Experiment and Analyze
Posted on | November 17, 2007 | 1 Comment
In Should Marketers Stop Talking About Advertising, our own Mary Lou Roberts in her DIY Marketing blog draws factful conclusions from several recent studies regarding the persistent migration of marketing spending away from more traditional media and towards interactive & social media in particular “emerging channels” which include blogs, social networks, advergaming and beyond. This spending shift is also speeding up the reformation of the larger agencies, which Mary Lou cautions may be missing the point as savvy marketers learn to harness their own creativity and tap directly into a world full of content creators. Thank you Mary Lou for drawing actionable conclusions from all those great research sources that for many of us remain under $$ lock and key.
In Search and Online Advertising: A Contintual Evolution, Ellen Siminoff contributes much of the success and growth in online advertising to advertisers’ willingness to experiment coupled with smart data analysis. She applauds Facebook’s nascent targeting model which aims to bring targeting to a whole new level based upon age, location, interests and other online activity as well as Google’s quality scoring. But these are just the latest examples in a field of constant evolution. Ellen’s perscription for continued growth and success: experiment and analyze (and don’t ever stop).
On a slightly more tactical level, in a couple of sectors near and dear to my heart – in-game advertising and mobile marketing, a couple short takes on sponsoring content or better yet, sponsoring users, serve as food for thought in a brand’s quest to engage in new platform marketing.
In Sponsor the User, Steve Smith sites some examples where mobile, because of its ultimate portability, offers advertisers a chance to add real value to a customers current real-time experience rather than creating a distraction. Instead of buying media, he urges brands to think situationally, how can a brand help improve the value of the situation a customer is in. The fine line between value and interruption has many marketers still sitting on the fence with regards to mobile advertising. Looking at the customer and their mobility and not just the third screen as another media will surly spawn creativity towards real value and relevance and hopefully some real fun to come in mobile marketing.
And finally, if you follow in-game advertising, a short piece on Popcap’s testing of its own in-game ad units within the casual online game Zuma suggest that players readily accept and click on ads in exchange for free play – or sponsored content. For now, the article states, Popcap is opting for an ad placement configuration which drives conversion to sales of the game rather than a completely ad supported model, in short because they fear they might be saddled with too much inventory for the time being. But as soon as advertisers decide to take the plunge, online games may well prove to be a desirable way to get in front of the people who watch less TV in order to play more online games.
Experiment and analyze!
Comments
One Response to “Experiment and Analyze”
Leave a Reply
November 19th, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
Great work on the blog, Penelope! Thought some of our readers might be thinking about viral and wanted to follow up on how quickly the gorilla video went viral–and how quickl it crashed.
http://www.influxinsights.com/blog/article/1568/read.do