Social Media Marketing Essential 50 Sites

Social Media marketing is a highly effective form of marketing channel that is soon to be as effective as search, even possibly more powerful.

Social Media Marketing Strategy for Home Based Business is the latest empowering trends of social marketing channels for internet marketing.

It can be leveraged for your marketing, especially if you are marketing on a modest budget.

Master this Media Marketing to turbo-charge your branding,traffic generation,conversion rate and ultimately online success.

These 50 essential Social Media sites will help you to get started in this vastly potential channel.

Social Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites

Share your favorite Social Media sites on the Web with potential clients and business partners by commenting on, uploading and ranking different newsworthy articles. You can also create a member profile that directs traffic back to your company’s Web site.

1. Reddit: Upload stories and articles on reddit to drive traffic to your site or blog. Submit items often so that you’ll gain a more loyal following and increase your presence on the site.
2. Digg: Digg has a huge following online because of its optimum usability. Visitors can submit and browse articles in categories like technology, business, entertainment, sports and more.
3. Del.icio.us: Social bookmark your way to better business with sites like del.icio.us, which invite users to organize and publicize interesting items through tagging and social networking.
4. StumbleUpon: You’ll open your online presence up to a whole new audience just by adding the StumbleUpon toolbar to your browser and “channel surf[ing] the Web.It is a good social media marketing resource. You’ll “connect with friends and share your discoveries,” as well as “meet people that have similar interests.”
5. Technorati: If you want to increase your blog’s readership, consider registering it with Technorati, a network of blogs and writers that lists top stories in categories like Business, Entertainment and Technology.A social media marketing must have
6. Ning: After hanging around the same social networking sites for a while, you may feel inspired to create your own, where you can bring together clients, vendors, customers and co-workers in a confidential, secure corner of the Web. Ning lets users design free social networks that they can share with anyone.A social media marketing essential tools
7. Squidoo: According to Squidoo, “everyone’s an expert on something. Share your knowledge!” Share your industry’s secrets by answering questions and designing a profile page to help other members.
8. Furl: Make Furl “your personal Web file” by social bookmarking great sites and sharing them with other users by recommending links, commenting on articles and utilizing other fantastic features.
9. Tubearoo: This video network works like other social-bookmarking sites, except that it focuses on uploaded videos. Businesses can create and upload tutorials, commentaries and interviews with industry insiders to promote their own services.
10. WikiHow: Create a how-to guide or tutorial on wikiHow to share your company’s services with the public for free.
11. YouTube: From the fashion industry to Capitol Hill, everyone has a video floating around on YouTube. Shoot a behind-the-scenes video from your company’s latest commercial or event to give customers and clients an idea of what you do each day.A fantastic social media marketing powerhouse
12. Ma.gnolia: Share your favorite sites with friends, colleagues and clients by organizing your social bookmarks with Ma.gnolia. Clients will appreciate both your Internet-savviness and your ability to stay current and organized in the social media marketing world

Professional Social Networking Sites

Sign up with these online social networking communities as a company or as an individual to take advantage of recruiting opportunities, cross-promotional events and more.

1. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a popular social networking site where alumni, business associates, recent graduates and other professionals connect online.A social media marketing top site
2. Ecademy: Ecademy prides itself on “connecting business people” through its online network, blog and message-board chats, as well as its premier BlackStar membership program, which awards exclusive benefits.
3. Ryze: Ryze lets members organize contacts and friends; upcoming events; and even job, real-estate and roommate classifieds.
4. YorZ: This networking site doubles as a job site. Members can post openings for free to attract quality candidates.
5. Xing: An account with networking site Xing can “open doors to thousands of companies.” Use the professional contact manager to organize your new friends and colleagues, and take advantage of the Business Accelerator application to “find experts at the click of a button, market yourself in a professional context [and] open up new sales channels.”
6. Facebook: Facebook is no longer just for college kids who want to post their party pics. Businesses vie for advertising opportunities, event promotion and more on this social networking site.
7. Care2: Care2 isn’t just a social networking community for professionals: It’s touted as “the global network for organizations and people who Care2 make a difference.” If your business is making efforts to go green, let others know by becoming a presence on this social media marketing site.
8. Gather: This networking community is made up of members who think. Browse categories concerning books, health, money, news and more to ignite discussions on politics, business and entertainment. This will help your company tap into its target audience and find out what they want.A social media marketing power tool
9. MEETin.org: Once you’ve acquired a group of contacts in your city by networking on MEETin.org, organize an event so that you can meet face-to-face, enhancing your social media marketing effort
10. Tribe: Cities like Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, New York and Chicago have unique online communities on tribe. Users can search for favorite restaurants, events, clubs and more.
11. Ziggs: Ziggs is “organizing and connecting people in a professional way.” Join groups and make contacts through your Ziggs account to increase your company’s presence online and further your own personal career.
12. Plaxo: Join Plaxo to organize your contacts and stay updated with feeds from Digg, Amazon.com, del.icio.us and more.
13. NetParty: If you want to attract young professionals in cities like Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Orlando Fla., create an account with the networking site NetParty. You’ll be able to connect with qualified, up-and-coming professionals online, then meet them at a real-life happy-hour event where you can pass out business cards, pitch new job openings and more.
14. Networking For Professionals: Networking For Professionals is another online community that combines the Internet with special events in the real world. Post photos, videos, résumés and clips on your online profile while you meet new business contacts.

Niche Social-Media Sites

Consider linking up with one of these social-media sites to narrow down your business’s target audience. You’ll find other professionals, enthusiasts and consumers who are most likely already interested in what your company has to offer.

1. Pixel Groovy: Web workers will love Pixel Groovy, an open-source site that lets members submit and rate tutorials for Web 2.0, email and online-marketing issues.
2. Mixx: Mixx prides itself on being “your link to the Web content that really matters.” Submit and rate stories, photos and news to drive traffic to your own site. You’ll also meet others with similar interests.
3. Tweako: Gadget-minded computer geeks can network with each other on Tweako, a site that promotes information sharing for the technologically savvy.
4. Small Business Brief: When members post entrepreneur-related articles, a photo and a link to their profile appear, gaining you valuable exposure and legitimacy online.
5. Sphinn: Sphinn is an online forum and networking site for the Internet marketing crowd. Upload articles and guides from your blog to create interest in your own company or connect with other professionals for form new contacts.
6. BuzzFlash.net: This one-stop news resource is great for businesses that want to contribute articles on a variety of subjects, from the environment to politics to health.
7. HubSpot: HubSpot is another news site aimed at connecting business professionals.
8. SEO TAGG: Stay on top of news from the Web marketing and SEO (search-engine optimization) industries by becoming an active member of this online community.

General Social-Media Sites

The following social-media sites provide excellent opportunities for businesses to advertise; promote specials, events or services; and feature published, knowledgeable employees.

1. Wikipedia: Besides creating your own business reference page on Wikipedia, you can connect with other users on Wikipedia’s Community Portal and at the village pump, where you’ll find conscientious professionals enthusiastic about news, business, research and more.
2. Newsvine: Feature top employees by uploading their articles, studies or other news-related items to this site. A free account will also get you your own column and access to the Newsvine community.
3. 43 Things: This site bills itself as “the world’s most popular online goal setting community.” By publicizing your company’s goals and ambitions, you’ll gain a following of customers, investors and promoters who cheer you on as you achieve success.
4. Wetpaint: If you’re tired of blogs and generic Web sites, create your own wiki with Wetpaint to reach your audience and increase your company’s presence online. You can easily organize articles, contact information, photos and other information to promote your business.
5. Frappr: Embed a Frappr map and guestbook into your company’s Web page so that you can pinpoint exactly how users find your site, discover in real-time what they have to say about your company profile and services, and create an “interactive, fun and engaging” spot for visitors in the social media
6. Yahoo! Answers: Start fielding Yahoo! users’ questions with this social-media Q&A service. Search for questions in your particular areas of expertise by clicking categories like Business & Finance, Health, News & Events and more. If you continue to dole out useful advice and link your answer to your company’s Web page, you’ll quickly gain a new following of curious customers.A god social media marketing tool

Job Sites

If you want to secure high-quality talent during your company’s next hiring spree, you’ll need to maintain a strong presence on popular job sites like the ones listed below.

1. CareerBuilder.com: Reach millions of candidates by posting jobs on this must-visit site.
2. The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal: The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal attracts well-educated professionals who are at the top of their game. Post a job or search résumés here.
3. CollegeRecruiter.com: If your firm wants to hire promising entry-level employees, check CollegeRecuriter.com for candidates with college degrees.
4. Monster: Post often to separate your business from all the other big companies that use this site to advertise job openings.
5. Sologig: Top freelancers and contractors post résumés and look for work on this popular site.
6. AllFreelance.com: This site “offers self-employed small business owners links to freelance & work at home job boards, self-promotion tips” and more.
7. Freelance Switch Job Listings: Freelance Switch is the freelancer’s online mecca and boasts articles, resource toolboxes, valuable tips and a job board.
8. GoFreelance: Employers looking to boost their vendor base should check GoFreelance for professionals in the writing, design, editing and Web industries.
9. Yahoo! Hot Jobs: This site is often one of the first places that job seekers visit. Post open opportunities and check out informative articles and guides to gain insight on the hiring and interviewing process.
10. Guru.com: Build your company’s repertoire with top freelancing professionals by advertising projects on this site, otherwise known as “the world’s largest online service marketplace.”



The Social Media Marketing Essential 50 sites List was compiled by Peter Bordes dated Feb 6, 2008 in the website Relevantly Speaking

List of Search Engines

By content/topic

Alexa Internet
Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves)
Baidu (Chinese)
Cuil
Exalead (French)
Google
Live Search (formerly MSN Search)
Sogou (Chinese)
Sohu (Chinese)
Wikia Search
Yahoo! Search


Geographical limited scope

Accoona, China/US
Alleba, Philippines
Ansearch, Australia/US/UK/NZ
Araby, Middle East
Baidu, China
Daum, Korea
Guruji.com, India
Goo, Japan
Leit.is, Iceland
Miner.hu, Hungary
Najdi.si, Slovenia
Naver, Korea
Onkosh, Middle East
Rambler, Russia
Rediff, India
SAPO, Portugal
Search.ch, Switzerland
Sesam, Norway, Sweden
Walla!, Israel
Yandex, Russia
ZipLocal, Canada/US

Accountancy

IFACnet
Business
Business.com
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Thomasnet (United States)

Enterprise

AskMeNow: S3 - Semantic Search Solution
Concept Searching Limited: concept search products
Dieselpoint: Search & Navigation
dtSearch: dtSearch Engine(SDK), dtSearch Web
Endeca: Information Access Platform
Exalead: exalead one:enterprise
Expert System S.p.A.: Cogito
Fast Search & Transfer: Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), RetrievalWare (formerly Convera)
Funnelback: Funnelback Search
ISYS Search Software: ISYS:web, ISYS:sdk
Microsoft: SharePoint Search Services
Northern Light
Open Text: Hummingbird Search Server, Livelink Search
Oracle Corporation: Secure Enterprise Search 10g
SAP: TREX
TeraText: TeraText Suite
Vivisimo: Vivisimo Clustering Engine
ZyLAB Technologies: ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform

Search Appliances
Google: Google Search Appliance

Job
Bixee.com (India)
CareerBuilder.com (USA)
Craigslist (by city)
Eluta.ca (Canada)
Hotjobs.com (USA)
Incruit (Korea)
Indeed.com (USA)
Monster.com (USA)
Recruit.net (International)
SimplyHired.com (USA)
TheLadders.com (USA)

Legal
WestLaw
Lexis (Lexis Nexis)
Quicklaw

Medical
Bioinformatic Harvester
Entrez (includes Pubmed)
EB-eye EBI’s Search Engine EMBL-EBI’s Search engine
GenieKnows
GoPubMed (knowledge-based: GO - GeneOntology and MeSH - Medical Subject Headings)
Healia
Searchmedica
WebMD
PubGene
Nextbio (Life Science Search Engine)

News
Google News
Daylife
MagPortal
Newslookup
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Topix.net
Yahoo! News

People
PeekYou
Ex.plode.us
InfoSpace
Spock (website)
Spokeo
Wink
Zabasearch.com
ZoomInfo

Blog
Amatomu
Bloglines
BlogScope
IceRocket
Sphere
Technorati

Multimedia
blinkx
FindSounds
Google Video
Picsearch
Podscope
SeeqPod
Veveo
YouTube
Pixsta
Munax PlayAudioVideo
Yahoo! Video

Source code
Google Code Search
JExamples
Koders
Krugle

Maps
Géoportail
Google Maps
MapQuest
Live Search Maps
Yahoo! Maps

Price
Google Product Search (formerly Froogle)
Kelkoo
MSN Shopping
MySimon
PriceGrabber
PriceRunner
Shopping.com
ShopWiki
Shopzilla (also operates Bizrate)
TheFind.com

Question and answer
Answers.com
AskMeNow
BrainBoost
eHow
hakia
Lexxe
Lycos iQ
Powerset
Live Search QnA
Uclue
Yahoo! Answers

Open source search engines
DataparkSearch
Egothor
Gonzui
Grub
Ht://dig
Isearch
Lucene
Lemur Toolkit & Indri Search Engine
mnoGoSearch
Namazu
Nutch
OpenFTS
Sciencenet (for scientific knowledge, based on YaCy technology)
Sphinx
SWISH-E
Terrier Search Engine
Wikia Search
Xapian
YaCy
Zettair

Metasearch engines
Brainboost
ChunkIt!
Clusty
Dogpile
Excite
Harvester42
HotBot
Info.com
Ixquick
Kayak
Mamma
Metacrawler
MetaLib
Mobissimo
Myriad Search
SideStep
Turbo10
WebCrawler
LeapFish

Visual search engines
ChunkIt!
Grokker
Kartoo
Pixsta
PubGene

Most Popular Search Terms in Google from India

Google has released the most popular search terms from India:

1. orkut
2. gmail
3. yahoo
4. google
5. youtube
6. yahoomail
7. indian railways
8. rediff
9. cricket
10. katrina kaif

Top ‘how to’ searches

1. how to reduce weight
2. how to kiss
3. how to earn money
4. how to get pregnant
5. how to learn english
6. how to gain weight
7. how to play guitar
8. how to create a website
9. how to impress a girl
10. how to tie a tie

Top searches on mobile are:

1. orkut
2. yahoo
3. waptrick
4. gmail
5. games
6. katrina kaif
7. rediffmail
8. yahoomail
9. namitha
10. google

Top holiday destinations

1. goa
2. kerala
3. kashmir
4. dubai
5. singapore
6. australia
7. london
8. shimla
9. switzerland
10. manali

Top Bollywood Celebrities

1. katrina kaif
2. aishwarya rai
3. salman khan
4. hrithik roshan
5. kareena kapoor
6. shahid kapur
7. deepika padukone
8. shahrukh khan
9. mallika sherawat
10. genelia d’souza

"Stop Talking to Yourself: Tips to Better Corporate Blogging"

Many corporate blogs fail because they forget two things:

* A blog is not a traditional news publication. It didn't spring from the ether. It's a conversation.

* A blogger is not a journalist. Journalists report facts. Bloggers connect and share.


So many corporate blogs make the mistake of trying to become a newsletter or an online news site. They are strict and regimented. Even worse, they are self-contained, only read and relevant to those within the company. No surprise, they don't get a lot of traffic and no one links back.

Why? Cause they are talking to themselves. It's like someone shut them in a room and they are just chatting away. Yes, some of what is said is good, but who's gonna hear it?

You have to remember that conversations have two parts: listening and participating.

"We monitor what's being said on other blogs. That's how we figure out what to write in posts."

BAD! To continue the room analogy even further, what you are doing is holding a glass to the wall, listening to the neighbor and then talking to yourself.

I'm not saying it's bad to just lurk--what's bad is to lurk and write. If you want to be a member of the blogosphere, however, you have to engage with it. That means that you should reply and respond to the posts you read. If you don't want to write a comment everytime, that's fine. Just link back to that post on your blog when you write something based on another idea you read.

You'll start to become a member of the community. You start finding ideas out in the wild. You identify conversations, share them with your readers, and add your own idea to keep the conversation going. Then *you* will become a faciliator of conversation. You start to feel like a moderator--finding key points, asking relevant questions, and steering the conversation towards things you feel the audience will want to hear.

Eureka! You are a blogger, weaving the best of the web into something beautiful. You are a poet, telling stories of....data centers, micro-processors and networking solutions.

Article by :Chris Lynn

When Times Get Tough, the Tough Escape Online

In troubled economic times, one of the few sectors that remain recession proof is the entertainment industry. Bars, Movies. Music – all stay in business. Call it escapism, diversion, or whatever you want, but entertainment companies seem to prosper when the economy falters. Even if we can no longer afford them, we seem to get even more enthralled in what celebrities are wearing, what the action hero is driving, and where the rock star is touring. Let’s be honest, when your 401K is crumbling, it sure feels good to escape into the latest romantic comedy, RPG alternate reality, or neighborhood watering hole for a couple of hours.

This is great news for web sites dedicated to covering and providing entertainment as well as advertisers targeting this demographic. Just as lines at the movie theaters grow when the Dow plummets, so does traffic to web sites focused on gaming, movies, and celebrity. This is particularly true of affinity sites where the users are engaged and can spend hours sharing their passion in a social community. Because these niche environments have a higher level of user engagement, brand marketers have a better opportunity to connect with the users and communicate their marketing message. Many of these niche sites also allow for more integration sponsorship opportunities that go beyond traditional banner advertising. My personal recommendation: integrated contests and sweepstakes. What movie buff or gamer doesn’t’ love “free stuff” when there’s a world-wide credit crunch.

As an added benefit, for suddenly budget conscience advertisers, these midsize and smaller niche sites tend to have lower CPM rates than the portals and larger sites – making them a real value buy. So when the economy stalls and media budgets get slashed, advertisers should spend their remaining media dollars where consumers are spending more of their time – affinity entertainment sites.


Article by: Mike Dodge is SVP/General Manager of AtomicOnline

Dark side of digital growth: Bad creative, Unsold Inventory

Ad Age has a terrific piece evaluating the impact of rapid growth in our industry. All the extra money and attention is great. But there have been costs.

Overwhelming complexity: With all the new ad nets, ad-supported websites, social nets and other media outlets, the process of media planning and buying in the digital space has gotten pretty complex. One expert estimates, "it takes 2.5 times as many people to execute a digital-marketing campaign as a traditional-media campaign."

Unsold inventory, the big get bigger: "As fast as dollars have shifted online, they might have flowed even faster had there been more talent to sell it," reports Ad Age. "It's also a reason why spending online remains concentrated among the top sites and portals rather than following consumers to niche sites."

Bad Creative: "The talent squeeze on the creative side meant some pretty dismal online ad campaigns." And not only does that annoy consumers, bad creative has also "helped drive down ad rates."

Maybe a slowdown in ad spending is just what the industry needs. One agency exec told Ad Age, "a slowdown of cash and slowdown in the need for talent will give this industry a bit of space to breathe."

Article by: Mario Sgambelluri

The Next Big Change

For most of us, the Internet has changed the way we work, communicate or even shop. It has opened up a whole new world of opportunities. However, while most of us are trying to keep pace with the ever changing Internet, not many of us are aware of the next cycle of changes that are waiting to happen.

We know the Internet will soon change because the present IP protocol - version 4, usually called IPv4 - is going to hit its limit. Vint Cerf, father of the Internet, in an interview with The Times said “The Internet is running out of numbers. This is like the internet running out of telephone numbers and with no new numbers, you can’t have more subscribers”. It will be replaced by IPv6, which has addresses enough for about 3.4x1038 addresses, or 5x1028 for each of us on Earth. That is like having a sizable network for each one of us.

One does not have to wait long to see the profound effect the Internet would have on the world. The internet is all poised to touch our lives in ways we wouldn’t have imagined a few years back. Geoff Mulligan, Chairman of the IPSO Alliance (a coalition of technology companies) recently said “We could incorporate Internet protocol (IP) into nearly everything, there’s no reason why the Internet shouldn't be in every single appliance.”

For someone like me, who comes from a digital marketing background, this implies huge potential. Just imagine if everything around us – Microwaves, Washing Machines even our toasters, could be networked.

So, what does this mean to Advertisers? It means a greater reach to audiences, a greater network of smart devices to deliver their ads and a lot more data. Visualize a world of advertising where different channels are now combined to serve ads across a variety of devices; each of these devices is networked and is able to communicate with each other and the Internet.

You have a baseball match to watch and have set a reminder in your DVR. Based on your behavioural data, your smart refrigerator (which of course is networked to your DVR) knows that you’d like some beer when you watch the match. As luck would have it you have run out of beer. Smart sensors in your refrigerator detect this and relay a message to your mobile. You will then be displayed with an ad of the nearest store that supplies beer. You have an option of messaging for supply of beer (Pay per Message) or calling for supply of beer (Pay per Call).

The possibilities are immense. Yes, the debate on whether we end up treating the Internet as a system where we become enslaved to our devices or whether we treat it as a truly open framework where everything around us can be integrated smartly will go on, but as we all know – Change alone is unchanging.

Article by : Mr. Sudhish Shetty - Manager, Solutions Consulting at Theorem Inc

8 steps to smarter media buying on a budget

In frugal times, the best way to maximize smaller media budgets is to make sure money is spent efficiently and in a way that will make investments go further.

Not every company has billions of dollars to spend on each online marketing tactic. Clients with smaller budgets need to be more selective about how they allocate their funds. Their money needs to work smarter -- not harder -- to generate their desired return on investment without going over budget. Fortunately, for these clients, there are steps advertisers can take to make the most of their clients' budgets, especially when it comes to media campaigns.

In broad terms, agencies have several ways they can leverage their relationships with online publishers to maximize budgets. A few examples are continually cultivating relationships, being creative in campaigns, adjusting to campaign variables and creating agency-publisher win-win situations. Advertisers working with clients who have a media budget in the million-dollar range can tap into their network of publishers to stretch their clients' spends.

The way to maximize smaller media budgets is twofold: make sure money spent is going to be efficient and work with publishers to tack on as many extras as possible to make investments go further.

First and foremost, agencies need to make certain they maintain amicable, cooperative relationships with their representatives. Agency reps know their site better than anyone, so it's important for media teams to listen to the suggestions, insights and proposals publishers have to offer. This does not mean that agencies should blindly follow their initial proposals, but agencies can do themselves a sizable disservice to just cast aside the expertise of their reps.

Developing a cost-effective and efficient media plan should involve a collaborative effort between the publisher and agency. I also recommend being up front about the expectations of the campaign and create shared metrics to keep publishers responsible for campaign outcomes.

Here are eight ways to stretch those ad dollars:

1. Ask for extras
Another way for advertisers to get the most for their investment is to ask for little extras here and there that can really add up and increase a client's visibility. Some bonuses included link sharing, offline efforts and added value impressions. One of the most viable extras in my opinion is inclusion in their newsletters or website features. This cross-promotional effort can be very a effective and realistic way publishers and agencies can trade services.

2. Ask for a test
As I mentioned before, one way to stretch a media budget is to make certain that buys will garner relevant traffic and impressions. If publishers are willing, running a free pre-campaign test will help advertisers fine tune their campaign and ensure money is being spent on the best placements. Getting these kinks worked out before launching the full-blown campaign can greatly improve conversion rates and deliver ROI for clients.

3. Be flexible
One key component to stretching media dollars is being adaptable at the negotiation table. If marketers are too locked into their preconceived plans, they might miss out on ideas presented by publishers about how funds can be cost effectively distributed. Certain variables are more concrete, but if advertisers can be flexible about their impression load, dayparting or filtering through their lower priority targets, they are in a better place to get mileage out of a media budget.

4. Leverage your future/past buys
Publishers want to make money -- and rightfully so. As we in the advertising world know, it is most efficient to retain customers instead of acquiring new ones. Applying this theory to publishers and vendors, agencies can get covetable inventory and price rates if they can guarantee future projects or increased budgets based on campaign results. Especially when working with one publisher for several campaigns, agencies are in a better position to bundle their past and future buys to make the most of a campaign where funds are lacking.

5. Be a "test subject"
Another way advertisers can make campaigns go further on limited budgets is to offer to be a guinea pig for publishers. It's easy to forget that publishers are trying to keep up with one another, and by offering to be a prototype -- in return for impressions or a service offering -- publishers can be on the cutting edge of their industry. This will also help establish clients as progressive and might result in additional marketing opportunities outside of the media campaign.

6. Offer to share/ develop case study
One of my favorite truisms is that nothing in life is free, and these wise words certainly pertain to advertising. If you, as an advertiser, are requesting a favor from a publisher, it only makes sense to provide something in return. A case study or sharing back-end information, which publishers generally do not have access to, is one thing advertisers have to offer. This shows publishers a few things -- most importantly that you appreciate their help. Secondly, offering to compile a case study at the end of the campaign illustrates that you are willing to make up for a lack of funds in other areas to possibly help publishers generate new business for themselves. Lastly, by offering publishers information and data that they do not have access to shows that you understand their business and want to maintain a good relationship.

7. Self-service options
Nowadays, there are several options for agencies to set up their own media campaign using publisher online self-service options. Since most publishers and ad networks have minimum spends, this option is ideal for campaigns with small budgets because they don't have any minimums. Between MSN's new partnership with AdReady, AdBrite, Google and Facebook, advertisers have a decent amount of options to make their own media buy and not be bogged down with publisher minimums.

8. It's about conversions
No matter how many clicks an in-page advertisement drives, at the end of the day conversions are what matter. This is why I suggest working with a fewer amount of publishers that can offer a more concentrated group of targeted users, as opposed to a buy that goes after a wider, watered-down segment of consumers. If publishers also have the ability to reach users that are further down the purchasing funnel, small budget media buys should go after them first. Utilizing geo-targeting can also help marketers get the most mileage out of a media buy. These targeting strategies are a key component of most media plans regardless of budget, but targeting becomes essential when working with limited resources. It ensures money is not wasted on users who are not likely to convert.

Conclusion
Approaching an agency-publisher relationship as more of a partnership allows both parties to get something from campaigns. Whether it's an impressive case study to tell at networking events or a good old-fashioned learning experience, online marketers and publishers should be able to extract value from most media engagements.

In the end, there are countless online publishers and agencies out there in the world, but we chose to partner with ones that are most effective and will help achieve client goals.

Article by : Andreas Roell is president and CEO of Geary Interactive.

Web Analytics Driven Online Marketing

With rising inflation resulting in an economic slowdown, the first thing in an organization that gets cut is the marketing budget. In the coming months we will be seeing more and more organizations reducing their marketing budgets.

Since marketing budgets are directly linked to the sales revenue, a fall in sales will result in a reduction in the marketing spend. This, across the board, cut of marketing budgets happen due to the lack of measurability of marketing programs. As the famous saying goes, “I know half my advertising budget goes waste but I don’t know which half”.

It is becoming increasingly difficult on the internet to reach the right audience, acquire the right visitors, convert them into your customers and retain those customers. The biggest challenge for us today is to determine which interactive channels to prioritize, how much to spend and how to measure the results.

Why invest in web analytics?

In times like these, when greater measurability and accountability is needed to measure the performance of the web as a marketing channel “Web Analytics” plays a crucial role in providing that much needed intelligence.

Online marketing is much more accountable than traditional media in terms of ROI calculation, but surprisingly, few organizations in our country actually use such web intelligence to optimize their online advertising and marketing spend.

Web analytics has evolved from the days when it was just used to measure hits and page views. Today, it forms the integrating platform around which all online marketing initiatives are deployed and optimized for better visibility into the performance of each and every online initiative.

How can web analytics improve your marketing ventures?

To measure and improve the performance of the web as a marketing channel, the following three essential requirements have to be taken into consideration:

1. Have clearly defined website objectives and create key metrics (KPIs): Clearly defined website objectives and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can help you measure the performance of the website against the defined objectives. The goal is to improve the KPIs over a defined period of time.

2. Consider both the website and the website promotion together: The website and website promotion cannot be measured and optimized in isolation. This is because the visitor activity on the website must be tied to its source to understand how each media segment is performing.

3. Create goal pages and assign weights and value: All visits to your website are not equal and only about 1-5% of the visitors register or buy from your website. So, what about the rest of the visitors (95-99%)? Surely most of them came to the website with a purpose and may or may not have accomplished those. Goal pages are key pages in the website and visits to which reflect the level of engagement with the website. Goal pages could be important pages such as product, resources or about us pages. Visits to these pages show a definite interest and intent of visitors to your offerings.

Once we have these three things accomplished we can measure and optimize the website and promotions.

What can web analytics data be used for?

The insights from web analytics data can be used to optimize the following:

- Marketing campaigns
- Conversion funnels
- Segmentations
- Landing pages and other important pages

Optimizing marketing campaigns

1. Optimizing display advertising campaigns: A typical brand campaign is based on a plan, impressions purchased across media vehicles and combinations of various creatives and sizes are placed. The campaign is monitored and the success or failure is measured through commonly used metrics such as CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CTR (click through rate) and CPL (cost per lead generated). These metrics, on their own, are insufficient to measure the true value of display ad campaigns. With hundreds of placements with varying combinations of website/property, creatives, ad size and landing pages, how do we know which combination works the best in achieving your campaign objectives?

The metric to be used to measure brand campaign is CPEA (cost per end action). A typical brand campaign is aimed at moving a visitor through the buying process of Awareness/Engagement – Brand consideration – Purchase intent. The website content can be categorized into the above three stages. The goal page values and weights can be assigned to the relevant content pages. The sum of the goal pages viewed is the end actions completed by the visitor. The end actions measure the “interaction levels” of a visitor within the website.

By using CPEA as a metric, you can achieve the following:

- Perform overall campaign efficiency analysis
- Identify the best performing combination of site/property, creative, ad size and landing pages in achieving the campaign objectives
- Perform creative analysis and identify the best performing creative
- Measure the impact of view throughs (impact of non-click traffic on overall campaign efficiency)
- Conduct post impression analysis of brand campaigns

2. Optimizing email marketing: In an earlier article, Vikas Tandon of Indigo Consulting had written exhaustively about the email marketing opportunity.

Email remains as one of the most effective marketing channels. In spite of low email open and response rates, the low cost per contact makes this channel so effective. However, bulk emailing with no consideration to “relevancy” has negative impact and puts the company brand at risk and all future mails are “instantaneously deleted”. (All of us delete many mails everyday from our inbox, without even opening the emails, once we brand the source as “no value”.)

How can web analytics help optimizing email marketing?

Traditional marketing segmentation divides customers into different groups based on demographics, purchase history etc. Web analytics provides a third component – “Behavioral data” of the visitors to the website influenced by the email. This data gives insights to create ‘relevant’ emails.

Consider the following examples:

Action – Visitor downloads a whitepaper or other documents
Reaction– Send informational mails to the visitor that will educate and provide opportunities to learn more

Action – Visitor visits the product pages and exits from the website
Reaction – Send mails with product comparison specs, warranty, trial offer etc.

Action – Visitor puts an item in the shopping cart but abandons the purchase process
Reaction – Send an email two days after the abandonment that includes incentives to purchase the abandoned product and other high margin products

Let us say a promotional HTML email was sent to 100 people, out of which 35 visited the website and eventually two bought the product/service. In the absence of behavioral data, we are blind to the 33 people who showed some interest in the product but due to some reason did not choose to continue. I am sure you will agree with me that we have a far better chance of converting these 33 people into customers, if we know the reason for abandonment and communicate relevant information rather than causing fatigue through a general email blast again.

Even if there is a 10% conversion from among the 33 people, you will have an overall conversion rate of 5.3%. In other words, an increase of 165%.

3. Optimizing SEO and PPC marketing: Both the earlier articles, Integrating SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) by Vinod Nambiar, Position 2 and Of Long Tails and Paid Search Campaigns by Nimish Vohra, Regalix, brilliantly cover the finer points of search marketing.

I am going to focus on how web analytics data can be leveraged to optimize SEM. We all know that top 20% of the keywords account for 80% of the traffic. Keywords/phrases can be classified into 1) branded and 2) category/generic keywords. By using web analytics tools we can look at the keywords that brought visitors to the website. You will find a small head of branded keywords and a very long tail of category/generic keywords contributing a small amount of traffic to each.

By using the intelligence gained from web analytics data, we can reduce the SEM spend by optimizing the website through SEO for branded keywords and PPC advertising for the low bid value category keywords.

Paid search campaigns need not necessarily be a direct response channel, it can be effectively used for brand campaigns too. Since the conversion rates are so low, we need to understand the “interaction levels” of visitors who came through various keywords. By assigning goal page values and weights (mentioned earlier), we can effectively measure and track the value of individual keywords/phrases in bringing the most “engaging audience”.

Most of this “engaged audience” may not buy from the website in their first visit, they may however bookmark the site and visit again to purchase/register (latent conversions). By using web analytics data we can gauge the effectiveness of a PPC campaign by tracking the conversions at a later date which can be attributed to the source keyword/phrase.

Article by : Raja Bhat, VP – Consulting Services, Nabler Web Solutions

Keys to differentiating ad networks

What can an ad network do to make itself stand out in a sea of undifferentiated companies? Underscore Marketing's president has some ideas.

Almost every time I have gathered together with my buy-side industry buddies in the past few years, I've heard the same complaint. There are new ad networks launching seemingly every day, but none of them seems like its own animal. Many of them have "proprietary" targeting, ad management, rich media and reporting technologies that everybody else seems to possess, too. Their names are even beginning to run together.

Lack of differentiation among networks is a common gripe. It's so common that I've been hearing reps from networks acknowledge openly in meetings that they need to position themselves differently with respect to their competitors, and they wonder aloud how they might do it.

some suggestions.

•Guarantee placement:
Running an advertiser out of network or in places the advertiser's brand specifically forbids is a common (and underhanded) tactic. Even if your network never does this, plenty of other networks do. They get caught often. The result is usually a blacklisting. Over the years, so many war stories have been traded back and forth about nightmarish placements that almost every network has been tarred with the same brush in this regard. So why not guarantee placement? If an advertiser runs outside a pre-approved list of sites or placements, they get the month's flight free.

•Show what a media buyer can't get when he leaves your network off a buy:

Highlighting inventory or unique reach that's accessible only through a buy with your network makes sense. If you have exclusive relationships with sites, buyers need to know that. If you have unique reach against a specific demographic, interest or behavior that media buyers are trying to target, they need to know that. It counts for a lot when buyers are sitting in front of their comScore interface trying to find ways to extend unique reach. I haven't seen too many networks successfully advertise this, although ValueClick recently demonstrated its unique reach versus other networks in an article and the details managed to lodge themselves in my brain.

•Show off your optimization chops:

Countless networks claim to be experts at optimization, or to have proprietary auto-optimization black boxes. Well, show me -- don't tell me! Pick a metric, then run some control impressions that are representative of the buy sans optimization. Then do your stuff and show me the difference between what I get when you optimize buys versus what I might get if I let the buy run without optimizing.

•Lift the curtain on behavioral targeting:

Simply saying you're able to target by behavior isn't enough. Buyers are smart enough to know that the more data you have and the more data points you're able to take into consideration, the better targeted the ads are going to be. Give me a one-sheeter that shows me all of the data points and variables I can use to target ads. Not only will it show how you compare to other networks, but it might give me an idea for a campaign.

I see a lot of presentations and sit in on a lot of meetings with ad networks. By and large, they seem to be telling me things as opposed to showing them to me. I think that if networks put their money where their mouths are, they would be able to get a lot more traction behind the notion of separating themselves from their competitors.

Article by : Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing

Ad networks: moving beyond reach and targeting

Real Girls Media's business development director reports on the latest ways interactive media executives are taking advantage of ad network benefits.As the long tail gets longer and online behavior becomes more complex, media buyers are relying more heavily on ad networks to provide reach and optimization.

"Online networks allow you to scoop up thousands of pennies out there, like assembling your consumer. They have already assembled the inefficiency into efficiency," said Sean X Cummings, Ask.com's director of marketing.

But few executives fully understand the opportunities ad networks provide beyond simply aggregating the inventory of small publishers. Earlier this month at an event produced by San Francisco's Bay Area Interactive Group, 250 interactive media executives gathered to learn new ways to better leverage ad networks.

Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association, moderated a panel that aimed to uncover various ways marketers are taking advantage of networks.
First up for discussion was the underlying purpose of ad networks, which have long been viewed by the buying community as pure direct response vehicles.
"In the past, we used them mainly for high volume, but now we're starting to use them for branding purposes. This requires experimentation to find success," said Scott Symonds, executive media director at AKQA.

Some of the networks have been trying to re-position themselves as having a strong offering for brand advertisers, but there isn't much proof of their effectiveness -- not yet at least.

"Is a network's transparency important to you?" asked Horan.

Panelists agreed that run-of-network transparency isn't a huge concern, and Cummings explained why the networks aren't voluntarily offering it: "A lot of networks are hesitant to divulge the list of their sites because they only have a few with recognizable names. I believe the sites with small reach are at an advantage because they are less content rich and therefore the user's eyes gravitate to the advertising. Or at least we hope they do."

As for optimization, Symonds said, "qualitatively driven campaigns take a longer time to build. Learning how to optimize is difficult. What's important is developing a custom universe of well performing sites."

"My biggest challenge with networks is pacing against our budget. They often over-deliver too early for fear that we won't roll over our budget," said Cummings.
Ad networks that don't place their client's needs first are certain to fail.

Differentiation is a must

With new and flexible systems like Adify, it seems every large media company these days is starting an ad network. So how can ad networks truly be differentiated?

hi5 Networks' Brett Finkelstein believes they can position themselves according to function and value: "We segment networks into four types of focus: media, widget, specialties (like geography) and premium -- for example, Hispanics are a really important target for us. And as a publisher, hi5 is getting a premium for non-user-generated content inventory at a 25 to 50 percent higher rate."

Vertical networks are seen as a great solution for clients because they aggregate special demographic or interest groups but most often can provide a narrow reach. Active Athlete Network, for example, allows brands to access athletes and sports enthusiasts, and Federated Media services bloggers. As another example, ad networks like Real Girls Media's allows marketers to reach a vertical within a vertical; advertisers targeting women can choose from nine different lifestyle channels that identify interest groups on DivineCaroline.com as well as on partner publisher sites.

"Exclusivity is another differentiator," added Cummings, "because non-exclusive relationships with publishers put a network at a disadvantage." But these days publishers are reluctant to sign exclusive contracts because they want flexibility to shop for the highest ad rates and try out various partner networks.

Networks offering behavioral targeting -- which operates under the assumption that which web pages users click on and where they go from those pages indicate at least a presumptive interest in buying products related to those topics -- are providing advertisers with higher value from lesser targeted inventory. For instance, brands with longer consideration products, like cars, tend to benefit from behavioral targeting. However, there is still much to be learned about its impact and potential: "I think we need to learn what strategic usage there is for a behavioral targeting campaign and to experiment more with it," said Symonds.

Many advertisers are finding that a combination of behavioral, contextual and demographic targeting can offer the best insights about their target audience. In addition, social networks are also working hard to support innovative concepts for advertisers. For example, AKQA developed a dorm room-related campaign for Target on Facebook, and ConAgra Foods approved an integrated campaign with cooking tips, a celebrity chef endorsement and a sweepstakes -- for its Pam cooking spray on DivineCaroline.

But not all brands should be eager to participate. One of the challenges social networks face is integrating into their communities all the types of brands that want exposure.

"The brands on hi5 must seem fun because by nature our platform is fun and entertaining for users," Finkelstein said.

Be informed before selecting an ad network

What are the key criteria to help buyers determine which ad networks to use?

"Two things: sales support and technology. The sales team must represent their publishers well and provide service that maximizes a client's impact," said Symonds. "They should act like a partner publisher and give general stewardship of the campaign."

This type of high quality service comes as a result of a team's understanding of a client's needs and business model, which can often be discovered through an initial proposal.

Cummings doesn't think technology is robust enough to make a difference when selecting an ad network. "I think the best networks will be those that obtain exclusive contracts with content providers. Not many networks have a lock on the content."


What is the next generation of ad networks?

Two new possibilities related to user re-targeting are sequential and 'avoidal targeting.'

"Sequential often takes too much work, but is worth it. You never really know whether the consumer consumed, but you have to do it quickly. Ads served days apart will never register. In fact, ads served mere hours apart is about the most distance you can afford for "Burma Shave" style messaging," said Cummings. "Avoidal targeting uses cookies to identify those consumers who actually will never be your customers so that you can stop serving them wasted advertising. Pass backs have always been promised, but the reality is that they have never happened."

Social networks may be primed to offer another promising strategy: calculating influence. Finkelstein added, "Purchase intent is being wrapped into influencers with viral impact. We want to know a user's connections and interactions because the level of their activity is a good predictor of how influential they are on community opinion."

Beyond these strategies, I personally suggest you consider ad networks that can offer integrated campaigns, customization and scale, new formats beyond the banner (sponsorships, contests, etc.), roadblocking, consultative selling and enhanced creative testing

Article by : Rebecca Weeks is director of business development at Real Girls Media

A few thoughts on Publisher ad networks

In early fall of 2007, much of iMedia’s commentary on the ad network space focused on the battle between ValueClick and Advertising.com and whether or not folks should use more than one ad network. The consensus from across the industry was a resounding yes, which is a good segue into a new trend that seems to be emerging — the launch of the publisher ad network.

So while everyone outside of Advertising.com agrees that you need to use more than one ad network, I think some publishers have taken that sentiment a little too far. In the past few weeks, Martha Stewart Omnimedia announced that it is launching an ad network to complement its vertical inventory; additionally, a newspaper consortium of Cox, Tribune, Gannett and others has all but announced it is launching a newspaper ad network to compete with the Yahoo group formed late last year. (For some perspective on this announcement, check out a 1998 BusinessWeek article on the New Century Network, formed by newspapers nearly 12 years ago. If you haven’t heard of this group, it’s no surprise: the operation had already disbanded by the time the article appeared.)

Lastly a rumor is floating around that Fox Interactive Media (FIM) is planning to launch an ad network. FIM certainly brings tremendous scale to the table with all its properties, but I do not think media buyers are going to be too enthusiastic about running ads across a network consisting of MySpace and Fox News inventory.

Networks today are driving about 15 percent (rough estimate) of the display marketplace. Publishers are trying to figure out how they can capture some of these dollars, which is understandable. However, at the end of the day, these organizations are so much better at focusing on their strength of owned and operated sites than trying to partner with lots of third-party content providers.

When I worked at About.com in the late 1990s, one of the ideas that emerged was the Luna Network. The goal was to bring additional reach to About’s specific guidesites, like Pregnancy, Italian Cooking and Computer Networking. By having more inventory, the sales team could garner more budget from advertisers. While this idea looks great on paper, it actually achieved limited success because the About.com inventory is so much more valuable than the inventory from these second- and third-tier sites. How do you price these other sites, manage the inventory and give the advertiser the results they need while managing your publishers? The network business is frankly more complicated and involves more moving pieces than I think many outsiders realize, especially publishers.

One of the reasons networks are so effective is because they employ a more innovative, hands-on approach to campaign set up, management and optimization. Clients also expect more from a network than a publisher, such as various levels of targeting that go beyond what many publishers can currently offer.


The network consolidation we have been seeing in the marketplace continues to be a good development. Long term, the industry cannot support hundreds of players with such similar offerings. Having new networks launch is not a step forward in the goal of making the network landscape more effective for advertisers. I watch with interest to see who will emerge next and how these publisher networks will take shape, although I remain skeptical on what, if any, success they will achieve.


Article by : Michael Cassidy

The Key to Better Online Leads: Quality

Prospectiv's president and CEO offers tips to deliver a high volume of quality leads without hurting your brand.

In online lead generation, most of us are familiar with the age-old battle between quality and volume. Most marketers will tell you they want quality leads first, specifically quality leads that convert into buyers. However, once they find leads that work, their appetite for these leads increases. Many times it's tempting then to start pushing for volume over quality. But how much quality are you willing to sacrifice to drive volume? And how do you achieve volume without sacrificing quality?

Whether judged by return on investment, customer engagement or sales effectiveness, sacrificing lead quality for volume is usually a poor investment for marketers, and ultimately a bad practice for online lead generation companies. What all marketers know instinctively -- that one good lead is worth a handful of mediocre leads -- has been confirmed by recent industry analyst reports and news stories that suggest focusing on lead volume generally does not result in lead quality. In many cases, this approach can lead to an erosion of online lead generation best practices and a corresponding erosion in consumer trust that can ultimately hurt not only your conversion numbers, but also harm your brand equity and image.

Maintaining a constant focus on lead generation best practices promotes high-quality leads without sacrificing volume, ensures campaign success and discourages abuses of consumer privacy. There are a number of important steps marketers can take to make sure that their online lead generation efforts are effective at delivering a high volume of quality leads, promoting and preserving the brand, and encouraging consumer interaction.

The quality lead

What constitutes a high-quality online lead? It's important to define quality up front, before launching an online lead generation campaign. Traditional lead generation and online lead generation differ significantly in one key aspect: the marketer's ability to measure quality at several points in the process before converting a lead into a sale.

A good lead can be judged by evaluating several criteria: Where was the lead generated? Targeting the right audience, always a challenge, is made somewhat easier on the internet as consumers increasingly turn online to research before making a purchase decision. Search engines, microsites populated with relevant information, targeted opt-in email lists, and online communities that align with your category and brand can ensure marketers choose the right sources for their lead-generation efforts. We recommend testing different lead sources to identify the most effective and efficient resource.

Many times lead quality can be determined by tracking:
• Response rates on emails or calls
• Conversion rates
• Lifetime value of the leads by source
• Consumer complaint rates

Maintaining volume and quality
What is motivating the customer to provide their contact information to the marketer?
Here, relevance is key to achieving the volume and quality of leads you want. Make sure your offers are relevant to the consumer's need, your category and your brand. Remember:
•Personalized, relevant offers are compelling offers.
•Busy consumers want to receive valuable information that reflects their interests and needs.
•Offers containing relevant information, samples and coupons not only increase the chance that consumers will respond to your offer, but these are also vital for building a long-term relationship with the consumer. This approach can also build volume without sacrificing quality.

Are you generating leads for a specific brand or category, or are your goals more general?
Offers that are targeted to an exclusive brand will attract consumers who are interested in your specific good or service. The marketer must be willing to pay a premium for this lead, but it will be worth it on the back end. If you can't narrow down your objectives to a specific brand, you may generate more leads… but expect quality to suffer a bit

Are you following up on your leads quickly, and do you have a targeted strategy in place?

The timing and content of your initial follow-up to your new leads is critical in online lead generation. The longer it takes to push the lead through your systems, the greater the odds that the conversion will be poor. We advise marketers to scale their campaign processes to make sure every lead can be followed up immediately and to make these immediate follow-up campaigns targeted so that consumers are receiving what is best suited for them.


Can you verify that the consumer self-profile information is genuine?
Jane Doe or Bob Smith may be some of your most frequent respondents, and conversion will no doubt suffer if you don't put systems in place from the start to pre-screen leads to verify the accuracy of consumer-supplied contact information.

Tempting as it may be, avoid building volume while sacrificing quality. Volume with quality is attainable. Make your quality metrics are established from the beginning and follow these proven best practices: testing lead sources and offers, measuring results frequently, tailoring your acquisition campaign to the consumer's interest, making sure there is quick and targeted follow-up, and verifying the quality of leads during follow-up will help you trump quantity with quality for the best outcome.

How to get the best leads at the right price?

Customized predictive models provide a process that evaluates each new, incoming lead, and then automates important marketing decisions.

For many of today's direct marketing professionals, cost-per-lead (CPL) online advertising has evolved to a point at which it now serves as the focal point of integrated campaigns because of the abundance of low-cost, high-volume consumer leads it delivers. As a result of this evolution, online lead generation is currently the fastest growing segment of online advertising expenditures, increasing 74 percent in 2006 to $1.3 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Furthermore, industry experts forecast that this spending will approach $2 billion in 2007.

However, the outsourcing of lead generation campaigns to third-party agencies, while a seemingly convenient and cost-effective move on the surface, comes with several inherent risks that direct marketers should keep in mind. The most pressing areas of concern for CPL advertisers today involves unevenness in the quality and consistency of the online leads they are receiving from multiple sources, and their inability to understand the value of these leads prior to purchase or during follow-up.

While the process between buyers and sellers of online leads is gradually becoming more transparent, the fact remains that many companies lack visibility into the sources and quality of the leads they are purchasing.

Simply stated, this is the double-edged sword of online lead generation. While large volumes of leads can be generated in a short period of time, the quality of those leads often remains, largely, a mystery until after they hit the call center or mail fulfillment house.

As a result, many direct marketers are complaining about unpredictable conversion rates that, in turn, have triggered a shift among advertisers toward a greater focus on the quality, rather than quantity, of purchased online leads. Thus, in today's online lead generation environment, how does one properly balance these two considerations?

In the end, the costs and risks associated with CPL advertising strategies must be closely weighed against their expected returns. When negotiating with outside agencies that specialize in the generation of sizeable quantities of low-cost leads, marketers must be more intelligent and pragmatic than ever to efficiently manage the costs in the lead-to-conversion process.

For example, using call center agents to pursue poor quality or invalid leads to inevitable dead ends will result in high costs that negatively impact marketing return on investment. To address this dilemma, the marketer must find a practical solution to properly evaluate the reliability of acquired leads, and then specifically determine which resources will be allocated to each lead.

There are definitive lead evaluation tools now available for guiding the decisions of online lead buyers along these lines. For years now, predictive scoring has been used by traditional direct marketers to intelligently segment customer prospects and house file lists prior to launching direct mail campaigns. This approach resulted in better-targeted lists, increased response rates and excellent marketing ROI. Now, in the real-time, online realm, a company can apply the same techniques to "score" online leads using predictive statistical models that accurately measure the probability of actual sales conversion. This approach gives advertisers tremendous power and flexibility to objectively assess the quality of an online lead right up front.

How is this done? First, customized predictive models are developed that utilize past campaign results appended with identity, demographic and behavioral data. Once created, these models provide simple, three-digit scores that can be used to evaluate each new, incoming lead, and then automate important marketing decisions. By scoring every lead received from its source in real-time, marketers obtain insight into and control of their online lead management activities.

The real-time scoring of online leads carries three important implications for direct marketers who rely heavily on CPL advertising:
•This tool gives them a concrete basis for rejecting low-scoring leads altogether. Additionally, many CPL agreements come with scrub rate provisions, so predictive scoring can be used to identify which leads should be kicked back to the provider.
•Scoring allows for better allocation of contact center resources by prioritizing leads with the highest likelihood of conversion. At the same time, this approach enables marketers to avoid the unnecessary follow-up phone and mailing costs on very low-scoring leads that have a near-zero chance of ever converting into a paying customer.
•Predictive scoring can facilitate a rational, tiered pricing structure for online leads, and enable buyers to negotiate and pay varying rates for different quality levels of leads.

Just as banks use credit scores to make instant decisions regarding consumer loan qualifications at different interest rates, predictive scoring can also help direct marketers effectively assess and monitor the consistency, quality and value of their online lead purchases. More importantly, this easy-to-use approach maximizes conversion rates, as well as the total ROI associated with today's CPL online advertising campaigns.

Source: Article by jeff Liebl is vice president of marketing and business development at eBureau.

Adnetwork: Competitor's Model

Komli :

You are not aware of the exact CPC becoz they will combine CPC ads with CPL & CPM. So, there can be huge deviations in earnings from day to day.

Tyroo:

They can be treated as no2 in terms of CPC. But, the clicks will be less as there will be less number of advertisers per category.

OzoneMedia :

They can be treated as no2 even no1 in terms of CPC. But, they work with limited number of advertisers at a given point of time)

CPX Interactive:

They have the least CPC to offer. But, guarantees 100% inventory fill.

TribalFusion:

It offers only CPM deals. So, the best if you are a site like news site will lot of traffic and lot of page views per visitor.

4 other affiliate networks deserve a mention here:

DGM-India:

They are really doing quite well and creating a lot of traction among the advertisers.

Axill:

They have some interesting non-Indian offers and CPM deals. Competitor to DGM.

Luckypacific:

Pretty good network. Its not limited to India but for the whole Asia-Pacific region.

Vertical Ad networks – Why are they needed in India ?

Over the last few months some vertical ad networks have been the talk of the industry press and in conferences. Some have even started doing the sales rounds to Media planners and advertisers. Some are in embryonic stages and planning to launch.

The one trend which is healthy for the Ad networks category is the onset of vertical ad networks in India. Vertical ad networks have been around Internationally for 2-3 years now ( when the Horizontals were arriving in India).

Overview :

The only thing “really new” about Vertical Networks is the attention they are starting to get in India.

Vertical ad networks are online advertising networks that have a particular content focus. They aggregate a collection of sites together that have an affinity with one another. This provides advertisers meaningful reach in Long tail and Middle tail publishers - without the uncertainty of a vast collection of unknown and dissimilar sites ( as in the case of Horizontals). They also give the advertiser the comfort of context as well as target. In some cases even 100% site transparency.

The horizontals can argue they can deliver the same with their “Channels” but it’s never the same for the advertiser.

The appeal of a vertical ad network is first and foremost its focus. If I'm a Laptop brand advertiser, regardless of whether I know exactly which site my ads are running on, I can reach my audience if I buy on a Technology Vertical Ad network.

A vertical network will go deep into a certain domain. For eg Technology network will have special focus on Linux , Enterprise Security websites , Networking , BPO , Digital marketing and so on .

Agreed the current audience volume will be low in India for such channels . But at the same time this Network will still have more audiences then an independent Linux only publisher or Linux blog.

So for IBM or Sun Microsystems looking to promote infront of the Linux community in India - it makes sense. International advertisers would be able to target Indian CTOs , CIOs and System Administrators through such a network as well.

Indian Ad network scenario :

Over the last two years , Horizontal ad networks have worked hard in setting up the scene for the ad network marketplace in India. Currently ad networks get about 5-6% of online ad spends in India ( around Rs 30 crores) , whereas the average in US and UK markets varies between 11%- 15% of the total online ad spends( this doesn’t include Google).

In the UK ad networks get 25% of the total online display advertising pie. UK has 28 reputable ad networks and many smaller ones and growing. US has more than 50 reputable top league networks and 200+ others and growing.

Clearly there is some catching up to do for Ad networks ( both Horizontals and Verticals) in India , to get closer to the global ad spend %ages.

The bet verticals are making in their business plans is that they work in growing the ad network marketplace and ad networks would reach closer to these %ages ( 11-15%) in the next 2-3 years in India and Verticals will play a big role in closing this gap from the current 5-6%. ( Keep in mind the industy should be closer to Rs 1500 crores by then. Making the ad network genre alone worth around Rs 150-200 crores – which is 1/3rd the size of the current 08-09 industry !!! ).

It’s a similar bet the horizontals made 2 years back – when in an indirect way their competition was publishers in the Media plan.

Still this potential market size is nothing compared to the ad networks market size in today’s US and UK. We still have only one credible Ad serving company based locally in India for the indian market. Rest want to come and set local shops , but are waiting for the market to grow( But that’s another story).

International Vertical Network trends :

Verticals ad networks and their prominence is growing worldwide with companies powering such networks like Adify being acquired for $300 million by Cox. DoubleClick is set to launch a similar vertical ad network product by end of 2008 along with their eagerly awaited Ad exchange.

Glam.com , Jumpstart , Travel Ad network and many more are other successful examples. All the blog networks are based on the vertical ad network model in a way.

Each vertical network has had its own path to success.

Some Vertical networks in US have actually grown by growing the publisher community itself. It’s a painful job , but they did it.

They have taken the route of establishing close working relationships with Publishers , Agencies and Advertisers.

Some Verticals networks even do ad sales ( including email marketing , offline events sponsorships , mobile marketing) , Ad Network sales , business consulting and even Online marketing for their publishers. This has meant strategic alignment of their business models as well , but they understood that they need to serve a community to reap the “ benefits from the domino effect” . They need to create an ecosystem.

This is surely needed in India if we ever want to grow the publisher base.

How many Horizontals Ad networks have such time and resources for their publishers is anybody’s guess. It’s not their fault. It just doesn’t fit in their business model.

Challenges in the Horizontal Ad network World :

Currently worldwide and in India, there seems to be an ongoing concern related to Horizontal Ad networks : Primarily their lack of transparency, lack of control over the reach and the quality of placements.

One key difference between the new breed of vertical ad networks ( internationally) and the "mass reach" Horizontal networks is that many of the new vertical ad networks do provide 100% transparency and do allow the buyers to choose the sites they want.

The counter argument here could be this is almost like a media buy , but its not. Since its not a placement buy and the network is committing to monetize the publisher’s inventory.

Conclusion : What value do Vertical networks bring ?

From an advertiser perspective – Option to go deeper into finding their target “and” niche audiences.

From a publisher perspective -( especially long and middle tail ) these verticals Networks also make sense , because they have an option to get a good price for their inventories and not go by the Google only defined “ price” of inventory currently in the marketplace – which is their only option in many cases.

From a Horizontal network perspective – The verticals are actually their allies. Not only Verticals are helping in growing the ad network market and publisher base, but there have been tie ups in USA where Horizontal and vertical ad networks have actually partnered together for inventory sales of the vertical inventory on horizontal networks !!

Ad networks and Ad sales houses have established an industry body in UK called the IASH. We will need a similar body in India and work together to grow the market.

After all the vertical networks are not chasing the same coin – “Right” fully earned by Horizontals.

Content is King --- again!

They say content is king -- again and how true it is!. As you are aware the traditional advertising industry was built upon the interruption/disruption model. Consumers understood that if they wanted to experience free content -- in the form of television shows, music on the radio, etc. -- they would have to view ads, most of which were perceived as irrelevant, boring, annoying or all three!. And thus ads were seen as a “necessary evil” in order to support the content consumers really wanted to see.

But now the interruption/disruption model is dying out.

Four interrelated trends are forcing advertisers to rethink their approach to advertising messages, what form they take and how they’re delivered:

1) Consumers increasingly are in control of their media content, and can easily eradicate ads they don’t want to see.

2) With the internet, media fragmentation is expanding exponentially.

3) Over the past few years, consumer trust in advertising messages, and the ad industry in general, has plummeted.

4) Consumers are creating their own content with the help of video sites, blogs, social networks, wikis and other digital communication platforms.

As a result of these trends, advertisers and their agencies who want to engage with today’s consumers will have to start turning their ads into content. Ultimately, they will need to be able to produce content that is so compelling, relevant and entertaining, consumers will seek it out, and want to share it with others.


Authored by: Geoffrey Ramsey

Behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting or behavioral targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual.

For Example, a visitor is searching for home loan and he landed your site, your site offers other type of loans also like personal loans, car loans, and mortgage loans etc. Suppose visitors clicking only home loan links then here comes behavioral targeting to serve him all the ads offering home loans. It will increase the CTR of ads.

Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them.

Behavioral targeting techniques may also be applied to content within retail or other e-commerce website as a technique for increasing the relevance of product offers and promotions on a visitor by visitor basis. Again, behavioral data can be combined with demographic and past purchase history in order to produce a greater degree of granularity in the targeting.

In behavioral targeting, the most important issue is starting with the right data. There is a hypothesis of what are the 10 to 15 available data points you can use that can significantly impact the value of an audience member. It is not about data mining, or amassing data, but on focusing a collection of high-value data points.

How do I sell advertising on my website?

How do I make money from my homepage? How can I sell banner ads? How do I get started in online advertising?

On the surface these all seem like simple questions. The reality though is that there are a whole range of options out there available to you. No single one is the correct answer. Let's simplify things a little bit by assuming you have one banner ad per page on each page of your site.

There are essentially four ways to sell advertising on your site:

1. Flat Rate – The advertiser pays you flat rate to display their advertising on your site for a certain period of time.
2. CPM – Cost Per Thousand. The advertiser pays you a certain rate for every 1,000 ad impressions.
3. CPC – Cost Per Click. The advertiser pays you a fee every time a user click on one of their advertisements.
4. CPA – Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action. The advertiser pays you a fee every time a user click on their ad and continues onto their site and performs an agreed upon action. This may be purchasing a product, registering for a newsletter, or any other action that has value to the advertiser.

Regardless of how you choose to sell ads on your site, the way you will track the value of each ad unit will be by calculating your effective CPM. If you sold your banner ads on a flat rate basis for $1,000 and served 100,000 pages, your effective CPM for that ad unit is $1,000/100 (since CPM is per THOUSAND page views) = $10 CPM. If you sold your ads on a CPC basis and got 200 clicks at $0.25 each or $50, your effective CPM is now $50/100 = $0.50 CPM.

As a publisher, your goal is to maximize the value you receive from each web page of your site. This value is called the RPM or Revenue Per Thousand Page Views. RPM is the basic metric online advertising operations executives use to gauge the health of their ad sales.

"RPM is the basic metric online advertising operations executives use to gauge the health of their ad sales".

To calculate RPM you add up the effective CPM of each ad unit on a page. For instance, if you had three ad units on a page selling for $3, $5, and $10 effective CPM's, then your RPM would be 3 + 5 + 10 =$18 RPM. Another way to calculate RPM is to take the total dollars earned from your site and divide by the number of page views. For instance if you know you made $5,000 in one month and displayed 100,000 page views, your site wide RPM is $50.

We increase RPM over time by selling a variety of ad types and using a variety of targeting criteria. To get started, first you must attempt to establish an RPM floor for your site. This serves as the minimum amount you expect to earn from your site.

Author By :Fritz Rollins

Are ads ready to become content?

There have always been great ads, but is the quality of advertising great enough to rival content? Geoffrey Ramsey, Carol Kruse and Sean Finnegan debate the question of the day.

Consumers don't like ads, the idea of advertising or even the ad industry, according to eMarketer CEO and Co-Founder Geoffrey Ramsey, who pointed out that most people rate advertisers slightly above big tobacco but below lawyers.

"Consumers are getting ad overload, and new media only exacerbates the problem," Ramsey told attendees at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Fla. "Traditional advertising fairs a little better than interactive, and in areas like banner ads and video, we see a lot of negative consumer feedback."

That was the bad news from Ramsey, who painted a harsh picture for brands struggling to find ways to connect with consumers. But the good news came from Ramsey's panelists, who dissected the growing trend of ads morphing into content.

Having some fun with the idea of blurring the line between content and advertising, Carol Kruse, VP of interactive marketing for The Coca Cola Company, took to the stage with a crowd-pleasing stunt.

Before Ramsey could introduce Kruse, or her co-panelist, Sean Finnegan, CMO of Vibrant Media, the soft drink executive took control, asking both men if they would be willing to wear bright red Coke t-shirts. While Ramsey pocketed his shirt and Finnegan made a quick wardrobe change, Kruse joked about the idea of wrapping content -- the speakers themselves -- inside an impromptu Coke ad.

Getting down to business, Ramsey -- without a Coke t-shirt -- led the panel and the attendees in an interactive discussion of the new "Ads-R-Content" model.

Using clickers provided by ValueClick, Ramsey polled the crowd to see whether the notion that ads will have to become content actually holds water. While a handful of those in the room took extreme positions, saying either yes or no, the vast majority of marketers found themselves taking the middle ground with respect to the new model.

"I think that makes a lot of sense," Finnegan said in reference to the fact that most marketers viewed the new model as being something short of a sea change. "Any kind of zero-sum approach won't work, so I think some ads will have to look more like content, while others will stay the same."

Elaborating on Finnegan's analysis, Kruse pointed out that some brands will more easily adapt to the new model, while others will certainly struggle.

"I used to work for Clorox, and it's hard to see a brand like that spawning content-style ads, but if you look at what Tide did at the Super Bowl, you see that it is possible," Kruse said.

Notably, Kruse, who now works for Coke, referred to her brand as an entertainment brand. While many think of Coke as a consumer packaged goods brand, Kruse's assertion that the beverage company has become something more than the sum of its products may serve as a guidepost for brands looking to bring their messaging into the digital age.

But that messaging will require a creative ramp-up that will force brands and agencies to invest more heavily in production, according to Finnegan, who said he believes agencies are well-suited to the task.

"Entertainment units within the agencies are getting a lot more attention, and that's helping to reshape the agency model as compelling content becomes more vital," said Finnegan, who recently left the BBDO agency.

According to Kruse, that shift will mean increased costs and more work for independent production houses because digital often demands a slew of creatives for a single campaign. However, those costs may not be as painful as brands might think if their agencies are able to realize economic efficiencies by producing content-style ads for the web in conjunction with their traditional TV spots.

But the most engaging creative in the world may still fall flat, according to Ramsey, who reminded the crowd that with more users reporting a dislike of ads in general and technology that enables ad-skipping becoming more widespread, the industry may have a bigger problem on its hands than it realizes.

"I actually hope there's more disruption," Finnegan said. "The more that consumers turn away from ads, the more that will accelerate the growth of the new model."

Kruse was equally pragmatic about the prospect of consumers using technology to avoid ads.

"I think publishers will always find a way to serve ads," Kruse said. "Disruption is just a reality that we deal with."

But another reality that we deal with -- user-generated content -- might not be the place for the new advertising model, according to Kruse.

"I don't know if you'll see a ton of brands opening up the doors to UGC because that's giving away too much control, but I do think you'll see more advertising around that kind of content," Kruse said.

Whether brands simply promote UGC by running ads on YouTube or throw open the doors and ask users to handle the creative heavy-lifting, one area the panelists and those in the room were able to agree on was the notion that success will be defined by a sometimes dizzying array of metrics.

"I think that's an answer that comes down to all of the above," Finnegan said.

Will ads morph into content? That remains an open question for the future, as brands experiment in a rapidly changing media landscape.


Article By:Michael Estrin

"Pricing of Advertisements on the Internet"

The internet is increasingly becoming an attractive channel for advertising. Further, the market for online ads in the US is expected to grow to $26 billion by 2010. The beneficiaries of this growth in online advertising revenue are web publishers or portals on the one hand, and search engines on the other. While internet users visit web publishers for their information content, they visit websites of search engines to search for the internet addresses of publishers or for the addresses of online sellers of specific products.

Traditionally, publishers have sold display advertisements (hereafter, simply ads) such as banner ads to advertisers interested in reaching visitors to their websites. In this case, advertisers primarily relied on the number of impressions or 'eyeballs' delivered by the publishers and the asking price for the ad space, in choosing where to advertise.

More recently, search engines such as Google have given a new impetus to online advertising by selling search-related ads that are placed alongside search results delivered to users. Advertisers in this case have much more than an average demographic characteristic of the search engine user to go by in gauging the usefulness of advertising.

Search engines such as Google have given a new impetus to online advertising by selling search-related ads.The search keyword such as 'wall clock' that is entered by the search engine user reveals a specific interest in the product or even the brand, and this makes the user a valuable prospect to sellers of the product. This advertising innovation has made search-related advertising the fastest growing component of online advertising.

The success of search-related advertising has enabled Google to extend this idea to placing context-related ads at the website of publishers.

Just as online advertising has evolved from banner ads to search- or context-related ads, pricing of online ads to advertisers has evolved over time. In the early days of the World Wide Web, the pricing model for online ads imitated that used for traditional offline media such as print and TV, with the publisher charging a flat fee for displaying a fixed number of impressions of an ad. Since this flat fee was usually computed based on thousand impressions, this pricing model came to be known as CPM (cost-per-thousand).

Subsequently, CDNow.com introduced the idea of paying web publishers based on click-through generated from ads or links placed on the publishers’ website. Since the advertiser is charged only when a consumer clicks on the displayed ad, this pricing model came to be known as cost-per-click (CPC).

In basing payment on clicks, the CPC pricing model capitalised on the ease of measuring consumer response in the internet medium.Many advertisers preferred CPC over CPM because the former is more closely linked to an ad’s performance. In 2003, another innovation was introduced by GoTo.com when it auctioned the ad space to the highest bidding advertiser. This auction model is now commonplace in the search related advertising category, where specific search keywords such as 'wall clock' are auctioned, and advertisers use automated bidding software to submit bids per click for millions of search keywords.

A pricing model that is even more closely tied to performance is one where the publisher is paid only when the click results in a purchase.

Google recently made an interesting announcement -- that it would also accept bids per impressions for its context-related ad services. In sum, pricing models for online advertisements differ on whether payment is based on impressions or clicks, and on whether the price per click or impression is posted or decided through an auction.

In this context, a pricing model that is even more closely tied to performance is one where the publisher is paid only when the click results in a purchase. This model is also used in internet advertising. A distinguishing feature of our analysis is that it considers the effect of product-market positioning of online advertisers on their bids for online ads and the consequent implications for pricing policies.

Thus it considers the following research questions:
1.What are the implications of pricing based on impressions versus clicks?

2. How is pricing for search- or context-related advertising different from other less precisely targeted advertising methods?

3.What are the implications for volume discounts given for higher click through rates (CTR) of an ad?

4.What are the implications of alternate policies for choosing the winning bidder for advertisements?

With respect to the last question, two policies for choosing the winning bidder are observed in the online advertising industry. In one policy the advertiser who bids the highest CPC is considered the winning bidder. On the other hand the second one derives a rank score by multiplying the maximum CPC bid by an advertiser for a search keyword with a quality score that increases with the advertiser’s CTR, and the winning advertiser is the one with the highest rank score.Offline ads can increase advertisers’ profit from online advertising suggesting that a synergy exists between these forms of advertising.

Finally, the impact of offline ads by the advertiser on the profitability of online advertising to the advertiser and publisher is considered. This is an important issue facing marketing managers as they decide how to coordinate offline and online advertising in their marketing mix.

Here, we assume that the products of these advertisers are positioned to appeal more to one of two different consumer segments. Our main conclusions are as follows:

* Bidding based on impressions or clicks yield surprisingly equivalent results in terms of advertiser and publisher profits. On the other hand, advertising placed with knowledge of a search keyword or context can be more profitable for the advertiser.

* It can also be found that, the volume discounts based on number of clicks or impressions can increase the publisher’s profit while also maximizing the profit of the channel consisting of the publisher and advertiser.

* Lastly, offline ads can increase advertisers’ profit from online advertising suggesting that a synergy exists between these forms of advertising.


Article by: Subramanian Balachander & Karthik Kannan, Assistant Professors of Management, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, USA