Twitter to Offer Marketers More Tools to Target

"Geo-relevance for promoted tweets and accounts allows marketers to reach the audience in the right geographic areas," said Adam Bain, Twitter's president of revenue. "A regional chain that is only available in a certain part of the country can now promote their account or tweets in the right metro areas. If you want to advertise against the term 'jeans' to people in Cleveland, you can now do that. Tweet by tweet by tweet, for each organic and paid tweet, we're able to tell you how it's resonating, including follows and unfollows, so you can tell if you're turning off your followers."

Geo-targeting on Twitter is available in 210 cities in the U.S. and more than 100 countries, Mr. Bain said, adding that Twitter will be adding more cities and countries over the coming year.

Inbound marketing is going to overtake SEO

“Engaging across social channels to get links, shares, likes, comments and +1s is going to be the future for generating organic traffic to your site.”

-The Daily SEO Blog

The death of the wallet as we know it?

With NFC enabled phones, mobile peripherals, and a plethora of other mobile payment services/platforms emerging in the last year or so, I have been giving a lot of thought to the death of the wallet as we know it.

What does a wallet essentially do? For many of us, its main function is to hold our forms of currency, of course. The wallet does so much more. Many people, for example, carry photos, fortune cookie leaflets that they believe will give them good luck, even little paper keepsakes that remind them of significant memories and events. Photos aside, a mobile device cannot completely replace many of these items. It can’t replace something that holds emotional value.

More than anything - I have my doubts that a mobile device will ever be able to replace our drivers licence/ identification card/ passport/ social security cards. At least not mobile devices as we know them today. Not until mobile security measures are in place will those of us that don’t value the emotional values of a fortune cookie be able to ditch our wallets for good.

The State of Wikipedia

Wikipedia just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Today, The English Wikipedia now stands at 3.5+ million articles(up from 500K in 2005), and more than 17 million across all languages.

Each individual Amazon.com visitor is worth $189, almost 8X more than Google at $24 per unique visitor, nearly 50X that of Facebook at $4.

Business Insider: http://bit.ly/hBA394

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like - Case Study

Deck from McDonald's 12/24 Presentation

Process and evolution of digital display advertising

View more presentations from aporges.

The Most Creative Agency Website. Period.

Thoughts and resources:

• I love this because it reminds us to think outside of the normal parameters that we are confined to in advertising. Why do things in the same manner as those before us? Our preconceived notions and assumptions of what is acceptable often limit our imaginations. It's not that the clip is so different, its that they leveraged a third party (in YouTube) to deliver a message that in EVERY other case was conveyed through a .com.
• To play devil's advocate: While this was an extremely creative application, did it do it's job? What is the goal for an agencies web presence? Sure, it’s a lot of fun, but all it does is set itself up as different, not necessarily effective or strategic or experienced.
• Making of BooneOakley.com: http://bit.ly/eD03KK

Google to acquire Groupon?

Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to more than 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America. The company offers one "Groupon" per day in each of the markets it serves. The Groupon works as an assurance contract using ThePoint's platform: if a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all; if the predetermined minimum is not met, no one gets the deal that day. This reduces risk for retailers, who can treat the coupons as quality discounts as well as sales promotions tools. Groupon has seen enourmous growth this year, and was a recent hot topic after being featured as one of Oprah's favorite things (Although, I cant imagine Oprah has used a coupon of any kind since the Reagan Era..). Their rather simple, yet brilliant business model, combined with Groupon's choke-hold on the online localized retail market, has made them a target for all of the major major players in the tech game including Yahoo and Google.

After Marissa Mayer, One of Google's first 20 employee's and most recently the head of Google Search, was put in charge of location and local services, it was widely believed that Google was going to be making a move into the location-based social networking space (think Foursquare or Facebook Places - click for me info). The question everyone asked -Why move one of the most powerful players at Google to head up an emerging, small, and recently reorganized area of the tech giant? After news came out in the last few weeks ago that Google offered CEO Andrew Mason close to $6 Billion to acquire Groupon, the Mayer move seemed to make more sense. "A $5+ billion purchase - even for Google - is not something to be taken lightly, and it would make perfect sense to put Mayer - who is still only 35 years old - in charge of what many believe to be the next big thing." With 700 million global monthly unique users, Google can achieve a wider distribution of the 40,000 merchants that Groupon has lined up that are waiting to get thier deals listed. Will Groupon accept what would be the third richest acquisition in history? For now, the world will have to wait and see.

UPDATE:

Late last week, Groupon rejected Google takeover bid, and Bloomberg is claiming they know why. The social deal leader is betting it can keep increasing its valuation after walking away from a deep-pocketed suitor. As the story of Yahoo demonstrates, it's a strategy fraught with risk, but - as Facebook shows -great potential, too.

Thoughts and resources:

• Did Google put Marissa Mayer in charge of local because of Groupon? http://bit.ly/eJf1Af
• Try Groupon yourself: http://www.groupon.com/

Mobile Market Share Update

Research in Motion (Blackberry) and Apple continue to trade body blows in the smartphone market, according to Comscore's latest Global Smartphone report. RIM(Blackberry) accounts for 37.3% of the U.S. smartphone market with the iPhone in second with a 24.3% share. Google's Android platform gained by 6.5% percentage points to over a flat Apple to reach a 21.4% share. ComScore notes that the rising smartphone market is lifting all boats and boosting mobile content usage across all platforms.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Sep. 2010
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+

Share (%) of Smartphone Subs
June -10 Sept. 10 Point Change
Subscribers 100.0% 100.0% N/A
RIM 40.1% 37.3% 2.8
Apple 24.3% 24.3% 0.0
Google 14.9% 21.4% 6.5
Microsoft 12.8% 10.0% 2.8
Palm 4.7% 4.2% -0.5
Source: comScore MobiLens

-Cynthia Turner

Projection Mapping Becoming More Mainstream

"3D projection mapping has recently emerged as one of the coolest forms of advertising, with big companies like Nokia, Samsung, and BMW projecting beautiful 3D video displays on buildings around the world and sharing their campaigns on the web."

3D projection mapping, according to Wikipedia, is "any method of mapping three-dimensional points to a two-mentionable plane." Using this technique, video artists are able to match videos to buildings that they are projecting on and create cool 3D effects, making it look as though buildings are crumbling, changing their shape and more. It is really amazing. Check out the following clip as an example of phenomenal things that can be done using this technique."

Mapping during 600 years anniversary of the astrological tower clock situated at Old Town Square in center of Prague:

thoughts and resources:

• Agency behind this project: http://www.seeper.com/
• A view of the Prague astrological tower clock durring the day: http://bit.ly/dxMSYA

Astronaut Checks In to Foursquare From Outerspace

Today, Expedition 25 Commander Douglas H. Wheelcock became the first human to ever use a location-based service from space. Doug checked in using Foursquare from the International Space Station and unlocked the new NASA Explorer Badge, and is on his way to obtaining the most elusive mayorship on Foursqaure.

In the near future, explorers on earth who visit space-related places can also unlock the badge while learning about NASA history and the space program. Get started by following the NASA Foursquare page.

NASA Explorer Badge:

Social Media Maven Gary Vaynerchuk's Advice For Scaredy Cat Corporations

"On Wednesday night Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuk stopped by Fast Company headquarters for a panel discussion about online influence. In this clip he explains how he moved more bottles than uber-wine critic Robert Parker, how he took the NHL from 500 Twitter followers to 500,000, and how caring more than your competitors is the most effective weapon in building influence on the internet"

A few of his statements really stuck with me, most notably "You always hear that content is king(in regards to social media). If content is King, then Context is about to become God."

How McDonald's Uses Twitter

"Rick Wion, Director of Social Media for McDonald's Corp, discusses why the company uses Twitter, how it staffs it and how it deals with the legal hoops. The following clip was filmed durring the National Restaurant Association's Marketing Executives fall gathering Oct. 14 in Scottsdale, Ariz."

When Display Advertising Goes Wrong

Microsoft Bing 'Friends' Facebook

In a news conference today at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft Bing and Facebook announced that they will be partnering to provide Bing with a search experience where your Facebook network helps inform your every query.

"Lets say your searching for Toyota Prius. Not only will you get the standard news and product links, there'll be a module near the top of your search that includes any Prius activity among your Facebook friends - articles they've liked, comments they've made, etc."

Expect huge privacy concerns with this new innovation..

Search Share Shakeup

Google continues to dominate search traffic with 72% of all U.S. searches, but Microsoft Bing is making serious headway. According to the latest research from Experian Hitwise that tracks September Internet traffic, searches powered by Bing account for 23% of searches, with Yahoo commanding 14% of searches.

-Cynthia Turner

Social Media Revolution

Thanks Kerry!

Google's new "Instant Search" may have major effects for advertisers

Meet the new Google search. Typing out the full search query and hitting "enter" are things of the past. While it may not sound like a very exciting change, Google Instant is actually the largest change to the search giant in over a decade, and with it may come major changes for search engine marketers. On the new Google Instant, "search results and suggestions continually update as Google attempts to predict queries from the very first character entered in the search box. This is a major change in search technology and Google predicts this will save users more than 350 million hours a year, or two to five seconds per search, on average."

Now that you have the basics- CLICK HERE to jump over to Google, and complete a basic search before you read on.

So... did you stop to look at the screen, take a sip of your coffee, or sneeze while you were typing? My guess is you did, and if your brief pause was 3 seconds or longer, each of the paid listings on the top and right hand side of the page were considered, by Google's standards, impressions to the advertisers serving those ads.

Why this is bad: Increase in impressions = lower click through rate = negative impact on historical calculation of quality score = increase in the associated cost-per-click = higher costs without a higher return.

• In essence, there will be more total searches compiled. Many of our clients will have to pay more to compete in the search space, especially when bidding on more higher traffic keywords.

With Google Instant only a week or two old, we are forced to anticipate the impact of the engine's change and adjust our strategy accordingly. Stronger calls to action and page titles will be extremely important as there will be a much shorter time for searchers to view and interact with the results page.

Thought and resources:

• Putting paid search aside- Is the increase in brand exposure a good thing, even if for a second while the query is being typed?
• With this release, don't be surprised if Google AdWords give us an "average exposure time" metric.

Checking In with Facebook Places