If you’re like many marketers, you may have wondered about the value of social media advertising on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, and even viewed it with a bit of skepticism. You may be asking questions like, Do people actually click on them?, and the all important, $64,000 question, Will I actually see ROI from social media advertising? These are not uncommon questions, but the fact is there’s actually a growing trend towards paid social media advertising. In fact, a recent Nielsen report showed that 75% of advertisers are using paid social media advertising, and 64% are increasing their budgets in 2013. And here at Search Mojo, we have actually seen where social media ads have delivered not only clicks, but conversions.
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Facebook’s stock has been taking a beating since their IPO. I’m not an expert on stock trading and I don’t own any Facebook stock, but I think the media and investing world are thinking too much about the short term and what Facebook is today opposed to what it likely is to become in the future.
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Advertising Age had an interesting story last week brought to my attention by a colleague, where a Procter & Gamble exec speculates that social media is already changing the world of market research. It’s an interesting story, mostly because of who is quoted. When a company with the marketing chops of P&G says something, you’ve got news. But the news is actually much bigger than what you are reading in Ad Age.

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There was a time when Pixar nearly went out of business. Yes, the studio that has been essentially printing their own money thanks to an unbroken string of hits like the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo was not always so invincible. In the early 90s, Pixar was in danger of going bankrupt, and to stay afloat they produced animated commercials for brands like Tropicana, Listerine and LifeSavers. Turning to advertising helped Pixar to survive, and go on to produce some of the most artistic and beloved animated films of all time.

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Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that online marketing is a gamble, but it is a form of calculated risk. Unlike typical wagers, you have the ability to adjust how much you are placing on a particular tactic, there are more than two teams, what one channel does impacts another and there is much more than just a win or loss outcome.

But if you are placing all of your marketing budget or efforts on only one channel, you might be missing the big payout: conversions and brand awareness. Why? Because so many digital marketing efforts are not measured against their actual value.

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In the world of online marketing, search and social media are evolving at an incredible pace.

Consider these stats: Google sites handle about 88 billion queries a month but did you know, twitter is approaching 20 billion?

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year and Hitwise has reported that Facebook tops Google in weekly web traffic.

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This relates to the post that I did over at Marketing Pilgrim the other day when I registered my disgust for advertisers and web sites who throw huge ads in between me and the content I want to see on their site. You can read about just how much I love intrusive advertising here so I’ll move on.

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With more and more big brands competing for top Google exposure, it makes you wonder just how much they spend on their search engine advertising campaigns…

AdAge recently obtained an internal Google document which highlights some of the biggest AdWords spenders for the month of June 2010.

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I conducted an ad hoc and wholly unscientific poll among a handful of my friends the other day about the possibility of advertising coming to books. It produced some strong (and predictable) negative reactions.

Hell freezing, dead bodies and metaphors about fat and slim peppered the comments I received. A minority felt ambivalent about the idea and said it was inevitable.

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As someone who works full time at the agency founded by David Ogilvy, there are plenty of reminders of his wisdom on the walls. Even online, at least once a day I see a tweet come through with someone quoting one of his famous sayings. So I don’t disagree with him lightly, but he did have one quote about dishonesty in advertising that I wish were true – but isn’t:

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