By Enid Burns, ClickZ, Apr 6, 2009

In a survey of over 500 e-mail marketers, online marketing agency eROI finds almost 20 percent of the respondents fail to track e-mail campaigns. The report provides insight into trends and use of analytics in e-mail.

"I thought the number would be much lower than that with all of the options out there," Jeff Mills, director of sales and strategy at eROI, told ClickZ Stats. "There's no legitimate excuse for it."

For typical site conversions -- which may include a click-through, watching a video, or another activity -- the reasons for using analytics included: don't know how (42.9 percent); other (38.1 percent); don't have time (14.3 percent); and don't have budget (4.8 percent).

For e-commerce conversions responses included don't know how (44.4 percent); don't have budget (38.9 percent); other (11 percent); and don't have time (5.6 percent).

" 'Don't have a budget' and 'don't know how' are no longer excuses," said Mills. "There are providers all across the board, it's less of 'I don't have a budget' and more of 'I need to re-prioritize the budget."

The survey asked participants to place the e-mail campaign "lifecycle" events in order of importance.

The open rate remains the most important event in e-mail campaign tracking -- a trend that surprises Mills. With image blocking, people reading on mobile phones, and other factors, he feels the open rate is less important a metric when looked at alone. The click rate, he feels, is a better barometer of an e-mail's effectiveness. That is when you take the number of clicks, and divide it by the number of opens.

What's the Most Important Event in an E-Mail Campaign Lifecycle?

When asked what is the most important event in an e-mail campaign lifecycle -- in order of importance -- here is what survey respondents said, along with definitions and pointers for each stage:

Open rate: Not supported by many e-mail clients due to HTML blocking, open rates can appear lower than they actually are.
Click-through: Relevance and personalized content is the key to increasing click-throughs. Segment recipients in e-mail lists by demographics, geographic variables, and other groupings.
Open-to-click ratio: Arguably a more accurate assessment of an e-mail campaign's success. The number of clicks divided by the number of opens.
Specified link clicked: The link a user clicks on an e-mail.
Delivery rate: The ability for mail to be received is challenged by spam filters and reputation, and bounced e-mails are not always fully reported.
Conversion rate: Encourage action: a purchase, a newsletter sign-up, a white paper download, or a phone call. "Your conversion rate is a measure of relevancy," the report said.
Unsubscribe rate: Take the total number of unsubscribes in an e-mail campaign and divide it by the total number of delivered e-mails. The unsubscribe rate is an indicator of list health and cleanliness.
Track campaign source: A holistic way of looking at what campaigns people come from.
Drill down into segments: List segmentation targets individuals rather than sending the same e-mail to the entire list.
Positive vs. negative clicks: Marketers might assign a positive click to a call-to-action, and a negative click to an unsubscribe. It allows marketers to break down the value of clicks into further detail.
Knowledge sharing is an area where silos still exist in e-mail marketing. Of those surveyed, 74 percent said they share e-mail analytics data with their bosses or other executives. Within the marketing organization, 61.3 percent share data with the corporate marketing department, and 42.5 percent share with advertising, marketing, and their public relations agency. The sales side of the business loses out the most. E-mail analytics data is shared with direct sales groups by 30.9 percent of e-mail marketers surveyed, and 23.8 percent of those surveyed.

"A third of people are sharing with the direct sales group, and [add in e-commerce], a combined half of people responsible for driving revenue, it still shows a disconnect between marketing and sales somewhat," said Mills.

Source: Clickz.com

By Jeanniey Mullen
The ClickZ Network
Nov 10, 2008

When's the last time you checked your e-mail? It doesn't matter if you checked it at home, on a mobile device, or through LinkedIn, Plaxo, or even Facebook. The point is, you're in good company if you're among the more than 60 percent people who'd say "within the last hour."

An estimated 20 percent of readers like you have their BlackBerry or iPhone right next to them while they read this. Is your digital device positioned in your periphery just so you can see the red light the second it comes on?

Consumer habits have changed over the past two decades. We've become digital addicts. We've coined a new phrase: the digital lifestyle.

Over the past 30 years we've been fortunate enough to live through one of the most dynamic and powerful revolutions to date: the digital revolution. In 1977, as we spent our evenings glued to the "tube" watching shows like "The Jeffersons" and "Wonder Woman," 48,000 people were testing out a new way of life. They were using a personal computer.

A mere 25 years later, in 2002, the adoption and use of personal computers had hit mainstream. With more than 500 million personal computers in use, the adoption curve had begun. Six years after, in 2008, the number of personal computers in the world reached over one billion households. The one billion mark was the indication that the digital revolution had arrived.

Many times a revolution is initiated through the introduction of a new way to do something or a new product. A revolution isn't justified until people can't imagine life without that element or product. That's when a revolution becomes a true success.

The great thing about revolutions is that they change people: culturally, socially, and even economically. And in this case, the digital revolution changed us all. It made us digital consumers.

Digital consumers aren't just a people using a device. It's people who have learned to manage devices in a way that make their lives life better.

Think back to how the digital revolution and digital consumer came to be. While the "device" that started the revolution was the personal computer, the activity that drove its adoption was e-mail. E-mail was one of the original power brokers driving the digital revolution.

Retailer JCPenney, computer maker Gateway, and financial services firm John Hancock were among digital revolution's true innovators. Each leveraged e-mail in the 1990s. E-mail was simple and fast to use. Customers and early adopters liked it.

The medium introduced significant benefits to the consumer lifestyle, including:

Discreet communications. Imagine the ability to tell someone exactly how you feel about them, their product, or their service -- without having to face them and while you sit in your underwear!

Direct communication and direct sales. In the early days of the Internet, e-mail enabled frustrated consumers to send messages about products or services. E-mail is credited with prompting Sprint to immediately change its audio-response system and develop alternative service options. That occurred after the phone service provider received a mass volume of e-mails from consumers complaining about an unacceptable four-plus hour hold time to obtain customer support.

Speed: With e-mail, people could resolve issues, faster and persistently, until a justified solution was determined. The Sprint example illustrates just how e-mail changed the brand/customer relationship in the early '90s.
We've continued to evolve and change as consumers since the 1990s. We no longer expect to wait for things. We want what we want, when we want it, and we know there is digital device, or development that will enable us to get to it.

Digital direct marketing is king. Anything else is unacceptable.

This brings us to the power of e-mail. E-mail remains one of the most effective channels to drive positive digital consumer experiences. Your e-mails still remain king in the midst of this digital revolution.

As the world continues to evolve, your target relies more on e-mail, now more so on mobile devices than at the desktop. But e-mail is still king. Respect the power of this channel to help create loyal and profitable consumer conversations.

Source: ClickZ.com

By Jeanniey Mullen, The ClickZ Network, Jun 23, 2008

Crazy title for this column, but it should get your attention. At a recent ExactTarget conference, I spoke alongside Aaron Kahlow, founder of the Online Marketing Summit. We addressed the best day to send e-mail, advising that there's no longer a best day to send e-mail. The best day varies greatly, depending on the following elements:

The reader's current environment when she reads your e-mail. (Is she focusing on e-mail or multitasking?)

The reader's frame of mind when your e-mail arrives. (Is she thinking about a home renovation or a vacation when you offer arrives?)

The reader's need of your product or offering.

The reader's e-mail client. Is she reading on a handheld device or on a computer?

The reader's mental health. Is she exhausted, stressed, or even excited?
These statements brought questions from the audience. The biggest question was, "Given these circumstances, how in the heck are you supposed to know when to send your e-mail?"

This is a great question. And while there is no one answer to the best day and time to send an e-mail, there are some best practices to follow:

Think about the product or service you're selling and when people might have the biggest need to hear about it or buy it. For example, if you sell entertainment-related services, don't wait until Friday night to send your e-mail. Send it on Wednesday, when most people are buzzing with personal e-mail strings about what they plan to do this weekend. (At this event, we also learned this may also be the best time to ask someone on a date.)

Think about when you reader will be paying the most attention to the e-mail you sent. If you send a B2B (define) e-mail, consider your work schedule. You probably pay most attention to your e-mail when you first get in or sometime in the early afternoon. If it works for you, it will work for others in similar jobs.

Think about where the person will be when she reads your e-mail and what you want her to do with it. If you send an e-mail about a special sale, think about sending it either when people are at home and can buy right there, or when they are in the mall, reading on a handheld device and can walk into the store.
There are no fast-and-hard rules for the best day to send an e-mail anymore. In the end, you must test, but think outside of the box. There is one hard-and-fast rule you can always depend on: things will always change. In this world of digital consumers, the only truly best time is the time when the reader feels it's relevant. And that changes every second.

Source: Clickz.com

MARCH 31, 2008
Source: Emarketer.com

When the going gets tough...

Sub-prime mortgage meltdowns. Floundering credit markets. Burst housing bubbles. Trillions wasted in war. Gold hitting $1,000. Tumbling stock markets. Falling payrolls. Oil at record highs. The dollar at record lows.

Is it any wonder that—even in a year of the Olympics and a presidential election-US advertising is struggling?

Almost all US advertising, anyway.

In the midst of the doldrums, like the Energizer Bunny, Internet advertising is still going strong.

"Even if its rate of growth is declining slightly," says David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, US Online Advertising: Resilient in a Rough Economy. "US online advertising is proving to be far more robust than other media channels."

eMarketer predicts that this year online advertising will grow to nearly $28 billion and account for 8.8% of total US ad spending.

"Even more impressively," says Mr. Hallerman, "in 2009 online advertising will reach $30 billion and account of fully 10% of all US ad spending."

It is important to note that even as growth rates decline through 2009, overall Internet ad spending increases will remain in positive territory, the mid-teens or higher through 2011.

"This growth, even if less than before, will surpass all other major media," says Mr. Hallerman.

Don't make the mistake of thinking the Internet is impervious to downward economic pressures, however.

"Whatever label you slap on the current economic climate, US ad spending both online and offline will be shaped by overarching business trends," says Mr. Hallerman. "While Internet ad spending is in no way immune to a recession's impact, it is more resistant to ad spending cutbacks than are other media."

Source: Emarketer.com

By Jeanniey Mullen
The ClickZ Network
Mar 3, 2008

Two weeks ago, I started a new job in the publishing world. It's a fantastic opportunity and I'm very excited, but at the same time a bit nervous. I wondered about the time it would take to learn the ins and outs of an entirely new industry. Do they rely on e-mail marketing? If so, how? How much of a role does e-mail play in a traditionally print world? I really wasn't sure what I'd find, or what would happen.

Within three days of starting my new job (once I learned where the bathrooms were, and the best place to get lunch), I was able to begin meeting with clients, prospects, and even to attend a few industry events. I was shocked with what I learned. In general, I found that the publishing world has a whole different set of rules than many other industries I've worked in. With one exception: e-mail!

As I spoke with publishers, media buyers for publications, leaders in the space, and even vendors, I found out the core e-mail challenges pretty much remain the same, regardless of what business you're in.

And so do e-mail's benefits. Herewith, the top three universal truths about e-mail, regardless of your business or your industry.

Offset cost by leveraging e-mail: While e-mail may still not be the most highly respected communications channel, it's one of the most sought after by business. This year, there's a tremendous amount of effort being placed on driving e-mail opt-in capture as a way to drive engagement and response.

An e-mail opt-in is a means to target high-value customers: Regardless of the business you're in, it's been proven a person who provides opt-in permission to e-mail them will buy more, and more quickly, from your company -- through a variety of channels). Going after the opt-in makes sense.

E-mail doesn't work in a silo: Understanding that e-mail is only one element of a digital communications strategy is critical for anyone in any type of business. This truth forces you to think more strategically about the messages you send and the impact they may have.

These three truths provide great insight, and are even fantastic news for anyone whose job is in the e-mail service provider space. It really demonstrates the e-mail channel isn't bound by groups or categories, but is healthy and growing in all sectors of client communication, regardless of industry.

It also makes good sense for e-mail marketers, of course. Knowing these core truths removes the boundries of searching for best practices within your own industry, and opens up a world of opportunity to think outside of the box about your e-mail programs and try something new.

The more e-mail changes, the more it stays the same.

Source: Clickz.com

E-mail marketing spending will grow to $2.1 billion in 2012 from $1.2 billion in 2007, according to JupiterResearch's "US E-mail Marketing Forecast, 2007 to 2012" report.

“E-mail service providers have done a solid job of standardizing feedback loops with Internet service providers and are continuing to make needed improvements in e-mail delivery,” said David Daniels, vice president and research director at JupiterResearch.

“This will create better opportunities for e-mail marketing, although marketers will have to work harder to remain relevant in their communications with their intended audiences,” Mr. Daniels said.

JupiterResearch also said that spending on retention e-mail would more than double through 2012 and account for more than half of total e-mail marketing spending by then.

Acquisition e-mail marketing was pegged to grow more slowly, with sponsorships such as ad-supported newsletters accounting for most spending.

In its own calculations of e-mail marketing spending, eMarketer includes payments to e-mail service providers, list rental and the costs of in-house e-mail. eMarketer projects that e-mail marketing spending will creep up steadily, reaching $1.65 billion by 2011.

"E-mail marketing is effective, but spending is tempered by the somewhat but not entirely valid impression among many companies that e-mail is inexpensive marketing and that they therefore need not throw too much money at those programs," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

Spending on e-mail marketing is also moderated by its own efficiency. Because e-mail is a low-cost medium, even relatively large increases in the number of commercial e-mails are not reflected in large spending increases.

Spending will jump by 5.1% in 2008, supported by marketing for both the national and local elections. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, marketing spending growth in 2010 will be boosted by election activity.

"US e-mail marketing spending in 2007 will reach nearly $1.5 billion," Mr. Hallerman said. "That is about $3.60 for e-mail marketing for every $1 that goes to e-mail advertising."

Source: Emarketer.com

Oct 15, 2007
Written by Jeanniey Mullen
Source: Clickz.com

E-mail campaigns' ROI (define) has always been phenomenal.

In the early days, 80 percent open rates and 20 percent conversion rates were expected. Today, open and conversion rates are often much smaller, but e-mail campaigns still win every time over other channels. And that's fantastic news for marketers who can consider e-mail a safe choice. It's not great news, however, for providers of e-mail marketing technology and strategies because improved services and innovations are expected at low and even commoditized rates.

Because of this misalignment, e-mail marketing ROI has consistently performed at amazing rates.

"E-Mail Usage High, Marketing Spend Low," eMarketer explored this issue. And groups like the Email Experience Council (EEC) have created roundtables to define and determine an e-mail address's value to make a case to increase e-mail budgets.

All of this discussion about e-mail and ROI made me think: is there really a way to maintain e-mail's ROI while de-commoditizing the market?

A year ago, I would have said "probably not." In today's digitally driven world, there's a strong chance e-mail will remain queen of ROI, no matter the investment's size. Here are three reasons:

E-mail marketing's old business model is dead. E-mail's new business model is predicated on lifestyle relevancy and management. It will remain the backbone of our communications.

Budget reallocation generates higher ROI through cost savings. You can pay $500,000 for a TV ad. Or you can reallocate $150,000 of that $500,000 for a digital video embedded in e-mail, in display ads, and on the site, creating a very cool viral element. The cost savings alone allow you to set up a higher ROI from the get-go. E-mail gets more funding as part of an integrated strategy, and the digital effort costs less.

Standalone e-mail campaigns increase brand equity and drive extended ROI. The old way of evaluating e-mail ROI looked at direct sales. However, e-mail has proven to be a branding tool credited with driving sales through other channels. The ability to capture this increased impact allows you to invest more in e-mail without your ROI declining.
What does this all mean? We should increase the e-mail marketing budget for 2008. Think about how you can enhance your program to increase impact. Do this without worrying about the potential negative impact on ROI.

The world of e-mail has changed. Now your ROI can be even higher without sacrificing anything. And each additional investment you make will further increase your ROI.

Source: Clickz.com

By Anna Maria Virzi
The ClickZ Network
Sep 28, 2007

Interactive advertising and marketing executives, like their offline counterparts, are fiercely competitive and highly guarded creatures. The same traits that help these business executives and creative personalities to soar can also impede an industry movement to bring consistency, including standards, to measuring digital media's impact and reach.

Just about everyone agrees online advertising should be easier to track and measure than offline advertising. After all, something built on bits and bytes lends itself to analysis and promises opportunities to target ads to the right person at the right time. Why else would Microsoft pay $6 billion to buy aQuantive, an Internet advertising agency, or Google propose to acquire DoubleClick, aQuantive's competitor, for $3 billion?

Observe advertising and marketing executives in action during Advertising Week in New York City, and you'll begin to understand the challenges.

A sampling of some panel discussions at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX conference featured, for the most part, presentations heavy on inspiration and light on lessons learned or instructive how-tos. That stands in contrast to, say, information technology executives who take pride in telling their war stories at conferences and explaining how they've overcome problems.

That raises a question: if marketing and advertising executives don't trust each other to openly discuss their failures as well as their triumphs, can they ever agree on approaches to measure online activities and the impact and reach of advertising?

Another sign of digital media dysfunction: the existence of two separate Advertising Week conferences devoted to interactive marketing and advertising. MIXX competed on the same days and in the same city with OMMA, operating outside official Advertising Week parameters.

Interestingly enough, a down-and-dirty look at digital media's challenges played out Wednesday at another Advertising Week venue: the William S. Paley Center for Media, named after CBS television's founder. Perhaps it was the venue, maybe the speakers. But this panel showed some edge.

It included Mark Kingdon, Organic chief executive; Beth-Ann Eason, Martha Stewart Living SVP; and Jon Mandel, chief executive of NielsenConnect, a service designed to integrate and analyze Nielsen's consumer purchase information, store data, online measurement, modeling assets, and other intelligence. These executives identified hurdles that must be overcome if interactive advertising and marketing are to live up to their promise:

Extreme competition among advertisers, marketers, and others makes it difficult to bring together stakeholders to advance an agenda. "If you're a surgeon in San Diego, you're not going to lose business to a surgeon in New York. In all my years in New York, everyone has had their own agenda," Mandel said.


While there's plenty of data about online activities, it's not sufficient. "There's not enough talent to turn the data into insights that are actionable," warned Eason. Kingdon concurred: "It takes systems thinkers, not technologists. It takes people who can diagram the ecosystems, understand the connection points in how the data and things flow. That's a different analytic discipline."


Advertisers resist paying to use emerging platforms, such as video on demand, because the programs aren't measured, said Eason. Thus, the industry must be quicker to find ways to measure these platforms to ensure advertising dollars are placed in the most effective medium -- whether it's video, widgets, blogs, display ads, or elsewhere.


Online advertising still dwarfs television advertising, a situation that tends to give executives working on TV accounts more clout than those working on interactive. "The largest budget has all the power," Mandel said. That obstacle, he said, was recognized at Carat where David Verklin, Carat Americas' chief executive, merged the media's agency traditional practice with its digital marketing organization and named Sarah Fay, who came from interactive, to run the shop.

Advertisers and marketers give short shrift to measurement services without fully understanding what they are about or without offering suggestions on what changes they'd like to see, said Mandel. Showing off the sales side, he pitched Nielsen's audience measurement and research services. "If I had known the handful of stuff available from Nielsen, I would not have made up half the sh-t I did at the agency," cracked Mandel, a former executive at MediaCom and Grey Advertising.

How can interactive media live up to its promise and move beyond the egos, politics, and sea change to reach some common ground?

Mandel offered up this solution: "It takes a couple of people to take the lead. To say, 'Damn it, we're going to do it.' It takes other people in the world to be big enough to say, 'I'm going to defer to them.' To put the agendas aside."

Mandel said that worked in the late '90s at MediaCom, an online buying service, when he and his colleagues were asked to come up with a metric to measure online advertising campaigns. After his seventh vodka at Smith & Wollensky restaurant, the click-through measurement was born, though he stressed it was intended to be a short-lived metric.

"We need another vodka lunch," quipped Kingdon.

Now, that's something the industry can agree on.

Source: clickz.com

By: Liz Webber

A majority say they plan to spend as much or more this year on online advertising and other Web tools.

Entrepreneurs now say the Internet is the most important marketing tool for their companies, but they primarily still use the Web for e-mail and research, according to a new survey.

The Capital Access Network Small Business Barometer, a quarterly poll of 250 business owners nationwide who accept credit cards from customers as a method of payment, found that small companies ranked an Internet presence or website as the number one method for business marketing, over such traditional tools as networking, public relations and print and radio advertising. However, respondents also said their top two online business-related activities are checking e-mail and researching business solutions.

"Our survey indicates that there is a definite disconnect between a smaller business's needs and their goals for meeting them," said Glenn Goldman, president and CEO of Capital Access Network. "There is this gap of understanding between the type of business and what the Web can do for you." Capital Access Network, based in Scarsdale, N.Y., provides merchant cash advances to small businesses through its main subsidiary, AdvanceMe.

While e-mail may top the list of Internet-related activities, many small businesses have begun implementing online advertising strategies. Of survey respondents, 59 percent use online ads and 68 percent utilize search engine optimization "sometimes" or "often."

Online social tools like blogs and message boards, however, are not as popular an option for business marketing. Almost half of small business owners never use a blog, 37 percent never visit message boards or chat rooms, and 59 percent have never tried the virtual world of Second Life.

"It's human nature, particularly when funds are scarce, to focus on what is known," Goldman said. "For some folks, maximum use of the Web is buying a book on Amazon."

Business owners are making efforts to increase their Internet presence. Forty-four percent say they plan on spending more on Internet tools this year compared to 2006, while 27 percent plan to spend the same amount as last year. The amount small businesses will shell out for their Web activities varies, with the largest group (45 percent) spending less than $2,500.

On the other hand, a quarter of respondents will not spend anything on the Internet this year. Of those, 30 percent named a lack of funds as the main obstacle preventing them from using the Internet for their business. "Clearly, folks are learning the benefits of the Web but in many cases are constrained resource-wise," Goldman said.

Overall, 46 percent of respondents say they derive at least some of their revenue from Internet sales. Based on that, Goldman said, "I think it's safe to conclude that not using the Web results in missed opportunities."

Published July 2007. Source: Inc.com

MAY 10, 2007

Campaigners hit the 'Send' button.

E-mail is the online tactic of choice for promotional marketers, according to a PROMO magazine survey.

The magazine found that 72.6% of respondents used e-mail marketing as part of their online efforts. Another 60.8% used e-mail newsletters.

Promotional marketers said online methods were gaining popularity overall.

"We're seeing a big shift away from advertising dollars to digital and interactive because they're a lot more measurable and they can get real-time results and show their return on investment," said Andrew Mitchell of Brandmovers.

Even when e-mail is not the main tactic in interactive marketing, it is usually still part of the mix.

A Forrester Research survey found that 83% of marketers used e-mail — more than those who used search, behavioral targeting, rich media display ads or any other interactive format.

The PROMO study revealed why so many marketers use e-mail. Respondents listed brand building and sales generation as top goals for online marketing overall. Building loyalty and opt-in e-mail lists were also high on the list.

eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman said, "The fundamental purpose of e-mail marketing is to enhance a company's relationship with its customers and to draw in new prospects."

By that measure, promotional marketers think budgeting for e-mail is money well spent.

Source: Emarketer.com

By Jeanniey Mullen | April 2, 2007

People ask me if e-mail marketing really affects brand. I don't know if anyone's truly bought into that theory (besides myself and key people like my family and those who work for me). If you're are one of the skeptics, here's a story for you:

My job is to expand and grow our e-mail practice on a worldwide basis. This is no small feat. This year, I've visited different countries quite a bit. Over the past two weeks, I traveled from New York to L.A. to New York to Prague to London and back home. That's three different currencies, which means stopping at lots of airport cash machines.

Exhausted after taking the red-eye to London, I was looking forward to getting in a cab. So I headed to the HSBC bank machine, only to get an error when I tried to take out money. Odd, but there was another bank machine next to it, so I tried that one. No luck. In the U.S., it was only 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday. I called home, but everyone was asleep.

I took the Tube to the hotel instead of a cab, managing to pay with credit cards. I was extremely panicked about why my ATM card wasn't working. How was I going to get money to buy food while away? Had someone broken into my account and taken all my money? My head went through crazy scenarios that could account for what was happening.

I got to my room and waited for New York to wake up so I could call my bank. After 10 minutes on hold, I got a representative who told me all New Jersey and New York were having a server upgrade. No one could get money from cash machines until at least 2 p.m. EDT. Relieved no one stole my identity, I moved into the infuriated-customer stage: When was this planned? Why didn't anyone tell me? I asked the representative what the notification process was for this. Had someone sent an e-mail?

Her answer -- and I'm not making this up -- was, "Yes, an e-mail was sent to your online banking secure box. You should see it when you log on. You can't log on now because the system is down. We didn't send e-mails directly to you because we already send enough."

Huh? I'd been out of the country for seven days. Why would I check to see if the bank had randomly sent e-mail to my online secure box? What good was it doing me now, anyway?

This lack of understanding of how consumers use and rely on e-mail seriously affected my perception of the brand. For all of you skeptics out there, here's a loud and clear message from the consumer in me: e-mail really does have significant brand power.

Oh, and I've since moved my money to another bank.

Source: Clickz.com

By STUART ELLIOTT
Published: February 22, 2007

IF the 20th century was known in marketing circles as the advertising century, the 21st may be the advertising measurement century.

Marketers are increasingly focused on the effectiveness of their pitches, trying to figure out the return on investment for ad spending. That is spurring most of the major media — along with many large research companies like Arbitron, Nielsen and Taylor Nelson Sofres — to improve the methods by which they measure audiences.

The ability of newer digital media to provide more precise data has also led traditional media like television, radio, magazines and newspapers to try upgrading the ways they count consumers.

“There’s a little something called the Internet, something that all other media are trying to get as accountable as,” said Jon Mandel, chief executive at the NielsenConnect unit of the Nielsen Company in New York, which brings together data from various Nielsen divisions.

Take, for instance, the outdoor advertising industry, which has for years been trying to better quantify not only the number of people who pass by posters, billboards and other signs but also the number who notice and remember them.

Now, the industry’s official auditing organization, the Traffic Audit Bureau, is accelerating plans to deliver improved information to advertisers and agencies. The bureau has set a target date of October 2008 to introduce a comprehensive measurement system for more than 200 markets nationwide.

"Sooner is better than later," said Joseph C. Philport, president and chief executive at the bureau in New York.

"The absence of better numbers has always been a barrier to entry,"Mr. Philport added, referring to the reluctance of many marketers to increase spending for ads that appear outside the home.

A recent report from Wachovia Capital Markets about outdoor advertising estimated that introducing the improved measurement system would cost the industry $25 million over the next five years.

But it has the potential to double, to 4.4 percent, the share of American ad spending devoted to signs, posters and billboards, the report estimated. The Universal McCann media agency said marketers would spend $7.2 billion on outdoor ads this year, compared with $6.7 billion in 2006.

That growth rate is the second fastest among all media, after the Internet. That reflects the increasing appeal of outdoor advertising - one of the oldest of the old media - as advertisers explore tactics that consumers cannot avoid by changing the channel or turning the page.

"The out-of-home medium provides a broad-reach platform to showcase our products in a cost-effective way," said Mark A. Kaline, global media manager at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Mich.

The medium should become more attractive as more digital signs become available, Mr. Kaline added. The digital signs, which can be changed continuously, offer "the ability for marketers to tailor copy to a given market, at a given time of day, to specific market conditions," he said.

Such improvements, however, would require more accurate methods to measure audiences. The current system is based on traffic - estimating the number of passers-by, with no idea of whether they actually look at a sign or recall the product being peddled.

It is "somewhat admittedly a crude system, counting the people who pass our signs," said Paul J. Meyer, president and chief operating officer at Clear Channel Outdoor in Phoenix, one of the three largest outdoor-media companies, with CBS and Lamar Advertising.

"The industry has been perceived to be slow and overly methodical" in considering changes, Mr. Meyer added. "If we could provide good rich demographic data, in a form compatible with what advertisers are accustomed to seeing from other media, they will start spending dollars in our medium or spend more."

The Traffic Audit Bureau has hired three research companies - the GfK Group, the Telmar Group and Transearch - to compile various kinds of data including traffic counts and travel patterns, and even to track eye movements of people as they pass outdoor signs.

"What the research measures is 'eye-dwell,' " said Erwin Ephron, a principal at Ephron Papazian & Ephron in New York, who is working with the bureau on the project. "If the eye fixes on it, you’ve noticed it."

"Like newspapers saying all sales are local, what outdoor has been saying is that you can't avoid that kind of advertising," Mr. Ephron added. After someone notices a sign, he said, the rest is a question of how creative the ad is and how relevant the product.

The growing popularity of digital signs brings a new urgency to the bureau's efforts, Mr. Ephron said, because a sign that can be shared by several advertisers "lowers the price of entry." Advertisers would no longer have to commit to a sign for 30 days, and the effect, he said, would be like the upheaval decades ago when the standard TV commercial "went from the 60-second spot to the 30."

This month, the Mediamark Research unit of GfK began conducting 4,200 traffic surveys for the bureau in five major markets: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Plans call for Mediamark to conduct 45,000 additional surveys in a total of 15 large cities, Mr. Philport said.

The bureau intends to brief media and agency executives about its progress at a meeting in New York scheduled for March 27, he added.

As the bureau moves forward, so, too, does Nielsen, which in 2005 announced that Nielsen Outdoor intended to improve the data it reported about outdoor ads. The Nielsen efforts are centered on a global positioning system it calls Npod, while the bureau is using various methods that include diaries.

Nielsen released data from its first market, Chicago, in December 2005. Information from the second market, Los Angeles, is to come out in late spring, said Lorraine V. Hadfield, managing director for international audience measurement at Nielsen, and the company is "targeting a roll-out to the top 10 markets in the U.S., where the most interest is from potential subscribers."

Ms. Hadfield added that Nielsen intended to brief agencies and advertisers about its plans at the 2007 media conference and trade show of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, scheduled for next week in Las Vegas.

There is some elbows-out competition, reminiscent of the cola wars, between Nielsen and the bureau over their dueling measurement systems.

As Mr. Mandel of Nielsen put it, laughing, "Let the games begin."

Nielsen plans to sell its data; the bureau's would be free to members. Nielsen was considered - but not hired - by the bureau to help produce its new measurement system. And Mr. Philport, the bureau's chief, formerly worked for Nielsen.

As for competing sets of figures, "it depends on how cost-effective each application is," Mr. Kaline of Ford Motor said. "The industry will address that issue."

Source: New York Times

FEBRUARY 15, 2007

Mo-o-o-ove over!

In most markets, the online segment accounts for only a small portion of total revenues and sales. But that is not the case in the travel business.

According to a new report from Burst Media, based on data from PhoCusWright Research, this year the Internet will make up over half of all of the travel industry's transactions.

The rush of travel consumers to the Internet has led to an online travel marketplace estimated at $68 billion - and that is the US market only.

In a Burst survey of 2,100 Web users ages 18 and older who plan to travel in the next three months, 79% of respondents said they would be using the Internet to plan their upcoming personal travel.

There is no statistical difference in the percentage of men, 79.9%, or women, 78.1%, who will use the Internet to plan their travel.

Among the respondents using the Internet to plan their upcoming travel, 47% said it would be their primary travel resource.

Internet travel planning does skew younger. Respondents ages 25 to 34 are the most likely to use the Internet as their primary travel resource, with 53% indicating so, and respondents ages 55 and older are the least likely, with 41% indicating so.

Usage also skews to higher-income households, with slightly over half, or 52%, of respondents with household incomes of $75,000 to $99,999 annually and nearly two-thirds, or 63%, with household incomes of $100,000 or more annually saying the Internet will be their primary travel resource.

The survey leaves little doubt that the Internet is the primary planning channel for travelers, and therefore a vital travel advertising platform.

A full two-thirds, or 67%, of the respondents who will use the Internet to help plan their upcoming travel will conduct travel research as well as make online travel transactions, and 33% will use the Web solely as an information resource.

Among respondents planning to make travel transactions online, 74.0% will likely purchase airline tickets, 72.9% will likely make hotel reservations and over one-third (40.4%) will likely rent automobiles.

In addition, of the respondents making transactions online, 60% will also research destinations and 29% will research travel/tour operators.

Travel vendors should be up front about pricing, as the survey found it was the most cited factor driving customers to sites.

When respondents were asked what features of a travel resource Web site make them want to return, the ability to check flights, hotels and rental car rates and availability scored highest, at 55%, closely followed by destination information and travel promotions and specials, both at roughly 50%.

Interestingly, women placed much greater importance than men on travel promotions and specials, 55% vs. 45%, respectively.

For more information, read eMarketer's Online Travel Worldwide report.

Source: Emarketer.com

Ad:Tech: ‘The media will be the Internet’
Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 6:56 pm
Source: ZDNet.com

Digg This!

An Ad:Tech panel headlined “Online Advertising Industry’s Definitive Advertising Playbook,” was full of surprises this afternoon. The conference program promised “This session will be the one that launches the Internet on its next wave of untrammeled growth”:

Where’s the “go-to-guide” that will give practitioners confidence in using interactive media? With participation of leading marketers, agencies, and publishers, The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) has produced the definitive response—The Online Advertising Playbook—released to the public for the first time at this ad:tech session. Receive the first copies from the authors and learn from a panel of leading contributors.

Well, where is the promised “go-to-guide”? Still in production.

And where is the star “leading contributor” promised featured panelist, Tim Armstrong, VP Advertising Sales, Google? “In court all week.”

Nevertheless, the available panel of visionaries envisioned on, led by indefatigable Ridgway “Taddy” H. Hall, Chief Strategy Officer, The Advertising Research Foundation.

Giovanni Fabris, VP, International Media Director, McDonald's International, offered an uplifting interactive take.

For Fabris, the Internet is ultimately not a particular “media,” but a virtual space where all nature of multimedia may be delivered. Fabris put forth that it would be theoretically possible for a brand to cease using “traditional” media because the Internet becomes “the media,” by delivering any and all information and entertainment.

So, “The media will be the Internet,” someday. For now, interactive complements, and integrates with, traditional media, Fabris concluded.

Tom Lynch, VP, Marketing Integration, ING, wants its advertising agencies to look to the Internet as a “leading medium,” but not from a “spend” perspective. Lynch believes interactive’s inherent qualities inspire forward thinking marketing philosophies for all media spends:

An audience is made of segments, it is not a “mass,”
Narrative and engagement are the focus,
Clutter is meant to be broken through,
Continuous marketplace feedback.

For Clark Kokich, President, Avenue A, Razorfish, the Internet is not solely an advertising medium. Interactive is a customer focused, multi-purpose digital channel:

Branding,
Research,
Sales,
CRM…

Kokich looks to the Internet as a vehicle for architecting holistic ecosystems designed to bring relevant and engaging communications to individual customers based on their unique relationships with brands.

Kokich noted, however, that while such a vision is doable, the “will to do it” does not always equal the power of technology.

Source: Business Week

Martin Fleischmann put his faith in online advertising. He used it to build his Atlanta company, MostChoice.com, which offers consumers rate quotes and other information on insurance and mortgages. Last year he paid Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO )and Google Inc. (GOOG ) a total of $2 million in advertising fees. The 40-year-old entrepreneur believed the celebrated promise of Internet marketing: You pay only when prospective customers click on your ads.

Now, Fleischmann's faith has been shaken. Over the past three years, he has noticed a growing number of puzzling clicks coming from such places as Botswana, Mongolia, and Syria. This seemed strange, since MostChoice steers customers to insurance and mortgage brokers only in the U.S. Fleischmann, who has an economics degree from Yale University and an MBA from Wharton, has used specially designed software to discover that the MostChoice ads being clicked from distant shores had appeared not on pages of Google or Yahoo but on curious Web sites with names like insurance1472.com and insurance060.com. He smelled a swindle, and he calculates it has cost his business more than $100,000 since 2003.

Fleischmann is a victim of click fraud: a dizzying collection of scams and deceptions that inflate advertising bills for thousands of companies of all sizes. The spreading scourge poses the single biggest threat to the Internet's advertising gold mine and is the most nettlesome question facing Google and Yahoo, whose digital empires depend on all that gold.

The growing ranks of businesspeople worried about click fraud typically have no complaint about versions of their ads that appear on actual Google or Yahoo Web pages, often next to search results. The trouble arises when the Internet giants boost their profits by recycling ads to millions of other sites, ranging from the familiar, such as cnn.com, to dummy Web addresses like insurance1472.com, which display lists of ads and little if anything else. When somebody clicks on these recycled ads, marketers such as MostChoice get billed, sometimes even if the clicks appear to come from Mongolia. Google or Yahoo then share the revenue with a daisy chain of Web site hosts and operators. A penny or so even trickles down to the lowly clickers. That means Google and Yahoo at times passively profit from click fraud and, in theory, have an incentive to tolerate it. So do smaller search engines and marketing networks that similarly recycle ads.

SLIPPING CONFIDENCE
Google and Yahoo say they filter out most questionable clicks and either don't charge for them or reimburse advertisers that have been wrongly billed. Determined to prevent a backlash, the Internet ad titans say the extent of click chicanery has been exaggerated, and they stress that they combat the problem vigorously. "We think click fraud is a serious but manageable issue," says John Slade, Yahoo's senior director for global product management. "Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system," says Shuman Ghosemajumder, the search engine's manager for trust and safety. "It's absolutely in our best interest for advertisers to have confidence in this industry."

That confidence may be slipping. A BusinessWeek investigation has revealed a thriving click-fraud underground populated by swarms of small-time players, making detection difficult. "Paid to read" rings with hundreds or thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in living rooms and dens around the world. In some cases, "clickbot" software generates page hits automatically and anonymously. Participants from Kentucky to China speak of making from $25 to several thousand dollars a month apiece, cash they wouldn't receive if Google and Yahoo were as successful at blocking fraud as they claim.

"It's not that much different from someone coming up and taking money out of your wallet," says David Struck. He and his wife, Renee, both 35, say they dabbled in click fraud last year, making more than $5,000 in four months. Employing a common scheme, the McGregor (Minn.) couple set up dummy Web sites filled with nothing but recycled Google and Yahoo advertisements. Then they paid others small amounts to visit the sites, where it was understood they would click away on the ads, says David Struck. It was "way too easy," he adds. Gradually, he says, he and his wife began to realize they were cheating unwitting advertisers, so they stopped. "Whatever Google and Yahoo are doing [to stop fraud], it's not having much of an effect," he says.

Spending on Internet ads is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion in 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to researcher eMarketer Inc. About half of these dollars are going into deals requiring advertisers to pay by the click. Most other Internet ads are priced according to "impressions," or how many people view them. Yahoo executives warned on Sept. 19 that weak ad spending by auto and financial-services companies would hurt its third-quarter revenue. Share prices of Yahoo and Google tumbled on the news.

Google and Yahoo are grabbing billions of dollars once collected by traditional print and broadcast outlets, based partly on the assumption that clicks are a reliable, quantifiable measure of consumer interest that the older media simply can't match. But the huge influx of cash for online ads has attracted armies of con artists whose activities are eroding that crucial assumption and could eat into the optimistic expectations for online advertising. (Advertisers generally don't grumble about fraudulent clicks coming from the Web sites of traditional media outlets. But there are growing concerns about these media sites exaggerating how many visitors they have -- the online version of inflating circulation.)

Most academics and consultants who study online advertising estimate that 10% to 15% of ad clicks are fake, representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings. Usually the search engines divide these proceeds with several players: First, there are intermediaries known as "domain parking" companies, to which the search engines redistribute their ads. Domain parkers host "parked" Web sites, many of which are those dummy sites containing only ads. Cheats who own parked sites obtain search-engine ads from the domain parkers and arrange for the ads to be clicked on, triggering bills to advertisers. In all, $300 million to $500 million a year could be flowing to the click-fraud industry.

Law enforcement has only lately started focusing on the threat. A cybercrime unit led by the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service just last month assigned two analysts to examine whether federal laws are being violated. The FBI acted after noticing suspected cybercriminals discussing click fraud in chat rooms. The staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee has launched its own informal probe.

Many advertisers, meanwhile, are starting to get antsy. Google and Yahoo have each settled a class action filed by marketers. In late September a coalition of such major brands as Expedia Inc.'s Expedia.com travel site and mortgage broker LendingTree is planning to go public with its mounting unease over click fraud, BusinessWeek has learned. The companies intend to form a group to share information and pressure Google and Yahoo to be more forthcoming. "You can't blame the advertisers for being suspicious," says Robert Pettee, search marketing manager for LendingTree, based in Charlotte, N.C. "If it's your money that's going out the door, you need to be asking questions." He says that up to 15% of the clicks on his company's ads are bogus.

In June, researcher Outsell Inc. released a blind survey of 407 advertisers, 37% of which said they had reduced or were planning to reduce their pay-per-click budgets because of fraud concerns. "The click fraud and bad sites are driving people away," says Fleischmann. He's trimming his online ad budget by 15% this year.

Google and Yahoo insist there's no reason to fret. They say they use sophisticated algorithms and intelligence from advertisers to identify the vast majority of fake clicks. But the big search engines won't disclose the specifics of their methods, saying illicit clickers would exploit the information.

Some people who have worked in the industry say that as long as Google and Yahoo distribute ads to nearly anyone with a rudimentary Web site, fraud will continue. "Advertisers should be concerned," says a former Yahoo manager who requested anonymity. "A well-executed click-fraud attack is nearly impossible, if not impossible, to detect."

ALTHOUGH 5 FEET 6 AND 135 POUNDS, Marty Fleischmann is no one to push around. He barked orders at much bigger oarsmen while serving as coxswain on the varsity crew team at Yale in the mid-1980s. His shyness deficit surfaced again when he later played the role of Jerry Seinfeld in the student follies at Wharton. Married and the father of three children, he tends to pepper his conversation with jargon about incentives and efficiencies.

Before he and partner Michael Levy co-founded their financial-information company in 1999, Fleischmann worked in Atlanta at the management consulting firm A.T. Kearney Inc., advising major corporations in the shipping and pharmaceutical industries. One lesson he says he learned is that big companies are loath to cut off any steady source of revenue. Google and Yahoo are no different, he argues.

That cynicism several years ago contributed to MostChoice's assigning an in-house programmer to design a system for analyzing every click on a company ad: the Web page where the ad appeared, the clicker's country, the length of the clicker's visit to MostChoice's site, and whether the visitor became a customer. Few companies go to such lengths, let alone companies with only 30 employees and revenue last year of just $6.4 million.

To Fleischmann, the validity of his clicks, for which he pays up to $8 apiece, has become an obsession. Every day he pores over fresh spreadsheets of click analysis. "I told Yahoo years ago," he says, "'If this was costing you money instead of making you money, you would have stopped this."'

Google, he says, does a better job than Yahoo of screening for fraud. But neither adequately protects marketers, he argues. Until March, 2005, Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., charged advertisers twice for "double clicks," meaning those occasions when a user unnecessarily clicks twice in quick succession on an ad. Confirming this, Google's Ghosemajumder says that before the company made the change, it felt it had to focus "on issues of malicious behavior," though now it identifies double clicks and bills for only one.

KOREAN CLONES
Fleischmann's daily immersion in click statistics fuels his indignation. How, he wants to know, did he receive traffic this summer from PCs in South Korea which are clicking on insurance1472.com and insurance060.com? The only content on these identical sites -- and five other clones with similar names -- are lists of Yahoo ads, which occasionally have included MostChoice promotions. Fleischmann's spreadsheets revealed, not surprisingly, that all of the suspected Korean clickers left his site in a matter of seconds, and none became customers. The two individuals registered as owning the mysterious insurance sites are based in South Korea. They didn't respond to requests for comment, and most of the sites disappeared in late summer, after MostChoice challenged Yahoo about them.

Fleischmann, like most other advertisers, has agreed to let Google and Yahoo recycle his ads on affiliated sites. The search engines describe these affiliates in glowing terms. A Google "help" page entitled "Where will my ads appear?" mentions such brand names as AOL.com (TWX ) and the Web site of The New York Times. Left unmentioned are the parked Web sites filled exclusively with ads and sometimes associated with click-fraud rings.

Google and Yahoo defend their practice of recycling advertising to domain-parking firms and then on to parked sites, saying that the lists of ads on the sites help point Internet surfers toward relevant information. Google notes that it allows advertisers to identify sites on which they don't want their ads to run.

But this Google feature doesn't apply to many parked sites, and Yahoo doesn't offer the option at all. In any event, excluding individual sites is difficult for marketers that don't do the sort of time-consuming research MostChoice does. Whether they know it or not, many other companies are afflicted in similar ways. At BusinessWeek's request, Click Forensics Inc., an online auditing firm in San Antonio, analyzed the records of its 170 financial-services clients and found that from March through July of this year, 13 companies had received clicks from Web sites identified as dubious by MostChoice.

Yahoo declined to comment on insurance1472, -060, and other suspect sites in its ad network. The Sunnyvale (Calif.) search giant stressed that in many cases it doesn't deal directly with parked sites; instead, it distributes its ads by means of domain-parking firms.

BusinessWeek's independent analysis of the MostChoice records turned up additional indications of click fraud. Over the past six months, the company received 139 visitors through an advertisement on the parked site healthinsurancebids.com, which offers only ads supplied by Yahoo. Most of these visitors were located in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, and Ukraine. Their average stay on MostChoice.com was only six seconds, and none of them became a customer.

Healthinsurancebids.com offers a revealing entry point into the click-fraud realm. It is one of several parked sites registered to Roland Kiss of Budapest. Kiss also owns BestPTRsite.com. "PTR" refers to "paid to read." In theory, paid-to-read sites recruit members who agree to read marketing e-mails and Web sites tailored to their interests. PTR site operators pay members for each e-mail and Web site they read, usually a penny or less.

In reality, many PTR sites are click-fraud rings, some with hundreds or thousands of participants paid to click on ads. BestPTRsite says it has 977 members. On Aug. 23 its administrator sent an e-mail to members containing a list of parked sites filled with ads. One of these sites, mortgagebg.com, which is also registered to Kiss, has been a source of apparently bogus clicks on MostChoice. The e-mail instructed members to click on different links every day, a common means to avoid detection. Members were also told to cut and paste text from the Web pages they click as proof of their activity. "If you send us back always the same link you will get banned and not paid! So take care and visit everyday a new link," the e-mail said.

Reached by telephone, Kiss says that his registration name is false and declines to reveal the real one. He says he's the 23-year-old son of computer technicians and has studied finance. He owns about 20 paid-to-read sites, he says, as well as 200 parked sites stuffed with Google and Yahoo advertisements. But he says he will take down healthinsurancebids.com to avoid discovery. He claims to take in $70,000 in ad revenue a month, but says that only 10% of that comes from PTRs. The rest, he says, reflects legitimate clicks by real Web surfers. He refrains from more PTR activity, he claims, because "it's no good for advertisers, no good for Google, no good for Yahoo." It's not unusual for people who are involved in PTR activity to profess that they restrict their behavior in some way for the good of advertisers and the big search engines.

After joining several PTR groups, BusinessWeek reporters received a torrent of e-mail showcasing hundreds of parked sites filled with Google and Yahoo ads. The groups urged participants to click aggressively on ads. "People don't click because they're interested in the subject," says Pam Parrish, a medical editor in Indianapolis who has participated in PTR sites. "They're clicking on ads to get paid."

Parrish, 52, says that when she started three years ago, PTR sites drew clickers like herself: potential customers looking to pick up a few spare dollars. At one point, she says she belonged to as many as 50 such sites but earned only about $200 all told. More recently, she says, most PTR sites have dropped the pretense of caring whether members are interested in the sites they visit. Parrish and others active on PTR sites say click fraud became more blatant as Google and Yahoo made their ads more widely available to parked sites.

Google and Yahoo say they filter out most PTR activity. "We manage that very well," says Google's Ghosemajumder. "It hasn't been an issue across our network, but it's something we take very seriously." Yahoo adds that PTR sites carrying its ads are in "very serious violation" of its standard distribution agreement. Yahoo says it scans its network for PTR activity, but declines to describe its methods.

PTR impresarios often don't fit the profile of an illicit kingpin. Michele Ballard runs a 2,200-member network called the-Owl-Post.com from her home in the small town of Hartford, Ky. On disability since a 1996 car accident, Ballard, 36, lives with her ailing mother and her cat, Sassy. She says she works day and night running Owl-Post, a five-year-old group named after the postal system in the Harry Potter novels. Sometimes, Ballard says she takes a break at lunchtime to tend her vegetable garden or help her elderly neighbors with theirs.

She sends her members a daily e-mail containing links to parked Web pages, many of them filled with Google ads. Her e-mails, decorated with smiley faces, suggest to members: "If you could just give a click on something on each page." She owns some of the parked pages, so she gets a share of the revenue when ads on them are clicked. She claims her take amounts to only about $60 a month, noting that if she made more than $85, the government would reduce her $601 monthly disability check.

In August, Google cut off a domain parking firm that hosted some of Ballard's sites. Showing her resilience, she moved the sites to other domain parkers, although none of those currently distributes Google ads. "Google would prefer you not to send out ads on paid e-mails, because they get too much crappy traffic," she says in a phone interview. She realizes that advertisers would get angry "if they knew we were just sitting here, clicking and not interested" in their wares. But, she adds, "They haven't figured that out yet."

Despite these views, Ballard says she doesn't think she's doing anything improper, let alone illegal. While investigations of some Internet criminals have revealed evidence of click fraud, the activity itself hasn't been the subject of prosecution. Ballard says Owl-Post is "like a huge family" whose members sometimes help out colleagues in financial distress. She says the network includes people who have low incomes and are desperate to earn cash to pay their bills. "A lot of people would be hurt if [the PTR business] crashed," she says.

Google's Ghosemajumder says any operation inviting people to click on ads is encouraging fraud, but he expresses skepticism about the overall scale of PTR activity: "People have a great tendency to exaggerate when they say they can attack Google's service."

Networks of human clickers aren't the only source of fake Web traffic. Scores of automated clicking programs, known as clickbots, are available to be downloaded from the Internet and claim to provide protection against detection. "The primary use is to cheat advertising companies," says Anatoly Smelkov, creator of Clicking Agent, a clickbot he says he has sold to some 5,000 customers worldwide.

The brazen 32-year-old Russian software developer lives in the city of Novosibirsk in western Siberia and says he received a physics degree from the state university there. A fan of the British physicist and author Stephen W. Hawking, Smelkov says Clicking Agent is a sideline that generates about $10,000 a year for him; he also writes software for video sharing and other purposes.

Clickbots are popular among online cheats because they disguise a PC's unique numerical identification, or IP address, and can space clicks minutes apart to make them less conspicuous. Smelkov shrugs off his role in facilitating deception. He points out that the first four letters of the name of his company, LoteSoft Co., stand for "living on the edge." Teasing, he asks: "You aren't going to send the FBI to me, are you?"

Google and Yahoo say they can identify automated click fraud and discount advertisers' bills accordingly. Jianhui Shi, a Smelkov customer who goes by the name Johnny, says that for this very reason he steers away from Google and Yahoo ads. An unemployed resident of the booming southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, Jianhui says he has used Clicking Agent to click all sorts of ads on sites he controls, making about $20,000 a year from this activity. While he doesn't click on Google and Yahoo ads, he says that more skilled Chinese programmers modify Clicking Agent to outwit the American search engines. "Many in China use this tool to make money," he wrote in an e-mail to BusinessWeek.

Back at the bare-bones MostChoice offices in north Atlanta, Marty Fleischmann continues to demand recompense. He says he has received refunds from Google and Yahoo totaling only about $35,000 out of the $100,000 he feels he is owed. In one exchange, MostChoice e-mailed Google to point out 316 clicks it received in June from ZapMeta.com, a little-known search site. MostChoice paid an average of $4.56 a click, or roughly $1,500 for the batch. Only one converted into a customer. Google initially responded that "after a thorough manual review" some bad clicks were filtered out before MostChoice was charged. Refund request: denied.

But as clicks from ZapMeta kept arriving, Fleischmann demanded in an Aug. 7 e-mail to Google: "You should be trusting us and doing something about [ZapMeta] as a partner, instead of finding more ways to refute our data or requests." (BusinessWeek's e-mail to ZapMeta's site and its registered owner, Kevin H. Nguyen, elicited no response.)

Finally, on Aug. 8, Google admitted that clicks from ZapMeta "seem to be coming through sophisticated means." A Google employee who identified himself only as "Jason" added in an e-mail: "We are working with our engineers to prevent these clicks from continuing." MostChoice received a $2,527.93 refund that included reimbursement for suspect clicks from an additional site as well.

Google says it has refunded MostChoice for all invalid clicks and won't charge for any additional ZapMeta clicks until the situation is resolved. But Google also says it doesn't believe ZapMeta has done anything improper. As of late September, ZapMeta continued to carry ads that had been recycled from Google, although not MostChoice ads.

Randall S. Hansen, a professor of marketing at Stetson University in Deland, Fla., sees a larger lesson in tales of this sort. "We are just beginning to see more and more mainstream advertisers make the Internet a bigger part of their ad budget, and move dollars from print and TV," says Hansen, who has held marketing jobs at The New Yorker and People magazines. "But if we can't fix this click-fraud problem, then it is going to scare away the further development of the Internet as an advertising medium. If there is an undercurrent of fraud, then why should a large advertiser be losing $1 million, or maybe not know how much it is losing?"

Written on September 25th 2006 by Editor of Adotas.com

Just in time for Advertising Week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers have released the figures for internet advertising revenues covering Q2 and the first six months of 2006.

Revenues for those first six months reached a record high of approximately $7.9 billion, while the second quarter of 2006 alone totaled nearly $4.1 billion, a 5.5% increase over the first quarter and a 36% increase over the same period in 2005.

“The latest results reaffirm the Internet’s growing importance for marketers to integrate online advertising into their overall media plans,” said David Silverman, Partner, Entertainment & Media Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Within the results, Search Advertising led the pack of various ad formats in terms of key revenue data breakouts, with Display Related following close behind, and Classifieds coming in third. CPM continued its reign as the preferred pricing model for buyers and sellers.

“While search advertising remains the largest format in terms of revenues, we expect to see new formats like video ads to continue to emerge as advertisers seek to leverage the branding opportunities afforded by the growing installed base of broadband users,” Silverman added.

Greg Stuart, CEO of the IAB, continued, “Interactive delivers an arsenal of options for advertisers no matter their marketing and business objectives,” and as a result, “continues to solidify its position as a mainstream medium.”

Source: http://www.adotas.com

By Jack Aaronson | September 22, 2006

So many people have gone back and forth about the "perfect" shopping cart. Do I know what the perfect shopping cart is? No. But I do know what some of the problems with a typical cart are and how to fix them. When SkyMall hired us to redesign its Web site, we had a golden opportunity to put some of these ideas into practice.

SkyMall produces the catalogs you find on airplanes that sell all the cool gadgets (not the duty-free catalogs selling perfume, the other one!). Its site is a major component of its business. Because its products are hip and innovative, the company wanted its site to be, too. In future columns, I'll discuss some of the other features we put into the site, but let's focus today on the shopping cart and checkout path.

The Existing Problem

One of my pet peeves about the typical shopping cart and checkout path is the way in which the user is guided down a singular path and taken away from the regular Web site. Typically, users enter products into the shopping cart. Once they click the checkout button, they see only the checkout path. It's usually difficult to get back to the site and impossible to alter the order itself once inside the checkout process.

This leads to many problems. The first is users can't easily add new products to the cart. In worst-case scenarios, they must physically close their browsers (or enter the base URL on the address line) to get back into the site. This obviously leads to many abandoned shopping carts.

Another problem that plagues the checkout process is the notion that all decisions are final once you're off the shopping cart page. What if, in the middle of filling out your shipping information or while you're entering credit card information, you decide you don't want one of the products in your cart? Or you decide you want an item from your wish list (maybe the added product justifies the order's shipping costs)? In most checkout paths, you can't easily go back and make alterations like that.

A Better Cart and Checkout

The checkout process we designed for SkyMall solves these problems. First, we don't remove the main site navigation like most sites do, so the user can easily continue shopping at any time.

Then, once users click "Proceed to Checkout" from the shopping cart page, something new happens. The left-hand side of the screen shows the first step of the checkout process, while the right-hand side of the screen shows the cart and the wish list.

The cart is completely editable. Users can change quantities, remove products, or move them to the wish list. If a product is customizable (such as an address plaque), users can change the customizable parameters. The wish list is there, too, and users can freely add items to the wish list at any point in the checkout process.

The split screen between the cart and the checkout process remains up until the thank-you page. Because users can interact with the cart during the checkout process, they can adjust orders, see how changing individual shipping options affects the total order price, and change all the customizable features of a product, all without leaving the checkout process.

The Results

The results are exactly what you'd expect. Average order size is up, as people find it easier to add products from their wish lists during the checkout (this makes the wish list a catalyst for impulse purchases). The cart abandonment rate has dropped because people can easily reduce their orders (and check out part of their carts) and put products in their wish lists during the checkout process. Finally, customer satisfaction has increased. People are very excited at how interactive the process is and how easy it is to use.

The Best Cart?

I think it takes a lot of hubris for someone to claim he has the best of anything, especially as the industry evolves on a daily basis. What I will say is this new hybrid of the cart and checkout process solves many of the problems that plague the current checkout process. Once we get more data on how people are using it, I'm sure it will go through another evolution. But for now, it's performing scores better than a typical checkout process does.

Try it out at the new SkyMall, (http://www.skymall.com) and let me know what you think.

Until next time...

Jack

By Jeanne Jennings | August 28, 2006

Great e-mail marketing doesn't involve e-mail alone. Usually, it also encompasses the Web pages people land on when they click through from the message to follow the call to action. You can get a great open rate and a very impressive CTR (define), but if the landing page doesn't carry the reader through to the goal, it's pointless.

Here are some tips for creating more effective landing pages.

Don't Just Send Them to Your Home Page

Yes, this is what's easiest to do. But in most instances, it's not best. Especially when the product or service you're promoting in the e-mail doesn't appear on the home page (I've seen it done). Don't make people search for what you've told them is there. Take them straight to it.

Don't Be Redundant

We've all seen landing pages that tell you exactly what the e-mail told you -- no more, no less. Why land readers there and make them click through to the next step? Send them to the next step directly from the e-mail.

Match Your Landing Page to Your Call to Action

A good e-mail engages readers by telling them about something, then setting an expectation for what they'll find when they click through. If you're promoting a new product with a link to "learn more," readers expect to land on a page with more information. If it's "order now," they expect to land on a page to begin the order process. If it's "read the full article," they expect to land on a page with the full article. Be sure you deliver on the call -to -action's promise.

Another note on calls to action: It's fine to include multiple calls to action in an e-mail. With clients I often place "learn more" right next to "order now" to see if we provide readers with enough information in the message to go directly to the order form. Just be sure all calls to action lead down a path to the end goal. There's no need to send readers to an "About Us" page if there's no direct link there they can order from.

Use a Look and Feel That's Consistent With the E-Mail

Test this to see if it lifts response; sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But consistency rarely depresses response and it creates a seamless experience, so I strongly recommend it. Something as simple as having the same image on the landing page and in the e-mail quickly lets readers know they're in the right place. Repeating the benefit-oriented headline is another way to do this. You want the e-mail to flow naturally to the landing page, so there's no disconnect for the reader.

Define a Clear Path

I like to think of the e-mail message as a starting point. Each landing page toward the end goal is a stepping stone. You need enough pages to make your case, but not so many that readers abandon the path before they reach the end. The more streamlined you can make it, the better. But be sure you have a route in mind. If you aren't clear on what readers should do, how can they be?

Minimize Distractions

Once you've set your path, don't distract visitors with other things. Question why every piece of information is on each page, and remove information that doesn't help readers reach the end goal. This is especially true of links that take readers to third-party Web sites, but it's also true of links to other pages within your own site.

Use Daughter Windows for Ancillary Information

Sometimes you need to include ancillary information to make a case. If so, have it open in a daughter window (define), especially if it takes readers to a third-party site or off the path to the end goal. This way they'll get the information without losing their way.

It's easy to read these tips and agree; it's much harder to implement them. But it's worth the effort. Practicing a little tough love with your landing pages is a quick way to increase the effectiveness of your e-mail marketing. with the e-mail, you should continually test and work toward lifts in response. Give it a try, and let us know how it goes.

Best,

Jeanne

By Karen Gedney | July 26, 2006

At e-mail marketing training sessions I conduct, I notice a lot of people still write e-mail on the fly rather than plan strategic e-mail campaigns. Why?

Because they can. E-mail broadcasting is cheap. There's no need for a lot of advance planning, as there is when you must build in a printing and letter shop schedule. The downside is such e-mail is relegated to a tactical, last-minute tool rather than a carefully considered communications channel.

With fall campaigns on the horizon, why not take a step back now and plan your e-mail calendar in advance?

Consider the seasonal nature of your prospects' work and personal lives and when they want to read about certain topics. This varies both by industry and by the kind of person you're trying to reach.

Business-to-business (B2B) magazines in your industry probably follow a standard calendar. Analyze a year's worth of issues to see if you can detect a pattern in the kind of articles published at different times of the year. This can clue you in to e-mail readers' interests. Additionally, you may spot ways to synchronize your mailing with the publication's regular features, such as annual buying guides, state-of-the-industry reports, and so on.

Next, review your industry's conference schedule and plan accordingly. If everyone attends an annual conference, for example, it's unlikely your promotional e-mail will be read from their BlackBerrys that week. Yet an e-mail a week or two before the conference inviting prospects to visit your company's booth or a post-conference e-mail reporting on the event's highlights could result in high readership.

Then take a look at a regular calendar to see when major holidays occur. Consider what's going on in prospects' minds a week before and after these holidays. If they're busy trying to get all their work done before the holiday or to catch up afterwards, your e-mail will probably go unnoticed.

Get your hands on a school schedule for areas in which you broadcast your e-mail. Factor in back-to-school dates, which can vary greatly by region, falling anywhere from early August to mid-September. Then, there are Christmas, midwinter, and spring recesses. As a working parent who deals with the NYC Board of Education school calendar, I've found the month of June is full of days off; clerical half-days, test-marking days, and the totally over-the-top (in my mind) "Brooklyn Day!" Though most working parents don't take all these days off with their kids, they're usually contending with out-of-the-ordinary childcare arrangements that often drive them to distraction.

Finally, consider the seasons and what they signal to your audience:

January can be a month of new beginnings or the start of a hellish tax season for accountants.

In February, you can offer a "sweetheart of a deal."

Certain months are more business-focused than others: February/March, May/June, and mid-October through mid-November.

Slow summer months can be times when your readers ignore their inbox or catch up on their reading.Every industry's calendar is different, so be sure to track e-mail responses over time to detect seasonal readership patterns.

Consider Industry Buying Cycles
Does your industry do most of its buying at a certain tradeshow or conference? Do purchasers delay major purchases until certain company financial statements or national economic indicators are released? Is there a yearend spending spree as managers try to spend their budgets?

In my own copywriting business, there's usually a deluge of new projects from January through mid-June. Then it resumes right after July 4 until mid-August vacation. It picks up again right before Labor Day, though sometimes there are lulls that can last until early October, depending on when the Jewish holidays fall. After that, it's full-tilt until January 1, when it starts all over again.

Create a Calendar
Now that you have all the blackout dates and key selling periods on your calendar, plan an e-mail campaign calendar.

Consider all the steps necessary to bring prospects through the sales pipeline from initial awareness to lead generation, sales, and, finally, retention. Then, create a timeline of e-mail marketing messages. In the conference industry, which has a short promotion cycle, a typical e-mail calendar can look like this:

Pre-event survey: To learn top audience concerns for the year

Save-the-date e-mail: To alert prospects to put the event on their calendars

Content e-mail: To promote the release of the event's new agenda

Early bird e-mail: To notify prospective attendees of a savings deadline for advance registrations (usually, as many as two thirds of registrations occur before this deadline)

Keynote speaker announcement: To generate excitement for marquee-name presenters

Final notice e-mail: To encourage fence-sitters to take action

Post-event recap: To keep the momentum for the event going and encourage early sign-ups by enthusiastic attendees
How you plan an e-mail campaign will be as individual as your company, marketing strategy, or product. But you must plan it, so you can seize the opportunities your shortsighted competitors miss.

by Wendy Davis, Thursday, Jun 29, 2006 6:00 AM ET

LEADING INDUSTRY FORECASTER ROBERT COEN Wednesday revised his estimate of U.S. Internet ad spending upward, but was bearish on ad spending overall.

Coen, senior vice president and director of forecasting for Universal McCann, now predicts that Internet spending, excluding search, will surge to $9.705 billion this year, marking a 25 percent increase from 2005. In the first quarter alone, online ad spending grew more than 19 percent from last year, according to Coen. Last December, he projected that online ad spending for the year would total $8.669 billion, representing a growth rate of just 10 percent.

Coen routinely excludes search from his calculations of online ad dollars; the Interactive Advertising Bureau pegs search as representing about 41 percent of online ad revenues.

Some other forecasters have predicted that online ad spending, including search, will total around $20 billion this year. PQ Media Tuesday pegged this year's total online ad spend at $19.96 billion--a 26 percent surge from 2005; TNS Media Intelligence president-CEO Steven Fredericks also recently estimated that overall Web ad spending will amount to around $20 billion. eMarketer forecasts a slightly more conservative $16.7 billion online ad spend for this year.

Overall, Coen predicted ad spending would rise to $286.405 billion, a 5.6 percent increase from last year; last December, he forecast 5.8 percent growth. The more pessimistic outlook stems at least partly from slower-than-expected local growth in the first quarter; newspaper retail ads were down 1 percent the first three months of the year, while spot radio was down 2 percent and Yellow Pages were "flat to down," according to Coen's report. Given the softer local ad market, Coen lowered his local spending forecast 3.1 percent (to $101 billion) from the previously projected 4 percent.

Coen also reported that dot-com brands will increase ad spending to $4.625 billion this year. While that figure marks a 25 percent increase from last year's $3.7 billion, it's still down from a high of $5.597 billion in 2000.

Eighth Consecutive Quarter of Double Digit Online Increases;
Print and Online Newspaper Advertising Up 1.8 Percent;
Real Estate advertising climbs more than 26 percent

Vienna, Va. - Advertising expenditures for newspaper Web sites increased by 34.9 percent to $613 million in the first quarter versus the same period a year ago, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America. Print and online expenditures together totaled $11.1 billion for the first quarter of 2006, a 1.8 percent year-over-year increase. Spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $10.5 billion, up 0.3 percent versus the same period a year earlier led by strong gains in real estate advertising.

“Newspaper publishers are winning on the Web and their efforts to attract visitors, build leading Internet properties and monetize their online investments are being recognized by advertisers and consumers – as shown by a full two years worth of outstanding consecutive gains,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “Meanwhile, newspaper print advertising continues to hold its own in the face of overall ad softness, reflecting our industry’s ongoing dialogue with the advertising community to demonstrate the enduring value of newspapers’ reach and engagement with consumer audiences.”

Among the print categories, classified advertising was up 4.7 percent to $3.8 billion, retail ad spending was down slightly by 1.0 percent to $4.8 billion, and national advertising was down by 4.8 percent, coming in at $1.7 billion.

Within the print classified category, real estate advertising climbed 26.3 percent to 1.1 billion; recruitment advertising increased 2.4 percent to $1.1 billion. Automotive was down 14.5 percent to $940 million. All other classifieds were up 11.9 percent to $702 million.

“Real estate was particularly strong in what is otherwise a seasonally soft quarter for print, as newspapers continue to demonstrate local market leadership to advertisers,” said James Conaghan, NAA Vice President of Business Analysis & Research. “Internet revenues are consistent with our expectations of continued, strong double-digit growth; at roughly 5.5% of total newspaper advertising revenues for the quarter are beginning to gain more critical mass.”

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $55 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Most NAA members are daily newspapers, accounting for 87 percent of the U.S. daily circulation. Headquartered in Tysons Corner (Vienna, Va.), the Association focuses on six key strategic priorities that affect the newspaper industry collectively: marketing, public policy, diversity, industry development, newspaper operations and readership.

Information about NAA and the industry also may be found at www.naa.org.

Source: NAA.org

APRIL 25, 2006

The final numbers are in for 2005, and they are good, very good.

Many agencies and leading researchers, eMarketer included, consider the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) numbers to be the benchmarks for Internet advertising. The latest data show that online advertising is doing better than ever.

According to the latest figures from IAB and PwC, total online advertising revenues in the US came to $12.5 billion for 2005, a new annual record and exceeding the 2004 total by 30%.

In the fourth quarter alone online advertising revenues totaled a record $3.6 billion, representing a 34% increase over same period in 2004.

Is the news too good? Is growth like this just froth, a sign of another bubble? IAB and PwC do not think so.

"Interactive Advertising continues to experience tremendous growth as marketers experience its overall effectiveness in building brands and delivering online and offline sales," said Greg Stuart, IAB CEO. "We are confident that this growth trend will continue as more marketers find Interactive to be an imperative and additional platforms including broadband video, gaming, iPTV and others continue to emerge as real opportunities."

"Continued strong growth in online advertising documents that an increasing number of advertisers and marketers see the Internet is an essential brand-building component in their media planning," added Peter Petrusky of PwC. "The Internet delivers the right audience at the right time — a winning combination for all types of marketers. We expect to see continued growth in Internet advertising spend."

Search continued its dominance in 2005, accounting for 41% of all online advertising, up from 39% in 2004.

Not surprisingly, CPM, or charging per impression, was the leading pricing model, accounting for 46% of the total, up from 42% last year.

For the latest on online advertising tactics and techniques, read the eMarketer report, Online Ad Targeting: Engaging the Audience.

Source: EMarketer.com

by Wendy Davis, Friday, Apr 21, 2006 6:00 AM EST

POSTING A THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR of gains, the Internet accounted for 5 percent of all ad revenue last year, up from 4 percent in 2004, according to a new report released Thursday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For the year, online ad revenue surged to $12.5 billion, marking a 30 percent gain over $9.6 billion in 2004, and an increase of more than 70 percent from $7.3 billion in 2003. Revenue more than doubled from the $6 billion generated in 2002--the depths of the dot-com bust.
Greg Stuart, CEO of the IAB, attributed the surge to a combination of consumers spending more time online and the availability of precise campaign metrics. "If you're going to spend $10 million, are you going to spend it in a medium where you know what's going on, or where you're just not clear where it's going?" he asked rhetorically.

Additionally, said Stuart, online marketing has proven resilient despite a host of perceived problems, including unpopular pop-up ads and the prevalence of often unwelcome adware. "Internet advertising has pretty much overcome every negative that's been thrown its way," he said.

Paid search last year accounted for the single largest chunk of online revenue: $5.1 billion, or 41 percent of online revenue, compared to 40 percent in 2004. Display ads, combined with display-related ads--rich media, sponsorships, and slotting fees--surged to $4.3 billion for the year, or 34 percent of the total, but this proportion was down from 2004, when such ads accounted for 39 percent of online revenue.

Revenue from Web classifieds came to $2.1 billion for the year, which marked 17 percent of total online ad revenue, compared to 18 percent last year.

As was the case in 2003 and 2004, the second half of the year proved stronger than the first half. Ad revenue in the third and fourth quarter last year accounted for $6.8 billion, or 54 percent of the total. In 2004, the second half of the year contributed 52 percent of the entire year's revenue; in 2003, the last six months of the year accounted for 55 percent of the yearly total.

Most spending--$6.4 billion, or 51 percent--came from consumer advertisers, including retailers, car manufacturers, and travel and hotel suppliers; in 2004, consumer advertisers were responsible for 49 percent of online ad dollars. Financial services marketers accounted for $1.5 billion, or 12 percent, compared to 17 percent in 2004. Computer marketers spent $1.6 billion, representing 13 percent of the total; in 2004 such advertisers were responsible for 18 percent of online ad revenues. Telecom companies increased their ad spending to $800 million, or 7 percent of the total, up from 4 percent in 2004.

Source: Mediapost.com

APRIL 19, 2006

Good news! A pair of new reports indicate that online advertising continued to grow in the first quarter of 2006.

According to new Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance tracking data, marketers bought 185 billion display ad impressions in the month of March. That is nearly twice as many as the 97 billion that were bought in March 2005 and 31% more than February's 141 billion.

Confirming this trend, the results of a survey from Deutsche Bank and MediaPost, and conducted by InsightExpress, found that, of the media executives interviewed for the survey, 72% said their clients spent more on Internet advertising in the first quarter — and 41 % of them saw increases of more than 10%. Only 6% reported a spending decline, while 18% saw no change in spending.

The survey showed that online ad prices are rising, too.

A majority of responents to the survey (55%) said that the cost-per-thousand impressions for premium inventory was more in 2006, and 15% reported increases higher than 10%. Half the respondents also said pricing for run-of-network inventory had increased, with 9% reporting price increases of more than 10%.

The unsurprising conclusion? Advertisers are spending more on online ads — and online ads are costing more.

Source: Emarketer.com

Marketers use a wide variety of techniques to improve response in their retention and acquisition email programs, with varying results, according to a MarketingProfs survey, the results of which are analyzed by Return Path, which also offers recommendations. Among respondents who measure their campaigns, 40 percent say email earns the highest ROI, followed by search (28 percent) and direct mail (18 percent). Revenue per campaign is the most-utilized email-marketing success metric, used by 39.8 percent; file size is a close second with 38.3 percent keeping tabs; and revenue per email third at 25.8 percent. Some 35 percent do not set clear success metrics.

Some 50-70 percent of respondents say they manipulate various response elements in every email campaign, primarily the offer, the call to action, and the subject line; however, 5-40 percent do not at all adjust the various elements.

Some 50 percent of respondents segment their email file to boost response, saying they do so consistently and reporting that segments based on purchase/response drive the highest success; demographic targeting is used by 70 percent of that half, with mixed results.

Only 35 percent of respondents use email as part of a multi-channel effort, and 60 percent of those consider the impact of multiple channels with every campaign; the most common efforts were combinations of direct (post office) mail and offline events combined with email.

The 2005 Email Marketing Survey was conducted by MarketingProfs in November 2005 and includes responses from 1,033 marketers, 68 percent of them in the US or Canada. About 73 percent of respondents are corporate marketers. Roughly 50 percent are B2B, 23 percent are B2C, another 19 percent market to both.

Source: Marketingprofs.com

by Wendy Davis, Thursday, Mar 9, 2006 6:00 AM EST

PUBLISHERS ANTICIPATE THAT TRADITIONAL BRAND marketers will substantially increase their Web advertising this year, according to a new study by AOL's Advertising.com unit.

"While Web-based direct-response advertisers are expected to represent the majority of online revenue, publishers are predicting increased spending from traditional, brand-focused advertisers," stated the report, "2006 Interactive Publisher Survey." The study was based on a January survey of online publishers in Advertising.com's network.

The respondents predicted that about 32 percent of revenue this year would come from offline companies--up from 26.5 percent last year and 22 percent in 2004. Spending is expected to increase across a variety of categories, including retail, consumer packaged goods, entertainment, and automotive.

Advertising.com also reported that more publishers this year will support contextual links, rich media, and streaming video than in the past. Sixty-seven percent of respondents say they support contextual links--up from around 50 percent last year--while more than 76 percent of publishers support rich media, up from 69 percent last year.

More than one in three publishers--35 percent--now supports video, compared to 25 percent last year. But, at the same time, more than 43 percent of publishers have streaming content--which has led Advertising.com to conclude that some publishers aren't yet monetizing their streaming content with ads.

Of the publishers that support video ads, almost all--86 percent--run in-banner video. The majority of publishers also supported pre-roll and post-roll ads, while about half supported interstitials.

Source: Mediapost.com

By Chris Sherman | March 8, 2006

A new study says that though a majority of shoppers use the Internet to research products, nearly half still prefer to make their purchases through bricks-and-mortar retailers.

The "Post-Holiday Online Shopping Study," sponsored by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch, finds 47 percent of Internet users who reported researching products online during the 2005 holiday season bought those products at a physical store, by phone, or through some other offline channel.

It's not that shoppers are uncomfortable using the Internet. Fully 63 percent of respondents said they researched products at online merchant sites, and 62 percent of Internet shoppers used general search engines (such as Google and Yahoo!) to research products online.

Despite these comparatively high figures, search marketers who rely entirely on online campaigns and don't track offline conversions are likely leaving money on the table. The study concludes that lacking a mechanism to fully measure and track offline conversion, search marketers must "otherwise cede as much as half their online ROI (according to this finding), and possible future budget dollars, to other marketing channels," according to the study's press release.

Put otherwise, search marketers who don't track offline conversions may be underbudgeting their efforts by as much as half as they don't capture an accurate ROI measure related to their search marketing spend.

In addition to this finding, the study also reveals the shopping and comparison search verticals aren't nearly as popular as general-purpose search engines for product research. Just 26 percent of respondents said they used a comparison shopping service during the holiday season.

This poses an interesting question for search marketers who dedicate significant resources to these specialized shopping services. Though most comparison shopping services offer reasonably good relative values in terms of CPC (define) or other search advertising spend, they may not be as good absolute values as general-purpose search engines.

Bottom line: if you do search marketing and don't carefully measure and analyze important metrics such as ROI, cost per acquisition and offline conversion rates, you may be misallocating resources and missing significant opportunities.

The report concludes:

This finding serves as a wake-up call to all search engine marketers who do not have systems in place to identify the volume of offline conversions generated by their efforts and their budget. Search marketers must put such systems in place so that higher ROI can be attributed to their search marketing efforts, and so that as a result, more budget dollars can be devoted to their future search marketing campaigns.

Source: Clickz.com

Internet advertising revenue exceeded $12.5 billion last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates.
March 1, 2006: 12:10 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Internet advertising revenue spiked 30 percent to set a new record in 2005, according to estimates released by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Wednesday.

Online ad sales likely topped $12.5 billion last year, compared to $9.6 billion in 2004, the accounting firm said.

Web advertising has grown at a rapid clip, contributing to the growth of several Internet firms. Tech bellwether Google (Research), for example, relies heavily on search-based advertisements to generate revenue.

But there have been concerns recently that click fraud, an illegal practice that fabricates increased traffic for ads and links, may deter companies from advertising online. (Full story.)

The PricewaterhouseCoopers report, however, suggests demand for Internet advertising remains strong.

"With the increase in broadband penetration further enhancing how messages get delivered, we should continue to see a favorable environment for increased Internet ad spending," David Silverman, a partner at the financial services firm, said in a statement.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers study was based on data from the top 15 Internet ad sellers and sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The report's final results are expected to be released in April.

Source: CNNmoney.com

ClickZ News

By Enid Burns | February 28, 2006

Sixty-two percent of Internet users who researched products online during the holiday season used a search engine to do so, and nearly half (47 percent) of researchers ended up buying offline. That's according to a report released by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch, which points to marketers' need to track the results of search marketing at the retail level.

If marketers' don't account for these offline conversions, they're unable to determine the effectiveness of their search spend and can't budget accordingly.

"It's the minority of companies that are tracking offline conversions," said Rob Murray, president of iProspect. "It dramatically impacts the amount of money people budget for these campaigns."

Although the researchers couldn't quantify how many marketers track offline conversions, they noted that it's rare for an offline retailer to ask shoppers if they used a search engine for research. Offering a discount online that could be redeemed in-store is also infrequently used as a tracking method.

Search engines were one of the most popular destinations for Internet users doing online research. Sixty-two percent search on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. Only merchant sites were more popular, with 63 percent using them. Manufacturer sites only saw 30 percent of researchers.

Interestingly, the study found that 26 percent of Internet users visit shopping-specific engines, such as Froogle, to research products.

"I think we will continue to see a verticalization of search. At the end of the day users want relevant, fast results," said Murray. "The adoption rate will be dictated by the quality of results in the shopping portals."

The study, fielded in January, was based on a survey of more than 1700 people randomly selected from the Ipsos U.S. consumer panel.

FEBRUARY 24, 2006

A new report released by comScore Networks reveals that auto insurance quotes submitted to online direct insurers increased by 23% in 2005 compared with the previous year, and actual policy purchases jumped by 29% during the same time.

The firm also reported that the average abandonment rate (the proportion of people who did not complete a transaction) at auto insurer and insurance aggregator sites dropped from 51% in 2004 to 44% in 2005. Ease of use, visual upgrades and overall better navigability of sites are the overall major factors contributing to the decrease from 2004.

comScore also noted that newer innovations such as VoIP and online chat have served to minimize customer frustration and reduce abandonment rates. Agent insurer sites experienced a strong benefit. They saw a 75% increase in submitted quotes and 42% more policies were purchased at these sites in 2005 compared with the prior year. Direct insurers remain the largest insurer segment, with a 61% market share of online quotes.



The auto insurance sector has been slow to find its footing online, but grew faster in 2005 than any other financial services category," said Nicolas Tabbal, vice president of comScore's Financial Services division. "Purchasing insurance online is more involved than other financial activities such as paying bills or applying for credit cards. The rapid surge in online auto insurance quotes and purchases in 2005 correlates to a substantial reduction in abandonment rates across insurer and aggregator sites, and confirms consumers' increased comfort in conducting complex financial transactions online."

To read more about the online activity of the automotive industry, read eMarketer's new Automotive Online: Gearing Up for Greater Spending report today.

Source: Emarketer.com

Setting Objectives for Dynamic E-Mail Campaigns
BY Derek Harding | February 23, 2006

Once you establish that you have a platform capable of delivering a dynamic campaign, you must define your objectives.

As I said in my dynamic messaging survival guide, dynamic programs require much more preparation and upfront quality control than traditional campaigns. Dynamic messaging opens up a whole new world of opportunity in which the possibilities are virtually endless. It's easy to get carried away. Yet marketing campaigns must meet and support business objectives. If they don't, they have no value. Clear objectives must be defined and kept in sight throughout the development process. They're a vital sounding board for determining what is and isn't worth implementing. They're the ultimate sanity check that keeps the project on track.

In addition to greater complexity, dynamic campaigns typically last longer than their traditional counterparts. There's a longer lead time and higher setup costs. So though the process for defining objectives for a dynamic program is fairly standard, it's worth spending more time to clearly and concisely define objectives. Time spent now will be rewarded later. Vague objectives can easily lead to a project that gets out of control. As they say, no one plans to fail, they just fail to plan.

I recommend using the commonly accepted "SMART" criteria for objective setting:

Specific. Be precise and detailed about the campaign objectives. Who are you trying to reach? Why are you trying to reach them? What do you expect to gain? Remember, e-mail is a consensual medium. Maintain focus on the value proposition to the recipient as well as to the sender.


Measurable. Define your metrics for success at the outset, including how those metrics will be measured and calculated. Many dynamic campaigns are longer term. Define measurement milestones and plan for regular reevaluations and course corrections.

Though open and click-through rates have been the staple measurements, it may be worth implementing methods to measure true ROI (define) with tracking through to purchase. As well as hard metrics such as ROI, you may wish to measure soft values, such as perception and propensity to buy.


Acceptable. Ensure the objectives and timeframes are acceptable to key stakeholders. With greater setup costs and longer lead time than normal, it's essential to make stakeholders confident of the value of your dynamic program so they'll see it through to completion.


Realistic. Give particular consideration to feasibility, budget, timescale, and complexity. Once messaging goes dynamic, the content quantity, as well as the cost and complexity of managing that content, rise rapidly. It's extremely easy to underestimate the costs, both financial and temporal, of managing that complexity. It's far easier to add complexity than it is to remove it. You're better off starting simple and ramping up than biting off more than you can chew.

Remember, dynamic messaging is no silver bullet. It can be an extremely valuable tool, but it's unlikely to turn a stinker of a product into a top seller. Managing expectations can be critical to a successful outcome.


Time-bound Set achievable timelines. All too often, I see marketers stumble from one "must be done this week" campaign to the next. Dynamic campaigns require more preparation, so they take longer. Everyone must be prepared for this.
A common marketing objective might be to increase repeat purchases. A SMART objective might be to increase repeat purchases among first time $100-plus purchasers by 15 percent within three months through the use of targeted cross-sell opportunities and limited discount offers.

I realize this may read like Project Management 101, but the complexity associated with dynamic campaigns requires this type of approach. The single biggest cause of failure I've seen is underestimating, and failing to manage, the dynamic messaging's complexity. As the project progresses and issues become more complex, a lack of clear objectives can leave different people working in different directions. The result is spiraling costs, missed deadlines, and, often, failure.

Adding more of the rigorous preparation and planning to a media campaign -- the type required by an engineering or software project -- will pay dividends in the long run.

Until next time,

Derek

By Enid Burns | February 23, 2006

Young adults in Europe find online advertising more effective than other channels; like their American youth counterparts. E-mail and instant messaging (IM) are high on the list of activities. A report commissioned by MSN and conducted by Helen Petrie, professor of human computer interaction at the University of York, details the online habits of young people in Europe.

Europeans age 16 to 24 years old use the Web as a social medium. Thirty percent of Web users in this group communicate via e-mail and IM with friends, family and colleagues. E-mail and IM are more heavily used early in the week. Lunchtime and the end-of-day periods account for peak daily usage.

Due to time spent on e-mail, 37 percent of online advertising is viewed by this group on e-mail Web sites such as MSN's Hotmail.

The Internet is viewed as the most favorable channel for advertising by this group, over traditional radio, cinema or magazine advertising. Nineteen percent find online ads the most informative form of advertising. Fifteen percent find it the most relevant when compared to traditional media in terms of "reflecting the advances in creativity in the digital marketing industry in recent years," the report said.

In a statement, MSN EMEA Regional Sales Director Marc Bresseel said, "These results indicate that the online medium is an essential tool in young people's daily lives with which they are highly engaged. Europe has 40 million consumers between the ages of 16 and 24 who are increasingly living a truly digital lifestyle and marketers need to take this into account when planning their advertising campaigns,"

The report recorded the personal communication habits of Internet usage of 16 to 24 year old Internet users on an hourly basis across Europe.

Source: Clickz.com

Out With the Old Media Ad Spending Trends and Still in With the New

FEBRUARY 21, 2006

It has become a leitmotif in the industry to note that ad dollars are moving away from print, radio and television and into the online world. To no one's surprise, a new report underscores this ongoing reality.

The 30-second TV spot is hardly in its death throes and radio and print advertising continue to thrive; yet the online world is becoming the arena of choice for most advertisers. Outsell Inc., an information industry research firm reports that the surge of dollars into the online sector continues to grow. Outsell's ad-spending study, published in January, based on a survey for 625 leading advertisers in the US, reveals that in 2006 respondents plan to spend more than 18% of their ad budget online compared with 16% of their budget in 2006 while cutting back slightly for TV, radio and print:

According to a recent story published in the Boston Globe, Outsell reports that approximately 80 percent of advertisers currently use the Internet, and the adoption rate is expected to grow to 90 percent by 2008.

"Advertisers could care less about the media as long as it works," said Chuck Richard, vice president and lead analyst for Outsell, in an interview with the Boston Globe. "They have a budget and they want to reach people. But these are seismic changes in terms of traditional media being able to maintain their growth rates. Most of the traditional media are public companies under tremendous pressure to increase growth year after year."

As the Boston Globe points out, it is the quantifiable and reduced-risk, pay-per-click model that continues to attract advertisers. What's more, and as a way to address the possible issue of fragmentation, firms such as Google, MSN and Yahoo are extending their brands via distributed video clips, adding user-generated content and into a variety of arenas such as maps and travel. This growing combination of burgeoning online advertising with new forms of distributable content means that the elusive Holy Grail of the 1990s is within reach: sustaining a profitable content-indexing business while aggregating eyeballs.

Source: Emarketer.com