By Min Poh, Senior Account Manager

As of June 2010 Facebook has over 400 million active users, the average user spending more than 55 minutes on the site per day. Having run many successful Facebook campaigns for our clients, we have provided some quick tips to tweak your campaigns and get your ads up and performing!

The Top 10 List

1.    Define Your Goals

As with all advertising campaigns, the first step is deciding what you want to achieve. It is also important to remember that not all goals can be met through this channel. For example, we found Facebook to be less effective for direct sales. The site is however very effective for branding & engagement, building product awareness, lead generation, promoting offers & sweepstakes, and building a community around your brand.

2.    Choose the Right Ad Format

In addition to the basic image and text ad format, other ad formats are available through Facebook.  For example, event ads with a RSVP button can be easily created through the ad self-serve ad interface. Video and polling ads are available to larger advertisers as well as for placement on the users’ home page.

3.    Leverage the Power of Your Network

Ads on Facebook are social. If someone likes an ad, it will show up on the pages of his or her friends. Facebook also uses this to gauge the effectiveness of the ads served. Get your company involved, have co-workers like your ads or become a fan on Facebook to help spread the word through their networks!

4.    Update Your Ads Frequently

Facebook ads are unlike search engine ads.  Depending on the size of your target audience, ads may be served fairly often to each individual. Keeping your ads fresh will help improve click through rates and provide you with another chance to remarket to the user with a different message. We recommend updating ads at least once every 2 weeks. Try a different image and refresh ad copy to see what works.

Figure 1: This chart shows click-through-rates over a 2 week period for a Facebook campaign. Click-through-rates are highest immediately following launch but plateau at the end of week 1. 

5.    Segment and Target Your Ads

The beauty of Facebook is the ability to target users based on their interests, location, age, gender, education level, workplace, relationship status and language.  Once you know the group you would like to target, segment your campaigns by age group, gender or interest to determine effectiveness. For example, does my product resonate better with males or females? One key point to remember is that ads should be custom to the audience you are reaching. By speaking to the interests of the target audience, we were able to increase click-through-rates by more than 200%.

Figure 2: Sample ads targeted at users with golfing or photography as an interest.

6.    Report & Analyze – Responder Profiles

Facebook provides the usual reports for ad campaigns (impressions, clicks etc.).  However, what really stands out with Facebook reporting is the responder profiles report. This report shows the top interests, books, movies and TV shows, of people who have clicked on your ads. Interesting information can be gleaned to help shape audience profiles and determine targeting for future campaigns. 

7.    Select The Right Landing Page

Landing pages can go to a Facebook product/company page or go off the site to your company’s home page. Select your landing page destination based on your goals. If you are trying to build a community and fan base on Facebook, keep your respondents on the site. Sending respondents to your home page works better if driving direct traffic is a goal.

8.    Get Creative with Branding! 

Facebook is an excellent platform for branding and generating product awareness. You can create quizzes, post videos, share images and product information on your company’s page. These features should be complimented with Facebook advertising.

9.    Work the Incentives

There is nothing like a contest or giveaway to generate product interest. Papa John’s added 125,000 fans in a day through a combination of Facebook ads and a free pizza offer.

10.  Build a Community

Finally, Facebook is also a great place to build a community. The barrier to entry is low since users already have a profile and do not have to register again to join.  You can start your Facebook community by growing your company’s fan base. This can be done through Facebook ads. Think of fans as an enhanced mailing list. Every time an update is made to your company’s status, fans will be notified.  Remember to also continually engage with fans as your community grows. Exchange comments, photos, links. Nobody likes a fan site with little activity!

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By Andrew Leinicke, Media Drector

Online display advertising, or internet banners, has not amounted to a growth industry during the last five years. Even though interactive marketing budgets have grown in the face of a global recession, banners stagnated in terms of spend back in 2007. Spend levels haven’t really picked up since. So why is there so much excitement about display advertising as we march into the second quarter of 2010?

 The answer lies in new technology. Google has made no secret of its intent to leverage its considerable engineering and user experience talents to enter the display marketplace with force. Recently, Susan Wojcicki, Google’s Vice President of Product Management, outlined an ambitious vision for Google display advertising on the Official Google Blog. Under this vision advertisers of any size would be able to:

 “buy ads across the web at scale, create engaging ad formats, measure the impact of ad campaigns in innovative and insightful ways, [and] deliver relevant ads to precisely the right audiences in real-time…”

 As it happens, many in the industry believe that the way display advertising is bought and sold may change in fundamental ways: it will become hyper-targeted and transparent. IAB chair David Moore predicted last month that online media planners will soon need to be “quant experts” and that demand platforms—the technologies that allow agencies and advertisers to hand pick ideal audiences—will become de rigueur. It is possible that as technologies and service expertise mature, advertisers will invest more in display advertising and use it to achieve greater potential. In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently cited a Google study that found advertisers were willing to pay up to 130% more for impressions they thought would be directed to more qualified audiences.

 This finding comes as no surprise to Red Bricks Media, where we typically present campaign success as a function of measured performance at multiple points in the sales funnel. Without the right tools and technology, though, it is difficult to know which impressions and clicks are really providing value. If the economics are right, advertisers will naturally be willing to pay more for high performance.

 Google has positioned itself well to provide this visibility. Our agency has already written about the sophistication, power and usability of Google Analytics. Meanwhile, Google has also been building and acquiring technologies that address other elements of Web advertising.

 For example, Google now offers ad distribution with the acquisition and re-tooling of the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. There is also the Google Content Network (GCN), which has been running “image” ads for the last six years. We have begun to notice new features appearing in GCN, and they are ambitious. Recent improvements such as view-through conversion reporting, interest-based advertising (behavioral targeting), and retargeting indicate Google’s growing capacity for sophisticated display advertising.

 The Ad Exchange, Google Analytics, and GCN position Google well for targeting and distributing ads on the internet.

 The one question I often need to answer for clients, however, is what the level of inventory quality of the GCN is. It is known as a place for publishers who invest far more in search results listings than in editorial integrity. As a result, it is necessary to take precautions against advertising with publishers who use parked domains and misleading SEO listings in order to take advantage of Google’s advertising marketplace.

 Although the display advertising market hasn’t grown in recent years, it represents a substantial opportunity for Google, which already dominates the search space. New advertising technology is a significant evolution from the more manual buying approach of hand-selecting publisher sites with attractive demo profiles and networks with private targeting technologies. This development is the key to the growth of spend levels in display advertising. Google is moving strategically to capitalize on these trends. We share some people’s worries about Google becoming an even more powerful and omnipresent vendor. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile paying attention to Google’s new offerings in the display advertising landscape.

 Andrew (Andy) Leinicke is our Media Director and manages all aspects of our Paid Search Practice. Andy is in charge of organizing, developing and overseeing every aspect of a campaign from message and testing strategy to media buying and segmentation. His love of microsegmentation, thorough testing, and up-to-the-second tracking and optimization, makes him the best in the business when it comes to decreasing CPA and increasing ROI. Under his leadership, the team developed an advanced micro-segmentation strategy and industry-leading approach to keyword research.

Prior to joining Red Bricks Media, Andy spent many years in publishing, serving as Sales and Marketing Director for Alpinist Magazine, Marketing Manager at Saveur and Garden Design, and Marketing Assistant at Worth Magazine. Andy received an M.S. in Marketing Science from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Molecular Biology from Kalamazoo College.

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By Adam Carroll, Senior Marketing Strategist

It was not long ago that display advertising, in the form of banner ads, was becoming the dinosaur of online marketing. Declining click through rates and poor brand engagement meant that marketers were allocating their budget to more effective online channels. However, in the last couple of years key developments in targeting technology and media buying platforms have significantly boosted the effectiveness of display advertising.

At the forefront of these advancements is the concept of ‘Audience Centric Buying’. To understand why this new approach is such an important development in online advertising it is important to understand the existing model for buying ad units online:

Typically the editorial environment was considered to be a critical piece of ad placement and targeting, so advertisers would attempt to reach their target audience by purchasing placements on contextually relevant sites. For example- a car tire manufacturer would place ads on automobile sites, hoping to find customers looking to purchase car tires. While this form of targeting certainly goes some of the way to reaching a responsive audience, it does not take into account the behavioral, demographic and financial characteristics of individuals that will influence the likelihood of them making a desired action. Furthermore, a targeting strategy focused on contextually relevant placements means that you are often vying for limited ad units with your competitors, forcing up media costs and cluttering the space with similar ads.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to identify browsers who we know are most likely to respond to a particular message and serve them an ad across any site, rather than simply casting a wide net by placing ads on what are believed to be relevant sites? ‘Audience centric’ targeting makes this concept a reality, providing a more scientific approach that ensures ads reach the most engaged and relevant audience.

So how does it work?

‘Audience targeting’ works by analyzing customers who have already completed a desired action on an advertisers site (such as making a purchase) and using this to identify and target other browsers with similar characteristics across virtually any site or network. Ultimately, this means you are buying and targeting a qualified audience, as opposed to simply buying pre-fixed ad placements across set sites.

Let’s take a slightly closer look at this process:

From Drop Box

1. Cookie based technology collects data on customers who have been to an advertiser’s site and/or completed a desired action eg: purchased goods; requested further information etc.
2. This data is used to build a profile of a browser most likely to complete a desired action. This profile includes multiple layers of behavioral, financial and demographic characteristics (eg: browsing history, age, gender, income etc)
3. Through ‘ad exchange’ buying platforms, advertisers are able to match the data they have collected with that of 3^rd party providers and effectively bid for individual ad units (impressions) across the web that are served to browsers whose cookie information is aligned with that of the ‘ideal’ customer profile.
4. A display ad is served, with copy and message that is targeted specifically for that browser, significantly increasing the likelihood of a desired outcome.

Essentially this process ensures that only the customers who are most likely to respond are served an ad no matter which sites they are browsing on.

Apart from the obvious advantages of reaching a more relevant audience, this form of targeting provides further benefits. Firstly, the advertiser knows the exact characteristics of their target audience and the online behavior they are able to segment this audience and deliver a more timely, customized message in the ad creative this compounds the level of engagement and value from the advertising spend. Additionally, being able to target an engaged audience in a non-contextual environment can help ads to stand out as they do not get lost in the clutter and ultra-competitive space of contextually aligned sites.

For advertisers this new technology really is a big step forward. Rather than simply landing on the target, advertisers can now have the data required to hit the bull’s-eye.

Whether the campaign objective is getting a direct response (lead, sale etc) or brand awareness the result is going to be a more responsive and engaged audience and less wastage on poorly targeted ad placements. I believe this is going to see display advertising once again become a vital component of the online marketing mix.

It is no secret in the industry that this is going to be a key trend in online advertising in 2010 but the biggest opportunity will be in the first half of the year where advertisers who adopt audience centric targeting will reap the full benefits of reach and cost advantages whilst the rest of the online advertising world catches up.

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Be Human. Get Personal with your Customers

Take time to get close to your customer base, because in 2010 customers will continue to dictate your marketing efforts. Take care to polish up your company’s blog and social media channels, like facebook and twitter, and keep them healthy by posting regularly. If your communications are sparse, users won’t respect you as an authority. It is necessary to participate in conversation and contribute valuable content to be respected in your marketplace. Providing direct and timely responses to customer feedback is a powerful and effective marketing tool.

Follow the Search Funnel

In-depth conversion tracking and analysis can shed light onto the profitability of search campaigns. Just as some keywords or ads may provide a great number of clicks but low conversion levels, high-converting keywords and ads provide different levels of customer engagement and revenue over longer periods of time. These sorts of ‘deep dives’ into conversion tracking will provide more customization, optimization, and ROI in the long term.

Analyze and Synthesize

Research and invest in new tracking technologies and tools in the marketplace which will benefit your marketing campaigns. Social media tracking, for example, gives concrete insights into what your customers are saying about your brand. This newfound ability to listen to and adapt to customer trends in real-time is a valuable resource. Likewise, a comprehensive and properly configured analytics platform is probably the most important tool that a marketing team can have. If your marketing data isn’t interpretable and actionable, it isn’t useful.

Diversify and Integrate

Your many marketing channels should be working as one. Integrated campaigns consistently perform better than campaigns running separately. When insights are shared among functional marketing teams, a comprehensive strategy may then be developed which incorporates findings and best practices from each marketing channel.

Audit and Update

Everything has a ‘Best By’ date, and your website and marketing collateral are no exception. Consumer tastes change as quickly as the seasons, and the images and copy which will generate positive responses need to be refreshed frequently as well. Update your paid search ad copy – revamp your homepage! Optimization of imagery and messaging are often overlooked, but the results are valuable marketing assets.

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By Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Search Strategist & Resident Analytics Guru

What would we do without Web Analytics? They provide the data necessary to make performance marketing possible. This allows for more efficient campaign optimization and higher ROI for businesses large and small. For most marketers, however, getting to that point is not an easy process. Most marketers will jump through hoops in order to pull the data they need to analyze, and merely end up with results which are confusing or difficult to interpret.

Web Analytics has evolved from log server files and stat counters into software packages whch provide a wealth of valuable data about website usage.. As such, Web Analytics as a practice began mostly as an arm of web development and developed in importance to the point that most companies now require an additional division to understand online profitability. However, the fundamentals of Web Analytics software which were originally built for website audits have yet to fully escape their roots in web development.

When one launches one of the well-known Web Analytics software packages today, whether it be Omniture, Google Analytics, or Coremetrics, the question that drives the user is usually “How is my website doing?” rather than “How are my online marketing campaigns doing?” These Web Analytics packages are structured by the process one would use to audit specific pages or searches, and how they are performing concerning website usability.

This is not to downplay the importance of these kinds of views and metrics, but rather to point out that Web Analytics should play a larger role in online marketing, rather than merely providing information about a website’s usage. There are changes afoot within Web Analytics that are providing deeper, more insightful, and more useful information to online marketers.An example of this is Coremetrics’ user-interface tagging or Google Analytics’ new ‘Analytics Insight’ section.

Yet, Web Analytics packages truly need to go through a full restructuring in order to avoid feeling like an add-on of an add-on, charging by the number of users or by the number of reports one creates. When an online marketer logs in to a Web Analytics interface, the first thing available should provide an overall view of performance by marketing channel, allowing any online marketer to dive into their own data and gain insights into their specialty without having to navigate through multiple areas in order to get data that is relevant to them.

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New service offers complex, comprehensive performance assessment and monitoring solutions.

San Francisco, CA – November 3, 2009 – Red Bricks Media, a full-service digital marketing agency, announced its new Analytics & Insights practice. Offerings will help clients better utilize marketing and website data to make more intelligent business decisions.

In order to meet the increasing and varied demands of digital marketers, Analytics & Insights will provide solutions that are both highly customized and platform independent. From defining analytics requirements to ad-hoc report development to generating robust data visualizations, the new service focuses on providing the data needed to make informed marketing decisions on budget and resource allocations.

“While a lot of agencies offer one-size-fits-all reports, our solutions focus on determining exactly what drives the success and failures of our clients’ digital marketing campaigns,” said CEO Elliott Easterling. “Whether we are analyzing the performance of a single channel or pulling together complex information from multiple campaigns, our goal is to provide custom, data-driven recommendations that will improve performance.”

The first offerings within the new practice will address the core elements digital marketers need to get analytics configured and intelligence uncovered:

• Analytics Platform Implementation Consulting
• Customized Reporting Solutions
• Deep Dive Analyses
• Cross-Platform Analysis Tools

For more complete information please visit www.redbricksmedia.com.

About Red Bricks Media:

Red Bricks Media is a full-service global marketing agency headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York and Hong Kong. Since 2003, they have offered services in search engine marketing, interactive media planning, email campaign management, creative, web design, and social media marketing. Their client list includes top brands like Microsoft, Hearst Magazines, THQ and the Los Angeles Times. To learn more about Red Bricks Media’s Web Analytics practice, please contact sales@redbricksmedia.com.

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by Elliott Easterling, CEO

I recall the first day I opened up AdWords almost 6 years ago to test out the self service functions. That feeling of bliss came to me again when I explored Facebook’s self service tool for the first time last December.

Joy came to me with AdWords because I encountered the tool as a data driven marketer. I spent 3.5 years at Digital Impact (now Axciom Digital) learning the ins and outs of database marketing before I started Red Bricks Media. At the time, we were working with algorithms to process large amounts of user behavior and self-profile data to predict the best products to put into individual emails. This behavioral targeting experience is what got me excited about AdWords. I quickly realized that search queries were in fact behaviors that could be used to present targeted ads to potential consumers. I was amazed that I could tap directly into the flow of demand. The combination of powerful targeting and scale is what made Google such a useful tool for marketers.

Excitement came to me with Facebook because I recognized the same opportunity to build marketing programs with amazing targeting capabilities supported by significant scale. Facebook allows marketers to target users based on the content of their profiles. Rather than being fueled by behavioral data, Facebook campaigns are fueled by profile data. This data is incredibly clean and accurate because, in general, people do not lie about their interests on Facebook. They might exaggerate but they won’t likely lie because peer pressure from Facebook friends creates a system of accountability. The profile data in Facebook is especially powerful because it represents the brand of Facebook users. The things you put in your profile represent the things that are most important to you and also the way you see yourself and want to represent yourself to the world. Facebook profiles are the sum of passions, interests, and make up the brand of one. Facebook also provides a separate targeting axis - one that surrounds demographic data. Where you live, where you went to school, and every piece of data collected in the registration process is targetable on Facebook. This matrix of interest data and demographic data make for great user segmentation and targeting. See chart below.

Since users are not actively seeking out information on Facebook as they are doing on search engines, the click-through rates (CTR) tend to be lower. This limitation can be overcome using the sheer scale of available inventory on Facebook, which can yield great click volume even with low CTRs. From our experience, Facebook campaigns can realize good conversion rates because our campaigns heavily segment users into tight interest groups and then present compelling messages to those users. Our background in database marketing has given us an edge in developing and designing successful Facebook campaigns.

Is Facebook right for your business? It is, to the degree to which interests in Facebook correlate to an interest in your product or services. If, for example, you are in the business of selling tissues online, you may not get much out of Facebook’s targeting capabilities. No one is likely to wax poetic on the virtues on a clean nose on their profile. Alternately, if you sell tours of India, you will have access to the more than 2.8MM 18 and older Americans that that show “travel” as an interest in Facebook. Matched with demographic data, a campaign could even target users in San Francisco with customized messaging – “Explore our tours to majestic India, flights leaving from San Francisco daily.”

As performance marketers, we tend to focus more on media that drives conversions. Facebook also has the amazing ability to drive great branding, so let’s not rule out the campaign for the tissue company quite yet. Facebook branding and fan development warrant a separate discussion, which is forthcoming next month.

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By Andrew Leinicke, Senior Director and Joe Van Remortel, Vice President

Chances are good that your search engine marketing program is an underachiever. The growing complexity of search engine marketing can often result in higher costs and lower conversions. If your paid search campaigns have not accounted for the 20-25 variables that influence results they are likely candidates for reassessment.

Deciphering the root causes of search engine marketing performance is not easy. In fact, many seasoned search engine marketers miss opportunities for campaign improvement because they stray away from core performance-enhancing principles and fail to migrate campaigns through the dynamics of efficiency and volume.

Performance Enhancing Principles

The upshot is that marketers can boost the performance of their search engine marketing and PPC campaigns by 30%-50% or more by acting on four fundamental tenets of PPC advertising.

1. Simplify the Inherent Complexity of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine algorithms, policies and functionality are in a continuous state of evolution. And with 20-25 variables (such as match type, messaging relevancy, bid strategy) influencing search campaign performance, your PPC program becomes a complex, dynamic system that requires insightful management. Success is earned through finding the unique set of performance variables that drive efficiency and volume.

2. Iterative Campaign Management Influences Performance

There is no magic wand to wave over a search campaign to generate immediate, breakthrough success. A common pitfall in search engine marketing is an over-reliance on technology and automation. Automation can create process efficiencies, but too often campaigns are auto-piloted right into mediocrity, as the value of insightful human intellect is discounted. Cultivating new opportunities are what sophisticated PPC strategists do. Keyword universe segmentation as well as testing and landing page optimization are never complete.

 3. Messaging Relavancy is a Critical Performance Factor

In the beginning, there was keyword research: a means to build a semantic foundation for your PPC campaign. Visitor quality and conversion rates are directly correlated to the consistency of the relationship among keywords, queries, ads and landing pages. Thus, “messaging relevancy” greatly influences conversions, ROI and quality score. Get control of your messaging relevancy and you will go a long way to improving performance. 

4. Focus on Relative Value to Optimize Yields

Don’t become mesmerized by the most obvious metrics. Develop a portfolio of high-yield campaigns based not on click-through rates, but on customer value generation. Measure and optimize the highest order campaign metrics—customer acquisition, revenue, cost savings to make true ROI optimization decisions. Investigate relative campaign performance at the adgroup level, and then apply a performance-tiering approach to restructure the campaign to give you more control over feeding the winners and starving the losers.

Efficiency-Volume Matrix

When working with existing campaigns, Red Bricks Media applies these methods through the looking glass of our Four Quadrant PPC Analysis™. This approach is designed to identify the core drivers of PPC success and develop strategies based on the advertiser’s industry and location on the Four Quadrant diagnostic grid. Our Four Quadrant methodology assesses PPC campaigns along two critical dimensions: efficiency (cost) and volume (conversions). All PPC campaigns strive to be in Quadrant 1 in the matrix below—a state of maximized volume and efficiency. Our diagnosis places each campaign in one of the four quadrants. Depending on its location in the matrix and campaign parameters, we prescribe a specific set of strategies and tactics aimed at migrating campaigns to Quadrant 1.  

For example, in the matrix above, a company in a highly competitive, mature sector—consumer banking, mobile phone services, or retail — is likely to have PPC campaigns constrained in Quadrant 4.  

As depicted, our approach uncovers the key performance drivers and inhibitors, and then conceives an improvement program built on moving the campaign to Quadrant 1, with expanded volume and improved efficiencies. One must first analyze past and current performance data in light of current inventory and CPC rates in order to properly locate a campaign on the grid. Experiential knowledge of PPC campaigns and rigorous testing and optimization scenarios expose the success drivers and inhibitors that power the migration to greater levels of success.

The benefits of this approach can be significant. In a recent case when Red Bricks Media adopted an existing search program for an entertainment client, we applied the methods described above. The program had been deemed optimized, but, in fact, was languishing in Quadrant 3. Within six months, the Red Bricks Media team reduced the cost-per-click from $1.24 to $0.19, while more than tripling campaign volume. In order to achieve such results under the old campaign regime, our client would have been required to invest an additional $2.8 million. That is found money.

Search engine marketing isn’t getting more simple, but rather more complex. The way to penetrate that complexity—and simplify campaign management—is to focus on the four principles described above. Structuring that analysis within the Four Quadrant model enables campaign strategists to identify a powerful set of performance-enhancing strategies and tactics that can turn the underachieving campaign into an overachieving success.

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by Craig Hordlow, Chief Strategist, and Ed Kim, CEO

The senior thought leaders at Red Bricks Media gathered in the beginning of the year to hold a round-table discussion about 2009 digital marketing and online trends.

There are some very common predictions made by search marketers for 2009, most notably advertising budgets taking a hit as a result of the economy.  Our list of predictions explores the nuances of some of the blanket statements made about 2009.

1.    Online ad spending gainers and losers: There has been a lot of talk about the impact of the economy on online ad budgets, the theme typically being that traditional marketing budgets will be cut if not re-appropriated to measurable online campaigns. We made the following predictions by channel, based on our observations of the industry and hands-on experience managing client campaigns:
a.    Paid search advertising spending will increase from $10B in 2008 to $12B in 2009.
b.    Display ad spending will barely increase: from $4.6B in 2008 to $5B in 2009.  As ad rates decrease, publishers will increasingly offer more performance based buys.
c.    Video will experience the most explosive growth, from $587M in 2008 to $850M in 2009.
d.    Classifieds will take a hit, from $3.1B in 2008 to $2.9B in 2009.
e.    Lead generation spending will be about the same ($1.6B)
f.    Sponsorships will decrease from $590M (2008) to $510M (2009)

2.    More attention to SEO: SEO will become more competitive as companies (finally!) begin adequately investing in organic search.  Previously perceived as a long-term investment, SEO will become necessary for companies facing slashed marketing budgets and the challenge of accountability.

3.    Data portability will become a movement: What is data portability?  Simply put, as users traverse the web, they often have numerous user accounts, passwords, and profiles.  According to Dave Morin, a senior platform manager at Facebook, “[data portability] is about giving users the ability to take their identity and friends with them around the Web, while being able to trust that their information is always up to date and always protected by their privacy settings.”  It’s also about being able to cross-leverage tools.  For example, a Skype user on Craigslist might be able to click a telephone number and have Skype begin dialing that number.  The possibilities are both seemingly endless and very realistic.

4.    Social networking will see several transformations:
a.    Facebook Connect – This is Facebook’s foray into data portability, which launched with partners Amiando, CBS.com, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC Television Group, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni.
b.    Enhanced self-service advertising platforms will be developed to increase revenue and lower overhead.

5.    Google will make significant enhancements to its tools:
a.    Google AdPlanner will offer display buyers more tools (whereas before, the tools catered mostly to PPC marketers)
b.    AdWords editor (currently at version 7.0) will have many more features developed (watch for geo-targeting enhancements)
c.    Google Analytics will continue to expand and minimize the differentiators between itself and its fee-based competitors

6.    Print will continue its Titanic sink into digital:

a.    In October 2008, the Christian Science Monitor became the first national newspaper to announce a move to a Web-only daily distribution strategy.   More publishers will go this route or reduce their publishing frequency.

b.    Amazon’s digital reader, the Kindle, sold out in December 2008 and is currently unavailable until late April 2009. It represents the first giant step forward in a migration towards digital reading. We predict that electronic readers will be one of the top selling items in the 2009 holiday season, consequently setting up 2010 as the “iPod” year for digital readers.

7.    Startups in survival mode: The lack of capital, as evidenced by Sequoia Capital’s alarming message to its investment strategists, will place an emphasis on survival strategies rather than startups with innovate ideas.  2009 will be a “lock down” year with far fewer startups introducing new ideas into the market.

8.    We will see a convergence between the internet and TV:
a.    The FCC has mandated that all TV signals must switch to digital by February 2009, a move which coincides with the increasing interplay between the television screen and the internet. Heavy TV users are also heavy internet users, often using both mediums at the same time. According to a recent Nielsen study, “early trends seem to indicate that online usage is complementing, not substituting for, traditional television viewing.”
b.    There is an opportunity for communication across these channels which before seemed so separate and siloed. Consumers are hooking their TVs up to their computers to enjoy a movie or TV show streamed from the internet. They are also going online to vote on TV shows that they are watching in real time. In the not-too-distant future, we may see shows like reality TV further harnessing the convergence between the two mediums by offering polls on a website that update in real time on TV, or vice versa. One device that is bridging the gap is the Roku, which allows users to download movies from Netflix to the Roku device and upload that content to the TV.
c.    The live video streams of Obama’s inauguration prove that audiences are turning to the internet for high-quality, up-to-the minute news. It also shows that video content providers have not yet figured out how to scale for a large volume of viewers; in 2009, they will need to find a solution.

9.    Video will continue on a path of explosive growth:
a.    As high-speed internet connections become the norm (broadband penetration is currently at 91.54 % in the U.S.), the demand for video content will grow. In 2008, the iPhone also paved the way for consumers to enjoy video content while on mobile phones. In 2009, consumers will continue enjoying video content both at home and on the go.
b.    We also predict that 2009 will be the year that video content distribution sites figure out a successful advertising and revenue model. Whether it’s a pre-roll, post-roll, or pop-up ads during the video, this is the year that video advertising will finally start to make sense.

10.    Agency consolidation will accelerate:
a.    With the recession, companies will move marketing dollars towards proven performance channels, demanding accountability on their marketing campaigns. Often, digital and performance-focused agencies provide the results that companies are looking for. Large holding companies and traditional advertising agencies will scramble to acquire digital shops to meet client demand and gain subject matter expertise.

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by Scott Tieman, Marketing Strategist

I suspect that many marketers sweat the “Launch” phase more than any other. They’ve seen other marketing efforts tank after tons of planning and want to get it just right. The bad news is that like with a book, the opening chapter of a paid search campaign sets the stage for what’s to come. Mess it up and the rest isn’t worth the bother. The good news is that it’s harder to mess up than most marketers expect. This post (and subsequent ones) will help you get your campaign on the right track from the start. Today, I’ll focus on marketing objectives.

As with any performance driven marketing campaign (and, regardless of media, I hope ALL of your marketing campaigns are performance driven), the first question to ask is “What are my marketing objectives?”. They come in all shapes and sizes, but I’ll generalize them as awareness, lead generation, and sales. Awareness is primarily the realm of brand marketers vying for more mind share, lead generation the realm of acquisition marketing, and sales the realm of acquisition and retention marketing.

Whenever we accept a new paid search client, I always hear the same thing. The client wants to focus on sales & leads. Period. The biggest misconception about paid search marketing is that it is ONLY a demand capture tool. This couldn’t be further from reality; it also functions just fine for awareness and demand generation.

Take awareness as an example. Marketers, depending on category, could pay upwards of $30-100 CPM for banner ads. True, banner ads are rich media and that’s got to count for something compared with bland, short form text ads. But, HOW MUCH MORE? For simplicity, say you pay $1 per click on your text ad. Also assume your click through rate (CTR) ranges from 0.5-5% for a given keyword. Finally say your ad shows 1,000 times over the course of a month. After some fairly simple math, you are roughly paying $5-$50 CPM. Already, this is significantly lower than the range I’ve spelled out above. Don’t forget that a lower CPC would drive even more cost savings.

Let’s take it one step further. The example above (assuming the CTR I spelled out) drove 5-50 people to your site. Each new qualified person is an opportunity for further brand education, lead generation, or sales. With paid search awareness campaigns, you will rely on your website more for the heavy lifting. That’s what you want. By comparison, typical banner ads generate clicks at a rate of 0.1%. Thus, you’ve spent significantly more money to drive only 1 person to your site. With paid search campaigns, you’re getting awareness AND traffic. Now doesn’t it seem like a better investment to put your awareness budget into paid search marketing rather than banner ads? Wouldn’t you prefer that your site do the marketing rather than a skyscraper ad?

In my next post, I’ll further explore this topic of marketing objectives. There’s lots more to say. Stay tuned.

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