Advertising in Web 2.0 September 18, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Advertising, Live Blogging, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Online Advertsing, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo, websites.Tags: Advertising, Blogging, Digital Advertsing, Indian Blog Writer, Online Advertising, Simarprit, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo
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David Kidder is talking about Challenges on Advertising 2.0
- Automating of advertsing has to be multistage
- Analytic Vs. Creative Challenge
- Cost Optimization challenge has moved over to simplicity challenge and time optimization holds the key
- Decision making speed is rewarding
- Semantics hold the key to success
- Execution enabled but strategy focused approach is working
- Unified accounting measurements is mission critical
Panel Discussion Max Kalehoff, Jim Barnett, Mike Kelly and Tim Hanlon
- Forecasting accurately in digital world is a challenge
- Last 10 years have made things complex in advertising space, talking about simplicity is it real….
- Fundamentally machines just cant solve problems’, it is the quality of human resource which would continue making the difference, complex marketing needs would require complex marketing solutions and complex advertising solutions… so there is no easy way out Brands is a billion dollar issue and is bound to be complex, machines or no machines
- Objective of automation is and should be measurement of every single impression, strategic success rests with computing down to each and every impression released in the digital space.
- User experience needs to be measured to add value to any campaign
- Automation of cource leads to transparency, what is working and what is not, you can’t bull any longer. Transparency is what is creating to complexity and data overload
- Inventory is increasing every minute and new options are emerging simultaneously, which is adding to the complexity, at no point you have clue to the whole offering market has to offer
- Performance of fresh inventory available is very unpredictable, transparency is fine but what to do about the performance.
- Business models need simplicity too, complex advertising options for media buyers can create its own challenge
- Driving leads versus driving revenue, driving global traffic versus driving local traffic and linking them together is also a challenge
- Marketers dream is to make automation give a great flexibility, to ease moving around geographies and medias, and mediums
- Creativity can’t be automated, but at the same time the audience complexity and commonality pushes creative team to try it harder
- Advertisers have a choice and they know it, advertising agencies have a challenge in delivering to their expectations
- Interactivity and measurement would also strongly influence success
- Personal relationships have always driven advertising industry and automation doesn’t change that.
- Relationships are not replaceable but restructuring of relationships is bound to happen, better persons and better processes can be the differentiators
- Non premium inventory is growing and piling up, that is something which doesn’t require personal relationships that can be handled by automation very well
- Most of the automation are aimed at publishers making more money out of what they think is required, which maynot mean much to advertiser and marketer and the advertising company.
- There is a big talent gap which has emerged due to the digital challenge, new products in the market need new marketing approach
- Feature obsession may not be helpful, being choosy in mastering features for your own use is important
- Lot of inventory which has no buyers goes in for house ads, ad networks are not yet working to expectations, it may take some more time for action to happen.
The session concluded with couple of unexciting questions…
Reinvention of Marketing the Web 2.0 Way September 17, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Business, Education, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo, websites.Tags: Marketing Strategies, Online, Online Advertising, Online PR, PR, PR 2.0, PR Tips, Public Relations, web marketing
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Brian Solis on Web 2.0 and its role in PR and Marketing, my 2 cents are all over (Brian may or may not agree)
- Customers are moving online, PR and Marketing needs to move beyond 1.0 which it looks like it is stuck in’
- Are you an influencer, or do you know influencers, bloggers are influencers and they are at it
- Perception is important and social web has a role in how you are looked at
- Defining and measuring influence can help in decision making
- Are you everywhere… Traditional media, Events online and offline, New Influencers, Social Networks, Blogs and Comments, Forums, Content Creation & Curation
- Composite strategy can work for you, all encompassing approach to PR and Marketing would help
- Engagement is important in PR now, not just a look or a hit.
- You need to be hybrid PR professional in today’s world
- A PR professional needs to be all it takes he has to be octopus
- PR today all about Public
- A PR professional needs to be participative a good Press Release may not lead to anything
- Common Sense rules the day
- Rules of PR are influenced by rules of Blogging, which has no rules
- Relationship of trust with a lot of guys
- Be incremental in approach, keep sharing and communicating as you go on, let the story build up fast enough
- WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing) is what every thing leads to.
- PR today has to be organization wide
- Are you everywhere, exclude none
- Do you know where-ever you are, you just have to be everywhere. Look at all of the key networks and measure your performance on all active networks
- Become a resource for people
- Participation is the key and not initiation
- Web Analytics holds the key to how you are doing
- Creating special landing pages for your various activities can help
- Quantification and tying the activity to sales helps
- WEB 2.0 is not frozen, there is a lot more to come so keep learning
- You are the brand you project
- Some resources – Future-works, SocialMediaClub, sncr.org, nowisgone
SES 2008 San Jose August 18, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Bay Area, Blogging, Internet, Marketing, Search Engines.Tags: Advertising, Long Tail Search, Online, Search Engines, SES, SES 2008
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For all my posts on SES 2008: https://simarprit.wordpress.com/category/ses-2008/
Long Tail of Search & Semantic Search
It is my first time at Search Engine Strategies 2008 – San Jose, California (SES 2008, San Jose), two sessions down and currently attending the panel discussion here are my early thoughts on what’s going on:
Random Gyan:
Long Tail of Search
- Long tail can count to about 30% of the organic search
- Use blogs to harvest long tail traffic
- Use local long tail terms in local listings
- Use attributes in Google Maps
- Look for the “very Long Tail” and not just the long tail
- Weigh your advertising options
- Smaller Niche sites maybe a cheaper option, and may give great results at fraction of cost
- Links with navigation can help
- SEO’s have a role in online search market
- Mind your Traffic vs. Bounce rate
- Three phrases per page maybe the most optimum and effective targeting
- Live out of logs, they hold he key
- Shoot upto 20 “me too”: terms per key phrase
- Make sure your pages get indexed, search engines are busy, they may miss you.
- Divide your site into Key Phrase Zones
- SEO is no longer dead, it is making a comeback, and a big comeback
- PPC is becoming expensive
- Understand your Page Yield
- Account for your bottom 100 pages, analyzing them may help
- Attack your freeloaders
- Plan your SEO Dashboard, ensure it has everything you need, right under your mouse
- Measurement is critical, Measure visitors per page
- Know the lifetime value of your customers
- Search friendly URLs are important, but there is also life beyond them.
- Use “No Follow” effectively to increase your page rank
- Slicing and Dicing the content is critical
- Ideal length of the URL is a very subjective thought
- Anchors within the documents help
- Rate your keywords and assess your value
- Optimize Pagination
- Re-look at your internal linking structure
- Surrogate sites can help
- Getting high value back-links remains critical
Semantic Search:
- Let us talk to search engine and forget abstract codes and mono syllables
- Semantic Search engines attempt to understand underlying structured data
- Semantic search engines tend to eliminate ambiguous queries
- Search monkey project by Yahoo is an attempt to open up Yahoo Search platform for further development, based on semantic qualities and natural language expressions.
- Boorah claims that semantic search is happening. A quick 20 word analysis revealed little and exposed lots of limitations to the project.
- Google is implementing high degree of behind the scene semantics
- Hakia is a full blown version of Semantic Search (Beta), some of the attempts looked to be right, results are coincidentally close to Yahoo
- Powerset claims to have extreme semantic capabilities, which were not visible when I gave a set of questions to the website
- Ask.com claims to be amongst the best semantic search engines around with best results in Natural Language Query processing
- Generalization Vs. Specialization, Parallelization, Question Type, Categorization, Compressions, Content Characterization, ontology science applications are amongst some of the terms introduced.
- Inside the page semantic results could be another deliverable.
- Semantic Search has a lot to do with Aggregation of facts
- Improving relevance would remain a challenge
- Linguistic capabilities aided in ample measure with AI can deliver a great product over couple of years.
M&M’s World – A Review of the Flagship Store June 8, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Marketing, Review, Uncategorized.Tags: Broadway retail, Chocolate retailing, M&M, Review
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At 11:30 PM walking on 7th Avenue my daughter Avval playfully asked me to take her to M&M, M&M to me was only those colored Dime size or smaller chocolates, what were clothes doing out there, a peep inside and we decided to make it one of our must see destinations for tomorrow.
There is a lot said about brand extensions, but this flavor of brand extension I had never seen and had no clue. When we landed up at M&M’s World – Flagship Store at 1600 Broadway New York, NY 10019 there, three of us had three distinct objectives, Avval to spend her pocket money, Mini to buy gifts, and self to understand the business logic behind all this. To me M&M had always been a Fun Chocolate Brand, essentially aimed at kids; it had effective last minute purchase strategyacrossthe world airports; it had a smiley with legs and boots as its brand ambassador; it was a company which had pursued its China manufacturing strategy aggressively to develop a range of packaging for its chocolates.
One visit to the M&M’s World store and I have started looking at the whole concept of chocolate retailing differently.
Some Observations:
- In New York; In Manhattan; On Broadway
- Three side open
- Three levels
- Decent size mouth but huge belly. The ground floor is the smallest, IInd Floor is the biggest, third floor is also decent in size.
- Washrooms are on third floor.
- Chocolate walls on IInd floor.
- Impulse buying; Impulse buying and Impulse buying.
- “We know how to loosen your purse strings.” Money upfront approach to business.
- It is a destination.
- No samples.
- No one checks you if you taste from the wall.
- We are a destination, 10 – 12 strategic placed photo opportunities.
- If Disney has, we have.
- Of course they know Hershey’s is next door, and they need to hold to parents.
- Deal corners for parents to “balance out”.
- No M&M employee should be without a product ever, displaying utility.
- Buy and close approach to selling, strategically located check outs.
- Ground floor has some of all.
- A child is encouraged to have “everything M” footwear, clothes, linen, cutlery, crockery.
- The huge Neon Poster wall outside ensures that everyone watches the commercial fully at least once.