Digital Connections – 360i Blog, Digital Marketing Agency

by David Levin
President, 360i Design & Development Group

360i has won two WebAwards for “Outstanding Achievement in Website Development” from the Web Marketing Association. The WebAwards is an annual website competition that honors the best sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all web development. Each WebAward entry is judged on design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, navigation and ease of use.

360i won for its work on both the adidas baseball website and for the design of Marvel’s “Create Your Own Superhero” site.

The objective of the adidas campaign – centered on the theme “Know the Code” – was designed to engage young ballplayers by educating them about how to play the game, while driving retail sales online. The Code is (more…)

At the Social Ad Summit this week in New York City, Facebook may have been the most buzzed-about company on stage, with everyone from agency execs to application developers discussing their thoughts on the belle of the network ball. JP Morgan’s Deborah Korb Maizner was the most direct, saying that when her company used social networks for recruiting, Facebook had the right caliber of candidates, while MySpace users weren’t in the same league. While the comment reeks of elitism, Quantcast backs her up, noting  Facebook users have significantly higher education and income levels than MySpace users.

Beyond Facebook, the next hottest topic seemed to be Google and the search marketing industry. MySpace was mentioned sporadically outside of the panel where it was represented, even though eMarketer says it accounts for 53% of the social network advertising market. Application ad networks and developers were pervasive among speakers and sponsors, but none could compete for share of voice with Google. You can find full coverage of every panel but mine  on my blog.

There are three ways the search marketing industry came up: as the foil, the ideal, and the old model.

(more…)

This week, 360i will be exhibiting at Shop.org’s Annual Summit, as well as speaking at a number of conferences:

——————————————————————————–

MONDAY: 09.15.2008
Social Ad Summit
New York, NY
David Berkowitz will be speaking

——————————————————————————–

MONDAY – WEDNESDAY: 09.15.2008 – 09.17.2008
Shop.Org Annual Summit
Las Vegas, NV
360i is exhibiting at booth #537

——————————————————————————–

WEDNESDAY: 09.17.2008
Digital Marketing Breakfast
New York, NY
Sarah Hofstetter, 360i’s VP of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, is a panelist at this Gotham Media Digital Breakfast.

——————————————————————————–

THURSDAY: 09.18.2008
OMMA Global
New York, NY
David Berkowitz will be speaking

——————————————————————————–

SUNDAY: 09.21.2008
Blog World Expo
Las Vegas, NV
David Berkowitz will be speaking

A big focus of new web browsers coming out is increased privacy settings for consumers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, still in beta but widely available, offers an InPrivate Browsing option where the browser doesn’t store any cookies, temporary files, or user information. Google offers a similar Incognito setting in its new Chrome browser. There are other browsers such as Ixquick that allow for private searching, and while Firefox 3 doesn’t have a standard privacy mode, there are plug-ins that achieve the same result.

With all of this, should advertisers and publishers be concerned? Generally, no.

First, the privacy settings must be enabled rather than disabled. The standard option stores cookies, and that should be the setting for most internet usage.

Secondly, these privacy modes should appeal to consumers who already delete cookies. These users have been able to delete cookies for years through standard Internet Explorer and Firefox settings; the difference is now they’ll get to do it proactively. If a user deleted cookies through the browser they would have deleted everything. Now, some users may actually wind up only turning on the privacy settings at certain times and then will return to normal browsing. That could wind up leading to fewer cookies getting deleted or blocked.

Lastly, while Microsoft and Google both use examples of someone turning on privacy settings when shopping for gifts for their spouse, realistically these settings are nicknamed “porn mode” for good reason. At this point, few brand-name marketers and publishers should worry about the impact on ad targeting while consumers are engaging in such activities.

We’ll continually monitor this issue and will post updates as more information comes out.

The longest vacation I’ve taken was my summer trip contributing to MediaPost’s Online Spin. Over the past three months, I explored the jungles of the elusive SearchMonkey, went shopping for precious Chrome, and tried to avoid coming down with a nasty case of Jewdar. If you haven’t checked out Spin, here’s a chance to catch up. If you’ve been reading all along, this includes some updates and reflection on what happened, so it’s not your typical highlight reel.

June 12 – “The Customization Conundrum”: When will consumers go through the effort to customize their digital media experience? I threw out a couple examples, such as the daily utility provided by Firefox add-ons and the social currency gained by customizing social network profiles. With Yahoo’s enhanced search listing program dubbed SearchMonkey, I mentioned “the payoff isn’t worth the effort” due to the several redundant steps users needed to take to activate it. Yahoo listened, in a big way (though I’m not taking the credit here). Not only did they start making SearchMonkey listings automatic for certain publishers, but on their blog they even referenced my presentation available on Slideshare, even though my presentation was highly critical of their initial rollout. This was one of the best, quickest turnarounds from a search engine.

(more…)

Tuesday was a fun day for mixing business with pleasure. Google’s debut of the Chrome browser and Picasa Web’s facial recognition were not only good fodder for the trades and blogs, but everyone could use these products and I could talk about them with friends and family members. It’s like touring a winery and going from the fermentation tanks to the tasting room; here was something everyone could experience without intimate knowledge of what happens behind the scenes.

Google’s Chrome browser has been covered well, perhaps too well. It notched six spots in Google’s Hot Trends Top 100 on Monday, all but one in the top 25, and five lower ranking slots on Tuesday. Picasa hasn’t hit Hot Trends at all this week, although its users are buzzing over one of its new features.

The biggest change with Picasa is tag-based facial recognition for online albums (there are also several updates to the downloadable software; read more on the Google Photos blog). I spent some time with it, tagging over 1,000 faces, and it works incredibly well. To use it, you need to have a Picasa Web Albums account where you’ve uploaded photos – the more, the better. First, you tell Picasa to start the tagging. When it’s done, it will display groups of faces that it thinks are the same person, and you identify who they are. It then starts learning to recognize those people in all your photos. If you’ve tagged Grandmom Hilda in several pictures from your Labor Day barbecue and want to find those pictures you took of her over Thanksgiving, Picasa can now help dig them up.

(more…)

Since Firefox emerged as a viable competitor to Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari, there have been a number of new browser competitors, such as Flock and AT&T’s Pogo, but none that have been real game changers yet. Google changed that instantly just by showing up, launching the Chrome browser.

Much of the differences are technical in terms of how it loads pages, and how it limits any bottlenecks to a single tab so that the browser shouldn’t crash, just a tab. Interestingly, there’s no Google toolbar or even a search bar. The “omnibar,” as Google calls it, where one normally enters the website address or URL, also serves as a search box – whether for Google or any engine you choose (it imports settings from Firefox and will ask if you want to keep whatever default browser you have there). As it’s open source, anyone can build on it; one could see future versions of Firefox incorporating the best of Chrome.

Trying it out, it does seem faster. It’s far more streamlined; there’s much more space devoted to the page you’re viewing.

There are some downsides. It doesn’t have full-screen mode (a favorite of mine for screenshots). It currently doesn’t support other extensions, so if you have favorite plug-ins, there will be an adjustment period.

Marketers shouldn’t experience any changes. There’s no added AdWords displays here or anything that inherently increases Google’s inventory. In fact, one could argue that people will search less in Chrome since there isn’t a search box calling out to people; conceivably, direct navigation will increase as a result of Chrome. Pop-up blockers are standard, but not ad blockers. Sites appear to load correctly. Firefox 3, the latest version of that browser, has had some issues with Flash and video, and all of that seems to work fine in Chrome.

We’ll see what happens with user adoption. Microsoft will soon be making a big push with Internet Explorer 8 and Mozilla set download records with Firefox 3, so users will consider browser upgrades, but there are barriers to switching. Given how many of the benefits of Chrome are behind the scenes and potentially harder for users to appriaciate, it could be a hard sell for mass market adoption.

Then again, Google’s a brand that spread by word of mouth. Name a major consumer-facing Google ad campaign and you’ll be hard pressed to think of one. If early adopters become passionate evangelists for Chrome, then it will market itself.