theDigitalNews.TV

Stats. Metrics. Articles. Resources. Trends. For Digital Media.

Archive for March, 2008

« Previous Entries

Mobile Marketing Based on Place Is Finally Making Strides

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 31, 2008

Source: http://adage.com

CBS Hooks Up With Social Network Loopt to Serve Geo-Targeted Banner Ads Without Invading Privacy

By Alice Z. Cuneo

Published: March 31, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — Location, location, location is the mantra of the emerging mobile-marketing industry.

The way the story goes, you are walking by a Starbucks on a cold day — or a hot day, depending on who is telling it — and your mobile phone rings with a coupon for 50 cents off a latte or a Frappuccino.

Do you know where I am now? Just think what it could do for directory assistance.
Do you know where I am now? Just think what it could do for directory assistance.

Of course, this story is a decade old, and while it illustrates the fact that geo-targeting has been touted as a major mobile-marketing boon for a while now, there have been few real examples (and Starbucks, for the record, has not offered this promotion).

But there are signs the technology is finally catching up to the promise. Last month, mobile social network Loopt announced one of the first major location-based marketing experiments, with CBS. The plan aims to use the mobile phone’s inherent ability to locate a prospective customer without invading a consumer’s privacy by requiring several steps before any geo-targeted ads are served.

Limited forays
First, a Loopt subscriber must turn on the phone’s locator button, which broadcasts its location. (Even without a GPS, the location can be approximated based the phone’s relationship to the cellphone tower receiving its signal.) Then when the subscriber checks the mobile-web version of CBS News, MarketWatch or Sportsline, the page will display a banner ad targeted based on the subscriber’s location.

Loopt has a limited subscriber base among Boost Mobile and Sprint customers. However, Mr. Altman said partnerships with additional mobile-phone services are expected to be announced soon. Other fledgling geo-targeted services include Buddy Beacon, available on phones from Helio, and applications such as BuzzD, which provides real-time search information from patrons at nearby bars and clubs.

Cyriac Roeding, exec VP-CBS Mobile and CBS Interactive, said the Loopt arrangement solves myriad problems related to location-based advertising: It’s opt in by the consumer, can be turned off at any point and doesn’t clutter inboxes, spam anyone with text messages or interrupt with unwanted rings.

“It’s simply getting a better banner ad,” he said, playing down Big Brother concerns. He said a large number of marketers contacted the network following the announcement, but so far none have signed up for the service.

Cellular circulars
Perhaps the bigger opportunity in location-based marketing is the unique utilities marketers can provide consumers based on knowing where they are. Think about location-based mobile marketing’s ability to improve local directory assistance or localize the contents of an age-old ad format such as the Sunday circular. Michael Baker, VP of Nokia’s mobile-advertising group, said the chief marketing officer of a major retail store told him that 96% of customers come to the store with a mobile phone in hand. In the future that phone could automatically flash the day’s offers.

Already Target is looking to morph its Sunday circular into a mobile version, said Jerry Courtney, the retailer’s group manager of corporate multimedia, at the Ad Age Digital Marketing Conference. “It’s just a matter of what format does it come to you in and how easy is it to use at the point of purchase?”

Michael Bayle, senior director of mobile advertising at Yahoo, said mobile-phone subscribers might be enthusiastic about navigation services, but marketers aren’t sure how excited they would be with location-based marketing services. Over time, privacy and spam concerns are likely to diminish, he said, creating challenges on the creative front where ad copy will require location-relevant, individually targeted messages.

But another telecom expert, Roger Entner, senior VP-communications sector at IAG Research, put it more bluntly, calling some of the possibilities of location-based mobile marketing “creepy.”

<!–

New Registrants

You may manage your subscriptions to the Advertising Age suite of e-mail products and change your login and member profile information by visiting your profile page.

–>

 

Posted in Ad Products, Marketplace Trends, Mobile, Widgets/Distributed Content | 1 Comment »

To Reach Shoppers, Move Beyond Print Circulars

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 31, 2008

Source: http://adage.com

Retailers: Use Digital Channels to Connect With Your Target Buyers

By Torrence Boone

Published: March 31, 2008

Retailers have made great strides in getting closer to their customers and sloughing off the weight of the 19th-century retail model of product and merchandising centricity. Retail giants such as Best Buy and Target in the U.S., as well as Tesco and Boots in the U.K., show how far the industry has come in embracing data- and insight-driven customer intimacy.

But despite these strides, many retailers are still playing catch-up in addressing the rapid fragmentation in media and tapping into the power of digital. With few exceptions, most are still addicted to the heady narcotic of promotional free-standing inserts, sinisterly delivered through rapidly dissolving print and newspaper media channels.

Take the particularly revealing case of retailers’ stock in trade: younger, more free-spending consumers for whom shopping is a top priority. The media disconnect between consumption and share of ad expenditures for them is startling. According to data from Forrester and TNS Media Intelligence, as of 2006, print and newspapers made up only 10% of the Gen Y media diet — yet commanded 41% of marketers’ advertising expenses. By contrast, the web represented 36% of young people’s media consumption, yet commanded only 6% of media spending.

FSI dependency is admittedly a hard habit to kick: Retail merchants and their suppliers have been hooked on them for ages, and circulars indeed do drive retail sales — for now. But as with the waning influence of the 30-second spot, the incremental economic gains associated with circulars is in decline because fewer people — especially younger people — spend Sunday morning with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper, a prime FSI distribution channel.

Make the shift
When you consider the impact this is already having with the next generation of buyers — those Gen Y kids who account for a full quarter of the U.S. population and who influence $200 billion in annual spending — it’s imperative for retailers to shift spending from newspapers to digital channels to better meet these consumers where they live.

That said, what’s the best way to accomplish this? You can’t just advocate the “go-digital” advice without having a framework for getting there, especially given how fragmented digital media itself has become. To best “go digital,” retailers should embrace a philosophy we call People-First Media: an idea-centric approach that focuses on engaging and connecting with consumers across channels and over time to earn their attention by creating relevant, valuable and motivating experiences. Rather than responding opportunistically to the latest emerging media fad, this approach takes rational and emotional consumer insight as its cornerstone and activates an insight-driven idea across the media landscape by understanding how each channel taps into three fundamental consumer behavioral drivers. We’ve captured them along three primary dimensions.

This framework is resilient in the face of next-generation emerging media: The trends around filter widgetization still fit within the category of personalization; meme trackers and metaverses align with socialization; distributed brand experiences and content channels are new incarnations of publicizing.

By reallocating marketing spending to better align with consumption habits — which implies weaning yourself off an over-reliance on print-based FSI promotional tactics — and embracing the idea-centric framework outlined above, retailers can more effectively respond to the seismic shifts unfolding in the media landscape, setting a new standard for the ways in which their brands connect with consumers.

Steps for going digital

An idea-centric approach that focuses on engaging and connecting with consumers across channels over time to earn their attention

1. PERSONALIZE

 This reflects the need today’s consumers have to filter and customize content and experiences based on their unique predispositions — for example, RSS feeds and start pages — as well as to access content and experiences when and where they desire (mobile, search and other time/place-shifting mechanisms such as video on demand and podcasts).
2. SOCIALIZE

Illustrations 1 & 2 by Tom Nullens

 This captures the interest in community, sharing and collaboration (social networking, blogs, viral activity and gaming).
3. PUBLICIZE

 This recognizes the importance of information and entertainment distribution through wider-reach brand sites and portals and their integration with traditional offline media channels such as broadcast TV.
Torrence Boone is president of Digitas, Boston, and helps lead the agency’s Retail and consumer package-goods practice areas.

Posted in Ad Spending, Brand Advertising, Marketplace Trends, Traditional to Online | Leave a Comment »

90% of Leads Lost to Another Dealership

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 29, 2008

Source: http://aiada.org

Brand and dealership loyalty is diminishing – most of us know that. We also know that the Internet provides the consumer with a wealth of information to consider when buying a car. And access to this information leads consumers to consider more makes, models, and dealerships than ever before. But how do consumers use the information available to them on the Internet? What filters do they use to narrow their selection and determine who they’ll do business with?

To better understand current automotive dealership Internet lead handling and the impact of search and consumer-generated media on vehicle shopping and purchase behavior, Cobalt, in partnership with Yahoo! and R.L. Polk & Co., conducted the 2007 Dealer eBusiness Performance Study: The New Buying Influences. This study was the largest research initiative in the automotive industry, and the findings provide dealership management with the information they need to best maximize their lead conversion. For instance, did you know of over a million leads sent to dealers, over 55 percent converted into a sale, but only 10 percent are converted by dealerships that initially received the lead. That means that 90 percent of those sales opportunities were converted by another dealership.
The study was focused on five primary questions:
• How are consumers utilizing the Internet, search and online consumer-generated media to shop and select a dealership?
• How do online dealership reviews and reputation, lead response, and professionalism of sales staff impact consumer purchase decisions?
• What are the current dealership eBusiness performance levels?
• How much Internet lost opportunity occurs at dealerships and what are the causes?
• What are high-performing dealerships doing to meet consumer expectations and successfully convert Internet opportunities?

The result is a comprehensive report on the state of automotive car shopping today. Click here to read the full report.

Summary of Key Findings
Dealers need to invest in their online presence as much as their physical dealership.
Most consumers start their vehicle shopping process online using Internet resources to filter information – 79 percent of consumers used search engines to research auto dealerships and 63 percent sent an online purchase inquiry/lead to a dealership. The Internet was the resource of choice for consumers, far greater than traditional media. This means that to maximize your advertising dollars, dealers should reevaluate advertising budgets to emphasize search and online media and most importantly, implement processes to respond promptly and transparently to online leads.

Online reviews and rankings of dealerships becoming more pervasive.
Consumers are turning to other people for insight into the type of experience they can expect from a dealership. The study found that 55 percent of car shoppers are aware of websites containing reviews of dealerships written by consumers. Seventy-three percent said they would likely use online reviews and rankings in the future and 58 percent said they would likely write an online review or rank a dealership in the future. Surprisingly, consumers typically only select one dealership of each brand to physically visit. Dealership management can use online reviews as a powerful marketing tool by emphasizing good CSI and building a positive online review base to make their dealership the one that is visited.
Customers submitting leads are serious and ready to buy quickly.
Of the one million de-duplicated third-party leads, 55 percent converted to a sale. Of those 55 percent that converted, 90 percent converted at a dealership other than the one to which the lead was initially sent. The financial implications associated with lost opportunity should be a red flag for all dealership management. Considering that 24 percent of leads that closed did so within 10 days of lead submission, a prompt and quality response to Internet leads is a must to capture these lost sales.

High-performing dealers communicate promptly and transparently.
Consumers are relying more and more on the Internet as a resource for vehicle shopping yet many dealers are under-performing when responding to these consumers. Fifty-eight percent of high performing dealers respond to email leads by email and phone and 95 percent provide price, availability and other vehicle information in the initial response. Management that invests in training for their sales staff and institutes guidelines and processes to respond to these consumers will be able to close the gap.

Positive buying experience more important than lowest price.
Not all consumers are happy with just getting the lowest price. Most consumers place a strong value on the actual buying experience, and are willing to pay a more competitive price for a positive experience. Additionally, loyalty and convenient location no longer have the “pull” they once did in attracting business. Foster a welcoming and respectful sales environment where the customer is treated respectfully and transparently, and your per vehicle gross should increase because you’re no longer selling at the lowest price.

Posted in Ad Spending, Brand Advertising, Consumer Behavior, Data & Metrics, Direct Response/Email, Local, Marketplace Trends, Multi-Channel, Television & Video, eCommerce | Leave a Comment »

Push in Online Car Shopping

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 29, 2008

Source: http://wsj.com

NBCU Is Hoping
Stake in DriverTV
Snags Ad Dollars
By SUZANNE VRANICA
March 17, 2008; Page B8

In an effort to snare more of the automotive advertising dollars migrating online, NBC Universal is buying a sizable stake in DriverTV, a Web site and video-on-demand channel that specializes in videos aimed at car shoppers.

NBCU is paying about $6 million for a 35% stake in DriverTV, which has about $8 million in annual revenue, according to people familiar with the matter. Currently all DriverTV’s ad revenue comes from car makers, but the company, which is partly owned by the TV- and ad-production firm Radical Media, is hoping eventually to attract advertisers from other auto-related industries such as insurance.

Unlike most print and TV ads, each video can generate multiple revenue streams. First, car makers such as General Motors, Ford Motor and Toyota Motor pay Radical Media to create the three-minute narrated videos, which highlight individual lines of cars and their features, from dashboards to headlights. Then, they pay DriverTV whenever someone clicks on the video. Car makers can also buy banner ads on the site.

The videos are slickly produced and promotional in tone. The voiceover with a video on GM’s 2008 Cadillac DTS, for instance, says “all DTS models feature sophisticated design.”

The deal is part of NBCU’s plan to buy stakes in a variety of digital properties as a way to get a bigger piece of the growing digital-ad pie. The General Electric unit recently created a pet owners’ site with Procter & Gamble and is set to announce another deal within a month that it says would take it into another big advertising category. “This is a more niche way to replicate the cable model we built in the online world,” says George Kliavkoff, NBCU’s chief digital officer.

Still, NBC and DriverTV face some stiff competition. DriverTV goes head-to-head with popular auto-research sites such as Edmunds.com, Time Warner‘s AOL Auto and Autotrader.com. Car dealerships have aggressively launched comprehensive Web sites that offer shoppers virtual vehicle tours and real-time inventory information.

As a group, car makers are the top-spending advertisers, shelling out roughly $20 billion for ad time and space last year. While the biggest chunk of those dollars has long been spent on television, car makers are shifting a growing portion online. GM, the second-biggest advertiser in the country behind Procter & Gamble, spent $1.2 billion on TV ads last year, down 11.4% from the year before, and its spending on newspaper ads slid 32% to $149.3 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Meanwhile, its spending on online display ads such as banner ads jumped 78% to $208.3 million, according to TNS. A similar scenario is playing at other auto companies such as Ford and Chrysler, which increased their spending on Internet display ads by 65% and 41% respectively, according to TNS. While Internet ad dollars pale in size next to TV ad spending, they represent the fastest-growing ad segment.

For DriverTV, the investment comes at a critical juncture. The site, which has been in beta testing since last summer, has only attracted a small audience. Many advertiser-driven Web sites and entertainment sites have been struggling with that issue, as they come to grips with the fact that compelling content often isn’t enough of a draw. Marketers and content creators are increasingly finding ways to piggyback on Web portals or media companies’ sites that already have significant Web traffic. DriverTV has also struck a deal to put its content on MySpace, the popular social-networking site owned by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.) Both NBC and DriverTV say they will seek to strike deals to place DriverTV content on other popular Web sites.

A partnership with NBCU is “an efficient way to generate traffic and eyeballs to our site, which can be expensive to do,” says Robert Friedman, Radical Media’s president of entertainment and media.

As part of the deal with DriverTV, NBCU will be able to put the car videos and information on other NBCU properties, from NBC.com to NBC’s individual network sites and cable channels. For instance, the Web site for “Heroes,” NBC’s sci-fi hit sponsored by Nissan, may be able to include video and content about Nissan cars from the DriverTV site. The more distribution the content has, the more ad revenue the company can make, because car makers pay every time a consumer watches a video.

Write to Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com

Posted in Ad Spending, Content, Marketplace Trends, Television & Video, Traditional to Online | Leave a Comment »

Newspapers’ Online Growth Slowed in ’07 Along with Web Ad Industry

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 29, 2008

Source: http://clickz.com

By Kate Kaye, The ClickZ Network, Mar 28, 2008
Articles  |  Contact Kate  |  Subscribe <!– |  Biography–>

Online newspaper ad spending rose almost 19 percent to $3.2 billion last year, according to estimated numbers just published by the Newspaper Association of America. However, growth of paper Web site spending dropped more than 10 percent from 2006, when online ad revenues grew 31.5 percent.

In Q4 2007, online newspaper spending hit $847 million, up more than 13 percent over Q4 2006. Overall, print and online ad revenues reached $12.6 billion in the last quarter of 2007, a decline from total ad spending of $14 billion in Q4 ’06.

The portion of ad revenue from Web media continued its incline last year, accounting for 7.5 percent of all newspaper ad dollars, up from 5.7 percent in ’06, according to the NAA. Though online ad dollars are going up, the rate at which they’re rising has slowed for paper publishers. In 2005 and 2006, online ad revenue grew at a 31 percent clip each year over the previous year. Yet in 2007, the growth rate decreased to below 19 percent from 2006, down over 12 percent.

The NAA attributes the growth decline to overall online ad spending decreases in 2007. Indeed, the entire industry experienced a rate of growth in 2007 of about 10 percent less than in 2006. Estimates from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers pegged 2006 online ad spending at $16.8 billion, an increase of 34 percent over $12.5 billion in 2005. Yet, by 2007 online ad growth tapered. The IAB estimated last month that full year ’07 revenues would reach about $21 billion, a 24 percent increase over ’06.

NAA VP Audience and New Business Development Randy Bennett indicated the newspaper industry’s partnership with Yahoo, as well as the recently-launched quadrantOne newspaper network, will boost online ad revenue generation for the industry. “Newspapers have been aggressively diversifying the online advertising revenue, particularly through the Yahoo partnership and the quadrantOne newspaper partnership, to capture a larger share of national advertising dollars,” he told ClickZ News. “We expect to see an impact from those partnerships this year.”

Although the Yahoo deals have involved HotJobs recruitment listings revenue thus far, a handful of sites from the 26 publishers in the newspaper consortium have begun testing a display advertising relationship with Yahoo. The project promises to rake in national ad dollars for the paper sites, something they’ve been sorely missing.

The drop in combined print and online ad revenues also has continued to accelerate. According to NAA numbers, total ad spending fell at a rate of less than 1 percent between ’05 and ’06, but declined nearly 8 percent in 2007 compared to 2006.

In their long transition to the Web, newspapers have bundled sales of print and online classifieds ads. Now that’s coming back to bite them, said Ken Doctor, newspaper industry pundit and lead news analyst at media market research firm Outsell. “They have a lot fewer ads going into print, and if they’re not going into print, they’re not getting the [online] upsell,” said Doctor. Still, he points to the industry’s increased investments in staff and training dedicated to selling Web advertising. “Online-only sales have ramped up,” he continued.

Doctor also suggested online newspapers, still mainly reliant on CPM-based advertising, would benefit from introducing more performance-based ad opportunities. As the recession tightens ad budgets, advertisers are seeking advertising that can be tracked, with results tied directly to expenditures. Those recession winds are shifting more towards performance-based online advertising sold on a cost-per-click or cost-per-action basis, and away from impression-based advertising.

“Newspapers need a [cost-per-action] strategy as advertisers discover the world of pay-for-performance just like the auto advertisers have with lead generation,” said Doctor.

Posted in Ad Spending, Consumer Behavior, Data & Metrics, Demos & Audiences, Marketplace Trends, Traditional to Online | 1 Comment »

General Motors Ranks as the Heaviest Online Advertiser Among Auto Manufacturers in January, According to comScore Ad Metrix

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 29, 2008

Source: http://comscore.com

GM Delivers 27 Percent More Display Ads than Toyota in Total, but Toyota Delivers 32 Percent More Ads per Person Reached

Auto Manufacturers Advertise Heavily on Portals and Auto Resource Sites

RESTON, VA, March 27, 2008 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study using data from the comScore Ad Metrix service that examines online advertising by auto manufacturers in January 2008. comScore Ad Metrix provides detailed reporting of the number and types of online display ads viewed by Internet users (from both the publisher and advertiser perspectives) for the U.S. market, with January marking the first public release of the advertiser-level data.

“The introduction of comScore Ad Metrix advertiser-level reporting represents a significant milestone for the online advertising industry,” said Alistair Sutcliffe, vice president of comScore Advertising Solutions. “It is a major step towards greater media measurability and accountability and gives advertisers an in-depth view of who they’re reaching with their online campaigns.”

comScore Ad Metrix measures the number of times each advertisers’ ads are viewed and where they are viewed, along with information on the demographics and online behavior of those Internet users being reached. comScore Ad Metrix also provides reach and frequency calculations, samples of the creative ad units delivered, and information on ad sizes.

GM Leads in Online Ads among Auto Manufacturers

General Motors was the top online advertiser among auto manufacturers in January, delivering nearly 1.7 billion total display ad views in the U.S., followed by Toyota (1.4 billion) and Ford Motor Company (1.1 billion). General Motors also led in reach, with approximately 103 million unique individuals receiving their display ads during the month, followed by Ford which reached 95 million people and Toyota which reached 62 million. But, both General Motors and Ford were outmuscled by Toyota in terms of ads delivered per person reached. Toyota delivered a frequency of 22 ads per person during the month, compared to 16 for General Motors and 11 for Ford.

Top Auto Manufacturer Online Advertisers by Total Display Ad Views

January 2008

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Ad Metrix

Advertiser 

Total Display Ad Views (000)

Share of Voice*

Ad-Exposed Unique Visitors (000)

Average Frequency

General Motors

1,687,065

32.8%

102,574

16.4

Toyota

1,356,782

26.4%

62,428

21.7

Ford Motor Company

1,075,831

20.9%

94,987

11.3

Honda

377,863

7.3%

57,923

6.5

Nissan

291,666

5.7%

31,262

9.3

Chrysler LLC

123,868

2.4%

22,142

5.6

Hyundai Motors Inc.

95,246

1.9%

16,723

5.7

Volkswagen

60,498

1.2%

7,126

8.5

Suzuki Motor Corporation

42,491

0.8%

15,389

2.8

Harley Davidson

35,287

0.7%

6,109

5.8

*Share of voice among Top 10 advertisers in the category

“GM has really led the auto industry in its use of online advertising,” added Mr. Sutcliffe. “And, their recent announcement that half of their $3 billion annual advertising budget would be spent online in the coming years is likely to be a bellwether for many industries. Many traditional advertisers are beginning to understand that the Internet enables them to efficiently build their brands by achieving their demographic reach and frequency goals while at the same time reaching the most attractive, behaviorally-defined target segments. This is a winning recipe for achieving an attractive return on one’s advertising investment.”

Auto Manufacturers Advertise Heavily on Portals and Auto Resource Sites

The top publisher sites on which auto manufacturers advertise are primarily portals and auto resource sites.  Yahoo! Sites (936 million display ad views) and Microsoft Sites (585 million display ad views) deliver the most total impressions for auto manufacturers, and both also deliver significant reach with these impressions.

Auto resource sites also factor prominently into auto manufacturers’ online advertising strategies, with AutoTrader (114 million display ad views) and Edmunds.com (98 million display ad views) leading the way.  Though these sites have a narrower reach than portals, they represent a desirable and highly targeted audience for auto manufacturers.

Top Properties where Auto Manufacturer Display Ads Appear

January 2008

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Ad Metrix

 Property

Total Display Ad Views (000)

Share of Voice*

Ad-Exposed Unique Visitors (000)

Average Frequency

Yahoo! Sites

935,550

18.0%

72,041

13.0

Microsoft Sites

584,889

11.2%

39,615

14.8

Fox Interactive Media

550,288

10.6%

41,660

13.2

AOL LLC

316,772

6.1%

33,808

9.4

AutoTrader

113,764

2.2%

3,698

30.8

Edmunds.com

97,579

1.9%

4,359

22.4

KBB.com

83,529

1.6%

4,669

17.9

eBay

80,918

1.6%

15,027

5.4

Time Warner – Excl. AOL

53,674

1.0%

8,855

6.1

Google Sites

50,306

1.0%

16,192

3.1

*Share of voice based on all publisher sites where Auto Manufacturer display ads appear

Toyota Scion xB Has Most Viewed Display Ad among Auto Manufacturers in January

comScore Ad Metrix also provides visibility into aspects of the display ads being viewed, including ad size and file type. The majority of the top 10 auto manufacturer display ads in January were for new model introductions, with the Toyota Scion xB 120 x 240 flash (swf) ad ranking atop the list with 12.6 percent of all display ad views in the category. Honda’s “Battle of the Bands” ad ranked second with 2.9 percent, followed by a Chevy Malibu new model ad with a 2.4-percent share.

Top Online Display Ad (Creatives) among Auto Manufacturers

January 2008

Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore Ad Metrix

Company

Make

Model

Strategy/Promotion

Ad Size (Pixels)

Type

% of Total Display Ad Views among Auto Manufacturers

Toyota

Scion

xB

New Model Promotion

120 X 240

swf

12.6%

Honda

Honda

n/a

Battle of the Bands

175 X 110

gif

2.9%

General Motors

Chevrolet

Malibu

New Model Promotion

350 X 200

swf

2.4%

General Motors

Saturn

All

All New Models Promotion

350 X 200

swf

2.2%

General Motors

Chevrolet

Malibu

New Model Promotion

728 X 90

swf

2.1%

General Motors

Chevrolet

Malibu

New Model Promotion

300 X 250

swf

2.0%

General Motors

Chevrolet

Malibu

New Model Promotion

300 X 250

swf

2.0%

Toyota

Toyota

Sequoia

New Model Promotion

300 X 250

swf

1.7%

Toyota

Toyota

n/a

Branding Logo

88 X 31

gif

1.5%

Honda

Acura

n/a

Certified Pre-Owned Vehicles

468 X 60

gif

1.3%

To request more information on comScore Ad Metrix, please visit: http://www.comscore.com/contact

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/boilerplate. 

 

Posted in Ad Spending, Brand Advertising, Marketplace Trends | Leave a Comment »

Vroom Vrooooom: Is GM Racing Ahead Online?

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 29, 2008

Source: http://adotas.com
car11.jpgADOTAS – General Motors is clearly leading the charge in the automotive industry toward interactive advertising. Earlier this month GM announced that it will spend half of its $3 billion ad budget online. According to a recent report, GM was already heavily invested online, but with mixed success.

GM was the top online advertiser among auto manufacturers in January, delivering roughly 1.7 billion display ad views in the U.S. – Toyota came in second with 1.4 billion and Ford Motor Company rounded out the top three with 1.1 billion, according to a recent study by comScore.

GM also led in reach, with about 103 million unique individuals receiving their display ads during January, followed by Ford which reached 95 million and Toyota, which reached 62 million.

But Toyota won out in the sheer number of ads delivered per person reached – hitting a frequency of 22 ads per person compared to 16 for GM and 11 for Ford.

“GM has really led the auto industry in its use of online advertising,” said Alistair Sutcliffe, vice president of comScore Advertising Solutions. “And, their recent announcement that half of their $3 billion annual advertising budget would be spent online in the coming years is likely to be a bellwether for many industries. Many traditional advertisers are beginning to understand that the Internet enables them to efficiently build their brands by achieving their demographic reach and frequency goals while at the same time reaching the most attractive, behaviorally-defined target segments. This is a winning recipe for achieving an attractive return on one’s advertising investment.”

So where are car companies advertising? The top publisher sites they advertise on are portals and auto resource sites. Yahoo Sites and Microsoft Sites deliver the highest number of impressions – 936 million display advertising views and 585 million display advertising views, respectively.

Posted in Ad Spending, Brand Advertising, Data & Metrics | Leave a Comment »

Mobile Marketing and Advertising Glossary

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 28, 2008

Source: http://www.mmaglobal.com/glossary.pdf

Click here to view: Mobile Marketing & Advertising Glossary

Posted in Mobile | Leave a Comment »

Mobile Ads: Slow to Take Off

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 28, 2008

Source: http://businessweek.com

 Telecom March 10, 2008, 12:01AM EST text size: TT

Advertisers are shying away from mobile phones until they get clearer data on whether promotions on the small screen pay off

by Olga Kharif

Even as ads on cell phones become more common, advertisers are holding off on a full-blown embrace of the tiny screen as a marketing tool.

There’s no denying cell-phone users are seeing more ads. A Mar. 4 study by Nielsen found that 58 million U.S. wireless subscribers had viewed an ad on their cell phones in the past month. The problem is that advertisers don’t know what users are doing, if anything, when they see the ads. And until advertisers find out, they may hold off on committing more precious marketing dollars to the mobile medium. “Advertisers that are used to full accountability are left in the dark,” says Farhad Divecha, director at London-based ad agency AccuraCast.

The hesitance is understandable. In the online world, determining how well a campaign is performing is easy. Web sites embed tracking software known as cookies on your personal computer. Those cookies monitor your browsing activity and pass the information to advertisers and the ad-placement networks that distribute their ads across the Web.

A Consistent Yardstick

The wireless industry has refused to facilitate this tried-and-true approach. Most wireless service providers block cookies before they can ever get to cell phones, arguing that to allow them would open a hole in their networks for computer viruses. They also say they worry that a flood of new data traffic—cookies are programmed to report back to their masters—could degrade service quality by clogging wireless networks.

Complicating matters, what little data the wireless service providers do pass back to advertisers varies widely in terms of what they measure. Mobile-advertising networks, in turn, crunch the disparate data in different ways to gauge the audience response to ads. One ad network might report the number of phones that received an ad, while another might report how many users actually viewed the ad. The distinction is subtle, but important for advertisers. Without a consistent yardstick, it’s hard to compare the results of a campaign that ran through Yahoo’s ad-placement business with one placed by a rival network such as AdMob.

Wait and See

In the end, ad agencies find themselves creating complex spreadsheets in a bid to reconcile the data from various campaigns. “They are doing more manual processing of data than strategic planning for their clients,” says Scott Ferris, a senior vice-president at Microsoft (MSFT), which has been testing software to help agencies compare mobile-ad data from different sources.

Even Google (GOOG), which is determined to extend its dominance in Web advertising to cell phones, has no reliable analytical tools customers can use to gauge the success of mobile marketing campaigns. “The mobile-ad space is nascent, and we are currently working to figure out the best ad formats for our advertisers and users,” Google spokesperson Daniel Rubin wrote in an e-mail.

As a result of these obstacles, there are doubts whether the mobile-advertising market will fulfill robust predictions (BusinessWeek.com, 12/13/07), such as a Gartner (IT) forecast for $11 billion in global ad revenue by 2011, up from less than $1 billion last year. After all, ad metrics are crucial to creating cost-efficient campaigns. “We can then optimize campaigns on the fly,” says Benjamin Ezrick, a senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive.
“If one [ad] network performs better than another, we can shift the budget,” he says. Likewise, if users don’t seem interested in a particular ad, it can be redesigned.

So for now, many advertisers are in wait-and-see mode. “At the moment, the level of transparency is not enough to drive significant budgets into this medium,” acknowledges Henry Stevens, director of media and entertainment at GSM Assn., a trade group that represents wireless service providers.

Measures of Success

In a bid to rectify the situation, the association announced in February that five of its most prominent members—Vodafone (VOD), Telefónica O2 Europe, T-Mobile International, FT/Orange Group, and 3—have formed a working group to define common metrics for mobile advertising. By yearend, these companies hope to develop a set of standard measures and then launch a trial in Britain. Using input from ad agencies and wireless carriers worldwide, the group will attempt to define everything from what constitutes a click to how to measure different kinds of user behavior. “The experimentation stage is almost over, and, in order to scale, operators need to work together [to fix this problem],” Stevens says.

A separate effort launched by Nokia (NOK) focuses on making it easier for ad agencies to compare the results of different ad campaigns. In February, the world’s largest cell-phone maker rolled out Nokia Media Network worldwide. The network, which lets companies place ads on mobile media sites from Nokia and about 80 other content providers, allows advertisers to contrast the performance of their ads on the various sites. Advertisers can also see which types of ads, be they banners or text messages, are working best. “Our focus is very much on this analytics element,” says Mike Baker, vice-president at Nokia Interactive.

Not surprisingly, mobile ad agencies see the urgency in delivering more reliable data to their clients. “We want to enable advertisers to understand value of ads more deeply,” says Jason Spero, vice-president of marketing at AdMob. “We want to let them see where a user goes, which phones they use. Otherwise, you can’t engage with an audience.”

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

Posted in Ad Spending, Brand Advertising, Consumer Behavior, Data & Metrics, Mobile | Leave a Comment »

What’s Holding Up Mobile Advertising?

Posted by Mort Greenberg on March 28, 2008

Source: http://emarketer.com

MARCH 27, 2008

Are mobile marketers moving ahead or merely spinning their wheels?

”2007 was not ‘the year of mobile marketing’ that it was advertised to be,” says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Mobile Advertising: After the Growing Pains. “And 2008 won’t be either.”

Even though mobile marketing and advertising didn’t break into the mainstream during 2007, with events such as the iPhone launch and other under-the-hood improvements, mobile marketers did take strides to move past the experimental stage of development.

In fact, eMarketer forecasts that worldwide mobile advertising spending will reach $19 billion by 2012.

”The vast majority of the spending will be based on text-messaging campaigns,” says Mr. Gauntt, “with mobile display advertising and mobile search constituting the rest of the main market.”

However, compared to other interactive platforms, mobile still remains extremely small in overall spending.

”A basic problem facing mobile marketing and advertising is that, while the business proposition cuts across many industries—telecom, technology, media, marketing, retail—it affects the economics of each industry differently,” says Mr. Gauntt.

But that’s not all.

“A clear bone of contention involves customer information,” says Mr. Gauntt. “All parties agree that better targeting will happen, given the personal nature of mobile phones, but the question of how to use customer information to improve ad targeting while respecting privacy remains elusive.”

Assuming the sensitive issues surrounding customer data and location can be solved, there is still the matter of the true elephant in the room: the possibility of advertising revenue subsidizing basic mobile services such as voice, text or data.

Telephia, now a part of Nielsen Mobile, recently reported the range of direct monthly charges levied on US mobile customers for different applications on top of mobile data access.

”It’s not lost on mobile users that they still pay for almost everything on mobile,” says Mr. Gauntt.

Before mobile marketing can truly get moving, many obstacles will have to be overcome.

To learn what brands, agencies, mobile carriers and mobile service providers must do to resolve these tough issues, download the new eMarketer report, Mobile Marketing: After the Growing Pains, today.  

Posted in Ad Spending, Mobile, eMarketer | 1 Comment »

« Previous Entries