Verizon Wireless has partnered with iSkoot to launch an application promising easy access to popular social properties including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in one place. The free Social Beat app allows subscribers to view and manage their social network accounts through live feeds and real-time notifications. In addition to seeing friends' status updates and news feeds, Social Beat also allows subscribers to post status messages, tweets, and comments. People can also access email and get updates from personalized news feeds on their phones. Mobile software startup iSkoot also powers a similar social aggregator app -- AT&T Social Net -- introduced by AT&T earlier this year. Both moves highlight efforts by wireless carriers to harness social networking to boost mobile data usage and attract new customers. New research released by eMarketer Wednesday suggests that activity on sites such as Facebook, MocoSpace and foursquare has been a major driver of mobile Internet use. The firm predicts that the number of mobile users accessing social networks from mobile devices will reach 607.5 million worldwide by 2013, or 43% of global mobile Internet users. In the U.S., 56.2 million people will be social networking via cell phone by then, accounting for 45% of the mobile Web users. eMarketer projects that mobile social network users worldwide will grow more than fivefold in the next five years, jumping from 141.4 million in 2009 to 760.1 million in 2014. Part of the reason for the rapid uptake is that mobile apps from the likes of Facebook and MySpace have remained ad-free to date. While the adoption rates have been impressive, "gaining a voice in the conversations taking place across mobile social networks will prove challenging for marketers," said Noah Elkin, a senior analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, in a statement. While Verizon is now making a major push into the smartphone market with Motorola's Droid, the carrier said the Social Beat app will be available across more than 20 feature phones including the LG enV and LG Chocolate.
Microsoft and Yahoo could ink their Web search and ad agreement announced in late July by the end of the week. So says All Things Digital's Kara Swisher, citing sources close to the partnership. But as the deal gets closer to reality, it appears that red flags have begun to wave. Ad industry executives had expected Microsoft and Yahoo to seal the deal in October. But when that date passed, industry insiders began to scrutinize the structure of the agreement and whether the real winner would become Google. The deal, however, remains subject to U.S. and European antitrust regulations. Yahoo has several search syndication deals expiring now and during the next year, according to Didit CEO Kevin Lee. "With both Yahoo and its syndication partners being powered by Bing for paid and organic results, within the pending partnership, the real hurdle for Yahoo in this is how Yahoo can continue to deliver value as an extra layer for search syndication partnerships," he says. "Microsoft has good reason to try to establish those partnerships directly with publishers, without the Yahoo middleman." Yahoo needs to find a creative way to approach the publishers when renegotiating deals. Without adding value, Microsoft will likely grab a significant number of search partners from Yahoo, Lee says. It could mean the demise of Yahoo's syndication business. Although not a significant biz, Yahoo's syndication business focuses on monetizing search clicks through its ad platform on non-Yahoo properties. Microsoft also needs to beat Google at the game, which Lee says remains on the negotiating table with publishers. The structure of the deal between Yahoo and Microsoft puts the Sunnyvale, Calif. company in a bad position, according to some industry insiders. Investors are also a bit concerned about Yahoo's continuing loss of search query share to Bing. October's comScore data released this week indicate that Yahoo lost 80 basis points last month -- dropping the company's share of core searches to its lowest level at 18%, Bernstein Analyst Jeffrey Lindsey wrote in a research note published Wednesday. He believes Yahoo's 18% market share in search is worth $6 per share to investors. Bernstein analysts share several concerns, but the firm's analysis indicates the loss of search share is not catastrophic. "Advertisers are waiting to see what will happen to the user-interface and the performance of the new combined business before committing significant new budget increases," Lindsey writes. "Ironically, the uncertainty of the limbo in the Microsoft deal may actually be driving more marginal advertisers toward 'market leaders' as Mr. Ballmer calls them, and away from Yahoo."
The Citizen Media Law Project is launching a new program that will provide free legal help to small news sites and bloggers. The initiative, Online Media Legal Network, aims to assist Web publishers with a broad array of legal issues, ranging from handling complaints about copyright to dealing with threatened defamation lawsuits to filing incorporation papers. A large roster of lawyers, including First Amendment specialists like Marc Randazza and firms like Baker & McKenzie, Davis Wright Tremaine, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal has already signed on. In addition, nine law school clinics have agreed to participate. The Citizen Media Law Project is jointly affiliated with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Arizona State University's Center for Citizen Media; the Knight Foundation is funding the new initiative. The new program is designed for independent journalists who write about matters of public interest. People who engage in original reporting (or "use traditional news sources in new and innovative ways") and adhere to standards of "truth, fairness and transparency," will receive first priority, according to the program's FAQ. For-profit ventures can qualify, as can individuals, but the program has income and revenue restrictions. Single individuals must earn less than $45,000 to qualify, and for-profit organizations must have annual gross revenues of no more than $100,000. Nonprofits must have annual operating budgets of no more than $250,000. Whether individual online publishers would qualify requires case-by-case analysis, says David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project. For instance, he says, a blogger who creates a gripe site about the oil industry might qualify for the program, but one who creates a gripe site to complain about a local car dealer probably would not be prioritized. "We're trying not to draw bright lines here," he says. Some industry insiders have long advocated for this type of legal service. "We have taken down the barriers to participation in other ways, but one of the final barriers is legal resources -- which are difficult for individual providers to afford," says Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and a member of the new legal network's advisory board. "Once you have blogging software and RSS and aggregators and Google, you have the elements of an open publishing system. But one of the weak points in that system was the ability of rich and powerful people to intimidate stand-alone journalists, bloggers and independent providers, through threats or legal action," Rosen adds. "This is a further attempt to even the playing field."
In what could be a breakthrough in online display advertising security, AdSafe Media has deployed what it claims to be the first system that can protect brands from having their ads appear on Web pages featuring unsavory content before the fact. The new system, dubbed a "brand protection firewall," literally filters every Web page based on industry standard content ratings, as well as a brand's own content criteria, before its ads are served onto those pages. The breakthrough comes as interest in online advertising security grows on Madison Avenue, and as a legion of developers race forward with solutions to monitor and protect advertisers from showing up in the wrong places. But unlike most of the solutions launched to date, which simply identify which pages are inappropriate for brand's ads to appear on, the new firewall actually prevents those ads from ever being served if the pages don't meet its criteria for acceptability. The firewall is the latest version of a suite of products AdSafe plans to launch to give advertisers and agencies control over how, when and where their ads show up online, and they are all based by tagging ads with content ratings that either identify or report inappropriate content to advertisers or agencies, or in the case of the new firewall, prevent their ads from ever running adjacent to it. "Advertisers have the control," says Helene Monat, president and a founder of AdSafe, which launched in April, and is competing with a wide range of entrepreneurs that have begun flooding Madison Avenue with solutions as brand advertising begins showing up in questionable places, or with questionable results. Among other things, hackers and cyber criminals have begun using either fake ads mimicking actual brand ads, or inserting them via fake insertion orders by posing as legitimate advertising agencies, that have launched malware attacks that could hurt a brand's and/or publisher's reputation. While AdSafe's current systems enable advertisers and agencies to identify publishers' pages that have malware code on them, they currently are not able to determine whether the ads they are serving have such code embedded in them, but the company says it is working on a solution for that, which will be introduced early next year. The new products are being developed by an ad savvy management team, as well as a board of advisors that includes some knowledgeable advertising and media industry vets, including Jon Mandel, a former top executive at Nielsen and WPP Group; cable TV pioneer Geraldine Laybourne; former Madison Avenue research czar Joe Plummer; and former Wal-mart and DaimlerChrysler marketing executive Julie Roehm. The core of AdSafe's system is it's content ratings, says Monat, which utilizes a combination of state-of-the-art technology, including a learning algorithm, as well as "human ratings" including a panel of 10,000 consumer content raters that rate and rank Web pages for a range of subjects ranging from sexual material to hate speech, as well as criteria that are specific and subjective to a particular brand's needs. AdSafe would not disclose what companies are utilizing the new firewall, but said they include "10 of the top 25" online advertising networks, and at least one of the major advertising agency holding companies.
Dealing a blow to IAC, a federal judge has decided that disgruntled online marketers can proceed with a class-action click-fraud lawsuit against the company. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles ruled that the search marketers could be certified as a class because their complaints against IAC stemmed from the same type of alleged conduct. "Plaintiffs advertised using Citysearch's pay-per-click advertising program and were allegedly charged by Citysearch for invalid clicks," Snyder wrote. "Notwithstanding any asserted differences between class members, plaintiffs' claims are based on an alleged common course of conduct." The class includes all pay-per-click marketers on Citysearch who "experienced click fraud by reason of double clicks" -- clicks within a short period of time from the same IP address -- or from Citysearch's "failure to apply automatic filters to traffic from its syndication partners" before March 23, 2007. Barry Diller's IAC had opposed the marketers' efforts to proceed as a class, arguing that "each advertiser's expectations of and experience with Citysearch are unique." This decision appears to mark the first time a judge has ruled on a contested motion to certify a class in a click-fraud lawsuit stemming from pay-per-click ads. While Google and Yahoo have both faced class-action click-fraud lawsuits, those cases were resolved without litigation about whether a class should be certified, according to attorney Brian Kabateck. He represents the marketers in the lawsuit against IAC, and has also represented search marketers in class-actions against Google and Yahoo. Whether a class can be certified is key in these types of cases because individual marketers' damages from click fraud are usually too small to justify the expense of suing, unless they can proceed as a class. The two advertisers who brought the case, make-up services company Menagerie Productions and payroll company Redwolf, alleged that they were billed for clicks that were "invalid." They said that in some cases, Citysearch charged them for more than one click from the same IP address in a short period of time. They also alleged that IAC did not apply filters to screen out suspicious clicks. Menagerie alleged that it shelled out $1,900 in a three-month period for pay-per-click ads on Citysearch without receiving any new clients. Redwolf said it paid $700 over a five-month period and also didn't see any new business as a result of the ads. Kabateck said the case could go to trial next year, unless it settles. "Hopefully, Citysearch will make things right with their customers," he said.
Compared to last year, far more consumers plan to spend less this holiday season than those who plan to spend more, according to new research from Nielsen. Indeed, 42% of respondents to a recent survey said they plan to spend less, compared to just 4% who plan to spend more. "While the economy appears to be improving at a snail's pace, it's apparent that many consumers intend to spend less and save more this holiday season," said Ken Cassar, VP of Industry Insights at The Nielsen Company. Worse still, of the money that consumers do plan to spend this holiday season, a smaller percentage will be spent online. A full 63% of survey respondents said they would do at least some holiday shopping online -- down 10 points from two years ago. Meanwhile, 7 percent of respondents said they would not do any shopping online, compared to just 1 percent in 2007. Among those that do plan to shop online this holiday season, many consumers expect to spend significantly less than last year. In 2008, 42% said they would spend more than $300 online during the holiday season. This year, that percentage has dropped to just 31%, while 22% of respondents said they will spend less than $100 online. Why do consumers choose to shop online at all? "Interestingly, the main reason is not to save money, but for convenience," said Cassar. "Respondents said the top reason they would shop online was the ability to shop whenever they wanted, followed closely by the ability to avoid the large crowds associated with holiday shopping." While consumers appear to no longer view the Internet as a value channel, they still see it as a place to do comparison-shopping, find coupons and do research, according to Nielsen. It is not just consumers coming from lower household incomes, either. Shoppers of all ages and income levels rely on the Internet to inform their in-store purchases. In October 2009, over one-third of the U.S. online population visited at least one deal-oriented Web site. While many consumers don't feel that they save money by making purchases online, they do view the Internet as a deal-seeking venue, Nielsen finds. When asked how they use the Internet before going shopping in physical stores, 55% of respondents said they use the Internet to compare prices across retailers, and 49% answered that they use the Web to learn about sales and promotions available in physical stores. It was clear to Cassar that while the majority of all purchases continue to take place offline, the Internet has an important role to play. "Deals found online impact holiday purchase decisions and drive purchases at brick and mortar stores."
Handing AT&T a setback in its legal battle to stop Verizon Wireless from running ads it says are misleading, a judge Wednesday denied the carrier's request to order Verizon to halt the campaign immediately. A federal judge in Atlanta declined to grant AT&T's motion for a temporary restraining order to stop Verizon from showing the ads in which it compares AT&T's 3G coverage unfavorably to its own. AT&T alleged in a lawsuit filed earlier this month that the ads are blatantly false and have caused irreperable harm to its business. The ads use side-by-side U.S. maps to show that Verizon has five times more 3G coverage than AT&T. While AT&T doesn't argue that the colored coverage maps are inaccurate in depicting its 3G coverage, it contends Verizon is misleading consumers by implying that they can't get any coverage in the areas of the AT&T map left blank. Customers can, in fact, still make calls using its slower EDGE or GRPS networks. AT&T last week filed an amended complaint to include Verizon's new trio of holiday-themed ads mocking its network in its lawsuit initially brought over the company's "There's a Map for That" commercial. Verizon fired back in a 53-page rebuttal to the court this week that AT&T is suing not over the substance of its ad claims, but because it can't stand the truth about its own network. "AT&T sued because Verizon's ads are true and the truth hurts," stated Verizon's court papers. AT&T nevertheless said it plans to go forward with its case. "While we are disappointed with the court's decision on our request for a TRO, we still feel strongly that Verizon's ads mislead consumers into thinking that AT&T doesn't offer wireless service in large portions of the country, which is clearly not the case," the company said in a statement. "We look forward to presenting our case to the court in the near future." A hearing on its motion for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for Dec. 16.
Expanding its monetization efforts, LinkedIn is launching a new program allowing marketers to create sponsored groups with built-out Web pages that are promoted across the professional's social network. LinkedIn unveiled the new Custom Groups along with other advertising initiatives the company is rolling out at a breakfast event Wednesday in New York. The moves reflect the company's wider strategy to capitalize on the company's affluent audience of more than 50 million members. LinkedIn, for example, already boasts some 500,000 groups, with 1,000 being added each day. The rapid growth stems partly from individuals and organizations being able to set up and join groups for free. With the new custom groups, companies would typically pay about $50,000 a month to turn group pages from discussion forums into something more like full-blown marketing sites, with added content including video, white papers, feeds and other promotional tools that users want to extend to LinkedIn. As part of the package, LinkedIn would also provide targeted display advertising across its network to help drive traffic to the custom groups. Marketers could also opt to use that advertising space instead for their own existing campaigns and ad creative for other products and services. "We're opening up the groups area to marketers to have a more established presence on LinkedIn," said Steve Patrizi, vice president of advertising and sales operations at the San Francisco-based company. "We see this as an important way for them to message to their audience." LinkedIn executives maintain that a custom group can accomplish the same purpose of a custom microsite with the advantage of having a ready-made audience of corporate executives, business owners and other white-collar workers. Already beta-testing the new groups program are IBM and Intel. IBM's group, co-sponsored by CIO.com and dubbed "infoBOOM," is aimed at technology executives at mid-sized companies. Intel's group is geared to senior IT managers, who may influence corporate technology purchase decisions. LinkedIn expects other Fortune 500-caliber companies to be the initial custom group clients. Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at digital strategy firm Altimeter Group, however, suggested that brands might balk at the price tag. After all, they can already run a regular LinkedIn group or a Facebook page or group for free. "A more effective way to do it might be to start with $50,000 as a set-up fee and if it's successful, pricing bands would increase as the group grows," he said. On the other hand, if a company finds the expense isn't worthwhile and pulls the plug on the group after a short time, then it could have a negative brand impact. LinkedIn says it would require at least a six-month commitment for custom groups, and ideally have marketers sign up for a minimum of a year. But Patrizi is confident that LinkedIn's custom groups will prove an attractive alternative to stand-alone microsites. "Given that these will be deeply interwoven within the fabric of the LinkedIn community, come with natural viral distribution components, and cost less than most of those solutions, we think there will be some interest from a number of marketers," he said. Owyang also emphasized that brands would have to continue to put discussion and direct interaction at the forefront of promotional efforts on LinkedIn. "The real trick in social media is conversational marketing, not just blasting out corporate creative content," he said. In that vein, LinkedIn has separately introduced a new ad format that lets companies promote content including video, RSS feeds, blog posts and Tweets in standard 300 x 250 and 160 x 600 display units across LinkedIn. The aContent Ads feature tabs at the top allowing users to select the type of material they want to see. The new ads can be targeted by the site's standard options including geography, industry, job title, and company size. Vanguard, Cisco Systems and Marriott are on board as pilot advertisers using Content Ads. In the coming year, LinkedIn also plans to add another interactive format -- Connective Ads -- that will show non-personally identifiable updates from members' news feeds related to the ad content or advertiser. So if it's a Microsoft ad for Bing, someone might see an update from their feed on a friend joining the Microsoft group on LinkedIn or a post related to Bing. On the analytics front, LinkedIn is also testing more in-depth "engagement reports" that would provide post-campaign information on interaction according to its targeting criteria. Marketers would then be able to see in more detail what types of audience their ads are clicking with. LinkedIn's U.S. audience in October more than doubled to 20 million from 9 million the prior month, according to comScore. The big jump resulted from the measurement service improving how it tracks Web usage at work, where about half of LinkedIn's users are coming from. Previously, it was undercounting the site's reach.
The other day I was sitting at the Whole Foods deli eating an $11 turkey sandwich on wheat bread, and I thought, why did I pay so much for a turkey sandwich? Then I proceeded to do some grocery shopping, check out was about $105, and I thought, what did I just buy? Both occurrences, I shook off with, "It's Whole Foods, good stuff, I'm healthy." Of course, this is completely a hunch, while the sandwich and grocery seemed great; I have no idea if it's any different than what I could get down the street at Safeway for 75 percent of the cost. Here's the deal: I'm totally comfortable spending extra money at Whole Foods and always have been. But, why? Whole Foods didn't run :30 second commercials rationalizing the premium value of their food. I heard about it from friends, and immediately my expectations were set. Rumor had it that Whole Foods will provide me with good quality food at a premium (but as friends told me, it was worth it). Because I had endorsements from friends and family, there was an immediate level of trust. My business was Whole Food's to lose. So, where am I going with this? People trust brands. This is nothing new. What is new is how people are gaining trust in brands and how brands continue to earn that trust. I see two sources of gaining this trust. The first is the source that tells you about the brand. If I hear about something, a product, event or TV show from a friend, the first step in trust is already met. The second source of trust is earned; the brand needs to maintain that trust by recognizing what the consumer expects and not letting them down. Now, let's apply this to social media and how it can cover both of these sources. Everyday, I see hundreds of updates from friends and people I want to be acquainted with for one reason or another on Facebook and Twitter. I see what they are reading, eating, doing, thinking about and recommending. I gain insight and make decisions every day based on these feeds, mostly because I'm too busy to do the research on what's good or bad, so I'll just go with what I'm hearing. These are what I call Social Endorsements. The way for a brand to earn these is twofold. Have a social presence. Twitter accounts and Facebook Fan Pages are essential to creating Social Endorsements. However, this isn't a tool telling people about your brand or marketing message, but rather helping them with what they want or giving them information they need. Whole Foods Twitter account (@WholeFoods) is 100 percent for their customers, answering their questions, giving tips and providing a resource as if they were in the store. All the while people are including Whole Foods in their Tweets, all for their friends to see. I saw @WholeFoods posted in about 30 Tweets in the last hour. Each of those Tweets is seen by hundreds of people, resulting in thousands of social endorsements an hour! The other way to get endorsements is create programs that are very easily talked about and shared. We just did a campaign with an airline on Where I've Been where you could take a quiz and Tweet your results to all of your followers. While these were only a fraction of total impressions delivered, I'd say that these were far and away the most valuable impressions -- even though they were just text. My followers on Twitter viewed my activity, which led to a small endorsement for the airline. With thousands of people creating activity in Twitter feeds, these small endorsements add up. We did this on Facebook with General Mills and Pink Together for the Month of October - Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Each mom on Circle of Moms, was able to signal their support for Pink Together to all of their friends, with the click of a button. Both resulted in Social Endorsements, which lead to more endorsements, and continued trust. In summary, brands can earn trust outside of big splash campaigns. Trust is initiated through endorsements on social channels, on and offline, and maintained through consistency and follow through. Because social media is about people, the ability to gain these endorsements and leverage these channels is equally available. However, to gain access to these channels, advertisers have to re-think their campaign targeting users, take a step back and figure out what it is these customers or potential customers expect from their brand. They need to determine what it is that will build trust with existing customers or gain social endorsements to win new customers. Trust is a beautiful thing and the ability to gain or lose it is staring us in the face thanks to social media.