June 27, 2008

Direct and Interactive activity of interest:

Divorce Court: Fox Interactive Media, the ad platform associated with MySpace, has been spun out in order to focus on other properties. In part the reason stems from missing revenue targets by $100m. Marketers are still concerned with effectiveness and appropriateness of Consumer Generated Content.
The use of free content as a means to make money is the foundation of Long Tail author Chris Anderson's next topic: "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business". In response, George Colony of Forrester talks about the limits of advertising which are: 1) value of time, 2) cognitive pollution, 3) objectivity, and 4) form follows ads. In other words, if you want it your way you'll pay for it.
If you want to hook a transaction or a lead form to a video -- check out Qoof (www.qoof.com) or qgia (www.qgia.com) - two of a couple of ways of getting from A to B quicker.
Digital/Interactive Talent is a) hard to find, b) hard to keep, and c) now a major import to the US as reported by Ad Age.
In the targeting space, IP addresses are now considered personal information and are subject to privacy and other restrictions according to the European Union. This is likely to migrate stateside since giving international residents more protection than US residents would be problematic.
On the question of influence vs. influencer (Gladwell vs. Watts) Joe Marchese wrote about things marketers should consider when designing campaigns - quantity, quality and types of influence. None should be confused with another.
Career destinations remain a major Internet destination skewing to women and those 45+. As to advertisers, no surprise that Apollo Group absolutely dwarfs everyone else delivering 328 million or 44% of all Education impressions the week of 16 March. Monster delivered less than half of that over the same time frame.
Max Kalehoff of OnlineSPIN answered the two key questions on everyone's mind: 1 ) What are the biggest opportunities in interactive? Reputation, Experience, and Brand Hub and 2) What are the biggest challenges? Authenticity, Silos and Simplicity.
In research conducted by shop.org about online commerce (exc. travel) , paid search accounted for 35% of customer acquisition. This was followed by organic traffic at 18% and affiate and email (7% each).
Online insurance quotes continues to grow - up 15% overall; with search inspired quotes up 36% to a quarter of all quotes with generic terms out performing branded terms. This gives smaller or less well known brands equal opportunity.
In an interesting twist on the RFP - the agency Trumpet sent out the "Request for Problem" to hundreds of prospects getting 70 responses.