Bing/News Corp: Not a Game Changer
Posted by Shar VanBoskirk and Sarah Rotman Epps]
Microsoft and News Corp are rumored to be in talks about an exclusive relationship, where Microsoft would pay News Corp to remove its content from Google and allow it to be indexed only through Microsoft's Bing.
I don't know anymore than you do about the veracity of this rumor. But my colleague Sarah Rotman Epps and I put our heads together on the potential deal. Here is our take:
News Corp’s short-term desperation will sabotage its long-term interests. Everyone is watching newspaper companies lose more ad revenues as subscriptions fall even lower in 2009 than the declining trajectory they have been on since 2000. Getting consumers to pay for content is a hard sell; media companies may have an easier time generating revenue by licensing their content to other companies, like portals, device makers, and non-media companies like Fidelity who need content for their Web sites. Murdoch wants a deal like this to get MS to pay him for the opportunity to index his companies' content. But the tradeoff for short-term revenue could be long-term irrelevance: If consumers don’t find Newscorp results in Google searches, they’ll just click on another content source. “If a tree falls in the woods…” could be rephrased as “If a site isn’t indexed by Google, does it really exist?” For the 65% of searches relying on Google, the answer is no.
Microsoft wins publisher goodwill, but probably not much search traffic. Bing has enjoyed growth in its share of searches since its launch in summer 2009, but it still accounts for only about 10% of searches compared to Google's 65%. So Microsoft needs to do everything it can to try to gain search traffic. I see this as another way to try to drive searchers to use Bing instead of other possible search engines. But stealing one content source from Google won’t be enough to change consumers’ search habits.
Consumers don't care about a deal like this. Consumers do not expect search engines to be exclusive. In their minds, search engines are gateways to answers, and if they can’t find something through search, it may as well not exist. So, while News Corp and MS might enjoy scratching each others backs in a deal like this, consumers won't know and won't care that Bing is the only place they can find Wall Street Journal articles and other News Corp content.
Most content doesn't have enough value for exclusivity to matter. A number of reporters have asked me if this is the beginning of something big in terms of media/search engine deal. My take is no way. Because frankly content is plentiful and cheap and consumers are very good at finding what they need without having to pay for it or be inconvenienced to get it. So while News Corp may have some content that still qualifies as "exclusive," I don't see many other media firms having any leverage to create similar deals with search engines.
See Forrester's blog for Consumer Product Strategy Professionals for additional take on this deal and others affecting the media industries.
Shifting Search Marketing Strategy
Less than two years ago, when I was introduced to the search marketing industry, I (naively) thought I knew what search was.
Today I got my Google Wave invite and floundered around there for a bit. Last week I played around with Google’s new Social Search experiment. With all the new uses, integrations and features search engines are adding to their results, it’s enough to make a blogger dizzy.
Is anyone else left asking, “What’s next?”
Along with the changes to search, the online evolution has brought about a change in user behavior. Turns out that after a rough year of economic uncertainty, Internet users are keeping their eyes wide open to identify scams as well as sales pitches.
Spending any time on the Internet’s watering holes, social networks, reveals that seemingly innocuous games and messages from trusted friends can elevate your participation to victim status with the click of a link. [This is why you should trust no one. --Susan]
Some users may have extended their caution of online content to the realm of the marketer as well. At last week’s Digital Publishing & Advertising Conference (DPAC4) attendees learned that consumers have new-found pride in their ability to bypass marketing messages. As if it weren’t hard enough for a business online, now the audience is actively trying to tune out the message.
Despite the great abuse potential of social media content to harm brands or defame individuals, on the search side, we see the engines eager to integrate social media into main results.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has made it clear that he thinks social media and real-time content plays heavily in the future for search. Determining how to rank real-time social media content is, according to Schmidt, “the great challenge of the age.”
Faced with an mistrustful audience and a new search opportunity, social media is a crucial frontier for any online business to be on. Thought it’s worth considering just where the value of real-time participation lies.
For all the weight put on real-time content within search engines and all the time spent on online social networks, for all the new features being added to search and the lack of trust Internet users have for overt marketing…
As recently as last week, I said SMM wasn’t a requirement of SEO. After connecting the dots with some new information I’m actually reconsidering whether social media marketing has in fact become a vital requirement of search engine optimization. I mean, really… what’s next?
Aggregated Social Media Marketing News. Go to Source
Email Marketing Service Provider Wave
I continue to work on the long awaited ESP Wave report, and yes we do plan to publish it before the end of the year. This Wave has more vendors than any of our earlier ESP Waves. It includes the following 15 vendors:
Acxiom
Alterian
BlueHornet
ClickSquared
Datran Media
e-Dialog
Emailvision
Epsilon
ExactTarget
Experian Marketing Services – Cheetahmail
Lyris
Responsys
Silverpop
Yesmail
Zeta Interactive
Email marketing’s cost effectiveness is driving a renaissance for the channel, which is resulting in strong growth for the sector. I look forward to helping with your vendor selection process. Stay tuned for the report…
The Future of Agencies: What Do You Think?
[Posted by Sean Corcoran]
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We’re in the process of pondering a very important question in the industry today: what is the future of agencies? Agencies have played such a crucial role in helping companies market their products and services for more than a century. Names like McCann Erickson, Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi (among others) are practically household names. There’s even a massively popular and critically acclaimed television show capturing life in the golden age of legendary agencies on Madison Avenue.
Yet the agency model was built during a time when there were only a handful of channels in which they could push one way messages en masse. Does that model still work in a time when nearly a quarter of online US adults now create content online? Many more questions begin to arise as we open Pandora’s Box: Can one agency do it all? Are holding companies the answer? Can digital agencies compete with them and lead brands? Do marketers rely on agencies like they used to? Should marketers consolidate their agencies or de-centralize to dozens of agency partners? Are technology providers and crowd sourcing legitimate threats? Where is this all going?
To conduct this research we’re speaking with some of the most influential agencies, marketers, and service providers. However, what better way to get a feel for the pulse of the industry than to crowd source it? So we’re reaching out to get your take on the space. Please give us your thoughts in the comments section on the question: What is the future of agencies?
We’re looking forward to your input (and please try to keep it to one or two paragraphs)! Since this research is a collaborative report across roles, this post is also cross-posted on the Marketing Leadership, Customer Experience and Customer Intelligence team blogs.
Shifting Search Marketing Strategy
Less than two years ago, when I was introduced to the search marketing industry, I (naively) thought I knew what search was.
Today I got my Google Wave invite and floundered around there for a bit. Last week I played around with Google’s new Social Search experiment. With all the new uses, integrations and features search engines are adding to their results, it’s enough to make a blogger dizzy.
Is anyone else left asking, “What’s next?”
Along with the changes to search, the online evolution has brought about a change in user behavior. Turns out that after a rough year of economic uncertainty, Internet users are keeping their eyes wide open to identify scams as well as sales pitches.
Spending any time on the Internet’s watering holes, social networks, reveals that seemingly innocuous games and messages from trusted friends can elevate your participation to victim status with the click of a link. [This is why you should trust no one. --Susan]
Some users may have extended their caution of online content to the realm of the marketer as well. At last week’s Digital Publishing & Advertising Conference (DPAC4) attendees learned that consumers have new-found pride in their ability to bypass marketing messages. As if it weren’t hard enough for a business online, now the audience is actively trying to tune out the message.
Despite the great abuse potential of social media content to harm brands or defame individuals, on the search side, we see the engines eager to integrate social media into main results.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has made it clear that he thinks social media and real-time content plays heavily in the future for search. Determining how to rank real-time social media content is, according to Schmidt, “the great challenge of the age.”
Faced with an mistrustful audience and a new search opportunity, social media is a crucial frontier for any online business to be on. Thought it’s worth considering just where the value of real-time participation lies.
For all the weight put on real-time content within search engines and all the time spent on online social networks, for all the new features being added to search and the lack of trust Internet users have for overt marketing…
As recently as last week, I said SMM wasn’t a requirement of SEO. After connecting the dots with some new information I’m actually reconsidering whether social media marketing has in fact become a vital requirement of search engine optimization. I mean, really… what’s next?
Aggregated Social Media Marketing News. Go to Source
Bye Bye, Old Media Thinking: CNN Leads the Way in Online Video Strategy – SEM Synergy Extras
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The rising importance of online video is the topic of the day on today’s episode of SEM Synergy.
CNN — a media outlet that before a few years ago was best known for its 24-hour television news coverage — launched a newly redesigned site last week. Central to the new design is the prominence of video.
On the home page, the editor’s choice of must-watch videos runs across the screen. Head to any category landing page — Politics, Entertainment, Tech, and so on — and you’ll see a number of videos featured above the fold.
CNN isn’t the only site looking to capitalize on the presence of video in online properties. A study by social media analytics provider Sysomos uncovers the wide-spread adoption of video embedding by bloggers and overall video viewing trends.
Examining video embeds and links to videos on blogs, Sysomos looked at 100 million blog posts published from July to September of 2009 along with twelve major video platforms. Findings showed that men and women across the world are including links to videos on their blogs. As a friend said to me the other day, “Videos are the new pictures.”
I’m already late to the party. Typical.
Now, if I’m not alone, let’s back up a second and listen to Bruce’s perspective on why video is an increasingly important element of any site, shared during an interview with ReelSEO, a video marketing and SEO company, earlier this year. Check that out and come right back, okay?
Videos are engagement objects™, or elements and applications that cause the user to actively participate on a Web site. Google’s Universal Search highlights the need for videos, images and other engaging content as such features are featured prominently in page-one search results.
My guest Topher Kohan, SEO coordinator at CNN, talked to me during the podcast about CNN’s Web 2.0 strategy, what the process of redesigning the site was like, and how he managed to keep SEO in the loop from the very beginning.
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One point that really stuck out to me during our convo but didn’t get a lot of time during the podcast was CNN’s approach to the Web, not as an alternate channel, but as a critical appendage of the holistic-minded media organization.
While some news organizations push Web visitors to the television, CNN sees Web users as an influential audience, deserving of at least the same amount of time and effort as is given to catering to TV viewers.
As a television news org, CNN has a lot of video in its archives. If users can find, view, and share video online, and all those interactions can be tracked and measured with unprecedented accuracy, isn’t online video an investment worth at least investigating?
Retailers are facing the same situation. Once upon a time Web site visitors could be directed to call or visit a brick-and-mortar location. The Web was a tool for funneling people down a non-Web-based conversion cycle.
But business models have necessarily evolved as confident shoppers aren’t going to put in the time and effort it takes to bounce from your site to the store when an online alternative is available.
The Web is no second-class citizen, and video holds a high place in the court of the king. Get the picture?
Aggregated Social Media Marketing News. Go to Source
10 Proven Applications For Social Media
Tenured digital marketing professionals have been applying social media for end business and marketing objectives for years. But what is clearly valuable to some is still a mystery to many.
Whether you’re a marketer trying to get buy-in for social media from the top or a small business owner wondering why you should bother, knowing high impact applications of social media are helpful. If you’re looking to build relationships with connected, influential individuals (and what business isn’t?) then it’s no longer a question of if you should engage in social media, rather it’s the how and the why.
If you’re wondering how, a great starting point is viewing TopRank’s social media roadmap presentation. But let’s take a step even further back and consider the why: directed application of social media can accomplish some seriously valuable objectives.
Following are 10 tried and proven applications of social media:
1. Change the conversation in your industry, even if you’re not at the top
The social web is the great equalizer, in that good ideas permeate a niche in as close to a democratic fashion as you can get. Certainly those with a following and a strong reputation can spark whatever conversations they want. But in reality anyone with ideas worth sharing can impact the global conversation. Influence is multi-directional and frequently occurs horizontally or from the bottom up.
2. Reputation management
As noted in our post on B2C Marketing and social media, social media allows you to go direct to consumer with your news. If you’ve got a megaphone to your fans – such as a popular blog read by your entire industry – you can counter pesky rumors floating around about your brand with a simple post backed up with the real facts.
3. Build your tribe
Seth Godin has popularized the notion of having a tribe – aka a following or community – interested in seeing you succeed. Social media does not make this easy, rather it makes it possible at scale if you’re actually worth following.
4. Organic PR generation
As Lee noted in answers to social media questions, TopRank’s blog generates anywhere from 10-20 quality organic PR placements monthly. Some months this can be much higher. By participating as a contributor to the social web and consistently adding value, organic PR is a byproduct. This is possible for your brand too and shifts your PR from the infinite treadmill of push to the natural growth of pull. This strategy is scalable, authentic and let’s you be yourself – what’s not to like?
5. Use social as part of your SEO strategy
At TopRank, we’re big on the SEO and social media intersection. We frequently help clients uncover opportunities embracing the fact that both SEO and social are intrinsically linked. Being white hat SEOs, it’s a crossroads we’re especially fond of. Social content plays such as linkbait are tactics the engines publicly endorse, the engines thrive on the addition of fresh content and social media participation forges relationships with others likely to link to you as those relationships strengthen.
6. Listen to key stakeholders
The wide array of social media monitoring tools available make listening to the topics you’re interested in a snap. Get the right setup in place and you can have your finger on the pulse of your niche, learn frequently articulated pain points and deliver solutions that truly resonate.
7. Become a David to your industry’s Goliath
Social media lets you tell the stories you want to tell in an unrestricted fashion. If you’re a brand willing to step outside the box, it is possible to position yourself as the David to your industry’s Goliath. And if there is one thing social web users across niches love, it’s an up-and-comer that’s organized around openness and being social. That was a huge part of Zappos’ strategy and reason for their success.
8. Social proofing
We’ve previously discussed the importance of social proofing and its application as part of your online marketing growth strategy. Social media allows you to attain directed social proofing for use to accomplish specific business objectives. Whether you want to inspire comments/ratings about a new product and leverage that for marketing materials or share compelling metrics such as the popularity of your community publicly to inspire even more growth, social media application can play a large role in establishing your brand’s social proofing.
9. Attract talented, passionate employees
Participation in social media shows the human side of your company and in time it shows your brand’s true colors. Bearing your company is truly remarkable and communicating that to the world, this will attract attention from quality employees. And with hiring paradoxically harder in a downturn, yet no slowdown in demand for A-list employees, social media can position your brand as a better choice for top talent.
10. Become a media company
In a previous post on influencing the social web we mentioned the fact that every company is now a media company. It’s something many others have noted, a great example being Techdirt. They’ve fully embraced this – their popular blog with more than 600,000 subscribers is easily their launching point for complementary services. Mike Masnick, Techdirt’s CEO recognized this so much he even state it directly: advertising is content, content is advertising.
Conclusion
The 10 potential applications of social media listed above are merely a primer to get you thinking. There are far more than these 10 – the use of social communications tools are limited only by your creative and technical know-how.
As a marketing professional or business owner, realize that at its core social media is not Twitter, Facebook or any single tool despite what your peers are buzzing about. It’s merely the opening of communications and connections through technology. And the buzzwords, tools or tactics are meaningless without end applications/strategies in mind.
What applications of social media are you applying for your business or marketing objectives?
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Aggregated Social Media Marketing News. Go to Source
How Industries Spend On Interactive Marketing
[Posted by Shar VanBoskirk]
I dedicate this blog post to anyone who has read Forrester's interactive marketing forecast and thought, "well that's great, but how are interactive marketers in *my* industry spending on interactive tools." I've just published the US Interactive Marketing Forecast By Industry, 2009 to 2014 which splices our interactive marketing forecast by 12 different industries including:
Retail and wholesale trade
Financial services
Lead generation
B2B
Travel
High-tech
Automotive
Heath and pharmaceuticals
Consumer goods
Media and entertainment
Telecom
And an "other" category which includes primarily education, government and non-profit businesses
A few takeaways from the research:
Direct marketers spend the most, but brand advertisers have the most growth potential. Look for the steepest growth to come from traditional advertisers who are under invested in interactive marketing today.
Advertisers should benchmark against their own peer set. Industry benchmarks are helpful (the report includes some per-company budget estimates for different industries). But don't presume your interactive budget should always match industry averages. We recommend adjusting your spend according to how online you business model and your customers are.
Stay tuned for deeper dives into retail, financial services, consumer goods and travel interactive spend in subsequent pieces of research.
Google Grabs AdMob To Push Further Into Mobile Advertising
[Posted by Neil Strother]
Google has just announced an all-stock deal to purchase mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million in a bid to solidify its position as the leader in mobile advertising.
By acquiring AdMob, the search giant gets a mobile ad network that has leveraged the power of the mobile Web and in-app advertising, particularly on the iPhone. Now, as more people adopt devices that mimic the iPhone experience (Androids, of course, as well as BlackBerrys, Palms, etc.), Google stands to gain from a growing audience that will be increasingly attractive to advertisers.
The deal also signals a shift in the landscape, and it will be interesting to see how competitors like Microsoft, Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless, among others, respond.
Big picture: mobile advertising remains a small fraction of the overall interactive marketing spend (see our forecast report if you are a Forrester client). Google, however, expects mobile to be a key growth driver in the coming years, and the acquisition of AdMob plays right into that strategy.
What's your view of Google's takeover of AdMob? Will it spur more spending on mobile by marketers? Or is it just an evolutionary step? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.
Case Study: The NHL Uses Tweet-Ups To Energize Its Fan Base And Reach New Audiences
[Posted by Nate Elliott. Follow me on twitter.]
Yesterday we published a case study that I'm really excited about, covering how the NHL used tweet-ups to create excitement for the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs. The league worked with fans to organize a series of events that took place simultaneously around the world on the opening night of the playoffs. I had a chance to attend the tweet-up in Vancouver, and thought they were a great example of the power of both online and offline influence.
In the weeks leading up to the playoffs, fans started talking online about organizing a series of playoff tweet-ups — and the league's Director of Social Media Mike DiLorenzo jumped at the chance to make it happen. Mike planned a big tweet-up in New York on the opening night of the playoffs, complete with food and beer sponsors and hockey merchandise giveaways — and started promoting the event on Twitter.
To make sure there were lots of tweet-ups happening around the league, Mike reached out to a handful of influential hockey fans in key NHL markets to recruit their participation. Lots of fans also stepped up and volunteered to host events in their cities too. Before long, there were tweet-ups organized in almost two dozen cities around the world. The league supported every one of those tweet-ups by sending gift bags, coupons for discounts at shop.NHL.com, and signed hockey merchandise for event organizers to raffle.
The NHL spent only a few weeks and a few thousand dollars planning and supporting the tweet-ups, but the results were fantastic:
- Big in-person attendance. More than 1200 people attended tweet-ups in 23 cities (including events in New Zealand and Northern Ireland) for the opening night of the playoffs. Many fans organized further tweet-ups as their teams progressed through the playoffs as well
- Bigger online chatter. Those attendees talked a lot about the events on Twitter: On the opening night of the playoffs, the term "NHL" was mentioned on Twitter more than twice as often as on a normal day. And #NHLtweetup became a trending topic for the day.
- Enormous total reach. According to the league's research, as many as 240,000 people could have heard about the event on Twitter. And the tweet-ups also generated press coverage that reached millions, including a story in USA Today.
So, what can other marketers learn from the NHL's success? We think there are a number of important lessons here:
- Get your brand advocates involved. The NHL wouldn't have been as successful without fan participation. The fans helped develop the idea, and they did all the legwork for the local events — including finding venues and promoting the events. If the NHL had tried to organize these events itself, it would've cost a lot more money, and probably wouldn't have worked nearly as well.
- Give yourself enough lead time. The NHL and its tweet-up hosts had only three weeks to organize these events — and it was a pretty hectic three weeks. The league plans to organize more tweet-ups this season, and will start planning each six to eight weeks in advance.
- Make sure PR is part of your strategy. The fans who attended the tweet-ups generated a lot of excitement about the playoffs — both at the events, and on Twitter. But the mainstream press coverage provided a ton of reach. The media is still in love with Twitter, so inviting them to the events can really pay off.
There's some other great coverage of the event online — including that at Goaliegirl.com — and clients should read the entire case study for even more details and best practices. Congratulations to the NHL, and to all its tweet-up organizers, on a great event.
