When it comes to new technology, marketers are often like a newborn playing with a set of keys. It’s new. It’s shiny. And we just need to have it and play with it. But, just because it is new and cool doesn’t mean that it’s the right fit, and often marketers adopt a new technology or platform just so they can scream “first!” with reckless abandon.
A client once told me, “I don’t need to be bothered with digital media reports.”
For digital media professionals, this statement stops the music, and we refrain from asking the obvious question out loud: “If you don’t care about the results, why did you even bother to invest money in this campaign?”
Let’s pretend it’s 2010. Your friend asks, “Have you been listening to this podcast?” Everyone stares blankly at said individual because they’re thinking podcasts are those weird audio recordings that loners produce in their parents’ basement when they’re not crushing the high score in DDR at the local arcade.
By Erin Mulrooney, Ashley Shuey and Megan Egan
No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, the 2016 presidential election has been entertaining, unconventional and thought-provoking, with much owed to online media—and social media in particular. And as we take a look at the election through the digital media lens, it begs the question: Does the trick to attaining the highest office in the land have anything to do with winning the battle on social media?Read full post...
by: Kathleen Doyle and Michael English
While we’ve heard rumblings in the industry about the demise of Flash for some time, it has become a reality only recently. Here’s a quick history of the rocky relationship between the Internet and Flash. Back in 2007, Apple chose not to allow a Flash player plugin on the iPhone, and in 2010, Steve Jobs called for Adobe to “kill Flash.” The writing was on the wall.Read full post...
Facebook surveyed users on promotional posts.
On January 15, Facebook users are going to see a cleaned-up newsfeed with less clutter and more controls for promotional posts. Facebook decided to make these changes after surveying users and learning they want less promotional content and more stories from friends and posts from pages they opted in to see.
Facebook decided to crack down on:Read full post...
Pew Research Center says 59% of U.S. adults have looked online for health information in the past year.
We know you. You’re a hospital or a healthcare system looking to increase your brand awareness or service-line volumes in your noisy city. You’re one of many hospitals patients can choose from when they have an emergency, need a doctor or are looking for preventive programs. And you’ve probably noticed that when patients come in for appointments, they’ve done their research — they are informed.Read full post...
Please take “hit” out of your vocabulary when you’re asking about campaign performance. We never measure by hits, but instead a variety of other metrics.
In the world of analytics, there’s this one, single dirty word that never fails to grate on an analyst’s nerves: “hit.”
As in:
“How many hits did we get?”
“Did we get any hits on our landing page?”
“Can you check the hits for me on that campaign?”
I’ll let you in on a secret: There’s no such thing as a hit. There are clicks, visits, visitors and pageviews, and each of those are different measurements.
Clicks indicate how many people have clicked on an ad. A user can click on an ad multiple times, but only be counted as one visitor. Similarly, a user can click on an ad just once and come back to the website in multiple visits. Usually, we only measure clicks when we’re analyzing ad performance. The number of clicks per the number of impressions equals the click-through rate (CTR).Read full post...
Working in the media department, I’ve been learning how to put together digital media reports. And I’ve learned that, while there is great power in facts and figures, a well-told story can move mountains. Numbers are forgotten over time. To engage our clients, we need to shape those numbers into stories.
In our reporting, we use colorful charts to tell a story about impact and growth. For example, in the stacked bar chart below, we show how social media and paid media affect overall website traffic. By breaking out the different traffic drivers, we show month-over-month increases and decreases in site traffic, as well as the dramatic consequences of pulling media campaigns in November.
Using bright colors and simple shapes makes the data visually appealing and helps the audience understand the insights behind the numbers.
Know your audience. If your clients are familiar with analytics, you may want to tell your story with more emphasis on certain data to help them make more informed decisions, decide their next steps and see the bigger picture.Read full post...
Bench the benchmark, set a target.
Last June, Bank of America’s Small Business Community asked me about setting benchmarks for digital campaigns. There’s no denying benchmarks have a lot of value. We use them to see how our campaigns perform based on the industry standard. Having a hard and fast number definitely draws the line in the sand between what is considered “good performance” and “bad performance.”
But a benchmark is just a number. As much as we want to match our number to someone else’s number, and label it “good” or “bad,” a benchmark can only tell a small part of the story.
Digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all discipline. One percentage number is not going to determine if the campaign passes or fails. What if we drive only a small number of visitors to our site, but they are extremely engaged, spending ten minutes viewing multiple pages of content? What if those few visitors become ten strong leads or convert into hundreds of purchases?Read full post...
Business-to-business publishers have embraced the digital world. The trend among them is to put an exact copy of their print version online. The only change most of them make is to add hotlinks to their advertisers’ websites. While digital does not yet make up the majority of the total circulation of most magazines, we need to monitor this trend to see what impact it will have on advertisers.
I applaud those publishers who are just as concerned about verifying circulation of their digital versions as they are of their print publications. BPA, the traditional B2B circulation auditor, now offers digital circulation audits. Media planners now have access to data on target audience coverage and composition to help them make informed recommendations. Unfortunately, some publishers are still “claiming” circulations that are unrealistic, at best.
Another way that publishers are ensuring target audience delivery is through a subscription-only basis for online viewing. Readers are required to fill out a subscriber profile for the online version with the same requirements as for the print version.
When you view an online version on a regular monitor, it’s easy to browse and read. But not so when you’re using a smart phone or a tablet. You might judge a spread to have a lot of impact on a big-screen monitor. But when you have to scroll between the two pages on your handheld device, it loses legibility, visual appeal and message delivery.
Big-Screen Monitor
With 120 million people listening to Internet radio, the playing field is highly competitive.
On June 10, Apple confirmed rumors that they will be entering into the world of Internet radio. iTunes Radio is expected to launch in fall of 2013 when Apple releases its iOS7 upgrade to its mobile devices. With 120 million people listening to Internet radio, the playing field is highly competitive, occupied by several providers including Pandora, Spotify, I Heart Radio and Slacker Radio.
Pandora dominates the market with 77%* of online radio listening. Pandora is a streaming music service, based on the Music Genome Project, with access to 800,000 tracks. Trained analysts use up to 450 distinct musical characteristics to identify qualities of each song that are relevant to listeners’ musical preferences. Pandora offers two types of listening: free, which is supplemented by display and audio ads, and subscription listening, which allows for advertising free listening and a higher-quality music stream.Read full post...
The fate of static outdoor displays may soon be much the same as CDs and VHS tapes.
Digital outdoor displays are quickly becoming one of the best mediums for cost-effective, high-impact advertising.
With the ability to change a client’s creative frequently and immediately, digital outdoor displays allow you to target your consumer with the most time-relevant message.
Another advantage of digital displays over traditional static displays is consumer retention. Research shows that while only 43 percent of respondents have any kind of recall of traditional static displays, more than 94 percent of respondents actually recall the message on a digital display. This is remarkable, given the fact that the message on a digital display is usually shown for only eight seconds at a time as part of a continuous rotation.Read full post...
Google Analytics is a data source powerhouse. It can measure almost everything, so it can be pretty overwhelming. Here are a few key metrics any small business, blogger or marketer just starting out should focus on.
In Google Analytics, if you look at your demographics by location, you can get a picture-perfect view of where in the world your audience is coming from. You can break this down by country, state, region and even city.Read full post...
Doesn’t seem fair for an advertiser to pay for an ad that wasn't viewable, now does it?
For as long as I’ve been in the business of planning and purchasing digital media, we have been buying display ads by impressions served. That means that when the server serving up the banner ad to the site records that an impression has been served, it is counted as an impression. When you buy display ads, oftentimes you pay by impression, and part of my job is to ensure my client’s ad has received the number of impressions I have purchased.Read full post...
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