This may be easier said than done, and among their biggest competitors in this effort is obviously Google.

While Facebook is essentially a social network it has been trying to incorporate search into social. On the other hand, Google which is basically a search engine has been working hard to get a foothold in social through their social network Google +.

Facebook certainly has a much larger user base than Google +. This could work in its favour as they will be able to attract more people to see their ads. However, certain features of Google +, are more attractive than those on Facebook.

While users of Facebook are mostly connected only to their friends due to the privacy settings of that network, it is easier to get in touch with a wide variety of people on Google +.

This kind of networking obviously leads to more stimulating and informative discussions, rather than the discussions on Facebook where people usually talk to each other about their day to day schedule or days events.

Also users can access many more sites such as Places, Maps and Navigation, YouTube and others through Google +.

Based on these observations one will have to wait and watch which social network will ultimately attract more advertisers and thus generate more revenue.

Facebook Premium

Experts had predicted this would happen when Facebook kick-started the process of filing their IPO. Mobile was identified as a point of risk and this new service is a step towards mitigating that risk and  generating as much revenue as possible.

The new service is called Premium.

Premium ads will be seen in the news feed of a user if for instance, a friend has ‘Liked’ the ad. In other words, only social ads in the form of sponsored stories will initially be placed in the main news feed.

Facebook Premium illustration. Image courtesy of Facebook.

Advertisers will be able to start using Premium in April. The announcement was made during a marketing conference held in the auditorium of Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday.

This is the first time that the mobile version of Facebook and its apps will be used as a source for revenue generation. However, Facebook will have to be careful with the way in which they offer this service as they will have to safeguard the user’s privacy while at the same time allowing advertisers to reach their target audience.

Reach Generator

Until now, marketers were allowed to use Facebook Pages as a free marketing tool. Premium ads will only appear in the news feed and the Facebook algorithm will determine whether or not an ad will appear in a particular user’s news feed.

Reach Generator takes news feed ads a step further. The service allows advertisers to pay Facebook on an ongoing basis, as opposed to a CPC or CPM basis, to sponsor one page post every day, and guarantees a 75% reach of the page’s fanbase over a month-long period.

The service is always on and advertisers don’t need to do anything other than generate interesting content once a day within less than 90 characters for their fans. Facebook guarantees that brands will reach a large percentage of their audience and estimates that the volume of engagement with the brand will double.

Unlike Premium Facebook advertising, the Reach Generator service will only be available to a limited group of qualifying advertisers. At present, qualification requirements have not been released, but are likely to consider advertiser budget and fan volumes.

Pages with Timeline

All Facebook Pages will be moved to the Timeline format, just like personal profiles, by 30 March 2012. The new format will allow pages to show richer content, create a history for the brand and engage directly with Fans via Likes, comments, shares and now even via direct messages.

One of the biggest criticisms of the timeline format for brand pages, however, is that it eliminates custom landing pages for brands, which were a very commonly used tool by most marketers. From April, users will always be taken to the main Facebook Page Wall and page  owners will not have the option to redirect users to any other tab.

Moreover, the cover image on the new profiles is not allowed to call out user actions such as Liking the page nor include any sales or contact information.

AccuraCast’s Facebook Page updated to timeline format

Level Playing Field?

In some ways, the new changes level the playing field for all advertisers and page owners. Brands will no longer be able to create doorway pages pushing users to Like the page. However, brands with deeper pockets will be able to pay their way for higher engagement.

Sponsored stories and social ads have shown better results on Facebook since they were launched. Now, these ads will become the norm, making the user experience better. However, ads will now show up in the main news feed, which is Facebook’s prime property. This alone is very likely to cause a severe backlash as users will most definitely protest the invasion of their personal feed by ads. Here too, brands with more resources will be able to post a lot more to the news feed and those who relied on the free promotion of news feed stories are likely to be quickly left out.

Over the last year or so tablet devices have been growing in popularity. A study conducted by Google found that 65% of users that have tablet devices use them for at least one hour a day. It was also found that these devices are used mostly for personal and fun purposes such as checking email, shopping, gaming and other such leisure activities.

91% of the time spent on tablet devices is for personal activities as opposed to desktops, which are used for work related activities and mobiles, which are carried everywhere and used mainly for local search and other related activities. As a result of this, the tablet devices are used mostly in the evening or night and are not usually carried everywhere.

In order to make the most of this growing popularity of tablet devices, Google also studied how users interact with ads on the tablets. The study showed that users expect the advertisements on tablets to be more interactive and interesting than ads shown on desktops and mobile phones.

Naturally, this is an opportunity Google won’t miss, as they are continuously trying to find new ways to woo big brands and win over more advertising money from traditional media via formats such as online video. The new ad formats introduce by Google are for search and display advertising on tablet devices and have a heavy emphasis on video and rich media.

Rich Media Designs for Mobile are basically rich media ad templates with in-built interactivity. This will make it easy for advertisers to create rich media ads for tablets by porting creative used on other display ad campaigns.

Google Media Ads for tablet search. Image courtesy of Google

On the search side, Google will take advantage of the interactive touch-screen of tablets test video ad placement directly onto the search results page. Google had tried similar video advertising on desktop search results pages in the past, but that experiment never took off from beta.

Media Ads, which will show on Google search pages on tablet devices, though, are more likely to succeed as tablet users are much more open to interactivity and the entertainment aspect of such a device and on the format will help advertisers to engage users in new ways as tablet devices continue to gain n popularity in the days to come.

The new version of StumbleUpon will make it easier for users to discover content on the Internet. This is the first time in almost a decade that StumbleUpon has gone in for major changes to their site.

StumbleUpon’s homepage now has a new design as well as anew logo. The earlier blue and green logo has been replaced by this orange and white one.

An Explore / search box on the top right hand corner of the homepage allows users to type a search term or select one from the drop-down menu that appears when typing to discover content related to that topic. These “Channels”, which are now emphasized a lot more on the new homepage allow users to focus on subjects of their interest rather than randomly stumbling across the web.

Redesigned StumbleUpon homepage listing Channels of interest

User profile pages have also been overhauled completely. The new profile layout once again focuses on content discovery, making it easier for visitors to a profile to view and stumble web pages that the user liked. Following users and making new connections is also a lot easier now with the new profile layout.

StumbleUpon user profile

One of the most important updates, though, is the change to the Stumble bar. The toolbar, which can be used with most modern browsers, is still the most popular way for users of the site to discover new content. It contains the same features as before along with a more obvious marker highlighting “Sponsored” stumbles via the Paid Discovery advertising platform, thereby making it easier for users to differentiate sponsored sites from organically referred content.

One of the main reasons for this redesign is the huge growth that StumbleUpon has witnessed on mobile. They have seen a growth of 800% year on year and they wish to give their users a better experience that is reflected across all platforms.

Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon’s CEO, told Fast Company, “We’re doing a complete re-launch of the site, and a lot of it is inspired by our mobile experience”.

StumbleUpon continues to remain the dark horse of social media. The site doubled its user numbers since 2010 to cross 20 million users in October 2011 and is still counted as one of the largest referrers of social traffic in the USA, in spite of its user base being a fraction of that of Facebook.

Google highlights three important aspects that currently characterise the Web scenario:

1. The number of online users are growing
2. The number of mobile phone subscribers will double in a few years
3. The amount of digital information exchanged worldwide is destined to see a huge growth too.

During the event, Google representatives spoke in detail about these 3 aspects, and how developing countries are reacting to changes.

The UK is believed to benefit from this growth. The Internet contributes to 7% of the UK’s GDP, with a growth of over 10% each year (this, of course pales in comparison to Chinese growth levels, which are massive!)

The Internet levels the playing field, representing a great benefit for SMEs, which can now effectively compete with big players.

Google+ In The Ad Ecosystem

Presenters at the even went to pains to point out that Google+ is not just a platform. It is a project. Their mission is to organise information and make it more accessible. Google+’s 40 million users help make this mission more personal.

Google+ is also aimed at engaging people with brands, through the set up of a Google+ profile. Once people add your business to their circle, you can also add them to any circle and segment your audience.

Intel directly asks which circle you belong to, so as to target the right campaign to the right consumers.

The 1+ button was confirmed to affect ranking. The extent of the effect remains unknown as Google employees continue to dodge direct questions about it.

AdWords Express

Made for businesses that are not yet ready for Adwords – 40% of small businesses do not have a website – AdWords Express is simple to set-up and easy to manage.

Google are keen to drive adoption of the new system. They even offered to reward a credit of ₤250 to all agencies that bring in five new clients to AdWords Express by the end of the year.

The benefits of AdWords Express are as follows:

• Targeted – specific to the area where the business operates
• Simple – no need to create /manage campaigns
• Measurable
• Eligibility – no need to have a website

Tips and tricks for Insights:

Let’s assume that faster is better – Google Instant saves a lot of time in the long term.

In Google Images you can drop images into the search box to give similar related results on search.

Google Insights for Search – You can find the most searched terms in a certain period in a specific location. Also you can analyse the evolution of a specific KW during a concrete period.

Ad Planner gives you insights about the audience that uses a specific website, so you can target your audience accurately.

Mobile On the Rise

The Smartphone and mobile markets are growing fast. Mobile is transforming the retail market. This is because user reviews have a huge impact on customer decisions and behaviour.

• It’s a good practice to set a mobile-only campaign, as it provides better click-through rates and easier tracking.
• Ads with phone numbers included get an average 6% to 8% higher CTR!
• Mobile is local – More than 1 in 3 searches in mobile are local.
• It is advisable that for mobile campaigns keywords should be shorter.
• Top spots matter more on mobiles than they do on desktops
• Another good practice is to set location extensions. One should also be mindful of the huge power of CTC and site links.
• The audience spends only 5% of their online time on Search. Display is growing a lot and will be growing even faster.

4 top tips for mobile advertising:

1. Prioritise re-marketing and keyword contextual advertising
2. Run both display and text format
3. Use exclusions to control efficiency
4. Frequency cap & ad scheduling

Tips and tricks for measurement:

The 3 Be’s

1. Be found
2. Be engaging
3. Be accountable

You definitely need to have goals to measure against.

Mobile sites / apps are a huge opportunity that most small businesses are losing.

1 second delay in page load causes a 7% loss of conversions, 11% fewer page views and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Improving Ad Campaign Performance

Page Speed Online – pagespeed.googlelabs.com – check there for audit & suggestions.

Real-time (Beta) – New on Analytics

Flow visualization – user path graph – New on Analytics

Tips and tricks for driving conversions:

• Enhanced CPC
• Conversions Optimizer
• Focus on optimising conversions
• Use automated rules

As with any major change to the search results pages, this update has been rolled out after extensive tests. Google has been running tests on this project for some time now, and has come to a final decision in this regard.

Ads at the bottom of the SERPs

The decision to include ads at the bottom of the search results pages has been based on the fact that they find the performance of ads at the bottom of the page to be better than the performance of ads that run alongside the search results.

This improved performance is probably due to the fact that users scan a search results page from the top downwards and not from side to side. Hence, when they reach the bottom of the page, they automatically see the ads displayed at the bottom. On the other hand, it is very likely that they might miss the ads that happen to be on the side of the results page, partly because they are not directly in the page scan path and partly due to acquired “banner blindness”.

Organic results at the bottom of the page have been known to typically have higher clickthrough rates than ads in the second-last position. These results will now more than likely get fewer clicks, with such traffic instead flowing to the ads at the bottom of the page.

When ads are displayed at the bottom of the page, it increases the potential advertising space, making it possible to place more ads on page one, rather than when the ads are placed only above and alongside the search results. This too could have a major bearing on the overall performance of ad campaigns, as many users may scan only the first page of results.

During the third quarter of the year, brands allocated 20% more on paid search campaigns, but many of them received a lower net ROI from search, according to a study by Efficient Frontier.

This should come as no surprise as the uptake of mobile search has increased dramatically over the past few years, and the corresponding consumption of media and search via these Internet-connected devices is bound to increase.

A graph charting the interest over time in ‘mobile video’ illustrates how the consumption of media on smartphones and tablet devices has grown steadily in the past couple of years. Advertisers are naturally going to follow suit.

Trend in volume of searches for ‘mobile video’ from 2008 to date

Mobile ad spend is likely to amount to between 7-10% of all ad spend by the end of this year. Tablets account for 77% of this amount, showing that they have become a very important part of this market.

Over the course of the last 12 months, mobile search spend increased from 0.5% to 4.2%, representing a 740% year-on-year growth in the market. For retail advertisers in the USA, mobile spend currently represents 7% of search spend and tablets represent 60% of all mobile impressions and clicks.

The popular social network is now in the process of releasing a new advertising format, which will help them to attract more clients, and in effect earn more money.

Building on the fact that Facebook is a social network, ads in the new format will expand when a user’s friend has ‘Liked’ it. When this ad appears in front of a user whose friend has liked it, the ad will expand to allow the user to comment on it and also see other related comments on the ad.

Unlike regular sponsored stories, the expandable ads allow users to comment and interact with an ad unit just as they would any other post that a friend ‘Likes’ or shares. This makes the ad seem much less like an ad, and much more like any other piece of content – image or video – that gets shared on Facebook.

The theory behind this new ad format is the fact that just like movies, restaurants and books, an ad is more likely to be appreciated by a person whose friend has already approved of it.

At present, expandable ads are not available to all advertisers. This ad unit is due to be announced at Advertising Week in New York.

The study was conducted across a sample of over 4,200 people in 6 countries across the Asia-Pacific region. The countries were Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan.

Pre-family men are an important user base because they have good amount of purchasing power as well as influence and they are also quite knowledgeable about technological developments. This demographic in the market is also on the rise as the average age at which a man marries is on the rise.

Targeting this audience when marketing and advertising online requires an understanding of how these men think and what their preferences are with regards to the use of different gadgets such as laptops, PCs, smartphones etc. It is also necessary to know what content they are most likely to access and how and when that may be.

It was found that these men are most likely to use laptops (40%) and PCs (35%) for social networking, as also for important emails and business transactions. On the other hand, the mobile phone is used only 20% of the time for such activity.

In contrast, when this demographic play games, they are about twice as likely to make use of smartphones and desktop browsers (56%). Home consoles and portable game consoles are used only 35% and 33% respectively for gaming. Price and social connectivity are the likely reasons for this.

Uunmarried men in the region browse through information regarding news, entertainment and people most frequently.

One of the interesting details provided by these metrics is that the use of rich media ad formats has doubled. Simple flash ads accounted for 54% of all global formats through the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform. This same metric accounted for 74% in 2009.

On the other hand, image ads account for 28% of the ad formats used in 2010, up from 17% in 2009. However, the response and engagement rates have remained more or less steady at 0.09% in the last two years.

Interaction rates have also remained more or less steady between the last quarter of 2009 and 2010. Expansion rates, which had fallen in 2009 now show an upward trend. Video completion rates on rich media ads have also remained generally remained consistent.

Display ad response and engagement rate benchmarks by month

Quite surprisingly, it has been found that larger ads do generate a better response from users. The half-page ad unit has been found to generate the best response in terms of CTR, interaction rates as well as expansion rates.

The U.S. market shows the lowest expansion rate, but the highest expansion time.

Auto advertisers were found to have the highest click through ratio, but they had the lowest interaction and expansion rates. On the other hand, telecom and B2B advertisers had the highest interaction rate and B2B advertisers had the highest expansion rates.

Microsoft Advertising recently recently posted the results of research analysing how Indians spend their time online. The study, titled “Living with the Internet” was carried out by Microsoft Advertising, MEC and Mindshare, and it provides interesting results.

Indians were found to spend:

• 49% of their time communicating
• 35% of the time seeking information
• 22% of their time on entertainment activities
• 14% of the time creating content on digital spaces (status updates etc)
• 12% of their time making online transactions.

In addition, it was also found that 81% of time spent reading the news or looking for information, is planned. Similarly, 81% of activities such as communicating, online chatting and networking are also planned. Even downloading or streaming videos, playing games or listening to music are planned 60% of the time.

In contrast, activities such as updating blogs, uploading photos and online transactions are unplanned nearly 50% of the time.

Another issue being studied is the popularity of laptops versus smart phones. While it was found that both gadgets are equally popular for searches on the go, laptops are more popular for other activities.

Laptops were used for communication 51% of the time compared to smart phones 46% of the time. Laptops were used for entertainment 23% of the time versus 17% for smart phones and laptops were used for transactions 13% of the time compared to 8% for smart phones.

This information is especially important to marketers and brands planning to target the Indian subcontinent as the data shows a definite maturing of the online market, thereby enabling advertisers to connect better with their target audience online rather than having no option other than to advertise on television, billboards and newspapers.

A blog post on the RKGBlog contained a screenshot of ads being displayed within the organic search results.

The ads have been placed along with the organic (unpaid) listing results. The word “Ad” is placed on the right hand side of the sponsored result. However, it is not very prominent and can easily be missed.

Image courtesy RKG: Bing displaying ads within organic search engine results

In the past, Yahoo! and a handful of second-tier search engines had tried a service called “paid inclusion”, whereby ads were included in the search results, but there were no ranking factors. Yahoo! withdrew the service in 2009, due to its controversial nature.

Popular blogger Danny Sullivan had also voiced disapproval of Google using paid inclusion in their search results.

Currently, Google does include ads within their organic search results, but they are highlighted in a different colour above the organic results, differentiating them from the organic results and making the fact that they’re ads more obvious than the marking that Bing is using.

This format is currently in the testing stage and is shown only to a few users. A Microsoft spokesperson has said, “We’re constantly testing and experimenting on Bing, and with that, we carefully measure user engagement and reaction to these changes. We have nothing further to share at this time.”

If Microsoft does choose to go forward and roll this format out worldwide, it could have serious ramifications. For one, click-through rates on Bing ads are likely to rise. If Google feels the pressure and chooses to do something similar, AdWords advertisers could benefit greatly while the value of SEO could fall.

According to Charles Duncombe, director of the Just Say Please group,  spelling errors are resulting in losses of millions of pounds in terms of revenue generation.

Duncombe, whose company runs travel, mobile phone and clothing websites, says that an analysis of online sales figures shows that even a single spelling mistake can reduce online sales of a product by half.

A simple test conducted on one of the group’s own websites measured the revenue generated per visitor with and without a prominent spelling mistake. They found that the revenue doubled after a spelling mistake was corrected.

It is a widely-held belief that spelling errors could lead to concerns about credibility, in a day and age when online fraud has become rampant. The spellings of words become important on the Internet because the selling itself is done by the written word online.

If we extrapolate Duncombe’s findings across the whole of online retail, then it’s easy to see how millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes.

The Confederation Of British Industry (CBI) has also issued similar statements, warning that often employers have to invest money in improving the literacy of their staff. The CBI’s head of education and skills, James Fothergill says, “Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff’s skills up to scratch.

Among school and university leavers, spelling mistakes and poor grammar are very common. Some people even use “text speak” in their job cover letters and official business communications. One of the reasons for this could be a growing dependence on social sites such as Facebook, where spellings and grammar are not given due importance.

William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University says that “In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a mis-spelt word could be a killer issue.”

Google allows advertisers and marketers of different products and services to show their ads on the various sites of the Google Display Network, the real challenge has been to reach specific sections of the audience that would be interested in that particular product.

In order to do so in the past, advertisers had to estimate that visitors to a particular website might be interested in particular subject and hence they would be interested in products or services dealing with that subject. For example, visitors to a gardening blog might be interested in buying gardening tools. However, this isn’t always an easy way to target consumers.

Now, when a user visits a particular type of page on a regular and frequent basis, the browser is associated with that interest category by means of a number. Google stores that number in the browser by means of a cookie.

In addition to the type of sites that the user has visited, Google will also consider inferred demographics to judge whether that user is likely to be a male or female, if they are likely to belong to a particular age group and other such relevant statistics. Google will then show ads based on the interest category as well as demographic profile associated with that particular browser.

Adding interest categories in an AdWords ad group

Google maintains that this service is in keeping with their privacy policy, as no personal information about the individual is used for this kind of targeted advertising. When users visit a site from a different computer or browser, they will not be shown interest-based ads, as Google will not know that this is the same user. However, one could argue that a user’s browsing history on their office or personal computer is pretty personal too, and that information is being used by Google in order to target their ads.

Ads will not be shown based on any sensitive information such as race, religion, sexual orientation, health, financial status etcetera. Users also have the right to decide whether or not they want to be shown these ads. Those who do not wish to use the service can opt out of it by clicking ‘Opt Out’ in the Ads Preferences Manager.

As the name suggests, the service gets activated when any user decides to watch a video on YouTube for the first time on any given day. In other words, this is a new kind of pre-roll ad.

In the past, ads in the header would start playing as soon as the YouTube homepage was opened. According to Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manger at YouTube, the ads on the homepage were highly successful and were “Starting to sell out.” Hence they felt the need to try a new form of pre-roll advertising.

First Watch ads are an extensionof the ads that are visible on the top of the YouTube homepage. These ad units will be visible to users who avoided watching the ad on the homepage and instead directly reached an inner page on YouTube by clicking on a link or when they visit a channel directly.

YouTube has been trialling this new facility. They have already rolled out such First Watch ads to about 15 million users and have received click-through rates around 1%, which is pretty good.

An advertiser interested in this service would need to buy a spot on the first video view by users on a given day.

First Watch ads will be applicable only to professional content partners such as The Onion, Tommy Hilfiger, Macy’s Inc and other similar brands. It will not be applicable to regular user-generated videos.

It is not yet known what YouTube will charge advertisers for this new service. However, Baljeet Singh said that it was “comparable” to what they charged for videos on YouTube.com “but less expensive”.

The DOJ is trying to ascertain whether or not Google knowingly allowed the pharmacies based in Canada and The U.S. to advertise through their advertising site Google AdWords, thus violating U.S. laws.

While several websites are known to sell prescription drugs, some of them do underhand things like selling fake drugs or drugs which have passed their expiry date. Some of them also dispense the drugs without a valid prescription.

The investigation, which is being conducted by the Food and Drugs Administration in Rhode Island, aimed to uncover whether the executives at Google were aware of these illicit activities, and if so, how much money Google has generated through this means.

In the past, Google has done its bit to prevent rogue online pharmacies from advertising on their site. In 2003, Google banned pharmacies that dispensed medicines without valid prescriptions.

Google’s competitors, Yahoo! and Microsoft, have also had to undergo similar investigations in the past.

After the present investigations were started last year, Google decided to allow only U.S. pharmacies accredited by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and pharmacies accredited by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association in Canada to advertise on their site.

They have already brought in a court order preventing the pharmacies named in the lawsuit from advertising on their site.

While spokespersons from Google, as well as the DOJ, have refused to comment on the issue, Google has set aside $500 million, while filing their quarterly results with the Securities And Exchange Commission, for a settlement with the DOJ. While this is a large amount for a settlement it isn’t big by Google’s standards - the company is expected to generate $30 billion through advertising this year alone.

The payment will be in the form of Facebook credits. Each of the selected ads watched by a user will entitle the user to one credit. One credit is equivalent to 10 cents. These credits can later be redeemed to purchase goods from the real world.

This has been made possible after the social network introduced Facebook Deals, which is similar to Groupon’s daily deals. Earlier, users could make use of their credits only to buy virtual goods such as virtual games.

At present, game publishers such as CrowdStar, Zynga, and Digital Chocolate have tied up with Facebook for this new payment scheme. Facebook is reportedly in talks with others such as Sharethrough, SocialVibe, Epic Media and SupersonicAds to sign up for this new offering as well.

They are also trying to forge a similar deal with TrialPay, which will provide additional analytics for advertisers.

So far, Facebook has suffered a low click-through rate for their ads and this new incentive should help to change that situation in the near future.

According to Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, which is one of the companies that has already signed up for the new service, this move is “a step away from interruptive advertising”.

Greenberg claims that his company will not just provide advertising in the traditional meaning of the term, but rather it will be in the form of branded entertainment, which users will not only be interested in seeing themselves but will also want to share with their friends.

This is the first nationally broadcast television ad for the Chrome browser. It is a 91-second ad and was aired during the popular US television series, Glee.

Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and Digg users have been sharing the video widely since its release just 3 days ago, generating almost half a million views on YouTube and a lot of discussion for and against it.

This isn’t the first time that Google has shown a definite pro-gay bias. They were pretty vocal about their stance on gay marriage too, when Proposition 8 was up for debate in California. However, this is the first time such a large corporation has launched a major product ad campaign on the back of a strong pro-gay and pro-equality stance.

Everyone from the President of the U.S.A, Barack Obama, to Lady Gaga, to regular gay and heterosxual users have posted messages supporting the campaign and voicing their solidarity with the gay community. A similar campaign in the U.K, called “It Gets Better Today”, featured Prime Minister David Cameron and the Home Secretary, Theresa May.

Well known writer and columnist, Dan Savage, who used to play agony uncle to gays through his column ‘Savage Love’ had first started this campaign. He used it as a means to encourage teenagers that life does indeed get better, by referring to his personal experiences with his partner, Terry. His original video has been viewed well over a million times.

He had said then, “When a gay teenager commits suicide, it’s because he can’t picture a life for himself that’s filled with joy and family and pleasure and is worth sticking around for. So I felt it was really important that, as gay adults, we show them that our lives are good and happy and healthy and that there’s a life worth sticking around for after high school.”

This campaign is especially thoughtful as it seeks to help youngsters who need to come to terms with their so called “different” preferences, and deal with their family friends and colleagues who may have a lot of prejudices towards them and can end up hurting or being mean to them at a very delicate phase of their lives.

At the same time,  this ad will help Chrome to compete with its competitors, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, which currently have a much larger market share than Chrome.

This prediction has been made by analysts in BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast (2010 – 2015). According to them, social media ad spend is any money that is spent on advertising through the various social networks, but does not include virtual goods, rewards, social gaming etc.

At present the major source of advertising on these social networks is display advertising, which generated $2.1 billion in 2010 and is expected to generate $7.7 billion in 2015. However other sources of advertising such as ‘promoted tweets’ on Twitter which currently generate negligible income are likely to become popular by then and will generate $600 million.

This means that the compound annual growth rate will be 31.6%. At present of course the major amount of all the revenue is going to Facebook which is the most popular social network. It currently has more display ad impressions than both Yahoo! and Google. It is also expected that their ad share as well as revenue will further increase.

According to an eMarketer report last January, the ad revenues of Facebook for 2010 had gone up to $1.86 billion, but the revenue of MySpace had fallen. It has also been estimated that Facebook’s global ad revenue will go up to $4.05 billion in 2011.

Andrew Shotland of Social Local Media says “Over the next few years, social media factors will become a core element of various ad networks, which will in turn drive increased advertiser spending and innovation.”

However, in order to make optimal use of this opportunity, the marketers must stay up-to-date with the changes taking place, not only on the web, but also in user behaviour.

Microsoft Advertising has conducted a study on this subject in conjunction with Mindshare and MEC. The study is called Living with the Internet: A Global Study of What’s Driving Web Behaviour

The study was conducted in two stages. The first part of the study was conducted in 2007 and the second part was conducted three years later, to see the changes in behaviour of web users over a period of time.

It was found that the basic motivations of web users viz. information, communication, creation, transaction, entertainment and surfing remain the same, but the difference between communication and creation is gradually diminishing.

As the internet grows, users try to get the maximum benefit out of it, without spending more time on it and hence each session on the internet is becoming more organised than it used to be.

In the past, planned internet use accounted for 61% of the sessions, but now it is 79%.

Even today email continues to be the most popular internet activity accounting for 23% followed by general browsing at 10% and social media activity at 6%.

Considering these facts, it is essential that marketers and advertisers should present their ads in such a way, that the ad is well assimilated with the content, so that it is appreciated by the user rather than being a distraction from the primary activity of the user.

The Kindle is already very popular and is set to become even more popular in due course. The new model will cost U.S. $114, which is $25 lower than the price of the standard model at present. It is due to be shipped on the third of May.

Special offers from advertisers will be displayed on the screen of the new version of the Kindle. Among the sponsors will be brands like Visa, Olay and Buick.

Some of the special deals on offer include $10 for a $20 Amazon.com gift card, $10 for $30 worth of products from the Amazon Denim or Swim shops, $16 for 6 audible books (actual price $68).

Amazon has, however, promised that the ads will not distract readers as they will be displayed only at the bottom of the home page or when the device is idling.

A feature called AdMash will allow users to vote for their favourite screen savers. The most popular screen savers will become sponsored screen savers.

This new version of the Kindle is expected to help Amazon to better fight competition from Apple’s iPad and other tablet devices as well as Google’s upcoming e-book retail service.

Amazon has refused to comment on whether or not they will launch a similar version in The U.K.

The online advertising behemoth had announced a partnership with SpotMixer, back in January 2009, in order to help AdWords and TV advertisers, to create video ad for free. They have now extended this partnership and integrated the SpotMixer service further into Google TV Ads and Google AdWords.

SpotMixer is a tool that allows advertisers to create their own ad directly, through their AdWords campaign. These ads can be displayed on Google TV and on Google’s display network including the very popular video-sharing site, YouTube. Ads can then be shown as often as the advertiser chooses.

Creating video ads on Google AdWords via SpotMixer

This is a very useful move, considering the fact that video viewing is on the rise, as people look for information and entertainment through various devices such as TV, desktops and mobile phones.

In the U.S. the average user is now watching videos for 4 hours a month, which represents a year-on-year increase of 45%.

Existing text ads are converted into a video or TV ad with the help of templates for pacing, transition, design etc. A collection of music, videos and images is also available to choose from, if customers do not have their own content.

For those who already have a video ad, they can upload it onto SpotMixer and have it edited to improve it. Advertisers can also customise their ads to suit different demographics, if they wish to do so. They can also make ads of different lengths and display them as appropriate.

Tracking the performance of each ad is possible by simply providing different contact telephone numbers and destination URLs.

The new platform provides advertisers with three types of advertising campaigns. They are Light, Standard and Premium. The Light option is the standard StumbleUpon ads version that was offered before the upgrade. The new options offer some new facilities to advertisers.

Targeting by device is one such new facility. This means that the sponsored stumble can be targeted specifically at various devices such as desktop browsers, iPad, iPhone and other Android based phones. This allows application developers to advertise their apps to users on specific devices that their apps are designed for.

The platform also provides advanced reporting, with viral sharing and engagement metrics, traffic analysis and a website quality score. The top-level service option also provides accelerated serving priority, which allows the advertiser to move ahead in the line.

StumbleUpon’s older ad model concentrated only on targeting new traffic for the advertiser or publisher. However, with this new ad platform, they are hoping to be able to engage visitors more.

Paid Discovery ads will show up on the StumbleUpon screen even without the user having to click on a banner. This is the same concept as the original ad model, where users were just led to new sites

Advertisers will still be able to target audiences based on demographics such as age, gender and location and interests.

While the earlier ad platform charged a flat rate of $0.05 per visitor, the Standard Paid Discovery ads will be charged at $0.10 per visitor and the Premium Paid Discovery platform will charge $0.25 per visitor.

Three ad options offered when setting up a campaign on StumbleUpon Paid Discovery

Some agencies in the USA have already been invited to test Twitter’s ad serving platforms, and their clients have seen an encouraging results. This could, of course, be due to the relative novelty of the advertising medium.

Some of the products that have been marketed through Twitter include health supplements and books. In the short period since the advertisers started using Twitter as a medium to advertise, they have found that the money spent is less than what they do on Google and Facebook, and at the same time they have received mare orders from Twitter than from Google and Facebook.

Targeting small and medium businesses seems like a good move on the part of Twitter, especially in light of the fact that Google owes its popularity in large part to this sector of the market.

Twitter has started efforts to develop a self-service platform since last December, and they hope that their 200 million users will respond favourably to their advertising initiatives.

The micro-blogging site started advertising as a means of monetisation only last year. They generated $45 million in revenue through this means last year. They hope to be able to generate $150 million through ads this year.

Twitter is also likely to introduce location-based targeting in the near future, as the service is often accessed on mobile phones.

However, as of the 1st March, this is set to change in the U.K.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is being empowered to monitor ads and claims made by companies on various internet sites including their own. This monitoring will also encompass unpaid for statements.

Matt Wilson of the ASA says, “The principle that ads have to be legal, decent, honest and truthful is now going to extend to companies’ claims on their own websites.”

If the ASA finds that some claims made by a company are exaggerated or unsupportable, they can now take action against it.

As of now, however, the only action possible is to enforce withdrawal of the statement.

This seems to clearly leave a loophole for manipulation, as it is possible for a company to make some exaggerated claims, to gain a lot of customers and then withdraw the claims on their own before any form of complaint is made to the ASA.

The comments made by customers on a website will not be regulated by the ASA unless the company concerned makes use of positive endorsements to advertise their products.

To encourage companies to stick to ethical claims, the ASA plans to announce the names of the companies which are found to misuse the web. They may also release ads warning consumers about the defaulters.

Last year, when the ASA had no power to act against claims on the websites, they still received 2,500 complaints. In anticipation that this number could now increase greatly, the ASA has already increased their staff strength by 10%.

The largest spending was seen in November ($14.5 billion) and December ($18.1 billion). Cyber Monday – the first Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday – broke all records with $1.028 billion being spent in a single day.

Among electronic items, flat panel TVs and mobile devices were the fastest selling, followed by computer hardware.

Online Consumers

Group buying through sites such as Groupon and Living Social gained tremendous popularity during the year. Social networks also continued to grow. Facebook became the number 1 site in August 2010, for time spent online, beating sites like Google and Yahoo! It now accounts for 12.3% of the total time spent online in The U.S.

The amount of time spent on leisure activities online also grew in 2010. Portals represented 20.2% of the share of time spent online, while social networks accounted for 14.4% and entertainment sites for 12.6%.

Social Networks

The growth of social media caused web-based email usage to reduce from 12.5% to 11.0%, especially among the younger generation. Social networking accounts for 14.4% of all time spent online, but its share much higher for youngsters. Women also tend to spend more time on social networks than men.

Facebook also now accounts for 10% of the U.S. page views and has gained millions of new users. MySpace, on the other hand, has seen a sharp decline, losing 27% of its users. LinkedIn, Twitter and several new social sites continue to grow gradually. While it has lost some users in the 35-54 years demographic, the number of users below 18 years and above 55 years have grown significantly. On the other hand, Twitter saw maximum gain in the 18-34 years demographic.

Search Marketing

The search market has also seen innovation with the introduction of instant search by Google. Google continues to be the market leader in the States, with over 60% of the market share, while Yahoo! had 16% and Microsoft had 12% in December 2010. ‘Facebook’ was the most searched term, with 1.9 billion queries in 2010, followed by ‘YouTube’ with 790.7 million searches.

Online advertising has grown by 23% between December 2009 and 2010. Leading brands have now started reallocating a larger share of their ad spend to online advertising. Over 1 trillion display ads were shown on Facebook and 529.4 billion ads on Yahoo! The strategies being used for display as have also improved resulting in better user response especially through retargeting. The online video and TV market are also growing, which is a fact that advertisers should take note of.

WebVisible, a provider of local online marketing software and services, also found that the average keyword count used in small and medium business’ search advertising campaigns reached a new high of 87 words, which means that small businesses advertisers used 30% more keywords in their campaigns in the 4th quarter of 2010 than they did in the same period in 2009.

The percentage of clicks that resulted in a phone call also rose from 3.9% in the 4th quarter of 2009 to 6.1% in the 4th quarter of 2010, which is an increase of 56%. This clearly shows that small businesses are now turning more and more towards online advertising, are becoming more savvy with their ad campaigns and users are also responding better to this new technology.

Ron Burr, CEO of WebVisible says, “successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together”.

Along with the general upward trend in online advertising, videos are also growing as an important means of connecting with users. 26% of small businesses are now using video as a means of advertising, as compared to only 19% a year ago. The number of video views has also gone up by 85%, from 3.7% last year to 6.7% this year.

While the increased usage of online marketing is good for the U.S. economy, it has its downsides too. For one, the average cost per click for ads has also gone up steadily. Also, the shift of budgets to online has meant that an increasing number of offline channels are now struggling to uphold revenues and carry on their business.

When a user makes use of a Facebook App such as check ins via Places or Likes, the new ad feature turns that user’s activity into an ad.

For example, when a user checks into a particular restaurant, the news feed for that user would automatically show a posts saying that the user has been to that place. If the restaurant wishes to, they can turn that news feed item into an ad for that restaurant, via Sponsored Stories.

User checking into a Facebook Place

Friends of the user will see the ad for that place on Facebook as an endorsement by that user.

Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Levi’s and Playfish are some of the organisations that have already partnered with Facebook to advertiser using this new feature. A few non-profit organisations such as Amnesty International, Women for Women and Donors Choose have also agreed to partnership with Facebook and trial this feature.

Sponsored stories can be set up on a pay-per-impression or pay-per-click basis. The new ad unit will initially be available on the home page and user profile pages. Later, it will be made available as a self-serve performance advertising tool for display across the entire site.

The Sponsored Stories will be shown in a special right-sidebar module. The name and profile photo of the user will also be shown. Comments by the user will be shown along with the ad – at present it is not clear whether Facebook will provide a mechanism for advertisers to prevent negative comments from being advertised.

Facebook expects that these ads will have more perceived value than the regular ads, as an endorsement from a friend should have more value.

Sponsored Stories are quite similar in concept to Promoted Tweets. The major difference is that with Sponsored Stories, the user decides the content of the ad whereas with Promoted Tweets the advertiser decides the content.

While uses do not have the option to opt-out of Sponsored Stories, their privacy settings will be respected. In other words, the ad will only be seen by those people whom the original feed item was meant for.

TrueView ads will allow viewers to not only choose whether or not they want to watch an ad, but also when they want to watch it.

The best part of this format, for advertisers is that they will be charged only when the viewer chooses to actually see the ad, and not when the ad impression is served. This cost-per-video-view ad model is good for advertisers as they will reach their target audience and only pay when their ad is watched.

Users will also benefit from the new format as it allows them to skip through ads that don’t interest them.

Just Like TV, But Better

Traditional television advertising works in the same way – users view ads before and during the content they’re interested in. However, unlike traditional TV ads, which must be endured by all viewers or can be walked (or channel surfed) away from,  TrueView ads will be skippable and will be priced per actual view only.

With the TrueView Video Ads – In Stream, which play as a pre roll or post roll ad along with a video, the viewer can select or skip a video ad after watching it for 5 seconds, and the advertiser is charged only if the ad has been watched fully or for 30 seconds whichever is shorter.

YouTube has already been experimenting with this ad format in their Promoted Videos advertising service too. They have found that users choose to see those ads that are relevant and interesting to them.

TrueView ad playing on YouTube

Advertisers will be able to collect data about the type of audience that shows interest in their ads. This will help them not only target future ad campaigns better, but also to align products to their target audience.

Google has also tested this system over a large audience and the results indicate a view-through rate between 20-70%. This means that between 20-70% of users have chosen to view the ad during the trial stages, which is an adequate response. This ad format was also tried during the recent U.S. mid term elections and the campaigns were fairly successful.

Hulu also offers viewers a similar choice – to watch or skip an ad. Hulu.com offers it in an InSlate format where users can watch one ad out of several or take a regular commercial break.

At present this ad format is available only in the U.S. and Canada and for limited testing in the U.K.

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

Until now, Google provided most AdWords specialist agencies, with a dedicated contact person or account manager, who would provide support to the agency and act as a single point of contact to answer questions regarding Google AdWords campaigns that may arise from time to time.

Some of the most commonly asked questions are about payment options, quality score, the reason why an ad did not show up and AdWords advertising policy. Whenever a supported agency faced any problem with the AdWords accounts they managed, they could contact their account manager and the account manager would personally attend to these queries and help solve them.

The number of agencies using Google AdWords is increasing rapidly. While this is a good thing for Google, it also means that they have to improve their infrastructure in order to provide support to all of these agencies.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Google’s current agency management team in Dublin to provide each agency with a specific contact person. So, instead of investing money into recruiting more account managers, Google has decided to take a giant step backwards and return to their previous model of poor support.

Making Cuts Without Making A Big Deal Of It

As with any negative development, Google has not made a big announcement about this change to their agency support structure. Instead, they’ve sent an email and when questioned about the change, have provided scripted answers about “striving to improve the way agencies are supported” and having “invested heavily in improving” the agency online support resources.

Effective 1st January 2011, the AdWords Support System will work in a call centre like manner, where the caller from any agency will be assigned to any one of many agents. The agent should be able to answer most of the questions raised by callers but will not have any history or prior understanding of the agency’s client accounts.

Low Level Support

An Agency Help Center has also been created to provide agency-specific self-service. Educational materials to help agencies manage their client accounts have also been devised. A Google Agencies programme will also be launched soon. Those who sign up for it will receive educational information and newsletters in this context.

From January onwards, most agencies will have to visit the Contact Us page in the AdWords Help Center. The technical support team will provide responses in due course. As in the past, this could mean waiting for days before getting any sort of response back from Google. The support numbers will also remain active, except that instead of dialling an account manager’s extension, the caller will only have the option to enter their MCC (My Client Centre) account number.

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.

Promoted Tweets are a form of advertising on Twitter, in which an advertiser pays Twitter to display tweets at the top of a Twitter search results page or even within a user’s tweet stream.

These ads will now also appear at the top of the relevant Google real time search results page – when a user filters searches to show only “Latest” results.  However, these ads or Promoted Tweets as they are called, will not show up on a regular Google search results page.

Google realtime search results showing Promoted Tweets

While this is the first time that Google has ever displayed ads from another network on their search results page, it may not be the last. According to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, who first blogged about these ads, Google has issued a statement saying, “Twitter is pioneering advertising against short-form content, so it was a natural starting place for us. We’re certainly open to continue exploring other advertising models and systems, including those we might develop in-house.”

The revenue generated by these ads will be split between Google and Twitter on a 50/50 basis, according to sources at Twitter.

Other Social Networks To Follow Suit?

If Google is true to its word and starts allowing ads from other networks, could we soon see more real time ads from Twitter, and then maybe Facebook ads and even promoted stories through Digg Ads?

While such initiatives would see a short-term increase in revenue by monetising products that previously weren’t monetised, they’re rather unlikely to really happen except in situations where Google AdWords has failed to monetise a service.

The appearance of Promoted Tweets on real time search results is probably a result of the original deal that Twitter forged with Google. When the deal was forged, Google was in a race against Microsoft to launch a real time search product. Twitter most likely used their favourable bargaining position to require Google to only show ads from Twitter alongside real time search results that were pulled from the social news site. The absence of regular AdWords ads on these pages, when compared to Google search results pages for all other time-range searches corroborates that this was the most likely scenario.

Twitter ads on real time search / AdWords ads on past 24 hours filter

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.

A similar service was made available by AdMob for the Apple iPhone platform almost a year ago.

Google’s mobile advertising blog explains that the addition of these rich media interstitial units to Android will be an exciting opportunity for mobile advertisers to reach a larger audience.

If this feature can just succeed in getting users to click on the ad more often, it could help in the development of more free apps. For instance, when the game Angry Birds was first introduced on the iPhone and iPad, it was a paid app. But later, when it was introduced on Android, it was free along with some ads, as its developers found that they could make more money through advertising rather than by just selling the game. Now, users get a free game that is paid for by ads.

Android video ad on Angry Birds game. Image courtesy of Google

So far, mobile ads have mostly been in the form of text and banners, which do not generate a lot of curiosity from users. However, the new interactive ads could be more interesting.

Google stated that 200,000 new Android connections are now activated on a daily basis, as compared to only 60,000 last February. The number of apps available has also doubled since last May and is now at 100,000.

It will now be possible for advertisers to reach users of the iPhone as well as Android devices through one single platform.

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 Borrell Associates, in the U.S. alone, the spend on advertising within mobile apps will be over $305 million this year and will more than double to an estimated $685 million in 2011.

Analysts at Borell predict that the figure will rise to over $8 billion by the year 2015, with local advertisers accounting for $1.2 billion of the total.

Since Apple opened their App store in 2008, about 5 million apps have been downloaded on mobiles. While the vast majority of these apps are for free, users have still ended up spending $1.5 billion on applications that are not free.

It is believed that only about one-fifth of the total number of computing devices in the U.S.A. can currently receive mobile ad messages, but by 2015 that figure should almost triple. This should encourage advertisers to pay more attention to mobile advertising.

Another interesting statistic revealed through research is the turnover rate of smartphone apps. Today, on average a single smart phone will have about 22 applications. However, it is estimated that within about 6 months time, only 5% of these apps will be retained. Since the turnover rate is very high, developers often do not even recover the amount invested in developing these apps.

Popular brands introduce new apps rapidly, but the offers they provide are not very attractive and hence their download rate tends to be very low.

Kip Cassino, Executive Vice President of Research at Borrell Associates says, “I think the app developers had better find out what is working for folks and what is most useful to people buying these apps. They need to concentrate their efforts and realise there is a bigger world out there than just Apple.”

AT&T Mobility was at the top of the list with $8.08 million spent in the month of June. All of the top 10 companies have spent over $2 million on AdWords advertising that month.

It is understandable that AT&T went all out in that month as they had to promote the iPhone 4, for which they had the sole supplier rights in the U.S.

Some of the other companies in the top 10 list are Apollo Group, Expedia, Amazon, and eBay. While these companies have consistently spent large amounts on Google AdWords, the presence of BP in that list, with a spend of almost $3.6 million was quite surprising, as in the past they have spent only as little as $57,000 a month on Google AdWords.

The obvious reason for the sudden change in BP’s advertising policy was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which was big news at that time. BP obviously had to do all they could to protect their reputation, and buying several related keywords on Google AdWords was one of the best ways to do that.

While the document gives a clear indication of how important Google has become for businesses of all sizes, the big surprise here is that the top 10 spenders put together account for only about 5% of Google’s U.S. revenue in the month of June. Only 47 advertisers were found to have spent over $1 million in June, 71 spent between $500,000 and $1 million and 357 spent between $100,000 and $500,000.

The thousands of smaller advertisers, who use pay per click marketing on Google, still contribute to the lion’s share of Google’s $23 billion annual global revenue. While this is great news for small businesses, it also means that when more big brands start spending significant portions of their total marketing budgets on Google, the smaller businesses might just get squeezed out.

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.

Enhanced CPC is an automated bidding feature that will make use of the keywords’ historical conversion rates to adjust the Max CPC bids on various keywords within a campaign. The Max CPC bids will thus be based on the likelihood of an ad actually converting into a sale.

It is expected that this new feature will help clients to lower their overall CPA, while at the same time increasing the number of conversions they receive.

When a client uses several different keywords within an ad campaign, as most advertisers do, the Enhanced CPC tool will consider which of these keywords have converted well in the past. The CPC for these keywords will be hiked by a maximum of 30% over the set Max CPC. On the other hand, keywords that have not performed too well will have their CPC lowered accordingly.

Unlike CPA bidding, where the advertiser sets a target cost per acquisition and AdWords then adjusts Max CPC bids without any CPC restrictions, the average CPC that the advertisers will pay for various keywords through Enhanced CPC will remain more or less the same as before, but the likelihood of conversions will increase, thus improving the ROI and also making it easier for the client to manage Max CPC bids more easily.

The Enhanced CPC feature will take into account various factors while deciding the new CPC. In addition to adjusting the CPC based on past performance of a keyword, the tool will also recognise variations or modifications to the keywords. Factors such as the user’s location, language settings, browser and operating system will also be taken into consideration while deciding the possibility of an ad converting into a sale.

Enhanced CPC bidding will be available to all advertisers without any restrictions such as the minimum number of conversions required per month to qualify for CPA bidding.

Bid management software providers face yet another threat from this new tool. The Enhanced CPC tool has the advantage of knowing a lot more information about the searcher than any bid management system could possibly know. However, as with all Google AdWords tools, this one too will eventually be aimed at driving more business for Google AdWords – albeit by making advertising on their system more profitable for the advertisers.

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.

Google is reported to have said that during the second quarter of the year, marketers were more likely to agree to pay a higher charge for their ads to appear online. This was probably a result of the fact that users were more likely to click on the ads.

The largest newspaper publisher in the U.S. Gannett Co. has also reported a positive trend in the print media after a gap of 31/2 years. The decline of print ads has dropped to 6% during this period.

General Electric Co. has also reported a recovery in the local ad market and the percentage of growth is quite substantial.

The first two months of the quarter were good for Yahoo!, but in the month of June they noticed a sudden drop in the ad spend of several of their advertisers. Though the total search advertising revenue fell by 8%, the display advertising sector has shown a growth of 19% compared to the same period last year.

The Omnicom Group Inc. has shown a 4.2% growth of quarterly net income. There overall revenue grew by 5.9% and in the U.S. alone, it grew by 7.4%.

The New York Times has reported a quarterly growth in revenue after a gap of 3 years. Digital ad sales grew by 21% but the print media saw a drop of 6% in advertising generated revenue.

Online ad revenue on Bing has increased Microsoft’s revenue by 19%. Fox Cable Network reported a growth in their advertising revenue. Time Warner Inc. also saw a surge in growth due in part to increased ad revenue.

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.”

A recent report from Econsultancy indicates that email still is a powerful medium for targeted advertising.

Stefan Tornquist, Econsultancy’s US Research Director says, “Despite the current hype surrounding social media, social network adoption and its influence on e-commerce is far from maturity. More than a third of consumers (37%) do not use a social networking site, while those who have recently become a ‘fan’ or ‘friend’ of a company or brand online are still in the minority.”

In fact it has been found that communication through email and even snail mail is more effective than the newer marketing efforts via delivery notices, notifications, vouchers and special offers on social networks.

What Is The Best Way To Receive Ads For Sales & Specials?
(Image courtesy of Econsulting)

Econsultancy’s report, titled How We Shop In 2010, has separate findings for the U.S. and for the U.K. as there are some differences in the online shopping habits of both places.

In the U.S. the study was conducted across a cross section of 1,400 respondents and about 1,000 in the U.K. Detailed demographics concerning age, sex etc were used to better understand and interpret the results.

The study does confirm that it is essential to target your ads at the appropriate audience as 53% of users felt that irrelevant information devalues the mail and 54% felt that the emails had no special advantage.

In the U.S. 55% of respondents said that high product ratings increased the chances of a purchase and 56% said that consumer generated reviews increased chances of using an online store. Two thirds of those under 24 check emails on mobiles and search is the primary source of information for most purchases. Men are more likely to use search engines and women are more likely to have discussions online or off. Those between 25-38 years of age are most likely to rely on e-commerce.

In the U.K. 57% appreciate ad messages which provide discounts and other special offers, 365 say email helps them make online purchases and 38% do not use social networks. 61% use search engines to study products, while 75% of those between 18-26 years use social networks to research products.

It had been reported about a year ago that billboards that could tell whether the face in front of it was male or female were being developed. This project is now being tested at subway stations in Tokyo.

NEC is developing a facial recognition system that will be inserted into these billboards. A pilot project has been undertaken by 11 railway companies and it will run for a year. They will set up 27 such billboards in total.

The Digital Signage Promotion Project, which is running this project, says that the billboards contain a camera that can determine the approximate age and sex of a person standing in front of it for a minimum of 1 second. The longer the person stands in front of it, the more accurate the data available is. The information is then relayed to an internal computer, which will pick appropriate ads to display to that person.

This system is called the Next Generation Digital Signage Solution. The project aims to collect data about the type of people most likely to stand in front of billboards and then show ads in accordance with the data available.

For instance, young women may be shown ads about cosmetics or designer apparel; whereas elderly women may be shown ads for household and kitchen equipment and men may be shown ads about sporting goods. This project is meant to help marketers and advertisers reach their target audience.

IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign developed an interactive billboard that provided a simple and engaging virtual demonstration of how a smarter retail system can work. The video below shows this “smart” billboard in action:

Color Sensitive Interactive Billboard from IBM Smart Planet

One big problem that the project currently being tested in Japan is definitely bound to face in the West concerns user privacy. Officials of the Digital Signage Promotion Project have said that the images of users will not be stored in the computers.

This innovation could very well be an example of real life being inspired by reel life. The film Minority Report had shown billboards that could similarly recognise people by name and then shout suggestions about which products they should buy!

In order to promote themselves through this feature, the NBA has sponsored the topic ‘LeBron James’.

When users click on the player’s name, they are directed to tweets about the basketball star from regular users as well as a promoted tweet from the NBA, which is highlighted as a promoted tweet within a yellow box background.

Users who click on the promoted tweet, are directed to a section of NBA.com, giving the NBA more exposure through this feature.

The reason this move is likely to be very effective in the short term is the timing. The basketball star is due to announce any time now which team he will be playing for next season. Basketball fans are literally waiting with bated breath.

The extent of his popularity and the anxiety of the football fans can be judged by the fact that he collected 1,50,000 followers on Twitter within just seven hours of joining the site. The number of tweets and stories regarding him have literally flooded the site.

While it was speculated that he would announce his decision on Twitter itself, his publicist has already rejected this suggestion.

The previous holder of the fastest growing fan following was none other than the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates. He had collected 1,00,000 followers in eight hours. With the help of trending topics LeBron James’ popularity on Twitter has soared much faster.

Other well known brands that have used Sponsored Trending Topics are Pixar and Coca Cola.

According to this study, 3-word queries are currently the most successful drivers of traffic from organic search results.

The study was conducted during the one-week period between 13 and 19 June 2010 across a sample of 41 million impressions of search traffic. They found that approximately 10 million or 26% of these impressions were for three-word queries.

The next most popular query length was with two words at 19% followed by four-word queries at 17% and one-word queries at 14%.

Queries with  five words or more had a much lower percentage of traffic.

In the past, one-word queries accounted for a much higher percentage. In 2007, one-word search queries accounted for 24.5% and in 2009 they accounted for 20.4%. Two-word queries accounted for 23.6% in 2009.

The study also considered the effect of word count on ad click rate for paid search results. Quite contrary to the findings for organic search results, they found that the highest click rates were associated with queries of five, six and four words respectively, with five-word queries getting 1.4% of the click share. This means, unsurprisingly, that complex searches are more likely to convert into revenue, rather than searches with one, two or three words.

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.”

The new service has been incorporated in their trending topics feature and is known as ‘Promoted Trending Topics’.

The first such promoted topic is for Disney / Pixar’s movie, Toy Story 3.

Promoted trending topics are clearly highlighted with a yellow box that says “promoted”. When a user clicks on that topic, a search results page is shown with the advertiser’s promoted tweet at the top, followed by “Top Tweets” that Twitter selects based on the number of retweets and then other users’ tweets about the topic.

The promoted tweet in the search results could contain link to pages with more information, just like any other tweet.

Even though promoted trending topics are placed near the bottom of the page at present, the yellow box is bound to attract some attention, especially while it’s new. Twitter might have to bump up the promoted topic ads in the future, once users get used to seeing it and start ignoring it.

Promoted trending topics will appear irrespective of the location to which the trending topics are set. One condition that has been set for the continuation of the promoted trending topics is that they must resonate with Twitter’s user base. If they do not attract sufficient attention, they will disappear just like any other trending topic.

Promoted tweet from Disney for Toy Story 3

While Twitter continues to claim that promoted tweets and promoted topics are not “advertisements”, it is rumoured that promoted topics are being sold for tens of thousands of dollars!

The tool is known as AdWords campaign Experiments or ACE. As the name suggests, the tool will allow advertisers to experiment with their campaigns, to test and measure the effect of any changes which they make to keywords, bids, Ad Groups and placements on the performance of the campaign.

Earlier, the best way one could gauge the performance of the ad was by comparing the results obtained before and after the changes were made. But this system was often inaccurate due to various uncontrollable factors such as holidays, weekends, changes to end user and advertiser behaviour.

With ACE, advertisers will be able to have more accurate information, by running the new experimental campaign concurrently with the original campaign. This simultaneous split test will enable advertisers to judge more accurately, the impact of the changes in the ad campaign.

Advertisers will be able to use ACE in any combination with changes in the bid, keyword, Ad Group, or placement changes.

It will be possible to measure the impact of adding new keywords or changing the keyword and Ad Group level. They can also restructure the content campaigns using more tightly themed Ad Groups. They can also check the change in volume by using different keyword match groups, or use an Ad Group default bid versus keyword-level bids etc.

ACE is still in the beta testing stage and Google has invited only their U.S. advertisers who use English to participate in the test.

AdWords Campaign Experiments: Introducing Google’s Split Testing Tool