Reports

Yesterday, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they’ve been cleared to move forward with their much anticipated search partnership, which was initially declared in July. Since the engines now have received “unrestricted” clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission to implement the deal, we’ve revisited our earlier POV and highlighted some of key areas for digital marketers to focus on in the months leading up to complete, full-scale implementation.

The most obvious impact on marketers is that there will now be two major places to buy search advertising, down from the previous three. And with more scale now aggregated within the next biggest search marketplace to Google, the partnership should ideally build efficiency in search advertising and also enable marketers to take better advantage of Bing’s traffic. Since Google volume is so much greater than either Yahoo or Bing, it enjoys proportionally greater attention from search marketers. This unified marketplace will grant Microsoft and Yahoo! a better chance to compete with Google due to their combined scale.

Continue reading and download the report »

Today, details of the much-rumored Facebook home page update were leaked on the social media news blog Mashable. Based on the screenshots, Facebook is changing the user experience on its home page, creating two news feeds: one feed which displays friends’ most interesting activity since the user logged in last, and the other streaming activity in real-time as the user watches.

Overall, the changes to Facebook make the platform more focused on showing events in real-time – on the old homepage design, as new items were posted they would accumulate until the user clicked the “show new posts” link at the top of their feeds. With the new design, when a user logs in, the expectation is that they will first view activity that occurred since they last logged in, and then switch over to the real-time view where they can see friends’ activities as they happen.

We’ve summed up the update and listed some key marketer takeaways in our latest POV, embedded below:

360i Report on the Facebook Home Page Update

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, establishing more precise rules for disclosure when it comes to marketers interacting with online influencers. The news affects anyone running Digital Word of Mouth marketing (DWOM®) to solicit coverage from these influencers. This is the first time the Guides have been updated since 1980, so all of the additions for online marketers are new.

Sarah Hofstetter, SVP of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, told Adweek yesterday that most marketers are “entirely above board,” when it comes to ethical blogger relations. “It’s for a marketer to take that leap of faith to know that disclosure and authenticity is the only way a brand and consumer are going to have a working relationship in social media,” she said.

Hofstetter also praised the update in a Wall Street Journal article, in which she lauded the decision for restoring “common sense to a nascent form of marketing.” 360i has always encouraged the bloggers and online influencers we work with to disclose such relationships even when there isn’t free merchandise involved.

360i’s POV on the FTC’s Updated Guides for Endorsements outlines the key changes made and helps marketers understand what the new regulations mean for future social outreach efforts.

360i POV on the FTC’s Updated Guides for Endorsements

Late last week Twitter updated its Terms of Service, found at twitter.com/tos. We’ve been following this closely because any small change on Twitter can have a big impact for marketers. The good news is that marketers don’t have to change what they’re doing because of this.

We released a POV with a layman’s recap of the Terms and a few thoughts on how it impacts you:

360i POV on Twitter ’s Updated Terms of Service

We also shared a few thoughts in the press.

In DM News, we noted that if Twitter does roll out advertising offerings, a number of marketers could find value in it:

“If you want to target people who are specifically talking about certain kinds of retailers or who show interest in certain kinds of topics, then there are definitely opportunities to segment users in those ways,” said David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital communications agency 360i.

Then in MediaPost, we mentioned how Twitter’s outlook on advertising has evolved over the years:

David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at 360i, took the time to read Twitter’s ToS, lightheartedly comparing it to a “good Grisham novel.” Queries made through the services are subject to being targeted with an ad. “Updates from their terms of service in 2007 does not include advertising,” he says. “It’s an open question on whether they’ll add advertising as a premium service. Or, do they want to cash out and let someone else figure it out? That doesn’t seem as likely, now.”

Speaking of Twitter, you can follow us there: @360i.

In this week’s MediaPost column, David Berkowitz can run – but he can’t hide – from social media in Los Angeles (image via Flickr).

I swore this would be a vacation. It was so weird taking a cab to JFK and not asking for a receipt, but I was ready to embrace it. Still, a long Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles for a friend’s wedding wound up being shaped continually by social media experiences with brands big and small. Here are some standouts.

Virgin America: There are two reasons I flew Virgin for the first time to get to LA. One was that the groom noted there were good deals on flights from New York. Yet uncharacteristically of me, when I checked that the fare was reasonable, I didn’t look elsewhere — I booked it right away. The buzz surrounding the brand has been a big influence, especially with the countless exposures I’ve had through social media such as the repeated mentions on Rohit Bhargava’s blog. I don’t quite get all the hype, but I’d fly it again if the deal warrants it.

Read the full article »

Social graph ad targeting is a way for marketers to target consumers based on who they’re connected to within online social networks.

Marketers often run campaigns that target consumers based on their age and gender (demographic), where they live or happen to be at the moment (geographic), what they’re viewing on a Web page (contextual), what Web sites they’ve visited and what they do there (behavioral), or what keywords they’re entering in a query box (search engine marketing). With social graph ad targeting, it’s now possible to target consumers based on their associations with each other.

This type of marketing targets consumers based on their social graph, or the map of who they’re connected to – and it can happen several ways:

• Within a social network
• Across social networks
• Across publishers

The following 360i report includes an overview of this type of ad targeting, reviews notable vendors in the space and addresses the key questions marketers should ask when considering running such advertising.

360i POV on Social Graph Ad Targeting

Read our complete POV on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal below, or download a PDF version via Scribd (above).

Microsoft is effectively acquiring Yahoo’s search business, migrating Yahoo’s search ad customers to its adCenter platform, and licensing Bing’s search platform back to Yahoo. Yahoo will become the worldwide sales organization for the companies’ premium search advertisers, while from an ad technology perspective adCenter will be the search ad platform and Yahoo’s Panama will be phased out. Smaller advertisers will use adCenter directly to purchase their search advertising. After the deal goes into effect, both the natural and paid results on Yahoo’s owned and operated properties will come from Bing’s search platform.

Read the full article »