Red Bricks Media’s News Blog

by Peter Vaughan, Copywriter

Both Yahoo Buzz and Digg allow users to submit news and vote on articles, with the most popular rising to the top. But according to a recent study by comScore, Yahoo’s user-generated news site, Yahoo Buzz, is vastly outperforming the incumbent, Digg. Is this for real?

Well, the data doesn’t lie. During the month of April, Yahoo Buzz outperformed Digg with 7 Million unique visitors who spent an average of about 14 minutes on site. More importantly, 51% of Yahoo Buzz users are women, compared to Digg’s 39%.

While I’m a loyal Digg fan, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a long time coming. Digg’s site has long been criticized for being overly male, childish and, for lack of a better word, geeky. If you’re into video games, politics (if you count Ron Paul), gadget news and the occasional LOLcat image, Digg is the place for you. If you like sports, music, movies, celebrities and “reliable” news from “trusted” media, Yahoo Buzz might be your new home.

However, I wouldn’t raise the victory flag just yet. Digg’s fans are a special breed – they spend hours upon hours on the web, are very tech savvy, and obviously as the aforementioned criticisms state, stick to cult subject matters. To them, Yahoo represents an evil corporate machine (you need to register a yahoo email address to participate on Yahoo Buzz) – what Digg has going for it is anti-culture and mob rule, even in major site development decisions.

In recent town hall meetings conducted via web cam, Digg founder Kevin Rose listened quietly to hundreds of complaints about “super-user” scandals, poor commenting features and gaming (making an article popular via artificial, black hat means). However, the monthly public ranting sessions seem to work – Digg made its algorithm smarter by rewarding “experts,” blocking the ISPs of Public Relations companies, and updating its comment system two weeks ago.

More importantly, the statistics presented by comScore are a little misleading given the fact that the most popular Yahoo Buzz stories are featured on the search engine’s homepage. Each click on Yahoo is a click for Yahoo Buzz, greatly increasing the stats – this is a very intelligent business move, but doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is actually using and interacting with Yahoo Buzz.

Oh, and did I mention that right now Yahoo Buzz only allows people to post stories from partner and affiliate sites? This drastically reduces content options from bloggers and third-party sites. Once this ban is lifted, I imagine Yahoo Buzz will find itself with the same problem as Digg – dominant techies, or in the case of Yahoo, payola reps, gaining a monopoly on popular content.

In the end, there is no doubt a buzz blood bath will occur. Perhaps, Yahoo will ultimately gain the upper hand due to its mainstream dominance and a little bit of a budget increase from our friends at Microsoft. As a marketer, I recommend common sense – if your content is more techy go with Digg. If you’re more mainstream go with Yahoo Buzz. Or if you’re a real rebel, use both – it’ll take you all of fifteen minutes.

by Jacob Morgan, Search Strategist

Recently, the folks at Pandemic Labs asked me to write a guest article on social media. The article (with minor changes) can be found below.

On a call with Seth Godin, I asked him where he sees the future of social media growth and how we can stop spammers. He responded that social media will continue to segment, and that there is no way to stop the spammers.

As marketers and spammers (although they are not the same, their objectives are similar, and sometimes marketers inadvertently become spammers) continue to penetrate the social media marketing platforms, we are going to notice that social media platforms will begin to segment. In fact, the trend is already quite apparent.

Consider the following segmented platforms:

• Flickr allows people to share pictures
• Craigslist allows people to buy/sell apartments
• LinkedIn allows business professionals to connect
• MySpace allows friends to connect
• Guru Del Vino allows people to share their wine preferences
• ignighter helps people interested in group dating

The reality is that eventually there will be a platform to cater to virtually every marketing niche. Another example is the recent launch of Google Health, a platform that allows users to create online health profiles, find doctors, and even download medical records.

With the “verticalization” of social media platforms (and eventually search), how is a marketer or spammer going to survive? Well, there are two sides of the coin.

1) With the sheer number of vertical platforms and their continued growth, there is just NO WAY that marketers and spammers are going to be able to keep up. There are tens of thousands of platforms, with many more appearing each day, and for every 100 platforms that are created, only 1 will survive. Sure, a marketer or a spammer can focus all of their efforts on the large sites such as Facebook or Myspace, but eventually when the “verticalization” kicks in, the amount of targeted advertising and marketing will be reduced drastically. So a marketer or a spammer is left with little choice but to target as many social platforms as they can, and they are becoming increasing efficient at doing so.

2) With the sheer number of platforms and their continued growth, it is becoming increasingly EASY for spammers and marketers to reach their desired audience. If I am a marketer or spammer, I can focus on specific social media platforms that are catered to my exact target market, piece of cake.

Essentially a marketer or a spammer has 2 choices: go after as many verticals as they can and hope that some of those verticals yield results, OR, focus on the target verticals and ignore the rest. The problem is that marketers and spammers pursue both avenues. There are those that try to target all the platforms, and there are those who try to target specific platforms. The point is that there is no way to prevent marketers or spammers from penetrating social media platforms. It doesn’t matter what side the coin lands on - it’s a trick coin and the marketers always win.

The coin was flipped and is in the air, call it…

This article is cross-posted from Jacob’s blog.

by Scott Tieman, Marketing Strategist

DEMO 08 happened a few weeks back. As the technology world reveled in the latest game changers, my eyes were squarely trained on one company, TubeMogul. This company has the potential to revolutionize online video distribution, analysis, and monetization. Online video is booming and offers a compelling new channel for marketers to peddle their products and services. It’s still in its infancy, though, and marketers are still figuring out how best to capitalize on it. The process of uploading videos to sites and then tracking them afterwards is very manual and time consuming. Also, it’s difficult to develop insights about who is actually watching the videos. It would be fine if there were only one site, but the landscape is fragmented with lots of sites vying for market share.

When planning campaigns, I must make difficult decisions. Which content should I use? Which site should I use – YouTube, Revver, Brightcove, Metacafe? Which results should I analyze?

Based in the Bay Area, TubeMogul has stepped in to the rescue. Its online video distribution, tracking, and analysis platform is best of breed and addresses many of the pain points previously mentioned. Now, I can upload a video once and then distribute it out to 12 video sharing sites. Then, it automatically begins tracking valuable performance data – like views, comments, etc – and gives me tools to slice and dice the data in meaningful ways. These are only some of the many features offered. All of this is free up to 150 videos per month!

So thanks TubeMogul! I can’t wait to see what new tools you’ll unveil next.

This article is cross-posted from Scott’s blog.

Come visit us at Search Engine Strategies, New York!

Ed Kim, our CEO, and Craig Hordlow, our Chief Search Strategist, were recently invited to speak at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in New York City March 17-20, 2008.

Ed will present in a panel titled “Igniting Viral Campaigns,” a session focused on helping marketers understand the newest buzz channels and how to apply these learnings towards their own marketing campaigns. In this session, Ed and other notable marketing experts will “unveil the secrets of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies that enable companies to stand out and be talked about.” Ed has presented on similar topics for Search Engine Strategies Chicago, MarketingSherpa, the Baptie Conference, and the Vodafone Summit.

“With the emergence of social media, brands can leverage viral marketing now more than ever as an extremely effective way to reach its audience with measurable results,” comments Ed.

Craig Hordlow will present in a panel discussion on “Search Engine Friendly Design.” This session will educate its audience on best practices for search engine friendly design. Craig will present a practical approach to the oft-encountered challenge of integrating flash design with SEO-friendly techniques.

“Marketers have pressured their developers to minimize flash content, but flash is a perfectly acceptable development application for both humans and search engines if the proper precautions are taken,” he says.

Search Engine Strategies and Expo is the leading conference and expo series for the latest news and developments in optimization, search engine advertising, and search marketing issues. The New York City conference is a four-day series of workshops featuring presentations from industry leaders, as well as major search engines. The conference runs from March 17-20, with Ed and Craig’s panels occurring on March 17th and March 18th, respectively.

by Beth Morgan, VP of Operations

Two recent related stories point to the continued flux in the mobile search market:

1. To the surprise of no one who has paid the least attention to the hype, the iPhone has increased its share of the US smartphone market quite rapidly for such a new entrant into the market. It is now the number 2 smartphone in the US, with a market share of 28% (compared to market leader RIMM/Blackberry with 41%). It also has a reasonably strong share of the global market; it comes in #3 with 6.5% (market leader Nokia has 53%). The iPhone is popular and its popularity is increasing; more importantly, the clamor over its user-friendly interface is having a big effect on overall smartphone design. And that brings us to:

2. Google has revealed that it gets 50 times the searches from the iPhone as from any other mobile device. That’s right, the iPhone represents a 98% share of Google’s mobile traffic. And since Google gets about twice as many mobile searches as Yahoo (according to an iCrossing report from May ‘07), that means that the iPhone is pretty much dominating mobile search. This is no surprise to anyone who has ever tried a search on an iPhone and on another smartphone; the iPhone’s intuitive interface makes searching easy, while with other phones you’ve got to really want that info.

Why are these two stories so important for influencing thought on mobile search? Because with the iPhone interface mobile search is really not separate from computer-based search. The search page you come to when you search Google on your iPhone looks like the same page you get on your computer; the ads are the same as well. There is no need to create special ads and landing pages, as there is with other interfaces. To me it appears the writing is on the wall in terms of the direction mobile search is going, and it is away from the separate ecosystem of mobile-only ads and landing pages. This very fact will only increase the iPhone’s dominance as sites stop investing in mobile-only design.

For marketers, this means that if you’ve been feeling vaguely panicked because you aren’t in mobile yet, you can relax– for once waiting was the right move. The market is coming to you.

As a P.S., Google’s own press release about the dominance of the iPhone in mobile search makes last week’s announcement about their new partnership with Nokia (a distant fourth in the US smartphone market) seem a little odd, to say the least.

This article is cross-posted on Beth’s blog.

By Bain Smith, Lead Copywriter

I’ve sequestered myself in the deepest recesses of the Red Bricks Media web laboratory this week, poring over mountains of data, reading exhaustive summaries of research from all over the world, and mixing beakers full of consumer behavior patterns, all in hopes of achieving that perfect alchemy known as Predictions for online marketing in 2008.

So without further ado, let’s get down to brass tacks.

1)    Social networking will continue its meteoric rise and touch more people in more places in 2008.

While “socialnetworkitis”—the fatigue from keeping up with all the social websites we belong to—is a real concern, any rumors of social networking’s demise are greatly exaggerated, and I’ll tell you why.

There are approximately two things that make the web interesting: content and people, especially people you know. So it stands to reason that social networks, whether Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, or another as yet undiscovered network, will continue to attract zillions of eyeballs and provide unparalleled levels of “stickiness” to their users.

The difference in 2008? You create the content these social networks profit from, so expect to see new websites that pay users for their participation. I’m not saying it’s going to work, but if Web 1.0 meant paying to use something, and Web 2.0 meant you were free to use something, Web 3.0 may just mean you get paid to use something.

2)    StumbleUpon will become a household name in 2008, as more people will stop googlin’ and start stumblin’.

StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering, an automated process combining human opinions and machine learning of personal preference, to help you explore a rich, vast variety of content you would never see otherwise, and rate it with a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down via an easily downloadable toolbar.

It leads to unexpected discoveries, and dare I say it: Fun. There are myriad features that make it even stickier, but StumbleUpon has single-handedly rekindled my love of the web.

3)    Twitter, while not for everyone, will continue to influence the influencers and make waves in 2008.

I mean it: Twitter is not for everyone. But for those who crave direct, brain-to-keypad-to-audience interaction with people they like, respect, look up to, or are just plain curious about, Twitter can be an experiential revelation, unearthing information, news and opinions literally as they are happening. Companies and others are catching on to this new info-delivery platform, and people are making a living from it.

4)    Advertising on video sharing sites and mobile devices will increase, but consumer noses will turn toward the sky in response. If you’re still in doubt, read this prescient manifesto for more on why.

Today’s consumers are not a TV generation. Video advertising is interruption marketing, and consumers don’t play that game anymore (TiVo anyone?). The same goes for mobile ads, except it’s an even more personal invasion of privacy and space.

Smart marketers, responding to the challenge, will come up with new, innovative ways to engage and “go steady” with the audience beyond sticking ads in their face. It’s already happening. While motion picture product placement has been going on forever, video and video game product placement is increasing, and mobile apps (widgets) that engage and help the audience will become more of the norm on mobile phones.

5)    A backlash occurs against obsessive, exhaustive communication, connectedness, and the glut of “gadgetry.”

It’s only a matter of time before people stop IM’ing the person two feet to their left, rest those stiff, fatigued Blackberry thumbs, remove the Bluetooths and iPod earbuds, and engage in old-fashioned, face-to-face discourse with other human beings.

Don’t forget that ultimately there is a reason they call it word of mouth marketing, because the real marketing gets going when face-to-face conversation is flowing.

These are my modest marketing-related predictions for 2008. Now back to the lab.

by Ben Kou, Account Manager

Whether you’re an Armageddon scholar or not, you can’t help but notice that the price of gas keeps climbing, Vladimir Putin is sending submarines to claim the North Pole, and China is slowly kicking America’s butt economically. Throw in some radical Middle Eastern terrorist groups and it’s not completely absurd to imagine all these elements fomenting another world war over the most precious resource on the planet – oil.

In fact, such a scenario is so easy to imagine that THQ built their latest first-person shooter, Frontlines: Fuel of War, on this exact premise. It’s the Red Star Alliance (China, Russia and a handful of former Soviet States) against the Western Alliance (read – US, England, and Europe) in another war to end all wars.

What does Red Bricks Media have to do with all this? In order to build interest in advance of the official release of Frontlines: Fuel of War, THQ contracted Red Bricks Media to concept, design and manage an alternate reality game allowing players to experience the frontlines of tomorrow, today.

After signing up to play at http://www.exeoinc.com, players become involved in an online search to uncover just how another world war could come to fruition. After reading blogs, discovering secret YouTube channels, befriending characters on Facebook and phoning in covert rescue missions, players discover the who, what, where and when in the world of Frontlines: Fuel of War.

“We wanted people to interact with real online channels like Facebook, Flickr and Google search in order to feel like all this is really happening, that there is a real Exeo Incorporated out there developing futuristic weapons and peak oil research and selling it to the highest bidder,” related Red Bricks Media CEO, Ed Kim.

Red Bricks Media upped the reality factor by using paid search as the backbone of the campaign. “You might be searching for real world news, say things like ‘North Pole oil reserve’ and you would come across one of Exeo Incorporated’s ads and click on it thinking it was real. Almost immediately, you become aware that something’s not right,” noted Media Director Andrew Leinicke. “It’s all just part of the game.”

Even fictitious characters in the Frontlines: Fuel of War game get in on the action. War journalist Wayne Andrews has his own blog on Wordpress (www.wayneandrews.wordpress.com) which describes his mysterious disappearance after discovering a secret Exeo Incorporated facility in the deserts of Iraq.

“I kind of feel like Orson Welles reading War of the Worlds over the radio,” said copywriter Peter Vaughan. “I hope people don’t get too freaked out by all this, but at the same time I think we all wanted to create a concept that would raise some eyebrows.”

To get in on the Countdown to War action, visit http://www.exeoinc.com – but remember, it’s only a game.

by Lauren Quan, Associate Marketing Manager

Guests who attended our recent NYC Open House party saw our first mobile marketing campaign in action. We set up a simple text messaging trivia game to test our guests’ knowledge of our New York-based clients for the chance to win an iPhone.

To start the game, guests text messaged the keyword “Applecado” to a predetermined short code. The contest, a series of five questions, was conducted entirely via automated text message. After receiving the first question, guests could text message their answers. They continued on in the game only if they got the previous question right.
Red Bricks Media’s mobile vendor tracked campaign data in real-time, keeping detailed statistics of phone numbers, dates, and times that messages were sent and received.

Red Bricks Media’s CEO Ed Kim predicts mobile marketing will become increasingly popular over the next few years. “Mobile marketing is a trend to watch in 2008,” he says. “A challenge for marketers has always been reaching consumers while they are on the go, and with mobile marketing you can bridge that gap.”

Although mobile is a new service offering for Red Bricks Media, mobile marketing strategy is similar to that of a current service line – email. “People may not realize that mobile marketing and email marketing are actually very similar,” explains Ed. “Both channels can be used to acquire new customers and market to in-house lists. More than half of our senior management team came from a background in email, and our experience will undoubtedly help shape our mobile strategy. ”

In addition to trivia-based campaigns, Red Bricks Media can set up more complicated campaigns including polls, voice and image messaging, and ringtone giveaways. Contact sales@redbricksmedia.com today and learn how you can use mobile to captivate your audience while they are on the go.

by Kelly Olson, VP Accounting and Finance

By now you’ve probably heard of the recent major milestones Google has achieved, including being selected as the world’s most admired brand, surpassing Microsoft as the world’s most visited website, and attaining a market capitalization larger than that of IBM. Another milestone of sorts has been Google’s ability to scare a surprisingly large number of industries including: advertising, entertainment, publishers, computer hardware and software manufacturers, and telecoms. And yes, they’ve even managed at times to make enterprising little startups like us uneasy. Each quarter the Red Bricks Media management team meets to review our business performance and refine our strategy. As part of our meeting we review our threats, and, as many other companies have done, Google has definitely made our list. So while some companies have responded by suing (e.g. Viacom) or others by seeking government intervention (ironically MSN & AT&T!); we thought we’d take a much less aggressive approach and turn the tables a little bit by speculating on what Google views as its top threats. For just as IBM dominated the 80’s and Microsoft the 90’s, so to may Google face a day when its meteoric rise plateaus.

So what causes Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lose sleep at night? What causes Sergei and Larry to toss and turn in restless slumber? Here then, without further ado, are the top 5 threats to Google’s dominance.

5. Peer Search

Is Google worried about peer search? This is where people or experts rank search results to provide more interesting and relevant results than an algorithm can yet provide. Maybe a year ago this type of search worried Google. This was when Yahoo acquired del.icio.us (that’s a pain to write by the way) and Flickr (for photos). Heralded by many as the next way to search, neither has seemed to do much to help Yahoo shore up their eroding search market share. The problem with this model is that most people don’t have the time to invest in rating their search results. We want the results to our search inquiry fast, and we want it now, and Google continues to best facilitate this motive, which is why they are probably not too concerned with peer search.

4. Other Search Engines

So does Eric Schmidt lose much sleep at night because of other search engines? Nah, probably not. Like any good executive you should never underestimate your competition, however, from their recent track record Yahoo and MSN have not done anything to show they’re going to soon be grabbing search market share back from Google (and lest we forget, Yahoo had around 31.8% of the search market at the beginning of 2006, now down to 26.8% as reported by Comscore). Perhaps Google should be most concerned with new search engines that promise to improve the search experience. One potentially exciting example is Powerset. This startup has gotten some significant investors lined up behind it and claims to dramatically improve search with their yet to be launched natural search algorithm. Still, it’s tough to see that any startups would scare Google that much. Google can always buy any of these engines that start to get too big.

3. Microsoft and Yahoo Merger

Like a couple of 800 pound gorillas courting each other, Microsoft and Yahoo have made overtures that they at some point might merge. The question is whether there is a strong business case for the merger, or if these discussions are more driven by fear of Google. If neither Yahoo nor MSN has demonstrated they are good at search, what’s to suggest that they will get it figured out together? Combine two lab technicians and you still don’t get a rocket scientist. Yet the threat of MSN suddenly getting Yahoo’s 26.8% search share, combined with the significant cash they are sitting on must make Google uneasy.

2. Content

Obviously this is a big one and is why Google purchased You Tube. But was this the best strategy for Google to get its hand on content? Recent developments such as Viacom’s lawsuit suggest the answer may be no. The issue for Google is how it will monetize the content on You Tube. The easiest strategy is to charge for downloads or through user subscriptions, but without access to proprietary content, how does Google get people to pay to see the latest amateur video? Would you pay to see someone with great dance moves perform at a junior high talent show (the most viewed video of all time on You Tube)? Certainly Google gets an amazing amount of eyeballs through the site, but monetizing these with banner ads certainly won’t contribute much to the bottom line. And, an even bigger threat to Google from content, and what should make Google even more nervous, is that someone such as Yahoo or Wikipedia will figure out how to leverage the visitors that come to their site for content to stay for search as well. And if this happens Google’s search market share could start to drop dramatically–a serious threat to their future growth.

1. Lack of Revenue Diversification and Loss of Focus

You may recognize the story of a startup company that with disruptive technology grew to a monstrous size and in the process scared the pants off its competitors, triggered lawsuits for their monopolistic behavior, developed huge cash reserves and decided to try all different types of new business endeavors to help derive a return from these assets? If you said Microsoft, of course you’re right, and if you’ve checked their stock price recently it is basically flat since 2001. Why is it flat? Because many of the endeavors outside of their core business of software have not been profitable. By focusing on too many, non-profitable strategies, will Google follow Microsoft’s path? As we saw with Web 1.0, ventures that get money for free tend to not do a good job of creating revenue from that money. And it appears from Google’s 2006 10k filing that about 99% percent of its revenue still comes from search. So while Madison Avenue, Hollywood and other industries are all running scared, Google has not made much in the way of inroads into these other verticals. The question is then, as the search market matures, will Google’s new ventures become an unprofitable distraction from their core specialty of search or will they in fact be able to diversify their business into these other arenas? The failure to convert their home run in the search space into other profitable ventures is the biggest threat faced by Google, and hopefully, given all the other executives losing sleep because of Google, has contributed to some restless nights for Google’s own management team.

We’re thrilled to announce that our first international office, Red Bricks Media Asia, is now open for business. We have a beautiful new office located in downtown Hong Kong, and we’ve also hired our first international managing director, Janet Low-McGaughy. She will lead a top-notch team that will leverage our technology, methodologies, and internet protocol.In addition to helping our clients expand programs into Asia, our Hong Kong team is perfectly positioned to tap into the rapidly expanding internet marketing industry in Asia.

Our CEO Ed Kim explains “we view the potential for search and interactive marketing growth in Asia to be unlimited, and we are excited to be in a position to participate fully in this amazing time in the Asian market and the industry.” China’s economy is growing at 9 percent yearly, and it will likely be the second largest economy in the world by 2025 (behind the United States.) Additionally, the number of internet users in China is increasing by 800,000 per week. According to a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, China’s media sector will achieve a 25 percent growth in revenue through 2008 due to an increase in online advertising.

It’s an exciting time to be working in online advertising in China, and we look forward to growing our international campaigns. Ultimately, our goal is to become the leading interactive marketing agency in China. We know that Janet’s enthusiasm, extensive experience with interactive marketing, and familiarity with Chinese culture will lead us to success. For more about Janet, read her biography in her own words below. You can reach Janet and the rest of our Hong Kong team at hongkong [at]redbricksmedia.com. Looking to start your own international campaign? Feel free to contact us - we’d love to talk to you!