Microsoft will face an uphill battle when it comes to adoption of its Surface tablet, but with the release of Windows Phone 8, digital agency executives believe ad targeting could improve. ABI Research expects Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows RT-based tablets to have little impact on the market this year, accounting for only 1.3% of global shipments. That could change in 2013. ABI analysts believe Microsoft will play catch-up in 2012, primarily because it lacks adoption for Windows 7, and got a late start launching the next version, which will not be available until October. The company is introducing a fragmented operating system (OS) strategy with Windows RT and Windows -- something Google has been punished for by Android OS developers. "I don't see Microsoft denting Apple's market share, but it's a good move for consumers," said Rob Griffin, EVP, global director of product development at Havas Digital. "The new Windows mobile OS has been quite popular, so it's a logical extension. For app design, Apple has two things in its favor. One, the install and user base, and two, the controlled Apple environment makes it easier to design." Griffin said ad targeting is a whole other opportunity. Microsoft's scale across digital and mobile helps them support better ad targeting. Targeting requires the ability to tap as few players as possible or it can cause inefficiencies. The tablet will sync with the Xbox 360 and the Windows Phone 8, unveiled at an event Wednesday in San Francisco. The version of Windows Phone 8 will share the underlying technology of the Windows operating system running on tablets, laptops and desktops. That would allow the ability to share content across three screens, similar to Ray Ozzie's vision shared in mid-2000. Microsoft spent the past decade developing portions of Surface. Ozzie, one of Microsoft's three chief technical officers at the time, demonstrated the touchscreen and ability to share content across devices in mid-2000. Then a few years later, Surface, a 30-inch computer tablet-like display, surfaced at the Sheraton in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Producing its own tablet, Microsoft enters a market dominated by Apple, with six out of 10 tablets being iPads, according to Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet and monitor research at iHS iSuppli. The research firm estimates more than 300 million tablet units will ship annually by 2015. iHS estimates Worldwide Q1 2012 shipments for Apple at 11,800 units; Samsung, 2,195; Amazon, 1,185; Lenovo, 672; Asus, 590; and all others, 3,997. Microsoft will offer two devices, each appealing to a different audience. It won't matter what the device is -- ad networks and paid-search platform providers will have the ability to serve up ads on either. Targeting ads based on the type of tablet could become the only reason a brand might want to know the model. One will run a Windows RT-based ARM tablet powered by an NVIDIA application processor, known for finer graphics. Many consider the other, a Windows 8 Pro tablet based on Intel's x86 architecture, synonymous with desktop computers. ABI believes Microsoft's initial market opportunity resides with business buyers that already work with Windows PCs. The question for the future: will company executives in the "post-PC era" move toward a mobile computing device and ditch traditional desktops?
LG Electronics will use natural language processing to support a voice search service for its smartphones running on Google's Android operating system. Quick Voice will support 11 applications with audio features for Web search such as text, maps and weather. The move should become a wake-up call to search engine marketers who will need to rethink how they optimize Web sites and paid-search campaigns. The Quick Voice feature will initially launch this month in South Korea, joining a growing market spearheaded by Apple with the introduction last fall of Siri for the iPhone 4S. It's unclear how quickly LG will introduce the feature into other markets. Voice search continues to become the natural progression to simplify the request of information across platforms and devices, according to BIA/Kelsey analyst Matt Booth. "Google ran a very advanced voice search 411 business for years at Goog411, even taking out billboard advertisements," he said. "They were really after a large database repository of voice searches that continue to improve voice search queries. We think voice will be playing a pivotal role across Android devices." Booth said these announcements are early indicators that the market is primed to take off, and in four to five years, voice search will become as ubiquitous as turn-by-turn directions on mobile. Quick Voice will support Android 4 updates on the LG Optimus Vu this month, along with the Optimus LTE 2 in July. As a smartphone maker, LG might have set a precedent by introducing voice search for its phones, but it's not the first. Earlier this month, Apple said it would expand Siri to the iPad this fall with the release of iOS 6. About 1 billion of the world's population own smartphones, said Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt at a conference in Israel. He delivered the message to explain the growth of smartphones and how the device can reduce the gap between those who have access to the world's information on the Internet and those who do not.
Every image tells a story on television, but not a complete picture without real-time tweets connecting TV with online, says Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, speaking at Cannes Lions. The biggest challenge, it seems, is that broadcast TV needs a dependable partner -- but by Thursday the added tweet volume from the ad festival appears to have sent the site offline. Earlier in the week, the site boasted that there were more than 15,000 online posts across social media referencing #CannesLions, with 95% coming from Twitter. On Thursday, as of 12:40 EST, the site went offline. Remember #failwhale? Broadcast TV needs a reliable social media partner. While it all began with lower thirds serving up at the bottom of TV screens during broadcasts, Twitter pushed the concept of using the site to bring TV viewers online and connect them with other socialites to create a community in real-time. A producer's guide explaining best practices for connecting TV audience through tweets went up on the Twitter's site in early June. TV shows have tapped the social site to raise ratings. The company developed an analytics package to track the continuous tweets during television broadcasts. The sharp spikes correspond to major moments in a show. Last year, Twitter and technology partners stepped up following tweets to TV, bringing real-time content to TV shows. But the interaction between viewers and TV content presents another dynamic that makes the big screen more relevant to marketers. Costolo also said Twitter would begin offering promoted advertising in 50 additional markets this year, reducing its reliance on revenue from the U.S. Twitter's worldwide ad revenue should rise 86.3% to nearly $260 million -- up from $139 million in 2011 -- and $45 million in 2010, eMarketer estimates. About 90% of Twitter's revenue comes from the United States, but this year, $26 million in ad revenue could come from overseas, the research firm said. Earlier this week, Twitter introduced Cards, making it possible to attach media to tweets that link to content through a few lines of HTML code on the Web site. A "Card" is added when site visitors tweet links to the content. It automatically attributes content to the site. There are three types of Cards: summary, photo and player.
Several high-profile brands including Virgin Media, BT and O2 have inadvertently bought advertising placed in front of neo-Nazi content on Google’s video-sharing site YouTube. The Guardian reports that the neo-Nazi groups Blood & Honour and Combat 18 have participated in Google’s AdSense program, which means that both Google and the extremist groups have earned money from ads placed alongside their videos on YouTube. The report claims that the groups are using their YouTube channels "to provide links to extremist materials and neo-Nazi Web sites, where discussion groups and literature can be accessed." Because AdSense is an automated program, neither Google or the aforementioned brands knew that the ads were being placed near questionable content. And because Google does not pre-screen video content uploaded to YouTube, Google didn’t even know the neo-Nazi videos were there. However, once it was alerted to their presence, Google removed them immediately. YouTube certainly promotes free speech, but per its rules, it does not permit “hate speech,” which it defines as “speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity." That may be, but The Guardian points out that Google wouldn’t say whether it plans to put any protections in place to prevent a repetition. The search did say, as it has before, that due to the volume of content uploaded to YouTube -- 60 hours of video per minute or nearly 10 years worth of content every day -- that it cannot pre-screen content before it is uploaded; instead, it relies on users to flag inappropriate videos. When told that its ads were appearing next to neo-Nazi content, Virgin Media replied that it was “concerned” and would work with Google and its advertising partners “to understand what measures can be put into place to prevent these occurrences going forwards."
The subject of analytics and measurement is one of the most critical areas to your ongoing strategy and tactical development. By acting in a participatory manner toward search, social, and content marketing, your business gains equity in visibility, trust, authoritativeness, direct revenue generation, and awareness, among many other factors. Measurement of real-time content is not so much about real-time as it is about measuring within a tighter frame of recency. Many marketers believe that acting and measuring in real-time means taking on a harried and almost panicked approach, when this is far from the case. We are not just talking about “right now” when it comes to measuring your real-time performance. The last hour, last day, last week, and last month also provide insight into what is currently happening with your content marketing efforts. Taking a real-time view of analytics also means that you will need to strike a balance with how you measure more current flows, as opposed to historical analytics. Most marketers are heavily focused on historical data -- in other words, what they have received over longer periods of time, and data that may be 2 months old or older. By focusing just the history of keyword returns, and the history of traffic flow, they may be missing out on the bigger picture of what is buzzing around their content beehive. Remember that a significant percentage of searches in Google have never been searched before, and the only way to capture some of this action is to monitor within a shorter window of recency. And this type of measurement doesn’t just benefit search, it benefits social interaction as well, and helps you find more current connections to your audience. Remember -- keywords are connections to people, and knowing the current language through analytics (both onsite and offsite) helps you reach them. With this approach in mind, here are some additional considerations for ramping up to a real-time view of content analytics: Start viewing “people as people” rather than “people as data.” One of the worst sins of modern Internet marketers is that they typically view people as a data point. This might involve cornering a person into a spreadsheet as a “unique visitor,” a keyword referral, or other traffic stat. Remember that your visitors and audience are people (you can ignore the robots for now), and in many cases they have a search intent, or a problem they are trying to solve. This is often a problem in the way that analytics providers are set up, but the good news is that some providers are trying to tell you more about “who” your audience really is. Remember that real-time data means nothing without a knowledgeable human to translate it into action. If you are checking out your data within recency parameters, it is important that it is analyzed by the right people. These are the people who write content, those who interact in social spaces, and those who optimize content. These roles should have at least some direct access to data, because gatekeeping the data only prevents them from doing their job in a timely manner. Use the best real-time analytics tool of all - your brain. For all of the talk about the wonders of analytics and measurement, there is no greater tool than your brain to make sense of all the data. Your brain contains the key link to interpreting data into actionable insights, and is the connective element between your business goals and your data. Remember Avinash Kaushik’s 10/90 rule. Just as your brain is the most important tool of all, Kaushik recommends spending 10% of your analytics budget on tools, and 90% on the brains that you will need to make sense of it. Even if you believe that your expensive new analytics widget is the best thing that ever happened to your business, you will not be able to use and interpret it properly without the right amount of brainpower. Distribute your data and insights throughout your organization. Be sure to spread your findings to other parts of your organization. In some cases, forwarding your data to someone with more specific knowledge can help turn it into an actionable insight. Consider forwarding relevant data to product managers, sales associates, customer service representatives, hiring organizations within your company, and your IT and creative teams, among many others. Use a variety of sources to measure what you are getting. Also remember that a single tool won’t cut it anymore. Use your onsite analytics, but utilize quantitative measurement tools on third-party social sites as well.
A recent series of three posts on the Harvard Business Review blog by Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird explored some of the myths about how consumers make decisions. I think each of these has direct implications for search marketers, so over the next three weeks I want to explore them one at a time. The first, titled “What Do Consumers Really Want? Simplicity,” talks about the breakdown of the purchase funnel. The HBR bloggers contend the funnel, which has been around for well over a hundred years, no longer applies to consumer behaviors. I concur, and said as much in my book, “The BuyerSphere Project.” We differ a little on the reason for the demise, however. The HBR team credits the demise to cognitive overload on the part of the consumer. We’re simply bombarded by too much information on the purchase path to fit it all into the nice, simple, rational filtering process captured in St. Elmo Lewis’s elegant funnel-shaped model. The accompanying research, a survey of 7,000 consumers, shows decision simplicity was the number-one thing people wanted when making a purchase. I agree that information overload is part of it, but I also believe that two other factors have led to the end of the purchase funnel. First, the purchase funnel assumes a rational filtering of options based on careful consideration of a consumer’s requirements. I don’t think this was ever the case. Emotions drive our decisions, and more often than not, rationality is applied after the fact to justify our choices. Prior to the Internet, emotion was tough to distinguish from rationality, as buyers didn’t have much control over the content they accessed during the consideration process. They were limited to whatever the marketer pushed out at them. So, whether driven by emotion or logic, they tended to go down the same path and display many of the same behaviors. Given the pervasive believe in humans as rational animals at the time, it was not surprising that a logic-driven model emerged. The other factor, as I alluded to, was that the Internet shifted the balance of power during the purchase process. Suddenly, we could choose which paths we took during the consideration process. We weren’t all forced down the same path, according to some arbitrary notion of a funnel-shaped model. What became clear, when consumers could choose their own path, was that the simplicity of the funnel model bore little relation to the actual paths consumers took. And those paths were driven by emotion. People bounced all around, depending on what they were looking to buy. They could go all the way to a shopping cart, then suddenly abandon it and go back to a destination that would be considered “upper funnel” and start all over again. From the outside looking in, this resembled a bowl of spaghetti much more than it did a funnel. So, we have a trio of suspects in the death of the purchasing funnel: cognitive overload, emotion trumping logic, and consumers gaining more control over their consideration path. All lead to an interesting concept to consider: laying an online path that anticipates the emotional needs of the buyer, and yet keeps the information presented from overwhelming them. For example, marketing has traditionally taken a “turf war” approach to persuading a prospect: “as long as they’re on our turf, we do everything possible to close the sale. But this doesn’t really match up with the three trends we’re talking about. What online consumers are looking for, according to the HBR research, is a safe online zone that will make their decision easier. Rather than going from site to site, collecting information and filtering out overt marketing hyperbole, what consumers want is a single information source they can trust. They want to be able to lower their “anti-BS” shields, because being a rational, cynical shopper takes a lot of time and effort. Today, it’s extremely rare to find that trustworthy information on a site you can actually purchase from, but it’s starting to happen in some high activity categories, where independent portals facilitate this simplified approach to shopping. Travel comes to mind. But let’s consider what would happen if a brand’s website took this approach. Rather than bombard a prospect with exaggerated sales pitches, putting them on the defensive, what if a more neutral, objective experience was provided? After all, why shouldn’t the decision path be built on your own turf, giving you a home field advantage?