Yogi Land

Harness the mania

Editors Note: The Yahoo! Advertising blog recently asked 10 agency leaders one question: “How will the tablet revolution change the advertising landscape and your business?” Here is the response from Jeff Gabel, Chief Creative Officer Partners + Napier.

According to the recently released “U.S. Consumer Electronics Sales and Forecast from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA),” tablet computers are projected to grow 157 percent in 2011, with more than 26.5 million units shipped.

As any new technology proliferates, especially one as flexible as the tablet, marketers feel pressure to keep their brands on top of the trend. So how do agencies harness this tablet mania in a smart way that will produce results?

We’ve seen a ton of impressive agency work that leverages tablets in the consumer space, but we’ve found that tablets yield high, immediate marketing returns when applied to B2B brands.

Placed in the hands of our clients’ passionate employees, tablets have mobilized entire sales forces. Tablet technology has helped clients track and report data, deliver interactive product demonstrations, and lead impactful meetings. The transition from paper-based sales materials to tablet-based engagement materials has provided clients with a significant improvement in measurable ROI, as well as the ability to update and manage content in real-time for the entire sales force.

Opportunities to apply tablet technology in the B2B space are often overlooked, but if we focus on providing clients with clear operational advantages in this way, we can better leverage the tablet revolution as it continues to develop.

See also:

• "The Tablet Revolution: Richard Schatzberger of Co Collective"
• "The Tablet Revolution: Gregg Fisher, Managing Director, LBi Health"

-- Christian Chensvold

Christian Chensvold is a New York-based writer covering business, lifestyle, and culture. He blogs at Ivy-Style.com. See some of his previous entries on the Yahoo! Advertising Blog, "Yahoo! Cricket Attracts an Audience of Millions" and “Mobile Retail Revolution.”

To learn what Yahoo! has in store for tablets and other connected devices, visit Yahoo! Advertising Solutions and contact your Yahoo! representative.

Four ways technology is changing consumer behavior, and expert tips for marketers

Whenever I hear the phrase “back-to-school shopping,” I invariably remember that amazing series of Staples commercials with parents dancing down the aisles to the strains of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” as their kids looked on dejectedly.

The ads may be hilarious, but Back-to-School (B2S) is serious business. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers will spend $68.8 billion outfitting students for school this year. A new Yahoo! study took a closer look at how digital media and new technology is affecting how consumers shop for back-to-school. Check out the four key findings we uncovered to help marketers.

Study finding #1: Consumers are shopping earlier and spending more

Yahoo! found that seven in ten consumers plan to spend more or about the same for back-to-school this year. Consumers say they will increase their budgets by 7% compared to last year. The biggest opportunities by category are in basic school supplies, clothing and media purchases.

The study also found that shopping starts much earlier than purchase. In fact, researchers found a five-point increase from 2010 for those shopping earlier. Approximately 60% of consumers told us that they are shopping at least three weeks before the start of the new school year. Searches on Yahoo! for "back to school" as early as July confirm that B2S is on people's minds well before the peak of the shopping season.

Study finding #2: Mom isn’t the only one doing the shopping

When it comes to back-to-school shopping, it's no longer just about convincing moms what to purchase. Specifically, Yahoo! found that 23% of dads and a whopping 84% of teens are getting involved in B2S shopping. Researchers found that dads are more likely than moms to shop for certain consumer electronics items, which tend to be pricier purchases. One in five dads said they plan to buy a tablet for B2S.

Study finding #3: Shopping happens online and offline

The vast majority of shoppers (75%) are using online and offline information to research purchases for B2S. Yahoo! also found a growing reliance on digital content, with 58% of consumers saying they read articles and 28% watching videos around the topic of back-to-school. Interestingly, Yahoo! found that dads are twice as likely to read articles on content portals about B2S than moms. Dads are also three times more likely to watch professional videos about Back-to-School than moms.

Study finding #4: Shoppers want deals, deals and more deals

Given the state of the economy, it’s not surprising that 69% of consumers say they have a budget for back-to-school. At least 59% plan to use coupons more this year than they did last year, while 75% of consumers said they will be using both on and offline channels to find these deals and promotions. A third will be using smartphones to take advantage of B2S deals.

Tips for back-to-school marketers

• Target shoppers over a longer time period so you can influence them during the research phase and drive the ultimate purchase behavior.

• With the growing influence of kids and dads in B2S purchases, marketers can use new channels in their media buys.

• Consumers are leveraging video and articles to optimize their shopping lists, so be where they are. Check out a great example of a bac-to-school article on Shine, sponsored by Target.

• With consumers leveraging online more for deals, spread deals through digital ads and extend location based deals when at the store.

• Leverage Yahoo!’s targeting opportunities to reach a highly engaged B2S audience at scale with offers and promotions.

For more on the Back-to-School Shopping season, attend our webinar on August 25 at 11:00 am PT/2:00 p.m. ET.

-- Dianne Molina

Also: Mastering m-commerce; search engine popularity; and 20 shopping seasons a year

Consumers get hip, zip lips around advertisers: A Harris survey shows that consumers are getting savvier about behavioral targeting techniques used by online advertisers---and a no-comment mindset may be growing.

Hello? It’s 300 million mobile customers calling: More than 96% of the U.S. population are wireless subscribers, so it’s time to stop thinking about m-commerce and do something---anything! Here are beaucoup ways for brands and retailers to start tapping the m-market now.

Who uses search engines? “Only” 92% of U.S. adult Internet users, according to a Pew Internet survey, with no real statistical differences by categories including age, gender, race, income and education. Most Americans spending their online time searching or emailing, says the survey.

Don’t give me static: Most advertisers reuse their static print ads for digital editions of print magazines, but those that add interactive elements like videos and 3-D views of products get better results.

To everything, there’s a shopping season: Retailers are segmenting the classic four seasons into 13- to- 20 shopping seasons, including allergy, fall gatherings, lawn and garden, and big game season. A key goal is to spur impulse buying, which has dropped by half since 2008.

--- Bob Pickard

(Image by The Marque via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Media focuses on expansion of real-time bidding across the exchange

When the Right Media Exchange announced last week that it’s expanding real-time bidding throughout the exchange, the press took notice.

Ramsey McGrory, head of Right Media Exchange, spoke with the press to explain what our new publisher controls for data, pricing, and inventory means to exchange members and the rest of the advertising community.

Visit the Right Media Blog for highlights of the media’s coverage.

In which we celebrate our “1K” post

Did you know that:

• The year 1,000 A.D. was a leap year?
• The letter K stands for 1,000 because the prefix “kilo” (as in “kilogram”) derives from the Greek word for 1,000, “χίλιοι?”
• In Japanese mythology, 1,000 cranes signify healing?
• On Friday, July 22, the Yahoo! Advertising blog posted its 1,000^th article since its launch on September 9 of 2009?

It has been a heady 1 year, 10 months and 16 days since our very first post.  In that time we’ve done our level best to keep you, our advertisers, up to date on what’s hot in the digital advertising universe, from Yahoo! and beyond.

We’ve come a long way, and (we hope) have kept you abreast  of Yahoo!’s latest advertiser and consumer developments in search, display, video, branded entertainment, mobile and insights to help you be a better advertiser.

But it’s not all Yahoo!, all the time. It’s about keeping you up on one of the fastest-paced industries in history. We have explored relevant trends in hot-button topics like social media, green marketing, and ethnic advertising. And we’ve interviewed some of the most interesting minds in the business.

We’ve also included relevant advertising, publishing and social media news, highlighted the week’s hottest campaigns and even injected a little humor.

The blog is just one column in our B2B social media acropolis. Since we launched it, the Yahoo! Advertising Twitter page has grown from a few dozen followers to more than 14,000, and more than 33,000 people “Like” our Facebook page.

For you, that means no shortage of ways to keep up with us. We hope to see and hear a lot more of you over our next 1,000 posts. And subscribe to the blog to get every one of them in your email.

Good luck and good advertising!

--- Jeff Sweat, Jeff Hecox, Michael Mattis, Dianne Molina & Robert Pickard

Also: Take Data Signals from Baseball; Protect Yourself from “Brandjackers”

You built it, but they’re not coming. It’s not enough to build a terrific online destination with rich content, gorgeous graphics and a sharp SEO plan. To generate traffic, says Derek Gordon of Mediapost, go where your target audience hangs out and bring ’em back to your place.

 Five data-driven lessons from baseball. Using statistical analysis known as "sabermetrics," the Oakland Athletics were able to outsmart and outperform much richer teams. What can online publishers and marketers learn from the A’s success with data-driven strategies?

Beware of brandjackers, bad guys who hijack your brand search terms and steal your sales. Prevalent in markets with strong online sales and complex web of channel and promotional partners, brandjacking costs the U.S. hotel industry about $1.9 billion a year in lost bookings. Start protecting your brand now.

 What’s the deal with DSP? AdExchanger asked a dozen industry executives about the challenges posed by using demand-side platform (DSP) data for targeting users in online ad campaigns. 

 Most online ad effectiveness research is a mess, producing inaccurate and unreliable results. So says the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which offers these best practices to shape things up. 

 ---Bob Pickard

Differences in how keyword duplication is treated, and using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence to fine-tune your keyword roster

This is the latest in a series of articles that explains how Microsoft Advertising adCenter differs from Yahoo! Search Marketing. They’re intended to help Yahoo! advertisers prepare for the upcoming transition and become familiar with adCenter.

Keyword normalization is the process by which a paid search provider finds and flags duplicate keywords within an ad group. This normalization process occurs automatically, and usually saves you time, because you don’t have to manage multiple variations of the same keyword.

Yahoo! Search Marketing has used a keyword mapping system in which singular and plural variations, and common misspellings of a keyword, map to the primary form of that keyword. The net result is that you do not need to bid on multiple variations of a keyword.

On the other hand, in Microsoft Advertising adCenter, normalization does not affect singular and plural variations, misspellings, spaces within or between words, or apostrophes that are a part of the word. adCenter treats these individual variations separately, so if you want to receive traffic from them, you’ll have to add each keyword variation to your campaigns. A keyword is considered a duplicate by adCenter if it contains extraneous characters or words, or if its punctuation or capitalization are slightly different.

Let’s look at a real-world example: the keyword “truck.” If you were bidding on this keyword only, Yahoo! Search Marketing could still display your ads for all other associated keyword variations, like “trucks” or “truk.” However, in adCenter each keyword is considered a separate marketplace, and you’d need to bid on each variation separately to help ensure full coverage for your keyword.

Yahoo! Search Marketing:

Microsoft adCenter:

When you import a keyword list into adCenter, duplicate keywords within the same ad group will be flagged with an error message and not uploaded. This gives you the chance to review the list and make any necessary edits.

Expand Your Keyword List
Once you transition your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns to adCenter, you’ll need to update and expand your keyword lists because there are a significantly higher number of keywords that can be entered, optimized and bid on in adCenter due to the differences in keyword normalization. You can easily pluralize your keyword list by using Microsoft Excel and build upon your existing keywords using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (see more below).

Creating Pluralized Keywords
The “concatenate formula” in Microsoft Excel is used to join several text strings into one, and this is an easy way to quickly create pluralized variations of your keywords. You’ll start by opening a new Excel worksheet, then copying and pasting your keyword list into column A. To add an “s” at the end of each keyword, simply use the concatenate formula as seen below:

Lastly, copy and paste that formula down the column and you will have a new keyword list that includes plural variations.

For additional information on how to use the concatenate feature in Microsoft Excel, please watch this step-by-step video.

Expanding keyword lists using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, a free, easy-to-use keyword research and optimization tool that operates in Microsoft Office Excel 2007, can help ensure that your keyword list is fully expanded. It uses actual query data on any search term, and allows you to optimize your campaigns to help improve ROI. Two of the tools you’ll probably be using the most in your adCenter account are Keyword Extraction and Keyword Suggestion.

The Keyword Extraction tool suggests a list of keywords based on the content of a website. Simply enter a website into an Excel field and click on “Keyword Extraction.”

You’ll then receive a list of keywords that are relevant to the website that you entered. It’s a great way to quickly generate a keyword list based on a specific website.

The Keyword Suggestion tool has several features that help you build a list of new keywords from scratch, or expand upon an existing keyword list.

While all three features suggest new keywords, they work slightly different from one another:

• Campaign Association: Creates a list of keywords that are based on the bidding behavior of advertisers. It will suggest keywords that are in a similar category to the keywords that you entered and helps ensure that you’re not missing any of the important generic terms.
• Queries That Contain Your Keyword: Generates keywords based on queries that contain the specified keyword. This can be used to identify missing keywords from your campaigns and to generate a list of negative keywords to be added to your account.
• Related Search: Develops a list of keywords based on Bing related searches. This is a great way to expand your keyword lists beyond generic search terms.

Of course, after you generate a list of keywords using the Keyword Suggestion features, make sure you remove the duplicate keywords and review the list to help ensure that all of the new keywords are relevant.

You can download the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool today, so you can immediately benefit from the keyword expansion and other features.

For more on how Microsoft Advertising adCenter differs from Yahoo! Search Marketing, please review the full feature comparison.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

— The Team

A few months ago at the Google I/O conference, we were approached by Zach Steindler, a co-founder at Olark (a way to gain customer insight and sale better through live chat) who was raving about Google Analytics Annotations. He had such a great business case, we decided to let him rave here. Enjoy, and thanks Zach.

Making good business decisions is hard, and making the right one is even harder. At Google I/O I realized many people use Google Analytics but they aren’t familiar with the recent annotations feature that has helped us make smarter business decisions.

When we look at our Google Analytics, we don’t really care if our numbers are up or down; what we really want to know is why. This means asking a lot of questions, particularly questions about what happened when, like:

“How long has that ad trial been running?”
“When did we release that update to the website?”
“What happened after that last blog post?”

To answer these questions I might have to dig through e-mails, commit logs, and probably end up pestering my teammates for an hour while we try to figure out what happened when. But this is serious stuff; if our numbers went up 50% in a week, you better believe we want to know why so we can do more of it!

Annotations are exactly the tool we needed to answer these questions without having to pester teammates and dig through the past. If you don't know, basically, they allow you to add notes of what events happened on a particular day. These notes are then visible for the different views in Google Analytics, so you can see how the events impacted your page views, goals, or whatever else you are tracking.

World record traffic for World Cup; Cannes-do’s and don’ts; Mac lovers make the best Mac lovers, and more

World Cup traffic Goooooal!!!
World Cup is still only in its second week but it has already broken all records in terms of online traffic and tweets, according to GigaOm, averaging more than 3,000 tweets per second and making up 27% of Web traffic during working hours. Now get back to work.

Tweeting the heck out of Cannes
If you’re not following our intrepid reporter, Jeff Sweat, at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival on Twitter, you should be. He’s doing the lion’s share of work there. To follow the full monty from Cannes on Twitter, use the hashtag, #canneslions.

Cannes-tempt
Speaking of Cannes, even at a love-fest as loving at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, bad hullabaloo cannot be avoided. So says AdAge, which notes a note of controversy in the winner of Nokia’s “Critic’s Choice Award” contest. Some are saying the winning entry, a Forrest Gump-inspired video was lifted from a previous campaign of a similar nature. Ain’t none of our business. We just report the news, which is kind of like a box of chocolates.

And, sorry, as long as we’re on the subject of Cannes, we just can’t help reposting this lame joke.

Mac people vs. PC people in dating
Anyone who has ever been on an online-arranged date will tell you horror stories. This one was just out of prison. That one was 50-pounds lighter in the profile photo. What about—gasp!—my prospect was a PC user?! Yes, it’s true. People really do get that bent over operating systems and hardware. Luckily, for Mac-only types, there’s now an online dating site just for you, named Cupidtino, after Apple’s home town, Cupertino, Calif. Now everyone say, “awe!”

Just how much is a Facebook fan worth?
Not as much as touted, says BNET’s Jim Edwards. “Consumers don’t become fans of brands and then, having been persuaded by the charm of the advertiser’s Facebook page, go out and start buying more burgers or soda,” he sasy. “They become fans after they’ve already developed their brand loyalty.” Citing several studies, Edwards comes to the conclusion that the average value of each FB user is about $3 per year.

Think you got paid search covered? Think again
While in-house paid search programs are on the rise (81% percent this year over 78% last year, according to a report by Econsultancy and SEMPO), Michael Flanagan, former CEO of TMP Directional Marketing, isn’t so sure that handling paid search in-house is such a bright idea. Most companies, he says, just aren’t equipped to do their own SEM.

— Michael Mattis