PardonMyFrench

links for 2008-05-15

• Official Google Blog: How auctions set ad prices
  Future post
  (tags: Google adwords)
• Why Twitter Matters
  (tags: twitter)

So Do You Actually Recommend Facebook for Online Advertising

I've had about two Facebook moments just today alone for two different clients.  One client was looking to target the youth segment and the second client wanted to push widgets-applications out to a wide audience.  For both clients I didn't recommend buying online ads in Facebook for reasons that I've given in the past (more on that in a second).  Then I get back from my meetings in the city (my new favorite drink is Tanqueray 10, tonic and two slices of lime) and read this article in Fortune called Finding cracks in Facebook and I had to smile.  Not because of any Facebooks woes because clearly they are a leader in social networking, but because of this line:

"Facebook ads can sell for as little as 15 cents per 1,000 impressions (CPM) - compared with the estimated $13 on Yahoo properties. And even at those bargain prices, marketers are reluctant to spend money on a venue where users aren't paying attention."

I'm hard pressed to buy any ads on Facebook for exactly this reason.  I believe that social networking ads are online wallpaper especially for acquisition and even branding tactics.  And even at 15 cent CPMs it would be a stretch to recommend them.  Sure going after the youth market they are still the best place to find concentrated web surfers, but how good are those ads even at such a low rate.  15 cent CPMS with low click rates or acquisition is just what it is - cheap eyeballs and the vast majority of marketers have moved passed this.

I don't know why Facebook doesn't want to embrace what they are to a lot of marketers.  A great place to engage customers, evangelize supporters, push information, and have users show their love by posting badges and widgets.  It is a great, effective, and efficient tool for communicating with customers especially with the younger generation who increasingly uses email less and communicates via message boards.

The pressure started coming down when they wanted to monetize that traffic.  Sure partnering with Google to place paid clicks ads is an awesome tool and that model works because Google serves the ads based on relevancy.  Plus a lot of Google users don't realize that if you don't want your ads served on partner search sites you have to opt out of it.  It is a great monetization model, but then extrapolating that for display ads is another thing where CPMS are believed to be higher. 

However, it is hard to push CPMs up when you serve plain display ads without video.  They seem so outdated and cheap, plus you can build them yourself without much creative experience.  Those ads show that and contribute to their wallpaper feel.  For example, I logged on tonight and here are the ten ads that were served to me:

1. Verizon (placed probably by an ad network)
2. Great-prizes.com correctly messaged to men over 34 (Facebook flyer)
3. Savvy-daddy.com correctly message to me (Facebook flyer)
4. All American Dish (Facebook flyer)
5. NPD research correctly messaged to over 34 (FF)
6. Some 30 Year Old Millionaire ad (FF)
7. Puma ad for Like.com correctly targeted to men (FF)
8. Myeasyrewards.com (FF)
9. Same as #8
10. Vacation homes

While they got the targeting correct for most of the ads, this isn't hard to do based on the profiles.  The ads themselves are shall we say on the cheesy side of ads and would be hard pressed to be considered branding ad units.  I built a few ads, didn't turn them on, and you know what CPM rate I was told to bid? 32 cents!!  That's right 32 cent CPMs and if I wanted CPCs around 69 cents.  The CPM IS DIRT FRIGGIN CHEAP, especially when you take into consideration their advanced targeting that seems to actually work.

It would be hard for any major marketers to justify spending marketing dollars for something like this.  I don't want you to think Facebook has zero value, just when it comes to branding and acquisition.  For customer relationship management and evangelizing your base it is great, for advertising I'd recommend passing unless you are on the very low budget scale.  I think Facebook's new COO and former Googler Sheryl Sandberg has much longer to go to develop a new ad scheme aimed at the billions that marketers spend on branding ads every year. "I'm hopeful that we play a significant role in pushing the envelope [with] awareness building," she says. "How we get there, I don't think we know yet." 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

links for 2008-05-14

• Are Political Ad Dollars Going Online? - eMarketer
  (tags: politics online statistics)

Drug Advertising and Me

I saw this editorial in today's Star Ledger called End Drug Ad Deception and I had to laugh, not because the article was funny, but because I had the exact same discussion with a friend of mine on our way to a meeting on Friday. My friend Jim and I spoke about this exact editorial of course before it was written and discussed the three drugs mentioned in the article - Lipitor, Procrit, and Vytorin.  All three of these drugs my immediate family has had experience in, but the one thing that was constant was that our doctor's recommended them and hopefully not based on direct to consumer ads.

I'm not going to sit here and write to you that I'm some smart pharmaceutical marketer but I am a consumer in the market for these drugs and I know a thing or two about advertising; plus I just had this discussion on Friday.  Basically the article failed to point out some good pharma has done when they advertise around medical problems you could be having that would cause you to go to a doctor about your problem.  Think about ED (I'm not spelling it out because of spam fear).  According to Jim there are numerous studies that show ED drove a lot of male patients into their doctor's office because of possible problems and this led to other diagnoses. The Star Ledger article failed to mention that, but that was a key discussion point with my friend Jim who is in the pharmaceutical industry.

Now I don't have all the answers but it seems to me that pharma opens themselves up to a lot of criticism, lawsuits, and government regulation with ads that are trying to drive patients into the doctor's office asking for a specific drug.  Do you really know the difference between Lipitor or Vytorin?  Feel a little down in the dumps from your cancer treatment, forget about whether your oncologist recommends your drugs, perhaps you should talk with him/her about Procrit.  Seems like a stretch to me, but perhaps someone has benefited because they were more educated than their doctor. 

However if pharma stuck to advertising around health symptoms, problems that patients could be experiencing they could use their advertising budgets to drive people to doctor's offices and let the professionals figure out which drug they should get.  By the time a patient shows up in the office, big pharma's sales force should have already explained their latest and greatest drugs to the doctor.  The ads could even be sponsored by the latest and greatest drug to get some name recognition out there and working with their sales force could show a tremendous amount of marketing synergy.

Anyway, that was the basis for my Friday conversation with my friend Jim.  Perhaps a shift towards advertising around potential health problems they'd spend a little less on ad dollars but what they did advertise would help patients with potential health problems; thus indirectly driving product sales...That's probably old fashion of me, but why not?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Quantcast Helps The Media Planner

I'm a little late on this post, but I'm jumping for joy when I read this post on Quantcast called List Website by Audience Demographics with Quantcast.  You can read the review of Quantcast of what works or doesn't work and how some of the data is based on a panel while others is based on being a quantified site.  Me?  I started using it immediately to help with media planning.  Why?  My choices are for media planning:

1. Spending somewhere around $25K for access to Nielsen Net Ratings for planning data.
2. Ensuring that when publishers pitch me it includes a snapshot of their competitor sites
3. My personal experience in buying over $150 million worth of online advertising

Let's say you are trying to buy online advertising targeted to the holy grail of all financial services companies - men with money.  Personally, I wouldn't need to look them up this way because I've been buying this target for years, but let's say you are new and without Nielsen.  So after registering for free at Quantcast, hit the advanced search and you get to choose sites based on:

• Gender
• Age
• Income
• Ethnicity
• Education
• Children
• Other Quantcast metrics
• And minimum site traffic of 10M

So for this example I select, males, 35+, income $100K+, education level of college or grad school, must accept advertising, and minimum US reach of 100K.  You can sort it by reach, uniques in target, or % of audience in target.  The top 10 sites on the list by % of audience:

1. NY Times
2. CNN
3. Wunderground.com
4. USAToday
5. Comcast
6. Nextag
7. Weather.com
8. Digg
9. Orbitz
10. Travelocity

Now some of the results surprised me a little bit, but I didn't filter it by Quantcast site affinity (more on that in a sec).  However, the list is actually a good one to test for this general segment.  I was surprised regarding Travelocity and Orbitz but when I checked them out I was served a Schwab ad so somebody there thinks Travelocity is a good place to look for these types of web surfers.  BTW - the Schwab didn't appear to be a network buy based on the clicktru; they were passing through a site id variable of osq108ab_trav)

So that list is a good start, but let's say you want to dig in a little more so you look for sites that have high affinity to thestreet.com.  Everything else works nicely except you have to lower the minimum US reach to 1 million, but you get this top 10 list:

1. CNBC
2. Fool
3. Bizjournals
4. Businessweek
5. WSJ
6. Forbes
7. Reuters
8. Bloomberg
9. Edgar-online
10. Smartmoney

Now that's more like it.  So with media experience you can set up a nice media proposal for your perspective client that would look like this:

• Base plan - Yahoo Finance, Google, MSN, Street.com
• Finance Test - CNBC, Fool, Bizjournals, Businessweek, WSJ
• Personal Test - NYTimes, CNN, USAToday, Weather.com, and Travelocity

That's a good media proposal without knowing more about budgets and/or goals for ZERO COST.  You didn't need to shell out a dime to pull this data and while it requires some knowledge of the marketplace to manipulate the sorting criteria, it is probably very close to what you would have paid Nielsen or comScore.  So starting using Quantcast for your media planning today - I did.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

links for 2008-05-08

• YouTube - Sen. John McCain jokes about his Vice Presidential candidate
  This is really funny
  (tags: mccain)
• List Websites by Audience Demographics with Quantcast
  (tags: online marketing statistics)
• John McCain 2008
  Funny video. Seems like a Justin creation
  (tags: mothersday mccain)
• Navy releases McCain's military record - John McCain News- msnbc.com
  (tags: mccain)

links for 2008-05-07

• Jonathan Martin's Blog - Politico.com
  Quite a switch from the fund raiser in NYC that Mary and I attended about a year ago.
  (tags: mccain fundraising)

Old School Facelift #8 - The (Lionel) Train Station

So today I received an email from a Lionel Train store in Mountain Lakes, NJ called The Train Station.  My father gave me his set of Lionel trains so I decided to clean them up, buy some new track, and get the engine repaired.  The closest train store was the one referenced above and I drove about 35 minutes to get there.  It is by the actual train station in Mountain Lakes.  It is also the site of Bobby Baccala's death in The Sopranos and the store is awesome.  Wall to wall trains, engine, accessories, and an extremely helpful staff who spent a ton of time with me.  So much so that instead of just waiting for my father's engine to get repaired, I bought another one just so the kids and I can test out our new track and cleaned up cars.

I loved this store, but haven't been back since.  It is on my short list of things to do but between work, soccer practice, travel soccer, and baseball  I haven't had the time.  That's why I was excited to get an email from The Train Station offering me 10% discount on any orders over $200.  The email was a plain text one, but I kept thinking to myself, hmmm if this is available on their website then why not offer it to more people than your email base.  What more could The Train Station do?  BTW - the URL is http://www.train-station.com/Pages/stimulus.html so clearly someone there believes this offer will stimulate sales:

OLD SCHOOL FACELIFT #8 THE (LIONEL) TRAIN STATION IN MOUNTAIN LAKES, NJ

1. Paid Search Ads - This is an absolute no brainer assuming The Train Station has some advertising dollars to spend.  Since the promotion is available for anyone and not just local residents, open it up to anyone searching on the internet.  Start out small with a few hundred keywords that are well organized because there is a lot of competition already for typical words.  Use the 10% off promotion in the text ad copy and have at it.  If you don't have enough dollars for a national campaign, geo target it.
2. Google Content - If possible I'd like to have some standard banner ads with the promotion, but if not that's ok just use your text ads.  Go into Google and search for sites that specialize in model trains and pick the ones you want to run on or if that's too expensive go off the keywords.
3. Blog Advertising - Now you can try going to BlogAds looking for hobbyist sites and then run some ads on it or you can try searching blogs on Google or Technorati (you remember that) and contact the blog owners to see if they'd write a post for you.  Or you could leave comments on a blogs, but before I'd do that I'd send a note to the blog owner so they realize you aren't spamming their comments.
4. The Website - The site does pretty much what you need it to do including offering eCommerce.  It does everything except give people reasons to continue to check back in often.  So what can you do?  Let's assume you don't have enough time for a blog, but how about video?  Grab a cam corder and create your own track layouts.  How about how to clean cars?  You could simply record a conversation with customers.  The content is endless and other than editing and figuring out your "video show" it will cost nothing.  Start a channel on YouTube and start promoting your store and promotions.  This will help you generate traffic to your eCommerce site.  You could host the videos on your site or just link to your YouTube channel.

That's it for now.  Happy train collecting.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

links for 2008-05-05

• Townhall.com::Blog
  (tags: mccain vp romney jindal)

So Microsoft Didn't Get Yahoo For Now

Yes you woke up this morning and you can read all of the reports and blog posts on Microsoft removing its bid for Yahoo.  Me?  I still think it will get done, but based on my own personal observations, I think Microsoft should take a long hard look at why they want Yahoo so badly.  I've never been in mergers or acquisitions and I'm sure the folks at Microsoft who are/were running the deal are highly paid and very experienced individuals, but here's why I believe Microsoft should be happy about the deal breaking up.

1. I don't believe the online advertising world is as simple as buy up your competition and Yahoo's ad revenue become Microsoft's ad revenue.  All buyers today know about both companies and make decisions based on audience, content, and price.  The audiences are different and buyers know this.  How much of Yahoo's ad revenue Microsoft would have kept was probably the biggest factor in Microsoft's bid.
2. This isn't like TV in the 70s where there are only a few channels.  Today's online advertising marketplace is very splintered with social networking, blogs, portals, and other sites vying for your time.  Sure a few publishers dominate the top of the pyramid, but there are large audience duplication rates and experience media buyers know this.  Simply buying one of the top 3 properties doesn't mean you are buying up a specific audience.  However, this strategy does work from a search perspective and how much of that revenue Microsoft would keep was probably factor #2 in the bid.
3. Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and Google all have a different look and feel and people choose these sites to frequent for various reasons.  Google pretty much makes a living indexing and aggregating the information for you in a simple fashion.  The other sites make a living arranging the information, cutting deals with content generators, and sometimes making the content themselves.  People go to different sites for whatever their reasons are and Microsoft probably would have kept some of that unique Yahoo traffic, but how long would have Microsoft kept the Yahoo properties and would they continue over the long haul to invest in it?  My guess is - not very long.
4. So after looking at advertisers, audiences, and content what assets do you have left?  Employees and that is where this deal probably was meant to never get closed.  I have friends at both companies and while I'm sure quite a number of them could work in either organization for the most part there is huge culture clash.  Just visit the NYC offices of Google, Yahoo, and MSN and you'll see what I mean.  Google looks like a huge frat house with gourmet food, Yahoo like a college dorm, and Microsoft, well it looks like a Government office building.  The people who made Yahoo an internet destination and are making changes to their platform are people that I just don't see being willing acquisition pawns.  And, without Yahoo's staff who helped create the content and look and feel, the Yahoo brand would have just whithered away which would have killed the audience and advertising revenues.  When I don't know but you get the idea.

Point #4 is probably the biggest reason why Microsoft should be happy the deal didn't get done.  The rule of thumb in acquisitions is that the vast majority of employees from the acquired company don't stay.  However, unlike a lot of other acquisitions (like E*Trade's acquisition of Harrisdirect) it is/was Yahoo's staff that built their presence and continues to make changes to their platform to keep it fresh.  Unlike other businesses, in the internet if you don't continue to invest in your product people will leave and find the newest site (Overture losing out to Google).  The Yahoos who made/make those changes are probably people who wouldn't have stayed past a retention bonus that Microsoft was nervous to pay out on.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Go See Iron Man

You long time blog readers know that I am a comic book fan.  I own almost every Amazing Spider-man comic book printed and as I tell my son I am a walking encyclopedia of comic books.  So Jacob, one of my best friends Jim, and I went to see Iron Man yesterday at 7:15 PM.  Now, I won't give you a big professional review, but let me tell you why I liked the movie besides the acting, music, CGI, and etc.

1. It stayed true to the comic books.  Sure Vietnam was replaced by the Middle East, but the story line was very similar.
2. Every character truly came to life just like Stan Lee's comic books.  Pepper the professional assistant who really has a crush on Tony, Happy Hogan in the background, Rhodes, and Stane.
3. Pepper was especially great starting out as the plain Jane, capable assistant but turning into the sexy, smart assistant Stark knows that she is (why else has he kept her around).
4. There were hints about possible upcoming movie tie in.  Rhodes (in the comic books) gets to wear a set of armor (War Machine), Shield and Nick Fury, Avengers, and really one thing that is a story line from recent books; Tony Stark's ties to the Government.
5. Hints of Stark's alcoholism.
6. Obadiah Stane's as the turn coat and real back stabber.  As I recall that happened around Iron Man #200 (for you novices Iron Man #1 is not the first appearance of Iron Man; that is is Tales of Suspense #39).
7. Robert Downey Jr. perfectly plays Stark as the playboy, brilliant inventor.

I put this film right up there with Spider-Man #1 and #2 which is saying a lot since Spidey is the comic book I collect the most.  Unlike Spider-man #3 which drifted too far from the comic book (Sandman involved with Uncle Ben's shooting, etc) Iron Man delivers in a huge way.  I think I'll go to see it again.

BTW - I wonder how much Burger King paid for the awesome product placement in the movie?  When Stark is brought home he wants an American burger before his press conference and the burger he eats is from Burger King.

My only wish for Marvel is to always remember when making movies - STAN LEE is a GENIUS.  DO NOT TRY AND DRIFT AWAY FROM HIS STORY LINES.  Just update them.  Some things are just better as the original.  Stan Lee the inventor of these stories really is a genius. 

Excelsior,

Eric Frenchman

links for 2008-04-30

• "Roulette" opens the Greensboro show - NJ.com: Bruce Blog
  Now That's a Show!
  (tags: springsteen)

Old School Facelift #7 - The Valley Shepherd Creamery

On Saturday May 3rd The Valley Shepherd Creamery is having their Annual Sheep Shearing event and I started thinking about how they might use the web to drive more traffic to it.  Now I'm not 100% sure they need to because last year's event drew so many people and cars that it took about 10 minutes to get down the mountain into town.  However, assuming they could still use more traffic....

Old School Facelift #7 Driving Attendance to Valley Shepherd Creamery's Event

1. Google Paid Click Ads:  Yes a lot of my old school facelifts start here, but what the heck?  It works, it is cheap, and you can zipcode target it with a mileage criteria.  Now The Valley Shepherd Creamery has a website and searches around artisan cheeses, nj brings them up #1 so their web designer actually knew what they were doing.  However, people searching for a term like that actually know what they are looking for, but probably forgot the name.  Cheese, NJ has them further down the page  as does sheep shearing, nj.    Perhaps in order to push even more traffic through they should buy NJ event words, NJ words, weather, and etc to capture people who are looking for something to do this weekend besides the obvious sheep, cheese words.  Plus, they should be zipcode targeted with a 75 mile radius to capture as much traffic as possible.
2. Photo or video strategy:  This tactic will generate a lot of cheap buzz for them.  Try posting videos of last year's sheep shearing festivals on YouTube or photos from Flickr.    There are not a ton of video on YouTube for sheep shearing, but some interesting videos could get huge views as could pictures on Flickr.  Also, try encouraging visitors to load up their own videos on a new YouTube channel or Flickr page to generate more buzz.
3. An Artisan Cheese Blog: I'm sure people would love to know how you care for sheep, make cheese, food pairings, maintain a cave, and etc.  Instead of posting static content on the site, how about a weekly blog so people want to visit back to the site.  While it may not be able to help with this year's traffic, but having a regularly updated blog will encourage your customers to visit back often and you will have the search engines visiting your page more frequently.
4. Social Networks:   OK, so you can join a local network and post about the event or better yet find some of the best social networkers in town or  in your targeted area and politely ask them to pimp the NJ event for you with a post to their friends and family.  See what NJ.com, The Daily Record sites have for you in the way of local content and message boards.

That's about it for now on cost effective tactics that The Valley Shepherd Creamery can employ.  Sure, they could try some do it yourself banner ads and run them across geo-targeted ad networks, but that still costs some money.  If you need something great to do on Saturday May 3 in NJ, I hope to see you at the Sheep Shearing Festival.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric