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  • The Facebook/GM Ado Very Well Might Have Been About Nothing

    According to a report in Reuters today, General Motors’ decision to pull its paid advertising from Facebook was preceded by the social network trying to pitch the value of its free pages in the first place.

    On Tuesday, GM announced that it would be pulling the $10 million it spends on paid ads on Facebook because, as the automotive manufacturer said, the ads just didn’t work. It wasn’t the decision that conjured up the controversy so much as it was the reasoning behind the decision, especially given that GM announced the decision mere days before Facebook’s vaunted IPO (which is happening today).

    While GM says the timing wasn’t coordinated, its decision to cease paying for ads on Facebook ignited a storm of scrutiny over whether Facebook ads were even worth a damn. The report from Reuters today, though, seems to nullify any of that scrutiny – at least in the respect to this specific incidence – if in fact Facebook was trying to sell GM on the value of free brand pages.

    An undisclosed source told Reuters that Facebook’s effort to pitch the free brand pages “backfires on them in a funny way,” although the only backdraft that seems apparent might be artificial.

    Consider this formula: Facebook emphasizes the value of free brand pages, so then GM decides to stop paying for ads but says its going to maintain its Facebook page and just focus on the freely available content.

    How is that controversial?

    The true and perhaps only story in this saga then gets narrowed down to the fact that GM, although it was advised by Facebook to focus on the free pages, said that the website’s paid ads didn’t work. The pronouncement now appears to be a little more underhanded than originally perceived.

    A source of Reuters said of GM, “”They’re just going to try not doing it for a while and see how it goes; just make content and if it works, it works.”

    So now, if GM’s merely doing what Facebook advised it to do in the first place, where’s the controversy in this whole non-drama?

  • Why Most People Never Click Facebook Ads

    …It’s because they’re not on Facebook!

    Pretty easy math on that one, right?

    While much has been made this week about the legions of people on Facebook who have resisted clicking on ads, the Associated Press located the opposite pole of that news and dashed headlong into that direction to talk to some of the people who have managed to fend off the hype to join the social networking site that is steadily colonizing the world.

    Several of the reasons given for why these hold-outs haven’t gulped down the Facebook Kool-Aid recall a lot of the complaints that the 901 million Facebookers frequently make about their experience on the website: no desire to rekindle decade-dead relationships, kind of boring, it’s a distraction, email and cell phones work just fine for communication, and so on.

    Although most of the individuals profiled in the AP report might be described as the edge of Facebook’s bread and butter age demographic, it does highlight Facebook’s possible problem of appealing to a broader audience. MaLi Arwood, 47, said that she’s “absolutely in touch with everyone” she needs to be in touch with and therefore has no need for Facebook. Echoing a sentiment that nearly every Facebook member has bemoaned at least once, Arwood added, “I don’t need to share triviality with someone that I might have known for six months 12 years ago.”

    While it’s impressive that only 2 of every 5 Americans haven’t joined Facebook, the fact that Facebook is most attractive to the a notoriously capricious age demographic doesn’t exactly lend any credence to the company’s long-term sustainability. Just ask Zynga, who purchased the mobile app, Draw Something, about how easily people can lose interest in a product. Or maybe revisit Rupert Murdoch’s lament about the demise of the once-popular MySpace. Permanence is an illusion.

    That’s not to say that Facebook’s going to swerve off a cliff the way Draw Something appears to have done or be mismanaged the way MySpace was handled; far from it, really. Facebook’s got enough momentum to carry it for a while longer, but if the questions evoked this week about its inability to generate more revenue have any validity then the speculation that the company’s IPO will invite another disastrous tech bubble could have some substance.

    Unless, that is, Facebook figures out some way to supplant the utility of extant, reliable ways to stay in touch like phones, email, and text messaging in order to appeal to the huge chunk of the population that currently doesn’t see Facebook as necessary.

    More than that, Facebook will be required to achieve what no other tech company has been able to do so far: create a universal product that piques the interest of everybody across all demographic spectrums. In the absence of such innovation, there will continue to be more and more people who regard Facebook as an ephemeral commodity.

  • More Arguments That Facebook Ads Are Shoddy (or Not)

    Look at what you did, General Motors. You pulled a measly amount of money (relatively speaking) from Facebook’s pocketbook and said it was because you don’t think Facebook’s ads do what they’re supposed to do. Now it’s a great big, steamy pile-on for everybody’s favorite website.

    Actually, that’s not exactly true. The reports coming out this week pointing out why ads on Facebook aren’t really that great have been in the works for a while, but it is monumentally bad timing for Facebook since that IPO of theirs is presumably set to crack off tomorrow. However, GM’s announcement, while having hardly any effect on Facebook’s overall value, (inadvertently?) caused a laser fury of scrutiny over the quality of performance of Facebook ads.

    Although tons of people can’t get enough Facebook action, many of them aren’t paying attention to any of those pesky ads hanging off to the side. In the same Greenlight report that revealed a Facebook search engine could be a formidable challenge to Google’s search dominance, a different metric shows that most people really pay no mind to ads on Facebook.

    When asked, “Do you click on advertisements or sponsored listings in Facebook?” an obstinate 44% said they never click on them. More, another 31% said they rarely click on Facebook ads. A middling 3% said they click them regularly and 10% said they often click the ads (13% haven’t gotten the memo to sign-up for Facebook).

    Curiously enough, Greenlight points out in the report that it’s enjoyed some success with Facebook ads. “We saw our Facebook investment (client media spend) overtake both Yahoo and Bing collectively at the start of 2011, hinting the channel had constant growth and was delivering a strong enough return to invest more,” the authors wrote.

    So… these ads are engaging at least some people out there in Facebooklands, right? Aside from the obvious finding that as many as 13% click the ads regularly, Greenlight isn’t the only company to admit that advertising on Facebook works for them. General Motors’ automotive rival, Ford, quickly tweeted a rebuke on Tuesday to the claim that Facebook advertising doesn’t work.

    Ford wasn’t the only one to offer a rebuttal to GM. Jan Rezab, the CEO of SocialBakers, penned an open letter to GM in Forbes that finely details what others have hinted at: GM didn’t understand how to do Facebook ads effectively, so they prematurely took its ball and went home.

    Despite Ford’s vote of confidence and Rezab’s compelling argument, Google’s Director of Product Management Jason Bigler couldn’t resist taking a poke or two at Facebook while the social networking site was still wearing some pie on its face:

    Jason Bigler
    @jasonbigler     Imagine, for a minute, what would happen if Facebook branded their data play like this: http://t.co/Nvq7z6AF
    1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    Jason Bigler
    @jasonbigler     Seriously folks, did you really expect consumers to be in transactional mindsets on Facebook?
    1 day ago via web · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    The mystery of why Facebook ads work for some companies and perform atrociously for others may have something to do with the type of ad format these businesses are using. True, while the ad formats on Facebook are truly awful, according to a new study from WordStream, Greenlight found that the Sponsored Story format was the most popular and effective ad format. According to the authors, “the Sponsored Story format delivers, on average, a 32% decrease in cost per acquisitions (sales) and an increase in CTR (engagement).”

    Perhaps it’s just a case of companies putting all their faith in the wrong type of ad format? Or, going back to Rezab’s point, maybe companies just haven’t quite picked up on the winning formula to create engagement via Facebook?

    The disparity of success among businesses doesn’t appear to favor one over the other based on the size of the business, either. Yesterday, NPR reported on a marketing experiment it conducted recently where it followed the return on investment for a budding pizza restaurant in New Orleans. Ultimately, the restaurant owners earned $10 back on a $240 investment in Facebook ads and, perhaps worse, everybody they polled who visited the restaurant after the ads were deployed said they weren’t dining at the restaurant because they were persuaded by ads on Facebook.

    Oh, and the $10 was just a donation – it wasn’t even from somebody eating at the joint.

    So some ads work better than others, and ads on Facebook work better for some businesses than others. In other words, nobody exactly knows how Facebook ads work. Despite this confusion, people are still falling over themselves trying to get their hands on some Facebook shares despite the fact that there’s no clear sign how Facebook can or will pump up revenue through ad sales.

    In the meantime, Facebook’s sitting at the bottom of the advertising melee biting its tongue because the company’s in a quiet period until the IPO when it comes to talking about financial goings-on.

    Next week should prove to be a revealing week in the annals of Facebookdom when Zuckerberg and Co. can finally respond to this media mess.

  • GM Yanks Facebook Paid Ads, Says Ads Don’t Work

    Due to a lack of vim from the company’s paid ads on Facebook, General Motors is said to be planning to pull some advertising funds from the social networking site, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    The timing of GM’s decision to nix its paid advertising couldn’t come at a worse time for Facebook as it aims to make history this Friday with the expected bonanza of its initial public offering. Facebook executives spent the better part of last week and this week embarked on a road show hoping to convince enough investors that the company can achieve a $100 billion valuation at this Friday’s IPO. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already had to assuage investors’ apprehension about Facebook’s difficulty in monetizing its mobile platform so it certainly is no vote of confidence for Zuck & Friends that the country’s third largest advertiser has declared paid advertising on Facebook as a money pit.

    From WSJ:

    Asked about the move, GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said the auto maker, “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.” Content refers to the unpaid Facebook pages many companies use to promote their products.

    GM started to re-evaluate its Facebook strategy earlier this year after its marketing team began to question the effectiveness of the ads. GM marketing executives, including Mr. Ewanick, met with Facebook managers to address concerns about the site’s effectiveness and left unconvinced advertising on the website made sense, according to people familiar with GM’s thinking.

    WSJ goes on to detail that GM spends a total of $40 million to maintain a presence on Facebook but only about $10 million is devoted to paid advertising on the site.

    Couple GM’s decision with a report released earlier today by WordStream that analyzed the effectiveness of advertising on Google or Facebook and declared that Facebook was lagging behind in the ad game. The WordStream report comes barely a month after a different survey said that Facebook was leaving Google in the dust with regard to cost-per-clicks.

    So is there any fear that investors could smell weakness in Facebook’s until-now seemingly irresistible ascent into its social days of Camelot? After the WordStream report and now the GM announcement, you have to imagine that some investors are going to at least balk at Facebook’s IPO. It likely won’t deter the company from becoming stinking rich this Friday, but it could make the difference between crossing that $100 billion valuation and hitting the ceiling in the mid-$90 billions (I know, because at that point, the difference between $90 billion and $100 billion is soooo different).

    Facebook has at least been making motions that its going to tackle the mobile advertising problem in the near future. Why else would Facebook be scooping up mobile apps ahead of Friday’s IPO? The acquisitions serve as an indication to investors that the company is forming a strategy for how to address the deficiency in mobile ad revenue. That fix is at least within Facebook’s grasp. But the GM defection? There’s no app that can be purchased to remedy that problem.

    Whether you’re a Wall Street jockey or just treat the stock market as a spectator sport, Facebook’s IPO in three days just got a bit more interesting. You have to imagine that Facebook’s mad men (and women) are doing some explaining right now on that road show of theirs so as to ensure that this is the last time you hear jarring reports like this:

    @dkberman
    Dennis K. Berman    Breaking from WSJ: GM has pulled its $10 million advertising campaign from Facebook. Why? The ads didn’t work. $GM 1 hour ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Is Google’s New TV Ad Model A Step Forward Or Backward?

    Google is in the process of drastically changing how online advertising is measured. Last month, the search and advertising giant announced its Brand Activate Initiative that is geared toward addressing the measurement challenges that brand marketers face.

    Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising at Google This new approach, which was announced at the Ad Age Digital Conference, applies a television ad model to digital advertising. On the DoublClick Advertiser Blog, Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising, wrote:

    In the 1950s, brands slowly moved to TV, just as they have started to move online today. In both instances, buying and selling systems improved; audiences and new content quickly moved to the new medium; and the creative possibilities inspired great ad campaigns.

    However, a key moment for TV came in the 1950 with dramatic improvements in measurement—like ratings and quantitative market research. Once major brands could see who they were reaching and what impact their campaigns were having, they fully embraced the medium, creating a multi-billion dollar industry…and TV’s golden age began.

    Here is a video Google released detailing the new effort:

    As part of the initiative, Google introduced two solutions: Active View and Active GRP (Gross Rating Point). With Active View, advertisers will only pay for viewed impressions. Active GRP, on the other hand, is what brings the television aspect to the table, and it is calculated by combining aggregated panel data with anonymous user data.

    How do you feel about Google’s new ad metrics? Will they take the industry forward? Why or why not?

    Dick Reed, CEO of Just Media It is this online equivalent of the Gross Rating Point that has some people less than satisfied with Google’s initiative. Just Media CEO Dick Reed has been particularly vocal on the issue and slammed Google about the move on his company blog. According to him, the Active View element is a positive approach to helping marketers with online measurement challenges, but the Active GRP is another story.

    “Where we have, I think, a little bit more of a challenge is to accept that we need to move to a GRP model, which is moving toward a TV-based model, when digital really has been doing so much more in analytics than TV has,” said Reed.

    “It just feels like a step back in time,” he continued, “rather than pushing the TV industry to be more in tune with the current metrics.”

    As he explained, digital advertising offers a very direct relationship between ads being viewed and the interaction with them. Therefore, he thinks the panel-based approach is a minimum offering when it is compared to the data the industry is capable of obtaining.

    “We’ve got more tangible data on each individual ad rather than having to rely on panel analytics,” Reed pointed out.

    Frauke Cast, Head of Analytics at Just Media Frauke Cast, Just Media’s head of analytics, also told us that Active GRP would have a “dramatic” impact on the industry. She explained that the CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) would become more valuable and expensive as a result.

    Both Cast and Reed believe that Google/DoubleClick should set a higher standard as a leader in the industry. What’s more, they would like to see them work with other ad serving technologies to provide solutions for the entire industry.

    “We want Google and DoubleClick to lead the industry – that’s what we expect from them as the major player – but what we would like to make sure they do is create initiatives that are not just for those people who are using the DoubleClick tool,” said Reed.

    Cast also pointed out that an open metric system would have been preferred. Furthermore, since the standards that are established today will set the stage for the future, she believes Google should have brought in agencies, publishers, and others in the industry before it began its initiative.

    “It should be our decision – combined decision,” she added.

    Google is currently in the process of submitting the methodology behind Active GRP to the Media Rating Council for accreditation. The company also said there would be much more to come with the Brand Activate Initiative.

  • Facebook or Google: Who Wins at Advertising?

    With the tech world still atwitter ahead of Facebook’s IPO this Friday, it’s expected to be one of the grandest IPOs in history. Investors are apparently so eager about the social network going public that all of the IPO shares have already been spoken for and some potential buyers have been left calling around for leads as if they’re trying to scalp Lakers tickets.

    Facebook figureheads have been busy this week with making last-minute pitches to investors and businesses, trying to warm them up to the IPO so Facebook will hopefully fulfill the expectation of a $100 billion valuation. Facebook’s future success is about to depend a lot more on advertising than ever before, but how exactly does the social networking site’s advertising compare to Google’s Display Network?

    To compare the two companies, WordStream, a provider of search engine marketing software and services, put together a new inforgraphic based on the results of a recent study it conducted. While the analysis shows that both Facebook and Google have huge potential reach, WordStream determined that Google Display Network “provides advertisers with significantly more value than Facebook advertising in terms of five key areas: advertising reach, advertising adoption/growth rates, ad performance, targeting options, and ad formats.”

    As you’ll see below, the fact that Google’s reaching 90% of all internet users is incredible, outpacing Facebook by over 40% and the strength of that reach is supported by Google’s much more dominant ad format. Still, the two companies run a close race until you compare the way ads are deployed on webpages: Facebook’s close to flunking while Google’s moving to the head of the class.

    “So far, Facebook’s advertising platform hasn’t kept pace with the explosive growth of its social network, and it remains to be seen if CEO Mark Zuckerberg even wants to focus on advertising as a source of revenue,” said Larry Kim, Founder and CTO of WordStream, in a statement. “In his 2,500+ word letter to shareholders this month, he mentioned advertising just once.”

    Facebook’s going to have some catching up to do with Google if it wants to play with the big kids, mostly in how the ad formats promote engagement. To see the rest of the stats, have a look at how the two companies compare below.

    Facebook vs. Google Display Advertising - Comparing the value of the world's largest advertising venues. [INFOGRAPHIC]

    © WordStream, provider of a Google Keyword Tool for Search Engine Marketing.

  • Old School Cigarette Ad: These Smokes Are Born Gentle, Just Like Your Newborn

    Unless you’re a crappy son/daughter/husband, you know that yesterday was Mother’s Day. The annual holiday allows us to honor the most important person in our young lives, and the first woman we ever truly loved, our mommas. It’s also a day for lucky children to thank the stars that their mothers didn’t screw them up – I mean, things were a lot different back in the 50s, 60s, and even the 70s and 80s.

    Case in point, this vintage ad touting the “gentleness” of some new cigarette packaging. “Proud mothers, please forgive us if we too feel something of the pride of a new parent,” it says. “For new Philip Morris, today’s Philip Morris, is delighting smokers everywhere. Enjoy the gentle pleasure, the fresh unfiltered flavor, of this new cigarette, born gentle, then refined to special gentleness in the making.”

    You know, because this new cig is born gentle and fresh, just like our new baby. And it’s totally cool to smoke around your baby, but also hold him oh so very tight to your smoke-filled clothes. Mmmmm….fresh:

    (image)

    As you can see, this ad ran in a 1956 edition of the Saturday Evening Post – an relic from a much different time. We’ve all seen Betty Draper puffing away both with and around child on Mad Men, but sometimes it’s hard for people my age to truly understand what motherhood was like 50 or 60 years ago. This vintage add perfectly captures one of the true oddities of past Americana – willful ignorance, questionable science, and manipulative advertising. None of those things are gone from today’s marketing landscape, but the consumer has evolved.

    A little.

    [via BoingBoing]

  • Marketing with Social Media Makes Ten Kinds of Win

    Even though most people agree that social media has changed the world of marketing, many businesses still haven’t jumped onboard the social marketing strategy.

    Utilizing social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and even LinkedIn can increase your consumer base, promote engagement with consumers, and help you tailor your advertising campaign to better fit your audience. Additionally, once you begin to track which customers are directed from social media sites, you’ll be able to see how this particular marketing strategy can do wondrous things for you like boost web traffic and increase ROI.

    To illustrate the ins and outs of social media and why you should consider incorporating it into your marketing campaigns, pagemodo put together a great infographic to serve as a primer for marketing in social media.

    Marketing with Social Media

  • Marketing on Social Media: You Should Probably Do This By Now

    If you want an effective way to reach your consumer base and, more importantly, expand the area of that base, there’s no way around it: you need to step up your social media vocab and make that an integral part of your marketing strategy. And yet, somehow, less than half of marketers have fully integrated social media as part of their brand’s plan of attack.

    Mashable points to a new study from Forrester Research that shows only 49% of marketers from 99 CMOs and marketing VPs have embraced the social media strategy.

    At this point in the game, many would argue that social media engagement shouldn’t even be something that anybody has to consider anymore; you just do it the same way you put a sign out front on your store or a logo on your letterhead. There are few ways to get that kind of consumer engagement as well as attract the right types of people who you’ll likely retain as repeat or regular visitors. Some of the most engaged brands on social media have found almost a mystifying way to maintain the attention of fans of those brands, even if those people aren’t buying the product.

    It’s cheap, it’s easy, and yet over half of marketers aren’t doing it. 92% of the participants in the Forrester study even admitted that social media has “fundamentally changed how consumers engage with brands.” Forrester principal analyst Tracy Stokes chalks it up to marketers just now figuring out where social media fits into the greater marketing puzzle.

    That’s great and all that people are starting to really figure out how to use social media in their marketing campaigns, but… hopefully, the next time Forrester does this story, a lot more than half of the respondents won’t be so sheepish about jumping into the social media pool of marketing. Facebook’s launched its Page Insights tool for brands to test and see how people are engaging their page and I wouldn’t be surprised if Google+ didn’t roll out some kind of Analytics feature sometime in the near future to encourage more brands to use the site.

    At any rate, if you haven’t embraced social media as a way to get your brand out there, what’s the biggest thing keeping you from integrating it into your marketing campaigns?

  • YouTube Launches Brandcast, Devotes $200M to Ad Campaign

    YouTube’s looking to evolve from offering only a conglomeration of amateur videos and pirated clips and become a legitimate provider of premium content with its new marketing tool, Brandcast, and it’s looking to achieve that goal by pledging millions of dollars toward the campaign.

    Yesterday at a celebrity-laden courtship for advertisers that featured the likes of Jay-Z, Virginia Madsen, Julia Stiles, Flo Rida, and several others, YouTube announced it was dedicating $200 million dollars to promote the premium channels throughout the Google Display Network. YouTube is investing another $100 million dollars into the creation and production of content for the premium channels, as well, so they’ll have a more Hollywood gloss to them and won’t be mistaken for the shaky camera work you see in so many of those skateboarder wipeout videos.

    In case you missed the teaser that YouTube released last month for Brandcast’s debut, take a look at what YouTube has in mind.

    YouTube’s been working toward its first upfront event since rumors began to circulate last September that the video site was going to launch a TV-like service.

    According to a Advertising Age, Global Head of Content at Google/YouTube Google/YouTube, Robert Kyncl, wants to take YouTube into a bold new direction with online broadcasting. “We will fish where the fish are in a mighty big pond,” he said invitingly to the advertising execs in attendance. “If you want to lead, join us now for the next seven years. We can build audiences together. We can build brands together.”

    So far, YouTube’s managed to attract a high caliber of celebrities to create channels on YouTube. A report from the Washington Post last October detailed how Madonna, Shaquille O’Neal, Ashton Kutcher, and Jay-Z will be a part of YouTube’s plan to eventually offer 100 channels of original programming that will produce about 25 hours of new material every day. As of today, YouTube’s practically already at that 100-channel goal as it’s channels page for new and original content has over 90 channels.

    As Google TV wades into the television and production market and with the Apple TV making a separate effort, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not this is the first death knell for cable television as we know it.

  • Google AdWords Now Available on Your Mobile

    Great news if you’re a fan of AdWords. Google is now giving you full access to the AdWords community right through your mobile device. That’s right, it’s optimized for mobile now. So if you have any spur of the moment inspiration or you need to get in touch with another advertiser, you can do it on the spot.

    Here’s what Google promises with the new mobile-optimized AdWords access:

    * Ask your AdWords questions as soon as they come to mind.
    * Post answers/articles and help other members.
    * Instantly browse any thread you want to re-visit.

    Many people are finding navigation on the mobile version to be similar if not better than what they experienced on their desktops. They kept the interface simple and buttons to all the community features are easy to find and just as easy to employ. All you do is go to the AdWords Community like you would on your desktop and all the mobile-optimized features will appear.

  • Tumblr Begins Selling Ads For Spotlight & Radar

    Tumblr today announced that ads can now be purchased for display in its Spotlight page or on Tumblr Radar. Business Insider is reporting that these ads start out costing $25,000 per ad. As you can see above, the ads will be accompanied by a dollar sign symbol next to the Follow button, indicating its placement has been paid for rather than earned.

    The Tumblr Spotlight page is curated by Tumblr editors to feature interesting and creative Tumblr blogs. Tumblr claims the site “drives tens of millions” of follows each week. The new advertisements will be placed “front-and-center,” right in the middle of these featured blogs.

    The Tumblr Radar is similar to Tumblr Spotlight, but is seen on the sidebar of Tumblr pages. Tumblr states that Radar gets more than 120 million daily impressions and that advertisers will get “a dedicated share” of those views.

    It’s always a sad day for a community when ads start appearing in places where users expect pure content. However, Tumblr does have monetize its business somehow. Though there was initial pushback against Twitter’s promoted tweets, users quickly adapted and the tweeted ads have now become very effective.

    In case you were wondering, the “Capitol Couture” ad seen in the above example is a blog set up by the Lionsgate movie studio to show off fashion designs based on the movie The Hunger Games.

    What do you think? Are you itching to plop down your 25K to be featured on Tumblr? Think the site just jumped the shark now that it allows these ads? Leave a comment below and let us know.

  • Apple Promises Developers Increased Revenues With iAd Rich Media Ads

    In 2010 Apple launched the iAd platform to compete with Google’s AdMob for a chunk of the lucrative mobile advertising market. Unfortunately for Apple, however, their Midas-like ability to turn everything they touch to gold didn’t really take when it came to iAd. In the two years since its launch, the platform has struggled to catch on – perhaps in part because it is limited only to iOS devices, while AdMob is far more broadly available.

    In light of iAd’s struggles, Apple has taken steps over the years to make the platform more enticing. When the platform launched, the minimum cost for an iAd campaign was $1 million, with revenues generated by the platform split 60-40 in favor of the developer. In December of 2011, Apple dropped the entry level price by 60% to $400,000. Apparently that was not enough to revitalize the flagging platform, however, and in February they dropped the price again, this time to $100,000 – a mere tenth of the original price. They also increased developers’ share of ad revenue to 70%, bringing Apple’s customary 70-30 split from the App Store to their iAd platform.

    Now Apple is at it again. They haven’t dropped prices or increased developers’ revenue share, though. It seems they’ve sent an email to developers to promote iAd as a major revenue stream for developers, who can use iAd to generate income from their free apps. The email also notes that rich media ads are now available on the iPad, bringing a more “immersive” advertising experience to Apple’s popular tablet. The email itself, which was obtained today by iMore, can be read in full below:

    iAd provides a significant source of additional revenue for iOS developers. Many developers with apps just like yours are already making thousands of dollars per week serving iAd rich media ads. And users have been delighted by the range of ads from major brands that offer an interactive experience while keeping them in your app.

    iAd Rich Media Ads. Now Being Served to iPad.

    iAd rich media ads are now being served to iPad apps on the U.S. App Store, redefining mobile advertising with rich, immersive ads that take advantage of the 9.7 inch LED-backlit display. Make the most of this growing opportunity now. Learn how you can join the iAd mobile advertising network and generate more revenue with iAd.

    While it’s widely known that iAd is struggling, it’s not clear how badly. Though Apple has not discussed iAd’s problems, the fact that they haven’t talked about its successes is suggestive. Despite an initial rush of developer adoption after the platform launched in 2010, it has not been the kind of money-maker for Apple that they clearly hoped it would be.

    Are you a developer? Do you use iAd? If so, what do you think of it? If not, why not? Let us know in the comments.

  • Google Paid Inclusion Results: Sponsored, But Not Ads?

    It would appear that some companies get the privilege of paying to be featured in Google search results that most others don’t. Obviously anyone can pay for AdWords ads, but Google reportedly has a new presentation for a certain kind of ad that is a little bit different.

    Danny Sullivan, with contributions from Pamela Parker, has put together a very interesting report about Google’s apparent paid inclusion program, which comes in the form of sponsored comparison ad results. According to Sullivan, Google considers these to be something in between organic results and ads – a “third kind of thing”. As he points out, it seems very much like paid inclusion, even if it’s only on a few select types of searches (hotels, flights and financial products).

    Update: A Google spokesperson tells us, “We’re changing the design layout of our hotel, flight, credit card and bank account results, which help users complete actions such as booking flights quickly and easily. We’ve always disclosed that Google may be paid when a user completes such an action; we want to be clear and consistent in how we do that.”

    Who’s to say this won’t expand to other types of searches in the future, as Google looks for more revenue streams? Meanwhile, Google is continuing to make improvements to mobile ads, which could help in that department as well.

    The main point of Sullivan’s article is that Google has long been against paid inclusion in search. He points to Google’s 2004 Founders’ IPO Letter from its S-1 registration statement, which includes the famous “Don’t Be Evil” section. This says:

    Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a well-run newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers’ payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.
     Emphasis added.

    It is interesting that financial is mentioned in there, considering that financial products are apparently one of the verticals that display this new format.

    I’m not sure the new format is a complete contradiction to this statement, however, as they are still clearly marked as “sponsored”. Just not as clearly marked. They don’t come in the colored boxes like AdWords ads. There’s a white background that will make them blend in much like other types of Google results. Though, it’s pretty much the same approach Facebook uses on its sponsored posts. Of course the big difference there is that with Facebook, these posts were organically made by your friends in the first place, so there’s a good chance you would’ve seen them anyway.

    Google's Paid Inclusion?

    Image courtesy: Search Engine Land

    The timing of this is pretty interesting, considering Google’s massive push against webspam with the Penguin update, which is designed to target sites violating Google’s quality guidelines, which, of course, prohibit paid links and links schemes.

    The idea behind paid links is that you are paying to influence search results. Obviously this is quite different than Google’s new comparison listings format, but in effect, it is still select companies paying to influence search results. The big differences are that Google is the one being paid and they are marked as sponsored. It’s that positioning of them as “a third kind of thing” rather than an ad product (and the fact that they don’t use the well-known ad background color) that might raise a few eyebrows.

    I’m sure you remember the debacle over “Local Paid Inclusion” a few months back, which sent SEOs into an uproar. If what Google is offering is a kind of paid inclusion, which one of the most respected names in the industry is calling it, I’m guessing we’ll see some backlash here too.

    According to Sullivan, the new sponsored comparison results format is going live over the coming days, so you may or may not see them yet. I’m not seeing them, but it looks like Google will be controlling a lot of what users see on hotel searches. I’m already seeing plenty of ads, Google Maps and Places results and Google+ Page results on a search for “hotels”:

    Google Hotels Search

    We’ve reached out to Google for more on these so-called “paid inclusion” results/ads. We’ll update with any more info that comes to light.

    What are your thoughts about what Google is doing?

  • Google Changes Ad Rotation In AdWords

    If you are a user of Google’s AdWords service, then you are probably familiar with the Ad Rotation feature. The Ad Rotation feature currently offers three settings – “optimize for clicks,” “optimize for conversion,” and “rotate evenly.” Google figures that they can fix up these settings so that the most relevant ads are always delivered to the user.

    To that end, Google announced some changes coming to Ad Rotation next week. The company hopes that the change will “provide users with the most relevant ad experience” and “help advertisers improve the performance of their AdWords accounts.”

    So what does this new update entail? The “rotate” setting is going to change. Normally, creatives rotate for an indefinite period of time. With the new update, this setting will only rotate for a period of 30 days. After this period of rotation, the setting will then pick the ads that are expected to generate the most clicks. It’s also worth pointing out that whenever a creative is enabled or edited, the ads in that particular group will “rotate more evenly for a new period of 30 days.”

    While you already know that this change will be coming next week, it’s important to note how it will affect current ad groups. If you have created an ad group with creatives that haven’t been added or modified in the past 30 days, the new ad rotation will be applied automatically. If you have altered the ad group, the change will come about 30 after the last activation or change.

    Like with any new change, it may confuse some users. If you have any questions, consult Google’s documentation on the changes. It provides all the answers you need in regards to the changes coming to Ad Rotation.

  • Awesome Urban Hack Turns Spinning Ad Into Carousel

    Walking the tightrope between art and activism, Florian Riviere fashions himself an “urban hacktivist.” Inspired by the hacker culture, Riviere has filled his portfolio with projects across various urban landscapes, including a “don’t pay, play” campaign that saw him make soccer and tennis courts in giant asphalted areas, completed with found items like shopping carts.

    He extended that to a “wild spaces game reintroduction” project where he turned various urban objects and settings into games. He put hurdles on sidewalks, limbo bars between street poles, and even basketbal hoops on billboards.

    The urban hacking is all about connecting people to where they live. Riviere says he “divers public space to allow citizens to reclaim their environment.” His projects fall somewhere between “do it yourself” design work and “upcycling,” which is the process of upgrading waste.

    One of his latest installations comes to us from Berlin, where Riviere has turned a rotating advertising cylinder into a functional merry-go-round. The shopping carts he used to fashion the carousel may not be an awesome as horses, but kids can enjoy the ride all the same.

    Check out his work below:

    If I put my art critic’s glasses on for a moment, I see a modernist statement on the world of advertising, and its grip on us from infancy. From a functionality standpoint, I see an incredibly interesting use for a basically worthless spinning advertisement. As an urban hacktivist, this “hacktion” took back a public space that’s been controlled by someone other than the people, and has given it “humanity and sensitivity.” Either way it’s awesome and I approve.

    [Via psfk]

  • Google Explains AdMob Publisher And Mediation IDs

    If you recall, Google released the Google AdMob 6.0 SDK last week. It brought with it a number of new features and upgrades to the existing SDK. Overall, it was a great release, but Google has found that some people are confused over one of the new features – mediation IDs.

    To help explain this new AdMob ID, the company has dedicated a post to the differences between the new mediation ID and the older publisher ID. It should help advertisers and developers better take advantage of both IDs to get the most out of AdMob.

    A publisher ID comes about when you add a site/app to your account. The ID is used to request ads from the AdMob network. You can use a publisher ID to request banners and interstitials as well. While you can also use the same publisher ID throughout an application to get ads, Google suggests you use a different ID for each ad placement.

    The mediation ID on the other hand is used for, what else, creating a mediation placement. It’s used to retrieve the mediation configuration from the server so AdMob can get ads from other networks on your behalf. This ties into the big new feature of the AdMob 6.0 SDK that lets users pull ads from other networks into AdMob proper.

    Mediation placements are very particular about the ads you place. You have to define the ad format or else the app will return an error. Even if the ads are the same size, you have to create multiple mediation placements for each banner and interstitial ad that you place.

    Hopefully these tips will help those still working out all the new features in AdMob SDK 6.0. It’s not that confusing once you get the hand of it. The new mediation IDs might throw you for a loop, but the simple tricks that Google supplied us with are sure to help.

    If you find yourself still struggling with the new AdMob SDK, Google will be hosting a live Office Hours Hangout on the subject. These Hangouts are usually pretty enlightening. If you want to join the Hangout, it will be taking place on Wednesday, May 2, at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EST).

  • AdWords Quality Score Explained with Latest Update

    In addition to Google offering account labels for keywords in AdWords, it’s also now offering a new tool that details the Quality Score of a keyword so marketers can optimize an ad’s performance.

    When looking at your AdWords account, hover the mouse cursor over one of the keywords and you’ll now see a yellow box pop up with more detailed information about that keyword’s Quality Score. In addition to the general Quality Score of 1 through 10, which you’ve always been able to see, users will now be able to see the specific metrics of how the keyword’s performance compares to other advertisers.

    Keywords are assessed in three different aspects: “expected clickthrough rate,” “ad relevance,” and “landing page experience.” For each category, advertisers can see if the keyword’s performance was average, above average, or below average relative to competing ads.

    As you can see in the example provided by Google, the status hover of the keyword “track lights” reveals two above average performances and one average performance, which has resulted in a Quality Score of 7.

    Google AdWord Quality Score

    Google’s Director of Product Management, Jonathan Alferness, who spoke with Pamela Parker of SearchEngineLand, explained the value of this information in terms of marketing strategies. “This is going to give advertisers a deeper look into where they might spend more time focusing and optimizing.”

    While access to this new information will not change how Quality Scores are calculated, knowing what three attributes of a keyword are considered in formulating the Quality Score could be a great boon to advertisers. Narrowing down what works and what doesn’t work with a keyword can enhance the advertisement’s relevance and since Quality Scores dictate the prominence and cost of an ad, this will help ensure that marketers are getting the most out of their ads.

  • Thinking Outside the Box of Banner Ad Clicks

    Thinking Outside the Box of Banner Ad Clicks

    Think seriously for a moment: when was the last time you legitimately saw an ad online and clicked on it to find out more about the product being advertised? Unless you said, “Never,” you are lying because nobody clicks on those pervasive distractions. The only time I even have an interaction with an ad is when I’m confronted with one of those sprawling bastards that go full-on face-hugger mode on my screen and completely block out all of the content that I’m trying to read/look at so I have to click on the X to remove the obstructing ad. Somewhere, some company might be generating ad revenue because I was attacked by the ad and had to interact with it, but my opinion certainly sours for that brand.

    If you can help it, you probably try to avoid looking at the ads and you may not even realize it. That’s fair, too: we don’t use the internet because we want to view a virtual catalog of products, we use the internet to watch videos of animals falling asleep in hilarious places and then occasionally take breaks to read the news. Get out of our way, ads.

    This willful avoidance of all banner ads is so prominent that it’s even taken on a common industry name: banner blindness.

    Nobody pays attention to these banner ads and yet they persist throughout the internet. How is that? Well, for one, they have to persist because that’s one reason why the internet is able to maintain its vaunted openness. Some news outlets have had to implement a paywall in order to make up for the lack of ad revenue in the digital market, but generally online ad sales are what keep the internet (in its current incarnation, at least) afloat.

    Regardless of your interaction with online ads, though, it turns out that simply having an ad be seen still counts more than anybody actually interacting with the ad. That much might sound obvious, but a new collaborative analysis by comScore and Pretarget today confirms that ad viewability and hover time are more strongly correlated with conversions than clicks or total impressions. The findings of the study suggest that the dusty model used by advertisers and media planners of trying to amass as many clicks as possible might need to be set aside in order to look to more meaningful metrics for evaluating a campaign’s performance.

    This seems to follow what Moat, developers of advertising tools, have anticipated due to their new ad platform, Metrics That Matter. The analytical tool is basically to your ads what Google Analytics is to your search traffic or what Facebook Insights is to your brand’s Page. With it, you will be able to see exactly what kind of engagement that people have with the site beyond just clicking on it.

    There have been some helpful how-tos about how to improve the deployment of banner ads but, realistically, banner ads aren’t sustainable. They get in the way – in fact, all advertising gets in the way: that’s why people change television channels when a commercial break pops up during their favorite Law & Order spin-off. Advertisers in the video medium have created a much better strategy for advertising that wholly circumvents the entire intrusion of ads, though, and it’s only now beginning to be experimented with in the online market: product placement.

    It’s worked out marvelously in the movie and television industry. I hadn’t even so much as thought about eating at Burger King in years until I saw Robert Downey, Jr., as Tony Stark mowing down on some Whoppers in Iron Man. I wanted to be charismatic and adventurous like Tony Stark, and surely if such a lifestyle was achieved by eating Whoppers, then that’s where I should start, too, in order to carve out my piece of the glamorous lifestyle.

    At least, that was the fantasy being packaged up in the product placement of Burger King food in that movie, and much to my embarrassment, it worked stupendously well.

    Granted, I don’t want to see a description of Taco Bell’s Loco Tacos in an article I’m reading in the New York Times about the on-going slaughter of Syrian protesters. But with the legions of blogs and more blogs out there in the internet, it’s somewhat dumbfounding that this hasn’t tactic hasn’t been successfully utilized.

    Facebook and Twitter have attempted some variation of this with their promoted/sponsored Tweets and promoted Stories, respectively, but neither one are really genuine or even compelling. At best, they’re contrived advertisements disguised in the skins of my friends’ and followers’ accounts. Seriously, Facebook, am I really supposed to take it that Mark M_____ is eager to let me know that he likes Hondas? No, and he probably doesn’t give a toss, either. If he thought I did, I’m sure he’s smart enough to know I’m smart enough to ask him.

    Promoted or sponsored posts represent the most prominent application of product placement on a website and so far the strategy appears to be working given Facebook and Twitter both have recently made some notable acquisitions. Since this ad experiment is really still the first generation of this type of embedded strategy, it certainly has some kinks to be worked out. Still, it’s novel, and as Nathan Kaiser expertly explained on nPost, novelty only works so long when it comes to online advertising. Given the ever-shrinking attention span of internet users, don’t be surprised if the half-life of this marketing strategy lasts less time than banner ads seem to have lasted.

    I’ve seen a similar strategy employed in some blogs I read wherein they’re labelled sponsored posts. It took me a few turns before I figured out that they weren’t actually posts from the blog I was visiting but rather an advertisement packaged to resemble a post on the blog. It was clever and, similar to every other advertising strategy, the novelty was lost on me after a while and now I just ignore them. That’s not to say that this innovation couldn’t be improved upon, though.

    Putting all of your marketing faith on click-throughs no longer seems like a safe bet or even a fair bet. Kirby Winfield, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at comScore, described how the comScore/Pretarget’s study highlights some of the major shifts on the horizon for the digital advertising community. “It demonstrates the perils of relying on click-throughs for measuring the performance of display ad campaigns, with this metric showing virtually zero correlation with total conversions,” Winfield said. “It’s time to start measuring the impact of campaigns using metrics that really matter, not just the ones that are most easily measured.”

    The current model does seem fairly inefficient and one-dimensional when you think about digital advertising in those terms. So for those of you working in the world of online marketing, how do you see the nature of advertising changing in the near future? Think there’s any use for analytic tools like what Moat has developed that could change the way advertising sales are structured for businesses? Let us know in the comments below.

  • Samsung Galaxy S III Teaser Ad Hints That iPhone Users Are Sheep

    Earlier this month, Samsung put all of the release date rumors to rest about the new Galaxy S III by sending out invitations to an upcoming event, set to take place on May 3rd in London. There, Samsung will unveil their much-anticipated new smartphone, which they’re referring to as “the dawn of the next Galaxy.”

    And today they dropped a new teaser ad for the device, which takes a not-so-subtle jab at iPhone users.

    The ad is pretty vague. It discusses “holidng a galaxy in the palm fo your hand” and gaining the power to “explore it freely and swiftly” over some abstract galactic images. The end of the ad is where it gets interesting, though. The final message from Samsung takes an obvious swipe at the Apple hivemind, saying “now you can stand out from everyone else” over the image of a bunch of sheep.

    Of course, this sort of depiction of iPhone users is par for the course for Samsung.

    Check it out below:

    Although Samsung hasn’t officially released any specs on their upcoming smartphone, the Galaxy S III is rumored to sport a 4.7-inch AMOLED display, 1.5Ghz quad-core processor and 1GB RAM. Other rumors have even suggested that it could come equipped with a Liquipel waterproof coating.

    If you want to travel even further down the rumor mill, a Vietnamese tech site recently shot video of what they claim is a prototype of the new phone.

  • AdWords For Video Lets Small Businesses Target YouTube Users

    Google has launched AdWords for Video, which will make advertising on YouTube a lot easier for any business. It’s integrated right into AdWords itself, so video campaigns can be managed right along with search and display.

    Frankly, the concept seems long overdue, particularly in light of all the criticism Google has faced regarding its YouTube purchase, and its monetization of the property, but it’s here now, and it just may have a huge impact on Google’s bottom line.

    “Similar to search advertising—where you pay for clicks and set budgets with bids—we created a new model for video advertising,” explains YouTube Group Product Manager Baljeet Singh. “With Google AdWords for video, you only pay when someone chooses to watch your ad, and you can create and manage video campaigns from the same platform as your search and display ads.”

    The account is not only connected to a business’ AdWords account, it’s also tied to the user’s YouTube account. Google says this is so that advertisers can easily start video campaigns using their existing videos. It certainly reflects that “one Google mentality the company has been taking (see recent privacy policy consolidation).

    Google has a 7 1/2-minute walkthrough of how to get set up on AdWords for Video:

    “On average, we’ve found that YouTube video ads drive a 20 percent increase in traffic to your website and a 5 percent increase in searches for your business (Google Campaign Insights, 2011),” says Singh. “With AdWords for video you can find out how viewers are engaging with your brand during and after they watch your ad. You can see how many viewers watched your entire video, visited your website, stayed on your channel to watch another video, or subscribed to your channel, after viewing your ad.”

    Google says advertisers will only pay when viewers choose to watch their ads, so if the user skips it, it won’t cost you anything.

    AdWords for Video is now available to all advertisers. Google is currently offering a $75 credit to new AdWords customers. The company says this alone can reach over 1,50 customers on YouTube for a month. The company is giving away $50 milliom worth of AdWords credits to 500,000 businesses. Businesses can request their credits here.

    YouTube has over 800 million users.

    There’s a lot more to say about today’s announcement. We’ll be following up with more.