Do Online Media Planners like sales reps?

via: Clickz

Do you often find yourself wondering, “I have money to spend. Why won’t anyone get back to me?”

For those of us trying to assemble online media plans and execute campaigns, when we finally get that rare good rep, we feel like breaking into song.

Unfortunately, according to the survey I’ve been running, most people on the buying end aren’t happy campers. Eighty-seven percent of my respondents are dissatisfied with the online media reps they contact to buy advertising — over 50 percent of the time.

What are today’s online media buyers unhappy about?

Sixty-four percent of buyers who contact sites they have no previous relationship with say those sites are typically slower to respond than sites with which they have a previous relationship. The majority of these buyers say requests submitted to new sites go unanswered or are answered too late. Respondents say their number one source of frustration is slow response time or unmet deadlines when they’re trying to put together online media plans.

read full story here.

Examples of augmented reality

via: Mobile Marketing Watch

Augmented Reality Steadily Mystifying Consumers In Marketing Campaigns

Augmented Reality (AR) is a buzz word you’ll likely hear more and more in regards to mobile marketing these days, and for good reason.  The concept holds the all-to-important “wow factor” needed to engage consumers in an entirely new way, and keep them coming back over and over again.

Esquire magazine recently debuted an interactive AR issue of its magazine chocked full of engaging elements made possible by downloading a small piece of software and holding the magazine up to your webcam- see a video of the issue in action here.  Similarly, GE implemented AR into an awareness campaign a while back to show its potential and to improve awareness of its “green planet” agenda.  You simply print out a page with a special image printed on it, hold it up to your webcam and watch the AR magic happen.  See the video here.

read full article here.

While still in its infancy, marketing campaigns that integrate augmented reality are becoming more common everyday, and are increasingly mystifying consumers by letting them interact with various brands in a way never before available.  Marketers are quickly taking note and putting the concept to good use.  Accordingly, I wanted to showcase some examples of marketers and brands utilizing augmented reality in really cool ways.

A good automatic recurring billing system – Paysimple

If you are looking for an automatic recurring billing system that can handle customer transactions online such as online credit card transaction processing, membership join and login, product orders and subscription renewals, customer information gathering and business intelligence reporting, then you might want to check out Paysimple. I have used them and it was fairly easy to setup email invoicing, ACH processing, and easily incorporate into one of my web pages. Most of the services out there can do these, but what I can tell you is that the customer service at Paysimple is exceptional. They respond to all my inquiries quickly and have been very helpful. Feel free to check out their services at Paysimple.com.

Who is the leading Mobile Analytics firm?

via: MobileVentureBeat

Flurry and Pinch Media to create mobile analytics powerhouse

Two analytics startups, Flurry and Pinch Media, are announcing a merger today as they try to create a mobile data analytics leader. While Flurry has been focused on e-commerce, Pinch Media was focused on ad optimization. Together the companies intend to go beyond just providing data and become a media company that offers services to developers, such as ways to mine data from users and target them with recommendations for mobile apps.

The merger will create a company with 20 employees in San Francisco and New York. When the deal closes, the combined company will be known as Flurry, and its leaders hope it will be better able to keep up with the fast-changing smartphone industry. On the analytics side, the company’s competitors will be Medialets and Mobclix.

read full article.

How to measure mobile application usage

via: MobileVentureBeat

Flurry unveils deal with comScore for measuring mobile audiences

Mobile analytics firm Flurry is teaming up with web market researcher comScore to help measure the audiences for mobile apps.

The two will combine comScore’s mobile panel data with Flurry’s data on how much mobile apps are used. The companies will thus be able to offer better data to app publishers, ad agencies, marketers, advertisers, ad networks and others. The service will cover the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile phones and will be available through comScore in the first quarter.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

Clients will be able to get more accurate data about how consumers use mobile apps. With access to usage on more than 50 million phones, Flurry can measure real-time consumption data for apps that use its analytics system. It can show how frequently and for how long an app is used, where the user is, new versus repeat usage and other data. That lets app publishers and others better target consumers. Meanwhile, comScore offers audience measurement reports.

read full article here.

Don’t tell, secrets on how to pass the Google Quality Score Checklist

via: ROI Reveolution Blog

You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. The moment you upload your new campaigns & ad groups, even if paused, Google gives you an initial quality score. If it’s below average you’ll be paying more per click until Google has enough data for your actual performance to determine your quality score.

If you don’t come out of the gate with your best foot forward, you’ll pay a premium on your first 100+ clicks. Worse, you may be tempted to give up on a keyword prematurely based on astronomical bid prices. Pay attention to the checklist below when launching new campaigns, ad groups or keywords into your AdWords account.

The good news is that all these suggestions won’t just help your initial quality score, but should actually increase the long-term quality of your AdWords campaigns.

Here’s how to get the best possible initial quality scores in Google:

Keeping up with the changes on your site can be nearly impossible. Equally challenging is keeping up with those changes in your Google Analytics reports. Yesterday Google announced a new feature called Annotations to help you remember what happened on your site, who did it, and when it happened.

Any user with Google Analytics access can write comments on the over-time graph to indicate any notes they have for that particular event. This will save a lot of time for companies where the tasks are distributed between numerous people, which means you the analyst will no longer have to spend hours figuring out why all your data has changed. Just view the annotations to see if any major updates or changes were made! In addition to this new feature, Google also released the ability to use the Custom Variables in Advanced Segments and Custom Reports, and the new Tracking Code Setup Wizard. To view more information about these you can visit the Google Analytics blog.

read full article here.

The Complete Directory of Real-time Search Engines

FoneGigs has launched a complete directory of real-time search engines. The directory will be updated frequently. Please let me know if you wish to recommend a search engine that is not covered here or update certain information that is listed. Email Eric at Eric@smartdigitalspending.com.

How to pull Youtube stats

via: Mediapost

Google Shares Stats From YouTube Campaigns

YouTube has been unprofitable since Google bought it for $1.76 billion three years ago — but Chad Hurley, the company’s co-founder, recently speaking at a launch ceremony for the launch of Israeli President Shimon Peres’ personal YouTube channel revealed that the company had “two spectacular quarters.” He also confirmed the site gets more than a billion views daily, according to reports.

Googlerers supporting the advertising technology aimed at driving revenue through YouTube say the integration of DoubleClick and Google has begun to pay off. The company has begun to share statistics from ads running on YouTube in hopes that advertisers and agencies will take notice of the possibilities to generate revenue from ads running on YouTube and in videos.

Sharing stats from Harley-Davidson and Volvo ads that recently ran on YouTube, Ari Paparo, group product manager for DoubleClick Rich Media, says ads have begun to perform well. He attributes the integration of DoubleClick and Google technologies to the uptick. “It’s not about new features, but more about quality,” he says. “Today, consumers gain interest with the ad and then interact with it.”

read full article here.

How to calculate a Target Rate Point for Digital

Ready to apply some traditional media planning techniques to digital?

Although panel companies like Nielsen and ComScore have developed demographic and population estimates for digital publishers, traditional ratings and circulation metrics (e.g., Gross Rating Points, Target Rating Points, and Cost per Point) are generally not included in digital plans. Digital media plans are not including the denominators required to calculate brand metrics. Thus, it is impossible to know if a media plan achieves the advertiser’s campaign goals.

With that said, we can apply a shorthand technique to estimate audience metrics for digital media plans. Target audience metrics can be estimated for a digital media plan when the publisher’s site audience composition is known. Starting with a calculation of the expected impressions to the target audience and the size of the target audience on the internet, a planner can estimate a media plan’s Target Rating Point (TRPs) – the standard offline metric for a media plan’s target audience reach and frequency. Download the free tutorial to learn how to apply this technique and calculate target rate points for digital media.