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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Sep. 21, 2007:

Archived blogs for the week of September 17, 2007

1379 - Sep. 19, 2007 - 1.47 PM EST

Targeting the right people in the right markets

On any given day, companies doing advertising for the wireless and mobile industry may be interested in getting their ads on cell phones, but they also want to know that their ads are being seen by their true target markets.

In fact, this method of very personalized advertising is one of the biggest features attracting advertisers to a mobile phone, and more markets than one.

"On average, data about consumers' actual use of mobile Web sites is truly vital to many advertisers. That's why M:Metrics has developed specific technology to audit these websites, so that advertisers can place their ads more appropriately," says Mark Donovan, v.p. with research company M:Metrics.

Recently, M:Metrics utilized its various audit capabilities in researching mobile advertising agency AdMob. Donovan said AdMob serves ads on about two-thousand Web sites. A report on the research shows that about 68 percent of users who view mobile ads are in the desirable 18 to 34 year age group.

M:Metrics' auditing process is done by surveying visitors to those WAP sites. It provides more granular information about those specific visitors, which includes ethnicity and sex.

"Audited information means mobile advertisers can reach their specific and intended target audience with much greater accuracy," said Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob.

Hamoui added "by working with M:Metrics and leveraging our vast network audience across Web sites, we are now enabling advertisers to target their ads in a way that they expect with traditional Internet advertising." Read more...

Posted on Businessblog™

1378 - Sep. 19, 2007 - 7.44 AM EST

Wow, this is unusual!

The co-president of a large New York marketing agency leaves his post to move to Google. I can only wonder the large amount of money AND stock Google has offered him... Read on.

Andy Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy & Mather in New York has left his job at the branding firm to move to Google. Berndt will oversee Google's new global unit that is dedicated to collaborating with search marketers, advertisers and entertainment companies.

Google's new unit is unofficially identified as a "lab for innovation", according to some ad-industry executives familiar with Mr. Berndt's departure from Ogilvy & Mather. Since May 2007, Berndt has been co-president of O & M's New York office, after being promoted from managing director, a post he held since last year.

Berndt, who was just named as an inductee to the AAF Hall of Achievement, has an interesting mix of both creative and account experience. Prior to joining Ogilvy as a copywriter almost ten years ago, he was on the account side, first at Weiden & Kennedy, where he worked on Nike and on Microsoft during its 1995 "Start Me Up" campaign.

Berndt then headed to TBWA, Chiat & Day, where he was the account executive on Apple's "Think Different" campaign. Over the past six to seven months, there's been a lot of speculation whether Google would try to get into the ad agency business.

Google's new global unit isn't being called an agency per se, but a unit offering creative consultation and account services would fit the description. According to some ad industry executives that work closely with Google, the search company has been busy trying to seriously attract more creative talent to the company. Read more...

Posted on Businessblog™

1377 - Sep. 18, 2007 - 11.27 AM EST

Yahoo acquires email provider Zimbra?

Personally, I don't see the value in this transaction. Yahoo is already offering an email service, so why would they acquire a second one? Anyway, read on...

Today, Yahoo announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zimbra, an email and collaboration software provider.

Under the terms of the deal, Yahoo will acquire Zimbra for approximately $350 million in cash. Jerry Yang, Yahoo's CEO said "our industry-leading communications products, including Yahoo Mail, are critical to the future growth and success of Yahoo. Zimbra's good talent and innovative technology will help to extend our core Mail offerings."

"Additionally, Zimbra's successful relationships with large ISPs are key as we expand our worldwide partner network and continue to focus on our commitment to being the partner of choice," added Yang.

Yahoo's acquisition of Zimbra will help the company to expand its presence in universities, businesses and through ISPs by enabling organizations to host email on or off premises with their own domain.

Zimbra's offerings include rich, AJAX-based email, calendar and contact management features that can be used both on and offline.

Their open platform enhances the user experience by enabling creative mash-ups called Zimlets that tie in valuable Web services to email, and can be tailored to fit the needs of every customer.

Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and CEO said "we are excited to combine ourselves with one of the world's most successful Web mail services and extend Yahoo's credible brand and leadership in the email business to universities, businesses and ISPs globally."

He added "with Yahoo's ad and content network, the possibilities for Zimlets and other applications are endless." Yahoo Mail celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2007 and continues to be one of the world's most popular Web mail services with about 250 million users worldwide. Read more here...

Posted on Businessblog™

1376 - Sep. 17, 2007 - 5.47 PM EST

Do you know what transitive advertising is?

Today, we continue our discussion on new advertising models for the Internet and how they can be used in today's Web 2.0. It is becoming clearer that Internet properties which are better prepared to accomodate more interactivity, both for users and advertisers will do better in their specific market niches. Those sites also stand to gain an edge over their competitors and should help them become leaders going forward.

Transitive Advertising for the Web (TAW) offers the advantage of switching older search advertising models into innovative marketing vehicles that are geared more for today's Web 2.0, while at the same time offering advertisers greater flexibility and more control over their Internet marketing campaigns.

It can be said that these new marketing vehicles for Internet advertising actually reverse the relationship between publishers and advertisers, since in older, more classic advertising models the advertiser held most of the control. They decide just how much budget they want to allocate and on which properties they want to apply it.

However, since the advent of Pay-for-Placement (PFP) networks such as Google's AdWords and in some cases Overture has changed this relationship in significant ways, Internet marketers and advertisers may want to study this new phenomenon a bit further.

In Pay-for-Placement (or pay-for-performance as it is sometimes called), advertisers are only paying publishers when their ad actually performs. Many observers and the advertisers themselves are now viewing this as a large shift in itself as far as media concept is concerned.

Google's AdWords programs even goes a step further by actually disaggregating advertisers from Internet publishers.

Using PFP, advertisers are no longer selecting the publisher with whom they are doing business, but are instead selecting the specific keywords and the context in which their ads will appear.

Now, instead of advertisers buying PPC networks on specific publisher sites, they simply release their ads on the Internet on previously-identified servers where they can easily be found or on their own Web sites.

For example, these ads are now filled with information supplied by the advertiser themselves on who exactly they are attempting to target, what kind of market segments they want to be in and of course which ones they expressly forbid (pornographic sites or affiliate portals).

They also determine in advance what percentage of their budget they wish to allocate in that segment for the ad itself, based on a number of previously-set guidelines and according to their own research and in-house data.

After they are finally published, some of these PFP ads can be cut and pasted (similar to a link) into their own sites, on the condition these sites conform to the previously-set guidelines the advertisers dictate in their ads.

The PFP ads then track their own progress, and through RSS feeds or similar technology they have the ability to report back to the advertiser or marketing agency that produced the ad in the first place. Such feeds can report back on who has pasted the ad and into what sites, how many clicks that publisher has delivered and just how much money might be left in the advertiser's account.

Such ads then propagate themselves until they literally run out of money, after which they simply turn themselves off automatically. If the intended ads are working effectively and as planned, and if the ROI generated from them is acceptable to the advertiser, they can then allocate more budget to them and continue with their campaign.

In a way, some call this another form of viral marketing. What's more, it's publisher driven, meaning that it lets publishers decide which ads are appropriate on their sites and which aren't.

Publishers certainly won't place ads on their sites that don't perform, and they'll work harder in placing ads that do. This is good for advertisers, as their downside is protected by PFP. Read more here...

Posted on Businessblog™

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