A do-not-track option, if implemented will allow users to decide whether they want advertisers to track their online activities for the purpose of future behaviour-targeted advertising or not.

Google Privacy Centre already offers an opt-out option, but it’s not directly accessible from the ad pages. Instead, users must proactively search for it.

The FTC has been asking advertisers to implement such a scheme on a voluntary basis since 2008. While there have been some discussions on the issue, nothing concrete has been done so far. The Federal Trade Commission therefore feels that it is time to take the matter into their own hands, and implement a law that would require advertisers provide such an option in the interest of safe-guarding user privacy.

According to the FTC proposal, the do-not-track mechanism would have to be in the form of a permanent setting that shows on the browser, informing users that the ad they are watching is being tracked. Users could then choose to opt-out of being tracked, if they so desire.

Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC believes that there will be a substantial rise in the number of privacy related lawsuits if such a system is not put in place soon. The U.S. government report states that “To be effective, there must be an enforceable requirement that sites honor those choices.” It goes on to state that “industry efforts to address privacy through self regulation have been too slow, and up to now have failed to provide adequate and meaningful protection.”

In short, the report lays stress on the fact that users should have the choice to decide who can collect their data, what data can be collected and where it can be used.

However, several sources have expressed reservations about the implementation of a do-not-track option, as it could affect the functioning of the Internet. It should be remembered that a ‘free’ Internet is largely dependent on the financial support provided by advertising. If advertisers are unable to reach their target audience, and hence unable to make some money, the economy of the Internet could be badly affected.

While most people agree that users should have a choice, and their privacy should be respected, it is strongly felt by some that the system should not be made compulsory. Advertisers should be allowed to use self-regulatory measures to go about this issue.

Would you opt out?

If you had the option, would you opt out of having your online activity tracked? Let us know by voting on our Facebook poll at:

http://apps.facebook.com/opinionpolls/index.php?pid=1292242071

One of the largest U.S. retailers, Target, has already made use of Twitter’s Promoted Trends service to advertise their deals. Other large department stores such as BestBuy and Walmart are making use of Twitter to tweet about deals.

BestBuy, a popular electronic equipment retailer has the largest number of followers on Twitter among all the retailers. Kate Kaye from Clickz reports that BestBuy posted 70 tweets on the 26th of November (Black Friday) highlighting the various deals they were offering clients. They also posted their Cyber Monday deals on Sunday itself to entice buyers earlier. This is an interesting move, as reports from comScore suggest that Cyber Monday was the second largest spending day last year, with sales of $887 million taking place on that day alone.

$1 Billion Sales Record

This year too, an estimated 88% of U.S. online retailers took part in Cyber Monday sales and some of them even offered week-long deals. The efforts seem to have paid off well, as comScore reports that Cyber Monday sales for this year hit an all-time record, surpassing the $1 Billion mark!

Among other retailers, Walmart, which has over 90,000 followers on Twitter had 49 posts on Black Friday, with several deals being offered. Home Depot also had 41 posts fro Black Friday advertising items ranging from ornaments and tiles to appliances. Other U.S. retailers who made use of Twitter for Black Friday included Staples, Sears, Macy’s, Lowe’s, J C Penney and Kohl’s.

Kohl’s promotes shopping deals on their Twitter account

Target is believed to have spent thousands of dollars to sponsor their Promoted Tweets a week before Black Friday.

These figures indicate that Twitter in particular, and social media in general, are becoming extremely popular advertising channels and small businesses should also start taking advantage of them in order to reach a larger audience.

Display ad on Image Search

Google Image Search was redesigned a few months ago. At that time, they introduced a new ad format called Image Search Ads. This format included a thumbnail image accompanying a basic text ad. The feature has performed well and advertisers have reported satisfactory results. Users of the feature also have reason to be happy as the search results to their queries are accompanied by relevant commercial content.

In order to extend this service further, Google has now expanded the image ads format. Advertisers will now be able to reach a larger audience with engaging ads that would help to create both brand awareness as well as improve sales.

Display ads on Google Image Search will work in the same manner as they do elsewhere on the Google Display Network. Depending on the search being conducted, “relevant” display ads will be shown to users.

To start using this facility, advertisers have to use the AdWords Placement Targeting Tool to target Google Images and then select the category of searches on which they would like to advertise. Advertisers can either upload their own leaderboard ads (sized 728 x 90 pixels) or create new ones with the help of Google’s ad builder.

According to comScore, the average Internet user in the U.S. has seen about 6,000 display ads in the third quarter of 2010 alone. This new feature will add a significant volume of ad impressions to that number. Advertisers won’t mind, though, as it will help them reach a new potential audience.

At present, display ads on Google Images are shown only on a few queries in the U.S. and U.K. but the service will be expanded in due course.

The new feature, called AdWords Call Metrics, is a combination of Google Voice and AdWords. At its core, the service is an integrated call tracking facility for AdWords campaigns.

With this feature, a unique telephone number is assigned to each online ad campaign targeting desktop computers as well as on smartphone devices. Ads will be displayed along with this telephone number.

AdWords ad with Call Metrics number

When users calls on that telephone number, they are automatically transferred to the advertiser’s business and the call is recorded by AdWords.

During the initial beta testing of this feature, advertisers found that they could track a significant percentage of calls that translated into a purchase, which would otherwise not have been attributed to sales originating through AdWords ads.

At present, the AdWords records of these calls will only provide the number of calls received and the duration of these calls. The caller’s area code will also start being reporting in due course of time. These details will help advertisers further optimise their ad campaigns with a more accurate measure of ROI.

AdWords- reporting Call Metrics for campaigns

At present this call metrics feature will be free, but in future, it will be chargeable. The exact extent of benefit of this feature to the advertiser can be judged only after the charges for this feature have been finalised.

Although this call tracking service has only just been introduced by Google, similar facilities are already available through a number of other companies.

AdWords Call Metrics is currently available only to a few advertisers in the U.S. and it will be some months before it is available to all advertisers.

The study was conducted between July 2009 and March 2010, and analysed 103 campaigns under 39 advertisers and covered 7 industries.

The different forms of online display ad targeting methodologies studied were:

• Audience targeting – based on the users past interest and interactions on the internet
• Contextual targeting – Ads related to page content
• Efficiency pricing – Click-Per-Cost engagement
• Premium pricing – High visibility placements on premium publishers
• Retargeting – To users who have already visited the advertisers site before
• Run-of-Network (RON) – Ads appearing anywhere in the network.

Comparison of brand lift for various targeting strategies

Each of these strategies has its own pros and cons, and marketers require accurate information in order to judge the performance of each strategy and optimise the ad campaign.

The average reach and cost of each strategy was compared to the baseline run-of-network strategy.

While retargeting had the highest lift (1046%), by a very wide margin, and it has moderate costs, it has low relative reach.

Audience targeting also has moderate costs with a good degree of brand lift but it also has low reach.

On the other hand, premium and contextual strategies are both very expensive. While premium strategies have a high average lift (300%) their reach is very low, and contextual ads have a lower lift but higher reach.

Run-of-network and efficiency based ads are both low cost with fairly high reach but show low brand lift (126% and 100% respectively).

The study has, however, found that when different placement strategies are used concurrently, they generated a better overall performance than any individual method.

According to YouTube officials, advertisers have requested the addition of such a feature often. This feature is almost the reverse of the above feature, as it will allow advertisers to decide which videos or channels their ads should not be shown on.

This new feature will help advertisers to better target their ad campaigns to a select audience, thus giving them better value for money through a higher Click-through rate.

YouTube senior product manager Baljeet Singh says this feature will give more control to advertisers by allowing them to decide which videos and channels their ad should not appear on.

In the past advertisers had to depend on YouTube’s own marketing services to decide which ad should be shown at which juncture.

For instance if someone is advertising a vegan product, they would obviously not like to show their ad on a TV show or channel which concentrates mostly on meat products.

Even is the advertiser feels that a certain type of audience is inappropriate for his product, thus giving him a low conversion rate, he can optimize the campaign to suit his requirements.

One of the reasons for the irritation is the fact that more often than not, the ad is of absolutely no relevance or interest to the user, and the user then feels that being forced to watch it is a waste of time.

A few companies have now decided to try and rectify the situation by offering users a choice. Users on certain websites will now be able to select the ad they would prefer to watch from a choice of 3 or more ads, thus letting them see the ad that they have decided would be most interesting to them at that point in time.

While helping users, this option also has the added advantage of being beneficial to advertisers. Agencies and brands will improve their consumer targeting, thus increasing the possibility of making a sale, which is the ultimate bottom-line for a marketer.

The new tool that facilitates such ad delivery is called ASq. It will be functional by next month.

Microsoft, Yahoo!, Hulu, CBS and AOL have already decided to use ASq, while others such as YouTube are still weighing the pros and cons.

ASq’s new concept in video advertising is appreciated by most. However, there are those who disagree with the concept. Richard Wheaton of Ogilvy & Mather believes that unless users get to know about certain products and services, they would never be able to make use of them. ASq will restrict the exposure of such products from users, thus defeating the very purpose of advertising.

On the other hand, Uyenco Shatto, global research director at Microsoft Advertising says, “We’re getting smarter about what makes more impactful advertising. The big ‘aha’ here is understanding what makes a viewer choose a particular ad.”

ASq is expected to further improve the market value of the global video ad market, which is already $3.1 billion. The global video ad spend which was $2.2 billion in 2009 is expected to go up to $11.3 billion by 2014.

In keeping with the basic concept of Skype, which has always been to allow users to make phone calls at no or minimal costs, this new service will allow users to call advertisers for free. The advertisers in turn will also be charged at very nominal rates.

The service has been called Click & Call Advertising With Skype.

Advertisers who choose to use the service will get their phone number highlighted wherever it is displayed online, with a blue button, saying “Free Call”.

A Click & Call ad from Skype

If any user clicks on the button, the Skype software is activated and the user is automatically connected to the advertiser for free. The new service is based on technology by Marchex.

Skype’s Director of Advertising, Andy Sims says, “Working together with Marchex, our objective for Click & Call Advertising with Skype supported by Marchex is to deliver a performance advertising tool that turns the Web surfing behavior of Skype users into calls to advertisers.”

Marchex COO Pete Christothoulou says, “Today, we are seeing a shift in the way consumers find phone numbers, the way they place calls and how those calls are paid for. As a result, coupling Skype’s reach with Marchex’s call advertising technology, sales team and service, we believe we can offer a high quality solution to large and small advertisers.”

These sentiments were expressed by Google’s Chief Financial Officer, Patrick Pichette recently, while replying to a question from a financial analyst during the company’s second quarter earnings call on the 16th of July.

He said, “Android] is not a huge resource investment, but it’s a formidable return in that what you have is the entire ecosystem exploding.”

While Apple is obviously minting money through the sale of iPhones (the new iPhone reportedly sold 3 million pieces in just three weeks) Google is doing so through the sale of mobile ads on the iPhone.

Other phone makers are also using the Android open source operating system to make new Android devices.

Search has reportedly grown by 300% in the first half of this year, according to Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President of Product Management at Google. He says that the most popular app on the Android devices is a browser through which users search for products and ads thus helping Google to earn more money.

Businesses have been known to use the names of their competitors to advertise through AdWords, and some companies have taken quite a strong exception to this practice and have gone to court to appeal against it, and prevent Google from selling their brand name as a keyword.

Earlier, this month, Europe’s Court of Justice the highest legal authority in Europe has ruled in favour of Google in one such case.

The specific case being referred to was between two competitors who made temporary or portable cabins. The names of the companies concerned are PortaKabin and Primakabin respectively. Primakabin was using the words, Portakabin, Portacabin, Portokabin and Portocabin among its keywords to advertise on Google.

The competitor Portakabin has objected to this.

The judges have finally ruled that, companies, using the names of competitors as Internet Advertising keywords, is not an infringement of Trademark laws in the European Union.

This judgment will be a big victory for Google as it will indirectly boost the revenue they can generate through advertising.

This judgment also upholds another ruling passed earlier in a similar case between Louis Vuitton and Google. The court maintains that as long as the internet service provider is neutral about the content they display, there is no infringement of trademark laws.

The French Supreme Court where the case between Google and Louis Vuitton was first heard, has also sided with the ruling given by the European court according to sources from Google.

Sources from Louis Vuitton however, have claimed that the French Court has held Google ‘liable for the sale of trademarks as AdWords on the grounds of civil liability.’

Clearly it looks as though there will be some more debating required in such cases.

One of these trials was conducted in the U.S. and the other was conducted in Finland. The trials were conducted on NAVTEQ’s LocationPoint advertising network, and both trials have yielded positive results.

The LocationPoint service can pinpoint the exact location of a user and based on this information, NAVTEQ can deliver relevant ads to consumers about establishments in that vicinity. When customers click on an ad, they are given detailed instructions on how to reach the advertiser‘s nearest location.

Location-Specific Ads Promoting McDonald’s

The average click through rate for the month-long U.S.-based trial was 2.49%, which is about 13 times more than the average click through rate of 0.19% for online banner ads. Of the people who clicked on the ad, 39% asked for further information to actually reach the advertiser’s establishment.

Similarly, the trial conducted in Finland, for McDonald’s fast food joints, received a clickthrough rate of 7%, followed by 39% of those users requesting further directions to reach the venue. The ad campaign promoted a McDonald’s cheese burger for 1 euro, which provided a suitable incentive for many users to react to the ad.

These trials indicate that the right sort of location-targeted advertising can be an effective sales tool to convert a potential market into actual clients. It also helps build the case for mobile local ads.

According to Chris Rothey, Vice President of NAVTEQ Media Solutions, “Location is the new demographic. It’s no longer just about age, gender, and socio-economics, but about reaching mobile users who are in a geographic position to buy. These findings show the power of LPA in helping advertisers find location-relevant consumers and guide those consumers into stores.”

Several well known brands such as Kraft Foods, Unilever, Heinz etc. have started contests, wherein, their users are asked to provide suggestions for the names of certain products and also to give an idea for an ad.

Unfortunately, most of the ideas received and accepted by the concerned brands have not yielded very favourable reviews. In fact, most of the ads can be described as ranging from being unintentionally funny to being downright lacklustre.

San Diego based brand strategist, Denise Lee Yohn says, “It’s almost like a parody, and it’s being treated like a game. That’s definitely affecting the quality of what we’re seeing.” According to her such campaigns lack authenticity and may even result in a backlash against the brand.

Jackie Huba, co-author of a book called Citizen Marketer says that marketers should instead lay much more stress on word-of-mouth publicity. These contests are losing their novelty factor now.

While it is certainly true that the public in general may provide some very good ideas for an ad, it is up to the brand concerned to exercise some caution while selecting and displaying only those ads which could be classified as intelligent or inspiring.

In fact “contextual” has become the new buzz word for online advertising. It would be a good idea for brands to to gain popularity by concentrating on making ads that would seem contextual to the user.

Apart from concentrating on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, advertisers should also pay attention to other sources such as StumbleUpon to reach the maximum number of users. And, they should also pay more attention to building links for organic search rankings and referral traffic.

Facebook has, for the first time, overtaken Yahoo! and Microsoft in delivering display ads in the U.S. They served 176.3 billion display ads on their website in the first quarter of this year, which accounts for 16.2% of the total display ad impressions delivered to U.S. home, work and university locations.

The world’s largest social network, Facebook, has grown by 52% between the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010. During the last quarter of 2009 they showed 115 billion ads, compared to the current 176.3 billion.

Yahoo! on the other hand, has actually dropped from serving 140 billion ad impressions to 132 billion during the same period. Microsoft served 60.2 billion impressions in Q1 2010.

While the numbers indicate that Facebook is now far ahead of Yahoo! and Microsoft in serving display ads, the figures do not take into consideration the number of ads that Yahoo! and Microsoft display on other websites, which accounts for a large portion of the revenue they generate through advertising.

Also, display ads counted here only include static and rich media ads. The numbers exclude video ads, house ads and very small ads less than 2,500 square pixels in dimension.

Moreover, while Facebook may have the volumes, the actual revenues earned by Yahoo! and Microsoft through advertising on their Web properties are much higher.

Last year, Facebook generated $ 500 million from advertising and expects to earn $1 billion this year. In contrast, Yahoo! earned $6.5 billion last year and Microsoft earned $3 billion.

In spite of being far behind in terms of revenue generated, Facebook’s growth is worth noting, as the number of people on Facebook continues to grow and users continue to spend more and more time on the social network. It will most likely be just a matter of time before they establish a more effective way to monetise all this traffic.

Brands such as Verizon, Toyota and Ford were among the top advertisers on Facebook this year, but were nowhere on the list of top 25 advertisers on Facebook last year. This indicates that Facebook is becoming an important platform for advertising, and marketers are probably diverting their ad spend from other sites towards Facebook.

Reports from Nielsen corroborate Facebook’s growth in display advertising – they found that Facebook’s share in the U.S. display advertising market grew from 2% in April 2009 to 20% in April 2010. However, according to Nielsen, Yahoo! is still the U.S. display market leader with 34% share of the market in April 2010.

When Google launched the Nexus One some time ago in the U.S.A; they had started by selling it directly online without a tie-up with any particular mobile service provider.

Shortly after launching the product, they started receiving a large number of complaints regarding the customer care and after-sales services, which were not geared for the sudden onslaught of queries that they received.

A desire to avoid any recurrence of such an event could be part of the reason they have decided to go through a service provider this time around.

In U.K; the Nexus One will be available through the high street Vodafone stores, online through the Vodafone store and on the phone through Vodafone’s sales phone line.

Google will continue to sell the phone directly online. However, it will remain priced in US$, will be shipped without a SIM card or 3-pin electrical plug and pay international shipping charges and VAT on importing, all of which could amount to an additional $144.55.

Vodafone will offer the phone free to users with a standard price plan of £35/month with a minimum 2-year contract, which is not a very good deal.

The phone is available directly from Google for £439.28 (including shipping, adapter and import VAT). Vodafone’s contract, on the other hand amounts to £840 in addition to the inconvenience of being tied in to one provider for two years.

Vodafone contract users might be thrilled to have this new handset added. However, many users will be put off by the idea of a long term network tie-in with Vodafone, and might instead choose one of the many other smartphones now available on the other networks.

Google Nexus One sold via Vodafone online store

All this while, Twitter has insisted that they do not want to use their site as a regular advertising platform. They have now come up with a plan that they believe will allow them to make some money while keeping their users’ priorities in mind and also letting Twitter continue to be a free service.

Promoted Tweets will be ordinary tweets that businesses would like to highlight to a wide group of users.

The Promoted Tweets will be placed at the top of certain search results pages on Twitter.com and Twitter promises that each such tweet will be completely relevant to the search being conducted. Moreover, each search results page will feature only one Promoted Tweet, which will be clearly labeled as “Promoted”.

Since this is a new service, Twitter will be on the lookout to see how it is received by their audience. If they find that a particular tweet has not found favour with users, or in other words, if it does not receive Retweets or replies and is not marked as a favourite, then it will be removed from the search results page.

Twitter founder, Biz Stone says, “We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.”

While most users seem to agree that it is high time Twitter started monetising itself without charging users, initial feedback shows that users want Promoted Tweets to be clearly labeled and relevant.

This new feature will allow advertisers to reach visitors that had already shown an interest in their product, service or brand by accessing their ad or website in the past, but did not proceed to actually make a transaction or purchase.

This service is not the same as retargeting, as it does not require any data from Google.com.

To make use of remarketing, the advertisers can tag pages and use cookies to identify a visitor or a category of users who can later be shown an ad or offer, based on their interests.

Google AdWords explains this system, by giving an example of a basketball team wanting to sell tickets. By putting a code on the tickets page, they can later show relevant ads to all visitors to their site. The relevant ad could be in the form of discounted tickets or could be an offer for VIP hospitality or team merchandise and so on.

Even though, in essence, this new feature uses behavioural targeting to show ads to users, Google has chosen to call it “Remarketing” rather than simply “behavioural targeting” in order to avoid any controversy involving user privacy and the FTC.

Users can still opt out of personalised or behavioural targeting  via the Ad Preferences Manager. Alternatively, users can specify ad categories, which they would be interested in, on the Ad Preferences Manager.

The remarketing feature was run in a limited beta test for the past one year. It has now been opened up to all AdWords advertisers. It could be a very effective way for advertisers to reach consumers who showed an initial interest in their content, but stopped short of making a purchase.

Brand advertisers want to know whether they are getting their money’s worth, in terms of quality and quantity, where digital media is concerned.

It is a well established fact that the more time a user spends seeing an ad, the more he or she is likely to be influenced by it and if this user is actively engaged with that ad the perception of the brand concerned is usually found to be higher.

The time spent on an ad, multiplied by the rate at which it is actively engaged with is known as the dwell score. The dwell score thus provides a tangible source to measure the effectiveness of a brand and its online ad campaign.

Dwell Score = Time spent on ad x Rate of engagement

Research from other sources such as comScore corroborate the fact that a high dwell score indicates a higher number of branded search queries, more visits to the brand website and more engaged visitors.

Data also shows that click-through-rates are not very effective in measuring brand performance as consumers are likely to spend more meaningful time on an ad then to actually click on it. To better understand this subject, new systems are required to measure the time spent and engagement with an ad.

According to the findings of the MIA Project, 96% of marketers surveyed felt that these digital ad measurements and calculations should be clear and transparent, but only 29% felt that they were so at present. 96% of them also felt that there should be consistency in the terms of measurement, but again, only 23% of them were satisfied with the present state of affairs.

Read the full white paper: Being Greater With Data (PDF 627 KB)

The survey, which was conducted in Oct – Nov 2009by by Creston plc, found that 80% of the respondents felt that social media does not have any impact on their brands at the current moment.

Surprisingly, it was also found that so far, almost two-thirds of marketers surveyed had no plans to introduce social media into their marketing strategy.

Only 14% of those interviewed, agreed that social media has an important role to play in marketing at present, and affects their brand reputation. The same attitude to social media was also seen with respect to product development and gaining new customers.

Two-thirds of those surveyed also felt that their company’s board of directors did not understand social media, and 88% said the board chooses not to support social media mfarketing efforts.

While a third of the marketers felt that they should take the lead regarding social media, others were not clear about who should lead.

Surprisingly, though, 88% believe that it will have an effect on their business in future. 71% believe it will affect market share. 79% believe it will affect customer retention and acquisition and 70% believe it will last in the long run and is not just a passing fad.

Don Elgie, CEO of Creston plc said, “80% of UK’s online population are now using social media, and the concern is that many marketing professionals are ignoring the impact social media activity could have right now on both their business and their own careers.

187 million users are the equivalent of 91% of the total U.S. Internet audience. AOL’s reach reportedly grew by 8% compared to the same month in 2008.

Yahoo! Network, which reaches 180.9 million U.S. users, was ranked second place and grew by 9% in the same period. The Google Ad Network occupied the third place with a reach of 178.1 million U.S. Internet users, and grew by 13% in that period.

Microsoft Media Network has turned out to be the fastest growing ad network, with a growth of 31% compared to the same month one year ago. Collective Network, which grew by 22%, was the second fastest grower and Audience Science, which grew by 16%, was placed third in that category.

According to comScore senior Vice President, Jeff Hackett, “Ad networks continue to be a powerful mechanism for delivering a large audience online with eight different networks reaching 75% of the entire U.S. online population.” Hackett believes that in 2010 ad-networks will continue to innovate and perform well.

Top 10 US ad networks ranked by total unique visitors in December 2009

This information was revealed to Rory Maher a research analyst with TBI by sources close to Facebook. According to eMarketer, Facebook has become “the premier destination for marketers who are using social media.

A major factor in this super success of Facebook is the fact that they have concentrated on building ad technology, and this has let Facebook leap ahead of its rivals like MySpace in a relatively short time.

Due to the up-to-date technology which they offer, Facebook is able to charge its advertisers at premium rates. Facebook’s rate card shows that they charge $20 per CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) which is much higher than what most other social sites are able to charge. Facebook has also set a minimum spend limit of $50,000 for agencies.
Facebook also offers a CPC (Cost per click) basis service which ranges from $0.15 to $1.10 per click depending on the product being advertised.

They have also greatly increased the use of their self-serve advertising platform. Another important reason for their sudden growth is the fact that their audience has now crossed the 350 million mark worldwide.

Facebook also allows their advertisers to target their audience in a very precise manner, using any number of criteria they want.

Facebook also forms a very crucial part of every viral campaign. Advertisers are allowed to create fan pages, or connect to Facebook Connect, thus notifying all the contacts of Facebook users about the products they are advertising.

Facebook has also recently struck a deal with Microsoft, to incorporate their feeds into the search results on Bing.
All this indicates that Facebook is likely to continue growing next year as well.

Ikea came up with an innovative and yet extremely simple way to use the popular social network, Facebook, to promote their new store in the town of Malmo, Sweden.

While using a social network to promote a product or brand is nothing new, the way they have done it is commendable, simply because the idea is so simple and inexpensive.

Forsman and Bodenfors, Ikea’s marketing agency created a profile on Facebook for the manager of the new store, Mr. Gordon Gustavsson, and then they uploaded pictures of several pieces of furniture in the store in his photo album.

Facebook users were then informed that the first person to tag their name to any piece of furniture in any of the pictures could take that article home for free!

The brilliance of this simple campaign lies in its intrinsically viral nature – when someone tags themselves on a photograph, all of their friends see the photograph, and therefore find out about the campaign. These friends then try to find a piece of furniture to tag themselves by going through the other photos in the album.

Certainly not wanting to lose out on a good opportunity, Facebook users started flocking to the profile at a feverish pace, as word of this campaign got around to more and more friends via the profiles page and Facebook news feeds. In fact users have been asking Ikea to upload more and more pictures so they can get some more freebies.

Ikea is, of course, enjoying all the publicity that is being generated for their store as a result of this campaign.

Go Mobile! provides tips to help marketers realise how best to reach their mobile clients. Google aims to make the site helpful to both new comers to the mobile marketing as well as to experienced marketers.

At present, the Go Mobile! site merely provide a one-page write-up with tips on mobile marketing, as follows:

Mobilise your website – if pages are specifically formatted for the mobile browsers, it becomes easier and faster for the user to see the highlights of the products or services being offered, thus saving the user’s time and improving the chances of making a sale.

Know your place – instead of asking the user for his location, make use of information from the mobile browser, or use Google Maps or other applications to know the customer’s location, thus impressing customers and providing more locally relevant information.

Offer ways to engage at any time – Since the mobile handset is always with the user, the marketer can engage them by providing a QR code or a phone number on a bus, for example, or by creating a downloadable mobile game to reinforce the brand.

Help customers spread the word – Encourage users to take part in events and ad campaigns etc. by sending MMS, IM, email etc to their friends.

Help them find you – make use of the ad products which Google offers to place relevant ads alongside the mobile search results when a customer is looking for something.

These basic steps are more common-sense than strategy, but could help marketers focus their mobile marketing initiatives more effectively.

Google Go Mobile!

Display ads have long been an important tool used by marketers to influence users and to create brand awareness. This new tool from Google will now enable marketers to measure the effect a particular ad on their target audience, even if it is not immediately clicked upon after viewing.

The new service will be able to measure the number of conversions that occur within 30 days from the date of viewing, even if no click was recorded at the time of viewing.

If a user sees an ad on a given site without clicking on it, but later visits the ad site within the next 30 days and converts into a lead or sale, this conversion will be reported in the AdWords campaign tab.

This facility will also allow marketers to better compare the performance of their ads on the Google Content Network, vis-à-vis its performance on any other content network. Marketers can then decide for themselves, which is the best place to advertise and thus get the best value for the money they spend on advertising.

To make use of this service, marketers will need to ensure AdWords conversion tracking works for their accounts. Google Analytics goals are not compatible with View-through Conversion reporting, and this service is not available for search campaigns and for text creatives.

The new service being provided will be called Nielsen BrandLift.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook says, “Nielsen is the leader in measurement and is an excellent partner for us as we look to provide marketers with richer ad effective data”.

BrandLift will make use of opt-in polls on the Facebook homepage. The poll will help marketers to understand the opinion users have of a particular brand and thus the likelihood of purchase intent.

According to John Burbank, the CEO of Nielsen’s online division, Facebook has now become a vital link between consumers and brands, and with this partnership Nielsen will be able to add tot heir knowledge of media measurement. He further says, “we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how web content and online advertising affect consumer behavior.”

This survey will help marketers to receive better market data and it will be made available to them sooner which is a great plus point for them.

Facebook will take care to see that individual users are not flooded with too many polls at once. Also no personal identification will be gathered through this poll, thus maintaining user privacy, which should please users.

The survey will consist of two questions put forward to consumers in standard ad positions. The survey will help advertisers to measure brand awareness, ad recall, message association, brand favorability and purchase consideration.

The service has already been used by a few brands such as Proctor & Gambol, and Sony Pictures on a trial basis. They have reported encouraging findings.

The service will be made available to all marketers in due course.

Several advertisers have admitted that of late, the results they get from advertising on Facebook are better than those achieved from advertising on Google, and that is in spite of spending less on Facebook than on Google.

According to several advertisers and marketers, the response they have been getting from Facebook has improved substantially in the last 6 months, and due to this, more and more businesses are buying ad space on Facebook.

Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook, however, maintains that the advertising growth curve at Facebook has maintained a steady pace and there has been no sudden jump in the demand for ad space on their site. It is true, though, that the number of advertisers on Facebook has tripled over the last three years.

One important factor for this growth surge at Facebook is the ability of advertisers to find their target audiences accurately from the profile data available about Facebook users. Facebook has always been very strict about users using real names and information on the site, and has often deleted profiles that posted false information. As a result, demographic data on Facebook is more reliable than on other networks.

When a Facebook user likes a product they are likely to recommend it to most of their friends, who are already on Facebook. This feature has certainly attracted a lot of marketers to Facebook.

While Google has not commented on this topic, Facebook has announced that they have logged annual sales to the tune of $500 million. Coupled with Facebook’s fast growing user base, it may only be just a matter of time before the social networking leader out performs Google on the advertising front.

comScore and DunnHumby recently conducted a study on the effects of online advertising versus television advertising, across 200,000 consumers, recording their behaviour through the use of supermarket loyalty cards.

Their research showed that the boost given by online advertising to offline sales was not only higher but also faster than the boost provided by TV advertising.

The comparative study showed that the sales lift achieved by TV ads was 8% over a period of 12 months, while the lift from online ads was 9% over just 3 months. In parallel terms, the percentage of sales lift achieved through TV ads was 36% and that through online ads was 80%.

In 2008, Google had commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a study among 3 consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, in order to study the effects of traditional TV ads versus the effects of online platforms.

Accordingly, the study was carried out by running identical ads on TV, on a computer screen replicating a YouTube video environment, and on a computer screen replicating a click-to-play video embedded in the content. The results revealed that all the platforms were equally effective in the ability to convey their message about the brand and its strength, and thereby encourage users to go ahead and make a purchase.

While these findings should encourage marketers to shift their ad spend towards online advertising, TNS Media Intelligence has found that the ad spend for TV ads remains static at 58% since 2005, while ad spend on online ads has grown in 2009 from 2% to 4%. And that additional 2% has come through relocation of funds from radio and newspaper ads, but not from TV.

Gian Fulgoni, the executive chairman of comScore says, “these early results confirm the ability of online advertising to successfully build retail sales of CPG brands on par with the impact of television advertising. It is likely that the more precise targeting ability of the Internet – especially in terms of accurately reaching the desired demographic segment – is a key reason for its effectiveness.”

The above mentioned statement is only applicable to those online marketers who use the names or photographs of celebrities, to endorse their products without having taken the consent of the celebrities concerned.

While this has been a very common practice for a long time now, talk show host Oprah Winfrey has decided not to take this practise lying down anymore.

Mashable reports that Oprah, along with Dr. Mehmet Oz and The Illinois Attorney General’s office, has filed a lawsuit against over 50 marketers for using her name to promote their products without her consent.

The lawsuit filed by Attorney General Lisa Madigan, charges 3 suppliers and a local affiliate marketer of acai berry products, for misleading consumers, by offering free trials and then charging them through their credit cards, even before the trial product reaches them. The scammers also makes it very difficult to cancel the order or to stop payment.

The suppliers named in a press release by the Illinois Attorney General are Advanced Wellness Research, its successor Netalab and its former President Nicholas Molina, Crush LLC and its owner TMP Nevada Inc and Amirouche and Norton LLC and Larby Amirouche.

Reuters reports that a lawsuit has also been filed in New York for copyright and trademark infringement against about 50 companies for misusing names, pictures, voices or trademarks and leading consumers to believe that their products have been tested and recommended by Oprah and Dr. Oz, which is not the case at all.

Following the filing of the lawsuit, an online affiliate ad network Azoogle, sent an email to its members, warning them about the possible consequences of using celebrity names without permission.

These lawsuits might have the desired effect, in the short run, but unscrupulous marketers will always find ways to exploit the law unless more celebrities decide to take action against such marketers and bring more of them to justice for brand abuse.