Advanced Search

Be honest with them: Brand building is different on the Web, where marketers must focus on users' heads, not their hearts.

Article heading states "Agencies develop sophisticated ways to gauge an ad's success at brand building, driving sales" but in fact it seems to conclude more that that is the goal than the reality. Along the way, it presents some interesting online ad issues however.

Internet marketers made lots of big (and, in hindsight, dubious) promises about the power of the Web to give companies a uniquely powerful way to chart the performance of their ads. The folks at Avenue A aren't ready to give up on those promises -- even if lots of other people are.

"According to a recently published study by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the Internet currently accounts for only about 1.5 percent of all marketing money spent by advertisers. The top six advertisers spend less than 1 percent of their budgets for online ads, whereas Americans spend approximately 12 percent of their media time online.

The big question is why. Looking for an answer, I hosted "What Do Traditional Advertisers Want When Buying Media Online?" last week, a panel discussion with representatives from Nabisco, Castrol North America, Yahoo!, and MediaVest. According to the panelists, here are some of those reasons"

Trials and Tribulations of Humor in Advertising.

In direct marketing campaigns - Audience is essential … Offer is Everything … Creative is merely Compulsory.

Fine. Nevertheless, Copy is still King. Here's why: without good copy, your perfectly-targeted audience might never understand that wonderful offer of yours - or, even if they're suitably impressed, may not summon up the energy to do anything about it.

So whether you're penning an e-blast yourself, or reviewing your agency's draft of an upcoming self-mailer, it pays to know the difference between highly effective copy - the kind that commands high response rates - and the kind that just speeds your campaign's journey to the recycle bin.

Here are 8 ways to make sure the copy does its job...

It's Oct. 27, 1994. In an industrial section of San Francisco freshly baptized "Multimedia Gulch," year-old magazine start-up Wired is launching its first site, HotWired. Always on the bleeding edge, Wired had sold 14 advertisers on an exciting vision. But in its fervor to sell banners, HotWired promised advertisers clicks. In retrospect, that was a mistake.

Note: eMarketer is a fee-based site

---

Are online ads direct-response vehicles? Or, are they branding tools? Depending on the advertiser's objectives, both are true -- but not everyone involved sees it both ways. The research data is mixed, too.

Marketers repeat their message because up to a certain point, repeated exposures to the message can lead to favorable impressions of the brand. Professor Prashant Malaviya examines the amount and type of ad repetition that would lead to a desired impact level.

ICONOCAST takes a look at the problems facing marketers brought about by the new interactive online advertising options and dwindling response rates in all media.

Article compares the growth of Internet advertising to its new-media predecessor, cable TV.

In this interactive feature, Forbes.com looks at the world of direct-response TV ads. The question: Are they a good deal for advertisers? Ask Johnny Carson. His Carson Productions has sold some 2.5 million copies of its best of The Tonight Show videos, a number the author notes, "is comparable to the DVD/video sales for a hit Hollywood movie." Nearly two-thirds of all Americans report seeing infomercials, and more than 1,000 products a year are sold through this channel, according to this report. And infomercials aren't just for hawking crazy knives and foot soakers anymore. Established brands including Apple, Whirlpool, and Time-Life have mounted direct-response commercials. The report includes lists of the most successful infomercial products in 2002 (headed by the Bowflex Home Gym), and the best pitchmen (Need you ask? Ron Popeil). [HBS Working Knowledge Annotation]

According to many students of Direct Marketing, Claude Hopkins was ahead of his time. Jumpstart your DM learning curve by reading "Scientific Advertising," the classic tome penned by legendary ad man Claude Hopkins, who was born in 1866 and who worked for Lord & Thomas advertising agency, forerunner to today's Foote, Cone & Belding. The book has been reproduced in its entirety at this site for free.

Hopkins was an incredibly successful copywriter and strategist whose six-figure salary (enormous for that time) was the result of careful adherence to principles, fundamentals and ROI. In his quest to improve ROI, he was the first to formalize many classic advertising testing methods such as ad tracking, double blind headline testing and more. Dig into all 21 chapters of "Scientific Advertising" for free right here; they are as fresh as the day they were written eighty years ago.

PS - Hopkins is also the author of the autobiographical "My Life in Advertising", another "must-read" for DM students. [WDFM Annotation]

This very in-depth study, which includes information through Q4 2002, covers everything a marketer needs to know, from the continuing development of advertising technology (animated gifs, ubiquitous pop-ups and embedded advertising methodology) to the statistical analysis of media purchasing trends, and much more. Of special interest is the overall conclusion that online advertising is increasingly direct marketing (as opposed to branding) focused.

In addition, the report contains good information on email delivery rates and high failure-to-deliver statistics. NetZero rings in with a 27 percent non-delivery rate, Yahoo! has a 22 percent failure rate, and 18% of AOL email does not get through. Quite significant information as you contemplate your next email campaign. [WDFM Annotation]

Is the Internet a direct response medium or a branding/awareness medium?
This question, which not too far back into the past was used as a means of somewhat eruditely suggesting that, perhaps, there is more to Internet Advertising than clicks and immediate conversions, has now become part of a wider phenomenon of over-generalizing that has hindered progress in the Internet Advertising space over the last two to three years.

Few are quicker to point out this fact than Rudy Grahn, a key Analyst covering Internet Advertising, and specifically, online branding at Jupiter Media Metrix - one of the world's foremost independent Internet Research and Audience Measurement firms.

Over the last months, Jupiter Media Metrix has released important research findings authored by Grahn, concluding that Internet Advertising has significant branding effects, the majority of which go unmeasured by Internet advertisers.

In what follows, avant|marketer speaks to Rudy Grahn to get his thoughts on the direct response versus branding debate, the future of brand/awareness advertising in the online medium, whether this form of Internet Advertising will soon overtake the various forms of direct response marketing that have come to define Internet Advertising since its inception, and what advertisers need to do to better harness and understand the branding capabilities that the online medium offers.

Editor's Note: You can also download a complimentary report entitled "What Works In Internet Advertising" (I didn't so I don't know how good it is).

Chances are, you've implemented a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign strategy. That often means a position/price-based strategy on Overture and a price-based strategy on Google (perhaps a copy strategy, to keep CTR high). You concentrate on position and price to drive visibility and traffic. Though visibility and click volume are good, the strategy has flaws. Big flaws.

Price/position strategies ignore results and are static. Inefficiencies remain in campaigns. Opportunities slip away. An evolving strategy overcomes these inefficiencies and allows search engine marketers to seize opportunities.

Suppose you could really figure out why advertising works.

Editor's Note: discusses the Taguchi Method, something those with engineering and/or manufacturing backgrounds may have heard of.

An entertaining commercial on a prime-time television show might be a good way to build a brand's image, but a straightforward spot with a prominent toll-free phone number is the best way for a company to move inventory fast, according to Ron Bliwas, chief executive of ad agency A. Eicoff & Co., who spoke last month at Wharton. Bliwas discussed both successful and unsuccessful commercials, and blasted what he sees as overly egotistical personalities who measure success by "how many people laugh at their ads," rather than how well the products sell.

Banner advertising helps companies retain customers by bringing them back to a company's Web site faster and encouraging them to spend more.

Companies have long tied their corporate logos to well-known sports teams and celebrities as a way to increase brand recognition and target a well-defined customer segment. But for many companies, the choice of a sponsorship property-whether it is the NFL, World Cup soccer or a brooding rock star-is often based on the CEO's favorite past time or as a means of gaining access to high-profile events. Yet, today, as competition for properties heats up and market dynamics change, so must sponsorship strategies.

This paper discusses the ins and outs of sponsorship marketing. It outlines how to align the sponsorship property with business goals and discusses the importance of measuring performance. It also offers guidelines for negotiating contract terms and agreements, and the best ways to design a market activation strategy. Companies that strategically evaluate their sponsorships and develop integrated marketing plans for each property, are more apt to realize the full economic potential of their sponsorship deals.

"Economists, traditionally, have had a very uneasy relationship with advertising," says University of Chicago professor Gary Becker. "Consumer preferences were thought to be either too stable or too easily manipulated." But in his latest book, "Accounting For Tastes," Becker employs the tools of modern economic analysis to confront the problem of preferences and values -- how they are formed and how they affect our behavior. In a chapter from the book, Becker and co-author Kevin Murphy, professor of economics and industrial relations at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, apply the economic theory of complements to advertisements and challenge the traditional characterizations of advertising itself.

Advertisement drives the revenue of the Internet industry. Learning about the science associated with successful ad campaigns can only benefit you and your site. With this in mind, an eyetracking study performed by Eyetrack III attempted to determine which sections of a webpage the human eyes focus. Eyetrack accomplished this by creating mock pages containing text and advertisements. Test subjects then reviewed the documents while Eyetrack monitored where their eyes focused.

Advertisers pay a premium to reach Generation Xers. The question is why...

Editor's Note: this article is part of an entire STERNBusiness issue, written back in 1999 - you can find this article on page 22; the other articles are all focused on the entertainment industry which may be of interest to you but the articles themselves are of little learning value...

More companies are pumping up the volume of their radio advertising. Here are 10 tips for making the most of your airtime.

The celebrity endorsement, driven more by gut feel than hard data, remains a bit of a black box for ROI-focused marketers.

Is one of the goals of your business-to-business advertising sales leads generation for your salespeople, representatives, distributors or resellers? Consider these proven B2B sales leads generation techniques gleaned from working with over 170 companies and some of the best marketers in the business.

Slate offers an overview of 12 kinds of advertisements with accompanying video illustrations.

The mere fact that an online video advertisement reaches a viewer's computer screen does not guarantee that the ad actually reaches the viewer. New experimental research by Thales S. Teixeira looks at how advertisers can effectively capture and keep viewers' attention by evoking certain emotional responses.