France24 The Next Big Thing: Social Media Advertising San Jose Mercury News But what about advertising on these sites? Back in 2004, Google revolutionized the Internet by selling ads next to their search results. ... Interesting facts about Facebook you may not know Helium 25+ Upcoming Social Media & Tech Events Mashable (blog) all 172 news articles??
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The Next Big Thing: Social Media Advertising - San Jose Mercury News
I was searching for Summer Solstice today in Google and saw a Tweet in their real time search results from “Bing Social”. Having never heard of Bing Social, I thought I would investigate further. Bing Social Sure enough, clicking through took me to the Bing Social Beta site. Bing Social Beta The Bing Social site is where Microsoft collects and posts the “Hottest Social Topics” from both Twitter and Facebook. While the topics featured in Bing Social may be hot, Microsoft is most likely using the social media streams to flesh out its fledgling search index. Whether the hot social topics Bing or any other search engine for that matter feature have any shelf life beyond the moment remains to be seen.
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Bing Social Beta
In part 4 of our " Coffee break " series, we caught up with Kaylyn Miller, Associate Search Director at MEC , who shared with us how her team incorporated click-to-play video ads into a recipe campaign for Swanson® Chicken, a division of Campbell Soup Company. The video campaign was established to distribute a new cooking video during two key dipping occasions - New Year's and Super Bowl. The campaign ran for six weeks, starting in mid-December and concluding at the end of January. During our interview, Kaylyn shared the following: What were the goals of using click-to-play video ads? We were tasked with distributing the Frank's® Red Hot® Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe, made with Swanson® Premium Chunk Chicken. We were already successfully directing users to print the recipe using paid search. However, we knew that keyword targeting could be a powerful tool for video distribution as well. Our goal was to use contextual targeting on the Google Content Network for cost efficient video views. Knowing that this strategy worked well for clients in the entertainment industry, we were striving to keep playback rate and cost per view in line with Google’s entertainment benchmarks. How did you set up and execute the campaign? We began by looking at the most relevant ad groups from our paid search campaign, including buffalo chicken dip, appetizer and dip, chicken recipes, New Year's recipes and Super Bowl recipes. The ad groups were then modified to include broader keywords to effectively target the Google Content Network. From there, additional ad groups were created, such as hot wings, cooking videos, easy recipes and general recipe words to obtain greater reach. Three distinct starter images were created for the video - Everyday, New Year’s and Super Bowl (images below) - based on the events of a given week. We used the best practice of making the starter image a YouTube-like still, instead of a display ad, to increase consumer engagement. Click to view images - Everyday , New Year's , Super Bowl How did the click-to-play video campaigns perform? The campaign's performance exceeded our expectations. In the 6 weeks it ran, the click-to-play video campaign received more than 34,000 video views with 42% of the videos viewed to completion. In addition, this was a good test for us to see how CPG would perform since there aren’t many benchmarks for this category to-date. We saw a lower cost per view and higher play rate than Entertainment industry benchmarks, a space where we assumed users would be more engaged. In addition to success found through video viewing, we also found success in on-site engagement. While recipe prints are the main goal of the paid search campaign, they were secondary for the video campaign. We were pleased to find that the consumers who were engaged in the video carried that engagement over to the site. The download rate associated with video plays was 203% higher than the stand-alone paid search campaign, keeping the cost per recipe print in line with the search averages, despite the more premium CPCs found in the video campaign. What did you learn from this campaign? This campaign validates that click-to-play videos can supplement paid search to expand reach while maintaining consumer engagement for a client. If you did not use this Google solution, how would things have been different? We may have used a portion of the search budget to drive traffic to sites where the video was being distributed by our Social Media and Display teams, but most likely the video wouldn’t have been promoted through keyword targeting. For more information on click-to-play video ads, visit the AdWords Help Center . For more information on how to prepare this recipe for your next dipping occasion, visit buffalochickendip.com. Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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Coffee break with clients: Swanson® Chicken dips into click-to-play video
I recently wrote “News isn’t transactional for advertisers”. I am not going to go out on another limb and say – “Social Media isn’t transactional for advertisers.” I am sure there are exceptions to both, but as a rule I will stand by them. I don’t foresee either media becoming systematically or predictably transactional for advertisers any time soon.
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Social Media Isn’t Transactional For Advertisers… Either
From eMarketer: It’s no secret that online marketers care about measurability. Six in 10 respondents to Datran Media’s “4th Annual Marketing & Media Survey” said measuring and understanding their audience was a priority, and more than 87% said accurate online audience measurement was at least somewhat important for driving increased brand awareness, revenues or performance. Bringing hard metrics to the realm of social media remains a challenge, however, with marketers worldwide in disagreement over whether 2010 will be the year they see quantifiable results from their efforts. Just over one-half think they will, but nearly four in 10 are unsure. “For the few marketers who do attempt to apply quantitative measures to their social marketing efforts, the metrics they use are not terribly sophisticated,” noted eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey in the eMarketer Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving Social Media ROI.” “Most marketers today do not invest sufficient time, effort or money on social media measurement.” The leading metrics used to measure social success focus on increased site traffic, which can be an important barometer of consumer interest for a brand but on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media. Quantifiable Social Media Results This is why social media is nothing more than just another broadcast channel albeit a new and as yet unmeasured one. If I were in the social media business, I would be doing everything in my power to keep social media from being measured – that’s right keep it from being measured. Why? Because once its performance gets measured particularly against its online competitive advertising alternatives, social media’s value as a whole will plummet – at least to those who had invested money in it.
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Quantifiable Social Media Results?