Marketing Pilgrim

With newspaper and magazine ad revenue on the decline, publishers are expanding their repertoire in order to make up the difference. They’re setting up deal sites, selling digital subscriptions and now they’re selling marketing services and not just to ad buyers.

Last week, Conde Nast, publisher of The New Yorker, GQ, Wired and dozens of other magazines, launched a new division called Ideactive. What they’re offering is a one-stop shop for all your digital marketing needs including mobile app development, websites and social media consultations. Companies who advertise with the publisher will get better rates, but they’ll take money from anyone who wants to hire them.

Poytner followed up on this idea and found several more publishers moving in this direction including the Grand Island Independent. If you’re a business in the area, you can pay this small, Nebraskan newspaper to set up a Facebook page and Twitter account for you.

Facebook’s Like button is near ubiquitous. Twitter has added a Follow button that allows people to follow an account without leaving the site they are on. I’m not sure that there aren’t more buttons these days than those from the political campaigns of yore (I Like Ike, anyone?).

Google doesn’t want to be left alone and has added its +1 button to the fray by allowing sites to give visitors the option to “+1” a site or page in addition to the ability in the search results.

Here’s Google’s video presentation which it has on the +1 for webmasters page. The video is old and doesn’t even mention the site level button until the end. I guess it’s not important enough to have its own video? C’mon man!

Getting people to follow you on Twitter is a good thing, but with the old “Follow Me” button users were immediately whisked away from your site and over to Twitter.  To quote Inspector Clouseau, “not any more.”

Twitter’s new “Follow” button allows fans to follow you without ever leaving your website. It’s one click (as long as they’re currently logged in to Twitter) and you’re done.

Twitter’s blog post hones in on how great this is for athletes, celebrities and reporters! They launched with the likes of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Jennifer Lopez proudly flying the new flag. But obviously, this is great for any business.

In the online space we are enamored with numbers. We can measure everything and everything can be quantified. That’s why the Internet is the place for marketers to be.

OK, at least that’s how the industry pitches the online space. As that momentum moves to the mobile front that same mantra is being droned out over and over again just so there is an understanding that ROI in the online world is something that can be quantified.

Well, I would like to introduce hype to reality. They don’t get a lot of time together because reality doesn’t sell. But if the report by eMarketer regarding return on mobile marketing is any indication, then “Houston, we have a problem.”

Maybe Eric Schmidt’s new role with Google, in his post CEO days, is to take the pressure off the rest of the Google team by taking the heat for its failures. Sure looks that way based on his comments at the D9 conference yesterday.

As All Things Digital reports

Asked later in the session about his biggest regrets as Google CEO, Facebook was again top of mind. Tellingly, Schmidt said the social problem Google is grappling with today is largely his fault. He said he recently looked up memos he wrote four years ago about Google needing to address online identity. “I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” he said. “A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”