Question: What's a Facebook Fan Really Worth to Marketers?

Interesting piece from Adage

Two Social-Media Tech Companies Set Out to Answer It With Differing Formulas

Posted by Judy Shapiro on 06.14.10 @ 06:40 PM

True to form, many of the technologies showcased during New York's annual Internet Week wowed, but what really generated attention were efforts to answer the $64,000 question: How do we measure the value of a Facebook fan, especially since Facebook is a dominant part of a marketer's toolkit?

Two clever social-media technology companies, Syncapse and Vitrue, took a crack at answering this seemingly simple question. I say seemingly simple because, in reality, the "value" of a fan can mean lots of things such as actual sales value or value as evangelists or value as a research resource in a crowdsourcing campaign.

And given the ad hoc nature of measurement today, it's no surprise, therefore, that we see wildly divergent answers from these two companies. Syncapse, for instance, assigns the average value of a fan at $136.38, and Vitrue pegs the value of a Facebook fan at $3.60. The wild differences, of course, lies in what you are measuring. Let's take a closer look.

The Syncapse approach
I got to hear Syncapse CEO Michael Scissons present the findings from a joint, proprietary research study his company did with Hotspex. It was designed to calculate the value of a fan based on a set of attributes as described by Synapse in the study:

• Product spending -- Facebook fans spend, on average, $71.84 more than non-fans over a two-year period.
• Loyalty (meaning ability to influence and promote brand loyalty within a target audience) -- Facebook fans are 28% more likely to continue using a brand than consumers who are not fans on Facebook.
• Propensity to recommend -- 68% of fans are "very likely" to recommend a product to family and friends (as opposed to 28% of non-fans).
• Brand affinity -- 81% of fans feel a connection to the brand (versus only 39% of non-fans).

Together these attributes (and a few others) roll into a sophisticated formula which yields an average value of $136 per fan. Now, I love the idea of these metrics. I love the scope that these attributes reach for. I appreciate how cleverly they assigned a dollar value to intangible attributes such as brand affinity. And rightly, the study spends a fair amount of time acknowledging that the value is highly dependent on lots of variables.

Yet, the study requires us to take some pretty big leaps of faith since the data is self-reported -- not behaviorally tracked. This somewhat stacks the data deck – after all a fan means they are already favorably predisposed.

But even if one is willing to take these leaps of faith, what are the practical applications of this information? Does a marketer then use this measure to justify shifting dollars from one media into Facebook? Is it a "dollar for dollar" shift? Or is this information best used as a theoretical baseline for some objective measure of progress? While I like this approach because it is innovative and ambitious, its practical application remains to be seen.

The Vitrue approach
Vitrue's approach to the question, "What's the value of a Facebook community?," is to associate fan value to the value of impressions generated in the Facebook news feed. It then applies display banner advertising pricing to the number of Facebook fans (at $5 per CPM) for a value metric. The results of the study are based on Vitrue's own client data that had a combined 41 million fans. With this approach, one can theoretically increase monthly media impressions significantly so that, for instance, a marketer with a large Facebook fan base that posts twice a day can deliver 60 million more impressions/ month. Here is a recap (and many thanks to Webtechuniverse's blog post) of the formula: 1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions 60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000 $300,000 x 12 months = $3.6M $3.6M / 1M fans = $3.60

This approach is valid and similar to the methodology used to assign media value to publicity received in the news. "It's important to understand that once you build that fan base, you want to make sure you're leveraging it," said Michael Strutton, chief product officer at Vitrue, and they provide a nifty tool to help you measure your value Facebook fan page.

While this approach is more focused than the Syncapse approach (though less strategic), even within the more limited scope, here too we must be willing to take a leap of faith, which is that all impressions perform equally irrespective of environment within which those impressions are delivered. And then the inevitable "Now what?" problem also raises its head because we are not clear on how to apply this learning in the real world. Does this suggest that a wholesale dollar shift will deliver comparable results? (I'd love to hear from the Vitrue folks on this point.)

Conclusion
I fully appreciate the need to put an ROI face to the question (pun intended), and I much applaud the efforts by these companies to give guidance. But it seems fair to step back for a moment and ask ourselves a bigger question: "What is our Facebook marketing investment worth?" The way to answer that bigger question might be, in fact, to reframe it within the context of specific marketing campaigns like direct marketing rather than looking at this problem in a "monolithic" sense. As David Armano, senior VP, Edelman Digital, observed in a session on Facebook; we would do well to think of Facebook as part of a larger marketing "ecosystem" where there are practical and actionable set of measures like customer lifetime value, acquisition costs and sales.

The way forward
There is a rising chorus of voices demanding a coordinated industry approach to metrics and methodology used in the measurement of social media that integrates the disparate trade organizations' efforts while introducing the best thinking from innovative companies like Syncapse and Vitrue. This will allow the industry to come up with an accepted standard set of metrics that provide true actionability. It's time we roll this initiative out in earnest -- so if you have a voice or want to help, feel free to e-mail me.e-mail me

So what did I learn about the value of a Facebook fan in the last week? At least I learned enough to say, "It all depends..."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Judy Shapiro is chief brand strategist at CloudLinux and has held senior marketing positions at Paltalk, Comodo, Computer Associates, Lucent Technologies, AT&T and Bell Labs. Her blog, Trench Wars, provides insights on how to create business value on the internet.

10 New Brand Metrics for FMCG

Nice post from Happily Misunderstood about some new thoughts on rationalising the irrational.

10 New Brand Metrics for FMCG

Posted in Brands by Tim on January 18, 2010

One of my previous posts, ‘Measuring the Irrational’, covered the theoretical implications of accepting that people are essentially irrational beings and that brands are irrational constructs. The following brand measures have been developed as a practical next step, they are largely new in approach, but do incorporate metrics that are already in existence. I have to confess, that 2 of the 10 metrics are not new at all, but work to compliment the other 8.

The following metrics have been conceived for a generic FMCG brand looking to gain (or re-gain) iconic status. A familiar, but tough, brief.

The brand in the mind

I believe that the difference between the subjective impressions of a brand can be compared with objectives ones to indicate brand strength in the consumer’s mind. By creating indexes of subjective vs. objective measures, and assessing them vs. competitors over time, we can measure and track the intangible power of a brand in the consumer’s mind.

1. Perceived Quality

Numerous studies and meta-analysis have linked financial success of a brand to perceived brand quality, but how can we measure this and what is it in relation to? From psychological experiments to ‘the Pepsi challenge’, there are plenty of examples of brand effect on subjective experience, e.g. taste. By comparing blind and branded taste test scores, one can create a ‘brand quality index, which measures the extent to which the brand enhances (BQI>1), or detracts >

2. Good Will

Comparing perceived relative price difference to actual relative price difference will provide an index that indicates how much the brand is valued above what is normally paid for it. This is not a measure of price elasticity, it can be used to give a positive (PRPI>1) or negative >

3. Brand Fame (popularity)

Brand ‘fame’ or popularity has been established as both a profitable communications strategy, but also a reliable indicator of a brand’s financial success. Asking consumers ‘how many people out of 10 do you think use this product’ establishes a consumer perception of popularity. This can be compared to actual popularity (penetration used as proxy) to give a ‘brand fame index’. The brand fame index will measure the extent to which the brand is more (BFI>1) or less >

The brand in the market

What we say, think and do can sometimes be completely different, behavioural measures are needed to provide an accurate picture of how a brand effects consumer behaviour. Again, all measures should be assessed over time and compared with competitors.

4. Purchase Behaviour

Purchase behaviour (frequency, weight and penetration, the latter being most important) can provide an important indication of brand’s financial success or weaknesses. However, past purchase behaviour does not always predict future success. Claimed purchase intent alone is subject to a different kind of problem, it tends to be a measure of past behaviour, rather than a predictor of future behaviour. By comparing claimed, with actual behaviour, we not only understand how people are currently buying, we also gain an indicator of the direction purchase behaviour is moving in.

5. Devotion

Loyal customers may buy the brand ‘most of the time’, but the really devoted ones will only ever buy the brand, even if this means foregoing the category we’re out of stock. The Devotion Index will give an indication of the number of buyers who are well and truly bonded to our brand.

6. Share of branded goods

The recession in the UK has seen the branded FMCG goods sector decrease as value seeking consumers down trade to own label products. This means that substitution now occurs across categories as consumers seek limit branded purchases in an effort to reduce the total shopping bill. The total value share of the brand’s products as a proportion of all branded FMCG purchases will give us an indication of the overall strength of the brand that will not be effected by recessionary factors.

The brand at the bank

7. Price Elasticity

The extent to which sales rise or fall given a 1% price increase, when compared to competitor brands this measure can provide a powerful indicator of band strength that is directly linked to financial success.

8. Campaign Efficiency

Movements in share of market (SOM) are directly correlated with movements in share of voice (SOV) at a category level. This allows us to make market share predictions given our media spend. However, strong brands enjoy greater campaign efficiency, i.e. they exceed the predicted SOM growth given SOV. The Campaign Efficiency Index gives a proxy for the strength of the brand based on more than expected movements in SOM given our SOV.

9. Brand Valuation

Discounted Cash Flow

The objective of building a sting brand is to increase its profitability. The long term health of the brand will therefore be measured by its long term contribution to the bottom line. This will be assessed using the discounted cash flow (DCF) method.

Iconic Status

10. Getting into Mark’s and Spencer’s

Marks & Spencer is to break with 85 years of tradition by stocking brands other than those with an M&S label. Although the distribution gains achieved by meeting this objective will not significantly impact upon business in the same way that distribution in the main supermarkets might, meeting this objective will confirm the brand has claimed (or reclaimed) its iconic crown.

This can be downloaded as a document, with references, here.

Tagged with: Brand Measurement, brand metrics, FMCG, Tim Jones Ogilvy, Tim Jones planner

Facebook’s “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users’ Social Behavior

Behaviour on Facebook - thanks InsideFacebook

February 27th, 2009

The famous Dunbar number, or “theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships”, is generally accepted to be about 150. However, in a recent interview with The Economist, Cameron Marlow, a research scientist at Facebook, shared some interesting stats on Facebook users’ social behavior patterns.

His findings: while many people have hundreds friends on Facebook, they still only actively communicate with a small few. Or to quote the author of the article, “Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”

Here’s the data from Marlow:

The average male Facebook user with 120 friends:

• Leaves comments on 7 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 4 friends

The average female Facebook user with 120 friends:

• Leaves comments on 10 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 6 friends

The average male Facebook user with 500 friends:

• Leaves comments on 17 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 10 friends

The average female Facebook user with 500 friends:

• Leaves comments on 26 friends’ photos, status updates, or wall
• Messages or chats with 16 friends

In other words, Facebook users comment on stuff from only about 5-10% of their Facebook friends. And as has been shown by many other studies, women communicate with more people in all cases than men.

“People who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,’” Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, says.

Building Online Communities by the Numbers

Thanks ClickZ for these simple community rules

By Heidi Cohen, ClickZ, Feb 23, 2009

Online communities are growing in this expense-conscious business environment because they provide companies with a cost-effective means to provide presales support, enhance customer loyalty, support the post-purchase process, and gather customer insights. These forums work for a wide variety of product, retail, and small media sites. Here's a set of guidelines to help your company build an active and effective online community.

Three Online Community Planning Rules

When building an online community, there are three important planning milestones to track to assess your community's initial growth trajectory. Joe Cothrel, chief community officer at Lithium, a white label community provider, presented them at the recent Online Community Unconference in New York:

• 90-9-1 rule. Of your audience, 1 percent will actively answer questions and post, 9 percent will comment and ask questions, and 90 percent will passively read the content on your community.
  
  
• 30-10-10 rule. In general, during any 30-day period, about 10 percent of the traffic that sees your community promotion will visit your community area. Of this 10 percent, about 10 percent will register and participate in your forum. (Note: Most sites only require registration to post. Adding registration requirements will lower your participation rate.) It's critical to note that this indicator will vary based on several factors, such as the type and placement of your promotion. Also, the percentages tend to be lower for highly trafficked sites, such as major media destinations. Business-to-business communities by their nature attract smaller, more targeted audiences.
  
  
• 5-to-10-posts-per-day-per-forum rule. To reach critical mass, visitors must feel that a community is vibrant enough to merit return visits. You need roughly 5 to 10 posts per day per forum to achieve this goal. In the early stages, either a core of fans or company employees may be needed to help get the community going. For a healthy community, there should be about 10 percent to 20 percent growth per month in the number of posts during the community's first year. Over time, this trend tends to flatten out.

What if you aren't able to generate sufficient traffic to build an active online community? A blog may be a good an alternative for marketers considering building a social community where there isn't a large enough visitor base.

Five Ways to Drive Community Participation

Ongoing marketing is needed to build your online community and help it grow over time. To this end, utilize your ongoing marketing to continually drive new visitors to your site. Also, use community-developed content to enhance your marketing.

• Leverage onsite advertising. Promote your online community by placing visible, persistent links on highly trafficked areas of your Web site. Link from all nonpurchase pages, since users may enter your site in a variety of ways.
  
  
• Use your e-mail. Use your existing e-mail marketing to promote your online community and drive visitors. Also, leverage the content from your community in your e-mailings to provide added benefit to your readers.
  
  
• Deploy other forms of online marketing. This can include social media or contests to entice new visitors to your community.
  
  
• Extend your search marketing. Use both paid and organic search engine marketing to support your community as well as other marketing efforts. If your community content is open, ensure that it's set up to encourage organic search. Also, buy search terms related to topics of interest to your community to drive more visitors.
  
  
• Integrate offline collateral. Promote your online community in offline collateral where it's relevant. Use content from your community to provide useful information in your packaging and bills to answer product-related questions more cost-effectively.

Two Types of Community Metrics

When building an online community, track both the health of your community and the financial impact of hosting the community.

Five Community Health Indicators

• Page views. Indicates the growth of the total community and amount of content being viewed.
  
  
• Registrations. Gives insights into the number of people who post and comment on your site since registration is usually required to contribute content. Track how this group grows over time. Where possible, assess the conversion rates for different marketing efforts.
  
  
• Posts. Examine what the 1 percent of your audience who post roughly 30 percent to 40 percent of the total content is doing. Look at the number of posts as well as the content of the posts. What trends emerge?
  
  
• Searches. Monitor the internal community searches to find out the types of information visitors want. This should give you insights into important trends and help you gather information about the people who don't register.
  
  
• Time to response. Track the time between a posting and the initial response. Users tend to expect this to take a day. If it's longer, consider having someone within the company respond. Also, monitor the number of responses to specific posts.

Three Financial Impact Indicators

• Depending on your forum's goal, does it generate sales or leads directly or aid in preselling complex products? For many companies, the benefit of online communities is measured in terms of cost avoidance from customer service, sales support, and market research rather than revenue.
  
  
• Costs include direct costs for the technology and support as well as related personnel and marketing.
  
  
• ROI (define) is generally positive because the benefits of the community in terms of revenues generated and/or the costs avoided are less than the direct costs for the forum�s technology and support.

Online communities can be a useful addition to your site. They can help you extend your relationship with your customers and prospects cost-efficiently while developing content that can be used to reduce customer service and content creation costs. Remember, online communities require care and feeding to continue to thrive.

Social Software Building Blocks

An old, but great post. Thanks nForm

by Gene Smith on April 4, 2007

There are lots of definitions of social software out there, ranging from the clinical ("software that enables people to connect through computer-mediated communication") to the pragmatic ("stuff that gets spammed").

While doing research for a recent workshop, I came across a useful list of seven social software elements. These seven building blocks--identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation and sharing--provide a good functional definition for social software. They're also a solid foundation for thinking about how social software works.

The original list was assembled by Matt Webb (who was expanding on a list created by Stewart Butterfield). Here's a brief definition of each element:

• Identity - a way of uniquely identifying people in the system
• Presence - a way of knowing who is online, available or otherwise nearby
• Relationships - a way of describing how two users in the system are related (e.g. in Flickr, people can be contacts, friends of family)
• Conversations - a way of talking to other people through the system
• Groups - a way of forming communities of interest
• Reputation - a way of knowing the status of other people in the system (who's a good citizen? who can be trusted?)
• Sharing - a way of sharing things that are meaningful to participants (like photos or videos)

Not every social software system has all of these, but most of them have three or more. And the most popular social websites implement many of these building blocks, but focus on just one or two. For example,

• Flickr is for sharing photos
• Slideshare lets you share Powerpoint presentations
• Twitter aims at presence
• Instant messaging applications like AIM and MSN are about conversation
• LinkedIn tracks relationships

For the workshop, I borrowed an idea from Peter Morville's user experience honeycomb and created a social software honeycomb. I put identity--the most basic requirement of any social software system--at the center with the other elements grouped around the outside.

Underneath the main honeycomb are examples of three social websites and how they use the building blocks. The dark green hexagon is the focus of the system; the light green hexagons are the supporting elements.

Once you dig into Digg, Flickr, Slideshare or Twitter you'll find that the actual implementation of each piece will be different. And not just different, but nuanced in a way that helps establish the overall ambience of that system. For instance, it's interesting to observe how the ease of interaction in Digg drives the swarming behaviour of its users.

The challenging thing about designing for group interaction is that people bend the tools for their own social purposes. I've found these building blocks to be a good conceptual framework for understanding social software. With these in hand we can start to look at how people use these systems to satisfy their personal and social goals.

More reading

• Tracing the Evolution of Social Software (Christopher Allen)
• On Social Software (Matt Webb)
• Social Software and the Politics of Groups (Clay Shirky)
• Communities, Audiences, and Scale (Clay Shirky)
• A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (Clay Shirky)

Heidi Cohen Eight Ways to Use Video to Boost Your Marketing

Thanks ClickZ for this:

Online video is white hot. It's being used in many ways and delivered anywhere your target audience is. The U.S. election was a watershed mark for streaming video in terms of the length of time and number of viewers. Marketers should be device indifferent since users may view your content on mobile devices, computers, and flat-screen televisions.

To better understand the state of online video, consider the following:

• Almost 80 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos for roughly five hours in December 2008, with an average duration of 3.2 minutes per video, according to comScore.
  
  
• 65 percent of online video views were streamed between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, making this video primetime due to the faster Internet connections available at work, reported Nielsen Online.
  
  
• In 2009, online video advertising is projected to grow 45 percent to $850 million, according to eMarketer's latest forecast.
  
  
• 5 percent of mobile subscribers accessed mobile video on their phones each month, according to Nielsen in its Q3 2008 Mobile Video Report.
  
  
• About one-third of online retailers offer video on their sites, according to Vovici Corp.'s September 2008 research for Internet Retailer.

Online Video's Five Subject Categories

Consider your target market's needs when creating online video content because they can have a major impact on the video's optimal length and its shelf life. An SIIA Information Industry Summit panel advised attendees to think about whether their audience snacks on short videos or engages with longer formats. Here are five popular types of video content you can use:

• News, including weather. Viewers often look for short tidbits to be informed about what's happening in their world. Think about the type of news most relevant to your target audience.
  
  
• Sports. Typically, these videos consist of clips highlighting a single sports play where the audience is highly engaged.
  
  
• How-to and research information. Viewers often look for answers to specific questions, so make it easy for your videos to be found. This content can be evergreen.
  
  
• Entertainment, including comedy, music, TV shows, clips, and movies. Everyone looks for fun diversions. While entertaining content can be short, users are also watching longer formats, such as complete television shows and movies.
  
  
• Social media, including user-generated content. These videos often focus on humor.

Eight Ways to Use Online Video

Regardless of whether you're a retailer, media company, or brand marketer, think holistically about how to incorporate video into your communications strategy. Here are eight ways to use online video to extend your marketing mix:

• Extend news coverage and other media events. While established brands like CNN dominate, any Web site can create its own channel.
  
  
• Provide product-related information to aid use, including how-to for complex products that require training or further help. For example, Janome sewing machines partnered with Threadbanger
  
  
• Create videos for product placement. Develop or partner with a video series that highlights your product and engages your target market, like Starburst has done with Nite Fite
  
  
• Portray products in a real environment to help customers experience the product without seeing it in person. Extend your Web site to give customers a more retail-like environment.
  
  
• Show real customers giving their honest reactions, like an infomercial.
  
  
• Sponsor an ongoing video series created by a third party to associate your brand with special personalities or other brands, such as Degree's integration with TMI Weekly's Little Black Dress episode.
  
  
• Extend other forms of content you're already creating, such as Webinars, analyst presentations, and quarterly meetings.
  
  
• Use video to connect with remote staff or customers.

Keep in mind that you need to drive traffic to your videos. Matt Cutler, VP, marketing and analytics of Visible Measures, suggests releasing related videos at the same time and cross-promoting them to help concentrate views over a short period to optimize distribution of related videos. The goal is to help your video reach top-viewed status that increases video views.

Four Ways Online Video Contributes to Profitability

Media companies, brands, and e-tailers can benefit from using online video. Here's how it can add to the bottom line:

• Advertising vehicle. From a consumer perspective, quantity and length are an issue. Product placement and sponsorship are other ways to create revenue on media sites.
  
  
• Paid products. Depending on the availability of the information or event, viewers may be willing to pay for downloads.
  
  
• Product sales support. Retailers can gain by using videos to better illustrate product use prior to purchase and to support product use and community building after purchase.
  
  
• Branding enhancement. You can enhance branding through the use of online videos that engage viewers, like the Blendtec blender videos.

Seven Online Video Metrics

To ensure that online video meets your marketing goals, track the following factors to ensure you're on track:

• Viewers. How many people have seen your video? What's the pass-along rate? Is it going viral?
  
  
• Views and Time. How many times are the videos viewed? How much of each one is viewed?
  
  
• Interaction. Since online videos tend to drive user interaction, assess comments for frequency and content and watch how viewers are using the video to create mashups and the like.
  
  
• Branding. Have your branding metrics improved as a result of online video use?
  
  
• Revenues. How have the videos helped support sales in terms of supplying direct identifiable sales leads or adding to the prepurchase research phase? Also, consider whether videos have helped reduce returns through post-purchase support.
  
  
• Costs. What is the expense of developing the video and related Web site support? How does this compare to the benefits you are realizing?

As online video evolves, there are bigger audiences to be had and increasingly more exciting ways to get their attention. The cost of creating and serving video has come down. It is time to get creative by using video to extend your marketing reach and complement your marketing plan

10 of the Best Adobe AIR Applications

Thanks Mashable for this run down on ten of the best for air

December 1, 2008 - 8:33 pm PDT - by Sean P. Aune 2 Comments

Are you getting the most out of your Adobe AIR installation? Are you one of those people that installed it for one specific application and never explored what else was out there? Well, it’s time to get more out of AIR, and here are 10 apps that will make you anxious to get AIR up and running.

What are the Adobe AIR apps that you couldn’t live without? Tell us in the comments!

DeskTube - DeskTube lets you get complete control over YouTube on your desktop. Search, watch, comment, get embed codes, upload your own videos and even download the videos you are currently watching as MOV files.

Dorame - Dorame doesn’t add much to the Pandora listening experience, but it does give you the freedom of being outside of your browser and changing up the appearance of the service.

EarthBrowser - EarthBrowser gives you live updates of clouds, earthquakes, the weather, satellite overlays, volcanoes, fires and a whole lot more.

Feedalizr - Many people have downloaded service specific apps like TweetDeck, Twhirl and so on, but Feedalizr rolls several social tools into one app. You can work with Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Twitter and VideoVideo all from this one handy interface.

Google Analytics - While most people love looking at statistics about their websites, Google Analytics can be a bit slow at times for those webmasters that use their tools. This Adobe AIR app gives you the ability to open reports in multiple tabs for easier switching and allows you to change date ranges faster.

MiniTask - A desktop tool for creating detailed to-do lists that you can separate out by categories, copy the items out to other programs, set reminders, print out task sheets and more.

Posty - Get all of your FriendFeed. Identi.ca, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr and Twitter updates in one handy application with built-in URL shortening, spell checking, message search and more.

TweetDeck - While it seems that apps that only work with one social site are becoming passe, TweetDeck gives you so much control over how you see your Tweets, it is well worth it. Your incoming messages are already split into columns for timeline, replies and direct messages, and then you can build custom columns for things such as work, friends and more.

Twhirl - The odds are fairly high that this is the application you installed Adobe Air for in the first place, but that doesn’t exclude it from the list in case it wasn’t. Probably the most popular of the Twitter clients, Twhirl also supports interactions with multiple accounts for FriendFeed, laconi.ca, seesmic and Twitter.

Yammer - Yammer, the private corporate microblogging service, gets a desktop client that runs on the Adobe AIR platform, allowing you to use all the features of the service freed from your browser.

now this is being transparent

thanks damian: http://www.internode.on.net/customer-service/

What the Semantic Web -- or Web 3.0 -- Can Do for Marketers

Thanks adage for this article on marketing applications of web 3.0 - bring on the relevance!

Whatever You Call It, Get Ready for Greater Relevance

Posted by Marta Strickland on 11.24.08 @ 03:16 PM

It's been nearly 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the worldwide web, expressed his vision of a "semantic web," in which all web data -- and the meaning of that data -- could be read by machines. Since then, much of the slow-moving progress toward this smarter and more powerful web has been courtesy of academics and data librarians.

Recently, however, the semantic web has been enjoying a commercial revival of sorts and is often referred to by the new buzzword "Web 3.0." Given how insane the pace of life is these days, I thought I'd offer a few thoughts on what I've been learning about it.

Since I can already feel the rising tide of negative comments as that version number graces the screen, bear with me for a second. Semantic web is just one of a few things often referred to as Web 3.0 -- others include topics like data portability or mobile web. But I think entrepreneur Nova Spivack offered the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the web (2010 to 2020) and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. Most importantly, the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful.

But Web 3.0 is not just about improving the consumer experience. And it isn't some industry ploy to sell you more services. The next-generation web -- the semantic web -- aims to solve some of today's biggest problems in marketing.

So what is it? Well, semantics refers to the meaning behind data. Right now, computers are good at sending data back and forth but not great at discerning the meaning of that data. Semantic web aims to change that. Perhaps it's best explained in describing what marketers can hope to gain from it.

Improving Ads
Has your contextual advertising turned into a contextual nightmare? Current contextual advertising depends heavily on keywords. Sure, it seems safe to buy a word like "feet" -- until your ad comes up right next to a story about severed feet. What if there were a technology that could analyze what is really being said on the page?

By using natural language processing and artificial intelligence, semantic advertising solutions, like Peer39, can look at the structure of a sentence and interpret word meaning and sentiment. Semantic text analysis relies on synonyms and relationships between concepts, rather than rudimentary keyword scanning. Identifying sentiment is becoming invaluable for advertising on user-generated sites such as blogs, where you wouldn't want to place ads on a negative post.

Online advertising has another obstacle to overcome: information overload. We live in a world where information evolves at an alarming rate and, let's face it, consumers trust each other far more than they trust advertising messaging. So how do we dynamically pull smarter and more relevant content into ads?

That's where the efforts like Dapper MashupAds come into play. In addition to pulling from a brand site database, the dynamically generated ads can scan social content sites like Yelp and Flickr for the newest (positive) reviews and photos of your restaurant. It's the power of your brand message only promoted by your consumers.

Improving Measurement
One of the toughest marketing challenges of recent times has been in measuring the success of social media. How do you measure the success of a human conversation? We can measure reach (visits, views, clicks, downloads). We can also measure exposure or buzz (what people are saying about our brand). But it's inside those walled gardens that everything interesting is happening: How strong is the community? Are members active? Are we changing their minds? Changing their actions?

It's the tough nut of the new marketing conversation, but Web 3.0 might be the key to cracking it.

Semantic technology is able to pull together connections between words and phrases. How often is concept "X" said in the same breath as concept "Y"? Measurement tools will be moving away from the tag cloud, and we'll be able to immerse ourselves in the trends of the real conversation, not just the keyword of the day.

Next, there is the dilemma of message velocity; i.e., how far is my message traveling and how fast? Sure, that's an easy thing to do when you are measuring a viral video or widget but what about a conversation? Semantic technology builds on meaning, not keywords. And so it doesn't matter if your followers say, "The new Batman movie is going to be awesome" or "You have to see the 'Dark Knight' trailer"; semantic buzz tools will tie the conversation together.

Sentiment analysis is an increasingly popular tool in the marketer toolbox. And its next generation will look at the entirety of a comment or an article, from whom it came and to whom it was directed. It will use natural language processing and analysis of meaningful relationships to distinguish the "good" comments from "bad."

And what about building a community of loyal enthusiasts? What about creating a relationship with your customers? Companies like Chat Mine measure the connections between members of the community and between people and concepts. By looking at both friending and popular dialogue, it can tell you if your brand brought a community together in passionate conversation.

When O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0, the marketing world divided into skeptics and enthusiasts. And a wave of start-ups began rolling out under the 2.0 moniker. It's only wise to fear the same for semantic web or Web 3.0. As nightmares of books and white papers race through your mind, it's important to separate the reality from the hype.

The successful technologist won't approach the marketer with buzzwords. He won't throw out phrases like "dynamic ontologies" or "semantic triples." Because good semantic technology is like movie editing -- you aren't supposed to notice it's there but it fundamentally changes the experience. So when someone approaches you about a "smarter" semantic solution, make sure they can answer this:

How will this make my ads more relevant and my metrics more meaningful?

~~~

Marta Strickland is manager of social-media strategy at Organic, Detroit, where she defines best practices on emerging technology trends and discovers new ways to use social media to connect with consumers for brands including Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Bank of America and Geek Squad. She voices her mind and evangelizes the power of social media as editor in chief of the Organic blog ThreeMinds. Prior to Organic, she was interactive strategist for Q LTD, a strategic design consultancy in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Data "point" of the week: Data alone is not enough

Cheers Forrester for this point of view on data and how to approach it.

by Josh Bernoff

I've been thinking about data lately. This is partly because of Bill's comment on our last Data Chart of The Week (Seniors) and also the responses we got to Part 1 of our recent Webinar series. In the Webinar, I chose to focus almost exclusively on several Social Technographics Profiles -- data about how different groups of people use social technologies -- and while most of the responses were positive, a few people responded that they were unsatisfied with the result.

Confession: I love data. I helped start Forrester's first consumer surveys, called Technographics, in 1997, and I love the idea that we can answer consumer behavior questions around the world now. As an analyst, I love having the ability to dive into data and find the answers to a client's behavioral or attitudinal question. And I find it endlessly fascinating to see how people's attitudes vary with age, or where they live, or from year to year. Having the ability to ask questions of the form "I wonder if people . . ." and actually get the answer is intoxicating. That's why data about People is the first step in the POST method for social technology strategy formation.

But data isn't the whole story. Data looks backward, and answers only questions you thought to ask. Surveys have biases. They have margins of error and sample size issues. I believe our surveys are the best, most comprehensive set of data available anywhere on technology. That said, if you start and end with data alone, you will go wrong.

That's why we always try to provide analysis along with, or driving, or surrounding the data we present, which creates the basis for intelligent decision-making.

There are experts on this stuff, most notably my colleague Brad Bortner. But I've learned a few things myself in a decade of research with consumers. So rather than present more data this week, I will offer up these bits of advice:

• Better to have data than to trust your gut. In the absence of data about your market, youi are driving blind. You intuition about your customers may be right, and it may not. (It's useful to remember that in every stock trade, one side expects the stock to go up and the other does not -- why are you so sure you are smarter than everyone else.) If you can get access to consumer behavioral data about what you're doing, then by all means study it.
• Data is not insight. What does it mean that 40 year-olds are twice as likely to create social content than 20 year olds? That depends on what you want to do about it. Use data to start and bolster your argument. Then ask, "Is there any other way to interpret this?"
• Check the source and the base. All Forrester data charts have a source (typically a survey) and a base (the group of people surveyed). The source will tell you when the survey was conducted -- and data is perishable, since people's attitudes change over time. The base us important to -- is it online consumers, people with mobile phones, or people in metropolitan China? Sample size is also important -- results from 200 people are interesting, but clearly not as as solid at results from 10,000. That's why I can tell you the social Technographics profile of people who own Mercurys, but not people who own Hummers -- we only reach a dozen or so of the latter.
• Protect against bias. All surveys have bias -- most notably, they reach only people willing to take surveys. Another common bias is "social desirability bias" -- people want to believe they are better than they are. This is why PBS gets higher ratings in diaries than when measured with a meter. Always ask "is there a bias here that could reduce the value of this data?"
• Beware of overinterpretation of a question. I will often show survey data in the form of a question and the percent who gave various answers. An audience member will ask "did they mean this, or did they mean that?" It's a hard question to answer, since I wasn't in the brain of the person answering. Strictly speaking, they read the question and they gave the answer -- it's up to you to interpret. Similarly, just because people participate in discussion forums doesn't mean they want to talk about your products. Data gives you a feel for how people are thinking, but it's still up to you to engage them.

I promise to keep showing you data, but always with a context on what to do about it. What bits of advice do you have about working with data?

Study: Less Affluent More Likely To Click On Internet Ads, Video & Otherwise

Thanks GenWow

A new study from iPerceptions, Inc., indicates that the rich just aren't that into Internet ads.

Turns out, the more you make, the less likely you are to click on Internet ads.

In fact, on average, 40% of consumers likely to click on any ad make less than $50,000 a year. Only 15% make more than $150,000.

It gets even worse with video ads - where 49% of those likely to click on an ad make less than $50K, and only 13% make more than 150K.

What's more, overall, most users say they're more likely to click on text ads than video ads.

Now, as iPerceptions points out, much of this has to do with age. Those under 25 - the group most likely to click on ads, text, video or otherwise - probably do not make $150K per year.

So this may have less to do with income than with age group.

But it does provide some warning to luxury goods manufacturers hoping the Web will help make up for expected tough times this holiday shopping season.

Read more about it, here.

Jeremiah Owyang's - Recommended Web Strategy Reading

Thanks Jeremiah

October 18th, 2008 | Category: Social Media

I started my social media career at Hitachi Data Systems (I’ll actually be speaking to Hitachi in Tokyo this coming week) and eventually become the online community manager. One of the keys to being a successful community person is to be a resource (or lethal generosity) to the entire industry you want to serve –rather then just a vendor pitching jockey.

In the spirit of sharing, over the past few weeks in client calls, I’ve referenced these posts several times, one of the challenges of my blog layout is that it’s difficult to find the most visited or commented posts, here’s some I think you’d enjoy.

The Many forms of Web Marketing for 2008 (translated into 5 languages): A large index, be aware of the toolset before you begin crafting a strategy. I’ll be updating this for 09, so please leave a comment, I’ll credit you.

The Irrelevant Corporate Website (translated into 10 languages): “Blasphemy!” A marcom manager told me yesterday.

The Many Forms of Web Monetization: an important post for startups in today’s economic times.

A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media: This is the list you want to stay off of.

List of Social Media Strategists and Community Managers in enterprise corporations: Unlike a wiki, I vet each submission and check their profiles to the best of my ability.

Impacts of Social Media on Customer Reference Programs: If your company harvests positive brand mentions and make case studies and toss the negative ones, they need to read this.

Social Media by Industry: Auto, Finance, and Insurance. Need to find examples for your boss or client? These lists can help.

List of Communities, Virtual Worlds, and Social Networks for Youth, Boomers, Retired, and Beyond: Need to reach a specific demographic, this list is a start.

Applying Social Computing to the Entire Product Life Cycle: If you’re thinking about social media for marketing only, you’ll need to expand further.

How to Successfully Moderate a Conference Panel, A Comprehensive Guide: I’ve been moderating quite a few panels, and have found some patterns that work for me. I still need to self-check to make sure I live up to my benchmark.

How I use Twitter: I often tell people I don’t mind if they unfollow from on Twitter as I’m very high volume, but there is a method to how and why I use the tool.

If these resources were helpful, I’d love to hear your feedback in comments. Recently I conducted a survey to find out what readers wanted to see more of, and it’s case studies, but I’ve found them too laborious to write for a blog post.

I’ll write you from Japan, (I’m traveling 4 out of 5 weeks) I’m going to enjoy a little big of quiet time on the plane to settle my mind, and hopefully write up my findings from last week’s roundtable as well as provide a status on the upcoming wave report on community platforms. Following Japan I land for a night back in SF then depart to Dallas for Forrester’s consumer forum, where I’ll be leading an interactive session with some of the world’s top interactive marketers, if you wanted to schedule time to talk with an analyst, here’s the lineup.

Mobile Advertising Lifts Brand Metrics and Purchase Intent

Thanks MediaPost for this

Dynamic Logic recently announced the aggregate results of mobile branding research studies which compared people exposed to the mobile campaigns to those not exposed, suggesting that mobile advertising can be an effective medium for raising brand metrics throughout the purchase funnel.

An average increase of +23.9 percentage points in Mobile Ad Awareness shows that these campaigns generally cut through and grab users' attention. Average increases in Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent of +5.4 and +4.7 percentage points, respectively, support the ability of mobile advertising to change consumers' attitudes towards a brand and to drive intent to purchase.
Mobile Advertising Impact on Brand Metrics

Significant Metric

Positive Impact (Delta % of respondents)

Mobile ad awareness

23.9%

Message association

12.2

Aided brand awareness

6.9

Brand favorability

5.4

Purchase intent

4.7

Source: Dynamic Logic AdIndex, July 2008 (Delta is % of respondents positively impacted by mobile ad exposure. Initial study considered small sample size)

N.B.: These findings are based on 21 mobile ad campaigns across a variety of industries. (Alcohol, Automotive, Consumer Electronice, CPG, Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Telecomm, Travel) The averages could significantly change as the number of campaigns increases, so any comparison made to them is directional.

The report posits that part of the reason for these positive increases may be a result of the newness of the medium. People may be intrigued and pay more attention to the advertising on their mobile phone since it is presented on a smaller screen and is located in a less cluttered environment compared to the Internet.

Michelle Eule, Managing Director of Dynamic Logic, says "... As we do more studies, we continue to build these initial averages into a normative database that can be used for a more granular look into the mobile data... (the) same way our... database is used for online performance benchmarking and planning."

Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President, Digital Sales, MTVN Networks, notes that "These averages clearly demonstrate to marketers that mobile is an increasingly powerful medium for communicating ad messages and engaging with today's consumer... Having initial averages to compare a campaign's performance against can serve as a guideline to what's working and what's not in these early stages of the medium... "

For more information, please visit Dynamic Logic, a Millward Brown company, here.

AdAge's Digital A list for 2008

Digital A-List 2008: No.1, Unilever

Digital Marketer of the Year Scores by Making Web Tactics Part of Its Mainstream Marketing Plans

Here's the funny thing about Unilever being Digital Marketer of the Year: It doesn't really do digital campaigns.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 2, AKQA

Ad Age's Digital Agency of the Year Is Actually in the Business of Product Innovation

Fourteen years after it started as a boutique in London, AKQA has become a global powerhouse. In 2007, the San Francisco-based agency reached nearly 700 employees; revenue was up about 40% to $99 million; and new-client wins included Kraft Foods, Unilever, Cadbury Schweppes and Motorola, adding to a roster that already included Nike, Visa, McDonald's Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Coca-Cola Co.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 3, Google

Search Giant Strikes Deal With Publicis, and Doesn't Lose Share Upgrading Rivals

Convincing ad agencies that it was friend, not foe, was imperative for Google if it wanted to start snagging the big-brand budgets major agencies control, and the barely 10-year-old company was effective enough in that campaign that it struck a deal with Publicis Groupe to share ideas, co-develop products and exchange employees.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 4, NYTimes.com

Ending an Unpopular Experiment to Capture Circ Revenue Has Paid Off

When The New York Times' website demolished the pay walls that had separated its columns and other premium content from the freeloading hoi polloi, it sealed a spot on the Digital A-List.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 5, Apple's iPhone

Changed Consumers' Perception of the Mobile Phone

No doubt Apple's sleek touch-screen iPhone is changing the look and feel of mobile phones. But more important, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has given mobile marketing a major boost with his iPhone.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 6, Digitas

Agency's Acquisition by Publicis Has Helped Shop Think Big Picture

Digitas continues to move beyond its roots as a direct-marketing agency to becoming a strong full-service digital partner that engages marketers building brands and businesses.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 7, J&J's BabyCenter

E-commerce Site Is Dominating Digital Mommyhood

Johnson & Johnson's BabyCenter is aiming for global domination and to follow moms beyond the confines of its website.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 8, Baidu

The 'Google of China' Is Moving Past Text-Based Search to Video, IM

Baidu.com is known as the "Google of China," the world's second-largest online market. Baidu has a dominant 62% share of China's search-engine market, according to China IntelliConsulting Corp. Google is the No. 2 player, with a 22.7% share, followed by Yahoo at 10.8%.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 9, ESPN

Its First-Round Knockdown at the Hands of Mobile Led to a Surprising Comeback

Keeping ahead of the game has been ESPN's signature play through the evolution of media, from its traditional TV base to print to its newer digital efforts.

Digital A-List 2008: No. 10, 'Cloverfield'

A Chancy Experiment Created an Immersive Online Marketing Experience

The J.J. Abrams-produced horror movie "Cloverfield" played hard to get through the late summer and fall of 2007. A mysterious online movement was a key ingredient in the run-up to the movie.

Digital A-List 2008: Next in Line

From Rising Star Tribal DDb to ... 'Whopper Freakout'?

In the end, we chose 10. But there was plenty of debate over who should make this year's A-List. Maybe it's no surprise that a burgeoning global power like Tribal DDB would come close, but a purveyor of flame-broiled burgers? These players' remarkable forays in the digital realm show new media's not just for tech companies.

Digital A-List 2008 Executive of the Year: Brian McAndrews

As Microsoft's Ad-Solutions VP, He Is Helping Map the Giant's Online Future

While many industry watchers have proclaimed the wisdom of Microsoft's Brian McAndrews, it's less his willingness to tackle the unproven path ahead and more the foresight in his past at aQuantive -- and that whopping exit strategy -- that makes him Ad Age's Digital Executive of the Year.

Combining online and TV to boost brand

Thanks future lab and Matt Rhodes

Recent research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Thinkbox shows the power to the brand of using TV and internet together.

The research provides the data behind a trend that we’ve been observing for some time. Around 50% of the tech-savy population in the UK will be online whilst they’re wathcing TV (this kind of multi-tasking is why some people claim we now have 38 hours in our day!). People are truly cross-platform and so brand building needs to operate cross-platform too.

The other headline statistic from this research is that combining TV and online leads to a 47% increase in positive brand perceptions compared to using either in isolation. A consumer is more likely to purchase when the two are used together, and so it’s great for conversion too.

Digging beneath these headlines, it’s interesting to look at how best to combine these media:

• TV is best for telling people about a brand they have not yet heard of, sparking interest in a brand or persuading people to try a brand or product
• Online, on the other hand, is great at helping people to decide which brands are relevant, helps people to re-evaluate brands (and their existing brand choice) and is the best source at giving specific information to inform a purchase decision

Looking at this split, it is clear that TV and online both play different roles in the minds of consumers. TV is about the new and the now, it is good as an interventionist medium to tell people about new things they might not have considered. Online is about reflection and information. It’s less interventionist and more about the consumer using it to find the information they need and to inform themselves.

This seems to fit with the pattern of consumer behaviour online that we witness. More consumers are using online to find information about and even discuss a brand. We also see a high success rate of TV advertising causing people to go and visit websites in their own time to get more information about the brand or product.

It’s clear that the two media work well together and that to build a brand successfully a strategy is needed both for television brand building but also online. Brands need to own their online space and create successful and effective campaigns that are about building the brand online, and not just transactional.

Some more reading

• UK 2008 Ad Spend Growth Forecast Slips to 4%
• Response: TV viewers are not switching off for the internet
• Study: Ads in online shows work better than ads on TV
• Spending on online ads rises by 38%

Original post: http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2008/07/combining-online-and-tv-to-boost-brand/

Google rates ad quality

Thanks to PinkAir for exposing this nugget in the below post.

The rate card that rates you

Not many companies are as interesting as Google. From their basic technology to how they make money, they repeatedly make you think "Okay, so that means..." and a bunch of new implications come spilling out.

Today's NYT outlines the workings of Google's "ad quality" team. Because the creative and placement variables of Google ads are relatively few and are controlled by Google, they can experiment with them and directly measure the results. This helps them determine how to price ads which makes them more money.

Even more interesting, one of the variables they incorporate into their pricing and placement model is the quality of the consumer's experience after they click on the ad:

Over time, the company also looked beyond click-through rates to rank ads. Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads. Soon, the loading speed of a landing page will also be considered.

These factors contribute to an ad’s “quality score.” The higher that score, the less the advertiser has to bid to secure top billing. For example, an advertiser who offers to pay $1 per click to attract those searching for “vacation rentals in Colorado” may receive more prominent placement than another who bids $1.50 for the same query but has a lower quality score. An advertiser with a very low quality score may have to bid so much for placement as to make it uneconomical.

Quality scores work as an incentive to advertisers to improve their ads, which benefits users and, in turn, benefits Google.

Yikes! Better service (and can better products be far behind?) leading to lower ad rates? Some advertisers are confused and angry ("many advertisers complain that the company was, in essence, deciding who can and cannot advertise on its system") but Google seems to believe that the overall health/value of their ad system is increased when consumers believe that Google ads represent relevant and high-quality suggestions.

Most media discriminate among advertisers in some way. You're not going to see a Hooters ad in Vanity Fair anytime soon. But I've never heard of a media company digging so deeply into the post-ad consumer experience and using it to directly affect rates. I can feel the possible implications radiating outwards...

http://www.pinkair.com/2008/06/the-rate-card-t.html