May 16, 2012
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Google’s Penguin Freezing Out Small Business Searches

Source: Google

Being at the top of a Google search results page is a highly sought piece of real estate for many businesses. After all, being listed near the top of the results page on Google can be the difference between gaining new customers and losing them to another company. A recent series of changes released by Google is affecting the way the search engine giant orders their rankings and small business owners have been hit particularly hard by this update.

This most recent set of more than 50 changes, named Penguin, released April 24 changed the Google [GOOG Loading... () ] search algorithm to target over-optimized websites that were stuffed with keywords in an attempt to improve their search rankings. The full list of changes can be found on Google’s blog.

What are the penguin updates?

“Penguin has been primarily focused on discouraging what the industry calls link spam,” Navneet Virk, director of optimization at Roundarch Isobar, said. “In Google’s algorithm, the links were placed with a very high value. In essence, the idea was if a lot of people were linking to a particular site or webpage, then it was considered to be a high-quality page and that impacted the ranking of that page in Google and other search engines.”

Websites, however, began to adapt to this and started to gain an advantage in a number of ways, most of which were frowned upon by Google. That led to the Penguin update.

“The Penguin update targets all the practices that search engine optimizers (SEO) have been doing for the past 10 years, such as getting paid links or spinning content articles and distributing them just to improve their ranking,” Todd Bailey, search engine expert and vice president of marketing at WebiMax. “If you had done a lot of these things, as of the release, you have seen dramatic shuffling of search indexes and drops in ranking.”

How does it affect businesses?

These changes have affected all businesses by changing conventional wisdom and practices of how to boost Google search rankings. However, certain businesses may be feeling the effects more than others simply based on how quickly they can respond to the changes.

“The Google algorithm is now going to try to see if the link structure is natural,” Virk said. “If the linking structure is unnatural with everyone linking using the same word, Google is saying that is spam.”

According to Virk, that will impact all businesses. In particular, big businesses and businesses with a lot of links coming to them will be most affected because they have more links that may be filtered as spam by Google, which will hurt their Google ranking. However, big businesses have deeper pockets and can afford to hire the help needed to react quickly.

Small businesses, however, are often unable to respond to the changes quickly because they lack the ability and funds to immediately change SEO efforts.

“The ones that are really feeling the change are the small businesses who may have hired an SEO vendor and didn’t know what they were doing to improve ranking, but now they are being penalized,” Bailey said. “(These changes are)disrupting any consistency of guidelines and punishing small businesses that lack the resources to respond.”

Lacking the ability to stay on top of changes, small businesses have felt the effects of the Penguin update in an area that they can ill afford to.

“Search engines are mission critical for small businesses that are targeting traffic digitally,” Bailey said. “Google has 66 percent of the market share for the online search industry, so they are the clear leader in online searches. As print goes away and search, mobile and tablets are here to stay, without question it is mission critical for these small businesses to be online.

What can businesses do to respond?

There are a number of ways that small businesses can climb the search listings ladder, according to Bailey. First and foremost, businesses must be sure to re-strategize their SEO strategy around quality content.

“Businesses need to get rid of the philosophy that they need to get as many links and as much content out as there as they can,” Bailey said. “They need to look at a public relations strategy and try to produce quality content by pitching news outlets, doing press releases and guest blogging. The other options are social media campaigns and other multichannel options such as referrals and using CPM advertising.”

Virk recommends businesses stay on top of new changes in SEO by following industry publications. Virk also said that small businesses can stay ahead of the game by focusing on link building, even though it is a time-consuming process for many businesses.

By: David Mielach, TMN

May 10, 2012
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Is Web video advertising really just about Hulu and YouTube?

It’s a Booming $1.8B Sector, But Half of That Ad Revenue Goes to Just Two Publishers

At AOL’s digital upfront in New York recently, CEO Tim Armstrong instructed audience members to check under their seats for a car key. He called the three people who found one to the stage and, Oprah-style, awarded one of them a shiny new Mustang convertible.

Such is the hype that marks the two weeks of online-video presentations from the likes of Hulu, YouTube, Yahoo, AOL and others. But many publishers are finding that building audiences large enough to capture real ad growth is harder than it seems.

There is cause for excitement. Online video “represents the most explosive growth area in the digital space in the next three years,” said David Cohen, chief media officer at Universal McCann. EMarketer predicts that the space will grow more than 40% annually for the next three years, before leveling off to a still-robust 20%.

But booms are never evenly distributed. The online-video market was about $1.8 billion last year, with half of that going to just two players: Hulu (about $300 million) and YouTube (about $600 million), according to Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. Mr. Wieser’s estimate does not include video that plays within banner ads.

“While our figure remains ahead of the television industry, growth outside Hulu and YouTube seems to be far from exploding,” Mr. Wieser said in a recent research note.

Is Web video advertising really just about Hulu and YouTube?

Source: eMarketer, Jan 2012

Note: eMarketer benchmarks its U.S. online ad spending projections against the IAB/PwC data, for which the last full year measured was 2010; includes in-banner, in-stream (such as pre-roll and overlays) and in-text (ads delivered when users mouse-over relevant words); mobile included.

Most of the advertising growth in online video will happen because it steals chunks of the $70 billion spent on TV in the U.S. But simply producing high-quality video doesn’t automatically attract vast sums of TV dollars. Those dollars also want TV-like scale, and not many players have both: mainly YouTube and Hulu.

“I have seen almost no evidence of anyone being able to build a sizable audience for these shows,” said Tod Sacerdoti, CEO of BrightRoll, which operates a video advertising network and an exchange for video ads.

“In the last six years, which is how long we’ve been at this, we have always invested in video, but we’ve struggled to really grow streams on our own platforms,” said Kimberly Lau, VP-business development and partnership relations at Hearst Magazines Digital Media, which just introduced its second YouTube channel under the video giant’s premium-content initiative.

YouTube is where younger people watch video, and its financing for premium content means Hearst gets to experiment and learn relatively risk-free, Ms. Lau said.

But publishers would rather see their own sites accumulate big audiences, which would let them keep complete control as well as all the ad revenue.

“Ultimately, I believe we will be able to do more video streams on our own owned-and-operated sites,” Ms. Lau said. “But the fact is that YouTube has an audience.”

Where YouTube has scale that individual publishers do not, Hulu has a large supply of TV content—making it a comfort zone for marketers and media buyers accustomed to TV advertising.

“Hulu has become a sort of portal to the online-video marketplace for TV buyers,” said John McCarus, senior VP at Digitas.

In March, Hulu had 1.75 billion video-ad impressions, a 39% year-over-year increase, according to ComScore data. Some players saw even more dramatic growth rates, though from much smaller bases. For example, impressions on ESPN sites totaled 563 million an eightfold leap from March 2011, ComScore said.

But video ads on Discovery Communications’ digital sites grew a more modest 9% in March vs. a year before and totaled fewer than 20,000, according to ComScore. (On May 3, Discovery said that it had reached a deal to buy digital-video company Revision3, part of an effort to pump up scale.) And video ads fell year-over-year for a variety of publishers, including Gannett, Turner and Demand Media.

Many publishers have a chicken-and-egg problem as they vie with these challenges: They’re unable or reluctant to sink big investments into video series until they know they can recoup their costs, but brands will be reluctant to move dollars out of TV until digital video has quality content and significant audiences.

“The big win is turning TV dollars into online video, but that’s only going to happen if you can provide the benefits that TV does — and that is scale and quality,” said Ben Winkler, chief digital officer at OMD.

The Wall Street Journal has expanded its reach by distributing beyond its own sites, but it plans to give video more prominence on its properties soon.

“About 60% of our total streams come off our own platform,” said Alisa Bowen, general manager of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “All the growth in the last four months has come off other platforms, including YouTube, Roku, Apple TV, and we’re soon to launch on Xbox — those kinds of environments that are video-centric.”

“We still see tremendous opportunity through our owned and operated properties,” Ms. Bowen said. “There’s been modest growth, but we haven’t seen the kind of gains that we expect to in the next phase.”

Ms. Lau said that advertisers love Hearst’s video content. “So the only thing that keeps us from having a robust sales strategy today is figuring out the scale issue,” she said. “But I would say that we’re going to figure that out in the next year, year and a half.”

It remains to be seen how many publishers can pull that off and how many will largely rely on ad networks or other partners for their video ads — a less profitable future than the splashy digital-upfront pitches suggest.

“Scale plays a huge role in the video space, and it’s hard for publishers to develop it directly,” said Ran Harnevo, senior VP-video at AOL. “Eventually I think we’ll see five to seven publishers that make it independently, much like TV.”

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May 4, 2012
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Yahoo! offers integrated marketing dashboard to SMBs

Yahoo Small Business hopes to grow by offering small businesses an integrated marketing dashboard to manage and expand their digital marketing efforts. The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard, generally available today, provides a consolidated view of a business’s marketing results and reputation.

Tom Byun, general manager, Yahoo Small Business, said the company has almost 10 million small business users of products including Yahoo Finance and mail, as well as “intendeds.” “This is a very proven, long-standing business that’s also highly profitable,” Byun said. “We’re now taking it beyond web hosting to, ‘How can you help me grow my business and manage it day-to-day?’ “

American Express Open is one of the launch sponsors of the management system, which also promotes non-Yahoo marketing platforms like Orange Soda and Constant Contact.

The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard has four components: search engine and directory listings; online reputation management; campaign tracking; and site traffic analysis.

Byun could not confirm that Yahoo Small Business will be placed under the new Commerce division mentioned as part of the restructuring promised by new CEO Scott Thompson, but, with display advertising sales down, the Yahoo Marketing Dashboard could be a solid revenue play.

First, it may convert some of those 10 million potential customers into paying customers for its web hosting and commerce offerings, as well as upgrading users from free to premium versions. Yahoo also gets a lead generation fee for every customer it refers to email firm Constant Contact and digital marketing platform OrangeSoda. To that effect, a recommendation to use OrangeSoda’s search engine marketing services is at the top of the overview page.

The dashboard lets SMBs see whether the company is listed in some 100 sites and directories, including Yelp and Yahoo Local. Anything that doesn’t match what Yahoo has on file is flagged with red.

Online reputation management pulls information from up to 8,000 sources (including Facebook and Twitter), providing a bar chart score for the company’s reputation. The free version also shows the two most recent comments and reviews that have been made.

The dashboard provides tracking for search engine marketing and search engine optimization. SMBs that use Constant Contact or OrangeSoda also can pull those campaigns into the dashboard. Shannon Parker, director of product marketing for Yahoo Small Business, said Yahoo plans to add a few more vendors to the mix.

Website analytics tools let SMBs see key website performance metrics, including Google Analytics results.

The destination also includes news and advice from the recently launched Yahoo Small Business Advisor content site and 24/7 free customer support.

“Having all this information in one dashboard, consolidated and presented in a clear way, makes it easier for the small business owner to see trends,” Parker said.

Users do not need to be customers of Yahoo Web Hosting or Yahoo Merchant Solutions, but those who are can view web traffic metrics for their stores, online orders, revenue and website traffic within the dashboard.

Customers can upgrade to Local Visibility Pro for automatic submission to search engines and directories, as well as Reputation Management Pro.

SMBs represent a lucrative opportunity for web media companies. In August 2011, BIA/ Kelsey said By 2015, SMBs will allocate 70 percent of their marketing budgets to digital/online media, including customer retention business solutions.

Yahoo rival Google also aims to expand its SMB business via YouTube. It recently introduced AdWords for Video, hoping smaller marketers will adopt it as part of the online arsenal. Advertisers are charged only for true impressions, and can use tools to track and monitor engagement with video advertising.

To kickstart usage, Google is offering new AdWords users a $75 ad credit, and it’s published the YouTube Advertiser Playbook with tips for creating and marketing via video.

Google also continued its efforts to spark mobile advertising with the release earlier this month of its Mobile Playbook, backed up by a webcast.

“There’s real pent-up demand that’s now being met, and that’s why you’re seeing a lot of activity, new players and new services,” Byun said.

By Susan Kuchinskas

April 19, 2012
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The Game Changer: Does mobile payment technology spell the end of cash?

Experts: Most people will make purchases via phones by 2020

This device lets users scan credit cards with their phone. Experts say soon we won’t need cards to make payments

(CNN) — Most Internet users and tech experts think cash and credit cards will become things of the past in the next decade as people turn to their mobile phones to make payments, results from a newly released survey suggest.

Nearly two out of three respondents to the survey (65%) told the Pew Internet & American Life Project that they think most people will have fully adopted the “mobile wallet” as their day-to-day means of paying by 2020.

Whether it’s paying for coffee with a mobile app, using more versatile apps such as Google Wallet or doing business using tools such as Square that turn phones into mobile cash registers, the adoption of mobile payments is clearly under way.

In a December report from comScore, 38% of smartphone owners had used their phones to make a purchase of some kind.

That finding jibes with an earlier Pew study in which one-third of smartphone owners had used their phone to do some sort of banking (such as checking their balances or paying bills) and that nearly half (46%) had paid for an app with their phone.

In the survey released Tuesday, 65% of respondents agreed with the following statement:

“By 2020, most people will have embraced and fully adopted the use of smart-device swiping for purchases they make, nearly eliminating the need for cash or credit cards. People will come to trust and rely on personal hardware and software for handling monetary transactions over the Internet and in stores. Cash and credit cards will have mostly disappeared from many of the transactions that occur in advanced countries.”

Survey respondent and Harvard University professor Susan Crawford wrote, “There is nothing more imaginary than a monetary system. The idea that we solemnly hand around printed slips of paper in exchange for food and water shows just how trusting and fond of patterned behavior we human beings are.”

Crawford, an ex-special assistant for technology policy for President Barack Obama, asked, “So why not take the next step? Of course, we’ll move to even more abstract representations of value.”

One-third agreed with an essentially opposite statement, saying there won’t be a major conversion to “all-digital, all-the-time” payments.

Many cited security concerns as the reason.

“The use of a simple string of digits that must be shared with any vendor with whom you transact is really a ludicrously insecure system that can and must change,” said Peter J. McCann, a FutureWei Technologies senior engineer.

Proponents of mobile payments said technology is evolving but that such payments are no less secure than what most people do now.

“It’s basically the same technology as credit cards,” Mung-Ki Woo, the head of mobile for MasterCard Worldwide, told CNN last year. “It’s not better or worse.”

Pew’s report said those who think mobile payments will dominate in the coming years frequently said the boom in smartphone ownership, convenience and security are key factors that make “these systems an obvious choice to replace established modes of payment in day-to-day commerce.”

The survey, conducted with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, was not random but instead asked for the opinions of 1,021 “Internet experts and other Internet users.” Since it sought the opinions of a specific audience, there is no margin of error.

By Doug Gross, CNN

April 5, 2012
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Company Watch: Google looks to grow in China

Google to grow display, mobile ad businesses in China

TAIPEI | Tue Apr 3, 2012 3:29am EDT

(Reuters) – Google Inc will continue to invest in China, where it has a testy relationship with the government, with a focus on growing its fast-growing display and mobile advertising businesses, its Asia chief said on Tuesday.

In a brief telephone interview during a visit to Taiwan, Google’s APAC President Daniel Alegre said the company sees opportunities in connecting China’s businesses with potential overseas customers.

“We’ve never left China,” Alegre said.

“We continue to have operations in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou; we have a thriving engineering centre, our sales infrastructure is something that we continue to grow, and the display, export and mobile opportunities are growing much faster than we had ever predicted.”

Google moved its servers from China to Hong Kong in 2010 after a hacking attack that was widely blamed on China, saying also at the time it was no longer willing to censor search results. The issue became a political strain between the U.S. and China.

Google continues to run operations in China, though relations with the Chinese government remain strained.

Alegre said Google can serve as a platform for the vast number of small and medium enterprises in China to access global consumers.

There are also over 10,000 Chinese registered developers on AdMob, the mobile advertising platform that Google bought in 2009.

Google currently has more than 500 employees in China and it said it plans to keep the number stable at this stage.

Alegre was in Taiwan to break ground on Google $300 million data centre in Taiwan, its third in Asia after Singapore and Hong Kong.

The company expects the Taiwan centre to come online in the second half of 2013.

(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Jonathan Standing)

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March 29, 2012
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Marketing spend is expected to rise, but mainly in digital

Social media marketing spend predicted to nearly triple over five years

Marketers, it seems, are confident that an economic recovery is under way. A February 2012 poll of CMOs conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business found that respondents estimated their marketing budgets would grow 8.1% over the coming 12 months, a sign they were optimistic about the overall state of the US economy.

This was down slightly from August’s more bullish spending expectation, but part of a general upward trend since the end of the recession in 2009.

Much of the growth in marketing spending will be directed to online efforts, spending for which was expected to climb 12.8% over the next year. However, the outlook for ad spending in traditional media was considerably less rosy—the poll found that respondents predicted ad budgets for traditional channels would drop 0.8% during the period. Marketers will continue to flee some forms of old media in favor of digital, no doubt due to the latter’s ability to corner a mass audience while also providing targeting advertising and better analytics.

Social media campaigns, in particular, will see a significant influx of dollars. Marketers said that they planned to allocate 7.4% of their overall budgets to social media in the current year. Survey respondents said they expected that figure to almost triple by 2017 to 19.5%.

However, CMOs see social media as a category that currently exists largely outside of their companies’ overall marketing strategies. About 18% of those polled said social media had not yet been incorporated into broader marketing plans, while only 7% thought social media efforts had been well-integrated into their marketing strategy, with the balance falling somewhere between those two poles.

eMarketer estimates digital ad spending, including paid ads on the internet as well as mobile search and display advertising, will rise 23.3% this year, while traditional budgets other than TV will remain largely stagnant. Social network ad spending in the US is expected to grow 43% during the period.

Corporate subscribers have access to all eMarketer analyst reports, articles, data and more. Join the over 750 companies already benefiting from eMarketer’s approach. Learn more.

Check out eMarketer’s other articles, “CEOs Who Tweet Held in High Regard” and “Mobile Activity Boosts Social Media Growth in Germany.”

March 21, 2012
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Online distribution gives comics new freedom

Stand-up comedians of a certain era knew they had arrived when Johnny Carson invited them to a desk-side seat on “The Tonight Show.” A generation later, the gold standard was getting a solo comedy special on HBO. But in the Internet era, the yardstick for success has been redefined.

Associated Press

A handful of top-tier performers have begun producing stand-up specials on their own, posting them online and selling them directly through their personal Web sites, eliminating the editorial control of broadcasters and the perceived taint of corporate endorsements.

While this straight-to-the-Internet strategy is far from ubiquitous in stand-up, it is already having a profound impact on the comedy landscape, enabling online content providers and individual artists to take more turf from television networks and empowering comedians to be as candid (and as explicit) as they want in their material.

“It’s a very rare thing, where you answer to no one at all as a comedian,” said Aziz Ansari, a stand-up comic and actor who released his first online performance special on Tuesday. “Now you can even put it out the way you want.”

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

The turning point arrived in December, when the comedian Louis C. K. released a stand-up special, “Live at the Beacon Theater,” that was sold only as a $5 download, without electronic copy protection, from his Web site.

Louis C. K., who stars in the FX series “Louie” and has performed in comedy specials on HBO, Showtime and Epix, said that he was seeking minimal outside interference and maximum ease for his audience.

“I don’t have to go, ‘Here’s this product,’ to whatever company,” Louis C. K. said, “and then cringe and shrug and apologize to my fans for whatever words are being removed, whatever ads they’re having to watch, whatever marketing is being lobbed on.”

The experiment worked: produced at a cost of $250,000, “Live at the Beacon Theater” sold more than 220,000 downloads and grossed over $1.1 million — enough for Louis C. K. to give $250,000 in bonuses to his crew and donate a further $280,000 to charities.

Other comedians following Louis C. K.’s online trail say that they have been contemplating Internet-only projects for several months.

Jim Gaffigan, an actor and stand-up comedian, said he began seeking new platforms for his material after a routine he performed about McDonald’s was partly edited out of a 2010 Comedy Central benefit special.

Mr. Gaffigan said he considered many commercial routes, including licensing; selling a new stand-up performance to an online content provider like Netflix, Amazon or YouTube; or making it available free to viewers who watched a block of commercials first.

But Mr. Gaffigan said he was able to turn down unfavorable deals and corporate ties after Louis C. K. upended “the perception of selling something on your Web site as being kind of icky.”

He added: “My manager was like, ‘You’re not going to sell it on your Web site like that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ ”

Instead, Mr. Gaffigan will release his next special — with his McDonald’s routine intact — on April 11 for a $5 fee, with $1 from each sale going to charity.

For the comedians taking their material directly to the Internet, the decision is as much a reflection of a desire to serve online-savvy audiences as it is a lack of other options.

Pay-cable channels like HBO and Showtime, comedians say, are too focused on scripted programming, while on basic cable, Comedy Central offers specials to nearly everyone, with little quality control and licensing deals that are not lucrative.

“I don’t get any money from the specials that air on Comedy Central,” said Mr. Ansari, who also stars on the NBC comedy “Parks and Recreation.” “I haven’t seen any checks from the DVDs, CDs. If I just put it out in a traditional way, I wouldn’t have made any money, so why don’t I do it this way?” Comedy Central said Mr. Ansari had been paid a six-figure advance and continues to receive residuals on his last televised special.

Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s head of original programming and production, said that the number of stand-up specials it shows was “in service to our audience and our business,” and that only “a very rarefied community of comedians” commanded followings large enough to make Internet-only programs viable. Many performers — even those with a large fan base — would still go to Comedy Central for “the marketing muscle that we have and the enormous exposure they get,” he said.

(One case in point is Louis C. K., who released his Grammy Award-winning comedy album, “Hilarious,” on Comedy Central Records.)

By DAVE ITZKOFF

March 15, 2012
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How Many of these 10 Social Media Blunders are you Committing?

Are you driving people away from your social media profiles?

Social media levels the playing field and allows the low budget websites and small business brands the ability to shine in a competitive, large brand-driven web space.

Unfortunately, mistakes are plenteous and they are costing small businesses their reputation. The big brands have millions of dollars to pump into high-priced agencies, but how does a small business owner know if he is actually achieving a high level of success or making critical mistakes with social media?

The first way to know how to do something is to know how NOT to do it. These 10 social media blunders occur quite frequently. Are you guilty of any of them? Can you add any to this list?

1. Too much repetition

If you post a Helen Keller quote one day and you receive a lot of RTs, don’t post it again for at least a month. Too much of a good thing turns into a bad thing.

2. Clustered tweets/posts

Imagine your social media stream is like a conversation. How would you like it if the person to whom you were talking opened his mouth for 10 minutes without shutting up? A “cluster poster” is someone who posts multiple times in a short duration. Space out your posting or you will be labeled a spammer.

3. Unrequited hype

If you post about a super duper, chance-in-a-lifetime deal, your offer better live up to your promise! If not, you will be like the boy who cried wolf. Just because you think your $5 off coupon is the best thing since sliced bread, if your competitors are giving away $20 off, the deal is not that great.

4. Sales overload

An occasional sales pitch is fine, but excess sales “lingo” will land you in the proverbial social media doghouse. I suggest the 90/10 rule—90% content, 10% sales.

5. Too much brand-related content

Avoid excessive chatter about your website or company. Similar to sales overload, brand overload is also annoying even if you are not directly selling in your posts. Add valuable content your audience wants to hear and you will indirectly attract people to your brand.

6. Infrequent posting

One Facebook post a week is not enough to show your audience you want to engage with them. In fact, it can appear that you business lacks the funds to continue your social media campaigns, which portrays a lack of success. Post at least 3-4 times a week on Facebook and several times a day on Twitter. Notice how your audience responds and over time you will find your posting sweet spot.

7. Off-time posting

Simply posting won’t get the job done. If your fans/followers don’t see your post, you will never grow your profiles. The best times to post will be dependent on your audience and the specific time of day. Here are some helpful infographics with data tested by Dan Zarrella, social media scientist.

Image credit: Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) and HubSpot.

8. Not talking back

Most of us hate one-sided conversations, so why do we refuse to talk back to people on social media sites? Whether Twitter, Facebook, or blogging, when a question is asked or you are mentioned, always respond and engage.

9. No sharing

Remember what mom always told you about sharing. Share your fans/followers content. This is one of the unspoken rules of social media because it helps others to recognize you and value your brand for your consideration.

10. Twitter auto DMs

There is an ongoing debate about auto DMs. Personally, I despise them, but other marketers swear by them. If you must send auto direct messages, avoid sales and links to your website or to other social profiles. Besides being tacky, it hedges on “spammy.”

Can you think of any more social media blunders? How many are you guilty of?

Written by Jenna Scaglione in Social Media

March 7, 2012
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China’s Internet alternatives to TV inspire media buyers

Advertisers put more emphasis on weibo sites as the networks gain users

China’s internet population is massive, at 513 million people at the end of 2011, eMarketer estimates. Though growth will taper to the single-digit range by 2013, and the internet won’t reach a majority of the population until 2015, China still has the largest online audience in the world, and it’s only getting bigger.

This growing online population, as well as recent governmental restrictions on broadcast advertising are having an impact on online advertising. As of January 1, 2012, China’s government made it harder for advertisers to buy their favorite time blocks from broadcasters like CCTV. It also ended commercial breaks during dramas and limited the number of entertainment shows local TV stations can air.

These changes have frustrated broadcasters, advertisers and media planners, but digital media owners in China are elated, envisioning more money heading their way, especially from advertising related to growth areas such as microblogging (known in China as “weibo”), online video viewing and smartphone usage.

And while China may not have Facebook—it’s officially banned in the country—its absence hasn’t hurt China’s social networking population, which reached nearly 257 million in 2011. So far, half of internet users have been attracted by local weibo and other domestic social networking sites, with the proportion expected to rise to nearly two-thirds by 2014.

The social network leaders in China are Tencent QZone (with 536 million users), Tencent Weibo (310 million), Sina Weibo (250 million), Renren (137 million) and Kaixin001 (116 million), as reported by social marketing agency We Are Social. Douban, Tencent’s Pengyou, 51.com, Tianji and Jiepang are important vertical social sites.

As advertisers look to spend more this year on mobile marketing and online video ads, social media across these platforms—especially weibo sites—will benefit from the increased marketing efforts. Advertisers will look for ways to promote brands on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo as consumers continue flocking to microblogs, which will pull advertising away from traditional social networking sites like Renren.

The full report, “China Digital Media: Usage and Marketing Trends,” also answers these key questions:

What are the top media usage trends in China?
How is the proliferation of smartphones altering the digital landscape?
How is online ad spending shifting among platforms and formats?

This report is available to eMarketer corporate subscription clients only. Total Access clients, log in and view the Emarketer report now.

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February 29, 2012
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Marketing Trends & Research: What marketers need to know about augmented reality

The years from 2006 to 2008 gave rise to a unique state of mania among brand marketers — a state by which this author was happily seduced. The virtual world, “Second Life,” captured the imaginations of both marketers and consumers alike, but the barriers to entry were high, and the user experience was cumbersome. There is still a place for virtual worlds, but the mania among the marketing community has died down (or should I say, “has come to a screeching halt”).

Another phenomenon has gained popularity in marketing circles — augmented reality (AR). Although the term has been around since the 1990s, marketers began to pick up on the technology circa 2008. A cousin to virtual worlds, AR has proven to fit more neatly into the lives of the everyday consumer, and after years of use by brand marketers, AR appears to be here to stay. As someone who spends a great deal of time studying the cross section of technology and human behavior, I urge you to keep an open mind when considering the potential of AR — 2012 will be a big year.

Have an understanding of how AR works

The typical AR application takes a tremendous amount of computing power. There are different ways to execute AR, some more processor-intensive than others. It is important to understand that there are parallel processes at work no matter what type of execution you are employing — all of which are a drain on today’s average smartphone. Before we go any further, let’s take a look at basic components of traditional AR.

(Sourced from http://www.cescg.org/CESCG-2011/sites/El-ZayatMohamed/.)

First, a camera has to detect a specific shape, image, or object in order to ascertain what is meant be augmented. There are other triggers for AR such as GPS, but for simplicity’s sake, we will deal with computer vision in this article. You may have seen AR executions in which a black and white marker is used; this method is employed because a unique pattern with stark contrast takes less computing power to detect. Older, less powerful smartphones are not capable of detecting more complex, natural features. Markerless AR is growing in popularity, but as one might guess, detecting complex patterns is more difficult than a black and white marker. As you can see in this demo, the first thing the camera is attempting is pattern recognition:

Once an image or object is recognized, a digital overlay is positioned in relationship to what is detected. The complexity of the overlay will determine how hard a processor will have to work. A single core processor is often not powerful enough to get the job done (we will talk about devices and processors in the next section). 3D models with large numbers of polygons (poly-count) make it difficult for an augmentation to render, and often slow down the process, resulting in a poor user experience.

Many of the popular AR applications do not accurately track to the object of origin — tracking is very difficult to do but generally makes the experience much more meaningful. Tracking means when the camera moves, the augmentation moves relative to what it is positioned to, as we saw in the first video. Metaio, an AR software provider, has taken AR tracking to new heights with what they call “gravity-aware” AR. Have a look.

As marketers and advertisers, we aim to create magical experiences that capture the imagination. The more sophisticated the AR execution, the greater chance we have to suspend disbelief and create a sense of awe in the minds of our customers. Early examples of mobile AR were less than magical. Take Yelp’s Monocle for a test drive. Although innovative for its time, the user experience is less than inspiring. As AR becomes part of our everyday lives, the ability to surprise and delight our customers with the mere presence of AR will diminish — but for now, there is still an element of magic in the technology itself.

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