2012-05-31T06:53:22Z Marne Semick Copyright 2012, Marne Semick SPHPBLOG

By Mark Sweeney
The Guardian UK

The internet is on the brink of overtaking television as the most complained-about advertising medium in the UK, with the ad regulator recording a surge of almost 300% in the number of consumers registering concerns over digital campaigns to more than 10,000 last year.

The Advertising Standards Authority – the body responsible for investigating consumer complaints into advertising content – said that overall there was a 25% year-on-year increase in the total number of complaints about all UK advertising in 2011 to a record 31,458.

However, the biggest area of growth in complaints was the internet, with a 282% surge in the number received about online advertising campaigns between 2010 and 2011, rising to 10,123. The number of internet ads consumers complained about also grew dramatically, by 300% year-on-year, to 9,295.

This quantum jump puts internet advertising a whisker behind the most complained about media, TV, which saw a 20% year-on-year decline in complaints last year to 11,245, about 5,556 commercials.

The main reason for the surge in internet advertising complaints was the extension of the ASA's remit to include investigating marketing messages on a media owner's own website. This includes offers made directly by an airline, retailer or telecoms company, as well as the marketing claims made by food brands and soft drink makers.

As a result the number of advertising and marketing campaigns that had to be ditched or changed to comply with the advertising code more than doubled to 4,591. And the total number of different ads complained about rose by 71% year-on-year to 22,397.

The ASA's figures also suggest a shift in terms of what most concerns consumers about marketing messages.

Earlier this year daily online deals company GroupOn was forced by the Office of Fair Trading to agree on cleaning up the way it markets to consumers, after the ASA received dozens of complaints about its offers.

This trend is reflected in figures showing that complaints about an advertisement being misleading, in what the ASA terms non-broadcast media – which includes the internet – more than doubled to 14,833. This compares to a drop of about 9% in the number of complaints about TV and radio ads being misleading.

The sectors that saw the biggest year-on-year increases in complaints included holidays and travel, where complaint numbers doubled; the retail industry, which saw a surge of 98%, making it the second most complained about sector; computers and telecoms, which rose 70%; and health and beauty which increased by 87%.

One area of concern for the ASA will be a more than doubling of complaints that were categorised as "harmful", with numbers in non-broadcast advertising rising to 984, and doubling in broadcast media to 2,154.

The ASA is funded by a small levy on the cost of media buying by agencies.

Total income for the ASA increased by 13% last year to £7.66m, largely due to the extension of the watchdog's remit to cover online advertising. The ASA spend came in £254,000 under budget, and overall it made a small pre-tax profit of £66,281.

Salary costs climbed by about £500,000 year-on-year to almost £4.9m.

The ASA spent £419,000 on advertising promoting its role and services to the public, although the true scale of the campaign was much larger, with media owners donating a lot of time and space on radio, TV as well as in press and outdoor.]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120530-135056 2012-05-30T00:00:00Z 2012-05-30T00:00:00Z
via JSOnline


It wasn't that long ago when the marketing menu for businesses consisted of print, radio and television. But as the Internet took hold, and Americans began to spend larger and larger shares of their time online, businesses began to see the opportunities offered by Internet marketing.

Today, Internet marketing is huge business - you only need to look as far as the $36.5 billion businesses spent on Google ads in the last year. And it's not just that businesses are simply throwing money into online advertising. The reason they are spending their money online is Internet marketing allows businesses to reach audiences in completely new and more sophisticated ways.

Benj Arriola, an Internet marketing expert for Internet Marketing, Inc., details four ways that marketing on the Web has changed the way businesses advertise.

* Internet marketing offers the opportunity to reach a more interested and active audience. Traditional marketing through radio, TV and print offers exposure to large audiences, but there's no guarantee that those audiences are paying attention. By optimizing their sites for search engines, companies can target individuals who are already likely seeking out their products or services. Social media also offers the opportunity for businesses to reach an engaged and active audience.

* Online marketing makes it easy to track your success. Web analytics allow you to track how long visitors are spending on your website, and what's attracting the most attention. Other tools allow you to track how many people are reading your email newsletter and track click-through rates on online ads. If something isn't working for you, you can change course before you spend a lot of money.

* Many online marketing platforms represent a cost savings. You can put almost unlimited content on your website for a very marginal cost. Starting a company blog can help drive traffic to your website and build trust with potential customers. Maintaining a presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter allows you to share information on special promotions or new products with a few strokes of the keyboard and the click of a mouse.

* Options like pay-per-click advertising help ensure that you are targeting the right audience, since you pay only when potential customers click on your ads. Through these types of models, you can also hone your sales pitch in a way that leads to more business by monitoring past successes and failures.

In short, Internet marketing has given companies a more direct link to consumers, and allowed them to deliver increasingly customized marketing content. Businesses that are Internet-savvy and spend their online marketing dollars wisely are likely to see a reward in the form of increased business.]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120521-145415 2012-05-21T00:00:00Z 2012-05-21T00:00:00Z

By Kunar Patel
Adage.com

Next to the 1 World Trade Center construction site, the American Express Tower occupies the street that its stables were on in the 19th century, when the company was a freight-forwarding operation.

Today, on the building's posh 50th floor, Chief Marketing Officer John Hayes is describing what sounds more like a tech business than a financial institution.
A 17-year veteran of AmEx and newly appointed board member for Silicon Valley stalwart Yahoo, Mr. Hayes outlines how his company is using Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. While adland has obsessed over what brands should say on these social-media outlets, Mr. Hayes and his team are testing ways to transact there.

AmEx is touting Sync -- a service that translates social-media activity into savings for cardholders -- in TV commercials featuring comedian Aziz Ansari. The spots highlight the "Link Like Love" feature on Facebook, which offers discounts based on what users of the network like.

The TV blitz followed Sync's high-profile debut at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, this past March. While the event has catapulted such startups as Twitter and Foursquare into popularity, some argue that AmEx stole the show this year when it introduced Sync paperless coupons, which are loaded onto credit cards when cardholders tweet certain hashtags.

AmEx's first foray into this kind of social-media tool was a partnership with Foursquare that let cardholders sync accounts to the mobile app to save money at Austin-area businesses when they checked in during the 2011 SXSW. AmEx then opened the Foursquare program to small businesses in other markets to help attract new customers with location-based offers.

Social media is also a cornerstone in AmEx's Small Business Saturday, the 2-year-old event that encourages people to shop at local businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And shop they do, thanks in part to AmEx's marketing clout. The company spent more than $2.2 billion on advertising in 2010, according to the Ad Age DataCenter.

Ad Age: Why has social media been so central to AmEx's marketing recently?

Mr. Hayes: Social platforms do so much more than communicate. If you go back through our marketing over the last couple of decades, we've built a lot of things that create experiences for people. Our belief is that marketing really needs to be more than just communication. With Twitter, it was about an experience: syncing your card, tweeting and saving money. On Facebook, "Link Like Love" is about experiences based on your "likes." [ more ]

]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120514-161254 2012-05-14T00:00:00Z 2012-05-14T00:00:00Z

By Jeffrey Wu
Taipei, May 3 (CNA) Google Inc. said Thursday it is eager to expand its advertising team in Taiwan as the Internet search engine sees the potential in the country's online advertising market.

"Taiwan's online advertising market has seen multiple increases in recent years, and we hope to recruit more people to work in direct sales or as contacts between our agents and large customers," Stanley Chen, general manager of Google Taiwan, said at a media briefing.

He said the number of people using the country's fixed and mobile Internet services is increasing rapidly, with more and more local consumers purchasing gifts or booking restaurants through smartphones.

Chen refused to disclose how many people the company planned to recruit, but said there would likely be "multiple increases" in the numbers of its advertising and sales members.

The revenue of Taiwan's online advertising market reached NT$10.22 billion (US$349.5 million) last year, up 19.46 percent from NT$8.55 billion in 2010, according to the Taipei Internet Advertising and Media Association.

The market is projected to increase 14.64 percent annually to NT$11.71 billion this year, with mobile advertisement becoming a new segment to drive higher growth, the association said.

As of March 2011, Taiwan's Internet users grew by 730,000 from a year ago to a record high of 16.95 million, with 3.82 million using mobile networks, according to an annual survey conducted by the Taiwan Network Information Center.

The number of Taiwan's mobile Internet users has increased to 4.90 million this year, accounting for 21.3 percent of Taiwan's total population, the survey showed]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120507-143541 2012-05-07T00:00:00Z 2012-05-07T00:00:00Z

Associated Press
via Seattle Times

NEW YORK — PepsiCo Inc. is tweeting to a new generation of music lovers.

The No. 2 soda company said Monday that it's partnering with Twitter to provide streaming videos of live music concerts to Pepsi's followers on the social networking site. The deal is part of Pepsi's new global ad campaign that will also feature a TV ad with singer Nicki Minaj.

The company, based in Purchase, N.Y., isn't yet saying which musicians will be featured for the Twitter concerts this summer.

Terms of the deal with Twitter were not disclosed.

The marketing push comes as Pepsi looks to revive the cola wars with The Coca-Cola Co., with up to $600 million in additional marketing slated for this year. Investors have criticized PepsiCo for letting its namesake soda lose market share to Coca-Cola in recent years. In 2010, Pepsi was bumped from its No. 2 spot by Diet Coke in the U.S., with Coca-Cola remaining in the top spot, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest.

Pepsi isn't the only one using music to tap into the youth market. Coca-Cola earlier this month announced a partnership with the online music provider Spotify; the companies are unveiling the details of their campaign later this year.

Coke and Pepsi both have a long history of using music to connect with young consumers. Over the years, Pepsi has featured musicians including Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, MC Hammer, Britney Spears and Beyonce in its marketing.

]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120430-131754 2012-04-30T00:00:00Z 2012-04-30T00:00:00Z

By Mike Sullivan
Officingtoday.com

OK what does Pinterest have to do with the world of business centers? If you want to grow business center to grow, then potentially plenty.

Since its launch in 2010, Pinterest has grown to over 10.4 million members and daily users have increased 145 percent since the beginning of the year. Gentlemint is similar service that is also gaining momentum.

Indeed, leveraging social media websites beyond Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is one way for a business center to further grow customer lists, increase website traffic and build brand awareness. But why, specifically, can your business center get on board the Pintrest bandwagon?

The answer is simple: You already have plenty of photos of your business center. Why not put them to more use on a visual content board that could turn into a powerful referral platform for your business center? It takes a few minutes and could pay dividends long-term.

E-mail marketing service Campaigner offers four tips for enhancing marketing content, encouraging customer interaction and raising social media responses through Pinterest and Gentlemint. We outlined them here with some of our own comments:

1. Find the right audience: Pinterest membership is female dominated. Top pins are about crafts, gifts, interior design and fashion. Gentlemint offers mostly a male readership. Try one social platform before diving in based on the audience. If targeting both sites, keep the audience in mind when choosing photos to add to boards. OfficingToday believes business centers should be on both sites but focus on Pinterest first.

2. Get the news out: Once the account is set up, include the board link in all new e-mail marketing campaigns and your website. For example, add a ‘Follow us’ button on Pinterest within a campaign e-mail alongside the links to pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. OfficingToday believes Pinterest is going to continue to gain momentum. Being an early adopter could give you a competitive advantage.

3. Captivate and capture: Make it as easy as possible to subscribe to an e-mail marketing program. Include a sign-up form in a prominent position on every website page, on Pinterest and/or Gentlemint boards and pages on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. OfficingToday believes if you offer an incentive, like some sort of free report, you’ll be more likely to get sign ups.

4. Make new friends but keep the old: Don’t skip out on Facebook and Twitter to focus solely on Pinterest. Share your content on all platforms. Just add Pinterest to the list. OfficingToday believes you should start with Pintrest and replicate your efforts on Gentlemint as time permits.

FOR VIDEO, CLICK HERE.]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120423-155154 2012-04-23T00:00:00Z 2012-04-23T00:00:00Z
By Tiffany Hsu
L.A. Times

Software engineers have the best jobs, writing code for operating systems and apps at companies such as Apple and Facebook, according to a new CareerCast list. Lumberjacks, who deal with high unemployment and constant danger, aren’t as lucky.
The job search site ranked 200 jobs by considering factors such as work environment, income, stress levels, market outlook and physical demands: Is crawling or stooping involved? Toxic fumes or noise? Do employees work in a confined space? Is the position competitive? Are there travel requirements or deadlines?

Not that many workers have a choice. In a job market that remains difficult – with unemployment still high at 8.2% last month – many job seekers are accepting positions that they wouldn’t have in better times.

CareerCast’s conclusion: Software engineers have it good. The position commands high pay – with mid-level workers earning $88,000 a year and the ability to grow salaries more than 140% over the course of a career. Demand is high for software engineering expertise. Working conditions are great, according to the report.

Many of the other top positions also draw in some way from experience involving math, science and healthcare.

The next nine best jobs, in order: actuary, human resources manager, dental hygienist, financial planner, audiologist, occupational therapist, online advertising manager, computer systems analyst and mathematician.

Among the top 50: pharmacists, museum curators, parole officers, astronomers, surgeons and accountants.

And, in the lowest of the low, the bottom 10 counting down: Shoemakers and repairers, broadcasters, butchers, dishwashers, meter readers, servers, newspaper reporters, oil rig workers, enlisted military soldiers and dairy farmers.

Lumberjacks have the worst job. Here’s how Jake Rosa, owner of Dry Brook Custom Sawmilling in New York explains it:

“We're still using paper and wood products all the time, but nowadays, kids would rather play video games instead of working hard and getting their hands dirty."]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120416-191815 2012-04-16T00:00:00Z 2012-04-16T00:00:00Z
by Katie Matlack

For doctors trying to reach their patients online, using Google+ can provide surprising marketing benefits that help them be more “findable” on the web. Consider that 44 percent of all internet users search online to find information about health professionals, and suddenly the importance for doctors of having a good online presence should be more clear.

In this article I’ll discuss three reasons why I think that, if you participate in Google+, the newest social network, you can improve the chances your name will come up when prospective patients search for something you’ve written about. If you’re not a doctor but you do know that many prospective clients use the web as a way to find you and your competitors, this article will also be relevant to you.

1. Rise in the Rankings

First, participating in Google+ gives doctors an advantage because content you share on Google+ has an “edge” against other stories. That’s right -- Google (the search engine) likes stories that’ve gotten shared or +1’d on Google+ better.

For example, if a doctor writes a post about back pain and shares it via Google+, Google may favor this post in search results for topics related to back pain over comparable results not linked to a Google+ user. That’s important -- because the higher up your content appears in search results, the more likely it is someone will visit your site.

2. Amplify Your Web Activity
Second, benefits of participating in Google+ grow as your network grows. Fellow blogger and search marketing expert Brian Whalley elaborates on what this means:

“[As you build up] a large following on Google+, content you've shared with your followers will also show up in those followers' relevant Google.com searches, keeping your business top of mind and increasing its visibility among existing followers across multiple channels.” [more]]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120411-195404 2012-04-11T00:00:00Z 2012-04-11T00:00:00Z
Ad Age Takes the Industry Pulse and Finds TV, Digital Have Benefited Most -- and May Do So for the Rest of 2012
By Adage Staff
www.adage.com

"Nobody's going to be fired for spending on Facebook."

Thus a digital-media executive summed up the sentiment on Madison Avenue as advertisers from American Express to Zappos are trying to stretch every marketing dollar. The theory is that wary financial investors will applaud spending on social media because of its lower cost and growing reach. So it follows that the ad dollars flowing to social media are buoying the ad economy at large, right?

Think again. While social media is getting a lot of attention and spending, the big bucks are going where they've always gone -- TV. Social-budget dollars are coming from print, radio and other web properties.

Magna Global's estimate for ad spending in the first quarter is print down about 5.6%, radio down 0.3%, outdoor up 5% and TV up 4.5%. For the full year, Interpublic Group's Magna has predicted rises of 6.8% for TV ad spending, including political and Olympics spending, but 2.4% excluding them; 11% for web; 0.8% for radio; and 4% for outdoor. It forecasts declines of 6% for newspapers and 5.9% for magazines.

Continued fragmentation and the rise of social mean individual traditional-media sellers may not experience the projected rebound even if marketers are spending more on the whole. And positive economic headlines don't encourage increased ad spending as much as all media sellers would like.

"I don't think we've truly experienced recovery," said one print buyer, who added that most ad budgets are flat. "When consumers spend, then marketers will have more money to put back into marketing."

The first part of 2012 should spell the end of a lengthy slowdown that has crimped ad spending, according to Vincent Letang, Magna's global head of forecasting. "It will pick up a little bit in the third and fourth quarters, and a lot more if you factor in political and Olympics money," he said.

TV ad spending fell in the fourth quarter of 2011 but began to climb and stabilize in first-quarter 2012, though General Motors told networks it would cancel some portion of its agreed-upon upfront outlay for second-quarter ad spending on broadcast and cable. Even so, ad-sales executives at TV networks say they are seeing healthy prices for so-called scatter advertising that is purchased closer to air date.

Fortunes naturally flow to the strongest in the sector. Ratings at the top 10 cable networks were weak on average in the first quarter, while smaller channels appear to be gaining, according to RBC analyst David Bank. TBS and History show some strength, but most other top-tier cablers are weak, he said.

News Corp.'s's FX, for example, has ended its phenomenal five-year run as insurgent networks such as AMC are growing. Even relative unknowns such as GMC (Gospel Music Channel) are getting some lift.

Ratings drops often mean networks must give advertisers make-goods. The tightened supply can lead to higher cost per thousands but also lowers overall revenue.

Some of 2011's TV growth simply is nowhere to be found this year. The abnormal percentage gains were fueled partly by marketers' loosening their purse-strings to compete for consumers trying to shake off the recession. And many advertisers used some of the funds typically budgeted for scatter buys to lock down lower prices during upfront talks.]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120326-151849 2012-03-26T00:00:00Z 2012-03-26T00:00:00Z
Ad Dollars Will Be Driven Much More Effectively With Messages That Match People's Activities

By: Eric Farkas

Ever wonder why websites try to force you to click-through to more content on a story (i.e. See Page 2 for the rest of your article, Top 10 Lists, Countdowns, etc.)? They want you to get hooked on a subject and click-through to load more pages. Each time a new page loads, the site gets to show a new set of display ads.

Sites are shoving display ads down your throat, above content, on either side of it and below it. The more display ads they show, the more money the site earns. And more page views equals more display ads. Why list the Top 10 Running Shoes on a single page and generate one impression when you can list them on 10 pages and generate 10 impressions?

Historically the way to drive more ad dollars has been to increase page views, but this practice has invariably made ads less valuable. This style of page-view advertising is becoming a business model of the past. You've probably read the countless stats showing that a majority of display ads are being ignored by consumers, including: "31 percent of ad impressions were never in view of the consumer," "43 percent of consumers ignore internet banner ads," and "88 percent of ads in apps are ignored by users." For the love of advertising, there's a different study released every week that devalues online advertising and gives our industry a bad name.

If you look at some of the most popular sites and apps (Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Pandora, Instagram), none of them generates advertising revenue through page views. Of course, many have yet to figure out how they're going to monetize their site from advertising. With that being said, I'm fairly confident that none of them will be turning to 300x250 display ads and other standard ad units.

These sites are primarily concerned with the user experience and are exploring ways to monetize their sites and apps by providing value to advertisers by intertwining brand messages within people's activities. Facebook is bringing your social graph into the ad equation and is turning brand content into one of its primary sources of advertising. Twitter is placing promoted messages within your stream of tweets. The trick for each of these companies is providing premium advertising at scale, without disrupting the user experience.

The key will be to look for natural breaks in the user experience and place highly targeted, relevant ads to users at that moment, when they're most likely to engage. Furthermore, publishers should limit the ads seen by a user and make sure that ads are relevant to what the user has done or is doing.

I'm not going to end this with a sweeping prediction that I won't ever be held accountable for. Instead, I'm excited to see advertising lose its black eye and break free from the page-view prison we've been in for too many years. Both online advertising and online content will be better off. ]]> http://www.onlinemediadiva.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120319-203551 2012-03-20T00:00:00Z 2012-03-20T00:00:00Z