On the heels of its failed offer to acquire online advertising giant Yahoo, Microsoft has once again shifted its focus to the interactive television world, announcing the acquisition early this morning of Navic Networks, a leading developer of addressable TV advertising technologies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but prior to its purchase by Microsoft, Navic had raised $43 million over three rounds of funding, and the software giant said it would become a part of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, the group headed by Brian McAndrews, the former head of aQuantive, which Microsoft paid $6 billion to acquire last year. The deal signals a broader industry shift from Web-focused interactive advertising deals back to television, and follows several important recent developments including WPP Group's investment in Navic rival Invidi Technologies, Google's partnership with EchoStar's Dish Network for Google TV Ads, and the official unveiling of Canoe Ventures, a cable industry initiative headed by former Madison Avenue media honcho David Verklin. The deal also is the latest in a succession of attempts - largely failed ones - by the world's biggest technology company to leverage its lock on computer operating systems, and a minor position in the online world, into the $80 billion television advertising marketplace. Over the years, Microsoft has invested heavily in a variety of platforms that were supposed to bring interactivity to television, including WebTV and various generations of TV operating systems, and has even positioned several other products as potential television Trojans, including the Windows Media Center and its Xbox video game platform. While Microsoft has largely failed to make a significant dent in the television business, the acquisition of Navic and its integration into its APS Group is intriguing. Among other things, Navic is now aligned with a major interactive advertising unit, aQuantive. For another thing, one of aQuantive's secret weapons is Atlas DMT, an ad serving platform that is one of the best deployed in interactive TV and video-on-demand systems. Navic made some other recent news on Madison Avenue, announcing the hiring of another ad industry media icon, former Initiative Worldwide chief Alec Gerster, as its chief marketing officer in April. Gerster, who spent years as the chief media executive at Grey Advertising, and was part of the team that led an early investment in Visible World, another promising interactive TV advertising technology company. Microsoft's Navic deal follows WPP's investment in one of its chief rivals, Invidi Technologies, which is believed to be close to announcing deals with several major cable operators to deploy its addressable TV advertising switching technology. The Invidi stake, which is held by WPP's GroupM unit, parallels Microsoft's in another respect. Like Microsoft's Atlas DMT stake, WPP also owns a major ad serving platform: 24/7 Real Media. And like Microsoft, which put a savvy Madison Avenue executive, Brian McAndrews, in charge of the asset, GroupM global CEO Irwin Gotlieb has become a member of Invidi's board. "Television media represents the largest percentage of advertisers and agencies' media budget today," McAndrews said in this morning's announcement. "Together, Navic and Microsoft will deliver addressable television advertising solutions to help our partners better manage media spend by increasing advertiser reach and ROI, and maximizing publisher yield on television advertising." That, of course, is something others - including Google and the cable industry's Canoe Ventures - are also racing to achieve, and much of it will depend on each player's ability to achieve enough distribution of their technology to generate the kind of scale that has made television advertising the dominant and ubiquitous ad medium it remains today - and which a number of industry gurus believe it will remain into the foreseeable future, despite the rapid growth of online video. In fact, during an opening keynote at the OMMA Publishing conference Tuesday morning in New York, Brian Wieser, director of industry analysis at Interpublic's Magna Global unit, made a compelling case for why television would continue to dominate the advertising mix for at least some time to come. Among other things, Wieser noted that it still works very effectively and is far more efficient for the world's largest advertiser to buy than the supposedly more effective and efficient emerging media, including online video (see related story in today's edition). Meanwhile, a highly respected industry consultant, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, this morning released its annual media outlook report, and noted that while online and mobile digital media technologies are driving growth, traditional media - especially television - will remain dominant for at least the foreseeable future. "Established and traditional business segments will continue to dominate revenues, with the exception of recorded music, where digital distribution will surpass physical distribution in 2011," the PWC report predicts. "We're seeing a new business model solidify for entertainment and media companies," said Marcel Fenez, managing partner, global entertainment & media practice at PWC. "Some, such as the film industry, have dabbled in this in the past, but those will be small movements compared to what lies ahead. No single company will be able to successfully go it alone over the next five years. The challenges are too significant and the demand for innovation too complete."
The simmering debate over whether online ad networks are cheapening Web publishing brands was stoked again Tuesday at the OMMA Publish program. The industry fracas was ignited earlier this year by Wenda Harris Millard's now well-known admonition against trading online media "like pork-bellies." The newly appointed co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was back yesterday in a less confrontational role, moderating a panel titled "Publishers and Ad Networks: Can This Marriage Be Saved?" The answer to that question, among a group of executives representing publishers, ad networks and agencies, seemed to be a qualified "yes." Millard herself summed up the discussion at a later point by declaring that there was "a lot of room in the marketplace for ad networks." She noted, however, that publishers and advertisers still had to sort out how best to take advantage of ad networks, as well as newer online ad exchanges, to get the most of their inventory and ad dollars, respectively. She pointed, in particular, to the need for ad networks as a means of disposing of what she called "disposable goods," or unsold inventory. That role has become especially important in the last couple of years with the rise of social networking sites and user-generated content. "There's a lot of inventory flooding the marketplace, and we haven't necessarily found a way to monetize that," said Millard. "If you can do that through ad networks, that's a good reason" to use them. Ad networks also make sense as a convenient alternative for any publishers that lack an ad sales force to go out and directly pitch advertisers and agencies, she said. Not surprisingly, panelists representing Burst Media and ValueClick Media championed a more prominent place for ad networks in the online ecosystem. They emphasized the relationships their networks maintain with premium publishers, and the advanced targeting they can provide via sophisticated analytics, as well as reach. Jarvis Coffin, co-founder and CEO of Burst, emphasized the company's ability to hyper-target audiences across its network of 6,600 sites. In the last year, Burst has also launched a series of vertical networks around specific categories including video games, sports, family travelers and trendsetters. "Brand advertisers especially have been looking for opportunities to find their best customers" while eliminating wasteful spending online, Coffin said. Noting that advertising is a relationship-driven business, ValueClick Senior Vice President Matthew Boyd said it's up to publishers and ad networks to sit down and hash out how they will work together to avoid crossing territorial lines. In particular, networks don't want to conflict with Web sites' internal sales operations, he said. A growing number of big-name publishers are putting sales staff to work on their own vertical networks, aiming to charge higher CPMs for targeted buys. Among them is Forbes.com, which recently started a vertical network bringing together content from more than 400 business and financial blogs. "We aggregate sites appropriate for our brand and then use those sites and that inventory to extend buys around the Forbes brand to provide value for our users, advertisers and publishers down the long-tail," said Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com. He added that as more ad dollars flow online, publishers will increasingly reevaluate how inventory is packaged and sold. Where does the fast-shifting online ad landscape leave agencies? Answering a question from Millard about the impact, Ed Montes, an executive vice president and managing director, North America, at Havas Digital, admitted all the changes were "wreaking havoc" on media buying and planning. "I don't think I've been home in three weeks," he said. Agencies' reliance on ad networks stems partly because the traditional agency model wasn't set up for a 200-Web site buy. "That's one of the reasons ad networks are so popular," he said. "Because of the efficiency they bring in terms of aggregation and one-stop-shopping." That relationship may be starting to change as ad networks are increasingly viewed as competitors to agencies. "They have a tremendous amount of information about the sites they represent...and they're going directly to clients because they don't want friction with the agency," said Montes. "What are they but a planning group that buys?" At the same time, traditional ad networks such as ValueClick are facing growing competition from the likes of Yahoo, MSN and AOL. With a slew of ad-related acquisitions over the last year or so including Microsoft's $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, each has positioned itself as a publisher-cum-ad network. Montes described Yahoo as "the world's largest ad network," after snapping up the Right Media ad exchange and behavioral targeting firm Blue Lithium, among other ad technologies. Facing declining traffic, the portals are bent on doing a better job of monetizing their own properties as well as those of partner sites. Burst's Coffin suggested that portals will continue to play an important role in aggregating the broadest audiences online, but wouldn't figure in the trend towards more specialized, vertical networks. "They're not what we're all doing here," he said.
Seeking broader distribution online, Scripps Networks has tapped AOL to carry clips from its portfolio of lifestyle content, the companies are expected to announce today. Beginning later this summer, Scripps fare will be driven across AOL's network of sites, including AOL Video, AOL Food, AOL Home and Slashfood. "These short highlights allow our fans an additional access point, and introduce a new audience to our brands," said Deanna Brown, president of the interactive group for Scripps Networks. "The partnership also supports our strategy of growing a wide footprint in the categories of home, food and living." Scripps viewers and AOL users will be able to view program segments from HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network and Fine Living Network by visiting AOL Video's channel. In addition, Scripps videos will be found through AOL's video search, powered by AOL's Truveo video search engine. Popular shows include the Food Network's "Ace of Cakes" and "Paula's Home Cooking," among others. Headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn., Scripps Networks is owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. In a difficult climate for publishing companies, E.W. Scripps recently reported first-quarter profits up 23% year-over-year, thanks to higher ratings and ad sales at HGTV and the Food Network. The media company, however, said that its second-quarter results were not likely to meet current estimates. At the end of the month, Scripps is set to split into two companies: one company including its cable networks and interactive properties, and the other including its newspapers and broadcast television stations.
A pair of industry pundits weighed in on the Yahoo-Google paid search placement deal on Tuesday during conference calls designed to give financial executives some color on how and whether the new deal will shape the future of online advertising. Former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone and Didit CEO Kevin Lee chatted with JP Morgan Internet and entertainment analyst Imran Khan, offering sometimes converging perspectives on the deal from a search provider and a search agency POV. "I think I'm one of the few people who views this as a positive for Yahoo," Lanzone said. "I don't know the exact terms, of course, but it seems like all upside." He acknowledged that his positive bias stemmed largely from having seen the benefits of a similar paid search partnership during his 7-year tenure with Ask. "We started in the summer of '02 with a 3-year, $100-million-dollar deal--and we actually made all that in the first year," Lanzone said. IAC's Ask (which was then Ask Jeeves) renewed the deal early with Google in 2004 for another three years--although the company had begun developing its own supplementary paid search platform by then. By the time Ask renewed again in 2007, Lanzone said that the engine had been successfully selling ads directly to the "real head of advertisers and backfilling (and adding volume) with Google." He said the newly announced Yahoo-Google search partnership stood to add significantly to Yahoo's bottom line because it increased the Web giant's overall ad volume--making the Panama platform more attractive to advertisers while still allowing Yahoo to monetize some queries on its own terms. "They get to continue to sell ads through (Yahoo's) Panama (ad platform), and backfill with Google when it will make more or additional money," Lanzone said. "In some senses, it's a 'why not?' deal." When asked whether finance types and Yahoo shareholders should be concerned about a mass exodus of advertisers from Yahoo to Google, Lanzone said that most of those fears likely stemmed from fear-mongering. "I'd say that less than 40% of all advertisers drive about 70-80% of search spending," Lanzone said. "And Yahoo does well with those advertisers. For them, it's worth it to maintain campaigns on both search platforms--so they can work directly with a Yahoo rep, and see and interpret the data. Yahoo has no trouble monetizing terms for them, so there should be no fear of losing them. Ask is much smaller than Yahoo--we dealt with an even smaller part of the head, and we never saw people leaving our system." Still, advertisers have voiced some concerns about running concurrent Yahoo and Google search campaigns--particularly when it comes to pricing, according to Lee. "The advertisers we deal with are slightly concerned that if for whatever reason, the ad that monetizes best (for Yahoo) is more often than not the Google ad," Lee said. "In that case, they'd often see their most expensive ads shown, even in a democratic auction-based system." He also said that statements made on the Official Google Blog regarding (a lack of) impact on pricing were premature. "There was a post on the Google blog that said advertising costs won't rise," Lee said. "It's too early to tell how the ecosystem will react, but we think that overall pricing will increase." Lanzone and Lee did agree that the revenue-per-search (RPS) gap between Google and Yahoo wasn't as large as some in the industry thought. Khan, for example, said that JP Morgan analysis suggested that Google monetized queries at about a 79% higher rate than Yahoo--and both executives disagreed. "We don't get to see the monetization side of things," Lee said. "But bid prices between the two are not off by 79%. They may be higher at Google, but not that much higher." Lanzone also explained why Google and Yahoo monetized queries differently. "Google's RPS is higher than Yahoo's for two reasons," he said. "One, because of the volume of advertisers in Google's network, and two, because of the company's technology. So there are still some strides to make on relevance, for example, on Yahoo's end. But volume is the main gap driver between the two at this point--which is what Yahoo seems to be trying to address with this deal." And as for Microsoft, the two executives also agreed that the software giant has a tough road ahead--regardless of the Yahoo-Google deal. "Microsoft's issues all stem from query volume--not the monetization side," Lanzone said. "They don't have a lot of ammo in this fight, beyond IE (Internet Explorer) and however they can leverage that. But I don't see how this deal really changes that." Lee said the cards are stacked against Microsoft. But he added that the software giant's current paid search challenges were not insurmountable. "They're still sufficiently large enough to belong in the mix--at least with the advertisers that were managing that spend $100,000 and up per month," Lee said. "In some cases, we even go to smaller engines than them."
With online privacy policies increasingly drawing public attention, ad company Undertone Networks has joined the self-regulatory privacy association Network Advertising Initiative, the company said Tuesday. Undertone Networks CEO Mike Cassidy said the move was partly driven by questions from online media buyers, who wanted to know whether the company belonged to the group. "Over the past six months, we've had two or three companies ask us about it," Cassidy said. While that number is low, it marks a significant change from prior years, when no marketers seemed to have the group on their radar, he said. Undertone serves ads for around 350 premium media sites, and about 25 to 35% of its ads are targeted based on users' presumed interests as gleaned from their Web-surfing histories. Undertone's platform is cookie-based, meaning that users are recognized by cookies placed on their computers, but the company doesn't collect names, addresses or other personally identifiable information. As Washington regulators and lawmakers have turned a closer eye toward online advertising in the last year, the Network Advertising Initiative has been drawing more notice. Google, under fire from privacy advocates for retaining search query logs by IP address, is among the companies that recently applied to join the group. But Google's application hit a snag because the company doesn't have a link to its privacy policy on its home page--a requirement of the Network Advertising Initiative and also, arguably, the state of California. The 8-year-old Network Advertising Initiative was formed in response to concerns that a merger between DoubleClick--then mainly an ad network--and catalog database company Abacus posed a threat to people's privacy. The organization, which includes companies like Revenue Science, Yahoo and AOL's Advertising.com and Tacoda, requires companies that engage in behavioral targeting to tell consumers about the practice and allow them to opt-out. But some privacy advocates say the association doesn't go far enough to protect privacy. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, holds that companies shouldn't deploy behavioral targeting techniques unless consumers have expressly consented. "Consent has to be opt-in," he said. "The NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) is absolutely flat wrong." The group is currently revising its principles, but the new proposals still largely call for an opt-out regime.
In the midst of an increasingly fragmented media landscape, television still reigns supreme with big brand advertisers. TV is not likely to be dethroned in the next few years either--as it will continue to dwarf other media, including online video, in popularity, said Brian Wieser, director of industry analysis for Interpublic unit Magna Global. "TV is not dead and it's not dying," Wieser told audience members at the OMMA Publish program on Tuesday, pointing to the 30 hours per person per week that people still spend in front of the tube. The convenience, relatively low cost and quality of content are among the reasons why traditional viewing will remain dominant. TV ad spending also continues to grow, although at a slower rate than online or other digital media. And because it can deliver on the traditional industry measures of reach and frequency, TV still claims the lion's share of ad budgets. Last year, an estimated $60 billion was spent on TV advertising, compared to only $366 million for online video. Wieser also attacked a widely held view in Internet circles that marketers' share of Web spending should equate with the amount of time that consumers spend online. A common estimate is that the Internet gets roughly 7% of ad dollars, while accounting for 15% to 20% of people's time. "By that logic, there should be no money in search," Wieser argued, because people don't spend that much time per session on search compared to other online activities. But search has turned out to be a highly efficient ad medium. Based on average ad dollars spent per hour of consumption, it comes in at $9 compared to only 10 cents for TV. The difference is that the growth of online advertising has been driven by small and medium-sized businesses using direct marketing vehicles--principally search--to drive sales rather than the big branding dollars that TV attracts. In other words, one could argue that the Internet is a victim of its own success as an efficient ad medium. When it comes to emerging media--including online video and advanced TV technologies, mobile content, social-networking sites and online gaming--spending has been mostly experimental so far, according to Wieser. Those categories attracted only about one-third of the estimated $9 billion spent on search advertising last year. Much of the spending on emerging media is also coming from smaller advertisers and e-commerce marketers who are "endemic" to the Internet, such as Amazon and eBay, rather than traditional brands. So what will encourage more spending on emerging media? Wieser outlined various factors, including more widely standardized systems for ad buying and improved ability by agencies to analyze and apply user data. "There's all of this data out there, but the industry is relatively poor at using it," he said. Instead, new media buys today often come down to "gut feel," Wieser added. "It's unfortunate, but a reality that advertisers won't pay to study, won't pay to experiment." The greater complexity and unfamiliarity of emerging media buys compared to TV also acts as a barrier to more involvement. "Most of this stuff is so incredibly labor-intensive it becomes a deterrent to using it unless somebody's willing to pay for it," Wieser said.
Internet ad revenue declined by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2008 from the previous quarter--but at $5.8 billion, still represented the second-highest total on record, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said Tuesday. Revenues in the first quarter not only nearly matched the fourth-quarter 2007 total of $5.9 billion, but also ran 18.2% ahead of first-quarter 2007, the IAB said. "The cyclical fourth-quarter to first-quarter drop in traditional media advertising spend, combined with an overall economic slowdown, resulted in a not-so-unexpected first-quarter slowdown in the growth of online advertising," said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which helped assemble the figures. Further evidence of a slowdown in online ad spending came from the second monthly PubMatic AdPrice Index (www.adpriceindex.com), described by creator PubMatic as an industrywide measure of online ad network pricing for publishers. Overall online industry monetization in May fell by 0.7% from April after the previous month's 23% drop. The PubMatic AdPrice Index did show significant increases in spending for social networking and gaming sites--with eCPMs increasing by 66% and 51%, respectively, from April to May. Monetization for sports sites in May remained relatively level, but spending for entertainment, news and technology sites continued to decline by 11%, 13% and 22%, respectively. "June's AdPrice Index shows that online advertising rates continue to reflect an overall weak economy; however, we did see improvements for certain segments," said Rajeev Goel, cofounder and general manager of PubMatic, speaking at OMMA Publish New York. "While social networking and gaming sites did show some increase in monetization, the two verticals remain volatile and continue to monetize at lower rates than other, smaller verticals." The PubMatic AdPrice Index is based on data from more than 3,500 publishers and billions of ad impressions. Among large, medium and small Web sites, large Web sites (100 million page views a month) showed the biggest improvement in May with a 16% increase from April, from 18 cents to 21 cents. This was probably a result of the significant spike in social network and gaming ad pricing, which generally fall into the large-size category, per PubMatic. Medium-sized Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month) remained consistent, having a less than 1% change from April, while smaller Web sites (less than 1 million page views per month) suffered a 12% downturn from the previous month, according to PubMatic. Among the verticals, social networking showed the greatest increase--with monetization increasing 66%, from 19 cents in April to 32 cents in May, slightly below the vertical's peak of 34 cents in March. Gaming monetization increased by 51%, from 66 cents in April to $1.00 in May, reported PubMatic.
LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A. wants to find the fastest texter. The handset maker stepped up efforts this week to promote the second annual LG National Texting Championship. The competition doubles last year's cash payout and integrates broadcast television into the game. Good news for texting enthusiasts looking to make $50,000 from fast fingers and a QWERTY keyboard--but it's not clear if the promotion will deliver positive results for LG trying to fend off rivals Apple, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and others. LG managed to swoop in this year from January to March, and take market share from rivals. The company moved up to No. 4 in the first quarter--shipping 24.4 million units worldwide, or 8.2% of market share, compared with ranking No. 5 in global unit sales of 64.3 million and 80.5 million in 2006 and 2007, respectively, according to research firm iSuppli, El Segundo, Calif. In the first quarter of 2007, Nokia ranked No. 1 with 39%; Samsung, 15.6%; and Motorola, 9.3%. Tina Teng, wireless analyst at iSuppli, said LG focuses marketing around the full keyboard on its phones. "LG is trying to create a hype to compete with iPhone sales, though they target different consumer segments, teenagers and young adults," she said, adding that Apple releases the latest iPhone early next month, targeting business users. Contestants must use an LG phone featuring full QWERTY keypads such as enV2, enV, V, Voyager, Rumor and Scoop, but Ovum practice lead Jan Dawson says it's unlikely the promotion will have a significant impact on sales. "These contests are made to give the company a brief boost in awareness among consumers," he said. "It might create a small blip, but not much more." LG gives contestants three ways to enter the texting competition: regionally, nationally online, and SMS wildcard challenge. The contest requires participants to text predetermined words or phrases and send them to a specified recipient. The first to send the correct message with no errors wins. Last year's first-place $25,000 prize went to 13-year-old Morgan Pozgar from Pennsylvania for texting "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" in 15 seconds with no errors. In this year's competition contestants compete for $50,000 and bragging rights to the championship title. The competition is open to anyone 13 and older, although minors need written consent from a parent or guardian. The form is available at LGTexter.com. New this year, the competition integrates with the June 24 episode of MTV's "A Shot at Love 2L Happy Hour, the Reunion." During the show, viewers will race to transcribe a phrase they see on the screen during the two-minute TV event. One East Coast and one West Coast winner will each get a seat at the national finals event in New York. There were multiple ways to qualify for the LG National Texting Championship. Online regional qualifier selections took place in Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami June 10-14. Contestants got a chance to win an LG enV2 and a free trip for two to New York City to compete head-to-head for the grand prize. Regional winners compete in the national online competition held today. Four winners will receive an LG enV2 and a free trip for two to New York City to compete. During the SMS Wild Card Play, players receive four separate text messages between Thursday and June 25 with a specific phrase, at any given time. After receiving the text message, they must reply and retype the original phrase as fast as possible. The fastest texter for each phrase will win an LG enV2 and a trip for two to the championship game. LG will provide each participant, while competing, with an LG enV2 phone to play the final rounds of the game. The finals are scheduled for July 9 in Manhattan at the Roseland Ballroom in Times Square.
Social Distortion rocked. Social studies didn't. Social anxiety is as common as acne. And social conversion is the term online marketers need to know. Why? Because online marketing conversion as we know it today is unlikely to survive as a successful long-term tactic. A few years ago, online marketers overvalued the click. Now, more and more, people have seen the light and understand that the click is not the reason we market. But we still seem to overvalue single transactions or events. We're still not focused on the end game--increasing our revenue. No matter how high your conversion rate is, it is probably limited to a single event. Big deal. Wouldn't you rather invest the same spend and get a string of events in return? Wouldn't you prefer to trade that expensive dinner for a relationship rather than a one-night stand? (Some of you social deviants answered "no" to that one, I know.) Take a fresh look at your online marketing and visualize it leading to not one event, but to many events strung together into a relationship. This relationship is much more permanent and pervasive than even the most perfectly honed lead or transaction. With this mutual engagement you establish a new level of branding-based on shared interests and conversations. Big Picture This relationship starts with a handshake. That handshake is the new conversion. And it happens on high-powered social landing pages. These landing pages come after your paid search, email or advertising and culminate in targeted, social engagement--rather than a lead-gen form or single transaction. You guide your respondents to participate in highly segmented social vehicles--self-serving to both your mission and to their needs. Now don't start thinking I am advocating this handshake as some kind of vague conversion black hole. Every bit of this should be measurable and accountable. The frequency of engagement taken against your click-through-rate is your conversion rate and the depth of engagement shows your relative conversion quality. Said another way, you want to track how many people are engaging and what they are doing after they engage. Then you want to track everything back to where they came from. And then track it all back to sales. Leveraging the Social Vehicles You Already Have What makes this so exciting is that most of us have social networking vehicles already in place. And most of us are struggling to leverage them to truly improve our bottom lines. Thanks to widgets like Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect you can promote and feed those existing vehicles using your online marketing. Take that niche Facebook group and pour 500 new members with shared interests right into it. Watch them start talking--all about you and what you offer. The possibilities are stunningly real and immediate. Think Outside the box, too Using widgets, it's become super easy to enhance landing pages with small social features like picture posts, discussions and microblogs. For example, one of the things we've begun doing is socializing our white papers. Now, when a respondent receives one of our white papers, it includes buttons (on the pages of the white paper). These buttons allow readers to deepen their engagement with us by posting questions to the author or discussing the white paper with peers. We even track which pages of the white paper stimulate the most interest-which gives us valuable messaging insight. The people who participate at this level are passionate about the subject matter and of very high value to us. Engaging with them on a common ground--within the context of our brand and ideals--brings them into an inner circle that could never be realized with a standard landing page or Web site. No manner of stimulating a single event can come close to matching the trust and enthusiasm of an exchange. We are all (hopefully) experts on something. It can be something as simple as a basic product or as far reaching as global politics. Either way, the most compelling form of marketing is one that establishes a rapport between our organization's expertise and those who care. Using online marketing to identify those who care is step one--segmentation. Making the connection using social conversion is step two. As long as we participate, then once the conduit is open, we're home free. Social conversion has a lot more legs than any single event. Believe it. Prove it. Make it happen.