettying fascinating how the mobile industry has changed behaviors and the expectations that people have about the world around them, particularly in areas where smartphones are prevalent. Mobile is a really encompassing term and I think we often think about smartphones, but obviously it does tie into feature phones that might be prevalent elsewhere. If you just look at where smartphones are very prevalent, I think everybody now expects things to be immediately accessible whenever and wherever they want this. Just thinking back, it’s a really stark difference from the world that I remember growing up in, where there’s no TiVo to record live television - you actually had to be home at a particular time in front of the television to watch a show; high-speed Internet access wasn’t readily available…a lot has changed in terms of accessibility, and I think consumers’ expectations are very different now.

Everybody just wants whatever they’re looking for to be in the moment, however that moment may be defined. Some people in the mobile community have called it just-in-time interaction, where you need whatever you’re looking for at that moment and then move on. And I think businesses really need to recognize how rapidly these changes are happening and be agile in how they adapt to these changes…I think mobile has really connected the entire world in different ways than we’ve ever been connected before…I think there’s a compelling case for what mobile can do for the world outside of just marketing. Obviously that’s what I do on a day-to-day basis, but it’s so much more than that and ultimately that’s what I find fascinating.

ClickZ: Where does mobile sit in the general framework of Morpheus Media? Are you advising clients to adopt more integrated, cross-channel marketing or is mobile viewed as more of an innovative, emerging space that follows a different playbook?

Beyda: Is it something that is thought of throughout the entire marketing mix and really integrated, or is just sort of a stand-off separate vertical, if you will? At Morpheus we don’t necessarily treat it with an either-or approach, oftentimes there’s a lot of gray area. We do advocate that mobile be part of an integrated marketing strategy and try and promote a mobile-first mindset. So that way it’s not just an afterthought and you’re thinking how you can cram a desktop strategy or non-mobile strategy into a phone, but keeping that front of mind as you’re planning: how are we going to use mobile? Because in a lot of ways, it’s the medium that ties all the other channels together. You can do a lot with it and reach people in places that you haven’t been able to before. Smartphones and tablets are perfect to create exciting and innovative experiences to connect with consumers. We don’t necessarily silo it out in such, but we do at the same time recommend trying to pushing the boundaries whenever possible and leverage the latest technologies to create immersive experiences that haven’t been possible in the past.

You can do very cool things with rich-media units. We recommend that our clients look beyond just standard key performance indictors that I think the industry has been used to in the past. Click-through rate, for example, has been an important measure of success in the past, but we try and focus a little more beyond that and what the post-click behavior is going to be, particularly on mobile. When you have that in the back of your mind, just the simple marketing campaign that you’re going to be running on mobile devices is not where it stops, right? You need to think about what’s that experience going to be like for the person that clicks through, how are we going to receive them, and how are they going to interact with it?

That’s where mobile comes into play and we try to weave into the entire process, so don’t just think about creating a display ad that you can run in an application. How are we going to receive people after they click through to the App Store, what’s the marketing message there, or if you’re doing a web display campaign, what’s the website going to be like that people land on? At the end of the day, we work with our clients to use mobile to reach their goals in a way that stays true to the brand’s identity, but tries to push the boundaries given the resources that they have on hand…Sometimes it is challenging to highlight the differences between mobile and traditional desktop strategies.

ClickZ: What trends are driving growth in mobile as a channel today, and what are the most challenging obstacles that still stand in the way?

Beyda: One thing that we find exciting is how mobile can complement or extend offline marketing. For example, adding an augmented reality experience to a print ad is a great way to make a traditionally static and non-engaging ad unit that much more engaging. And also get an idea of how many readers are actually seeing the ad or interacting with it because you might know circulation numbers. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people are seeing it. A lot of money is still allocated to print advertising, but it’s almost impossible to understand what the value is of those ads outside of readership numbers. Another example that I think we’re going to start seeing a little bit more of is how mobile can extend the value of out-of-home advertisements with mobile technologies like NFC (near-field communications) or Bluetooth. So if you equip a kiosk that has an out-of-home messaging or a poster on it, brands can broadcast their advertisements to people that pass by. This is sort of thinking a little bit down the road and we’re going to need to be careful not to bother passersby in a similar way that pop-up ads used to.

Another hurdle the mobile industry needs to get over is accurate tracking of mobile traffic…Being able to determine how or when mobile campaigns lead to, let’s say an in-store purchase, is really difficult right now from an attribution modeling perspective. So tracking consumers as they’re online but then going offline is something we’re going to need to figure out as an industry so mobile is getting the proper credit in that consumer lifecycle. Right now, we’re not there yet. And I think that’s also a challenge from a business perspective for retailers because you might have teams that are at odds with each other. Even though everybody is rowing in the same direction, who do you credit a sale to? Is it the in-store team or is it the digital team, or the mobile team that helped get that person in the store to begin with? Or is it a combination of both and how do you then figure out what percentage of that sale gets attributed appropriately? These are the kinds of things that I think are another challenge that could almost shut down a conversation before it happens, because we’re not there yet as an industry.

ClickZ: Finally, we would like to close each of these features in our series with a simple question - what makes you a mobile trailblazer?

Beyda: I think mobile in itself is kind of trailblazing just by definition. As digital has moved forward in the last four or five years, I’ve always tried to gravitate to where the action is, sort of like a don’t-skate-to-where-the-puck-is-skate-to-where-it’s-going-to-be kind of mentality. And especially from a predictive behavior standpoint, that’s really something that I’ve personally have had my eye on: how is the general population’s behaviors or expectations of the world going to continue to evolve in different ways as all this post-PC technology really starts to become ubiquitous?

Mobile World Congress: Banjo and Twitter Define Boundaries of Location Within Context

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:11:28 -0800

The compelling nature and implications for location in mobile marketing vary dramatically by context and - well, location. The opportunity for contextually aware location data isn’t lost on anyone, but stringing those attributes together with relevant marketing remains challenging and elusive.

“I look at advertising and advertising on mobile quite differently. I think there has to be a paradigm shift,” says Damien Patton, CEO and founder of Banjo. There will eventually be a backlash against intrusive ads, he tells a packed audience at Mobile World Congress.

“When it comes to location, you cannot talk about location without talking about privacy,” he says. “Why are people going to give you their location, their privacy?” A nominal discount for a nearby Starbucks, for example, isn’t going to do it, he adds.

Banjo, which aims to enrich real-time content discovery by location across the social graph, provides more context and relevancy to check-ins, posts, videos, news stories, and the like, says Patton. “We’re looking at everything going on in the world right now…It’s the things that are happening right now in temporal time and it’s across all social networks.”

“It’s not only the location, it’s what’s going on. It’s the event,” he adds.

For Twitter, location is just another piece of metadata, says Sean Cook, lead mobile partner engineer at Twitter. “If you attach location, that’s a piece of metadata that better explains what that 140-character sound bite is,” he adds. Twitter also uses location to share more relevant ads with its users, but it also “helps grow the conversation,” Cook says.

When a user sees a large ad running along the top of any given application, there are times where it might be relevant to that user, but oftentimes it isn’t, says Cook. Here in Barcelona, “in the moment, I’m more likely to walk across the street and buy a Barcelona jersey. I think the context of where you are is going to be more important, especially for advertising,” he adds.

“It’s a concept of here versus there,” Patton continues, adding that Banjo has found that users are more comfortable sharing their location on Twitter because it’s more general and not necessarily pinpointed to a specific corner or venue. “It’s like an ice cream cone,” he says. “It’s not about being at the tip of that pin.”

Location sharing varies significantly across cultures and events, Patton says, adding that this year’s Carnival of Brazil drove much higher usage than Mardi Gras in New Orleans, for example.

“If you look at location globally, the percentages would skew male,” says Patton, but locations shared from events like New York Fashion Week are predominantly female. Nonetheless, that same type of event in another part of the world could drive very few location shares because of the culture.

Cook reflects on his early days at Twitter, four years ago, when it was still virtually unheard of for people to share their most private thoughts, photos, or other media with the world at large. “We’re becoming conditioned to it, but with each step…there are bounds that you have to work within,” he says. “Once we get our toes in the water, we realize it’s not freezing and we step further in.”

“The user has that short attention span that we’ve all grown out of, and I think as we continue down the path it’s going to get worse or better depending on your perspective,” concludes Cook.

Mobile World Congress: Brands Extol Virtues of Mobility

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:01:00 -0800

“The way peoples’ behavior is changing intrigues all marketers,” says Keith Weed, global chief marketing officer at Unilever, who attended Mobile World Congress in full force with his team this week. “To us, of course, this is a source of connection with people, but also a potential source of entertainment.”

Weed and lead marketing executives from KLM and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) outlined their evolving strategies in mobile here by highlighting some of the struggles and successes they’ve encountered on the road to mobility.

While many brands have embraced a 360-degree approach to marketing, wherein brands aim to surround the customer with content across every screen or medium available, Weed says he’s now pushing Unilever to foster something he calls 365. “Our approach much more now is about 365, every day, 24/7. How can we provide content that really engages people?” he says.

“Not only are we interested in leveraging opportunities in this area through media, but we’re also interested in investing in companies so we can scale in market,” adds Weed. “One of the things an advertiser has to do is break through the clutter.”

Because Unilever is an international conglomerate of many brands in vastly different cultures, Weed is driving his team to test new ideas that are more culturally and sociologically relevant to its target customers in each local market.

In India, for example, Unilever discovered that the act of making a call and hanging up before the receiver picks up is widespread because it helps people avoid charges but still reach out and connect with someone. So the company played off that cultural reality and developed a campaign where users could call a number displayed on the packaging for Omo, a laundry detergent, have the call immediately disconnect after one ring and then receive a callback with a pre-recorded message from a Bollywood start. The branded callback feature also offered customers varying amounts of free airtime depending on how many times they purchased the product and placed the initial call.

“I’m only interested in delivering good value for our dollars,” he says. If a campaign doesn’t deliver a worthwhile return on investment, Weed is likely to abandon the idea and move on. “I think the important thing is to setup expectations up front,” he continues. “Measurement is key because at the end of the day we want to make sure we’re spending good money.”

“You really have to define the measurement for the task,” he adds. “The ROI we’re getting on mobile is indeed very interesting, and it certainly justifies the money we’re putting into it.”

As for how much money Unilever is committing to mobile, Weed declined to provide specific numbers, but he shared some other anecdotes to help indicated how important the area is for the CPG company. “We don’t give out the percentage we spend on mobile, we don’t even give out the percentage we spend on digital,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, I fish where the fish are… All I can say is that it’s a number that is growing very fast.”

Michael Menis, vice president of web and interactive/mobile marketing at IHG, didn’t shy away from providing some numbers during his time on stage here but he chose to focus on mobile revenue growth instead of mobile marketing spend.

The hotel group booked $2 million in revenue from mobile devices in 2009, but now its mobile plays are generating an average of $40 million every month, Menis says. “Mobile still represents a very small percentage of our overall revenue. We’re anticipating in the next two-to-three years that mobile will overtake web revenue.”

IHG was far from a late arrival to mobile. It launched its first mobile app on a Palm device in 2000 and the company claims to have launched the hotel industry’s first apps for iPhone, Android, Windows 8 and Kindle as well. “We’re really interested in thinking through the role a smartphone can play in a guest’s journey,” says Menis, capturing everything from a guest’s travel to a destination, to check in, the stay and after the visit concludes.

Many of those travel journeys typically involve a flight on an airline like KLM or others. Maite Oonk, mobile commerce manager at KLM, admits that the company made many missteps along the way.

“Changing our 95-year-old airline into one that needs to become mobile was a challenge. It was a bumpy ride these last two-and-a-half years,” she says. Because about 70 percent of the airline’s online revenues were coming from email marketing, display ads and social media, it made the early mistake of taking the same approach to mobile. “We made classic errors such as bannering on one of the main news websites and redirecting them to a desktop, which is something you cannot afford to do,” says Oonk.

“Airlines are mobile by definition. We are a mobility company,” she says. And although it’s now seeing double-digit growth on mobile year-over-year, KLM still faces challenges as more travelers search and purchase travel plans on their mobile devices. “Our customer demands are changing and evolving so rapidly. We simply don’t manage to develop in the same pace our customers expect from us sometimes,” says Oonk.

Mobile World Congress: Network Operators and Vendors Rethink Roles as Traffic Explodes

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:00:45 -0800

Wireless carriers have certainly grown accustomed to their perch from above, controlling so much of the industry and their relationships with customers. Only recently have they begun singing a different tune, as was evident here at Mobile World Congress this week.

The astronomical growth rates of mobile broadband might appear to present a great future ahead for carriers, but with data usage exploding and traditional telecommunications services being disrupted by nimble startups with no legacy costs, more growth in mobile will mean more problems and tighter margins for many network operators.

Mobile broadband is projected to grow from 1.6 billion connections in 2012 to 5.1 billion connections in 2017, representing a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent, says GSMA chief marketing officer, Michael O’Hara, citing the organization’s latest data.

“Networks are vital resources for the future,” says Rene Obermann, chairman and chief executive of Deutsche Telekom, but as traffic across the carrier’s networks increases 70 percent year-over-year, he adds that carriers also need to do more with less. Managing all that traffic will be a growing challenge, but Obermann says he is equally troubled by what he calls the “over-the-top paradigm.” Apps like Skype and WhatsApp are cutting away at the revenue carriers have enjoyed for many years from services like text messaging.

“I’m not moaning, I’m just describing the reality and we need to deal with it… It means you invest, we take the profit, from there side,” he says. “As a result, you see the stock market responding to all the telcos.”

“It’s not sustainable that networks make all the investments,” adds Obermann. “The good news — we are changing, we are becoming more efficient, we understand how to innovate, at least better than in the past.”

“Telcos have to be smarter than they are today… They have to embrace innovation,” he continues. “We have to view ourselves as enablers” and make cooperation part of carriers’ DNA.”

Hans Vestberg, chief executive of the infrastructure giant Ericsson, carried Obermann’s theme into his follow-up keynote as well. By 2018, 92 percent of the earth’s population will have access to mobile broadband, he says.

“The pace of change we’re seeing so far in our industry is the slowest so far — it’s only going to increase from here,” adds Vestberg. “It’s going to transform us, you and me using the network, it’s going to change businesses and it’s going to change our society.”

Although Ericsson is one of the direct beneficiaries of carriers’ massive capital investments in network buildouts and technology upgrades, Vestberg says infrastructure vendors also need to innovate to create more value and efficiencies for their carrier partners.

While carriers have long bemoaned the notion of being nothing more than “dumb pipes,” they desperately need to rethink their future roles to avoid such widespread commoditization. The ideas are finally bubbling to the surface, but as Obermann says, “it does require a big cultural shift in traditional telecommunications companies.”

Mobile World Congress: Mozilla Lines Up 18 Operators for Firefox Mobile OS

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 09:07:44 -0800

If mobile network operators were content with the current stable of operating systems in the market today, Mozilla certainly would not have the backing of 18 operators around the globe. Mozilla previewed its Firefox OS here at Mobile World Congress with a significant number of carrier executives on stage, announcing that the first devices to run the open mobile ecosystem will be made available to customers in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela beginning in July.

The company, which was founded more than a decade ago, also unveiled a new brand marketing campaign here at a press conference under the slogan “unleash the fox.” The first low-end devices running on Firefox OS will be released by Alcatel, LG, ZTE and Huawei. But Sony Mobile also announced a new joint technical collaborative effort with Telefonica to “explore the development of a handset running Mozilla’s Firefox OS open source mobile platform.” The device maker hopes to bring a Firefox OS device to market in 2014, says Bob Ishida, deputy chief executive and EVP at Sony Mobile.

Mozilla’s partners made it clear that they expect Firefox OS to emerge as a contender in the highly competitive, price sensitive market for smartphones under $100 or even $50.

Mozilla chief executive Gary Kovacs says most Firefox OS customers will be purchasing a smartphone for the first time. Paul Jacobs, chief executive of Qualcomm, reiterated that point during the announcement, referring to “high-volume smartphones.” Each of the Firefox OS devices will be powered by the San Diego, California based company’s Snapdragon mobile processors.

And referring to the collaborative effort with Sony Mobile, Marieta del Rivero, group devices director at Telefonica says it “will create the opportunity to reach new segments of the market.”

A number of app developers and content providers have already committed to building apps for Firefox OS, such as Disney, MTV, Facebook, Airbnb, Twitter, EA, TimeOut, Here (from Nokia), Box and others. Every feature and application in Firefox OS will be developed as an HTML5 application and Mozilla claims the OS will “bypass the typical hindrances of HTML5 on mobile” by leveraging the internal capabilities of each device. “The platform’s flexibility allows carriers to easily tailor the interface and develop localized services that match the unique needs of their customer base,” the company adds.

Following his comments about building a mobile OS upon an ecosystem that’s already well established via the Internet, Kovacs adds: “We’re not going to have the only marketplace. I expect many marketplaces to flourish, some may be run by operators.”

In addition to its early device and technology partners, Mozilla has enlisted support from America Movil, China Unicom Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telefonica, Telenor, Telstra, TMN and VimpelCom.

As for plans to release a device in the US, which is believed to be powered by Sprint, Kovacs only says: “We have plans, we have partners lined up. I expect somewhere in the 2014 timeframe.”

Mobile World Congress: Visa and MasterCard Rollout Enhanced M-Commerce Platforms

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:32:12 -0800

Visa and MasterCard are both using Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest stage for mobile, to reveal deeper efforts for mobile payments across the globe. MasterCard launched MasterPass, an enhanced version of its mobile wallet PayPass, while Visa announced a global partnership with Samsung and a group of technology providers that will broaden its mobile payment program and enable third parties to connect to the system.

“We all know that the center of commerce will be these devices,” says Jim McCarthy, head of global product at Visa. “It’s not just about using these devices to pay, but also the fact that today in the Visa ecosystem we have 30 million merchants but the fact is there are over 7 billion of these devices that can be turned into terminals and turn consumers into merchants for payment.”

The deal with Samsung calls for all future next-generation devices from the Korean device maker to come with the NFC-equipped Visa payWave app pre installed. Visa also announced that ROAM will be the company’s first mobile point-of-sale partner for the Visa Ready Program, which enables third-party technology companies, platform providers, OEMs, card manufacturers and mobile network operators to incorporate Visa’s mobile commerce platform through SDKs and APIs.

“Visa can’t do this alone,” says Bill Gajda, global head of mobile at Visa, adding that adoption rates and usage patterns will vary by market. “Where banks can get access to those devices and that alternative secure element, you’re going to be able to create your own mobile wallet built on your mobile banking application that includes NFC payments. And we’re going to be able to use that Visa payWave app that’s already on the device that’s out of the factory, as well as our provisioning service to get all of your accounts onto those phones,” adds Gajda.

“Even for mobile network operators, whether it’s to address capacity issues of the SIM or just because they don’t have to replace the SIMs now in order to facilitate NFC, I think we’re going to see a number of parties really look favorable on this alternative secure element just because it broadens the options for banks, mobile network operators and device manufacturers to provision credentials on phones,” he continues.

McCarthy also discussed the potential marketing opportunity for m-commerce, but indicated that any targeting ads based on customers’ financial purchase patterns are still a long ways off.

“We do see a lot of data today,” he says. “Clearly in the case of mobile, there’s the opportunity to expand beyond that as it relates to having one-to-one relationships, but at it’s core Visa is still only managing those 16 digits, we don’t have personally identifiable information. But what we can do is work with our financial institution clients, issuers and acquirers to actually provide better service, deepen the relationship, provide better offers all based on that data and use in a predictive fashion. Now, the trick there obviously is its all about consumer permissions. There’s no hiding the ball, it’s all about giving consumers control, making sure consumers know how that data is being used.”

Visa currently has more than 200,000 active merchant locations equipped with NFC in the United States and more than 600,000 locations in Europe.

For it’s part, MasterCard plans to launch MasterPass in Australia and Canada next month, followed by the United States, United Kingdom and then eventually Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and Sweden by the end of the year.

MasterPass will support checkout services for merchants with the use of NFC, QR codes, tags and mobile devices at points of sale. MasterCard now has 27 financial institutions, 21 technology partners and 16 merchants on board for the effort as it looks to expand to more than 5,900 merchants. The company also announced new partnerships with mFoundry’s mobile banking solutions and Orange in Spain.

Finally, MasterCard released a new study today, in partnership with Prime Research, that found early adopters have a 58 percent favorable rating of mobile payment technology while those yet to adopt have a more positive outlook overall at 76 percent.

180LA Blows Up Seasons Passed in New Adidas Spot

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:26:52 -0800

In a new commercial spot for Adidas, Robert Griffin III (RG3) looks up at the camera from a squatting position and his voice begins to narrate. “Blow up last season. Every win… every loss… every headline. Blow it all up. ‘Cuz all that matters is what you do next.”

The 60-second spot for Adidas’ “all in for week 1” campaign carries few words, but fast-changing imagery, workout scenes and explosive pyrotechnics are on display in spades.

“The spot is born from a universal truth that all athletes can relate to: what you did last season doesn’t matter,” notes Zac Ryder, a writer at 180LA, the agency behind the campaign.

The ad, which concludes with a series of massive implosions in a trophy case and on a football field, was shot over the course of four days last month in Los Angeles and Pensacola, Florida, but the story line was set well before the 2012 season ended.

“We knew RG3 would be the centerpiece of the campaign. But at that time, the Redskins were only halfway through the season. No one would have foreseen the way the season ended for him. But Adidas was brave enough to embrace it and let us tell a much more powerful story,” he adds. “The work is way more impactful because of it.”

The Washington Redskins quarterback is featured along with Notre Dame and John Curtis High School doing exercises, routines and training during the off season. Of the three, only John Curtis High School was victorious in the 2012 season, as it took home the national championship.

Oddly enough, the losses end making Adidas’ “blow it all up” message even more resonant.

“Nothing (RG3) did on the field last season matters right now. The only thing he’s focused on is getting ready for week one of next season,” says Ryder. All of the athletes featured in the spot are “approaching next year with a clean slate, regardless of their successes and failures of last season.”

As the campaign expands to social media, RG3 will be featured in short, weekly video challenges encouraging athletes to improve key aspects of their game. Followers will also be able to post videos on their progress, Ryder adds.

“Adidas is hoping to motivate all high school athletes to use their off season to train to get better,” explains Ryder. “The TV spot is meant to start a conversation between Adidas and high school athletes throughout the off season.”

Sprint and Telefonica Form Mobile Advertising Alliance

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:25:32 -0800

Sprint and Telefonica are joining forces to increase the reach of their respective mobile advertising networks and collaborate on targeted ads for brands around the globe. The carriers’ alliance reaches a combined 370 million customers, with Sprint servicing 55 million customers in the US and Telefonica counting more than 314 million customers across 25 countries in Latin America and Europe. As teams work with advertisers and agencies to plan more multi-national campaigns, the alliance is also expected to expand to Asia.

Carriers own some of the richest and most relevant data on their customers for the purpose of marketing, but there is a disconnect between that data and the third-party ad networks that most advertisers push their mobile marketing campaigns through. The differences between the data sets are so stark, says Mike Cooley, VP of New Ventures at Sprint, that it’s like pinning “inferences and modeling versus actual data.”

Sprint launched its own mobile advertising network, Pinsight Media+, in October and although it hasn’t named any brand partners yet the group’s directors tell ClickZ that it is determined to prove the value of the data it holds on its customers through deeper targeting.

“We’ve got a really interesting relationship with the customer in that we obviously have a lot of relevant rich data about them,” Cooley adds.

“From the Sprint perspective, the key is one of the things that we believe has prevented mobile advertising from growing as rapidly as a lot of people would have expected or hoped, is this major gap around targeting,” says Dan Polk, head of sales and marketing at Pinsight Media+.

Although many advertisers are still hesitant to jump into the mobile space because of the “broad, shotgun-based approach” that typically follows campaigns on mobile, Cooley says carrier data on demographics, location and other characteristics is paving the way for more granular targeting that increases performance for advertisers and publishers alike.

“It’s a very chaotic time right now, and there’s really a lot of opportunity,” says Cooley. “If you look at this industry, it reminds me where e-commerce was in 1999… There seems to be a tipping point opportunity.”

The relationship between Sprint and Telefonica also extends to their mutual adherence to opt-in targeting. “We are letting customers tell us what data we are allowed to use to drive them relevant messaging,” Cooley says.

“On the surface, global reach and scale are key to the partnership. We’re partnering with a carrier that has a similar view of the world as we do,” Polk adds, calling it “a consent-driven program.”

Telefonica held a half-day event at Mobile World Congress today to discuss how it is building a cross-operator ecosystem for mobile advertising and m-commerce. Later this year, Sprint plans to do a more focused campaign to encourage its customers to opt-in to targeted ads in order to receive more relevant offers and content.

Mobile Drives 11 Percent of E-Commerce in 2012 Holiday Quarter

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:02:56 -0800

E-commerce is now a double-digit force in U.S. consumer spending, according to comScore. Online retail spending, which has steadily made double-digit gains since 2009, jumped 15 percent from a year ago to $186 billion last year, while online travel spending increased 9 percent to $103 billion.

Overall, e-commerce sales combined for a 14 percent spike in year-over-year growth, reaching $289 billion in 2012. Over the course of eight years, e-commerce grew from 5 to 10 percent of all U.S. consumer spending with mobile now also accounting for one in every 10 e-commerce dollars spent.

“With the exception of the great recession of 2009, you can see solid growth,” comScore Chairman and co-founder Gian Fulgoni says in a webinar highlighting the firm’s latest findings. “We reached for the first time in a quarter, e-commerce representing 10 percent of all U.S. discretionary spending.”

Online sales are also growing about seven times greater than offline retail, posting a 14 percent year-over-year increase. Online buyers spent an average of $293 in the all-important 2012 holiday quarter, up 8 percent from the year prior. Total online buyers also rose 6 percent to 194 million people, while the average number of transactions per buyer jumped 4 percent to 2.91 in the quarter.

Fulgoni also notes another threshold that was reached in the final quarter of 2012 - three quarters of the U.S. Internet population made at least one online purchase during the quarter.

Mobile phones and portable devices such as tablets represented the highest product growth areas during the quarter, jumping 40 percent and 46 percent year-over-year, respectively. Online sales of desktop computers fell 13 percent.

Amazon remains the dominant online retailer by staggering margins, clocking 115.2 million monthly visitors via fixed Internet, while its next closest competitors Apple and Walmart reported an average of 50 million and 49.6 million monthly visitors, respectively. While still much smaller in total numbers, flash sales sites like Fab.com and Zulily.com tracked phenomenal growth, tracking 329 percent and 72 percent year-over-year gains in average monthly visitors.

ComScore also took a look at the effects of “showrooming,” when consumers might visit a physical store and then decide to purchase the item online. While only 17 percent of consumers were aware of the term, 36 percent of those surveyed by the research firm reported that they do engage in the activity. A better price online was cited as the key reason for showrooming, while smartphone owners were significantly more likely to showroom than non-smartphone owners at a rate of 46 percent compared to 27 percent for the latter.

Although price is still king, 40 percent of those surveyed by comScore said they already planned to buy the item online but wanted to see the item in person before ordering.

Twitter Slowly Opens the Gates With Advertising APIs

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:32:07 -0800

Twitter released a new set of APIs today that give marketers third-party access to manage and implement their Twitter Ad campaigns. The move is expected to enhance targeting capabilities, performance metrics, and cross-channel opportunities for brands interested in Twitter’s ad products such as Promoted Tweets and Accounts.

But not every brand or social media platform will gain access to the APIs right away. Integration is limited to select brands working with one of Twitter’s first five partners - Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, Shift, and TBG Digital - that have been testing the service since last month.

“As we built out Twitter’s ads API, we knew it would be important to work closely with our advertising partners to understand how to effectively scale their marketing campaigns,” says Adam Bain, president of global revenue at Twitter.

Marketers will gain access to Twitter’s initial set of advertising APIs through a growing set of partners as Twitter also begins work on certifying the strongest performing ad products that integrate with the Twitter Ads API.

“Our system rewards marketers for being good, not for being loud. And this approach encourages ads that are engaging, relevant and useful,” April Underwood, product manager of revenue at Twitter writes in a blog post.

“We believe that this will result in improved management efficiencies, targeting and optimization capabilities, and stronger insights, which in turn will help us drive better results for clients through Twitter advertising programs,” says Lisa Cucinotta, associate director of social media at Omnicom Group’s Resolution Media.

After it applied granular targeting, tested different bid levels, and segmented campaigns by regions, Adobe revealed some impressive results, reporting a 63 percent increase in the brand’s follower base and a 60 percent decline in total cost per follow.

Adobe gained an average of 400 new followers per day with Promoted Accounts during the trial, up from an average organic growth rate of around two dozen followers per day. By the close of the campaign, new followers were coming to Adobe at a rate of about 115 per day.

“Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts are important assets in creating a holistic digital marketing campaign,” says David Karnstedt, SVP, media and ad solutions at Adobe. But as Michael Lazerow, CMO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud adds: “Successful Twitter marketing has evolved and must be more holistic than just publishing content.”

Razorfish and Delta Reveal First Collaborative Windows 8 Ad Concept

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:30:56 -0800

Microsoft has unveiled the first collaborative branded campaigns for Windows 8 Ads in Apps. After naming 30 initial brands and select agency partners for the new concepts in early November, ads from Delta, Paramount Pictures, Ford, and Jeep are now live on Microsoft’s new operating system.

“What’s really unique is that it’s a framework upon which we can build experiences that we’ve talked about or imagined for a long time but it’s been prohibitively expensive for brands to do,” Margaret Czeisler, national lead of marketing and advertising at Razorfish tells ClickZ. “They have this very flexible platform that allows experiences to transform in different environments and adapt.”

Razorfish developed a new ad experience for Delta’s “Up” campaign in the NBC News app, while other agencies like Team Detroit, This is Tommy, Universal McCann, and Sapient worked with their respective brands early into the ideation process as well. “The idea is that we co-create with partners and platforms very early in the process…in order to maximize and leverage their full ecosystem,” Czeisler continues.

“The creative process for us as an agency has changed significantly over the last few years,” she adds. “It’s totally changed the nature of the work and the concepts…You’re not pitching a campaign anymore, you’re pitching a full change to every touch point that a brand has with consumers.”

Microsoft is convinced that “audiences are ready for something new,” Stephen Kim, GM of global creative solutions at Microsoft writes in a blog post detailing the first ads released from the effort.

“I want to talk about the unique and collaborative journey we’ve been on these past few months, which is as important as our eventual destination,” he continues. “As we sat down together waiting for the caffeine to kick in, we had no idea how the day would go, the direction we would take or what we would create. Collectively, we let our creativity push what we thought was possible and leaned on our new technology to make it real.”

The first ad concept delivered by Delta takes advantage of gestures by encouraging users of the NBC News app to swipe upward to engage with the content. Czeisler says it reflected back to Delta’s “keep climbing” tagline. “We were able to marry the actual experience of the ad and the physical gesture with that new brand tagline,” he says.

“Co-creating with partners in a very different way is something that we’re really excited about as an agency because it’s really transformed our work and this is just one example of that.” Although, she adds, “I would have loved to see it go further.”

The teams are meeting again this week to begin work on their second ad concept, and Czeisler says she looks forward to making the next iteration more dynamic based on users’ passions, interests, location, and other relevant data.

“These experiences need to seamlessly port and adapt to their environment but also change based on what the user expects from that environment,” she adds.

“The idea of ads versus apps is very important as the lines are blurring between what is advertising and what is an app,” Czeisler says, adding that while the ads aim to tell an emotional story, they also pull app-like elements into the app itself.

Facebook Casts a Wider Targeting Net With Lookalike Audiences

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:22:21 -0800

Facebook has expanded its custom audience targeting feature to now include what it calls “lookalike audiences.” By porting their CRM databases to Facebook, advertisers can reach their existing customers and users who share similarities with their customer base.

Facebook’s custom audience algorithm will now pull additional clusters of users for advertisers to target based on similar interests, demographic data or location. If the new beta feature is effective, brands will be gaining a unique insight and direct connection with Facebook users who are more likely to become customers.

“I think this gives an opportunity for advertisers to get a better understanding, and another way of looking at, who their audience is,” notes James Malins, VP of cross-channel solutions at Adconion Direct. “By creating a lookalike profile against an advertiser’s existing CRM base, it means advertisers are going to be targeting the audience most like their existing one.”

“It’s based on all the Facebook data that’s targetable right now,” says Elisabeth Diana, communications manager at Facebook. “What we’re seeing is that advertisers are gaining new customers through it, but they’re also seeing lower cost per acquisition (CPA).”

The level of probability for conversions, purchases, and other marketing objectives tends to increase when advertisers reach users who share similarities with their customer profile and target them with different ads or unique offers, she says. Facebook declined to name specific brands in its early results for lookalike audiences, but Diana tells ClickZ that a travel site is reporting a 70 percent reduction in CPA while a shopping site is reporting a 56 percent reduction in CPA and a 94 percent reduction in cost-per-checkout.

“The lookalike audiences could have huge potential compared to traditional targeting as it removes significant guesswork out of the process. Facebook is really taking the approach to improve the reach and engagement of its advertising,” notes Dave Williams, CEO and president at Blinq Media, a longtime Facebook advertiser partner that was acquired by Gannett last August.

“Traditionally, advertisers have focused on targeting precise interests, topics, and demographics to reach new audiences within Facebook. Using this targeting is very subjective to the perception of the brand’s customer and often that perception is not necessarily correct,” Williams adds.

“The benefit is getting a message in front of qualified leads, in this case a segment identified by the advertiser that would otherwise be difficult to impossible to match,” notes Rebecca Lieb, analyst at The Altimeter Group. “Because Facebook has an almost unprecedented amount of data around its users, the platform can slice and dice audience segments in a highly customizable way. I therefore do believe Facebook can match advertisers’ criteria for targeting.”

Custom audiences, and the new lookalike audiences beta feature, can be applied to any ad unit on Facebook. Once advertisers extrapolate new leads they can further refine the clusters of Facebook users who match a desired profile by either optimizing for highly accurate similarities or broadening the scope to a larger population of users with fewer similarities.

“It is a step in the right direction in that advertisers will start to realize their audience might not be the cheapest one they want. It is time to start paying and targeting users that actually fit their profile and aren’t just the cheapest,” notes Malins. “It doesn’t change the dynamic for advertisers that were previously focused on getting the right audience, but it might surprise and shock other advertisers that won’t believe the differences in the audience they have on Facebook, and the true audience that likes their brand.”

American Express Pushes for Hashtag-Driven Commerce

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:04:16 -0800

Can you imagine making purchases with a special hashtag in a tweet? Twitter and American Express sure hope so, but as the companies expand their partnership to include a new pay-by-tweet functionality, first they will have to encourage customers to adopt new behaviors for online shopping.

Once American Express card members sync their account with Twitter, their tweets will become virtual purchase orders for gift cards and products from select merchants. American Express first brought its Card Sync technology to Twitter last March, introducing merchant discounts that came in the form of statement credits. Thousands of merchant offers have since been promoted on the platform, resulting in millions of dollars in savings for card members, notes Brad Minor, VP of public relations and social media communications at American Express.

“This is part of a long-term path to digital transformation for American Express. We are focused on delivering our card members and merchant partners with relevant and valuable experiences where they are - and increasingly, that is on social media,” he adds. “We’ve also seen growth in followers for our merchant partners, an increase in conversation about those brands in social media.”

American Express is kicking off the sync-to-buy program with a $25 American Express gift card for $15 (available by tweeting #BuyAmexGiftCard25), and beginning Wednesday it will begin offering products from Amazon, Sony, Urban Zen, and Xbox 360.

After users tweet a hashtag to express their intent to buy a product, they will receive an @reply from @AmexSync asking them to confirm their purchase with a subsequently unique hashtag within 15 minutes.

Commenting on the flood of branded tweets that might follow, Andy Sternberg, co-founder and CIO at Adler Integrated tweets: “[American Express] will essentially buy your tweets for two at $10. Might want a secondary Twitter account or this can get annoying.”

Card members can avoid flooding their followers’ streams with hashtags for online purchases by initiating the entire transaction via @replies, but that more private option will likely be less apparent to the average user.

“We want to ensure you can make the purchase quickly and easily, but also want to build in the confirmation tweet to give consumers even more control,” adds Minor. Merchants will also begin receiving more detailed reports and aggregated stats about the performance of their offers via American Express.

By boosting its partnership with Twitter, American Express is also giving Twitter a major vote of confidence that will certainly catch the attention of other brands and social marketers. Indeed, it appears that American Express has already picked its favorites in social media and Twitter is sitting center stage.

“We believe in the power of Twitter and are focusing the bulk of our marketing efforts in the platform. We will be actively engaging our social community, as well as those of our merchant partners who are involved,” Minor notes.

“Twitter is about sharing, communicating, and connecting. We strategically chose products that are simple to explain in 140 characters or less and are buzzy,” he adds. “The products available for purchase are already part of the social conversation, and we are now able to turn those conversations into commerce.”

In addition to the discounted gift card offer, American Express will begin selling an Amazon Kindle Fire HD, a Sony Action Cam and Waterproof Headband Mount, an Urban Zen bracelet designed by Donna Karan, an Xbox controller, or an Xbox 360 4GB console.

ESPN Celebrates 'Clutch Moments' in New Campaign

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:00:00 -0800

Sports fans are all too familiar with clutch moments or plays. Season in and season out, their collective joy or despair hangs in the balance as each potentially clutch catch, shot, kick or drive comes and goes.

“Being clutch in sports is very important and we thought that would be relevant with our fans,” says Adriana Rizzo, senior director of consumer marketing at ESPN. The broadcast sports giant is leveraging that theme in a new, ongoing series of animated spots to promote WatchESPN, a mobile app originally launched in April 2011.

“The Clutch Way to Watch” campaign features two animated super fans, Vic and Steve, talking about how they watch the biggest moments in sports at home, away or in the office. “Most fans will relate to them either because they are them or they know someone like them,” adds Rizzo. “They are true sports fans and you will seem them throughout the year talking about different sports.”

When ESPN approached 72andSunny to develop a new campaign ready to launch before the college basketball season approaches its defining moments of the year, it wanted something different, informative and relatable. “We were looking for a fresh and own-able approach to the product and service. It is a market that can be a bit confusing to fans and viewers, particularly because there are a lot of versions of TV Everywhere,” Rizzo says.

The teams began collaborating in November on a tight deadline, which called for the first two spots of the campaign to debut on ESPN networks last Monday, running through March 17.

ESPN wanted a flexible concept that allows it to introduce new story lines in short- and long-form content based on strategic needs in the marketplace, adds Rizzo. “We always go out in market and time it to specific moments in sports.”

ESPN plans to feature more clutch moments for fans of football, motor sports, tennis, X Games and more throughout the year. The campaign will also carry into ESPN’s digital platforms, social media outlets and mobile, but plans for the latter channels haven’t solidified yet.

“We’re still in the early stages of that. Personally I think it has a tremendous amount of power in the social space,” Rizzo says, adding that ESPN is also designing a feature that will allow sports fans the opportunity to contribute and share their favorite clutch moments in sports via Facebook and Twitter.