Two weeks ahead of second-quarter earnings, AOL is undergoing another executive shakeup, the biggest fish to fry being Jeff Levick, head of global ad sales. In his place, Ned Brody is being promoted to the new position of chief revenue officer and president of AOL Advertising, where he will oversee the company's global owned-and-operated advertising, global network business, sales and advertising and publishing products. The changes -- outlined in a staff memo issued Monday by CEO Tim Armstrong -- are part of a continued effort by AOL to court advertisers and appease investors. Regarding the company ad strategy, Armstrong said Monday that he has three key goals going forward. "The first is a unified premium strategy for advertisers and publishers," he said. "The second is consistent growth in advertising spend across all our properties and networks. The third is a more rigorous approach to advertising and publishing system design." Armstrong said this approach will help AOL to connect Project Devil and its premium brand formats to its O&O properties, as well as its network. In addition, AOL announced expanded leadership roles for five sales executives, including Tim Castelli, Wendy MacGregor, Tim Richards and Jim Norton -- all of whom are being promoted to senior vice president -- and Michael O'Connor, who is being promoted to vice president, head of sales and operations. These executives -- along with Don Kennedy, senior vice president of advertising.com sales, and Chris Heine, senior vice president of advertising operations -- are expected to form AOL's sales leadership team going forward. Meanwhile, Lauren Hurvitz, who came on last year to replace AOL communication head Trish Primrose-Wallace, is also out, along with human resources executive Kathy Andreasen. Earlier this year, on the heels of its Huffington Post acquisition, AOL announced plans to fire about 200 U.S. employees, around 120 of whom are editorial staffers. The remaining cuts were expected to impact other areas of AOL's media business, including its technology and product units. The layoffs were largely perceived to be an effort to eliminate redundancies created by merging The Huffington Post with AOL's content properties. First announced in early February, AOL officially closed its $315 acquisition of HuffPo in March. Meanwhile, AOL's first-quarter earnings actually beat expectations on sales, and delivered good news on display advertising. Indeed, global display revenue grew for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2007, according to AOL, while the company's overall revenue continued to shrink. The most recent earnings led a renewed sense of confidence at the company. "We are not watching trends in the advertising business, we are creating them," Armstrong added on Monday.
Joel Lunenfeld, one of the most knowledgeable executives on Madison Avenue about social media, is out as CEO of Publicis' Moxie unit has left to become director of global brand strategy at Twitter. Scott Neslund, a long-time Publicis media executive who joined Moxie in March as president, will lead the agency. Lunenfeld helped found Moxie in 2001, and previously had been a media executive with 360i. He joins Twitter at a time when the micro-blogging service is literally atwitter on Madison Avenue, and is looking for ways to capitalize on rapid growth. Neslund, who will remain president of the Atlanta-based agency, which is a division of Publicis' ZenithOptimedia Group, will also take Lunenfeld's place on ZenithOptimedia's North American Management Committee, reporting to ZenithOptimedia chief Tim Jones. Neslund, who previously was a senior executive at Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group, left to become CEO of WPP's Mindshare North America division, and then left Mindshare to take the dive into digital media, joining Red Bricks Interactive before joining Moxie earlier this year.
Rumblefish released an application programming interface giving software developers a pipeline to integrate licensed music and soundtracks into mobile and Web applications through its FriendlyMusic portal found on the company's new Web site Tuesday. Brand advertisers looking to crowdsource ads from sites such as YouTube or Zooppa, a user-generated advertising community with more than 100,000 members who set music to videos, can feel more comfortable with licensed tunes. The API launched in private beta with a handful of companies in the second quarter of 2011. There are 400,000 available songs for film, TV, advertising, video games, and social media. The biggest challenge for brands integrating user-generated content into video or television ads remains licensing music, explains Rumblefish Founder and CEO Paul Anthony. The API allows brands, members of social sites, and ad agencies to license music directly through Rumblefish for $1.99 per song per video. While the music industry has put up a few roadblocks when it comes to licensing music, Rumblefish acquired the appropriate rights from the holders, Anthony explains. "It's a big deal to offer a song for a video at this low price and guarantee the license forever," he said. "It takes work to make it this easy." About 4 million songs licensed from Rumblefish's music catalog appear in user-generated videos, slide shows, presentations and games. New content partnerships have expanded the company's music catalog during the past year from 35,000 to more than 400,000 songs. Last year, the company inked a deal with YouTube to provide consumers with a tool to find and license the soundtracks for online videos. Now through the API, the music licensing company extends that service to other companies. One of those partners, Kaiser Permanente, has worked with Rumblefish for several years to give employees across the company access to a custom version of FriendlyMusic's platform to brand the company with licensed music. The first version launched in beta about three years ago. Dozens of KP employees tested the first and the second versions, but Scott Power, KP's senior brand strategist spearheading the infamous "Thrive" campaign, expects hundreds to tap into the third. KP's marketers and advertising departments, as well as event planners, have access to about 300 preapproved songs spanning numerous genres and six brand attributes. The latest version of the "Thrive" campaign focuses on music. "The brand sounds like confidence," Power said, pointing to some of the radio spots that now talk about how music makes people feel better. Power said the IT group has also begun to use the music for a variety of services such as on-hold music for the telephone system. The group estimates saving about $300,000 during the next five years by licensing music from Rumblefish. The next phase of the "Thrive" campaign will look at bringing doctors into the fray, many of whom play musical instruments. While it's not clear whether doctors will produce a musical CD, Power said one thing's for certain -- the campaign's theme continues to emphasize how KP and music heals the mind, the body and the soul.
Studying user behavior through click-through rates highlights the importance of ranking among the top 10 positions in Google search engine page results. But how much do CTR behavioral patterns influence search engine optimization campaigns? As keywords increase their positions in the SERPs. can companies expect more visitors on their sites? A study released Monday from Slingshot SEO looks at ranking values and traffic, and tries to understand user CTR behavior. For starters, it finds the No. 1 rankings in search engine results gained 18.20% CTRs; and No. 2, 10.05% based on a sample set of 324 keywords. CTRs for each position below the fold returned 4% or less. "These numbers are significant, considering the huge decline in click-through rates for the top 10 positions," said Evan Fishkin, head of research and development at Slingshot SEO, comparing the results with the leaked AOL data in 2006, the Enquiro study in 2007, and a recent Optify study, which all showed CTRs above 25% for the first position and higher percentages across the board. Fishkin said the goal of the study is to give clients a baseline model, so marketers know the return to expect for keywords with about 10,000 searches monthly ranking in the No. 1 position. That expectation should sit between 2.43% and 76.73% for CTRs. The baseline model or average curve -- about 18.2% -- gives marketers a low-end realistic value. Searchers do not make a click on the first search -- it may take several. This means being found becomes just as important as the click, Fishkin said. It's no longer about obtaining rankings, but obtaining a variety of rankings for all the searches done by the consumer to find the information they need. For any given SERP in the Slingshot, the percentage of users who click on an organic result in the top 10 was found to be 52.32%. The study notes this typical user behavior is a result of searchers window shopping Google SERPs, and then searching again before clicking on a domain. The CTRs for long-tail keywords become a little more unpredictable. The study looks at keywords with a "stable 30-day position" to find the percentage for CTRs on all long-tail terms that stem from the keywords during the same period. For example, "if 'cars' ranked at No. 2 for June 2011, then how much traffic could that domain expect to receive from 'new cars,' 'used cars,' or 'affordable cars'?" Ranking No. 2 for "cars" likely means that marketers can also drive a lot of traffic for the related keywords, partly because of the halo effect. Slingshot researchers observed an average between 1.17% and 5.80% for each position for long-tail keywords. The average long-tail CTR associated with each primary keyword with a stable ranking between positions 1 and 10 results in 2.75%. While the "halo effect" -- a cognitive bias where the perception of one characteristic influences another -- of long-tail CTRs associated with primary terms can become unpredictable, marketers should not ignore them, according to the report. Every SERP is different, and employing a successful marketing strategy requires multiple factors about each keyword phrase. The study, which began about four months ago, became the impetus for creating an R&D department at Slingshot, Fishkin said. It is based on more than 170,000 actual user visits -- making it one of the largest studies of its kind, with a client database of more than 200 major retailers and enterprise groups, according to Slingshot. The SEO company chose the sample set from thousands of keywords based on specific criteria.
New research from privacy company Truste indicates that a sizable proportion of U.S. Web users are uncomfortable with online tracking by advertisers. For the report, released on Monday, researchers from Harris Interactive asked 1,004 Web users whether they would voluntarily consent to share their online browsing behavior with advertisers in order to receive targeted ads. Only 15% said they would "definitely" or "probably" consent. When asked in a separate question whether they were comfortable with online behavioral advertising, just 11% said they were. That figure doubled to 22% when respondents were told that online behavioral advertising was not tied to their personally identifiable information -- which industry groups generally define as name or contact information. Researchers also asked respondents whether they would sign up for a "do-not-track list," with the understanding that they would receive fewer relevant ads. Forty-four percent answered in the affirmative, up slightly from 42% in 2009. Consumer Reports recently said that its survey found an even higher proportion of users -- 81% -- favored a do-not-track mechanism that would allow them to permanently avoid online tracking. One reason for the difference could be that Consumer Reports research asked consumers whether they agreed there should be "one single, central place" where they could opt out of online tracking, while Truste referred signing up for a do-not-track "list." The FTC called for Web companies to develop a universal mechanism that would allow consumers to easily opt out of all online tracking, but did not call for any kind of a national registry or list of people who have opted out. A surprisingly high proportion of consumers -- 25% -- said they regularly opt out of online tracking, while 40% said they regularly clear their cookies, caches or Web history.
We regularly harp about how data is collected by the Nielsens, Arbitrons and MRIs of the syndicated research world. But what about the quality of data from media agencies' own proprietary research, where no oversight by an organization like the Media Rating Council exists? As a participant in a number of online panels, I shake my head at the design quality of some of the surveys, e.g., interminable length, poorly worded questions and puzzling question flow. For example, last week I answered a survey about vision correction. At the onset, I established that I wear eyeglasses but not contacts. Yet there were numerous questions about my opinion regarding contact lens-oriented products -- "not applicable" wasn't a choice. However, in order to go further into the survey, I had to choose an answer. In another survey, I was asked to choose the financial institution my employer-sponsored 401(k) was invested in. My company wasn't listed, but there was no choice of "other" as an answer, so I couldn't continue unless I chose a company. Maddeningly, I was forced to select one that I don't use. Some of the most tedious surveys are those pertaining to banking or insurance because the category is not exciting, and the questions are often much too long. Even surveys about relatively interesting product categories (e.g., beverages, electronics, fast-food restaurants) can become maddening when they attempt to milk respondents for every conceivable bit of information. When a respondent is subjected to a lengthy, meandering survey at what point does he/she become disengaged (or just opt out)? And how does that impact the accuracy of their answers? These flaws suggest that too many people, given the responsibility of putting together a survey, lack an understanding of the complexities and subtleties of questionnaire design and respondent psychology. They bring a simplistic "if you ask, they will answer" attitude to the task. That's why the oversight function of media researchers is a crucial one. Without it, questionable or misleading "insights" from flawed surveys end up being presented to clients or new business prospects. While it's vital that we never stop insisting on quality research from our suppliers, agencies also need to be vigilant about internal practices when conducting their own research.