Marketing Pilgrim

This weekend, The Gap helped Facebook Places claim their place as a viable Foursquare contender by giving away 10,000 pairs of free jeans.

On the surface, it seemed simple enough. Show up at your local Gap store on November 5th. Check in using Facebook Places. Show the cashier your check-in acknowledgment and get a coupon for free jeans as long as you’re one of the first 10,000 customers.

But of course, that’s not how it went down. First, the event instructions didn’t make it clear that you had to have an iPhone or Droid in order to check-in (and I hear that older phones didn’t provide the same icon response as newer phones). Other smartphones wouldn’t cut it. Next, they failed to make it clear that each store had a different quantity of free jeans on hand, likely based on the income of that store.

Last Year the FTC revised guidelines governing the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. As you may recall, the big news then was the addition of a rule stating that bloggers who accept free merchandise or services from companies they write about must reveal the terms of that endorsement to their readers or be found in violation of the law. Apparently someone forgot to tell Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley about this.

As discussed at CNNmoney.com, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley recently speculated at a panel hosted by NYU, that “the next big thing” will be online social networks creating algorithms that account and weight users’ recommendations which marketers will be able to use to reward the most influential users for mentioning them (ahem… paid posts).

Groupon is looking for more money to expand its quickly growing business. Anyone in their position would be doing the same especially when the valuation being tossed around is in the $3 billion range. That’s rarified air for sure but one has to wonder how long that air will be available to breath. Bloomberg Businessweek reports

Groupon Inc., owner of a daily coupon website with 20 million subscribers, is seeking venture funding that may value the company at about $3 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The company aims to raise the funding to help it expand beyond the 230 markets where it now operates, said the people, who declined to be identified because the fundraising is private. The company had been discussing funding that would value it in the range of $2 billion to $3 billion, two of the people said.

Normally, the change of terminology in any company is a pure marketing move designed to breath new life into something that has some wear and tear. Aside from just the “new and improved” kind of changes, you occasionally get a completely different word to make a person think about the product again. Rarely, however, do you see a change like Google is experimenting with as they move to calling AdWords ads just that, Ads, rather than Sponsored Links.

First brought to my attention by Search Engine Land last week that this switch is official, I had some time to think about the possibilities. I will now happily cross-over to ‘speculation land’ and let my imagination run a little wild. So what could this change indicate?

When it comes to online marketing, traffic is everything. It determines what marketers pay per click, which web sites get which ads, and if traffic is low enough, it may keep a site from getting ad dollars at all.

That’s why the latest faux pas from The Nielsen Company may be bigger than it seems. On Thursday, the company sent out a note to all of its clients saying they had been undercounting traffic for the past three months.

The problem was one of long URL’s. One’s with more than 2,000 characters as a matter of fact. They found that their system wasn’t recognizing these URL’s all the time resulting in an estimated 22% decline over the prior year.

I have a secret to tell you.

I can see the future. Well, kind of. You see, I can see the future of making money. At least, I hope I can. But before we talk about the future, let’s talk a bit about the present.

What is the most successful business model to date, on the Internet? Yep, you guessed right! Advertising! The predominant model for success has always been, create a valuable piece of web real estate, built on outstanding content, that users flock to, and litter it with ads. Ads have been the leading force of monetization online. And, if you were to read Google’s quarterly statements, you might think that this trend will forever continue. But, unfortunately all good things must come to an end and even giants like Google will need to adapt.