Facebook and Microsoft have recently confirmed that they reached an agreement in which Facebook acquires the Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft. A leader in campaign management and measurement for both marketers and agencies, the Atlas ad serving solution has been around for many, many years, and is widely used at a global scale.

The rationale for Facebook’s latest purchase is thoroughly explained on Facebook’s blog¹, where Brian Boland, Director of Monetization Product Marketing, says:

“Today’s marketing environment is much more complex than it was just a few short years ago. Marketers and agencies struggle to understand how their efforts across different channels complement and strengthen each other. Consequently, they are forced to adopt siloed marketing strategies for each channel, leading to poor and inconsistent end-user experiences. 

This challenge also provides an opportunity. If marketers and agencies can get a holistic view of campaign performance, they will be able to do a much better job of making sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. Atlas has built capabilities that allow for this kind of measurement, and enhancing these systems will give marketers a deeper understanding of effectiveness and lead to better digital advertising experiences for consumers.

Many marketers that advertise on Facebook today use Atlas, and Atlas has been an approved partner for measurement since June. Today’s agreement brings us closer together in a way that benefits both Facebook and Atlas’ agency and marketer clients. Atlas clients should not see any change to the service they receive today, and we will continue to innovate and invest in the Atlas platform.”

Facebook ensures current and future Atlas users that they will continue investing in the platform and enhancing its current offering. Atlas, connected to the Nielsen and Datalogix platforms already in use at Facebook, will have all capabilities to assist advertisers and agencies in measuring and analyzing their ad spend uniformly.

From the Microsoft side, we hear that, simply put, “We needed to sharpen our focus and concentrate on identifying, building and executing on the things that are core to our vision for the future as our entire company transitions to a devices and services model.  The continued investment in third party ad serving technology like Atlas, while important, is less of a strategic pillar for our business than it once was.”²

In terms of logistics, Atlas will continue to operate from its current location in Seattle. Facebook does have an engineering office in Seattle and is said to look into investing and expanding the Seattle engineering and product teams.

1. Facebook to Acquire Atlas from Microsoft
2. The Story Behind the Story: Why We Sold Atlas to Facebook

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Agreement will help strengthen the ad technology offerings of both companies, improving digital ROI for brands and publishers

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Despite global macroeconomic woes, IgnitionOne releases positive Q3 Global Digital Media Report with continued growth predicted for Q4

NEW YORK – Online advertising saw strong spend growth globally in the third quarter, with spend up 10% YOY, excluding Asia. This represents strong growth in spite of global economic challenges worldwide. Paid search advertising grew 7% and display grew 21% year-over-year. Retailers saw the largest growth in advertising expenditure, increasing search budgets by 22% compared with the third quarter 2010.

These figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, a leading provider of performance marketing technology and services managing more than $1 billion in online advertising.

Key findings in IgnitionOne’s Q3 report:

• Search advertising spend remains solid in Q3. In Q3, total search spend was up 7.2% YOY driven in part by more consumer search activity (impressions up 22%). Europe saw 20% spend growth YOY compared with 7% for the US. Growth in retail, finance and auto was partially offset by modestly lower YOY spends in travel. Retailer spend was particularly strong, growing 22% year-over-year.
• Performance-focused advertisers continue to increase their display advertising budgets (spend up 21% YOY), namely for inventory sold via real-time bidding (RTB). This form of display advertising is similar to search in that it is bought in an online auction marketplace, and therefore highly measurable with spend able to be quickly scaled up or down. CPMs on RTB display are also declining (-23% YOY) as more inventory floods the market, increasing its cost-effectiveness.
• Google’s online advertising dominance grows further. The company’s share of search advertising rose to 81.6%, and its display advertising platform experienced 184% growth year-over-year. Higher quality search inventory, the product enhancements in Google’s Ad Exchange and new highly effective ad formats form the basis of Google’s dominance and continued growth in market share.
• Yahoo/Bing alliance shows little impact on the search engine landscape at one year anniversary. On a year-over-year basis, Yahoo/Bing’s effective cost-per-impression has declined -22.8% mainly due to declining CPCs (-18%) and declining CTRs (-5.9%). While the Yahoo/Bing alliance has recently introduced ad format changes (Rich Ads in Search) and other innovations, these efforts have had little effect in attracting new advertiser dollars.

“Online advertising has stayed strong despite global economic challenges,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “Marketers are looking for high ROI in this economy, and are increasingly turning to efficient advertising formats like performance display and search. This has resulted in strong advertising growth YOY; which, coupled with increased online activity from consumers, should yield a solid Q4 for publishers and marketers alike.”

IgnitionOne’s complete Q3 Digital Media Report can be downloaded here.

This report is the latest in a series of reports from IgnitionOne reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. Previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/ignitiononeresearch

About IgnitionOne
IgnitionOne is the world’s first closed loop Digital Marketing Suite, offering multiple solutions to improve online performance within a single interface. Solutions include ad management and optimization (search, display and Facebook), cross-channel attribution and website conversion optimization.

IgnitionOne currently powers more than $20 billion in revenue each year for some of the world’s leading online marketers, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, Fiat and advertising agencies such as MRM Worldwide, CyberAgent and more.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

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List Dominated by Technology Messages; Apparel Retailers Fail to Make a Splash

LOS ANGELES – Ace Metrix™, the authority in television advertising effectiveness, announced the most effective Back-to-School TV ads, a list led by Microsoft and dominated by technology companies and brands, including Best Buy, Staples, Dell, and Wal-Mart.

“Notably, apparel retailers did not make much of a splash with consumers this back-to-school season,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “JCPenney was a notable exception, winning big with consumers with their ‘pennies from heaven’ spot that promoted the company’s contributions to local after-school programs. This philanthropic tactic, which was used last year in the Number One back-to-school ad from Kohl’s, has been an effective way of getting consumer attention for apparel retailers.

“The usual reliance of apparel retailers on typically ‘in the box’ ideas like promotion of sales events are just not effective in breaking through to consumers in a cluttered advertising environment.”

Microsoft’s top-rated ad, achieving an Ace Score of 651, offered a free Xbox with the purchase of a Windows 7 PC, an offer also made by Dell, which had the 9th most effective ad with an Ace Score of 569.

Top 10 Most Effective Back to School Ads*

*Definition: Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 0-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, attention, etc.

In addition, five of the top 10 ads were focused on college students. By comparison, many of the poorer performing ads were focused on messages around children’s apparel. Crayola was a notable children’s brand to break into the most effective ads promoting its dry erase crayons and achieving an Ace Score of 589.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace ScoreTM measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management TM suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com

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Mid-Quarter Shift from Google to Yahoo-Bing Search Alliance Reflects Increased Click-Through Rates and Lower Costs Per Click
IFA 2011

IRVINE, Calif. – Small businesses achieved more in search in the fourth quarter of 2010 by increasing their keyword portfolios and diversifying ad spending across the major search engines, according to a report released by WebVisible (www.WebVisible.com), which tracks small business search advertising trends.

“Looking ahead, we believe successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together, which is what WebVisible does best.”

The average small business advertiser spent $2,126 in the fourth quarter of 2010, while average keyword counts reached an all-time high of 87 root keywords, a 30 percent year-over-year increase from the last quarter of 2009. Small-business advertisers also took advantage of the slow migration in October of Yahoo advertisers to the new Bing adCenter platform and shifted their spending away from Google – a strategy that appears to have at least temporarily bolstered both click-through rates and clicks leading to phone calls.

Costs-per-click were 23 percent lower on Yahoo-Bing than on Google in November and 29 percent lower in December. At the same time, click-through rates for advertisers with ad programs on the Yahoo-Bing platform were 10 percent higher than those on Google during December, according to the report, while the percentage of clicks resulting in phone calls rose from 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 6.1 percent in the final quarter of 2010 – a dramatic 56 percent increase.

“We’re pleased to see that our robust technology and years of experience are clearly helping small business advertisers achieve greater efficiency and conversion rates, and they’re achieving these results with manageable ad budgets,” said WebVisible CEO Ron Burr. “Looking ahead, we believe successful campaigns will be those that combine the best creative, most dynamic media buying strategies, and smartest use of keyword targeting all working together, which is what WebVisible does best.”

These results and others are included in The WebVisible Report: State of Small Business Online Advertising, which examines trends among WebVisible advertisers from Q4 2009 through Q4 2010 and represents more than $54 million in U.S. small business advertiser spending by more than 10,000 individual advertisers during that period.

The report, which each quarter provides the definitive snapshot of how small businesses are deploying search and online marketing tools, revealed that Google’s share of total search ad spending among WebVisible clients dropped from 56 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to less than 38 percent of total spending in November before climbing back to 52 percent in December.

Home Page Video Usage Continues to Grow

The fourth quarter results continued to show that small business advertisers consider video to be an important component of their online advertising presence. Twenty-six percent of advertisers used video on their landing pages in the fourth quarter, up from 19 percent in the previous year’s fourth quarter. Video views increased 85 percent year over year, rising from 3.7 percent of landing page actions a year ago to 6.7 percent in the final quarter of 2010.

The Q4 2010 report, as well as reports from previous quarters, is available by request here: http://www.webvisible.com/wvreport. Members of the media may also contact info@edgecommunications.com or call (818) 990-5001.

About WebVisible, Inc.

WebVisible has been the leading provider of local online marketing software and services since 2001. WebVisible was among the first to pioneer the use of search as a reliable, measurable avenue to connect directly with a buyer’s needs, providing solutions through some of the world’s largest Interactive Yellow Page companies, directories and other media vendors. The company has served over 100,000 customers from 4,000 industries in 14 countries. The company also delivers solutions directly to small businesses throughout the United States. WebVisible is based in Irvine, California with offices in Los Angeles, Charlotte and Mumbai. For more information, visit www.webvisible.com or call 949-255-9677.

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BOSTON – Will 2011 be the year of Facebook TV, CloudTunes and Wii2? Strategy Analytics’ analysts have dug themselves out of snow drifts, put another log on the fire, and pooled their thoughts on the year ahead. Connected TV will not be going away, in spite of early glitches: Google, Apple and Microsoft may be joined by Facebook in the race to develop a world-beating cloud TV service. Apple’s iTunes will enter its second decade with challenges ahead, and Nintendo will have to decide what to do about the decline of the Wii. Social networks will pass one billion users, $10bn will be spent on Blu-ray discs, and more than 500 million connected TV devices will be in use. Revenues from tablets will exceed netbooks, but on the downside, only 20% of 3DTV owners will be watching 3D content.

“2011 promises to be another exciting year in the evolution of the digital home,” says David Mercer, Principal Analyst. “Many of the key elements of the next generation home are now in place, such as connected devices, high speed broadband and advanced user interfaces; it’s up to key players to pull these together to create compelling experiences and drive added value.”

He continued: “The battles between content owners, technology vendors and service providers for access to consumer revenues will continue. The field is still wide open for any of these players to take a leadership position in the emerging ecosystem. And there will always be opportunities for new players like Facebook to appear from nowhere and threaten established positions.”

The report, “Digital Home Predictions for 2011: The Year of Facebook TV, CloudTunes and Wii2?” is available for complimentary download at www.strategyanalytics.com.

Analyst Blog: http://blogs.strategyanalytics.com/blogs

About Strategy Analytics

Strategy Analytics, Inc. provides timely and actionable market intelligence focused on opportunities and disruptive forces in the areas of Automotive Electronics and Entertainment, Broadband Connected Home, Mobile & Wireless Intelligent Systems and Virtual Worlds. Headquartered in Boston, MA, with offices in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, S. Korea and China, Strategy Analytics works with clients through annual multi-client services, management team workshops and custom consulting engagements. For more information, please visit http://www.strategyanalytics.com/

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DUBLIN – Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Internet Publishing and Services” report to their offering.

The Internet publishing and broadcasting and search portal industry includes about 2,300 companies with combined annual revenue of about $34 billion. Major companies include Google, IAC, and Yahoo!. The publishing and broadcasting segment of the industry is concentrated: the top 50 companies account for more than 60 percent of revenue. The search portal segment of the industry is highly concentrated: the top 50 companies account for more than 90 percent of revenue.

Companies that specialize in providing Internet access are covered in the Internet Service Providers profile.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Demand is driven by consumer and business needs for information and entertainment. The profitability of individual companies depends on their ability to deliver relevant information to consumers and to offer advertisers desirable target markets. Large companies enjoy economies of scale in marketing and in their ability to develop and maintain multiple websites. Smaller companies can compete by focusing on niche markets. The industry is capital-intensive: average annual revenue per employee is more than $400,000.

Companies in the Internet publishing and broadcasting and search portal industry compete with other publishers and broadcasters and with the Internet-related businesses of leading technology and entertainment companies.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

Major products are search portals and websites devoted to news, sports, entertainment, gaming, networking, and other topics. Advertising is the primary source of revenue. Other sources of revenue include subscriptions and licensing of proprietary products to other sites.

Key Topics Covered:

Industry Overview

Quarterly Industry Update

Business Challenges

Trends AND Opportunities

Call Preparation Questions

Financial Information

Industry Forecast

Website and Media Links

Glossary of Acronyms

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9c829f/internet_publishin.

Source: First Research

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SearchIgnite issues Q3 report evaluating the state of U.S. search marketing

ATLANTA – The U.S. paid search market continued to heat up in Q3, with spend on paid search advertisements increasing nearly 6% year-over-year as marketers again turned to search marketing to fuel online growth. Among the engines, Google took an even more dominant lead, picking up two percentage points to garner more than 80% of all U.S. PPC ad spend in the third quarter. But early data coming out of the Bing and Yahoo! alliance reveals that the partnership is showing strong results for advertisers thus far, boding well for Bing to become a viable competitor to Google in the future.

These findings come from a report released by SearchIgnite, a leading provider of paid search optimization and online media solutions managing more than $600 million in PPC spend annually.

Detailed findings in the report include:

- Google Continues to Seize Significant Market Share: Google now stands at more than 80% of PPC ad spend, up nearly two percentage points from just last quarter, and taking the most dominant market share lead since SearchIgnite began tracking spend share among the engines (2007).

- Strong Quarter for Paid Search with Solid Momentum for Q4: Paid search spend in Q3 increased 5.8% year-over-year compared with flat growth a year ago and exhibited positive momentum month-over-month, with July growing 4.9%, August 5.8% and September 6.7%. The growth throughout the quarter bodes well for a strong Q4.

- Early Results from Bing-Yahoo! Alliance Positive for Advertisers: Despite widespread speculation that CPCs for the new search alliance will hyper-inflate, PPC ads delivered by Bing show little CPC inflation thus far and SearchIgnite does not anticipate that they will be markedly inflated in the future. In addition, click-through rates (CTRs) have increased for advertising served on the combined Bing-Yahoo! search inventory, revealing that Bing’s ad serving algorithm delivers more relevant advertising than Yahoo!, positive news for advertisers.

“Google continued to increase its dominance in the paid search market in the third quarter,” said Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite. “However, the Bing/Yahoo! alliance is performing well for advertisers thus far, and marketers want to see a viable competitor to Google in the market. We feel that there is a real opportunity for Bing to capture significant market share in the near term if these early results continue to play out in the fourth quarter.”

The complete Q3 report can be downloaded at: http://about.searchignite.com/en/research/early-results-bing-yahoo-alliance-positive-signs-advertisers

This report is the latest in a series of SearchIgnite white papers reviewing trends across the search landscape. Previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/searchigniteresearch.

About SearchIgnite

SearchIgnite is the leading provider of search optimization and digital media attribution solutions that help major marketers achieve their search marketing goals quicker and spend their advertising budgets smarter. The company’s media management technology offers an advanced suite of tools to manage, optimize and report on paid search campaigns in one central dashboard, as well as gather insights into the relationship between media channels including PPC, SEO and display. Some of the world’s leading brands and advertising agencies depend on SearchIgnite to power their search campaigns and improve their online media ROI.

For more information, please visit http://www.searchignite.com/ or follow the company on Twitter @searchignite.

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ST. LOUIS – Advertisers could see a cost-per-click (CPC) increase up to 78 percent above current Bing CPCs as a surge of competitors move to one platform with the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance transition, a study completed by GroupM Search revealed.

Based on the impact two industry milestones had on advertisers – Yahoo’s introduction in 2007 of Panama and Microsoft’s transition in 2009 from MSN Live to Bing, GroupM Search projects a three-week period of volatility post-transition before costs begin to settle. At the campaign level, advertisers can expect an average increase of 64 percent over current Bing CPCs for unbranded keywords and 78-percent for branded keywords during this time. Once the marketplace settles, CPCs on Bing will rest at 13 to 23 percent above current Bing CPCs for unbranded and branded keywords, respectively.

“Any time you interject change into the auction you invite pricing pressure,” said Chris Copeland, chief executive officer of GroupM Search. “In this case, we see historical evidence that suggests regardless of the bid tools and the preparation, a period of short-term volatility will exist.”

The study was completed by GroupM Search’s Predictive Insights unit, a team comprised of econometric statisticians and mathematicians with expertise cultivated in the area of search marketing. GroupM Search looked at current and historical paid search campaign data to estimate cost implications and how long it will take advertisers to return to equilibrium after this shock to the market. The study included campaign data of 12 market-leading clients who have maintained a steady presence on both Yahoo and Microsoft’s search networks dating back to 2007.

The insights from this study are important for advertisers because it allows advanced preparation for what to expect from this transition.

“If three-week volatility and CPC increases can be countered through better understanding of competitive sets, sophistication of those advertisers and what strategies they use today, then this research will have served our client base well,” said Copeland.

One of the most important insights from the study is the understanding of the number of advertisers with paid search campaigns unique to Yahoo that potentially will now be running on the Microsoft adCenter platform. Within the search marketing campaigns analyzed, on average only 27 percent of the advertisers’ competition for branded and unbranded keywords were running on both Yahoo and Bing. GroupM Search projects that advertisers unique to Yahoo moving to adCenter could lead to a 74-percent increase in competition levels on Bing than exist at present.

This increased competition will be the greatest factor for the amplification in paid search costs, the study revealed. In a pay-per-click auction system, such as paid search, the number of competitors matters greatly in the final price of the item because each competitor vies for its desired position.

“The industry has long known the variances of performance between Yahoo and Bing. What we found and what we believe has the biggest material impact for advertisers are the vastly different competitive sets between the two,” said Copeland. “When you put such a large set of new advertisers of varying sophistication into the mix, you are going to see a less stable CPC marketplace.”

On the heels of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance transition, however, comes the peak of the holiday season when paid search sees its greatest surge in advertisers and CPCs. With this unique timing, the marketplace could experience bidding variables it hasn’t seen before and it could be early 2011 before everything settles and the “new CPC” is realized.

Copeland added, “It is essential for all parties to get this right and we support the decision to go forward ahead of the 2010 holiday season. However, this predicted fluctuation, combined with holiday bidding strategies, means it could be three to four months before the new normal is set.”

An abstract detailing the study can be downloaded from the GroupM Search Blog, SearchFuel.

About GroupM Search

GroupM Search is the search marketing specialist division of GroupM, the media buying and planning arm of WPP responsible for more than 1/3 of the world’s media buying. GroupM Search provides industry-leading search marketing strategies, technology development, research, staffing and training to GroupM communications planning agencies, including: Maxus, MediaCom, MEC and MindShare, as well as the direct-to-client search marketing agencies Outrider, Catalyst Online and Quisma. More than 700 search marketing strategists comprise GroupM Search’s global network spanning 40 countries. In 2008, GroupM Search was named the 2008 Search Marketing Agency of the Year by OMMA Magazine and MediaPost. Global search marketing perspective from experts across GroupM Search can be found on the industry blog, SearchFuel (www.searchfuel.com). URL: www.groupmsearch.com

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DUBLIN – Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Trends and Strategies in Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Branding” report to their offering.

It is interesting to consider what if the founders of Yahoo had stuck to the original name. Certainly we would not have the iconic logo and of course the memorable name the company has now. It might be pertinent to say that had the company entered the competitive fray as Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web the search engine would hold a lowly position amongst the options users have today to search the internet. While Google dominates the sector and has a brand value of $32bn in the branding agency Interbrands 2009 analysis of global brands, Yahoo! still posts a brand value of $5.1bn (the second ranking search engine in the analysis). This is one of the many examples that can be cited as to the importance of a good brand name and of a strong overall brand to business success.

The importance of effective branding has generally been lost to companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. One reason for this is that unlike other industries companies in these sectors have been able to charge premium prices for their products. Of course with such high development costs they need to. However, in sectors outside these life science industries competition leads to an emphasis on differentiation based on price and therefore to a degree of commoditization which is ultimately unwelcome in most business sectors. Rather than differentiate through branding companies can be lulled into believing that price is the more effective differentiator. This may be fair for the supermarket sector but not for many others.

As pressure has built on drug and medical device companies, based on governmental efforts to reduce healthcare spending, the importance of brand building efforts has been realised by some. As people continue to search the internet for information related to health and disease, and as they increasingly engage in online conversation with fellow sufferers and physicians for support and advice on day-to-day management of their conditions they increasingly become exposed to the companies that actually make the drugs and devices that they use. Even so, it is perhaps true to say that while many people know of Viagra they probably still cannot name the company that manufactures the drug. How important is it anyway for patients to know about the drug and device products they use? The simple answer is that it is increasingly important, purely because of the information they seek and obtain online. When companies first started to use direct to consumer advertising an important concern was that doctors would be pressured by patients into prescribing certain drugs, against their better judgment. As time has gone on these fears have subsided as physicians have stood firm and have been able to assert their positions as the decision makers in the patient-physician relationship based on their specialisation and a clear understanding of what is best for a particular patient. It appears that more and more physicians, who themselves are becoming increasingly familiar with and utilising the power of online social networks, welcome dialogue with the more informed patient.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary
Introduction
What is a brand?
Brand architecture
5 Marketing strategies – Corporate vs product branding
6 Branding Clinical Trials
7 E-branding. Maximising a web presence
8 Word of Mouth Marketing
9 How to protect a brand
10 Steps to brand creation and promotion
APPENDIX
Companies Mentioned:

Philips
Medtronic
Nuvasive
KCI
Sonova

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cd30c5/trends_and_strateg

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