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.
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:
If you’re an active user of foursquare, the popular location based app, you may have noticed the “Special Nearby” tab when you check in somewhere. By clicking on that tab you’re taken to a “special” from a local vendor.
In order to maximize conversions it is important to present your potential customers with the information or answer they are searching for. A person heads to a search engine to ask a question, our job as SEMs is to answer their question in a small ad and direct them to our or our customer’s website which will ultimately lead to a conversion.
An increasingly popular question in attribution management and in advertising measurement is what effect ads – that were viewed but not clicked on – have. These ads are known in the lingo as ‘View-Thrus’ or ‘View-Throughs.’ The related question people usually have is what percentage of credit to give view-thrus for conversions that came via multiple touchpoints (e.g. the customer saw and/or clicked several ads, before buying).
Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits.
How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly to the group that most needs or wants my products? Well, it’s simple supply and demand. While you are targeting a much more defined market you are not going to be alone in that quest to advertiser to just the people that will buy. Remember those pesky competitors? They want those people too because their claim is that they are better than you. Now you are going to find a price war that drives up costs for advertising and makes customer acquisition costs rise which in turn hurt the bottom line. So maybe there is too much of a good thing after all.
Ad.ly is an ad network for Twitter. You set your price and approve the targeted ads before they’re inserted (marked as ads) into your Twitter stream. And now, Ad.ly is adding analytics to its platform.
Online rules of engagement are changing. Old school business approaches and methods are getting left behind for dynamic new mediums that offer more interaction and less broadcasting. Businesses and industries are realizing it’s no longer possible to simply say what you do – you need to say what you can do as well.
This is the dawn of social media as a true business outlet and there’s never been a better time to get in on the inside.
Can you tell the difference between these two ads?
Look closely:
Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich!
Over the course of two days, I saw two stark examples of what could easily be considered the best and worst of airline advertising messages encompassed in two ads done for domestic US-based airlines. Let’s start with the worst from United:
