A technology originally designed to help Google DoubleClick and ad servers supply content on a publisher's site can now automate marketing tasks. It may seem like a nuance, but this new use of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication allows advertising companies to also support customer service, product development, and other businesses within an organization. M2M describes automated communication between mechanical or electronic devices without interaction. As the advertising industry prepares to turn the page through automation and cloud capabilities, John Nardone, CEO at [x+1], has finally begun to realize his vision of moving advertising technology into other businesses. "Audience-based targeting isn't just for advertising," Nardone said. "It's for Web sites, call centers and any interaction channels that brands use to interact with customers and create an experience." Automation will move services from helping to determine what ad to serve up on a page to integration with CRM systems. Technology will automatically make decisions to carry out tasks and populate databases that can follow up and send consumers information based on actions and clicks. Nardone said work to build a feature that will automatically populate contact information into CRM databases from data entered into a Web site has begun. The platform will automatically create a record and file the information in the CRM platform when a consumer enters the information online. "There's a gap in traditional CRM systems because of the issues privacy laws create on the Internet. Information is anonymous," he notes, "but CRM systems require an address." With M2M communication come security concerns. Some are based on vulnerability and data theft, others on the extra costs surrounding securing the Internet transmission, according to Beecham CEO Robin Duke-Woolley. Many companies, such as Oracle, known for its enterprise and CRM platforms, are already successful in M2M communication.
Portraying a difficult business climate for premium Web publishers, The New York Times Company said Thursday that third-quarter digital ad revenues declined 2.2% to $44 million. Along with lower national display and real estate classified ad revenues, executives blamed revenue declines on a bland economy, and the rise of programmatic ad buying, which is putting pressure on premium pricing models. “Programmatic buying is driving prices down,” Denise Warren, SVP and chief advertising officer at The New York Times Media Group and general manager of NYTimes.com, said during a call with investors on Thursday. “We are seeing pricing pressure on core banner display [businesses] as business confidence weakens and as programmatic buying becomes more robust,” Warren explained. Pressed by investors about the degree to which programmatic buying -- via ad exchanges, agency trading desks, demand-side platforms, and supply-side platforms -- was hurting business, Warren would only say that the negative impact is real and growing. As for specific ad categories, Warren said luxury, automotive and transportation from airlines were all performing well, while financial, entertainment, department stores and real estate advertising were down in the third quarter. In the first nine months of the year, The New York Times Co.’s total digital ad revenues decreased 2% year-over-year to $145.7 million. Digital ad revenues as a percentage of total ad revenues were 24.4% in the third quarter -- up from 22.8% in the third quarter of 2011. Digital ad revenues as a percentage of total company ad revenues were 23.6% for the first nine months of the year. Early in the fourth quarter of 2012, The Times Co completed the sale of the About Group for $300 million, plus a working capital adjustment. “This sale will allow us to enhance our focus on our core business of generating and distributing high-quality journalism,” stated Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and CEO of The New York Times Co. In early October, the company’s interest in Indeed.com was sold for approximately $167 million as a result of the sale of that company. Paid subscribers to The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune digital subscription packages, e-readers and replica editions totaled approximately 566,000 at the end of the third quarter -- an increase of 11% to about 57,000 subscribers. Paid digital subscribers to BostonGlobe.com and The Boston Globe’s e-readers and replica editions totaled approximately 26,000 at the end of the third quarter -– up 13% or about 3,000 subscribers. The company’s digital businesses consist mainly of NYTimes.com, BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com. Looking to the fourth quarter, Warren said investors could expect revenues “similar to third-quarter levels.”
Like many companies, Colgate-Palmolive’s mobile marketing strategy isn’t where it should be, given consumers’ rapidly growing usage of mobile platforms, says Jack Haber, C-P’s vice president, global advertising and digital.It will take some time to get mobile “fully woven into the fabric” of the company’s marketing activities, he added, speaking at the GroupM What’s Next conference Wednesday. One obstacle was resistance to change both within the company and within the larger advertising and marketing community.Haber likened the company’s attitude toward mobile today to skeptical attitudes that many inside the company held about the Internet as it was emerging and had not yet become a consumer utility. “We need to get past that,” he said. Research that demonstrates the medium’s return on investment would help internally, he said. C-P still spends roughly 80% of its advertising budget on TV, which he acknowledged was probably out of sync with the shifting media habits of consumers.“We’re all behind,” he said. “The industry is not as focused as it should be, especially among the creative ranks” at advertising agencies that for the most part remain fixated on TV, he said. “People talk about integration, but it’s still TV first” at many ad shops. “We need to change that.”“The consumers are setting the pace,” said Haber, and they have embraced mobile devices far faster than the industry anticipated. “We’re trying to catch up,” he said, noting that C-P has made developing and implementing a cohesive and integrated mobile strategy one of its top-10 global marketing priorities.Mobile is critical in countries like the U.S. and the U.K., Haber said, because of rapidly escalating consumer usage rates. He agreed with others at the conference that marketers and agencies should begin looking at mobile as “the first screen in a lot of ways. It’s the first thing we touch in the morning and throughout the day.”In some parts of many important overseas markets like China and India, mobile is not just the first screen, it’s the only screen. Given the personal nature of mobile devices, Haber added, “it’s the closest you can get to people as a marketer.”That said, Haber added that marketers have to be sensitive to the personalized nature of mobile and ask themselves if their consumers “want ads on this screen” -- and if so, “how to interact with them. We have not figured it out yet.”
Yahoo on Thursday confirmed its acquisition of the 10-person team behind mobile recommendation app Stamped. The deal, first reported by Mashable, signals the Web portal’s efforts under new CEO Marissa Mayer to make mobile a central part of its growth strategy. The fact that Stamped was launched by a group of ex-Googlers like herself likely helped smooth the path to her first acquisition as head of Yahoo. “Their experience building fun, useful, personalized mobile products aligns well with Yahoo!’s vision to create the best everyday mobile experience for our users. They will be a great asset as we expand Yahoo!’s mobile efforts and build a world-class mobile development organization,” stated Adam Cahan, SVP, emerging products and technology at Yahoo, in a blog post today. The Stamped app, which lets people keep track, or “stamp” favorite things from movies to restaurants to books, gained attention this summer for attracting celebrity investors, including Ryan Seacrest, Ellen DeGeneres, and Justin Bieber, among others. But the Stamped app has relatively few ratings (226) in the App Store, suggesting that it has not gotten much traction to date with mobile users. In their own statement today, the Stamped founders said they planned to shut down operations by the end of the year and open a new product and engineering office for Yahoo near Bryant Park in New York. During Yahoo’s third-quarter conference call on Monday, Mayer acknowledged that the company had not kept pace with the broader shift to mobile devices. “We haven't effectively optimized our Web sites, we've underinvested in our mobile front-end development and we've splintered our brands,” she said, promising to boost investment and bring on new talent. With the purchase of Stamped, she has already started to make good on that pledge. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Some 43% of retailers said they will raise online marketing budgets -- investing in either mobile, social or email marketing channels during the holiday season, according to a new study analyzing expectation of holiday advertising and sales. About 68% expect sales to increase this holiday, compared with last year, and nearly a quarter believe they will see it rise by more than 50%, according to the Retail Systems Research study sponsored by Bronto Software. When asked what percentage of their 2012 holiday online marketing budget will go toward email, mobile and social, 22% of retailers report their social marketing will increase slightly from 2011, with 18% reporting a slight uptick. And 21% note mobile strategies will rise significantly this year, as part of the 40% of retailers who report an overall increase in mobile marketing spend. When it comes to email marketing, retailers plan to increase the number as the holidays approach. About 22% cite a significant increase in the amount spent for email marketing, while 20% cite a slight increase. Some 53% report that they expect the overall volume of emails sent this year to rise, compared with the year-ago holiday season. About 34% don't expect a change, and 13% said they will spend less. Of those preparing to increase frequency, 36% of retailers invested in email personalization and 21% in segmentation technologies during the past year. Another 46% have invested in technology to acquire new email subscribers, and 43% have built up automated and triggered messaging features. The survey, "Loading the Sleigh: Marketers' Plans & Expectations for the Holiday Season," analyzes retailers' plans for the holiday season. The responses come from 179 online and multichannel retailers, with between $51 million and $999 million in annual revenue.
A Michigan resident is preparing to ask a federal appeals court to reinstate his privacy lawsuit against Pandora, court records show. Peter Deacon alleged in a 2011 lawsuit that Pandora violated a Michigan privacy law by participating in Facebook's "instant personalization" program. That program shares logged-in Facebook users' names and photos with outside companies, including Pandora. While Facebook users could always opt out of instant personalization, at launch it operated by default. Deacon said in his complaint that the Pandora-Facebook partnership led to disclosure of his "sensitive listening records" to his friends on the site. He argued that revealing this type of information is illegal under Michigan's Video Rental Privacy Act, which prohibits companies that rent, sell or loan music from revealing information about customers without their consent. Late last month, U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland, Calif. threw out Deacon's lawsuit, ruling that Michigan's privacy law doesn't apply when companies stream music online. Her decision was based on the relatively narrow language of the law, which specifically refers to businesses that rent, sell or lend music. The statute -- which is more than 20 years old -- makes no mention of Web streams. Armstrong said in her ruling that Deacon could amend his complaint, but last week, he notified the court that he didn't intend to do so. That move sets the stage for Armstrong to enter a final ruling, which will enable Deacon to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Deacon's lawyer, Jay Edelson, tells Online Media Daily that his firm is "looking forward to making our arguments to the 9th Circuit." A different judge recently ruled against Hulu in a privacy lawsuit accusing it of violating a federal privacy law by sharing Web users' information with ad networks and analytics companies. In that case, Hulu argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the federal law mentioned "videocassettes" and "similar audiovisual materials," but not streaming video. (That law is worded differently than the one in Michigan.) But U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler in the Northern District of California ruled that the 24-year-old federal law was aimed at protecting the privacy of people who watch video -- regardless of technical format.
With more than 37 million members, the AARP is one of the largest advocacy organizations in the U.S. The acronym is also synonymous with the 50+ demographic it represents. But that audience is not often associated with early tech adopters. MediaPost recently spoke with Sami Hassanyeh, vice president of AARP’s digital strategies and operations, about the group’s efforts to expand its media properties across platforms as its membership becomes more tech-savvy. MP: What’s your approach to mobile in connection with the AARP membership? SH: Baby boomers account for about 40% of paying customers for wireless services. The audience is already mobile. We see about 15% of our unique visitors come from mobile. Mobile traffic has grown for 10 or 12 consecutive months, so the audience is mobile-friendly. We have a "mobile first" mindset; we want to make sure for everything we design, right out of the gate, the mobile experiences are built in. MP: What form does that take? SH: One of the projects we are working on now is a responsive design experience for our Web site across the board. While we have an m-dot version of AARP.org, and we have apps on iPhone, iPad and Android for the Web site and our magazine, we are rebuilding our digital experience to take advantage of all devices. MP: Does that involve using HTML5? SH: Yes. We want to make it so that any personalization and customization you make on one platform automatically transitions to another platform. There are some technical things we need to work through, but we’re quite confident we’ll be in the market in the Q2 time frame, and hopefully sooner. MP: Are you running advertising on your mobile platforms yet? Yes. Inside the iPad app, on the iPhone and Android apps, as well as on the mobile site, above and below the content. Our iPad app is sponsored by Chase. MP: Where do you see most usage -- the mobile Web or apps? SH: We see a lot more engagement overall on mobile than on apps, but over time, we see apps becoming a greater share of the overall experience. When people use our apps, they’re more willing to spend time with us. When they use the mobile version of our site, they’re engaged, but for a shorter window of time. MP: How many app downloads have you had to date? We had 319,000 total downloads as of September, and 150,000 of those are for the main iPhone app. The iPad app, released a couple months ago, has 26,000 downloads. MP: Switching to video, AARP just relaunched its YouTube channel. What is the role of online video for the organization? SH: The YouTube redesign is to ensure that users can find our content, see the breadth of the [2,000 videos] we have, and target them with the kind of content most relevant. Our objective is also to leverage it in such a way that it’s shareable and distributed across multiple platforms. MP: Have any AARP videos gone viral? SH: We can one called the 100-year-old bride, about a lady who at 100 wanted to get remarried. That one has over half a million views on YouTube. And we also did our take on “Call Me Maybe,” which isn’t doing badly. It has a social mission slant, which is call your grandparents on Grandparents Day. No maybe about it. So it’s important to infuse our objectives into some of the videos. MP: AARP.org was listed by comScore as one of the fastest-growing sites in July. Was that related to a redesign or any particular step? SH: We’ve seen a significant increase in our unique visitors over the last 12 months or so. [comScore] put us around 6.9 million in July and we exceeded 8 million in September. We optimize the site on an ongoing basis.
Fueled by community dialogue surrounding political discourse, the Huffington Post estimates it will post its 200 millionth reader's comment sometime early tomorrow. How much posts related to the campaign season contribute to the milestone may not be discernable, but consider this stat offered by HuffPo's PR team: "It took six years for the first 100 million, but only around 15 months for the second." Not surprisingly, the top five commented-on stories of HuffPo's brief history have been mainly political in nature, including No. 1, "Mitt Romney Video: Barack Obama Voters 'Dependent On Government," which garnered 171,160 comments. Two of the other top four were also political in nature, and Romney-related at that: Iran Updates: Live-Blogging The Uprising - 96,281 comments Supreme Court Health Care Decision: Individual Mandate Survives - 71,632 comments Ann Romney: We've Given 'All You People Need To Know' About Family Finances - 68,281 comments Mitt Romney: 'I Never Paid Less Than 13 Percent' In Taxes - 62,562 comments
Using mobile as a shopping tool clearly is being embraced by consumers more quickly than online e-commerce enjoyed in the 1990s and 2000s. But the concept of the mobile wallet and paying for goods over devices is still either unfamiliar or unimpressive to most shoppers. According to a new survey on upcoming shopping plans by ResearchNow, commissioned by payment processing firm Litle & Co., almost a quarter of the more than 500 customers surveyed have shopped on their mobile devices. Among those who did make purchases, the typical cart size was $20-$100. But when it comes to the wrapper for using devices as payment tools, the mobile wallet, there is overwhelming disinterest. The survey finds that only 8.6% of consumers with smartphones agree that “mobile wallets are going to change the payment world.” The mobile wallet form and format are still in their nascent stages currently. Google has an app tied to its own payment system, and Apple recently introduced its Passbook on iOS 6 that gathers together third-party coupons, e-tickets and debit cards. Like the wallet that powers m-payments for retail purchases (also called proximity mobile buying), consumers are also not well acquainted with the m-payment facilitators like Square. More than two-thirds (71%) say they have never used a mobile swipe serve at a retailer. "The number of shoppers transacting via their mobile devices is small, and really calls into question the consumer appetite for mobile payments," says Ben Saren, VP of Marketing, Litle. "The reason why mobile wallets haven't caught on yet is because there really hasn't been an incentive to switch over to them. It's still just as easy, if not easier, to pull out cash or a credit card and make a purchase. Also, there will never be consumer adoption until merchant adoption expands. No one service has gained ubiquity in the marketplace." Interestingly, one of the critical functions that many associate with mobile wallets -- integration of loyalty and rewards programs -- is an important motivator to consumers. For the upcoming holiday season, a majority (53%) say they will rely on available funds rather than credit to pay for gifts. And while only about a third of shoppers say they will be using credit cards this season, almost half of cardholders say that awards and miles are a primary reason for using their cards. But among the most affluent ($150,000+ incomes), a remarkable 73% are motivated by rewards to pull out the plastic.
The Bulging Bicep Gym in Stamford Conn. terminated the membership of Barnard Fife, a resident of nearby Darien, when it was determined that Fife had been blood doping prior to his spin and Zumba classes. The discovery was made by BBG's janitor, who reported that urine Fife failed to flush in the men's locker room was "the color of a Hawaiian sunset." "This doesn't really surprise me," fellow spin class doyenne, Francine Fannypack, told Over the Line. "He was always the one yelling 'feel the burn' and 'more sprints" while the rest of us were crying for the class to be over." The gym also stripped Fife of his "Biggest Loser" title that was awarded last February when he lost the most post-holiday weight in the shortest period of time. "I suppose we should have been a little more suspect when Fife worked out seven-and-a-half hours every day while most of our other members average an hour visit every 10 days or so," said BBG associate manager Beth Toussant. "The real shame of it is that we used to hold Barney up as an example of what could be accomplished by being more dedicated to workouts." Fife is 55 years old, 5'10", and weighs 135 pounds, with a body fat percentage of 8. He gives the appearance of a much younger man. He tells Over the Line that he broke no laws and has no regrets about transfusing his own blood prior to workouts in order to increase his aerobic capacity. As a result he was able to work out longer and harder than other members of the gym. "Not gonna lie to you -- we all thought Barney was The Man at the gym, " said a member who asked that we not disclose his name (which is Rob Petrie). "I mean, the rest of us would come in and do a quick circuit on the Nautilus, then hit the cross-trainer for 20 minutes and call it a day. But there was Fife, kicking ass and taking names. All the MILFs snuck looks at him, and who knows how many he hooked up with. Any one of us would have traded places with him in a heartbeat." "Look, being able to crank a steady spin for a couple of hours while listening to some Bird Peterson mixes is not the same thing as cheating to win the Tour de France," Fife told Over the Line. "Half the people in my Zumba class are high on prescription pain killers, Peruvian snow, amphetamines or energy drinks. Most of the football players in this town are taking some sort of muscle mass concoction, some of which are probably anabolic steroid-based. Everyone wants an edge. I just chose to shoot mine in my arm." Asked about the efficacy of keeping the Biggest Loser cash award, Fife said," I had certain, uh, 'training expenses' I need to cover, so I think I’m going to keep the money. Especially since they already kicked me out of the gym." "Fife's nuts are not going to fall off because of blood doping," said Dr. Johnny Fever, a general practitioner who also asked to remain anonymous. "I suppose he might be at risk of overtaxing his heart if he has any kind of artery blockage or arrhythmia. Doping also increases blood viscosity, making blood clots much more likely and stroke more likely. But how does that compare with being a stud among the rest of us flabby, overweight folks? Mr. Fife could probably benefit from a few sessions with a licensed psychotherapist exploring his self-image, but that's his business." Fife's demise follows a series of blood doping scandals in professional cycling, track and field, soccer and wrestling, and the revelation by at least one runner that he doped to win the modest prize money offered by local road races. Full disclosure: I blood-doped to write this column (and wash three cars, 45 windows, do three loads of laundry -- now folded and put away -- finish shopping for groceries, Xmas, with a head start on Valentine's Day and Easter, and take six classes at the gym. All today).
If you’re a CMO and you can’t explain your digital advertising metrics strategy in a paragraph or less, you’re in trouble. In the early "wild west" days of digital, metrics and measurement were sketchy at best, and going with your gut was not at all unusual. But gone are the days of guessing … of planning a campaign based on assumptions and hoping it will achieve your marketing goals. It is to provide clear, actionable results to justify the dollars you are spending, especially in the still relatively uncharted and fast-changing waters of digital media. There are three hard and fast rules every CMO or marketer should be following when considering digital advertising. 1. Establish Solid GoalsAre you building or supporting a brand? Driving traffic to a Web site? Working on customer conversion? Pick one objective and stick to it. Defining your objective at the outset will help benchmark performance later. Introducing a product, for example, is a goal. Squeezing the most product sales out of a media buy is also a goal, but it is a different goal. The metrics that define your success in reaching them also must be different. Performance measurement naturally depends on observing the metrics at the end. But don't forget to look at the metrics at the start. so you have the correct apples-to-apples reference point for your back-end metrics. 2. Measure The Right MetricsIdentify the correct Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for the goals you've set. If you use the wrong metrics to measure success, you could see numbers that have little relation to achieving your desired goals, meaning you've lost both precious time and dollars. If, for example, you have a media buy that is strategically planned to support a broad brand awareness goal, you need to be looking at the right metrics. In today’s Web-based world, everyone is obsessed with clicks. They serve as a metric of response, not branding. Branding metrics, on the other hand, are all about impression counts, interaction rates, frequency data, and placement performance. Before you reach any conclusions about the impact of your message outreach, be sure you’re measuring the right metrics. When establishing the metrics you'll be using, remember how quickly technology is moving. Be careful that the metrics you establish today will still be relevant six months from now. 3. Measure Twice, Decide OnceTrying to obtain a solid performance sample? Don’t measure five times a day and change your campaign each time. Conversely, don’t wait until the campaign has been fully implemented before you begin the measuring process. Quantitative and qualitative research, supplemented with a solid metrics package reporting on your online buy, will provide all the data you need to make educated optimizing decisions throughout your branding campaign. If you list your goals, then find the KPIs that report on those goals, you’ll be much better positioned to make the periodic, informed decisions necessary to optimize all of your campaign elements. But beware! Data is data. Don’t let it make the final decisions for you. Data, of course, needs to be factored into the overall decision-making process, but there is no substitute for expertise and experience, or your gut. Or a really savvy agency partner.