Social Media Advertising Diversifies As Revenues Rise
Posted by Reggie James | October 24th, 2011 | Filed under Digital Advertising, Social Media Advertising
Watching a re-run of Mad Men at the weekend, I almost yearned to be back in the old world of advertising. All the trials and tribulations of Don Draper and his team at the advertising agency, Sterling Cooper seemed like a walk in the park compared to some of the complexities faced today by both clients and agencies alike.
Madison Avenue has always had its fair share of challenges as the world of media evolved. Though the complexities exist, so do the opportunities, no more so than now. As brands, big and small wonder how they reach the ever changing consumer and business client, Digital Clarity is perfectly poised to embrace the need to understand, execute and analyse a world full of diversity driven by data.
A little like Sterling Cooper and other agencies around the world, Digital Clarity has evolved itself. This journey started before even Google’s AdWords platform existed, the agency has diversified to offer a bespoke service to advertisers and agency partners alike. A lot of our recent work has come from companies fed up with agencies who only work in one area and who do not understand the ‘joined-up’ commercial complexities that impact business today.
From being a pure-play Search Marketing Agency; the company has moved into design and development, mobile marketing and social media, both as a strategic implementation partner through to using social channels as an advertising platform.
This last area seems to show much promise to add to the company’s current offering. Here are a few reasons why.
At the recent Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco last week, Dick Costolo mentioned that Twitter’s monetization efforts are working better than expected. On top of this, the Twitter CEO also outlined that Twitter would be offering new and innovative ad formats to the array of advertiser falling over themselves to advertise on the social media platform.
Twitter’s advertising platform was a long time coming and in part, this was due to the company looking to strike the right balance between the mass advertising models that have existed historically and the new more sophisticated tools available to brands and their agencies today.
Twitter will bring in $139.5 million in global ad revenues in 2011, according to a new forecast from eMarketer, up 210 percent from just $45 million in 2010.
Currently, the main advertising offerings from twitter are broken into three main areas.
- Amplify the reach of Tweets through ‘promoted tweets’.
- Driving conversations and interest around brands through ‘promoted trends’.
- Targeting a follower-base of advocates and influencers for brands through ‘promoted accounts’
Like Facebook before it, advertising was a sure way of raising revenue on a platform that had a captive audience and an equally excited number of brands looking to reach this group.
Again, according to research firm eMarkerter, Facebook will make $4.27 billion in revenue this year, more than double the $2 billion made in 2010. This breaks down as $3.8 billion from advertising this year, up 104 percent from $1.86 billion in 2010.
More interesting however, is that the company should make $470 million from ‘Facebook Credits’, a virtual- currency program that lets users buy items in games, more than triple the $140 million it made last year.
All these various business models give Digital Clarity a unique insight that many can only dream of and puts the agency in an excellent environment to apply these methodologies to tools we are building out for RTG Ventures as well as new customers.
As mentioned earlier, diversity creates complexity. Complexity creates opportunity. Opportunity exists for those who can make sense of a changing market for its customers.
Tags: Advertising, Design & Development, Digital Clarity, Facebook, Mad Men, Search Advertising, Social Media, twitter
The Future of Social Search – Social Media Week London 2011
Posted by Reggie James | February 11th, 2011 | Filed under Social Media
An excellent event sponsored by I Spy Marketing at Microsoft’s London HQ in Victoria.
Chaired by Nick Jones, MD of I Spy, the session was kicked off by Orla Malone of Facebook. Orla gave an overview of Facebook’s current advertising offering and shared some case studies on how brands were using Facebook effectively.
This was followed by I Spy’s excellent CEO and former Yahoo Sales Director, Jim Brigden. Jim outlined the need to have an integrated tool that allowed both management and tracking across search and social advertising campaigns.
Amy Clarke, Ecommerce Manager and Radisson Edwardian delivered an excellent client perspective on the effectiveness of Social Media used by an upmarket hotel group and the need to get buy in across the group.
Amy shared some interesting views on how Radisson are using Blogging, Twitter, Interactive video and Facebook to connect with customers. Their excellent blog for the May Fair hotel even delivered Trip Adviser comments bad and well as good – true openness.
The session was rounded off by Colm Bracken, Group Search Manager at Microsoft Advertising and Dave Coplin, Director of Search – both giving their insight into how Social was transforming the Search landscape.
The event was opened by the effervescent and international Social Media maestro, Mel Carlson. All in all a ‘super-exciting’ event.
#smwldn
Tags: #smwldn, #smwlondon, Amy Clarke, Colm Bracken, Dave Coplin, Facebook, ispy, Jim Brigden, London, Mel Carson, Microsoft, Nick Jones, Orla Malone, Radisson Edwardian, Social Media London, twitter
Facebook for business – BBC Report
Posted by Reggie James | October 18th, 2010 | Filed under Social Media
Sharif Sakr reports on the growing use of Social Media for business. This video looks at how Facebook is addressing the corporate market.
Tags: Facebook, Sharif Sak
Levi’s ads Social Media to its online strategy – Social Shopping
Posted by Reggie James | May 4th, 2010 | Filed under Social Media
We’ve come a long way from watching Nick Kamen wash his Levi 501’s in the laundrette – from the excellent and iconic advertisement devised by BBH London in the 80’s.
Fast forward 20 odd years and the days of Nick Kamen are distant memory as today’s youth interact with the Social media platforms to discover the latest trends and see what their friend are buying.
What was true 20 years ago is true now and Levi has hit the Zeitgeist again and developed an integrated Social Media strategy with a plug-in for facebook. The plug-in has an integrated “like” feature with every product on the site that allows you to see the number of people on facebook who like the item – it also allows you to cast your own vote.
A big thank you to Aden Hepburn, Head of Digital at IdeaWorks (Y&R – WPP) who is a fellow Linked In member of the Intelligent Social Media Group
http://bit.ly/cgU2c9
Reggie James
Tags: Facebook, Levi's, Social Media, Social Shopping
Social Media for Business: Dell shows the way
Posted by Reggie James | January 18th, 2010 | Filed under Social Media, twitter
Dell Laptops commercial use of Twitter and how to make money out of Social Media.
One of the most frequently asked questions when companies are looking at the commercial use of Social Media is, “How can my company use Social Media to win new business”? Fear not my hunters of this elusive Holy Grail; the answer is to be found at the offices of the computer behemoth, Dell. After pioneering the use of the internet first time round and using paid search advertising to its full potential, the company has done it again by using Twitter to sell its equipment round the world.
Dell has announced that it has more than doubled the amount of money it is making via its Twitter accounts around the world to $6.5m. Of that $2m was made directly and another $1m was accounted for when traffic to Dell.com was factored in.
The $3m included both 2007 and 2008 when there was minimal Twitter activity, but the 2009 figure shows real growth that has come during the year the number of people using Twitter within the Dell organisation has increased to somewhere between 100-200.
Some of the strongest growth Dell is seeing is coming from emerging markets. It highlighted Brazil as one area it was doing particularly well.
Dell’s operation in Brazil via its @DellnoBrasil Twitter account has generated $800,000 in eight months of activity.
Richard Binhammer a spokesman for Dell, said the growth in Brazil showed the social web was not just a European or US phenomenon, but a global one.
“That’s interesting not only from an emerging market perspective, but from a social web perspective as well as it shows the spread of services like Twitter.”
Another market Dell highlighted was its @Delloutlet operation in Canada.
“DellHomeSalesCA went onto Twitter because a number of Canadian Twitter users and bloggers were asking us why isn’t Dell on Twitter in Canada. Now it is,” Binhammer said.
Since it began operating on Twitter @DellHomeSalesCA has generated $150,000 in sales. As has happened in other markets where the social web is used, the market itself has helped inform a business what its customers want as much as what they don’t want.
In addition to generating $6.5m in sales revenues via Twitter, social networking in a wider sense has allowed Dell to make what it says are 3.5 million social connections from sites such as Facebook, Google’s Okut, Slideshare, Flickr, YouTube as well as Twitter, Dell’s own Direct2Dell online community forum and its crowdsourcing project IdeaStorm, which has 60,000 members.
“These are people who are fans or followers of Dell on social networks. There are more besides this as we are not counting the many bloggers we listen to and engage with,” Binahmmer said.
The crowdsourcing of IdeaStorm is proving to be a valuable part of Dell’s social media operation. Thousands of ideas come to Dell via this site from users suggesting changes and modifications. Hundreds of these have been acted upon.
Binhammer cited Dell’s launch of a product for aids charity (Red) that came from user suggestions; expansion of its Linux product offering for consumer PC and laptops; and a change to keyboard design for its Dell Mini netbook range as another.
“Users had a problem with where the apostrophe key was located on the Dell Mini’s keyboard. They were finding it hard to use because of the reduced size and so we changed it. That was a crowdsourced idea.
In a post on the Dell blog, Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell, said that looking to the future Dell would be taking steps to tackle what he described as “the big issues on the horizon like profile collaboration”.
He said for Dell (or any company), isolated social media efforts would not lead to long-term success and said the PC maker would be focusing on three key areas:
1. Streamlining its presence in social media networks and creating meaningful content for customers and continue to increase its connections in those places.
2. Focus on building a tighter integration between Dell.com, Support.Dell.com, its Dell Community sites with its presence in social networks.
3. Continue its focus on scaling support of social media initiatives into the Dell business units.
This article was first published by Brand Republic in December 2009 and certain extracts have been taken from this original article
Reggie James
Tags: commercial use of Social Media, commercial use of Twitter, crowdsourcing, Dell Laptops, Direct2Dell, Facebook, Google's Okut, IdeaStorm, Reggie James, Slideshare, Social Media for Business, YouTube
Is Social Media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?
Posted by Reggie James | December 11th, 2009 | Filed under Social Media
Social Media Revolution
An excellent video from earlier in the year worth re visiting.
Thanks Socialnomics 09
Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Revolution, twitter
What is Orange Canyon?
Posted by Reggie James | September 14th, 2009 | Filed under Uncategorized
Been hearing a lot about a new blog on a few forums called Orange Canyon.
Anyone heard of it?
Reggie
Tags: Blog, Digital Clarity, Facebook, Orange Canyon, PPC, SEO, twitter
