Microsoft rolled out the "Bing It On" campaign to challenge Google at search after an independent study found that people prefer Bing over Google two to one. While the campaign will span television, online and mobile, Microsoft also plans to take the fight into its retail stores. The first 30-second TV spots -- two -- will begin running on the MTV Video Music Awards Thursday night and continue through Fox premieres such as "Ben & Kate" and "American Dad." One of the TV spots filmed in San Francisco, "Google's backyard," explains how Googlers turned into Bingers once they took the challenge. Adam Sohn, GM of the Bing business group, said many of them were surprised that they chose Bing over Google. Most people turn to Google for Web searches, but a study commissioned by Microsoft shows people prefer Bing search results in blind comparison tests. Respondents tested searches on engines without branding on a choice of PC or Mac, using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Chrome browsers. The Bing It On landing page allows anyone to come and test their preference. Sohn said people prefer Bing visually. The engine continues to grow share, which looks good for the company's financial outlook. "We have a long-term plan," he said. "We never expected to release the engine and find ourselves conquering the world three or four days later." Agencies behind the creative pieces include Crispin Porter Bogusky for TV, online video, Social, Bingiton.com; Starcom Media Group for media, and Razorfish for digital media. Although Microsoft has been slowly increasing search market share, the confusing part resides in recent data from comScore that doesn't reflect the 2:1 ratio Sohn claims. Google Sites took 66.8% of the U.S. search market in July; and Microsoft Sites, 15.7%. Yahoo, powered by Bing, came in at No. 3 with 13%. When asked about Google's move to increase images through Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads in search results, Sohn said "there's a balance between visually compelling content and making the information on the page accessible, not too cluttered." He admits that people process images faster than text, but there are better and worse positions for images. Bing, part of Microsoft's Online Services division, posted a fiscal year loss of $8.1 billion, including a $6.2 billion write-down related to Microsoft's 2007 acquisition of online ad company aQuantive.
WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather has forged a new partnership with longtime ad client IBM giving the agency access to a suite of analytics and cloud-based tools for its e-commerce operation eCommerce@Ogilvy. The new tools are designed to provide client CMOs and CIOs with enhanced ways to engage shoppers online. The partnership follows IBM’s $3 billion investment in its Smarter Commerce initiative. The new partnership is designed to enhance the eCommerce@Ogilvy offering, while providing the tech giant with a new pathway to clients for its own e-commerce tools and systems via O&M. O&M has been developing its e-commerce practice for several years and brought Carl Hartman on board in January to run it. Previously, Hartman was head of shopper marketing operations at WPP. Before that, he was the holding company's global client lead for Kimberly-Clark. O&M has ambitious expectations for its eCommerce practice and hopes to make it a business generating more than $100 million in revenues by 2016. Current clients include Louis Vuitton, British Airways, Kimberly-Clark, Nike and Nestlé. Commenting on the agreement, Hartman stated, “ecommerce engagements are complex and require multiple types of vertical expertise, to meet that client need. The IBM/O&M partnership will include joint training and education sessions, new collaborative service options and a one-stop solution for clients to power and simplify their ecommerce engagement.” It’s not the first time the agency has utilized IBM technology for a client offering. One example: interactive marketing software developed by IMB subsidiary Unica is used by O&M clients such as Kimberly-Clark worldwide.
Facebook isn't ramping up its mobile ad revenue fast enough to keep up with Twitter. A new eMarketer forecast projects the microblogging service will take in $129 million in U.S. mobile ad revenue this year compared to $72 million for Facebook. Both social media powerhouses will trail companies with more established mobile ad platforms. Google, for instance, is expected to reach $1.4 billion in mobile ad sales, fueled by the expansion of its huge search advertising business to mobile devices. Online radio service Pandora is projected to post $226 million in mobile ad revenue, with mobile ad network Millennial Media at $84 million, and Apple (iAd) at $75 million. Overall, U.S. mobile advertising is expected to increase nearly 80% to $2.6 billion this year, and to hit $12 billion by 2016. When it comes to Twitter, eMarketer concludes the company's rollout of new ad products, especially Promoted Tweets, has made the shift to mobile display advertising relatively simple. On most days, Twitter generates more money from mobile than on the desktop. For Facebook, the transition hasn't been as smooth because eMarketer estimates the company makes most of its money from Marketplace ads, which don't appear on its mobile platform. Instead, Facebook has focused on extending Sponsored Stories to the news feeds of mobile users. That move will help the company generate $387 million in mobile ad dollars next year, topping Twitter's estimated $272.6 million. Google, which claims more than half (54.1%) of the U.S. mobile ad market, is expected to continue dominating the category for the next couple of years. Excluding search, the market is more evenly divided. Pandora accounts for 20% of mobile display advertising, with Google at 18%, and Twitter, nearly 12%. eMarketer said one key difference from its prior forecast is that the figures represent net revenues after companies pay traffic acquisition costs to partner sites. The research firm previously estimated gross U.S. mobile revenues for major ad networks. “This change in definition has led to a reduction in share for mobile display ad networks owned by Millennial Media, Apple and Google, each of which pay back a significant portion of their gross revenues to ad publishers and partner sites,” eMarketer stated. While mobile becomes a growing focus for publishers and advertisers, the firm projects it will represent just 1% of total U.S. ad spending in 2012. That's partly a result of smaller media buys in mobile dictated by smaller screen sizes that limit the number of impressions per page view.
After what it admits was an awkward phase for social marketing, Adobe just debuted a new service, which it promises will give brands all the data and tools necessary to execute mature social strategies. Part of its Digital Marketing Suite, Adobe Social is a combination of analytics-heavy social listening, management and publishing tools. “Just because social feels intuitive doesn’t mean you can run it intuitively,” says Brad Rencher, senior vice president/GM of Adobe Digital Marketing Business. “Imagine reporting on your search campaigns by telling your CMO that customers really ‘like’ your keywords, or that sentiment around your keywords is positive.” Determined to drill deeper than “likes,” Rencher and his team will try to help brands understand the direct and indirect effects of social on all aspects of their businesses. More superficially, Rencher plans to give brands a clearer picture of how social impacts brand uplift, conversions, and revenue, while allowing for better customer segmentation across various channels and devices. “Your social strategy should not end with the start of a conversation,” according to Rencher. “That’s just where the opportunities to learn from your customers begin.” The next step is to put social into context with search, display, email, mobile, Web sites and other marketing channels, Rencher added. “With all of this information, data and programs have to connect, make sense together and be part of a broader initiative and platform.” In recent years, Adobe has moved aggressively into the advertising space with four key acquisitions, including Efficient Frontier, Omniture, Demdex and Auditude. All the while, Adobe has continued to create technology for marketers to buy and optimize online advertising for search, social and display. Late last year, Adobe said it was capturing approximately 5 trillion digital transactions annually for some 5,000 customers.
Department store Neiman Marcus is teaming with Visa to launch a service that delivers special offers, fashion news, and sneak previews to shoppers on their mobile devices. Called nmbuzz, the new program is open to Neiman Marcus customers who enroll their eligible Visa account and mobile phone number. Through Visa's real-time messaging technology, users receive information via SMS text messages from nmbuzz while shopping with an enrolled Visa card up to two times per week. For instance, after using their card to make a purchase at a retailer near a local Neiman Marcus store, a shopper might get a message about an upcoming beauty event there featuring a gift with a purchase. Users can opt out of the service -- which doesn't include a direct m-commerce capability -- at any time by text message. “At Neiman Marcus, we always strive to exceed our customers' expectations,” stated Wanda Gierhart, CMO for Neiman Marcus Group Services. “This technology allows us to be in touch with many of our Neiman Marcus customers in a way we know they prefer.” In May, the luxury retailer began its 4,000 sales associates at full-line stores with smartphones in order to better serve customers. Neiman Marcus also partnered with Foursquare, last year running a promotion that encouraged people to “check in” to see if they were in the vicinity of one of 15 hidden Nancy Gonzalez handbags, each worth about $1,400. The launch of nmbuzz also reflects Visa's efforts to expand its mobile offerings. This spring, the company announced the beta lauch of its digital wallet service called V.me with online retailer Buy.com. Also, Visa card payments are supported within Google Wallet, its own mobile wallet service. Neiman Marcus itself only began accepting Visa cards in the last year. The companies did not disclose any financial terms of the deal.
Amazon on Thursday announced new versions of its Kindle Fire tablet including a larger model designed to better compete with Apple's dominant iPad. The company also debuted an upgrade to the original Kindle Fire and new illuminated e-reader to counter Barnes & Noble's glow-in-the dark Nook model. At a press event, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the new Kindle Fire HD, featuring an 8.9-inch display, bigger than the current 7-inch screen and closer in size to the 10-inch iPad. The device also includes up to 32 GB of memory, a sharper screen, and stereo sound with Dolby Digital Plus. The HD model also comes in a 7-inch size, which will sell for $199 (16 GB) and ships Sept. 14. The 8.9-inch device will sell for $299 (16 GB) and ships Nov. 20, just in time for the peak holiday shopping season. The upgrades to the original Kindle Fire include a faster processor, twice the RAM, 40% faster and longer battery life. The price has also been reduced to $159 and it ships Sept. 14. Amazon is counting on the new models to rejuvenate sales of its tablet, which plummeted at the start of 2012 after a strong holiday season. Shipments of the Kindle Fire in the first quarter fell 62% to 0.8 million units from 4.8 million in the fourth quarter, according to IDC data. That dropped Amazon from a 16.8% share of the worldwide tablet market to just a 4% share, with Samsung jumping ahead to second place behind Apple. While the Kindle Fire -- along with devices such as the Google Nexus 7 -- are among the leaders in smaller-sized tablets, the landscape could shift with Apple rumored to launch an iPad Mini in October. If competitively priced, a smaller iPad could prove a formidable rival to the Kindle Fire. Amazon also brought out its answer to Barnes & Noble's popular Nook with Glowlight e-reader. The new Kindle “Paperwhite” features a front-lit screen and boasts extra-long battery life. The Wi-Fi model will retail for $119, while the 3G version will sell for $179). The Kindle Paperwhite will go on sale Oct. 1. The price of the entry-level Kindle e-reader was also dropped from $79 to $69. The success of the new or updated devices is crucial to Amazon's broder strategy of using its hardware to sell a wide range of digital goods and services. “This is an important launch for Amazon, as it continues to evolve its strategy of service syndication: pushing Kindle, Prime, Instant Video, Cloud Drive, and now its data plan to as many touchpoints as possible, making it more convenient and pleasurable for consumers to buy Amazon stuff,” wrote Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, in a blog post today. A Forrester survey of 4,650 U.S. consumers conducted online in August showed that 31% reported they had a credit card on file with Amazon, compared with 18% that have one stored with Apple and 5% with Google. Epps said that payment connection should give the company an advantage in rolling out new subscription services like Amazon Prime, as well as new products -- including its own smartphone, which 23% said they would be interested in purchasing if available.
Antivirus company McAfee has been hit with a potential class-action lawsuit for allegedly duping Web users into purchasing "Registry Power Cleaner" software. New Jersey resident Jennifer Bilodeau alleges in court papers that McAfee markets the registry-cleaning software via online ads that offer free diagnostic scans of users' computers. The scans allegedly always find that the computers are at "high risk" for problems, Bilodeau says. "The unfortunate truth is that, rather than actually performing any meaningful assessment of a computer's condition, Registry Power Cleaner was designed to invariably -- and ominously -- report that harmful errors and problems are afflicting a user's PC," she alleges in her complaint, filed late last week in federal court in San Jose, Calif. She says in her legal papers that a computer forensics expert tested the software and concluded that it always reports numerous errors, even when scanning a brand new computer system. "It follows then, that even Registry Power Booster users with new PCs would be informed that hundreds of errors exist on and are harming their system's status, placing it at 'high risk,'" she alleges. Bilodeau alleges that the Registry Power Cleaner software is manufactured by the company Capital Intellect, but that McAfee has a deal with Capital to endorse, market and sell the program. Bilodeau also named Capital Intellect as a defendant in the case. She says the companies are violating California's consumer protection laws. The lawsuit is part of a recent wave of scareware cases brought as potential class-actions by attorney Jay Edelson. One software vendor that was sued, Ascentive, agreed in March to a $9.6 million settlement. In that case, Ascentive said it would allow people who purchased its software to put in claims for refunds of either $10 or $18, depending on how many products they purchased. Ascentive also promised to revise its disclosures to consumers, as well as its refund policies. The company didn't admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement agreement. A separate lawsuit by a consumer against Symantec was recently dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, who ruled that the allegations were too vague because the consumer didn't include Symantec's verbatim ads in his complaint. The consumer in that case filed new papers two weeks ago.
Datalogix, which aims to link digital media exposure with customer purchasing data, has acquired Connection Engine, a firm with expertise in multiple areas of email marketing. Connection Engine was founded by former Merkle executive Eric Kirby in 2010. Kirby had previously built a pair of companies acquired by Return Path.Among Connection Engine’s capabilities is helping to build email lists and working in customer segmentation.Datalogix and Connection Engine have worked together over the last two years, and Connection Engine’s SaaS platform will be melded into Datalogix’s DLX ROI portfolio.Kirby stated that Connection Engine has looked to “revolutionize the way companies develop customer insights using scalable cloud technologies” en route to “more relevant marketing communications and smarter marketing spend decisions.”Kirby, who joins Datalogix along with all of Connection Engine’s staff, added that more than 200 companies have used Connection Engine’s platform.Datalogix CEO Eric Roza stated that the “exponential growth in both data production and real-time decisioning systems calls for a fundamentally new interaction model between the offline and online worlds."Colorado-based Datalogix recently opened offices in San Francisco and Detroit.
More long-form premium TV and movie content continues to get heavy play from online consumers.Premium video content -- movies, TV and sports programming -- now accounts for more than 60% of total time Internet users spend watching video online. This data comes from Ooyala, the digital video technology company, which looks at research from 200 million online viewers from the second quarter of this year.Growth of video continues on tablets and PCs: The time that tablet viewers spent watching long-form videos grew 47% in the second quarter. Also in the period, PC viewers tuned in to see live videos for an average of 33 minutes.Long-form video content is still very important to viewers in this digital age -- even when it comes to new technology attached to their big screens. When using smart TVs, set-top boxes and gaming consoles, viewers spend 93% of their time watching movies, TV shows and other long-form videos, says the report.In keeping with the heavy political season this year, Democrat-sided viewers watched more online video in the second quarter.“Blue State” viewers –- states that went heavily Democrat in the 2008 U.S. presidential election -- watched 26% more online video, in terms of number of plays, than “Red State” viewers, where states leaned Republican.
It’s that time of year again when the editors of OMMA magazine begin the process of evaluating agencies for our 2012 Agency of the Year awards. If you would like to nominate an agency, please feel free to contact Carrie Cummings at carrie@mediapost.com with any insights or recommendations you might have. The winners will be selected based on the impact they had on the overall industry, as well as their own clients and campaigns during the past 12-months, and will be announced by the end of the year.
In a wonderfully thoughtful piece in iMedia this week, Jim Nichols, Vice President of Branding at ROI DNA, gives "7 reasons people think you're too old to work in digital," referencing things like "you complain about the young," "you read (about) instead of experience (new interactive developments)," and "you aren't mobile enough." In this case he doesn't mean you are no longer a contributor in the half-court basketball league (although he could have) -- rather, he means you are probably stuck at your desktop while the rest of the world is operating on handheld devices. But Jim is a stand-up family guy, and probably by design left off a few other key indicators of why your colleagues think you are an old geezer. You leer at the women in the office. When you have been married to the same woman for a couple of decades, you tend to think those 20somethings in casual clothes were sent by God to remind you of the good old days when you had sex with lots of different women with perky breasts, flat stomachs and no cellulite. But you staring at their every move in the office, hoping for a down-blouse or up-skirt view, does not inspire them to have pity-sex with you. Rather, it creeps them out and eventually gets you a reprimand. Get used to it: At your age, you are utterly invisible to younger women. You tell inappropriate jokes. Yes, when you were coming along, it was okay to tell racist and sexist jokes. Not really -- but you got away with it since nearly everyone else at the office was white and male, too. No arguing that many of those jokes were hysterical, but this ain't the ‘70s or the ‘80s anymore. You'd best save those knee-slappers for the golf course. You play golf. It is an old, rich, white-guy sport. NOTHING is more boring than hearing about an almost hole-in-one or how you killed the back nine at Winged Foot. With rare exceptions, those around you in your office won't even begin to think about picking up a club for another 15 years, so shut up about it and get those stupid foursome photos off your desk. Stop talking about the great books you've read. A seven-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson holds essentially no interest for anyone under 50. Besides, they don't read books yet anyway. They don't talk about great tweets or blog posts (at least not to you) so don't bother them with references to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ken Follett and E. L. James (well, that one they might have read). Same goes for referencing stories in the New Yorker or The Atlantic. Does not compute. That USMC tat you got at Subic Bay does not have to be revealed each time you see a couple of Chinese characters etched on a neck or ankle. And for chrissake, stop asking "Where else did you get pierced?" when you see a lip or eyebrow ring. At all costs avoid discussing playlists on MP3 players or cell phones. Just because somebody does not know all the words to “Stairway To Heaven” or “One Toke Over The Line” does not make them musically illiterate. Bury the urge to compare Nat King Cole or Ella Fitzgerald to Cee Lo Green and/or Adele. It is a no-win proposition. Most of all, stop trying to use the same lingo the kids in the office use. If you say something is "bad," they expect you not to like it. Sick doesn't mean you have a fever anymore -- and when you talk about your "ride," you’d best not be referring to the Prius in your driveway.