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360i’s Sarah Hofstetter Elected to WOMMA Board of Directors

  • Posted on November 11, 2009 1:57 pm by 360i

360i’s Sarah Hofstetter Elected to WOMMA Board of Directors

At 360i we’re proud to be a part of a number of industry associations that continuously help propel and evolve digital marketing through collaborative thought leadership. One such group is the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), which focuses on word of mouth, consumer-generated and social media platforms – areas that the 360i works in on behalf of our clients each day.

For that reason, we are pleased to announce that Sarah Hofstetter, SVP of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, has been elected to the WOMMA Board of Directors, effective Jan. 1. Sarah leads the Social and Emerging Media team at 360i, a group of specialists who devise social strategies and online listening programs for major brand marketers.

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Google to Gobble AdMob; Expect Big Things from Mobile Ahead

Image via Google.
(Image via Google)

Google announced Monday its plans to acquire mobile display advertising company AdMob for a cool $750 million in company stock. The search giant asserts that “great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem” and that together Google and AdMob will work on the future of mobile advertising.

The future looks bright. Mobile phones have rapidly become a main communication channel thanks to enhancements to mobile Internet browsers and the staggering app market boom. Another sign demonstrative of mobile’s emergence is the growth of AdMob itself – in just three years the company has surged to the top of the mobile ad market, serving more than 10 billion monthly impressions across 15,000 sites worldwide.

Here’s what Google says the acquisition will do for the mobile market’s three prime stakeholders:

  • For consumers – Expect more mobile content and better, more relevant, mobile ads.
  • For publishers (of mobile sites and apps) – The deal will allow for sophisticated products and tools that will lead to more effective monetization solutions.
  • For advertisers – Google says marketers will be better equipped to engage consumers in the mobile space by delivering “more relevant ads and greater reach.”

This deal will help propel the mobile industry by encouraging mobile ad spend, which currently pales in comparison to other digital mediums, such as display. Yet given the discrepancies in spend, mobile usage continues to rise to dramatic levels, and advertising must keep pace.

Though the integration between Google and AdMob will not be finalized for a couple of months, the prospective implications of the deal loom large for marketers in the digital space. One thing we know for sure: Google’s status as an industry leader makes the acquisition an effectual vote of confidence for the future of mobile.

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Does Online Interest = Ratings? A Tale of Two Late-Night Legends

  • Posted on November 4, 2009 5:05 pm by 360i

Does Online Interest = Ratings? A Tale of Two Late-Night Legends
How do planned promotions and juicy scandals affect search interest? And what’s the correlation between searchers and viewers?

By John Cole, Customer Insights Analyst at 360i

There are rivalries and then there are rivalries. Jay Leno and David Letterman have been duking it out on the late-night stage for the better part of two decades – and while NBC’s Leno might have been the ratings leader, it was hard to discuss his success without mentioning his equally comedic counterpart at CBS. Leno and Letterman no longer compete in the same time slot, yet public interest and controversy around the two hosts is seemingly stronger than ever.

As marketers, we were curious to see if a relationship exists between online interest, as measured by search volume, and viewership for the late night TV warriors. With all the Leno and Letterman news events in the past month – premieres, celebrity apologies, presidential visits, sex scandals – what were the top drivers of search queries? And did ratings follow suit?

We’ve provided a full report after the jump. Here are the key takeaways from our research:

  • Fluctuations in ratings (sales, engagement, etc.) do not always mirror search trends.
  • Breaking news events such as a sex scandals trump scheduled Presidential visits when it comes to generating interest.
  • Which types of events generate ratings? Marketing supported season premieres win over the scandals.
  • Brands should be cognizant of online interest; Search InformedSM Research and conversation monitoring can help shape smarter marketing decisions.

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4 Tried-and-True Rules for Effective Display Creative

By David Levin, President of Design & Development at 360i

Last week 360i attended a Dynamic Logic and 4A’s webinar during which they presented best practices for display banners based on analysis of best- and worst-performing campaigns (you can access the press release about the study on Dynamic Logic’s Web site).

One key insight, which we have espoused for years, is that taking the time to develop strong online creative is critical. So much so that poor-performing banners don’t merely perform worse than better creative, they actually can negatively impact brand metrics such as awareness, favorability and intent.

Here are some key design and messaging recommendations from Dynamic Logic’s analysis and some of 360i’s thoughts based on our display creative experience:

1. Brand impact is only as strong as brand presence.
Specifically keep your logo on every frame. Intrigue rarely drives awareness and response. The longer the logo appears, the higher the lift in aided awareness. And consumers most likely will not see the logo if it only appears on the product and not prominently within the ad. For example, here is one of the ads we developed for a recent Panasonic campaign. Note that the logo is persistent throughout the interactive animations.

Click image to play ad:
4 Tried-and-True Rules for Effective Display Creative

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10 Tips for Combining SEO & Paid Search

  • Posted on  12:29 pm by 360i

10 Tips for Combining SEO & Paid Search
One way to effectively mix SEO and PPC: Stay ahead of the curve and utilize new innovations that enable you to weave micro-formats and RSS feeds into search listings.

In an iMedia Connection article published today, Mike Dobbs — Group Director, SEO at 360i — outlines 10 tips for combining SEO & paid search in your digital marketing programs. We’ve provided a brief summary below, but you can read the full article over on iMedia’s Web site.

While search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search are often seen as independent processes by digital marketers, the consumer sees a search results page as a single experience, and research shows that paid and natural search do impact eachother. Here’s a look at 10 key force-multipliers that leverage search results pages to maximize the impact of both your PPC and SEO efforts:

1. Follow proven SEO best practices
There are many standard best practices, but avoiding duplicate content is a vital SEO rule for retailers. Duplicate content is a term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one webpage. Embracing the “canonical tag” is an elegant solution for avoiding duplicate content.

2. Evaluate your paid search campaign structure against your own site architecture
Following your site’s architecture when setting up your campaigns and ad groups can help reveal untapped opportunities for your paid search efforts. Do you have an ad group for each of your product categories and promotions? Walk through your site map and compare it against your PPC campaign to make sure you cover all the bases.

3. Take a holistic approach to PPC bidding and ad creative
Running paid ads that include timely promotions and a call-to-action alongside natural search results for your brand can actually increase overall click-through rates (CTRs) on natural search listings, providing higher ROI across your search efforts.

Results of a SearchIgnite study showed that natural search clicks were 17 percent higher on days when paid search ads were running, garnering more “free” clicks simply by running paid search ads alongside natural search results. In addition, total conversions and revenue on both paid and natural terms dramatically increased on days when paid search ads were running.

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360i Report on Facebook’s Q4 2009 Platform Update

  • Posted on November 2, 2009 1:46 pm by 360i

Facebook’s latest round of updates to its platform will affect everyone: marketers, developers, publishers, consumers and anyone else remotely connected to their site and platform. Some updates will be especially significant for marketers, as David Berkowitz, Sr. Director of Emerging Media & Innovation, writes about on today’s Ad Age DigitalNext blog.

In a rare move for any company, Facebook not only announced what changes will take place, but publicly offered a timeline for when they will happen. The timeline may shift, and some specifics have yet to be ironed out. That said, marketers should still appreciate the wealth of information Facebook has provided on these changes, including a gallery of screen shots.

Our latest report (embedded below) provides a summary of the changes and what they will mean for marketers.

360i POV on the Facebook Q4 2009 Platform Update

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Twitter List Rollout Spreads, Fueling Web’s Newest Popularity Contest

Twitter List Rollout Spreads, Fueling Webs Newest Popularity Contest

How many Twitter Lists are you on?

I’m on 32. Danny Sullivan’s on 273. Sockington the tweeting cat is on 367, a total I’m sure that will skyrocket as the feature rolls out.The New York Times is on 1,864. Discovering that a venerable news institution is more popular than a tweeting cat is just one of many serendipitous effects of this new Twitter feature.

Twitter Lists lets users create lists and follow groups of people (and/or cats). If you create a public List (and it can be private), other Twitter users can follow that list too. You can see what lists you’re on by going to http://twitter.com/USERNAME/lists/memberships, of course replacing USERNAME with your Twitter handle or anyone else’s. The lists are accessible in the right-hand box of your Twitter.com home screen when you’re logged in, below Saved Searches and above Trending Topics.

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