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.
The Tony Soprano guide to social media
It’s that time of the year: I’m considering watching The Sopranos again from the start. I need a week off, some quality Italian food and no distractions from the goddamned Feds.
This urge was the result of a bunch of Tony Soprano quotes that I stumbled upon and – since it’s a Friday - I wondered if any of them could be applied to social media. Turns out that they can…
The five biggest myths about Google
On the internet, few companies receive more attention than Google. And for good reason: Google touches so many individuals and businesses. From search to its 'side projects', just about everything Google does creates interest.
Google's prominence, not surprisingly, has led to the creation of many myths. Here are my top five.
Is NDA culture hurting developers?
Ars Technica has an interesting post revealing some sordid tales from the world of iPhone development. The tales center on iPhone app developers who claim to have developed apps that they really didn't develop. And they're getting away with it because of an NDA culture that permeates much of the development world.
NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, of course, are those pesky little agreements that you've probably asked been asked to sign a million times if you work in the world of technology. In some markets, just about everyone asks that an NDA be signed for the smallest of things. Sometimes I half expect to be asked to sign an NDA if I ask where the bathroom is when working on-site with a client.
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.
The A-Z of conversion rate optimisation
E-commerce professionals tend to obsess about conversion rates and how to optimise them. Why? Because a tiny increase in conversion rates can generate millions in additional sales for large retailers, so it’s obviously worth throwing resources at ongoing optimisation strategies.
A lot of the basics are obvious. Selling online is about being relevant, removing distractions, and having a clear proposition. It’s about having a competitive price and a trustworthy brand. By testing and experimenting these things you can boost conversion rates.
What else is there? Well, I’ve compiled an A-to-Z of conversion rate optimisation for your viewing pleasure, along with a bunch of links to further reading. Hopefully this will help you to boost sales at your firm.
Amazon makes it easy for its affiliates to tweet
You may not be able to fit a whole lot of words into 140 characters but a growing number of individuals and businesses think that it doesn't take more than 140 characters to produce a profit.
While Twitter focuses on building its platform and brand, plenty of third parties have been focusing on using Twitter as a marketing platform of their own. From established companies like Dell to upstarts like Sponsored Tweets, many are trying to cash in on Twitter.
The domain name industry gets its Bernie Madoff
He may not have run a $50bn ponzi scheme but the domain name industry has found its Bernie Madoff. Yesterday, it was revealed that an employee of SnapNames, a popular domain name drop service and auctioneer, had been bidding on SnapNames domain name auctions, winning valuable domains, inflating auction prices and boosting revenue for the company in the process.
All told, the employee, who was an early member of the SnapNames team and a vice president at the company, is said to have participated in 5% of SnapNames' total auctions between 2005 and 2007 and that the value of his bidding accounted for 1% of SnapNames' revenue during that time.
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.
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
