What Role Will Display Advertising Play In Your 2009 Marketing Plan?

November 24th, 2008

Many companies are slashing their marketing budgets and evaluating how marketing dollars are spent due to the tough economic times.  Slashing budgets is a clear sign that “Lean and Mean” is the current theme for many businesses. On average most research suggests that (while growing) online advertising still only represents less than 10% of where marketing dollars are spent. Yet even online advertising budgets are getting scrutinized.

For advertisers who wish to get the best ROI (Return On Investment) for their online marketing dollar the focus tends to shift to display advertising and whether or not they should keep spending in that category. We all know that display advertising (eg banner ads on websites bought on CPM or cost per thousand impressions) is typically the hardest online advertising initiative to measure. Comparatively, CPA (cost per acquisition) campaigns can be directly tied to ROI.

Therefore, when under pressure to justify every marketing dollar spent the inclination is to slash display advertising budgets and increase more accountable marketing channels such as affiliate marketing. At the surface this seems to make sense. However, if you take a holistic approach to looking at this situation you may find that display advertising plays an important role.

At NETexponent we have seen how display advertising can boost other online marketing efforts such as paid search and affiliate programs. We evaluate all marketing channels in order to get a holistic view of our clients’ online marketing effort. This outlook has shown us time and time again that spikes and dips in performance driven marketing channels such as search and affiliate can sometimes be directly related to display advertising efforts. When significant display advertising campaigns are running for clients we usually see a boost in traffic and conversions in other online marketing channels. Therefore, display advertising can play an important role even in ROI focused advertising efforts.

Measuring the impact of display advertising on other media channels and choosing the right allocation of marketing dollars is where the tricky part comes in to play. I am not advocating that all advertisers go out and boost display ad spending because it may not have the impact they want. It is true that even boosts in performance related to display could come at a price that is too high for advertisers.  My main point is that companies should evaluate the impact display advertising has on other online campaigns and use that data to determine exactly how much spend to allocate to this channel in order to maximize online marketing ROI.

Posted in Display Advertising, Meet Us, NETexponent Clients, Online Marketing, Research by Peter Figueredo | | 2 Comments

Search-Based Keyword Tool Is Cool

November 20th, 2008

Right away, I’ll tell you that you should add the new Google Search-Based Keyword Tool to your go-to armory of keyword research solutions.

In a sort of Copernican way, the new Google keyword tool looks at what already exists on your site and pulls out relevant searchable keywords, which sets it apart from your average run-of-the-mill keyword list building tools.

What’s really cool about the search-based keyword tool is that it lets you sign into your AdWords account. Once you do this and enter a website into the word-box, it queries your current keyword mix and populates an extensive list of keywords that are not currently existent in your account. This is a great thing for marketers who have spent countless hours thinking, “Okay, I’m buying thousands of keywords, but what else am I missing?”

There’s also a small competitive advantage to the search based keyword tool, since it lets you enter any website. Even though it only returns 100 results if you are not signed into AdWords, that’s still 100 more competitive insights than you had before using it.

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

7 Minutes in SEM Heaven

November 19th, 2008

For those of you who are not search marketing experts yet, I’d like to share with you a few tips and some quick fixes that will improve your account and can be figured out in 7 minutes or less. Please note that these are more beginner tips. In addition, this applies directly to Google, but can also be used to help with other search engines like Yahoo and MSN. When you are done, you will feel like you’ve accomplished a lot and are in a nice happy place.

Let’s focus on three key areas:

1. Campaign settings
2. Keyword match types
3. Keyword bid optimization

1. Campaign Settings

Check your campaign settings and ask yourself the following questions:

• Are my geo-targeting settings correct? If you are selling a product that only ships within the United States, don’t target “All Countries and Locations.” I know it sounds simple, but I can’t tell you how many accounts I’ve seen that have wasted dollars on such a careless mistake.
• Are my networks and bidding settings correct? Keep search and content separate…always. If one is checked, then other should not be. It’s a major money waster to not separate search and content campaigns. Refer to a more in-depth explanation in this blog post about Google Content Network Best Practices.
• Is my daily budget big enough? Review the daily budgets of all your campaigns. It’s possible you might need to shift things around a bit. Your campaigns with the best conversion-driving keywords should get the most budget dollars allocated to them. You don’t want these campaigns turning off prematurely, because it could mean a huge loss in revenue.

2. Keyword Match Types

Ask yourself:

• Which match types am I currently using? Which should I be using?

Think about your search terms. If you are only buying broad match keywords, you need to change this strategy right away. Ideally, you should do some keyword research and buy long-tail terms in both exact and phrase match. As a quick fix, however, you can copy and paste your entire keyword inventory into other match types in AdWords Editor. Buying multiple match types is a way of making your keyword mix more efficient, but be careful setting up the different bid amounts. If your broad match keyword bid is higher than your exact and phrase keywords, then it will be triggered and most likely have a higher average CPC. Also, if you are not using negative match keywords to block off irrelevant traffic, you are making a pretty big booboo as well. Learn more about match types.

3. Keyword Bid Optimization

Run a keyword report covering the last few months. Download the report into Excel, and look for 2 big things that might stand out:

• High cost keywords - Sort keywords by cost and pick out any keywords that have not had conversions in the last few months but have spent a lot of money. For example, a keyword with $2,568 in spend and zero sales is a pretty good clue that it should be paused.  If they have had a conversion or two but the cost per conversion is still pretty high, you might considering lowering the bid.
• Low cost conversions - Look at the keywords with the most conversions and lowest cost. Are they in a high enough position? Can they be even higher? If the cost per conversion is really low, you might want to raise bids on these keywords for higher positions and see if it increases volume.

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Testing/Optimization by Dani Shalmone | | 0 Comments

Sponsored Videos on YouTube

November 13th, 2008

The day has come!  Advertisers are now able to post sponsored videos on YouTube and it holds many of the same attributes as Google Ads.

• Operates on a CPC bidding model.
• Video is triggered by designated keywords.
• Promotion text has the same character limits as Google ads (25, 35, 35).

Here’s a great video demonstrating how to create ads and also how they are displayed.

Google search ads have a tendency to be used heavily (or solely) by direct marketers and are not really applicable for aspiring artists and the like.  However, YouTube ads provide the starving artist an outlet for greater visibility and comfort in knowing their video will be seen.  The trick is, they need to be able to afford it.  Will the garage band down the street use YouTube ads?  Will YouTube ads become viral or will the community view them as sellouts (no pun intended)?  My guess is the garage band sticks to their MySpace page, and YouTube ads stay that way, as ads.

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Video Ads by Erin M. | | 1 Comments

Even the Military Loves Social Networking

November 12th, 2008

In honor of Veteran’s Day (ok - I’m a day late) I’d like to give a round of applause to TroopTube.com, a YouTube-like site that connects soldiers with families and friends, keeping them up to date on the little things in life.

In addition to those serving our country, members not in the military can create an account as a civilian friend or family member and can easily upload and share videos.  TroopTube does say that members have the option to share videos with everyone or only with a select few, but I couldn’t really tell how a member chooses who can view the video, or if a member can have “friends” to choose from.

The site is only in its Beta version and was created by Military OneSource, an authorized Department of Defense program that provides support to Active Duty, Guard, Reserve, and their families.  There are few videos, but I am sure that is only because the site just launched.

I love how social networking has made its way into every nook of society and even the armed forces see its value. I just hope as the hunt to monetize social media continues TroopTube is left alone.  It embodies the core values social networking started with - finding a way to connect when you’re not there.  To me, a TroopTube member is going to the site for one purpose, most likely with limited time, and wouldn’t be interested in anything other than new videos from friends and families, so what’s the point to try and monetize if they can’t be easily distracted?  We’ll see what happens…..

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media by Erin M. | | 0 Comments

NETexponent Launches New Research Division AffiliateBenchmarks

November 12th, 2008

It gives me great pleasure to announce the launch of the newest division of NETexponent – AffiliateBenchmarks. AffiliateBenchmarks will focus solely on marketing research and education in this niche space.  The goal of this division is to produce research studies that will benefit the affiliate marketing community while maintaining its own unique identity. We mentioned our survey effort in previous blog posts and provided more detail on questions asked, etc. This survey will be the inaugural survey for this new division and we will continue to launch research papers on a periodic basis.

Peter Figueredo, NETexponent CEO, brought a great deal of learning and knowledge to the table during the creation and launch process of the survey.  During his tenure at Nielsen Media Research as a Research Analyst Peter learned best practices for survey creation and data tabulation, just to name a few.  In addition to Peter and myself, Sal Conca, and Leslie Van Buren contributed a great deal of time and energy during various stages of the project.  Their expertise was definitely utilized to its fullest during this process.

Affiliate survey results will be available for the next 30 days FREE of charge at AffiliateBenchmarks. After the initial 30 days, the survey will be available for purchase for only $199.00  If there are any questions regarding the survey, please feel free to contact us.

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing, Research by Erica M. | | 1 Comments

Advertisers Tailor Messages To Address Economic Concerns

November 11th, 2008

This LA Times article was extremely interesting since it explores how different advertisers are tailoring their advertising messages to pitch value and savings during this harsh economic environment. Advertisers who have pitched themselves on platforms of luxury or convenience are now changing their tune since those qualities are valued less when money is tight. What is especially interesting is how luxury goods companies like BMW are changing their tune to promote value and savings while competitors like Mercedes are not. (Bad move, Mercedes.)

Even luxury brands are promoting value. The current ads for BMW’s dealer group, for example, focus less on performance and prestige and more on safety and savings. The campaign reminds potential buyers that BMW offers a four-year no-cost maintenance plan.

“The message we feel is most in line with the times is reminding people about our value-for-money equation,” said Shawn Ticehurt, BMW North America’s marketing and events communications manager.

The team at NETexponent brainstormed this very topic a few weeks ago during one of our townhall meetings. We discussed how our clients could tailor their marketing messages so they appeal to the current consumer mindset. The team came up with some great ideas and here are just a few:

• iChapters.com offers students textbooks at a fraction of the cost- a key marketing message to be highlighted.  They also offer immediate gratification since they are downloadable textbooks. Focusing more on the savings compared to print and less on the immediate gratification should prove helpful.
• audible.com allows people to purchase downloadable audio books one at a time or through their subscription plans. The subscription plans allow consumers to purchase books at a significant savings off the cover price. This could prove to be a much greater value proposition than the convenience of the download or their vast selection of 50,000+ books.
• The Financial Times newspaper provides great world news coverage, not just financial news as the name may lead you to believe. In this market more and more people are looking for news about the world abroad for financial and political reasons. It’s also great to get a world view on the US to see how others view us. FT’s messaging could benefit from a focus on this value proposition perhaps even more than a focus on price. Timely news with a world perspective is very important in this crazy environment.
• Even The Wine Enthusiast can pitch themselves on value if they promote their clearance section more as well as selling their own brand of products which can be much cheaper than pricier alternatives.

I am sure that some of our affiliates can also find interesting ways to pitch our clients and I encourage everyone to think about how products and services can offer consumers value and/or savings.

Posted in NETexponent Clients, Online Marketing by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments

Ad Network, Vertical Ad Network, Affiliate Network – What’s the Difference?

September 18th, 2008

At NETexponent we get asked this question a lot.  There are so many to choose from and it seems like everywhere you look there is a new network and they all claim superiority.  So how can an advertiser and/or publishers choose the right one for their business?  The first step is knowing how ad networks, vertical ad networks, and affiliate networks differ.

In his article published in the inaugural issue of FeedFront, our CEO and Co-Founder, Peter Figueredo shed some light on the subject by comparing each side by side.

In a perfect world networks would be…

• Transparent - telling you who you were working with always and what those sites are earning
• Safe for your brand – keeping your ads off of inappropriate sites
• Innovative - offering robust technology options for publishers
• Targeted - allowing advertisers to segment and target easily
• Informative - providing full access to campaign reporting and not hide any metrics
• Responsive - offering great client service and account management
• Unselfish - allowing advertisers to connect with publishers directly and keep relationships on their tech platform rather than their role as middlemen

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Lead Gen, Online Marketing by Erin M. | | 0 Comments

Google Browser Launches

September 2nd, 2008

Google’s official blog announced the release of “Google Chrome.” The browser will be open source and probably set-up much like Firefox. Google claims it is not doing this to compete but to help foster innovation. That seems to be true (to a certain degree) as Google has invested a lot of money in Firefox.

However, while they may not want to compete with good partners such as Apple and Mozilla…it is clear they are going directly for the jugular with Microsoft. Allow me to explain. The web browser will become the ultimate operating system of the future as most companies move towards web based systems rather than software based systems. Think Salesforce vs ACT. The web based systems are slowly making software based platforms obsolete. As this happens and more data is moved from the desktop to “the web cloud” the browser becomes a tremendously more important part of the computing environment. Microsoft may have won the first big browser war when they beat out AOL and Netscape but they are in big trouble if they lose this war.

UPDATE:

CNN has a great review of the browser here

Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing by Peter Figueredo | | 0 Comments

Social Networking Sites + Social Ads = Revenue!?

August 25th, 2008

Word on the street is Facebook is working on a variety of social ads that may become the secret sauce for monetizing ads in social networks.

The 3 key ingredients allow users to:

1. Post comments about ads
2. Send out virtual gifts designed by brands that function as ads
3. Become a fan of brands and spread the word to their network. Users will also be able to see their friends’ comments and find other fans.

#2 and #3 I get, but #1 I’m not too sure about. It’s a great way for marketers to get feedback on their ads, and make it viral, but it will be interesting to see if it actually moves product. I’d like to see an ad that allows users to review the product, after all it’s proven that reviews good or bad increase conversions.

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media by Erin M. | | 0 Comments