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Why Twitter’s Olympic Coverage is Good For All Marketers

posted on July 24, 2012

Later this week, a huge portion of the world’s population will be tuning in to watch the Olympics on TV, on the internet, and on their mobile devices. Riding high on this media wave is Twitter, the official digital communication partner for NBC’s coverage.

In the past, we’ve seen Twitter streams integrated into sites for events such as The Super Bowl and we’ve seen Twitter rise to the top as the source of information during a natural disaster. This time, though, Twitter isn’t just reporting the news, they’re actually becoming a part of the experience.

The Twitter hub at NBCOlympics.com is like nothing we’ve seen before. Here’s a partial screenshot. The full site is so big and so deep, I’d need at least ten shots to cover it all.

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Banner Ads Give Way to Rich Media as Mobile Monetization Continues to Climb

posted on July 24, 2012

A year ago, it was social media marketing that was growing and changing right before our hours. Now that the dust has settled somewhat, it’s mobile’s turn.

The State of Mobile Advertising report from Opera shows big changes in a short period of time as advertisers learn to take advantage of the mobile landscape.

Opera cataloged the ad types on their network comparing January of this year to June. Take a look:

In six short months, expandable banner ads decreased by half and video more than doubled. The big news is in HTML5 Rich Media ads, which are slowly taking over mobile advertising. These are the ads that feature video, slideshows, music, and interactive elements. This is good because interactivity equals engagement and that equals more time spent with your brand.

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Trackur Brings Automated Sentiment Analysis to the Masses

posted on July 24, 2012

[Insert message about this technically being a sponsored message, but not really as Andy also technically owns this site, blah, blah, blah]

Trackur may be in its fifth year, and it may be approaching its 50,000th registered user, but the social media monitoring platform is not resting on its laurels.

As of today, Trackur has added automated sentiment analysis to all of its paid social media monitoring plans. Yes, even the uber affordable $18 a month plan!

According to the blog post announcement:

Trackur’s automated sentiment analysis looks at the specific keyword you are monitoring and then determines if the sentiment towards that keyword is positive, negative or neutral with the document. That’s weighted the most in our algorithm. We then also take into account the overall sentiment of the document, but to a lesser extent. We believe this gives you a much more accurate picture of the sentiment towards your saved search.

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Yahoos Hang Mayer Posters of Hope in Headquarters

posted on July 24, 2012

NO PRESSURE, HUH?

This poster showed up in Yahoo’s headquarters according to Business Insider.

Do you think she can change Yahoo?

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Google Leads Lobbying Spend in US, Braces for Potential $4B Fine in Europe

posted on July 24, 2012

For those of you who have been reading anything I have said about what is happening to Google in Europe you know that I am not a fan of the intent or the process that the European Union has undergone to bring Google on the cusp of a $4 billion fine. The EU has allowed a few companies led by Microsoft and others including Foundem give the impression that Google simply isn’t playing fair with its search results. Now the desired result for these folks is right around the corner.

The Washington Post reports

Europe may be a financial disaster and a faded military force, but in at least one arena it has emerged as champ: Regulators here are challenging the power of America’s technology titans. And they are winning.

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In Grocery Stores We Trust. . . Facebook, Not So Much

posted on July 23, 2012

I’d start this post by saying that people don’t trust Facebook, but that wouldn’t really be new news, would it?

How about this? People trust grocery stores more than they trust Facebook with their personal data. To quote Larry the Cable Guy, “now that’s funny, right there.”

This revelation comes from a poll conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Placecast. Placecast is in the location-based, mobile messaging market, so they’ve got a little stake in the outcome of this report, but nothing to be suspicious about.

Here’s how it shakes out. Placecast has been doing a series of studies under the umbrella of The Alert Shopper. Their goal is to find out how shoppers feel about different kinds of marketing. In this, their third time out, they asked folks to think about their privacy as it relates to personal data for promotional purposes.

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Parents List Free Shipping As Biggest Incentive in Online Back-to-School Shopping

posted on July 23, 2012

The secret to back-to-school sales success? Free shipping.

PriceGrabber just released more data from their yearly Back-To-School Shopping Forecast. Last month we learned that parents are going to start shopping sooner and nearly half said they expect to spend more than last year.

If you want some of that money to flow through your online store, here’s the line-up of incentives shoppers are looking for:

 

As you can see, sales are also a big incentive to buy, but almost every store on land and on the web is going to offer some kind of back-to-school sale, so it’s tough to stand out. Free shipping, on the other hand, is a rarity.