• Nielsen reports that prices for Super Bowl ads are up 13% to 29% from a year ago and first quarter spots went for a premium of about $100,000 since more people remember/watch the ads early in the contest.
• Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Seems Farris is back (if not in name) in Honda’s new commercial.
• The chimps are back for CareerBuilder
  from CareerBuilder For Employers on Vimeo.
• This year’s game could really go to the dogs.
  

Watch for more before the big game!

The study only surveyed college students and under 30 workers, so there is a lack of perspective of what life was like without Internet access or mobile phones.

The survey also shows how important digital connectedness is to those under 30. More than two of five college students (40%) and young employees (45%) said they would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility. Take less money to read Facebook posts and Tweets all day?

Is your business ready reaching out to this group of consumers in a way they care about?

Here’s a really poor quality upload of one of the original commercials you can find on YouTube.

A side note here. Our pick as one of the best commercials during the 2011 SuperBowl was Chrysler’s “Born of Fire” 2-minute mini-film commercial. It just won an Emmy Award and has picked up a number of other awards since it first aired last year.

Also, not surprising, replication helps increase action. That is, the more often someone sees an ad, the more likely they are to click on it (at least up to a certain number of views). Ads shown five or more times were 12-14 times more effective. Fortunately, it is much easier and affordable to show a viewer an ad multiple times quickly on the Internet than in print.

A great article on the Wall Street Journal’s site about the power of social media. As much as you want your positive messages to go viral, the danger in Facebook, Twitter and other similar tools is that they backfire in huge ways if you goof.  Rep. Anthony Weiner’s broadcast of a lewd photograph over Twitter last month (the hook for that article) was just the latest oops by a celebrity/politician using social media. And because of people’s obsession with the unusual (why do you think news organizations now have pages devoted to stories of the weird), the right mess up could land your company in the news for all the wrong reasons.

In the article, Ken Goldstein, the worldwide media liability expert at Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, suggests that companies/high profile people should follow an editorial process similar to those at newspapers to avoid embarrasing and harmful posts, updates and tweets.

And having somebody with a journalism background work with you to promote your business will help in more ways than just avoiding bad press. It will also help you attract more website visitors. Google’s new search algorithm is designed to look at more than just key words. It is supposed to sort out the good content from that which has been slapped up with little regard for quality. Writing, editing and adherence to style are reasons why companies have hired former journalists to work in their public relations departments for years. Now PR and web marketing are mixing like never before and the need for content control is great. Another set of eyes, especially a trained set, can make all the difference between disaster and success on social media sites, blogs and even your website.

Not every company has the resources to bring in outside help, but everyone can set a system in place to reduce the chance of damaging mistakes. It may be a drag on some of the spontaneity of social media, but that’s OK. Speed often causes mistakes.

Mobile

According to Nielsen, 28% of the U.S. cellphone market was smartphones in November 2010, and market share was growing by 2-3% each quarter partly because over 40% of new cellphone buyers were choosing smartphones. So by now, smartphone are probably nearing 40% of the market.

With 303 million cell phones in the U.S. (according to CTIA – The Wireless Association) that’s about 121 million smartphones. iPhones now make up 27% of those smartphones, so your flash banner ad, photo gallery, game or other visual website feature won’t show up for at least 33 million cellphone web surfers. And although wireless speeds are picking up, most users would agree that Flash is not ideal on other mobile formats either.

The number of mobile users Flash doesn’t work or work well for will only grow. Nielsen found that 51% of those who own an iPad, but not an iPhone, plan to buy an iPhone the next time around. 25% of those that don’t own either one would like an iPhone instead of their current phone.

Tablets

By the end of March, Apple had sold 19.5 million iPads (in about 1 year), none of which support Flash. And here’s what is even more important—Nielsen reports that 35% of tablet owners used their desktop machine less often or not at all since buying their tablet. Fewer and fewer eyeballs for your Flash banner ad.

Alternatives

Here’s the good news. There are alternatives out there to Flash. YouTube already uses the HTML5 video tag to provide mobile and iPad users with video instead of the usual Flash player. As HTML evolves it will only get better at displaying video. There are also a lot of options, from animated gifs to Java scripting to make your website or banner ad more than just a static page—and they’ll be viewable in the future by the millions more that will do their surfing on iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices.

Until recently, Google could not read the text embedded in Flash websites because it was essentially like reading a picture.  Google now can index text contained in Flash sites, but other search engines may not. In addition, Google recommends that every piece of Flash content be available in a text format for search engines to read. You can learn more about how Google deals with Flash and other rich media forms in their Webmaster Central help pages.

Flash sites have other problems:

1. Google (which provides over 60% of all searches) now considers load speed in its search engine rankings.  Flash sites are slow to load because they have to load the entire site at once. Not only are your visitors left waiting, your site will be a lot harder to find.
2. Flash sites require specialized programming to make changes and cannot provide any type of content management. And content is where it is all at today.
3. It is very hard to provide any type of meaningful search engine optimization on flash sites.  Take a look at what pops up in your browser’s tab, or in that bar across the top of your screen next time you are on a Flash website. Often it is something like “index” or “home” no matter what page you are on.
4. They are not user friendly. Have you ever tried to go back a page on a Flash site? Usually you end up on the previous website you were visiting. Try bookmarking a specific page or sending a link to a friend. Doesn’t work too well.
5. Flash is difficult to track using basic analytics software because the whole site essentially operates as just one page.

There are ways around a lot of these problems, but they make an html or php driven website a lot more cost effective.

Now there are other reasons to avoid Flash in your websites or even web banners.  To learn why, see Why You Don’t Want Flash – Part 2

Despite the apparent success of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (Google Adwords, etc), only 21% of small business owners surveyed were using search advertising.  28% said they were doing something to improve unpaid search results.  And only 16% said they planned to add search engine marketing this year.

The complexities of handling a pay-per-click campaign may be part of the reason small business owners are holding back.  Of those surveyed, 56% said they needed help with at least one aspect of search engine advertising.  Only 19% outsourced their Search campaigns to outside agencies.

Looking for help starting a search engine marketing campaign.  We’re happy to manage campaigns for you, with initial packages costing far less than the $700+/month being pitched by large pay-per-click companies.