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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

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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

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New Twitter site coming soon

Posted by Reggie James | September 15th, 2010 | Filed under Social Media, twitter

It seems that Twitter will be undergoing a major facelift with a focus on making photos and video easier to view and share.

With the likes of Tweedeck, HootSuite and others providing a better user experience than Twitter itself, it seems that Twitter wants to create a richer destination site to attract advertising revenue.

Another feature is that the new Twitter.com will display information over two “panes” instead of over one page.

More here: http://twitter.com/newtwitter

Tags: Social Media, twitter

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Will adding my Twitter feed to my website increase my PageRank?

Posted by Reggie James | July 28th, 2010 | Filed under SEO

Search supremo and head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts talks about how we can best capitalise on Twitter.

Tags: Matt Cutts, SEO, twitter

£1m in sales for Sony via Twitter

Posted by Reggie James | February 26th, 2010 | Filed under Social Media, twitter

Following Dell’s report in January highlighting sales by it various laptop divisons on sales that could be allocated to Twitter – it is the turn of the Japanese electronics giant Sony, to flex it muscle in what is fast becoming a peacock parade of large companies looking to show-off their Social Media crudentials.

Speaking at Marketing Week’s Social Media for Brand Building event yesterday, Nick Shapeless Sony’s head of corporate communications highlighted the use of Twitter as a tool to amplify the company’s PR activity.
Sony launched a campaign for a special edition of its Cybershot camera range last year and used social media to extend PR coverage over nine months, resulting in over £12.5m in revenue.
More at NMA: http://bit.ly/9n6kWJ

Tags: Marketing Week’s Social Media for Brand Building, NMA, Social Media, Sony, twitter

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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

TweetDeck v0.32 – the best way to use Twitter

Posted by Reggie James | December 3rd, 2009 | Filed under Social Media, twitter

New version of TweetDeck, rocks! Here is a video outlining the best bits of the upgrade.

Tags: Reggie James, Social Media, TweetDeck, TweetDeck v0.32, twitter

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Twitter Whore

Posted by Reggie James | November 29th, 2009 | Filed under Social Media, twitter

A rather annoying YouTube starlet going on about her obsession with Twitter. Sadly the underlying addiction to twitter is something we can all relate to – go gal!