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Mobile advertising is the way of the future, according to recent reports from US research companies Pew and ABI. With increasing numbers of consumers turning to mobile devices capable of full wireless connectivity, and mobile networks and web browsers becoming progressively more refined, industry analysts are predicting that a boom in mobile advertising is not far off.

Studies conducted in May and June this year indicate that advertiser spend on mobile device marketing will increase fourfold over the next five years. Currently, 40% of American consumers use Internet-capable mobile devices, and advertisers invest $313 million USD annually in campaigns targeted to mobile markets.

Both the sophistication and use of mobile smartphones and tablets has proliferated in recent years, and shows no signs of slowing. The release of Apple’s hotly anticipated iPad, and competitor tablet devices such as the HP Slate and the Dell Streak, marks a paradigm shift in how wireless mobile devices are marketed and consumed.

While wireless music and video games are nothing new, content such as films and television series is now proliferating in the mobile space. Forms of media once traditionally confined to the home or office are now available to people on the go, and advertisers are set to capitalise on a market in perpetual motion.

Advances in mobile technology and online usability also permit advertising on a more interactive and personalised level than was previously possible. Speedier networks allow for users to engage in real-time multi-player apps and games, while more powerful devices are capable of supporting Flash and other rich media advertisements.

And of course, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are evolving to capture mobile audiences. These lucrative demographics can only widen as smartphones become more affordable and readily available.

The challenge to advertisers now is to keep up with rapidly moving markets that are anything but house-bound and static.

Since Google Inc. bought out the free video-sharing site YouTube in 2006, the company behind the world’s most popular search engine has been trying to break even on its US $1.65 billion investment.

This was always going to be a long-term strategy, as Google’s amazingly lucrative business model is based around offering free and valuable services. Gmail, the online atlas Places, and most recently the social media platform Buzz, are all examples of Google products that don’t cost their users a cent.

So charging to watch videos on YouTube was never a possibility that was seriously considered, either by Google or by the web public. Google makes money not by selling products or services, but by selling advertising space on the web pages under its control.

Google AdWords is the search engine giant’s major breadwinner, and Google has successfully integrated this system with YouTube. Advertisers pay to show their video ad as a “Promoted Video” within a regular YouTube clip. Placement targeting can refine this process for a higher advertiser ROI, as ads are automatically matched with videos that contain related content, and so more likely to be shown to people who already have an interest in what is being advertised.

Still, the system is imperfect. A YouTube user watching clips about different dog breeds may not necessarily be a dog owner, so showing that user video ads for dog food or dog cleaning services is wasted on both the site visitor and the paying advertiser.

Google has always claimed to put the experience of its users above the wants of its advertisers, so it’s unsurprising that the search engine has announced its intent to integrate “skippable” ads within its YouTube advertising platform.

So soon, if You Tube site visitors don’t feel that a particular video ad is relevant to them, they don’t have to watch it. However, Google is playing fair by its advertisers too and not charging for ads that are “skipped”.

Google expects that the quality and relevance of ads will improve as a result of its latest initiative, and the accuracy of its ad tareting system will increase. If so, then the move will surely be beneficial to enhancing both You Tube user experiences and advertisers’ return on investment.

Twitter launched its ‘Promoted Tweets’ advertising system earlier this month, in a long-expected move by the staggeringly popular micro-blogging platform to attempt to monetise the global reach of its information exchange service.

The system is similar to Google AdWords: keywords receive bids from advertisers, and if successful, the advertiser’s ad is triggered as a ‘Sponsored Tweet’ when that keyword is typed into Twitter’s search field. How often the ad appears is figured on its relevancy and popularity, a performance metric reminiscent of Google’s Quality Score.

If the advertising model does do well, then lucrative deals with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Starbucks are surely not far off.

How will this affect the lives of Twitter users? Hopefully not much, beyond inflicting a mild sense of irritation upon someone seeing a largely irrelevant ad within their usual stream of largely irrelevant tweets.

So many people tweet as a means of unpaid, unofficial advertising anyway that it’s entirely possible that the most prolific Twitter users will be the least impacted by the switch.

Appropriately, Twitter is handling the change with a delicacy intended to avoid alienating its user base. Netizens don’t take to change well, especially the kind that’s glaring (Facebook layout changes) or obviously aimed toward diminishing their experience for the sake of corporate profit (pop up ads).

Twitter’s transparency in announcing its intent to introduce search, and the relative subtlety of its text-based ad format – 160 characters max, just like a regular tweet – may just make this one a success.

A recent advertising effectiveness study released by Nielsen and Facebook outline a positive relationship between earned brand awareness (naturally earned traffic) and paid media (such as sponsored Ads on Facebook). The study found that both paid and earned media can’t be planned separately just like Google Adwords and organic traffic (through SEO).

When developing the strategy, marketers and agencies should consider:

• How will the paid media investment drive earned media volume?
• Who will be seeing the paid ad (target audience)?
• What’s the pass-along factor? What will motivate consumers to share it?
• How will they ensure that their main message remains a part of the conversation?
• What does the organic impression look like?
• What are the goals of the campaign?
• What are other ways we can measure the effect of paid and earned media across
   multiple platforms beyond Facebook?

These are some very important questions to have answered before you start any online marketing or social media campaign. Most businesses fail to plan and hence tend to be shooting in the dark with results being ‘hit and miss’.

Marketers and agencies cannot continue to plan paid and earned media separately. We’ve seen
campaigns that have driven high traffic volume to social experiences, only to have the
communication stop there. On the flip side, there are wonderful social experiences out there that have little traffic because there has been no paid media support.

In order to effectively utilise marketing through social media, the communication needs to continue beyond just driving traffic to the website E.g. Facebook and Twitter icons on your website.

There is a myth that traffic helps with rankings. Although we don’t know exactly what Google’s ranking factors are, based on our experience, it has nothing to do with traffic. Engaging in social media has nothing to do with SEO, in fact it is another avenue to engage and grow that customer base who end up on your website having found you through high rankings for specific search terms. There are essentially 2 parts to the equation: driving traffic to the website and engaging users through continued interaction resulting in long term customers.

For those already using both paid and organic media strategies, do you think it is more effective for your online marketing campaign?

For full details on the article, read the 360i report.

Yahoo has followed in the footsteps of Google and released a new tool that gives users the ability to control what targeted ads they receive. The beta launch of the new tool, named Ad Interest Manager, was rolled out on Monday in response to lawmakers and privacy groups putting increased pressure on online advertising networks to hand users more control on the personal data that is collected.

Ad Interest Manager can be found on the same page that used to allow Yahoo users to opt out of all behavioural tracking on its network. However, users now have greater flexibility which will allow them to control what targeted ads they receive. Users will now be able to select from interest categories from which to receive ads from as well as the option to use Yahoo’s “educated guesses” system to choose the types of ads they want to receive.

Yahoo’s search engine rival, Google, announced a similar service in November that gives users more control on the data that is collected and the categories of Ads that are delivered to them. However, Yahoo’s Ad Interest Manager offers even more information and greater control. Along with Yahoo and Google, there has been a greater trend amongst the other companies in the online ad industry that have responded to concerned users wanting choice when it comes to online advertising.

Moonfruit bigger than Jacko!

Recently Moonfruit, a free website builder became the most twittered about company on this planet, and Cornwallseo.com proved, bigger than Michael Jackson. Moonfruit cleverly showed how a Twitter marketing campaign should be done!

Moonfruit to celebrate its 10th birthday are giving away 10 new release Macbook Pro’s over 10 days and all you need to do is Twitter a Moonfruit Tweet or come up with a funny or creative tweet yourself. This example shows that companies, who know how to use Twitter, and put it to good use, reap the rewards. This idea is simple and affordable, but, and this is a big but, generates millions of viewers coming to their website and more publicity than Michael Jackson. This catchy idea and ploy of Twitter shows how buzz, excitement and publicity can be spread in just a few days. It’s a real credit to the company and their employees who can capture the consciousness of millions of people and for only a few thousands of dollars.

Online media enables companies to gain professional and admirable publicity, and the companies who have the ability to understand and use the latest technology can take advantage of it and grow their business to new heights.

There are still 4 winners left to be chosen! So if you want a chance to win a Macbook Pro and to support the great use of Twitter and use of social media then Tweet something about Moonfruit!

Every business should look at the alternatives available to them in order to continually build hype and excitement about their brand.
Let’s face it, with so many brands competing for the market’s limited dollar – what can your business do to get potential and current clients talking about you.

One way in which this is possible, is through online contests in which you can work to get clients excited about your brand and keep them buzzing about the end offer – which is of course a prize. The key is to align this prize with your brand’s message to make the impact even greater.
The trick is to ensure that the contest you plan to run stands out from the rest. This means the right preparation.

Creating the right idea
It’s all in the planning stage and the first step is that you need to figure out what you want from your contest. The question to ask yourself is what can your contest offer that will lead to your objective be it brand awareness, or enticing visitors to sign-up for a newsletter.
Then let the fun begin! What crazy (yet manageable) ideas can you and your team come up with? Think of your target market and think outside the box. You will get points for being different rather than imitating something that has already been done.
The idea is to relate your brand name with something innovative and exciting.

Time Frame Involved
In regards to the timeframe involved how long is the entire process going to run for? This includes the idea generation stage up until the time when a winner is announced.
The types of contests that are most successful are the ones that give people the right amount of time to do what you intend. When you decide what you want the users to do (create and post a video or create a blog post) it’s essential that you have the resources to handle it. It’s also important to find the balance between keeping the contestants in the loop without annoying them until the contest ends.

Contest Promotion
What’s the point of creating a contest if no-one hears about it! This is where social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook can help generate the buzz to get people excited about your contest. The benefit of this is that these marketing outlets will give you the opportunity to get a whole new market excited about your brand. Sure, most people’s primal interest will be in the prize however take this opportunity to be bold and try new things.

And the winner is…
So how does it all end? You have drawn people to your site and they are excited about what you have to offer – so how will you ensure that the final announcement packs the biggest punch? It’s important to remember that all of this new found attention (and potential new customer base) needs to be fostered to reap the contest’s long term benefit.

When watching TV, how often do you flick through the ad’s - just waiting for your favourite TV program to come back.
Well I hardly think I’m alone in doing this, because lets face it, it’s just plain annoying.

The time has now come for these types of ad’s to infiltrate the online world - and David Payne is leading the way, hoping to alter not only the way online ad’s look but also how they are sold.

I’m sure you have come across pop-ad’s during your online surfing time, so whats so different about this type of online ad?

This time, the advertisments will be full screen and deliberately intrusive. They will last for approximatetly 15-30 seconds and will load in-between web pages as you browse through your favourite websites.

So why is this method being touted as the next big thing in online advertising?
Well according to David Payne:

The reason we need change is that brands are not treating in-page display ads as brand vehicles. Payne believes that its time to adopt a bigger, bolder creative and less sensitive approach to the user experience when it comes to online advertising.

So how will you feel about short video adverts rolling whilst you are on the web?
According to some experts in the industry

Companies have tried things like this before with mixed results, but we may be reaching a stage in the growth of our industry that tolerance for this type of video advertising is higher.

For this web user, I must disagree as I feel the primary reason people turn to the web is because they are time poor. Will it make sense for brands to forcefully expose web users to this type of advertisment? What’s your opinion on the matter and with all online ideas - watch this space!

Do you know who is visiting your website? It’s a very important question for webmasters and online businesses to know the answer to because it translates into revenue for the organisation. 

However, it is even more important to know the answer when you are buying ads for your clients. Would you like to ensure that your ads only displaying to relevant market? Would you like to decrease your CPM by a significant amount?

Behavourial Targeting is the answer to your questions.

For those that do not know, Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them. - Source: Wiki

What does this mean in terms of dollars and sense? According to Business Week

Marketers can use these tools to reduce online ad costs dramatically. Say your company sells “Bidgets,” a luxury product. Ordinarily you’d run banner ads on FancyOldSite.com, which reaches your target audience of men and women who earn more than $150,000 a year. The ads are expensive—say $60 per thousand impressions—but they reach your ideal audience.

You might instead embed a snippet of code in the banners that run on FancyOldSite.com. This places so-called cookies on the computers of everyone who sees the ad so you can track them when they visit other Web sites. That’s where retargeting kicks in. Every time a former FancyOldSite.com reader who saw your ad visits other Web sites, your Bidget banner ads pop up again. The banner ads reappear because the cookie on that computer flags a retargeting “network” of thousands of sites, saying “This desirable reader is back.” These new ads are cheap—$3 CPM—but they reach exactly the same audience.

So should you be investing in this kind of technology if you are running banner campaigns? Definitely! Not only does this reduce your costs, but at the end of the day, you are sending qualified traffic to your website or online business, which a much higher chance of converting. The only downside of this method are the paranoid web surfers out there that delete or disable cookies all together, because if they do this, the data wont be tracking correctly. Fortunately for advertisers and ad buyers, this practice isn’t mainstream as yet.

How difficult is it to setup? There are many providers out there that provide this kind of service but the key point you want to look for is integration with your CRM system that allows you to see what your clientele are doing on your website as well. Basically, we want to know everything about everyone. Is that too much to ask?

The best news? The price is slowly becoming right for SMEs and not just the big boys. So jump on board!