The social media landscape has seen tremendous growth over the last year and the buzz surrounding Twitter in particular has become nearly deafening. It’s now estimated that there are about five million users posting “tweets” on a regular basis. Despite the abundance of conversations, it’s been difficult to track and measure the valuable word-of-mouth brand related dialogue taking place on Twitter.
Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be that if you wanted to run a video ad campaign online, you only had a few options for creative and site placements. You could put your :10 or :30 second TV spots on user generated video sites such as YouTube, but you were worried about associating your marketing message with User Generated Content (UGC). Or you could purchase pre-roll spots with a companion banner on national or local news sites, which was a viable alternative but had limited reach.

 Now that full length TV programming and movies have migrated online and the video industry has a better idea of what works creatively in this space, your options have increased exponentially. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Borrell Associates predicted that direct mail would be the next category to see steep declines in ad spending. The Virginia based research firm expects up to a 39% slip over the next five years, placing total direct mail spending behind internet, broadcast TV and even newspaper by the year 2013. Direct mail currently faces challenges such as increasing costs related to postage fees, paper and printing, as well as increasingly expensive mailing lists. All of this negatively affects the cost per response for direct mail.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to a recent study from Simmons Market Research, more than 40 million people downloaded coupons online last year. That is up 20% from the year prior.  In fact, the number of people that moved to exclusively getting their coupons online increased 46% in 2008 over the year prior. Realizing that advertisers will naturally follow their consumers online, here are 6 important differences between traditional and online couponing:�
Read the rest of this entry »

As more advertisers start to test mobile campaigns, the two most popular mobile advertising tactics – text messaging and the mobile web – have emerged as effective ways of reaching mobile users. These tactics are very different from each other and have unique applications within a plan, but both are showing lots of promise based on ad recall rate. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent Harris Poll revealed that 66% of Americans think that advertising agencies have some responsibility for the current economic recession. Why, you ask? Because they caused people to purchase things they couldn’t afford. Ignoring the obvious debate about individual responsibility, this could have repercussions on consumer’s receptiveness to advertising. Read the rest of this entry »

Recent research from Arbitron indicates that people who watch television at the gym are more focused and therefore tend to recall ads better than people who watch TV at home. According to the findings, 55% of people who watch television at fitness centers and health clubs recalled one or more advertisements. This compared to average TV ad recall rates of 15-20% makes out-of-home television advertising an attractive proposition. Television exposure at the gym can be anything from the clubs running local television stations to a dedicated health club TV network, such as Ideacast. Read the rest of this entry »