Gamers coming clean on scam ads: Is contrition enough?
The social gaming lead-gen controversy sparked by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington came to an end this week when OfferPal, the company he singled out for scamming users and advertsers, replaced its CEO and posted a mea culpa for its past and current practices.
Beyond that, Facebook, MySpace and mega gamer Zynga have made moves this week to better regulate gaming offers. Will the move decimate the social gaming industry?
Brand tweets sends twitterers searching
Twitter's traffic may be flatlining at the moment, but Performics and ROI Research have come out with good news for marketers: Twitter users pay attention to brands on the service.
That may seem obvious to anyone who's ever promoted a product on Twitter. But the new study, announced today at Ad:Tech new York by Performics Marketing senior vice president Michael Kahn, also found that almost half of twitterers who have been introduced to a brand on Twitter have subsequently gone on to search for more information about it. If true, that's a big deal.
Nielsen: Search matters for retail, but you can't ignore display
What matters more for online retailers: display advertising or search? It's likely not an either or answer, but it's a question that has been the subject of an ongoing debate in our comments section this week.
I wrote this post after reading an AdAge article that implied search only accounted for 10% of traffic sent to online retail sites. Abby Klaasen wrote:
"Nielsen found the majority of retailers' web traffic (61%, on average) comes from people going directly to a retail site -- consumers typing, say, Amazon.com into a browser address bar."
The idea that only 10% of traffic would be driven by search was new to me, and we asked our readers to weigh in with their own experiences. Many were surprised and confused by Nielsen's numbers (and there is a ton of information in those comments for anyone interested in the subject).
I spoke with Kenneth Cassar, Nielsen's VP of industry insights, to get some clarification. And as always, it turns out that context is key with these numbers.
Ad:Tech: How do you market to cellphone users who don't want marketing?
For marketers working in mobile, talk about cellphones being on the verge of breaking out can feel more than a bit repetitive. At least that's the way Brian Levin of Useful Networks put it at the Location Awareness panel at Ad:Tech today.
"I feel a little like Bill Murray in 'Groundhog's Day.' I was on this panel last year."
Despite all the technological progress and increased user adoption that mobile phones have experience in the past few years, they still occupy only a small percentage of most marketing budgets.
Amid all of the promise held out in the future of mobile, how is the market actually going to break out? The panelists at Ad:Tech's panel on location werein agreement on a few things (besides the Corona's that were served on stage to celebrate impending happy hour).
A lot of it will rely on users self-reporting their data.
Ad:Tech NY: Free doesn't have to be a four letter word
With media companies thinning out their newsrooms, struggling to stem revenue losses and worrying about the plausibility of subsisting on dwindling ad revenue online, there's been a lot of talk over the past few months about charging for content.
The free versus paid debate was at the forefront of discussion on the first day of ad:tech in New York this week. Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, showed his cards early in the day, opening the event with a talk where he put his money with Rupert Murdoch when it comes to making customers pay for media content online:
"In order to make traditional models viable... you have to plumb where people are willing to pay for content."
Sorrell seems bullish on consumers paying varying rates for content of varying quality, and despite predicting a winnowing of content suppliers online, is confident that media brands will need to charge to sustain the quality of their content. It's a theory that found root later in the day as well.
There's a lawyer for that: AT&T sues Verizon over new commercials
Telecom giant AT&T may be more than happy to partner with Apple, who makes fun of its top competitor daily with the now infamous Mac vs. PC ads, but the company is a little thin skinned when it comes to getting mentioned in its competitor's ads.
Today AT&T sued Verizon over the company's "There's a map for that" Droid ads. AT&T is asking for unspecified damages and a temporary restraining order to keep Verizon from running the ads, which say that AT&T customers are "out of touch" in places that do not have 3G capabilities.
Unfortunately for AT&T, the allegations aren't off base.
Nielsen: Display ads send more traffic to retail sites than search
Display advertising is starting to look like the little ad format that could lately. Online advertisers are moving away from click-through rates as a metric for display success, large companies from Google to Yahoo are stepping up their display efforts and now Nielsen has come out with numbers that imply display may be more effective for retailers than search advertising.
According to Nielsen, less than 10% of online retailers' web traffic, on average, comes from search engines. That's good news for display ads. But is it true?
There is now a mobile device dedicated to Twitter. Why?
It may be hard to wrap your head around a device that exists solely to Twitter, but that does not negate its existence.
Starting today, Amazon is selling the TweetPeek. For the low price of $199, you can tweet for life. You may be wondering why you would shell out $200 for a feature that can be easily had on most mobile phones already. Well, that's a good question.
Be afraid cable companies: Apple is at work on an iTunes version of TV Everywhere
For those of you following the saga of authentication, rumors from Apple today may bring a refreshing new twist to the effort to bring cable television content online.
According to sources who spoke to AllThingsD, Apple is trying to talk the networks into streaming their content in the iTunes store and charging users $30 a month. The monthly subscription service would not be tied to any hardware like Apple TV, but deliver televiswion programs through iTunes' multimedia software. The news should shake the cable companies in their boots a little.
Case study: e.l.f. is changing the cosmetics industry, $1 at a time
Through a mix of social media, word of mouth and user generated
content, women around the country have slowly been learning the secret
to buying cheap cosmetics online. It comes in the name e.l.f. The brand
(which stands for Eyes Lips Face) has been selling cosmetics online for
five years at absurdly low price points. For a long time all their
products could be found for $1 each.
Designed by Scott Borba, the man behind Hard Candy and Neutrogena Men, e.l.f. cuts out the marketing budget — and markup — that most cosmetics companies attach to their products. And the results have been astounding. This week, e.l.f. is making a large push into Target stores and online. The company is on track to reach over $20 million in sales this year.
With price points at $1, $3 and $5 an item, that's a lot of lip gloss. How did they do it?
Holiday shopping forecast 2009: a lot like 2008, with more coupons
The NLA explains why it is going after the news aggregators
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
