The Power of Advertising - Ripley's Believe It or Not Style

So I spent this last weekend in Branson, Missouri with my younger brother. We tooled around town, saw some GREAT shows (Liverpool Legends were fantastic, and the Dixie Stampede was the dinner show to end all dinner shows - if you are ever in Branson, see BOTH of these!), and met some really amazing people along the way.

And of course, the following exhibit in the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum about the power of advertising caught my eye:

It's true the old "cure-all" and patent medicines had no basis in fact (or even in reality, I mean, a blood, liver, and stomach renovator? What does that even mean??), but they definitely knew how to advertise.

Here are a few funny ads for patent medicines. Don't be fooled!

Final Score - Revolution 0, Fire 0....Cranberries Win!

Saturday night I was at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA for a soccer game with my Mom and brother. (Go Revs!)

Anywho, the game ended in a scoreless tie but there were some interesting marketing opportunities that caught my eye, similar to the ones I'd mentioned in a previous post about the Red Sox sponsors...

As we entered the stadium, we were greeted by a number of people in Ocean Spray cranberry grower overalls (you know, like the ones from the TV commercials) handing out samples of various products. Along with that there was a simulated bog of the wonderberries:

Following our close encounter of the cranberry kind, we made a pit stop at the restroom, where we noticed the hand-dryers had been updated:

If you can't read the small print under DO SOMETHING PATRIOTIC, it says "INSTALL PATRIOTS HIGH-SPEED ENERGY-EFFICIENT XELERATOR HAND-DRYERS IN YOUR RESTROOMS."

Side Note: Maybe I'm totally missing it, but go to Patriots.com and try to find anything, anything at all, on purchasing Xelerator hand-dryers. I dare you.

And then, of course, American Airlines wanted to get in on the act. And since they are a sponsor of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there were signs distributed that were pink on one side and said "GOAL for the cure!" which everyone was supposed to hold up when the Revs scored a goal. (It was a scoreless tie, so there was no opportunity for that to happen, but a solid idea). The other side that faced all of us in the stands reinforced the sponsor's logo:

I guess the moral of the story is that marketing is everywhere, even in the bathroom, so you really can't escape even if you try. I mean, we knew that already, but it's fascinating all the same.

Report: Top Keyword Price Nears $100 Per Click

The highest-priced keyword in the United States last month sold on Google for $99.44 per click, according to the AdGooroo Search Engine Advertising Update: Q309.

And before I tell you what it is, why don't you think about it for a minute and take a guess...

Used Cars? Not even close.

Debt management? Nope.

Auto Insurance? Getting up there, but still not the correct answer.

Give up?

It's Mesothelioma. Yes, really.

The report released Wednesday pegs Mesothelioma as the highest-selling keyword in September. The same word sold on Yahoo in the No. 1 spot for $60.68 per click. The phrase "auto insurance comparison" took top honors on Bing, bringing in $55.20 per click.

Well, that's certainly news to me. I've seen the TV commercials for the class-action lawsuits - "if you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma due to negligence, etc..." - but wouldn't have guessed it would pull $100 per click as a keyword. You learn something new every day!

(Courtesy of MediaPost)

SEO & SEM - Can't we all just get along?

Here's what you need to know about these two acronyms:

SEO = Search Engine Optimization
SEO is simply optimizing the keywords and links to your site and improving other aspects of your site to maximize your search engine rankings, resulting in an increase in traffic. Potential customers are already searching for your products and services, and by positioning your business at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) they will find you! SEO increases your organic (non-paid) search results.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing
SEM places your text ads to appear as sponsored listings on the SERPs (top and right-hand side of the page). It allows you to put your business in front of potential customers at the precise moment they're searching for what you sell. SEM makes it easy to test different ad copy, target local areas or the entire nation, and control your budget through spending limits and campaign optimization. Because your keywords are tailored to your business, you reach only those people interested who are interested, and only pay for your ad when it's clicked on! SEM increases your paid search results.

With the basics out of the way, you're probably wondering now why you'd pay for search results with SEM when you can get the organic results for free with SEO.

Think of it this way, if you've put the time and effort into creating, maintaining, and optimizing an SEM campaign to drive traffic to your website, you need your website to be set up correctly to give them what they came to find. If you can bring someone to your site but they can't find what they want immediately, your SEM is a waste.

From Raise My Rank SEO Services:

You only have a few seconds to convince them that your site can deliver what they want. Will your visitors, failing to find what they're looking for, click their browser's back button and try another site?

Your site has to be ready for your visitors. It needs to be written, structured, and coded in such a way that the information is clearly laid out and easy to find. If it isn't, your site will either be immediately forgotten by visitors, or worse, it will be remembered as one that fails to deliver.

On the other hand, SEO can take 6 months to fully optimize, which can be a long time to wait if you need to see results sooner or if you have a limited-time offer.

Gareth O Neill, a Microsoft Media Specialist, says:

If you do SEO properly then you will get clicks for free but if you have a fresh offer your site will take time to get spidered and start showing up in the organic listings.

This is where SEM will deliver better results. You can create the campaign straight away [...] and have your ads appearing in the paid listings.

For example, if you have an entertainment site and big news has come out from Hollywood or you have a computer games site and the latest game has just hit the shops, then there is nothing as quick as PPC to provide you with visibility.

So now what? Well, the bottom line is that your SEO and SEM should be working together. Here's just one great reason why your SEO and SEM should suck it up and be friends, from AllthingsSEM.com:

Recently Google made public some changes to their AdSense program. These changes include the addition of a quality score that is used when determining the cost of an ad. This quality score will mean that two exact ads will have different costs depending on the quality of the destination page. Although there are many factors that will be used to measure the quality of the destination page, most of these factors can be influenced by SEO. In fact, improving the quality of a web page as perceived by the search engines is pretty much what all SEO is about. So if you use SEO to increase the quality of your site, you will end up reducing the cost per click of your ads.

And now you know (and knowing is half the battle).



(Courtesy of Microsoft Advertising Community, All Things SEM, and Raise My Rank)

Times Square Owners Create Ad Network

Sept 24, 2009

- Katy Bachman

NEW YORK A newly formed group of media companies controlling some of the biggest digital signs in Times Square will make it easier for brands to simultaneously put their names in lights across multiple venues.

Called Times Square Domination, the networking effort offers marketers a one-stop shop for creating an unprecedented campaign in the nation’s largest out-of-home arena, visited by 565,000 people each day.

The network will be able to sync marketers' messages across many of Times Square’s most captivating video billboards, including Clear Channel’s Spectacolor HD sign, ABC SuperSign, the Nasdaq monitor and News Corp.’s Astrovision sign. As part of the package, TSD offers accompanying marketing and event services such as sampling and the use of street teams to create brand immersion.

“Sometimes, the benefits of coming together as an industry for customers are so compelling that even strong rivals see the value,” said Harry Coghlan, president of Clear Channel Spectacolor, one of the companies participating in the network along with ABC Regional Sports & Entertainment Sales, Nasdaq, News Corp. and Reuters.

TSD will also include the Times Square Network, a fully integrated platform created around Clear Channel’s Spectacolor HD sign at 47th Street at Duffy Square. When it launches next year, Clear Channel is hoping to turn the sign into a new entertainment source, complete with original programming broadcast from a Times Square studio and streamed on a companion Web site. Short segments will focus on popular interests, including major product launches or interviews with people on the street. Sponsored advertising will air in pre-determined slots and be combined with live-event marketing, mobile messaging, polling and contests.

“When we build SpecHD, we knew this attraction could also support a new model,” said Coghlan. “We knew that we could enable true interaction with the audience, going beyond traditional one-way broadcasts to create true two-way conversations.”


(Courtesy of AdWeek.com)

Natural Born Clickers - Follow Up

Following up on a previous post regarding click-through rates, Starcom has released a new report on measuring online ad success.

The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, according to the most recent "Natural Born Clickers" study from ComScore and media agency Starcom. As the pool of people who click on banner ads rapidly decreases, it begs the question: Is the long-used click-through rate now officially useless?

Useless? Probably not. Outdated? Absolutely.

"The click has always been of dubious value," said Joshua Spanier, director of communication strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. "But clicks are easy to understand and easy to measure. We still know that display advertising has unequivocal value; your search performance improves as well. Together, search and display are much stronger than apart."

So how do we now measure the success of an online campaign if we can't use the click-through rates? Here are some tips:

1. Goodby's Mr. Spaniers points out that it's important for marketers to ask their agencies how display ads fit into the larger marketing plan. "With the media mix, how do you set up overall metrics?" he said. "It's unrealistic to look at one element of one media for success. Since online media is so trackable, it's is held to a higher standard. The reality is no one looks at print advertising like that. You can't measure print that way or TV because they don't have built-in capacity. It's a little unfair that display becomes the whipping boy."

2. In the digital space, look at how elements like display and search coalesce, Mr. Spanier said. How do people end up at a website to make a purchase? Look at sales of a product on-site with consumers' exposure to ads. "There is no way display advertising is wasting money," he said, "even if people don't click."

3. Clicks are a direct-response measurement. For display campaigns, look at brand-awareness studies, purchase-intent lifts and engagement rates. "Users might work with an ad, but not click on it," said Paul Gunning, CEO of Tribal DDB Worldwide.

4. Look at display view-through rates. "CTRs have a value, there is still a hand being raised, but view-through is more important," Mr. Gunning said. "How many people actually end up where you wanted them to? How much time are they spending?"

5. Look at the creative. While consumer attitudes online have undoubtedly changed, think about how messaging does or doesn't demand clicks. If you want to measure success against click-throughs, include strong calls for action. Or, if you have a rich-media experience, other metrics such as engagement time are probably more telling. And that may be the case as more banners include innovations such as embedded video and rich media, said Atmosphere BBDO's Warren Griffiths, group account director for Visa, Emirates Airlines, Hertz and Starwood. "More banners have become the destination. I don't believe that would account for a 50% drop in clicks, but this may have had some impact."

Read the full article here.


(Courtesy of adage.com)