Still don’t believe in the economic crisis so much. But yes this is a total commercial clean up. Is that bad? I guess not.
Further more I see indeed less spending at the moment. A lot of houses for sale etc. But is this temporary or a real trend? If it is one thing we learned from the whole crisis then it is that we are really bad in predictions. So if they now predict downturn..Maybe it is just a matter of a longer time to conversion after all.
In digital marketing I hear a lot about less investments. There seems to be a big opportunity for affiliate marketing because of the performance based model. Display ads and branding seem to have a hard time, but companies are used to these “reach”model for ages and they learned to never skip too much marketing budget in bad times. So they will think twice and spend a little less I guess.
For cleaning up however it is now time for analytics. While we are all waiting for new investments it is a good time to look at how effective our webpresence is in engaging, converting etc. In my opinion there is a lot to gain here. Most companies where to busy spending in the past, now it is time to look at costs and ROI.
This is totally in line with the overall commercial clean up.
Most people think of Google Adwords as a tool for acquiring new clients cost effectively. And of course it is a good direct marketing tool. However creatives and advertising agencies should use it as well.
As an advertising agency you need to get as much information as possible about your audience. You want to know their need, their interests etc. Adwords can give you this information. It gives you focus, some clues to brainstorm on. Yes it makes a difference if you know that people are looking for blue shoes lately in stead of red ones. So learn more about how to use Adwords as a market research tool.
Besides Adwords as a research or inspiration tool. It can also be a good tool for branding, getting attention etc. Of course you can learn more about Adwords for branding. However you don’t see much of a creative use of adwords yet.
Most Adwords Ads are like “need a car?, come to us” which is of course effective in DM. But Adwords for branding will need a different approach. What about using estrange statements like “My car is better than yours” or using slogans and redirect to customer feedback “BMW Sheer driving pleasure, want to see what others think” etc…
Lately I meet more companies doing online advertising, like Google Adwords, without a good analytics in place. When you don’t measure the results of any campaign, you waste your money.
You see your traffic is growing and you think you are doing a good job. But is this traffic interested in what you offer? Do they ask for more information? Do they buy your product? If you don’t measure that, you don’t know .
In stead of using your own analytics tool you should start with implementing Google analytics. It is free, and in stead of focusing on the amount of traffic you will move forward to a ‘relevant traffic’ focus.
With analytics you get insights in all visitors but you are especially interested in the visitors who buy, subscribe on your site etc. When you follow their behaviour you know what they search for and where they came from.
With this information you don’t need to buy expensive advertisements on crowded websites anymore. You buy ads on relevant places which pay off directly.
I do believe performance based marketing has a bright future. For anyone involved in advertising it is very attractive to pay per sale, per lead etc. in stead of just buying reach without any further guaranties.
Publishers have the opportunity to place ads while sharing the revenue. Customers get to see more relevant ads because ads that don’t pay will disappear.
Affiliate networks will however face a hard time to stay relevant. As tracking software will become free and available for everyone. Affiliate networks will have to compete with affiliate managers within the advertising companies to find and built relations with relevant publishers.
Why would you still pay the affiliate network if you can do it yourself.
Google is already offering Pay per Action advertising in beta and I guess it is just a matter of time before Google starts offering this tracking solution for non-Google ads as well (similar to Analytics campaign tracker). By then anyone can start his/her own affiliate program for free.
If the tracking software is for free. Affiliate networks will need to show their relevance by delivering better tracking and/or better publishers then we can find ourselves. In this situation they can’t afford to charge monthly fee’s. They will probably have to work performance based themselves.
Mobile marketing is getting serious. Admobs.com launches a Google Adwords-like service for easy mobile banner advertising. Including a mobile landing page, if you need one. Google offers Mobile image ads since April 23.
This is just a first step. Bannering on mobile is nice but not really intelligent and engaging, unless you target very well. And also then you tend to forget about the specific value of a mobile device for the consumer.
More on this in the following presentation from Mobile Monday Amsterdam
Following my post on Saatchi2.0 I would like to talk more about the subject of agency2.0.
What does a future advertising agency look like? What is its role, its structure? What can we learn from pure digital agencies and other online businesses in general? What can a traditional agency do to stay alive and revive?
In the Businessweek interview I mentioned earlier, I read that Saatchi & Saatchi has tried to buy a digital agency Blast Radius. It didn’t work out since Blast Radius merged with Wunderman, a large direct marketer. What is the real reason behind this? Was it a cultural difference or a pure strategical decision?
After some short research (I will come back to this subject). I found some well known insights digital agencies come up with:
stop annoying customers, start engaging
stop delivering ads for clients, start delivering strategies on advertising
get insights through data, customerinfo and testing
I my opinion the field of advertising is only getting more interesting since agencies must and can focus on their core business “ideas”. And they get more means to generate and spread these ideas.
Looking at how this could look like in practice. I did check the Nitro website. What do they do for a living? As they say, they deliver:
Research from Isobar
found that around 90% of the French online audience ages 15 to 49 had seen at least one video ad in May 2007.
Over half (55.5%) of the respondents to the Isobar survey went on to visit a brand’s Web site, one-third searched online for further product information and over 22% requested further information. What’s more, one in five bought a product as a direct result of seeing a video ad.
