Advertising: Online
Top 5 Cross-Channel Lessons Learned from the Super Bowl
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Written By Anthony Iaffaldano | February 11, 2010 | Share This
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On Monday morning, we released our 6th Annual Search Marketing Scorecard on the Super Bowl.
Unlike the USAToday AdMeter, YouTube’s AdBlitz or most other Super Bowl ad rankings, we focus on just about everything relating to a marketer’s campaign OTHER than the quality of their creative.
Instead, our Scorecard ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on their visibility in search and social media immediately after their TV spots aired. Essentially, we’re evaluating the steps each brand took to capture the demand created by their Super Bowl advertising investment.
So what were some of the biggest takeaways from the big game?
No Rookie Mistakes Here: Among the top-rated brands in our scorecard were three first-time Super Bowl advertisers – Boost Mobile, HomeAway and Google. All three brands turned compelling TV ads into meaningful online experiences. The brands were highly visible across the major search engines, and met interested consumers’ interest with content that easily extended the value of their TV commercials.
Advertising – Now With More Tailgating!: As any football fan will tell you, one of the best parts of going to a game isn’t the game itself, but the party leading up to it. So why should it be any different for the advertisers? 37% of the advertisers in this year’s game launched initiatives weeks and, in some cases, even months before the Super Bowl, building buzz and anticipation for their spots.
This is a significant shift in the way brands view the big game, one that’s taken place over the last few years. Super Bowl Sunday used to be about the big reveal – new spots were guarded more carefully than the president’s nuclear football. But in the age of social media, brands are finding benefits in opening the kimono a little early, not only showing consumers what they’re in for, but actually giving them the playbook and letting them lead the drive. The best example? Doritos’ incredibly successful Crash the Super Bowl promotion, which let consumers develop (and promote) their own spots, with the top three getting Super Bowl airtime. This not only cut down on Doritos’ production budget, but gave them an army of marketers all jockeying to earn :30 of worldwide fame.
Where’s the Brand Investment?: For the first time in five years, we saw a significant decrease in the number of companies visible in paid search for their brand names. (63% down from a high of 70%). While marketers have often struggled with the question of whether or not to buy their brand on search engines, it should be a no-brainer on Super Sunday. Only paid search offers the ability to control the message shows to consumers, allowing better integration with a short-term promotion like, say, the Super Bowl. This was most certainly a trend we expected to see heading in the other direction.
Social Took a Back Seat: Many pundits (including the one on the other end of this keyboard) expected this year’s Super Bowl to act as a coming out party of sorts in the way that mainstream marketers used social media during the game. We expected brands to end every commercial with breathless pleas to “Fan us on Facebook!” or “Follow us on Twitter!” We expected those channels to be literally buzzing at game time, with special offers for consumers, and for brands to loosen their controls and engage in real conversations with their customers.
And what did we get?
Well, to be fair, there were a few marketers thinking outside the box – For instance, Google drove viewers directly to YouTube, and E*Trade included Facebook & YouTube widgets on the end card of their commercial. Unfortunately, for most of the field, it was more of the same. 91% of the 57 brands we tracked had a presence on at least one of Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, but the conversation on those channels was fairly typical and one-sided: “Hey everybody, watch our ads! We’re proud of them!” Still plenty room for improvement.
No Commercial? No Problem! – There are only so many brands with $2.5 million sitting around to spend on a Super Bowl spot, but the buzz and interest generated by those spots isn’t only the domain of Big Game advertisers. Take tax prep-software TurboTax – given the timing of the Super Bowl, they knew that the Super Bowl would drive millions of people to the search box looking for information relating to the game, players, halftime performers and advertisers.
As a result, the company was extremely aggressive in paid search, with a campaign reminding consumers of the benefits of their package. While they didn’t explicitly say the words Super Bowl or even football, the landing page had football personality Chris Berman and a “tax coach of the year” trophy that looks awfully familiar.
In all, a savvy move to build awareness for their service in an unobtrusive (albeit not entirely relevant) way.
Want even more information about how brands fared in this year’s cross-channel marketing showdown? Register today to reserve your place at Reprise Media’s annual Super Bowl webinar, which will be held next Friday, February 19th at 2PM EST.
Among the topics we’ll cover:
• An in-depth look at the winners and losers in search and social media buzz
• Innovative tactics for tapping into the post-bowl surge in interest
• Potential pitfalls that could keep your brand on the bench
Which Brands Scored an Integrated Touchdown at Super Bowl 44?
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Written By Anthony Iaffaldano | February 8, 2010 | Share This
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This morning, Reprise Media released our 6th annual Search Marketing Scorecard on the Super Bowl, which ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on the level of integration between their television commercials and presence in search and social media –measuring how prepared each brand was to capture the demand created by their Super Bowl advertising investment. The Search Marketing Scorecard is the longest-running study of its kind.
The audience for this year’s Super Bowl was primed and ready for integrated campaigns. According to a recent comScore study, 1/3 of the 90 million people planning to watch the Super Bowl expected to log on to their computers during the game. Furthermore, One out of every ten viewers (or nearly 9 million people) were going to use their computers specifically to seek out advertiser websites. That sounds like an audience that’s not only interested in the ads, but interested in having real interactions with brands, which is what our study is all about.
So how did this year’s advertisers do?
This year’s scorecard (which can be viewed by clicking the thumbnail to the left) saw the crowning of three rookie advertisers, as Boost Mobile, HomeAway and Google scored integrated marketing touchdowns in their first Super Bowl outing. The spots were joined in the win column by multiple-time champion E*Trade.
EDITOR’S NOTE: While it didn’t factor into the scoring in any way, it also didn’t hurt that Boost Mobile (with their Tim & Eric directed remix of the Super Bowl Shuffle) and Home Away (with the triumphant return of the Griswolds!) had two of my favorite ads of the night.
Furthermore, Denny’s, which rated a Fumble last year during their Free Grand Slam Breakfast promotion, turned in a solid performance, which bumped them up a few levels to a First and Gold advertiser - room for improvement, but a marked improvement over last year when their website crashed due to a lack of server capacity on the night of the game. (Rule #1 of cross-channel integration… make sure you can handle it if your stuff goes TRULY viral). This year, the restaurateur’s screaming chicken-related landing pages loaded quickly, pointing users to more info about the hugely successful promotion.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, PopSecret/Diamond Nuts was hard to find on the night of the Super Bowl - surprising given their pre-game promotion about using search and social to connect their campaigns. They were joined in the Fumble category by Dockers, Dodge Charger and Intel.
We also saw the return of a strategy we like to refer to as ad drafting, where companies not participating in the Super Bowl pull a judo move, buying keywords relating to their competitors and using their own energy against them. The most egregious of these drafters? Turbo Tax, who seemed to be buying every single keyword related to the Super Bowl that we could think of. They were visible for most brand names, generic super bowl keywords and more. Honorable mention goes to Pepsi (who were buying Coke related terms), and both Monster & Careerbuilder, who once again bought each others’ brand names and taglines in an effort to poach resumes and job hunters from the super bowl market.
Want to know more about the best in integrated marketing campaigns from the Super Bowl? Stay tuned to this blog over the next few days, as we dig into more of the data around our analysis to provide some useful trends and best practices. We’ll also be sharing some data from our partners at Trendrr, who provided conversation monitoring for all Super Bowl adds over the past few weeks.
And don’t forget to sign up for our upcoming Super Bowl webinar, which will be held on Feb 19th at 2pm. We’ll review all the winners and losers from this year’s Big Game, and provide analysis on what actually happened with all that buzz once users went online.
What did you think? Did you see any campaigns that you thought did a particularly good job integrating their messages cross channel?
Search and Social Media: Mom Power Drives Marketing Results
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Written By Ruth Nightengale | December 7, 2009 | Share This
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The fact that women are powerful is hardly news, but recent studies suggest that moms may very well represent the National Power Grid for the United States.
In a white paper published by Advertising Age, The Rise of the Real Mom, the Boston Consulting Group states that moms control $4.3 trillion of the $5.9 trillion U.S. consumer spending total, or 73% of household spend. The Shriver Report, issued in October, found that women are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. And just last week, Google released another study on moms they are calling Four Truths about Moms and Search, created in collaboration with BabyCenter and two different research vendors between October 16 and November 17 of this year.
Mobile: What Marketers Need to Know About Google’s AdMob Deal
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 11, 2009 | Share This
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The rapid growth of mobile platforms this year has put to rest any doubt that digital marketers may have had about jumping in. The recent successful launch of Android coupled with the continued growth of iPhone sales (even as the recession continues) point clearly to a continuing transformation in the portability of the online experience for most Americans. Google’s deal to buy AdMob serves to reinforce this wisdom.
After all, it’s not just about AdMob’s ad-serving platform. So much of Google’s success in the world of search advertising has been built on the back of analytics - how they cull and act on data in-house and what they offer to advertisers and consumers as a benefit of service. There is no doubt that whether or not Google’s own mobile OS dominates, AdMob’s platform agnostic nature gives them directional insight into mobile as a whole.
Here are the basics that every marketer and advertiser should know:
Search News: Google Spreading Tentacles Wider into Ad Exchanges?
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Written By Shivan Durbal | September 17, 2009 | Share This
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Rumor has it that in the near future, possibly within the next two weeks, we may see Google’s invitation only DoubleClick ad exchange marketplace door swung wide open to all buyers and sellers. This is according to ClickZ, but as such it’s still only rumor. As Mia Wallace said in Pulp Fiction “When you little scamps get together, you’re worse than a sewing circle.”
Still, assuming it’s true; Google could bring the worlds of search and display marketing closer together than ever and finally impose tools and measurement on display that we’ve been using for years in the search marketing field.
For those search marketers out there that are unfamiliar with ad exchanges in the display advertising space, in effect they are a support structure for the sale of undervalued, unused or remnant banner advertising inventory.
Ad Week: What Do You Want to Know About Search Re-Targeting?
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Written By Noah Mallin | September 15, 2009 | Share This
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Here’s your chance to get a panel question asked without ever leaving the warm soothing glow of your computer screen. As part of Advertising Week Reprise Media’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Dan Kashman will be leading a panel at next week’s OMMA Global New York, Tuesday September 22 at noon titled Leveraging the Power of Search Re-targeting for Marketing Plans.
The best part is that we want your input into what questions to ask the panel, either in the comments here or on Twitter at @dankashman. Dan will incorporate as many of your questions as he can into the panel discussion.
The panel will explore opportunities for re-marketing to searchers after they’ve left Google, Yahoo, Bing or their other engine of choice, specific search re-targeting offerings from networks and other providers, best practices for segmentation and messaging, and the privacy implications inherent in this approach.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, search re-targeting allows advertisers to match display ads to search users based on keywords that they’ve recently searched for. It’s becoming a key tool in the marketer’s shed, amplifying and strengthening the ability to hit the right consumer with the best message.
We know that marketers and businesses have a lot of questions about search re-targeting, and we want to hear them from you directly. So, what questions would you like to see Dan ask the panel?
Search News: Branded Search Marches On with Google Video Plus Box
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Written By Emil Panzarino | July 22, 2009 | Share This
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Google released (or I should say re-released) a new product earlier this year for paid search results called the “Video Plus Box”. This is an interesting opportunity for advertisers who focus less on an absolute conversion and have more interest in the branding and awareness possibilities that search holds.
It also makes sense for advertisers who have a strong visual component to their product or pitch – film and television promotion comes to mind. On the other hand advertisers that are more focused on e-commerce- getting people to their site and converting and/or monetizing their paid search traffic in some way- might find this feature to be counterproductive to their core goals.
The Video Plus Box allows a searcher to watch a video within a paid search ad by expanding the plus box {+} link. An early form of this product had been released last year as one of Google’s many alpha tests. It went away for a few months but came back earlier this year as (you guessed it) one of Google’s many beta tests.
Users of Google are no strangers to the general concept of “expand plus box” links in their search results. Google has been showing this feature in their organic listings for quite some time. In 2006 Google introduced the feature that would allow a user to see maps for local businesses within the organic results:
In May 2007, it was blended into their universal search, allowing users to watch videos from YouTube and Google Video inside the organic search results. It was a quick way to play videos without having to load the entire page of a video hosting site. For whatever reason, Google only limited the plus box to its own video sites (YouTube and Google Video), while showing thumbnails and metadata for other sites:
Here’s what the Video Plus Box looks like before activation by the user:
Here’s what it looks like expanded:
Here’s a quick rundown of how it works:
- A paid search ad shows up on a Google as normal, but also includes a small link to preview a video.
- If a user clicks on the headline link as normal and goes to the brands website, as cost per click is incurred.
- If a user clicks on the (+) and expands the ad to watch the video, a CPC is incurred.
- After clicking to watch the video, if the user clicks through to the brand’s website, an additional CPC is not incurred.
- Only 1 CPC is ever incurred per 1 impression
What the “video plus box” does on the user end is encourage the searcher to find out more about the brand and its offerings by having them interact more with the actual paid search ads. Obviously this can deter the user from clicking through to a landing page. The upside of this is branding. Users can still have a chance to interact and learn about a brand without leaving the Google search environment. The downside is that users might abandon the process before a more valued ROI action is completed.
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Social Media: Don’t Forget the Non-Virtual World
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Written By Shreya Kushari | July 21, 2009 | Share This
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My colleague Noah Mallin once heard a panelist describe Second Life as “the Vietnam of online marketing.” A lot of marketing dollars, virtual blood and real-life treasure went in to snapping up virtual real estate and even billboards on Second Life. There was a buzz that in-person meetings were so 1990s and that instead, our avatars would meet virtually. The result, of course, is history.
Nobody talks about Second Life as a marketing venue anymore and contrary to predictions, we continue to have in-person meetings, sometimes traveling an entire day for a 45 minute face-to-face. Truth be told, clients appreciate the personal touch and knowing that they can drop by the office to talk about search and social media, their accounts, or even to play an impromptu game on the ol’ Wii.
Cultural fit continues to be an important sell in our pitches. Marketing execs wants to meet us and feel comfortable with us. So I was definitely amused as I read about MinneAdpolis.com. Ad agencies in the Minneapolis region have come together to create a virtual world of avatars to show clients and prospective employees how it is a cool place to be in and to promotes it as “the City of Advertising.”
This is clearly aimed at New York agencies – they don’t call the ad world “Madison Avenue” for nothing. Will ad agencies prosper in Minneapolis? Sure. Are they really a threat to New York agencies? Probably not. Still, there are enough businesses that need creative services in that region, who may very well prefer being in closer proximity to their agency. Will clients suddenly realize how cool Minneapolis ad agencies are because they have a virtual site with cool avatars? The answer is No.
Ironically, the drive to be cool and cutting edge undercuts the proximity advantage Minneapolis Agencies should be emphasizing. This speaks to a larger truth here – many companies and organizations want a presence in social media, cool widgets and what have you, but not enough of them take the time to ask how these map to a larger strategy.
Could this virtual world possibly take creative talent away from New York? I’m pretty doubtful. Like most New Yorkers, I have a love-hate relationship with the city. I love to complain about it – cramped quarters, overpriced everything, smelly subways, but it will take a lot more than a website to convince talent to give up the Big Apple and instead move to the “City of Advertising.” What attracts people to New York is the unique energy, the history and culture and diversity. This goes much deeper than the “The black shirt and skinny jeans” wearing the MinneAdpolis website touts. On the other hand, if you wear purple and ride a motorcycle Lake Minnetonka might just be for you.
Search Innovations: The Branding Value of a Search Impression
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Written By Emil Panzarino | June 17, 2009 | Share This
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What is the branding value of a search impression? While most search folks are trampling over and pushing aside impression data to get to the almighty click and conversion data, I ponder the question: Is there a significant branding importance associated with a search text impression?
When we think of branding within Internet marketing, we typically think of Page Takeovers, Interstitials, Page Skins, and a variety of other intimidating sounding nomenclatures.
In fact, some industry-ers scoff at the notion that search (or any text ad) could have any significant value when it comes to branding or awareness. And because the cost of impression is on a per click basis, some search planners /agencies have gone as far as removing impression data from client reporting altogether.
Social Media and Publishing: Revolutions Online and Offline
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 15, 2009 | Share This
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When Iran had their most recent popular revolution in 1979, people around the world had no 24 hour news source to convey what was happening. CNN would be launched the following year by Ted Turner so coverage was limited to shows like ABC’s Nightline (which was created in response to the hostage crisis which grew out of the uprising) and the regularly scheduled network new programs, as well as the daily newspapers like The New York Times and newsweeklies like Time magazine. The Internet? A gleam in Al Gore’s eye.