What marketers are thinking

Curious about the state of online advertising?

Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail

Link: The Onion - America's Finest News Source.

"They already know I'm going to vote for Obama," Obama added. "The only people who sign up for this thing are Democrats anyway. They're just preaching to the choir."

Not sure any 8yr old could beat me at Video Games..... Yet !

http://borndigitalbook.com

LinkedIn Demographics

LinkedIn Demographic Data Jun08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: linkedin statistics)

Documenting soldierly support in Lynchburg

From the Lynchburg VA newspaper...

"Filmmaker Manny Marquez shoots video of participants for the Sears Holdings program called ‘Heros at Home’ at the support the troops rally at Monument Terrace in Lynchburg on Friday. Sears Holdings gave the Lynchburg Rebuilding Together grants to fix veteran’s homes."

Porn passed over as Web users become social: author - Yahoo! News

Link: Porn passed over as Web users become social: author - Yahoo! News.

4 wish list items for improving digital reach - iMediaConnection.com

Link: 4 wish list items for improving digital reach - iMediaConnection.com.

"Sit a VP of marketing or a brand manager down at the bar, start to imbibe, and eventually they'll tell you that digital doesn't get a larger share of advertising budgets because of the uncertainty of its delivery. Whereas, an advertiser can call an agency, ask to see what a $5 million TV buy looks like, and get something back from the agency in short order that details the deliveries of a prototypical plan.

We still can't do that in digital very well. When advertisers call the TV buyers, they get a concise delivery report. When they call the digital folks, they get a turning hourglass."

No Label or Distributor - No Problem: TuneCore will put your indie film on iTunes

A new service of the company TuneCore promises to aid the indie film revolution - no distributor needed - just drop the cash and your indie film is on all of your favorite digital stores (itunes, amazon, etc)

Ars Technica's article explains:

Link: TuneCore will put your indie film on iTunes.

WOW. Just WOW.

Insane Downhill.

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

Stop neglecting your viral metrics

iMedia has a great article about how to track and measure viral campaigns. This is a virtual template for reporting and measuring campaigns.

The article discuses how, while unique to each campaign, some examples of pre-campaign metrics are:

Number of pass-alongs or forwards. Most pass-alongs will happen one of two ways: either via a viral medium or through the email/mobile medium. A viral medium is something designed specifically for effective pass-alongs. For example, you could put a link that says "forward this message to a friend" in your viral email marketing campaign. If the recipient uses this link, you'll be able to track the number exactly. However, if the recipient uses an email or mobile pass-along, it will not be captured or measured. If they hit the forward button through their Outlook or Yahoo! email, it's nearly impossible to track. That's why it's important to include a clear, easy-to-use viral medium to avoid this untrackable option.

Number of embeds. How many people embedded it on their sites? Viral messages embedded in social networks can be powerful -- if the recipient embeds your link onto a well trafficked social networking site, your exposure increases. However, the flipside is also true. The embedded material can become part of a spam blog and the numbers can be skewed. One way to discount distorted numbers is to allocate higher weights to early clicks while also counting unique clicks in that time frame.

Number of comments in the comment field. Some social networking sites let you add comments to what you are viewing. If you include this option, it's important to keep track of the comments added.

Number of downloads. This is a pretty straightforward metric. If there are downloadable elements in your viral marketing campaign, track the number of downloads by each recipient.

Post-campaign analysis
The second phase of measuring your viral marketing campaign involves conducting a full post-campaign analysis. There are a few straightforward numbers that you might already have on your list to collect. Common data sets include:

Total number of views
Total unique viewers
Average number of views per visit
Number of conversions
Number of clickthroughs and the clickthrough rate
Number of referrer URLs and examples of referrers, which typically tell you where your users are coming from
Number of email addresses collected