Econsultancy, 7/14/10
Engaging. Compelling. Fun. Viral. All terms you don’t think of when you think of B2B marketing, right? Well, think again. Or better yet, read on to learn how Cisco is making content fun…and even funny…and nevertheless sells million-dollars routers and other high-tech infrastructure technology.
Doug Wester, Cisco’s director of strategic communications in Cisco’s worldwide service provider marketing division shares all.
Everyone wants their information to be found in the first page of a search. Many people don’t go beyond the first page. But, IDG editor Derek Slater says all is not lost. He has seven tips on how to move up in the rankings. Read them here….
6/29/10, IDG News Release
While PC prices continued to erode in 2009, the PC accessories market remained vibrant and expanding. The fourth annual International Data Corporation (IDC) Beyond-the-Box survey shows that U.S. consumers spent at least $1.05 on PC accessories and peripherals for every $1 spent on a PC in 2009, compared to $0.87 per dollar the previous year. In 2010, IDC expects U.S. consumers to spend at least $28.6 billion on acquiring a variety of products and services to enhance their PC performance and their own personal user experience.
While security and anti-spam software remained the most popular products, consumers continued to focus their spending on PC performance enhancements, such as graphic cards and additional memory and storage, as well as expanding their own user experience with media creation products and software.
MediaPost, 6/29/10
When it comes to display ads, rich media and Flash-based ads account for 40% of impressions, according to a new study of online display formats introduced Tuesday by comScore.
That proportion is close to the 42% of impressions captured by static JPEG-based display ads. Animated units using the GIF format accounted for 14% of impressions.
6/24/10, Investor’s Business Daily
After falling for the first time in years in 2009, sales of online advertising are booming again as Internet phenoms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sop up rebounding demand.
U.S. online ad sales jumped 11% in the first quarter over the year-ago period and are projected to grow 16% in the current quarter, according to tech research firm IDC. That’s a stark reversal from a year ago, when ad sales fell 3% in each of the first two quarters vs. the year before. For the year, IDC expects online ad sales to grow 19% vs. last year’s 3% drop overall.
6/15/10, MediaPost
IBM’s move Tuesday to acquire Coremetrics, a privately held analytics firm in San Mateo, Calif., clearly signals Big Blue’s intent to support companies through social media marketing, advertising and cloud-based services. The real-time insights from raw and processed analytics and data will give brands a closer look at how consumers consume media. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Along with the technology, IBM acquires several of Coremetrics’ patents — although Joe Davis, Coremetrics chief executive officer and founder, told MediaPost that IBM’s interest in and plans for them are not clear. IBM — a company known for developing research and development of sophisticated technologies — not only supports thousands of patents internally, but has been buying up analytics firms that support marketing and advertising firms for the past several months collecting more. In May, IBM announced it would buy Sterling Commerce from AT&T.
I was recently at breakfast, a sort of meeting of the minds involving a media company, technology companies, market experts, and CEOs of start ups, arranged by a venture capital firm. Someone commented (and yes I wish it had been my statement) “do you think Leonardo knew he was part of the Renaissance at the time?”
That single question pretty much redirected the entire conversation as the table began to talk excitedly about the recent and likely coming developments in the technology and media spaces.
So if history is truly a guide to the future then I thought it made sense to look back so I could do a better job of looking ahead.
The term “Renaissance” means “new birth” and referred to the revival of art and learning that occurred in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. This period was characterized by the prolific and fabulous works of art by Da Vinci, Michelaneglo, and Raphael to name but a few. A few factors spurred this new interest in art and learning: the black death wiped out most of the peasantry in western Europe giving rise to a new middle class and in 1454 The Gutenberg Bible was published.
So did Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael believe that they were in The Renaissance at the time? I don’t think so, but some of the parallels to today are fascinating.
Back to Gutenberg, the printing press revolutionized learning and the flow of information. The Renaissance press could print 3600 pages a day compared to 40 by hand printing and a few pages when copied by hand. By 1500 there were 20 million printed volumes in circulation and that number jumped in the 16th century to between 150-200 million volumes. It was not until the 1700’s that the first newspapers arrived and then 1815-1820 when The Times of London became the first paper to print on both sides of a page, producing a cheaper product that more people could afford. In 1830 the first penny press newspaper arrived that cost 1/6th the price of other newspapers.
Does any of this sound familiar to today’s media and technology worlds? So maybe the black death is a bit extreme, but the publishing industry generally has been hit over the head again and again: first the Internet, then the rise of search and Google, and finally, a devastating recession. This leaves many of those in media wondering when will it get at least a little bit better. Everybody should know that it is never to going to be as it once was in the golden days of print with organized information dissemination tied to a steady stream of profits. But how many of us feel like we are in a period of Renaissance?
It took almost 400 years from the arrival of the printing press to the production of newspapers that the masses could afford. For context it took radio 38 years to hit 50 million listeners, TV 13 years, Internet four years, the iPod three years, and Facebook added 100 million users in nine months. We are living in a period of unheralded change and transformation. People now access content in real time all the time whether on the Internet, the mobile Internet or via an application.
It was only three years ago that the iPhone arrived and turned the smartphone and mobile Internet experience on its head: suddenly content looked great on a phone. Then came the applications that provide rich user experiences and now some 200 thousand apps exist on the Apple platform alone. Recently, Apple introduced another revolutionary computing and communication device with the iPad. It’s a game changer.
Every major media company is excited by this development and the slew of tablet devices from the Nook to the expected competing devices from PC makers. Mobile changes the user experience with content that supplements the wired web.
All of these rapid fire developments revolve around content and users who are connected almost ubiquitously to infinte streams of information and rich multimedia. It took 400 years for information to be democratized during the Renaissance. In less than 20 years since the advent of the Internet media and technology have combined to create a world of democratized media, learning, and creativity.
Content in this new world is once again King, but the delivery mechanisms keep changing. The King is dead, long live the King.
Despite all of the challenges of the past two decades, will we look back and reference this period as a media Renaissance?
Minsider columnist Matthew Yorke is president, IDG Strategic Marketing Services.
As we slowly emerge from one of our worst-ever recessions, where even the online juggernaut slowed to anemic growth in 2009, publishers are confronted with the fact that print advertising will continue to decline and online growth cannot make up the shortfall. Media companies remain under ever-increasing price and performance pressure by marketers and face threats from ad and demand side networks. So it’s hard to see where publishers can find hope and revenue growth.
As IDG looked for revenue growth last year, it decided to move aggressively into the social media space. This was not a wild roll of the dice. There was a lot of supporting research from internal and external sources. Forrester’s technographics study confirmed our suspicions that technology decision makers (IDG’s audience coveted by marketers) were actively engaged in social networks and, more importantly, were making business decisions based on those engagements and exchanges of information.
In March 2009, we formally launched IDG Amplify services, a suite of ad products that turned banners from one-way shouting matches into an opportunity for a dialogue between consumer and vendor. Between March and August 2009, I delivered more than 100 social media presentations to clients and prospects. Quite literally, the demand for insight and ideas was overwhelming. Clients were desperate to understand how to participate in Facebook, with its 300 million unique visitors. They wanted to know what Twitter represents for marketers and whether or not it is a passing fad. Could they get involved in social media marketing without losing control of the brand message?
Fast forward almost 12 months, and Facebook now has 350 million uniques, 8 billion minutes spent on the site each day, and Twitter in January 2010 processed 1 billion tweets. That is 16 times more than what Twitter handled in January 2009. So the question about fads has clearly been answered. But how do these statistics offer any hope for publishers? Since we launched IDG Amplify services a year ago, we have sold a lot of social advertising campaigns and, just as important, we have learned a lot.
Every technology marketer is excited about social media because of both the statistics and what we can learn about visitors. eMarketer reports that 90% of consumers rely on recommendations from people they trust, and 70% trust the opinions of others posted online compared to 36% who trust banners. Add to the mix that 56% of social network users have friended or follow a brand, and you have what should seem like the perfect environment for marketers.
But the advertising growth numbers tell a different story. Social media advertising in Facebook, MySpace and other social networks is projected to reach $1.4 billion next year, but that is up just a few hundred million from this year. In this market, that is decent growth, but what’s holding back significant advertising growth around social media? Users have made it clear that they don’t like seeing ads for cars or technology products while reviewing their family’s holiday photos on Facebook. Marketers also have legitimate concerns about ads appearing alongside highly inappropriate content and the lack of engagement with users.
So this brings me back to IDG Amplify and why we are bullish about social marketing for all publishers. When we serve contextually relevant ads and bring in the social Web as part of the message, we see stunning results. In the latest version of IDG Amplify, in one program, we ran ads in notebook review sections, incorporated comments from users from the social Web about the notebook products, and allowed users to share parts of the ad with their social streams (see example here). All of this happens dynamically and within a standard Interactive Advertising Bureau ad unit.
This treatment has shown fascinating engagement results: For some social ads, dwell times average 63 seconds and peak at 82 seconds. For other units, click-through rates range from .024% to .033%, which is two to three times greater than traditional ads. And we see readers engaging with the ads before the traditional click, which means that they are finding more value in the ads themselves. We know about the connection with brands because people are choosing to follow/friend brands and amplify the message within their own social networks. These ad units are simply driving deeper reader interactions than traditional online and print advertising. When IDG serves up contextually relevant and highly social advertising, we are able to offer both prospects and marketers a new and enhanced experience.
Our experience shows that media brands can be the starting point for social marketing complemented by social networks, and not the other way around. For decades, media companies have established a bond with their readers based on quality and relevant editorial, design and photography. What better place to encourage conversations between readers and marketers than in a trusted site? Readers can comment within the brand and, if they want, share with their social networks. Social marketing is not just a new coat of paint for the Web. It is a door opener for marketers and agencies. Once the door is open, there are major new revenue opportunities for services around campaign development and management.
By Frank Cutitta
While speaking recently with Fern, one of my nutty, crunchy clients, it struck me that many marketers are devotees of the Zen Buddhist ritual of Zazen. This ritual includes claims that sound occurs even if only one hand is clapping. Those of us who grew up in Jersey have a hard time getting this. What’s more puzzling is that Zazen has actually infiltrated social media strategy.
In recently launching a new Social Intensity Audit service, we’ve been approached by a number of major IT marketers to do a “lab test” on their social media content. We’re always happy for new business in a tight economy but we feel obliged to ask exactly how they define “social media content.” Inevitably the answer is that they want us to track the volume of posts and intensity of conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the community section of their corporate Web site. They then want us to report back on the “buzz” for their brand and products.
This is how I got in trouble with Fern. My answer to the content lab test request is that auditing social media without doing so in context with a company’s traditional media is like clapping with one hand. Good for Zazen, bad for business.
Many digital marketers have convinced themselves that social media lives as an isolated celestial plane. We hear over and over again that it’s the conversation that counts. But the conversation is only one hand, and in some cases it’s not any hands.
Take a close look at your Twitter feeds to see the proportion that have tiny.urls or bit.lys attached. Then ask yourself where these links take the reader. While one can argue how to define contemporary social content, most of these links take us to relatively “traditional” media formats (i.e., blogs, white papers, press releases, webcasts, news articles, research reports, videos, etc). Few if any take us to other conversations, Twitter feeds or Facebook posts. Most take us back to completely non-social content.
The problem is that most marketers are so satisfied to have a social media strategy of any kind, the underlying content that serves as the foundation for that strategy becomes secondary.
What strategy there may be is typically bipolar. On one “hand” the social media posts are 140-character sound bites with little or no real meaning or launching-off point for the prospect. Or on the other hand the posts are so shamelessly commercial that the prospect will never return after the first distasteful engagement with an onerous registration form guarding a sales brochure.
Social media is a clapping with both hands experience. Unless your brand is an incredibly powerful conversationalist (name one!), intimate social repartee must be aligned to highly optimized traditional content. Anything less is what we refer to as a “random act of content,” or the sound of one hand clapping.
It’s interesting to note that when engaging in a social media platform, most prospects actually expect to be taken back to the traditional. More interesting is that their expectations are pretty low. Our research shows that technology prospects only expect 40% of the content they receive to be aligned to any given stage of their purchase process. They actually expect 60% of the content to be off target.
But here’s why you shouldn’t be satisfied with mediocrity: Buyers also tell us that every percentage point closer to optimized content when they need it provides an exponential increase in the chances of being added to the consideration and final purchase lists.
From a Zen point of view, as the alignment of conversational and traditional content increases to meet a heightened stage of buyer enlightenment, the clapping gets louder and louder.
As content experts in our respective industries, this alignment process presents the golden opportunity for media professionals looking to delve deeper into the strategies (and the ever-growing budgets) of clients and agencies who are negotiating the social media maze.
Frank Cutitta is general manager of IDG Connect and former CEO of the International Advertising Association. He can be reached at frank_cutitta@idgconnect.com and is analyzing your company’s bit.ly’s on Twitter at www.twitter.com/fcutitta.
In these very uncertain economic times, people can feel powerless to keep a job or find a new one. However, if you define success with three components —reputation, network and expertise —you see how much control you can have.
You Are What People Think You Are
Reputation is the beginning of personal branding. You are judged wherever you go, whether it’s interacting with colleagues, participating in a volunteer activity or going out with friends. What people think of you or how they describe you are the branding basics. To a great extent, you influence that perception at work through your performance and personality. Your brand extendsbeyond a workgroup or even a division.
How Far Does Your Brand Reach?
Whether you plan to work in one company your whole life (not likely) or in many, a network is critical. You should be growingand enhancing it at all times. Don’t wait until you need a new job or want a promotion to develop a network.
It should be an ongoing process much like you develop circles of friends in your professional and personal lives. Of my nine jobs, all but one of them had a networking component. While your professional network is important, you should also establish a privateone via friends, relatives and volunteer activities. Think of a network as a bank account where you want to put in more deposits (offer help) than withdrawals (request help).
You Are What You Know or What People Think You Know
A degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University helped me achieve my boyhood dream of being a broadcast journalist. I lived that dream for several years until I decided it was time to change and moved into high-tech. My marketing communications careerhas evolved over many years from a base of knowing very little about ads, brochures, events and electronic marketing. I didn’t realize my education was just beginning 10 years after I graduated from college.
I’m a case study in learning on the job. Initially, my expertise totaled an understanding of news, writing and multi-tasking under TV news pressure. Over the years, I’ve gained experience in most marketing communications disciplines by learning from others, asking questions, observing what works and doesn’t work, and contributing to professional associations.
To a great extent, your career is in your hands. You can shape your reputation, network and expertise, or others can do it for you, but probably not as well. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Howard Sholkin has more than 36 years of journalism and marketing communicationsexperience. He joined International Data Group (IDG)—the world’s leading technology media, event, and research company–as director of corporate communications in 2003. He has also provided PR support for IDG Founder and Chairman Pat McGovern
The IDG TechPanel wants to know what you think. From business and gadget users to gamers, your opinion counts. You'll receive cash rewards for your participation. Choose between almost two dozen merchants such as Amazon, iTunes, and Visa. If you'd like to make a donation instead, choose from more than a dozen organizations including The American Red Cross, Make a Wish Foundation, Susan G. Komen, and Doctors Without Borders.
It takes just a few minutes to register for the IDG TechNetwork panel and begin giving your opinions to earn rewards.
Click here to read more