Ad Operations Online

SES Toronto Conference Offers Attendees the Opportunity to Meet and Hold One-On-One Dialogue with Digital Marketing Experts

Otilia Otlacan — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:00:45 +0000

The annual conference offers multiple formats for attendees to get their marketing challenges addressed and build relationships with industry luminaries

SES Toronto 2013

TORONTO - SES Conference & Expo, the leading online and integrated marketing event series, announced today that online marketing and advertising professionals who attend this year’s SES Toronto Conference, June 12-14, 2013 at the Toronto Marriot Downtown Eaton Centre, will be able to participate in the popular “Meet the Experts Roundtable Forum.” This forum facilitates face-to-face interaction and discussion with industry thought leaders and leading practitioners. Attendees will also be able to hear these industry luminaries speak throughout two morning keynotes, 30+ conference sessions, theater presentations and express clinics on the Sponsor Showcase floor, and 4 ClickZ Academy onsite training workshops.

“The ‘Meet the Experts Roundtable Forum’ has become one of the most popular parts of the SES conference program”

Each roundtable discussion is led by 2 featured experts, with a total of 10 different key topics from which to choose. Some of the most popular topics include: Link Building, Content Marketing, PPC for Ecommerce, Video Optimization, Maximizing Mobile Marketing, and Social Media Optimization, and more.

“The ‘Meet the Experts Roundtable Forum’ has become one of the most popular parts of the SES conference program,” said Mike Grehan, Group Publishing Director at Incisive Media.

“In these informal roundtable discussions, SES Speakers are ready and willing to share their knowledge and expertise with conference attendees,” adds Grehan. “Attendees simply pull up a chair, take a seat and put forth their most challenging questions to the experts. What better way to get answers they need to hone their marketing campaigns?”

Grehan concluded, “Attendees can also move freely between different roundtables to make sure they get the most out of the session. After the Thursday, June 13^th ‘Meet the Experts Roundtable Forum,’ they can take their conversation and new contacts to our drinks.”

About SES Toronto

The SES Toronto conference includes informative presentations and panels, intensive training workshops, and a Sponsor Showcase floor. Each day is choreographed to leave plenty of time for networking opportunities with industry associates. Its real-time case studies provide attendees with best-practice knowledge that can be immediately applied to their marketing programs, and its classroom-style learning offers a high degree of interactivity.

The SES Toronto conference agenda, programmed by the SES Advisory Board, is designed to help online professionals with up-to-date marketing strategies and best practices. This year, specific consideration has been given to mobile marketing, Big Data, Web analytics, Email marketing, Display advertising, Content marketing, and e-Commerce. Visit http://sesconference.com/toronto/ for more information.

About Incisive Media

Incisive Media’s SES Conference & Expo is a leading global conference and training series focused on educating today’s digital marketing and advertising professionals. The SES sister brands include ClickZ, the provider of digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, and research and Search Engine Watch, which covers news and information about search and analysis of the search engine industry, and offers tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is one of the world’s leading business-to-business (B2B) information providers, serving a wide range of financial, business technology and professional services markets globally. The company aims to bring product provider and purchaser business communities together using all the varied platforms available to a modern information business.

Whether communicating online, in print or in person, Incisive Media prides itself on its entrepreneurial culture, creating market-leading products for the industries it serves. The business operates across the main areas of financial services, with leading brands in the financial, legal, accountancy and IT sectors. For more information, visit www.incisivemedia.com.

For more news and event updates visit the SES press room.

OwnerIQ’s New Pre-Roll Capability Targets In-market Shoppers

Otilia Otlacan — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:28 +0000

New video capability is powered by unique retailer, manufacturer and e-commerce data

BOSTON - OwnerIQ, the inventor of Path to Purchase Media, has announced the launch of its new pre-roll product, which will enable advertisers to target shoppers from specific premium retailers and other top e-commerce websites with pre-roll impressions as they browse the web.

“Brands spend millions of dollars on national and local TV advertising to support their retail channel”

OwnerIQ’s unique targeting solutions enable advertisers to target online ad messages to consumers based on the products and brands that they are browsing on e-commerce and transactional websites. Early last year, the company launched its Retailer Branded Audience product, a targeting solution comprised of the website audiences of specific premium retailers – giving brands a unique way to drive sell-through in their retail channel with their online ad dollars. Through its in-house demand-side platform, OPTMS, OwnerIQ is now able to combine pre-roll inventory with targeting data based on consumers’ browsing behavior on their retail partners’ websites.

OwnerIQ believes this will be a game changer for many of their brand advertisers that sell products through retail. “Sight, sound and motion is still one of the most effective methods to deliver a brand message to consumers,” said OwnerIQ CEO and Cofounder Jay Habegger. “Today, brands that deploy video assets, whether through TV or digital, to support their retail channel have limited targeting options. We are offering these brands a way to get their video ad in front of consumers who have explicitly identified themselves as a shopper of a specific retailer.”

In addition to online video buyers, Nick Vallante, Media Director at Carat thinks these types of solutions will be attractive to TV buyers as well. “Brands spend millions of dollars on national and local TV advertising to support their retail channel,” said Vallante. “While it is still an effective medium, it can be very expensive and have a notable percentage of waste due to its targeting limits. Solutions like OwnerIQ’s pre-roll product are interesting because they can be a very efficient way to extend the reach of our TV campaigns against our retailers’ customers, making it a good complement to our TV buys.”

Habegger says that the company’s OPTMSplatform is integrated with the major video inventory platforms, which gives it access to approximately 90% of all pre-roll inventory available via RTB (real-time bidding) in the US and Canada.

This story appeared first in the E-Commerce Times.

About OwnerIQ

OwnerIQ is pioneering the concept of Path to Purchase Media. They transform consumers’ interactions with products and brands along the path to purchase into powerful new online advertising solutions and marketing channels.

The companies’ Path to Purchase targeting solutions are powered by their unique data and technology. Their data is directly sourced from over 300 data partners comprised of some of the most popular websites used by consumers along the path to purchase: Retailers, Manufacturers, Price Comparison Engines, Coupon Websites, and Product Support Sites.

OwnerIQ’s technology was designed specifically to maximize the performance of their unique Path to Purchase data in the world of programmatic buying. CoEx is their data management platform (DMP) which tags and catalogues over 1 billion consumer product and brand interactions per month. OPTMS is their demand side platform (DSP) which is integrated with every major inventory pool – seeing billions of pre-filtered advertising opportunities via real-time bid (RTB) daily.

Programmatic Buying: The Advertiser’s Upside and the Publisher’s Dilemma

Caroline Watts — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:00:25 +0000

Programmatic buying is the not-so-new, technology-based form of ad buying that’s changing the game for online advertising.

Advertisers have adopted programmatic buying in droves (in the form of RTB or otherwise), because it’s faster, easier, and more efficient.

Publishers, however, have largely been hesitant to get on board with programmatic buying — some for better reasons than others. Here’s a look at how programmatic is changing the landscape, and why advertisers and publishers aren’t always aligned when it comes to programmatic:

Why Programmatic Is Changing Everything

Seventy percent of advertisers are currently using programmatic buying as part of their media-buying plan, and three-quarters of those currently using it plan to increase the percentage of their spend dedicated to programmatic over the next year. This shift is happening for a reason: programmatic buying makes media planning easier and more efficient.

As the programmatic ecosystem expands and matures, the benefits for advertisers continue to expand. Programmatic advertising has removed the lengthy, cumbersome process that’s required to complete a direct ad sale online.

Not only is programmatic efficient, it’s opened the doors for robust audience-targeting data that can allow advertisers to truly hone in on the precise audience that’s most valuable to them. Each impression can be layered with valuable data that lets the advertiser make the most of every impression.

Through both efficiency gains and the layering of valuable audience data, programmatic lets advertisers get more from less.

The Publisher’s Dilemma

The benefit to advertisers are obvious, but what about publishers? For some publishers, real-time bidding is a great way to monetize a chunk of their inventory, or in some cases, all of their inventory. (To be clear, real-time bidding or RTB is a form of programmatic buying, but not all programmatic buying is RTB).

RTB lets publishers automatically sell inventory without sales resources, RFPS, or IOs. Everything is automatic, so the overhead for the publisher is minimal. For some publishers, this is the most efficient way to monetize all their inventory. For many large publishers with expansive inventory, this is the best way to monetize a subset of inventory that isn’t sold directly. Inventory that may previously have gone unsold can be added to networks or exchanges and can earn incremental revenue for the publisher where previously they may not have earned anything.

On the other hand, RTB can have a downside for the supply side. RTB impressions tend to be relatively low priced, so even without the overhead the publisher can sometimes end up earning less money from RTB than from direct sales. Because RTB is often associated with remnant inventory, publishers with strong name recognition who rely on direct sales are sometimes hesitant to use RTB to sell any of their inventory for fear that it could harm their brand value.

In some cases, there is a fundamental misalignment between what advertisers want and what publishers need to sustain their business. Programmatic buying has changed media-buying forever, and there’s certainly no turning back now. The increased efficiency brought to the ecosystem can benefit publishers as well as advertisers, as long as the needs of both groups are met.

Two Thirds of Brands, Agencies Say Branded Content Marketing Now Important To Their Marketing Mix

Otilia Otlacan — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:00:42 +0000

MailOnline Survey Finds About 70% Plan to Spend More on It in the Next Year

New York - MailOnline, the world’s largest global newspaper website, today reported that a new survey of over 600 online advertising and marketing execs reveals that about two thirds of brands (66%) and agencies (65%) say that branded content marketing has become very important or most important to their marketing mix. When asked “Have you employed branded content marketing for advertising purposes in the last year?”, an overwhelming percentage of both brands (70%) and agencies (77%) replied “yes” clearly indicating that this tactic is enjoying great popularity.

“There are many ‘flavors’ of branded content marketing from native advertising to content hubs, from advertorials to branded entertainment and even custom video, but given the on-set of social media, there has been an evolution of this marketing approach and a new emphasis placed on it by both clients and their agencies,” says Sean O’Neal, Global Chief Marketing Officer for MailOnline. “It is now a top tactic for driving brand lift and sales lift online”.

Asked “What is your preferred method of measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing programs?” the top response for agencies (30%) was “Brand Lift”, and the top response for brands (32%) was “Sales Lift.” When asked “Rate the following tactics for their ability to achieve your branding objectives”, brands cited branded content as amongst the most effective, virtually tied with video as a leading tactic.

The survey was in-field for three weeks in April and combined both qualitative and quantitative research. Of the 610 respondents, the majority were media buyers – 17% on the brand side and 47% on the agency side – and the remaining 36% were publishers.

“Content marketing is intended to take advantage of the one key difference between marketing and content which is that consumers are more guarded against marketing messages,” adds Mr. O’Neal. “For this reason, many brands are becoming adept ‘publishers’ of information and content, and tapping into the more trusted nature of valuable content vs. advertising.”

Asked “Where do you acquire your branded content?”, 71% of agencies said they partner with the publishers that they are buying the media from. This tactic leads all others.

When we asked brands about their content marketing activities, 83% have used it for their website or email – but more interestingly is over two-thirds have partnered with content providers to create and distribute branded content beyond their own websites.

The MailOnline survey also reveals that brands are increasing their investments in content marketing with 72% saying their spending on branded content increased in the past year and 69% predicting a budget increase ON TOP of that in the COMING year.

Data from agencies validates how the brands responded with 71% of agencies saying their clients spent more in the last 12 months on branded content marketing and 73% say their clients’ spending on branded content marketing will increase over the coming 12 months.

Of the buyers who haven’t yet tested branded content marketing, 57% of those brands said they plan to test in the next year and 84% of those agencies said they plan to test in the next year.

Finally, when asked “What prevents you or your clients from investing more in branded content marketing?” a whopping 24% of brands and 17% of agencies replied, “Nothing, we are fully committed!”

Full details of the study will be presented during a free live webinar Wednesday May 22, 2013 at 2:00 EST which can be registered for at https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/358476087

MailOnline (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html) is a division of UK-based DMGT, an international portfolio of digital, information, media and events businesses, which employs over 12,000 people and is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: DMGT.L). In the U.S., MailOnline boasts more daily unique visits than any other newspaper web site and is known for its unique blend of entertainment/celebrity buzz, pop culture news, female lifestyle editorial, and phenomenal images. MailOnline delivers a highly desirable audience to advertisers in the U.S. Its visitors are 22% more likely to live in households with income over $100,000/year and the overall property has a median Household Income of over $74,000/year. In candid video interviews, U.S. visitors call the site “addictive, revealing, funny, honest, and probing.”

Nanigans Expands to Europe with New London Headquarters

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:50 +0000

Leading Facebook® Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer to accelerate Facebook performance advertising in key market

LONDON - Nanigans, Inc., the lifetime value based advertising technology company, announced the opening of a European headquarters to support their rapidly growing international business. The expansion reflects the company’s passion for unparalleled customer service as well as its interest in pursuing growing opportunities from companies operating in the region.

“We’ve gained valuable insights into our customers throughout the path to purchase, which has enabled us to better understand the impact of our Facebook advertising investment.”

“With our industry-leading position in the United States, expansion into Europe is a natural progression,” said Ric Calvillo, CEO of Nanigans. We’ve seen strong demand from clients across multiple sectors in the region, from retail to gaming. Of course it is very important to Nanigans that we provide the same level of expertise and support for our European customers, which has been at the core of our success in North America.”

The London office opening follows a series of key milestones for Nanigans since its inception in 2011 including a recent round of $5.8 million in Series A.1 funding, a 120%, increase in headcount, a doubling of its customer base and a 6x expansion in revenues.

Nanigans is offering its unique Facebook advertising platform to marketers across all European countries. The company has scaled complex global Facebook advertising campaigns with spend as high as one million dollars a day. The London office will enable the company’s ad operations and client services teams to provide in-person platform training and optimisation expertise to help clients focus and scale on revenue. Nanigans manages Facebook ad campaigns for more than 200 companies across the globe including Fab, Social Point, Vistaprint and Wooga.

“Nanigans’ Facebook advertising solution allows the Vistaprint team to effectively find and acquire profitable customers at scale,” said Matthew Trattles, head of online display and social media at Vistaprint. “We’ve gained valuable insights into our customers throughout the path to purchase, which has enabled us to better understand the impact of our Facebook advertising investment.”

The company’s expansion into Europe will be led by Will Ashton, a 10-year veteran of digital media and social advertising platform technology companies. Will has previously managed successful operations in Europe for Google’s search advertising group and for social media advertising company, Alchemy Social, later acquired by global credit and marketing services giant, Experian.

Nanigans offers the only advertising platform that measures, predicts and optimises ad spend for lifetime ROI. By harnessing the power of lifetime value to inform more intelligent and efficient media buying, the company is moving the industry away from buying on a cost-per-click and cost-per-action basis to a true ROI basis.

To learn how licensing Nanigans’ lifetime ROI-based advertising platform can help your company acquire profitable customers, contact us.

® Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

About Nanigans, Inc.

Nanigans’ Ad Engine software platform helps advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their social and mobile advertising by appointing ROI (return on investment) and predictive LTV (lifetime value) based algorithms to advertising campaigns at scale. Founded in 2010 and backed by Avalon Ventures, Nanigans manages over 9-figures of annual ad spend across 200 advertisers. To learn more, visit: http://www.nanigans.com

In Just a Few Clicks, SendUs Turns Unfocused User-Generated Content into Valuable Video Engagement

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:51 +0000

The Cloud-based Video Platform Enables Companies to Easily Leverage the Power of UGC to Co-Create High-Value Content

LOS ANGELES - With consumers holding ever increasing control of an organization’s message, how do organizations bring together what consumers are saying about them to tell a focused, controlled and consistent story? SendUs unveiled its cloud-based video submission and management platform that enables businesses to interact and engage with audiences who share their ideas and values via user-generated video content. With its new 2.0 release, SendUs empowers this conversational storytelling with an easy-to-use platform through which organizations can invite their audiences to co-create with video and automatically own the content use rights.

“Understanding the importance of co-creating with members of the Tata Harper community, we believe that video is more powerful and authentic than any other advertising medium. SendUs is the only platform that enables us to engage in such personal and authentic communication”

For a video snapshot of the SendUs platform at work, visit: http://bit.ly/10DhVJt.

“Today, the consumer is controlling the message through social media. For businesses, this message, though loud and exciting, is unfocused, uncontrolled and often inconsistent with commercial goals,” says George Crowley, Executive Chairman, SendUs. “Our platform cracks the code on this audience engagement problem by bringing brands and consumers together to create customer-focused video content. In turn, this interactive dialogue helps drive sustainable long term relationships and increased sales.”

In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute:

80 percent of consumers would love to be involved in co-creation projects of brands they like.
However, currently, less than 1 out of 5 companies are actually involving their consumers in their marketing planning.

“Organizations know they have to widen the channel that connects them to their audience or customers, but too often the result is noise or information overload,” says author and Web pioneer Steven Johnson, who is an advisor to the company. “SendUs is a platform that uniquely opens the floodgates to much wider participation, and at the same time allows organizations to curate the best material that emerges.”

In this era of relationship marketing, recent studies show that video drives consumer engagement in a more credible and personal way than any other medium. From enterprise brands and small businesses to creative agencies and non-profits, organizations can use SendUs as either a turn-key platform or a customizable solution via the SendUs widget and API.

Additionally, as part of its launch, SendUs has partnered with natural skincare company, Tata Harper Skincare, on a national contest asking their customers what natural beauty means to them. Powered by the SendUs platform, Tata Harper is featuring the contest through May 24, on their Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/tataharperskincare.

“Understanding the importance of co-creating with members of the Tata Harper community, we believe that video is more powerful and authentic than any other advertising medium. SendUs is the only platform that enables us to engage in such personal and authentic communication,” said Tata Harper, founder of Tata Harper Skincare. “We are leveraging SendUs for video testimonials featured in our marketing and in our upcoming commercials. We are excited to be hosting this nationwide contest powered by the SendUs platform.”

SendUs has successfully deployed its first generation platform with brands such as FremantleMedia (producers of American Idol), Singapore Airlines, Peugeot, Nextel International, Sierra Club, and Susan G. Komen for The Cure. To see how the SendUs platform works in 3 easy steps, visit: http://corp.sendus.com/how-it-works.

ABOUT SENDUS

SendUs is a revolutionary video submission and management platform enabling a variety of organizations – from enterprise brands to non-profits – to acquire, manage and edit videos from their customers, supporters or audiences. Additionally, media use rights to the content are automatically secured at the time of submission. For more information, visit www.sendus.com.

Univision Begins Rolling out RAMP for Content Search

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Integrated search across all content types – video, audio, text and image – drives enhanced navigation and user engagement across 96 Univision online properties

BOSTON - RAMP, the industry’s leading provider of next-generation video and search experiences for major online media publishers, announced that Univision Communications Inc. has selected RAMP to deliver search across 96 Univision web and mobile properties. Univision began its rollout last week.

“The ability to present the right content to the right user is a critical component of maximizing the value of premium content across a network of sites.”

RAMP’s award-winning universal search solution enables users to easily and quickly find all relevant content on the site across all formats – video, audio, text and image. RAMP’s topic page publishing solution identifies and publishes thousands of user-friendly and SEO-friendly topic pages for easy navigation across Univision’s content collection.

“Given the footprint of Univision’s digital properties, we needed to identify a solution that could scale to our requirements while being easy to build, launch, and maintain,” said Kevin Conroy, president, Digital & Enterprise Development, Univision Communications Inc. “RAMP allows our Univision content to be easy to find and discover while helping us deliver on our ROI.”

RAMP’s MediaCloud platform continuously ingests all of Univision’s content and creates rich metadata, including time-coded transcripts and tags for video content, and automated tagging and indexing of text and image content. This indexed content is then deployed across all of Univision’s online properties using RAMP’s template search results pages, which also include searches for specialty Univision content types such as recipes and featured keywords.

“RAMP’s Universal Search solution is unmatched in the market in terms of delivering a comprehensive search experience for major media companies like Univision,” said Tom Wilde, CEO, RAMP. “The ability to present the right content to the right user is a critical component of maximizing the value of premium content across a network of sites.”

About RAMP

RAMP has developed the next generation of search & video experiences to make video more valuable. Using RAMP, clients are able to fully leverage the value of all of their video content by driving increased discovery across search and social sites, enhancing user engagement through dynamic search and publishing solutions, and maximizing revenue through sophisticated advertising capabilities.

Leading media companies and enterprises using RAMP include Thomson Reuters, FOXNews, ABCNews, NBC, Dow Jones, Meredith, Citibank, and others. For more information visit RAMP.com, or contact us at info@RAMP.com.

Chitika Announces Agreement with Yahoo! to Monetize Desktop and Mobile Search Marketplace

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:02 +0000

Chitika to provide Mobile Ad Serving Monetization and Off-Network Search Syndication

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. - Chitika announced a multi-year extension of its relationship with Yahoo!. Chitika, a leading online and mobile ad network, delivers advertiser and publisher solutions in the areas of search, mobile and local. The multi-faceted agreement with Yahoo! includes; off–network search syndication, monetization of Yahoo! owned and operated properties, and mobile ad serving and monetization. This deal allows Chitika to continue to provide world-class monetization solutions to its partners and helps Yahoo! extend its search marketplace.

“Yahoo! has a proven track record of capitalizing on strong, successful partnerships, helping the organization meet and exceed its business goals”

Since 2006, Chitika has been working with Yahoo!, syndicating Yahoo!’s search feed across Chitika’s expansive online network of over 250,000 websites, providing high quality traffic to Yahoo! advertisers.

Additionally, Yahoo! has tapped Chitika to help monetize its owned & operated properties. Yahoo! currently licenses Chitika’s proprietary ad targeting technology to serve sponsored search ads across select Yahoo! properties. Chitika’s ad serving technology allows Yahoo! to better monetize its desktop traffic while enhancing the overall user experience.

“Yahoo! has a proven track record of capitalizing on strong, successful partnerships, helping the organization meet and exceed its business goals,” said Venkat Kolluri, Chitika’s CEO. “Extending and expanding our relationship with Yahoo! reaffirms our commitment to deliver innovative online and mobile ad technology solutions, which will help contribute to the growth of Yahoo!’s search marketplace.”

Chitika’s mobile ad serving technology is now included in the renewed partnership, and will become a key piece in Chitika’s mission to develop a unified, user-friendly integration of online and mobile advertising.

For examples of Chitika ads on Yahoo! properties, please contact press@chitika.com.

About Chitika

Chitika is an online ad network that caters over four billion strategically targeted ads each month to a network of over 250,000+ sites, making it the second largest network of its kind. Chitika ads are known across the industry for their ability to perform unlike any other, leveraging its proprietary targeting and optimization technology – a delicate blend of “Art + Science”- to ensure delivery of intent driven ads to the right user, at the right time and in the right place. Chitika’s advertising partners include; Yahoo!, Superpages, yellowbook, ServiceMagic and Shopzilla, and are leveraged by publishers in the network to drive audience engagement and boost revenue. For more information, visit www.chitika.com/presscenter.

Consumers Responding to Social Call-to-Action in Online and TV Advertisements

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:17 +0000

Consumers, specifically women, are interacting on social media via advertising cues to show support for favorite brands

BURLINGTON, MA - Burst Media, (http://burstmedia.com), a leading online media company and wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), released the results of a survey revealing how and why web users interact with brands via social media. Conducted in March among 2,577 U.S. online adults aged 18 or older, the study found that the effectiveness of social cues in advertisements varies by the medium the ad appears in. Among respondents who recall social media prompts in advertising, digital ads (61.0%) and television ads (58.7%) are most effective at driving interaction with a brand’s social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These are followed by print ads (52.4%), radio ads (41.5%) and outdoor ads (39.4%).

Notably, two-thirds (67.6%) of 18 to 34 year-old respondents—including 73.9% of 18 to 34 year-old women—say digital ads that feature prompts to social media assets are effective at inspiring them to take action.

“We found that marketers who use social sharing and action prompts within advertisements create authentic interactions that drive further engagement,” said Mark Kaefer, marketing director, Burst Media. “On the digital front especially, display, mobile and sponsored online content campaigns that include social media prompts can virally and exponentially extend campaign reach through consumer status updates, likes, tweets, pins and more.”

Survey Highlights

Web users interact with brands on social media for a variety of reasons.

· More than one-half (53.8%) of women and 44.1% of men who interact on social media via cues in advertising cite “to show my support for a brand that I like” as a reason for doing so.

· The gender divide is even wider with the next most-cited reason, which is to access special offers, coupons and/or promotions: 53.2% of women versus just over one-third (35.5%) of men cite this as a reason.

· Notably, two-thirds (66.7%) of 35 to 44 year-old women cite the access to offers/coupons as a reason to interact with a brand’s social assets.

The majority (65.4%) of all survey respondents have at least one social media account set-up for personal use.

· Facebook—at 53.0%—is by far the leading provider. Google+ follows a distant second, with one-quarter (25.6%) of respondents reporting they use the up-and-coming platform.

· Three-fifths (58.6%) of respondents with social media accounts use them at least once a day, and another one-fifth (22.3%) check accounts at least once per week.

Interestingly, Pinterest and Instagram—as image and photo-driven social platforms—skew towards a female audience.

· One-fifth (21.9%) of all female respondents have a Pinterest account, versus only 4.8% of men. The disparity of Pinterest use between the sexes is even greater among 18 to 34 year-olds: 1-in-4 (25.5%) women in this segment have a Pinterest account, versus just 3.6% of men this age.

· Instagram’s audience also skews more female than male—10.4% versus 5.8%, respectively. Again, the gender gap is biggest among respondents aged 18 to 34, as 20.8% of women this age have Instagram accounts, versus 8.4% of men.

Download the full “Expanding the Conversation: Leveraging Social Media for Brand Interaction” Online Insights report (PDF) at http://burstmedia.com/pdf/burst_media_online_insights_2013_04.pdf.

About Burst Media
Founded in 1995, Burst Media represents thousands of independent web publishers. Through a select group of vertical channels, built around areas of specific interest, Burst connects advertisers with audiences across the web’s most dynamic communities in a social, engaging way. A wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), Burst is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, with sales offices throughout the United States and in the UK.

Visit us at http://burstmedia.com or call +1 (781) 852 5200 for more information.

Interview: Chris Mann, VP Product Management at Bizo, on Targeting Business Audiences

Otilia Otlacan — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:00:26 +0000

Otilia Otlacan: Bizo has recently announced the launch of Bizo Data Solutions, enabling B2B companies to efficiently engage their target audiences across an entire marketing funnel. Can you tell us more about the type of company benefiting most from Bizo Data Solutions?

Chris Mann: Bizo Data Solutions is designed to benefit brands and enterprise companies that have heavily invested in building out their existing “marketing technology stack,” including CRM, marketing automation, web analytics, content management, data management platforms, and media channels.

Otilia Otlacan: Social platforms are notoriously difficult to integrate with. How does Bizo Data Solutions work with social media campaigns, what have you found to be the most challenging?

Chris Mann: Social media continues to hold a lot of promise for today’s marketers as companies are discovering that their prospects and customers are increasingly on social channels not only at home, but also during the workday. The way marketers use Bizo Data Solutions in conjunction with social media channels will vary across companies depending on their specific business needs. We currently have one client who is exploring how to add Bizo data to its social link shortener in an effort to determine the business demographics of its social audience. Outside of Bizo Data Solutions, we have multiple customers who are using our social advertising capabilities to reach their target audiences on LinkedIn and Facebook. I think the main challenge with social media, and any other marketing channel for that matter, will be for marketers to determine how each channel fits within the larger attribution picture when it comes to determining the ROI driven by specific tactics and strategies.

Otilia Otlacan: What types of metrics and dashboards are available through Bizo Data Solutions? Could we see a screenshot of the reporting interface?

Chris Mann: Bizo Data Solutions integrates with marketing technologies including Adobe® AudienceManager, Salesforce, Eloqua, BlueKai, [x+1], Google Analytics, and more by powering them with our demographic data on more than 120 business professionals. As such, our customers will see the value in the analytics and dashboards that reside within these systems. However, when marketers combine Bizo Data Solutions with Bizo Advertising Solutions, which provides powerful, targeted display advertising, marketers can truly begin to reach their prospects anywhere on the Web. Through Bizo Advertising Solutions, marketers can use audience analytics to determine if they’re driving their target audiences to their websites, and trend display ad campaign performance over time. Below is a screenshot from Bizo’s own audience analytics dashboard demonstrating how we’ve been increasing traffic from our own target audience (marketers) to the Bizo website since the beginning of the year—a trend that validates that our programs are indeed reaching the right audience!

Otilia Otlacan: Bizo is currently focused on the much sought-after U.S. business audiences. Is there any plan to extend the reach outside the U.S.?

Chris Mann: In addition to the U.S., we have a strong presence in both Canada and the United Kingdom. Since many of the 600+ brands we support are leading, global brands, we’ll continue to keep a close watch on the needs of our clients to help prioritize as we expand internationally in the future.

Otilia Otlacan: What’s next for Bizo?

Chris Mann: Bizo will continue to strive to be the ultimate choice for B2B marketers when it comes to reaching their target audiences anywhere online and at every stage of the marketing funnel. Our focus has always been on providing unparalleled precision when it comes to B2B targeting, and in just the last twelve months, we’ve expanded our capabilities to support this effort with social ad targeting, CRM retargeting, company targeting, and more. As for Bizo Data Solutions, we will continue to focus our product development on Bizo’s role “behind the firewall,” partnering with other marketing technology providers who will join our mission to break down information siloes and empower marketers to use their data more effectively.

About Chris Mann, VP of Product Management at Bizo
Leading product management at Bizo Chris has a passion for building new businesses. With over 20 years product management and sales experience Chris comes to Bizo from Coremetrics where he is credited with building the market leading real time product recommendation business for e-commerce. Previous to Coremetrics he held multiple product management roles with IBM’s WebSphere business unit over a 10 year span. Chris is passionate about family and all things cycling. In his free time can be found on the roads and trails of Marin County.

About Bizo
Bizo is how B2B marketers identify and reach their target audiences online. Fueled by Bizo’s audience of more than 120 million professionals around the world, including more than 85% of the U.S. business population, the Bizo Marketing Platform can precisely target business people by specific business demographic criteria. Bizo’s customers use the platform’s data management and targeting capabilities to reach audiences anywhere they travel online and engage those that come to their websites, landing pages, and social channels. Bizo has earned the confidence of more than 600 SMB marketers and large global brands including AMEX, Mercedes Benz, Monster, Salesforce.com, Porsche, Microsoft, AT&T, and UPS who use Bizo to impact every stage of their sales and marketing funnels.

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