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Facebook Pages Upgrade is a Boon for Marketers

posted on February 11, 2011

Facebook is making a big push over the next few weeks to get all fan pages over to their new layout. You can choose to do it now or wait for it to be forced upon you in March, but don’t wait. This upgrade is huge for marketers. Here’s why.

Many businesses have Facebook Fan Pages which is great if you have lots of followers coming to you. But when you went outside of your page and left comments on others, those comments linked up to your profile not your page. Until now.

The new page update has a very powerful toggle in the right sidebar that allows you to surf Facebook as your personal profile or as your page.  That means that, like blog commenting, you can now leave comments all over Facebook that lead back to your business (page) instead of back to you.

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Oops! Mobile Users Don’t Mean to Click

posted on February 10, 2011

Oops, I did it again, and again and again. Me and forty-seven percent of mobile application users who responded to a recent Harris Interactive survey click on mobile ads more often by mistake than we do on purpose.

That’s a lot of wasted coin-for-click and as Mobile Marketer points out in their review of the situation, it’s got to stop.

With the high incidence of accidental clicks, advertisers cannot continue to use traditional online ad units and measurement models – namely banners and click-through rates – as a way to deploy and measure the success of mobile campaigns.

We all know that each medium demands its own specialized form of advertising, and with it, system of measurement, but we continue to treat mobile as if it were just a tiny version of the internet. It’s not. People do things on their phones that they don’t do online and vice versa.

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Searches on Bing: This Time, It’s Personal

posted on February 10, 2011

“With the launch of Personalized Search, you can use that search history you’ve been building to get better results. You probably won’t notice much difference at first, but as your search history grows, your personalized results will gradually improve.”

Oh wait, that’s from Google’s blog back in 2005. Let me try again.

“We’re introducing a feature that helps Bing present the most relevant website based on an individual’s previous searches.”

Oh, okay. Bing is using “previous searches” which obviously isn’t the same as the a fore mentioned “search history” that Google uses. Did we mention that Bing is also included localized search results, now so you don’t have to type in your city when you’re craving pizza? One problem. When I type in pizza, Bing wants to send me to a town twenty minutes from here and Google wants to send me up the street. Looks like Bing still has some refining to do.

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comScore Lists Top 10 Digital Media Trends of 2010

posted on February 9, 2011

It’s time for the comScore, U.S. Digital Year in Review report 2010! I know you’ve been waiting breathlessly for this, preparing for the moment when you can put these marketing secrets into action and ramp up your sales 200%!

Well, here’s the real secret. There are no secrets. We’ve seen these trends coming right at us for the past year and then some. Still, a little validation is always helpful, so let’s see what made the list of the Top 10 Digital Media Trends of 2010.

E-commerce is back, but is morphing:

The report states that US e-commerce grew 10% to $142.5 billion. A big chunk of that went to online only sites such as Amazon, but many brick and mortar stores with an online component saw sales skyrocket this past holiday season.

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Ken and Barbie Get Social

posted on February 9, 2011

The internet is all a twitter today about a brand new social media marketing push from toy manufacturer Mattel. The campaign is all about how Ken plans to woo Barbie back into his life by Valentine’s Day and it’s pretty brilliant.

The entire event revolves around a website where people can vote if Barbie should take Ken back. The simplistic website has huge buttons sending people to Ken and Barbies’ Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare page, there’s even a YouTube video where Ken uses Match.com to see if he and Barbie are compatible. Not enough? They’re also running a reality show on Hulu called The Genuine Ken and not coincidentally they’re about to release a new “Sweet Talking Ken Doll” who looks like a cross between Justin Bieber and the kids from Twilight.

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Last FM Mobile Switches from Ad-Supported to Subscriber Based

posted on February 8, 2011

Starting on February 15, mobile Last FM listeners will have to pay $3.00 a month to continue their service. That’s less than most people spend on coffee or soda in a day so no big deal, right? Wrong. As expected, the response to the company’s blog post announcement has been mostly about people ready to jump to a competitor rather than pony up the bucks.

The refusal to pay for what they once got free is pretty common in the internet space and it’s becoming more and more of an issue as news outlets and video sites switch over to the paid subscription model. But what’s really interesting here is a line from Last FM’s post:

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Can You Name the Brand Behind the Little Darth Vader Ad?

posted on February 8, 2011

Probably not.

Nielsen has turned in the numbers on this year’s Super Bowl ads and what was popular and what was memorable were two very different things.

Little Darth Vader attempting to use the Force on everything from baby dolls to the dryer took the top spot as the most popular Super Bowl ad, but it didn’t even make the top ten for brand recall.

Doritos was the winner across the board with ads that were both popular and had high brand recognition. The Pug attack got the top spot for the most recalled brand ad while the licking cheese fingers and grandpa’s ashes came in fourth and fifth for popularity.