Advertising

BOSTON – ChoiceStream, the top choice for brand advertisers interested in advanced target optimization and programmatic buying, today announced the next installment of its Audience Cost Calendar — a monthly aggregation of impressions traded on digital ad exchanges. “In the last month, there has been much more diversification in the top 20 performing segments,” said Bill Guild, vice president, product management and marketing at ChoiceStream. “Travel continues to be a popular segment as more consumers have vacations on their minds with the nice weather and kids out of school. However, there are new segments debuting on the top 20 list this month, including Sports: Pro Ice Hockey, Careers: Marketing and Education: Graduate Degree.” Careers and Education There were some new Career segments that rose in ranking and cost index. Among the top performers were Human Resources (ranked 5th in May), Marketing (ranked 8th) and Accounting & Finance, which also increased its position in the top 20 segments. Curiously, the Education: Graduate Degree segment also rose in popularity and ranking, jumping 190 slots since April. The pursuit of an advanced degree shows those interested in investing in their education is on the rise, in tandem with the launch of summer degree and certification classes offered by various universities across the country. Holidays and Events With the summer officially kicking off with the Memorial Day holiday, the National Holiday segment rose in rank by four spots. This should not be any surprise with July 4th as the next big holiday approaching in the coming weeks. Complimentary to summer holidays, Food and Wine events saw a 20 percent rise in this month’s index. Additionally, the sporting segment, specifically for Pro Ice Hockey, jumped 55 slots to number four this month, thanks to the impending Stanley Cup Finals in June. The Audience Cost Calendar was created to help media buyers and marketers understand trends in the cost of various online audiences. The full infographic and the most active categories for the month of May can be found here. About ChoiceStream, Inc. ChoiceStream’s unique understanding of consumer choices provides individually targeted and personalized advertising solutions that are proven to increase revenue and customer engagement for today’s leading brands. For more than ten years, brands have relied on ChoiceStream to create a more engaging, personally relevant experience for their consumers.  By transforming audience choices into intelligence, ChoiceStream is able to help today’s biggest brands target their most qualified prospects with the right advertisements. For more information, visit www.choicestream.com. Interact on our blog at http://www.choicestream.com/newsfeed/blog/ and follow us on Twitter @ChoiceStream. Related articles: ChoiceStream’s May Audience Cost Calendar Finds Travel Segments on Top in Online Advertising BOSTON – ChoiceStream, the top choice for brand advertisers interested... ChoiceStream’s April Audience Cost Calendar Finds Careers and Automotive Segments Rising in Online Advertising BOSTON – ChoiceStream, the top choice for brand advertisers interested... ChoiceStream’s April Audience Cost Calendar Finds Careers and Automotive Segments Rising in Online Advertising BOSTON - ChoiceStream, the top choice for brand advertisers interested in...

ADOTAS – Advertising legend David Ogilvy once said, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” I imagine Ogilvy would have jumped into the digital realm with both feet. Apps. Big data. Mobile. Instant analytics. A key technology that enables organizations to provide all of those services is cloud computing. The cloud comprises of resources that might not be in an organization’s own data center, but that an organization can spin up within minutes when it needs more computing power. That kind of agility lets companies meet the challenge of a wildly successful digital campaign that yields an unexpected traffic spike that might otherwise swamp an organization’s infrastructure, or handle the slow but steady growth of mobile and social apps and websites. And while in the past brands and agencies would have had to buy servers and keep them on hand to meet contingencies, the pay-as-you go nature of cloud computing generates significant savings over traditional approaches. A broad range of agencies and brands leverage cloud computing already. Agencies including Domani Studios, Hook Logic, Ruckus Marketing, Vayner Media, Leo Burnett, Publicis, Arc Worldwide, Razorfish, HUGE, and JWT are running campaigns in the cloud.  So too are brands such as American Girl, Coty, Lady Gaga, Fox, CBS Interactive, Lionsgate, TMZ, ESPN, and PBS. My employer, RightScale, provides a cloud management platform and professional services to many of these companies to help run campaigns on cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Compute Engine, Windows Azure, and Rackspace. For all of its benefits — which also include almost unlimited storage and processing power and high availability for user-facing resources — cloud computing requires significant expertise to implement effectively. If you don’t set up your cloud infrastructure wisely, you can experience delayed launches and blown budgets. But with a little help and guidance, it’s not hard to set out on the right foot. Based on our work with marketing organizations on their cloud computing infrastructure, here are four tips to help ensure the success of your cloud-based digital campaigns: Plan your cloud infrastructure in parallel with your campaign. You have enough to worry about as you conceptualize and execute your digital campaign. Don’t risk it all by leaving infrastructure decisions to the last minute. Create a team made up of members of both your IT and programming staffs whose mission it is to vet the technology. This mixture of development and operations — DevOps for short — is a key factor in managing today’s computing projects. If necessary, your DevOps team can consult with a trusted partner. Plan for outages. No matter what kind of infrastructure you use, cloud or a traditional data center, outages are not a matter of if but a matter of when. That storm that keeps shoppers in until just before the holiday could also knock out your application just when it needs to be most available. Make sure you build high availability into your infrastructure plans, so that if one server, network provider, or data center goes down, you can seamlessly transition to your plan B with minimal downtime. Plan for cloud costs. Congratulations, your campaign is a runaway viral success. Traffic is spiking. And you were smart — you built your campaign on the cloud so it can scale. But your success means you’ve had to roll out unexpected resources, and who’s going to pay for that? A very successful digital campaign may use more computing resources, and therefore be more expensive, than you expect. Use a free tool such as PlanForCloud to help model your cloud cost ranges in advance. Plan for analytics. One of the greatest things about digital campaigns is the real-time visibility into customer response. We helped the marketing team

We'd venture it's a sure bet the brand McAfee is none too pleased with a recent video released by founder John McAfee in which he trashes the software he created because the people who have run the company without him for the last 15 years have "fucked it up." In the video, he hilariously reads profanity-laden emails he says he still receives even though he is no longer associated with the company. Dressed like Hugh Hefner and accompanied by a bevy of bodacious babes dressed in cleavage-bearing tops and extremely short pleated plaid miniskirts, McAfee reads several letters than skewer the brand and beg him to tell them how to uninstall the software. It's quite funny but it hits close to home towards the end when in an apparent nod to his recent Belize murder investigation, McAfee says, "You know, something went wrong. Fifteen years ago, I had some beautiful software and they took it over. I don't know what they did. It was like the time I hired that Bangkok prostitute to do my taxes while he fucked my accountant. It was terrible. The same fucking thing is going on now." He then illustrates how to uninstall the software -- by shooting his computer with a gun. While this will, no doubt, spark plenty of discussion surrounding the brand, we'd guess none of it will necessarily benefit the company. For now, the brand has remained mum on McAfee's video. Which is probably a good thing. Although the best response would probably be an equally strange video confronting McAfee's tirade. Not an easy task though. Needless to say, the video is NSFW. You have been warned.

Sharing, sharing, sharing. It's all the rage right now among brands that have discovered the power of social media and what it can do for them. But is there such a thing as oversharing? Can a brand become too active in social media channels for its own good? Can this harm any bond that has been made between consumer and brand? Author, speaker and social media consultant C.C. Chapman weighs in on that dilemma: "Everyone assumes there is a magic formula to answer this question and the truth is that there isn't. I have years of experience developing award-winning content for clients and for myself and the one thing I know is that if it is one piece of content or a million, it doesn't matter if it does not create an emotional response from your hoped-for audience. If what is created doesn't educate, entertain or inspire them, then nothing else matters." And so it would seem, oversharing is relative and to be determined based on a individual situations in which the brand participates - as well as how that content connects with a brand's audience. A slippery slope of sorts. More...

SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK, June 19, 2013 (ADOTAS) — Martini Media, a global media and advertising company, shared key findings from its most recent Affluent Online Shopper Index™ research study powered by comScore. The index measured the behavior and engagement levels of the online affluent audience, and found shopping activity across the wealthiest segments remains comparably strong. The study is a continuation of an ongoing research series in which Martini Media has partnered with comScore to keep steady track of affluent shopping behaviors. The company’s baseline study conducted last holiday season confirmed assumptions that affluent shoppers outspend other segments of consumers during an important time for all retailers. In examining the overall shopping patterns of all online shoppers during Q1 2013 versus Q4 2012, the study specifically revealed that affluent consumers are both still shopping and further outpacing the shopping activity of non-affluent shoppers, whose activity diminished after the holiday season. In fact, affluent consumers were 47 percent more likely than those earning under $100k to make an online purchase in Q1 2013, and on average, they spent 41 percent more on purchases. The gap between affluent and non-affluent spending grew in 2013 compared to the December holiday period, when affluent consumers were 31 percent more likely to buy and spent only 15 percent more than their non-affluent counterparts. On luxury retail sites specifically, the gap grows even wider. Three out of four affluent consumers were more likely to make a purchase on a luxury site, and spent an average of $184 per purchase – more than half of those earning under $100k. These gaps were much smaller during the holidays, when affluent users were 47 percent more likely to buy on a luxury site and spent only 25 percent more. Additionally in Q1 2013, affluent consumers were seven percent more likely to visit luxury retail sites and made 16 percent more visits per visitor than those earning under $100k. “The affluent audience can consistently be found online for both work and play,” said Skip Brand, CEO of Martini Media. “This study demonstrates how steady the digital affluent footprint is throughout the year, whereas other segments’ spending wanes after the holiday period. Brand success is dependent on focusing digital ad dollars toward the affluent audience and effectively reaching and engaging them online.” The Martini Media Affluent Online Shopper Index™ powered by comScore measured behaviors and engagement levels of the online affluent audience (HHI $100K+) by indexing (1) affluent users (across the Internet) against non-affluent online users (HHI “While the holiday season spurs gains in e-commerce spending across income segments, affluent consumers also exhibit strong online spending patterns throughout the year,” said Kent Parmington, Manager, comScore. “This study highlights the overall significance of affluents to the e-commerce sector, and helps demonstrate why it’s important for brands – and particularly luxury brands – to connect with them effectively.” The study also found that affluent spending indexed especially high in the apparel, accessories and jewelry, general services, and event and movie tickets categories, which is consistent with the previous holiday data. In Q1, the affluent spent on average: $171 on event and movie tickets. $163 on apparel, accessories and jewelry. $155 on electronics and computing. $122 on home and living. $113 on general services. About comScore Inc.: comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in digital measurement and analytics, delivering insights on web, mobile and TV consumer behavior that enable clients to maximize the value of their digital investments. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo. About Martini Media: Martini Media is the digital media and content platform for engaging the audience with the most money and influence online. With more than 1,000 p

Reciprocity and Rewards Key to a Successful Reward-Based Mobile Ad Strategy BOSTON, MA – Mobile consumers are more receptive when brands offer value in exchange for their time, says new research report Exploring the Role of Value in Mobile Advertising. The study, conducted by Millward Brown, in partnership with SessionM, a mobile loyalty platform and advertising network, is a continuation of Millward Brown’s 2012 U.S. AdReaction Report: Marketing in the Mobile World. The AdReaction study found that although favorability toward mobile advertising was, on average, low, brands have the opportunity to break through by offering more tangible value in their marketing content. To explore this further, SessionM partnered with Millward Brown to study, in depth, the role of value and rewards in mobile advertising. “Through the AdReaction Report we know that consumers want brands to provide valuable and rewarding ad experiences, and this study helped us break down exactly what that means,” said Joline McGoldrick, Research Director at Dynamic Logic, Millward Brown’s digital practice. “The findings present marketers with a tremendous opportunity to deliver mobile ad experiences in line with consumers’ expectations, enabling them to effectively break through to mobile consumers.” The study revealed a value exchange equation that consumers use to assess mobile advertising and found that they were more likely to engage when brands offered them tangible value in exchange for their time and attention. “Mobile advertising experiences that create a more balanced consumer experience — ones that respect time and provide a useful outcome — open the door of receptivity and have a positive impact on the brand,” added Jayne Dow, Director of Qualitative Research and Digital Innovation at Firefly, Millward Brown’s global qualitative practice. “This simple truth has powerful implications in improving the perception and effectiveness of mobile advertising.” Reward-based mobile advertising is one answer to value exchange equation. Specific key findings from the report include: Rewarded audiences are over twice as likely to interact with brands. After seeing an in-app ad, 34 percent of rewarded users clicked or interacted with an ad, compared with only 15 percent of mobile users who had not participated in reward-based advertising. Receiving a reward expands a consumer’s consideration set. After seeing an in-app ad, 26 percent of rewarded users considered purchasing a brand, compared with 18 percent of mobile users who had not participated in reward-based advertising. Not all reward-based advertising is created equal. When using a reward-based advertising strategy, there are some things to keep in mind. Ninety-two percent of mobile users report it’s important they choose the reward they receive, and 68 percent of users prefer to know for certain they will get a reward, rather than be surprised. Users also prefer rewards that are tangible and have an element of choice in how they’re spent. “Engaging consumers on their mobile devices has been a clear challenge marketers have faced with no clear solution,” said Deborah Powsner, Vice President of Marketing & Consumer Insights at SessionM. “Our study with Millward Brown, ‘Exploring the Role of Value in Mobile Advertising,’ not only reveals the impact of reciprocity within the mobile space, but more importantly why and how it can work effectively. Our advertisers have experienced success when leveraging this approach and we’re excited to present the opportunity for every brand to transform their relationship with consumers.” Mobile marketers interested in further background on the study can visit the SessionM insights blog: http://www.sessionm.com/blog/reciprocity-rewards-and-real-breakthrough/ For further information on the ‘Exploring the Role of Value

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