Tumblr Announces Advertising Package

by Mike Reiber

Last week, for the first time ever, Tumblr, the fast-growing but profitless blogging platform announced an advertising package. So what's the big deal? Why would advertisers eschew Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for a site that doesn't collect much user demographic information?  

The answer lies in Tumblr's growth and the fact that it's more visual than many of its peer sites. Tumblr's unique visits reached 58 million in March of this year up from 26 million a year ago according to comScore. Tumblr contains more than 54 million blogs. The site allows users to easily customize and share their blogs. According to the company, the average Tumblr user creates 14 blogs per month and reblogs three. Half of the posts are photos.  

The company has been dipping its toe in the water on a number of revenue generating initiatives such as allowing designers to sell web page themes to bloggers or allowing bloggers to promote their posts on its dashboard. The new ads will appear on the dashboard and directory pages used to highlight content categories and blogs.  

Our team at Axiom is excited about this development. The enthusiast customers targeted by our home and garden manufacturer clients are avid bloggers. They like to write about and share their experiences on cooking, wine, interior design, gardening, out door entertaining, etc. We believe that this will add yet another arrow to the quiver for innovative marketers who want to break out of the Facebook and YouTube pack.  

Video Boosts Brand Engagement, Study Reports

by Dave Sniadak

We've seen a dramatic shift since 2010 in how advertisers are using video campaigns - online, interactive, and through traditional media buys. Accordingly to an Adap.tv industry survey of 638 agencies, brands, publishers and ad networks, nearly three out of every four advertiser (73%) is setting out to build brand engagement with their video initiatives. This shouldn't come as a surprise to those of us who advise our clients how to utilize video in their marketing and advertising efforts. 

However, what is slightly surprising could be that in the past 24 months, the attitude towards online video has shifted so dramatically from brand awareness to brand engagement. How dramatic? In 2010, only 18% of advertisers saw value in brand engagement with video. In just two years, attitudes have spiked by 55% in favor of engagement. 

The cross-platform integration of video - thanks to the strong saturation of tablets, smart phones, and even smart TVs - allows companies to deliver their message simultaneously on a multitude of mediums. No longer are companies forced to simply buy a flight of cable spots that go out and fall flat. Now, for example, we can buy the cable time on ESPN, while coordinating buys on ESPN.com, and even ESPN's mobile app.

The ability to hammer home a message with video has never been greater than it is right now. However, do advertisers run the risk of over-delivering content to a video soaked consumer base? Fresh content is crucial to ensuring a successful campaign. Keep that in mind as you dial up your next media buy.

How Axiom Does DRTV

by Mike Reiber

Many of our customers strive to develop consideration and preference for their products and services. For them, third party endorsements are critical to adoption of their new products and services not only by end user customers but by their retail trade partners. The question is how to achieve low-cost reach and frequency with the endorsements over a sustained period of time. Increasingly, we're turning to short-form direct response television (DRTV) advertising.

The DRTV rates we're able to negotiate are 35-45 the cost of regular media buys. In many cases, we're able to more than quadruple frequency and reach. The creative in our spots revolve around the third-party endorsements that end user customers seek out when they're researching a major durables purchase. We typically use social media and publicity-based marketing programs to spur these third party endorsements from real customers and/or experts who have fallen in love with our customers' products. Our creative formula always includes a third party endorsement for each key product attribute within the spot. The spot is structured to highlight the product as a solution and always ends with several compelling calls to action (CTA.) All this in 60 seconds or less!

Thinking about DRTV for those product categories without P&Ls to support broadcast media buys? Below are a few questions you should ask your vendors.

1.) How many DRTV ads do they complete each year? Relatively few agencies have a laser focus on DRTV. The skill set is remarkably different from a created brand spot.

2.) Do they have a proven method? Everyone has a method or approach. The question is whether or not they have business results to support their method.

3.) Do they have working relationships with seasoned DRTV creatives and media buying personnel? Most of the time the best professionals aren't on staff with agencies. Because of this, you can save big bucks if you negotiate well.

4.) What are my DRTV economics? These include conversion rate, cost per lead, fulfillment cost, call center cost and return on investment.

ComScore Reveals Online Advertising Growth

by Nick Egner

It’s no surprise that the world of online video is growing. However, this also includes online video  marketing. What? People are actually watching commercials on their computers?

ComScore just released January’s 2012 U.S. online video rankings. It shows that 84% of the U.S. internet audience viewed online video. Guess what? Google sites ranked number one in unique viewers. Shocking. When the report reads “Google sites” they might as well say YouTube. Not only is YouTube number one, but they control 83% of total viewers for the month. That’s 151,989,000 people in the month of January alone! The next closest? The music video property VEVO who snagged 51,499,000 unique viewers. Something interesting about VEVO is that they also run the most popular partner channel within Youtube with a total of 50,563,000 unique viewers. People are clearly watching music videos. You hear that MTV? 

Americans viewed 5.6 billion video ads in January. Hulu is at the top of this list with 1.4 billion ad impressions with 652 million ads viewed. Video ads reached 47% of the total U.S. population! Video ads accounted for 12.2% of all videos viewed and .9% of all minutes spent viewing video. That might not seem like a staggering statistic, but when asked, consumers find on-line video ads to be 38% more memorable than ads on traditional television. Television is still king, but online video ad content is making growth. 

With over 1/2 of the entire U.S. population tuning into on-line video content, it's safe to assume that on-line video advertising will continue to be a lucrative area for marketers. 

How about you? Have you ever watched advertisements online? 

Facebook Friday: New Ad Incentive Program Misses the Point

Facebook introduced an interesting incentive program yesterday to get users to watch more of the site's ads.

Basically, Facebook is giving Facebook Credits to people to watch certain ads, most of which will be through some of the games on the site. Current partners with the incentive program include Zynga, CrowdStar and Digital Chocolate.

While having the Facebook gaming powerhouses backing the program is good, there are two glaring issues Facebook is overlooking.

First off, the incentive for users isn't all that much. Granted, Facebook Credits can be used for real-world purchases through the Facebook Deals platform. However, most ads reportedly only yield one credit, which is equivalent to about 10 cents. I just don't believe that will be enough reason for most users to try this program out.

Secondly, and more importantly, is how advertisers will (or should) feel about paying users to watch their ads. While I'm sure this will boost ad views, there will be little to no effect on the sales of the products in the ad. Users aren't going to care about what the ad is saying, they will only care about amassing Facebook Credits.

The bottom line is I don't think this is good for advertisers, and I don't think it's worth it for users. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if users just click play on the ads and go back to playing Farmville while they reap the benefits of this ill-conceived program.

Coke's Android-vertising

One of the things that I love about Android devices is the Live Wallpaper feature. However, but because my phone doesn't support that particular feature, I'm left to envying those that have those animated wallpapers (playing with the display devices at Best Buy).

Well, now Coke has taken advantage of Android's popular Live Wallpapers by releasing a holiday-themed Live Wallpaper of their own. The wallpaper, like all Live Wallpapers, responds to touch and movement. In this case, if you tilt your phone, it'll send a man in a shopping cart rolling across the screen. Also, if you shake your phone it will start to snow, essentially turning your phone into a snowglobe.

It's a neat idea, mostly because it's fun and well-timed with the holidays. However, I'm not sure we'll see this become a trend with other companies, because Coke has one big advantage over most other companies: cultural icon status. 

What I mean by that is that Coke doesn't just have strong brand awareness and recognition, but that the brand has extended beyond the levels achieved by most companies and has become a cultural symbol. That's why it's nice to see Coke take advantage of their status and venture into this new form of advertising.

What Were They Thinking?

Instead of trying to set the scene about today's blog post, I'll just start with the headline I saw and go from there.

Coca-Cola Pulls Facebook Promotion Amid Porn Complaints.

The Dr. Pepper-focused promotion required Facebook users to allow Dr. Pepper to "hijack" their Facebook status and post a funny or embarrassing message. In return, users received a chance to win $1,000 each week.

Problems arose when a few of the 160,000 people who volunteered their accounts were underage, including a 14-year old girl from England. Again, nothing too inappropriate, but anytime age limits aren't defined you're asking for trouble.

Some messages weren't all that offensive, like the one that read "Lost my special blankie. How will I go sleepies?" Other statuses edged closer away from the line of good taste, like, "Never heard of it described as cute before."

However, the message that Dr. Pepper placed on the 14- year old girl's Facebook wall was, "I watched 2 girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards." For those of you who don't know, 2 girls one cup is a hardcore pornographic film.

Now it's safe to say that a line was crossed. Not surprisingly, the girl's mother wasn't too happy about the status, and her complaints led to Coca-Cola pulling the Dr. Pepper promotion altogether.

This is a great example of not only knowing the target demographic of the promotion, but the target demographic of the medium as well. A status like that might be funny to someone a little older, but the age range of Facebook users extends into that younger demographic.

Some will ask how Dr. Pepper could let that status go unnoticed, while others may ask who was writing such risque status updates. But anytime a big corporation slips up this badly, there's only one thing we can all ask...

What were they thinking?

Grocer Has A Lot At Steak With New Billboard

If you've ever driven on highways through the rural Midwest, then you know that billboards outnumber trees on many of those roads.

There will literally be 20 or 30 billboards in a row at times, to the point where it's impossible to pay attention to any one billboard in particular.

And that's the problem with billboard advertising. It's impact becomes largely subliminal, seeing as how drivers rarely focus heavily on the billboard at all. Not to mention that due to safety concerns, drivers can't look at a billboard for more than 2 seconds or so.

But Bloom Grocery may have solved this vision impairment billboards face, when they recently put up a billboard in North Carolina to promote their new line of beef. The catch is that the billboard actually emits the smell of cooking steak to entice drivers.

The aroma was artificially created and is stored in tanks behind the sign, which is then wafted with industrial fans.

While this will probably disgust vegetarians, I'm sure it will attract more than a few meat-lovers, if only out of curiosity over steak-scented sign. More importantly however, this is a new venture into a largely untapped resource: the power of smell to attract customers.

If this billboard is successful, we could end up seeing many more of these scented billboards spring up across the country.

I just hope my local Waste Management company doesn't decided to go this route.

An Idea for Facebook To Increase Revenue

I don't often think to look for Fan Pages on Facebook. I enjoy getting updates from bands I listen to (some are using the update feature very well) and displaying my support for certain brands or people, but I usually don't actively seek them out. The times I usually "become a fan" are when I notice in my mini-feed that a friend has added a band or group that I also like (maybe the mini-feed wasn't such a bad thing after all?) . A lot of my favorite bands don't have Facebook pages and if they added one, I wouldn't know about it. Here is where an idea Tim and I were talking about comes in.

Facebook should develop a tool that sends users alerts when new pages they might be interested in are created. For example - One of my interests listed is "broomball" (Not sure what broomball is? Check it out here). If a "Broomball" fan page was created, I would be interested in it, so Facebook would notify me of the page's creation ("Hey! A new fan page was created for Broomball. Check it out.").

With the way Facebook already customizes ads on your page based on your profile information, this step doesn't seem like it would be that hard to accomplish. If everyone who was interested in the "Back To The Future" movies knew there was a fan page and joined, a lot more people would be interested in clicking the fan page's ads for "Save The Clock Tower T-Shirts" thus increasing Facebook's revenue. Since people are more likely to click on ads if they are within their area of interest, this new tool would seem to encourage more click-throughs. If Facebook was able to get everyone onto fan pages they liked and clicking ads they were interested in, they could really increase their income.

What do you think?

$3,000,000 for 30 Seconds

Wanna buy a Superbowl ad?

* Word of warning - just because you have funny or memorable commercial idea does not always mean you will be successful because of it.

Millions of people will see your brand and many may remember your commercial, but not all of them want to buy a dog toy.

Here's one alternative. Here's another idea. And you should probably watch and think about this.

The world of ads is changing and not just because of a bad economy.

Automotive Commercials

Every year, we all see thousands of auto ads while watching television. The auto makers spend millions and millions of dollars (perhaps billions) on TV commercials that are made to show off their latest models and features of the new cars. Only about 10 million new cars are sold every year in the US, and while the auto makers know this, they are hoping that when the time comes for us to buy a new vehicle we would remember their ads and decide on their vehicles.

I do not believe TV ads work for the auto companies for a few reasons:

1.) Not everyone is looking for a new car. These ads become untargeted, uninteresting, and once again, ignored by the large portion of the TV viewers. I don't believe that TV commercials are the way people gather info on new vehicles.

2.) They all blur together. Auto makers are stuck in a cycle of releasing new commercials because that is "what you do." The more that they try to make them new, the more they all blend into one giant blur or leather interiors, financing offers, and great gas mileage (at least they tell us it is). The blur then becomes spam and ignored.

3.) There have been so many TV ads over the past 20 years, that we ignore them now (or rage about how much we hate them). We already know that Ford is tough (once again, this what they tell us) and that Caravans have a lot of storage for soccer gear. If auto makers only spent money on an ad when they had something truly exciting to tell us about their product, we would probably listen. Unless a car commercial presents something significantly different (and I'm not talking new graphics, I'm talking alternate fuels, etc), they will be ignored.

Think of the last car ad you saw. I can picture maybe 3 car ads in the past 10 years that I actually remember or liked. If I was to look at getting a new car, I would search places like Consumer Reports and talk to friends and family about their recommendations. Of all the conversations I have had with others about buying a vehicle, not once has a car commercial entered into the discussion.

I just can't see how all the money spent on TV ads can be worth it for auto makers. What do you think? Are automotive ads worth it for the car companies?

Less Is More

Hulu figured something out: it's better to have a few ads than to have a ton. Having a small number of ads makes people more likely to notice them, and less likely to find them annoying. Advertisers, in turn, will pay more for this lack of competition.

Maybe TV will learn a lesson from Hulu? With a crashing market economy, the economic gap will only widen. The successful corporations will have less competition and more money to do with as they choose, such as sponsoring a TV show. You know how sometimes a network will show a movie commercial-free "brought to you by"? It almost inspires a sense of gratitude that the company is saving you from an onslaught of advertising. If this is the future, I look forward to it.

Internet Ad Sales Slowing

Looks like the internet media is finally taking a hit from the recession. Granted, it's not that knock-out blow that print media is facing, but still...

In today's economic climate, people are less likely to support risky internet start-ups with advertising. Of course the most popular sites will continue to be funded, but those borderline successful blogs and sites may have to look to other ways to stay afloat. Don't worry though, we're still sticking around! (Gawker)

Facebook Ads Get Personal

We've written earlier on targeted facebook ads; but this is really taking it to a new level. People are apparently targeting individuals for advertising. For example, a hopeful media intern has set up facebook ads to target his potential employers. Even better, a dad has set up a facebook ad asking some girls to date his son. So embarrassing!

With advertising everyone can afford, it's turned into a fun new way to communicate. Revenue generation is now secondary. (Valleywag)

David Blaine is a bad ad agency

A young ad agency creates an ad campaign that is a hit. What do they do next? They think they have to do something bigger, better, louder, push the boundaries even further.

Compare that to David Blaine. A street magician who has made fame through various acts that would seem impossible. First it was spending 7 days buried under water without food, then he spent 3 days inside a frozen block of ice, then he spent 44 days in a glass case without food, and now for his next feat: Hanging upside down for 60 hours.

Agencies don't need to go bigger or spend more, they only need to be more creative. It is far more impressive to out-wit than out-spend. David Blaine doesn't need to hang upside down in one of his most dangerous stunts. There are a lot more creative ideas out there that would create more buzz that aren't quite as dangerous.


What do you think?

Goodbye Jerry, Hello Eva

News is that Microsoft is dropping Jerry Seinfeld and employing Eva Longoria for their new ads. Also, they're going to take the "I'm a PC" phrase from the Mac ads and somehow re-invent it.

Isn't Eva Longoria a little busy with those Dove bar ads? Also, I liked the Bill Gates/Seinfeld robot spots. But what I would REALLY like is some Microsoft ads that make sense.

Mad Men

I admit I was a little slow to jump on the Mad Men bandwagon, but I just finished the first season and I have to admit it deserved all those Emmys. It's great to see a quality show that's not on a premium channel; AMC did well! Who knew that the ad scene in the 1960s would be so interesting?

When Rori on Gilmore Girls waxed poetic about Harvard, or Meadow from the Sopranos decided on Columbia, both schools reported an increase in student interest. Will Mad Men create an increase in young advertising hopefuls?

English Continues It's Reign

According to a NYT article, English is the language of choice when marketing internationally. Particularly for luxury goods, it is seen as the most sophisticated choice. For household products, however, the local language is usually employed.

While linguistic education is clearly still important, it's nice to hear that Chinese or Spanish haven't taken over...yet.

When You Need PR: Launching a New Brand

There are many times when you need PR, but the one I want to touch on is: launching a new brand/product.

When introducing a new product, you have three options:

1. Launch with advertising
2. Launch with PR
3. Do nothing and hope word-of-mouth carries the product name.

I'm assuming most brands/people won't do nothing, so we will focus on the first two.

Why advertising?

While I consider launching a new brand solely with advertising foolish, I completely understand the appeal. Their are many benefits to launching a brand with advertising:

1. You pick the outlet (TV, radio, print, online)
2. You control the content (control over print ads and commercials)
3. Guaranteed hits (You can get an accurate number of who has seen your ad)

Advertising is the safe route, NOT the effective route.

Why?

Advertising's major downfall is the lack of credibility. There is plenty of data to back this up, but lets go the common sense route. What do you think would be more effective, an ad for a new novel by a Nicholas Sparks or Oprah's endorsement of his new book? The answer is obvious.

Do you think anyone would take a new coffee shop seriously if it touted that it had 'the worlds greatest coffee'? Of course not. This was mocked by Will Ferrell's character in the movie Elf. When his character went ecstatic and congratulated the coffee shop on being 'the world's best' it drew laughs from the audience. They realized anyone can call themselves the 'world's best' and it seems outlandish that anyone would believe it, therefor laughter ensued.

But lets say that coffee shop mentioned above, received a review from The New York Times, verifying that it indeed, has some of the best coffee in the world. Would that not draw a significant amount of buzz? Much more than running a print ad in the Times with the same claim.

So if advertising isn't how you should launch a brand, why Public Relations?

In one word: credibility.

PR is riskier. You can't completely control the message, the timing, or that you will even get coverage. While these are disadvantages to take into account, the power of credibility outweighs all of them.

For the most part, people believe what they see or hear on TV, radio, blogs, and customer reviews. The more cluttered advertising becomes, the more likely consumers are to seek out a third-party for their opinion.

Laura Ries makes an excellent point in her book "The Fall of Advertising, and the Rise of PR":

"It's ironic that America's advertising agencies, the 'advertising builds brands' crowd, do almost no advertising themselves. Rather they depend heavily on PR to build their own brands. They deluge the trade presses, especially Advertising Age and Adweek, with samples of their work. No award, no matter how trivial, goes uncrowed....How can you believe in advertising for others if you don't believe in advertising for yourself?"

So if PR is significantly cheaper and more effective, why not?

Famous brands built by PR: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Linux, Segway, Red Bull, Amazon, Ebay, and many more.

There is too much more information on this topic for one blog post. Much more to come..

Sell Your Twitter Soul

There is a new way for Twitter users to make money off of their accounts: Twittad. Twittad allows users to essentially "rent out" the background of their Twitter page for a fee.

Here is the breakdown of how it works for users and advertisers.

I remain skeptical on whether services like Twittad will gain popularity. The idea reminds me of the cars I see with advertisements all over them. An easy way to make money, but how many people want to sell their appearance for advertising? Not many cars on the road and probably not too many Twitter users.