Participant Awards to Podium Finishes | 0 replies since Sep 4, 2008, 02:00 PM
Mike Carney: The Olympics just finished up and what a show it was! You saw amazing athletes strive to be the best they could be and some like Usain Bolt establish new levels of excellence. Being a hyper-competitive person, I loved watching the athletic beauty and quiet controlled effort that was put in by the top performers. Was it just me or did most of the elite performers always look calm and controlled and everyone behind them looked frantic and their faces were turning red? When you’re that good, you can calmly look around for your mom in the stands when approaching the finish line. After viewing the results coming in event after event I became even more interested in finding out more about each person’s dedication, how they approached their craft and how they got to such high levels of success. One quote that I picked out that stuck with me was Usain Bolt who stated the following after his Gold winning and record shattering accomplishments: “I came out here prepared,” he said. “I worked hard, that’s all I can say. … I worked hard to get here. It wasn’t easy at all. It may look easy, but it was hard.” To someone that loves the online industry and is dedicated to making it the best it can be, those are beautiful worlds to hear - I came out here prepared, I worked hard, it wasn’t easy at all. It may look was but it was hard. Great things can be accomplished by embracing these words. To start, we can throw out the status quo, the “that’s the way we’ve always done things.” Sebastian Coe’s father wasn’t a track coach, but he turned his son into a track star by ignoring the status quo. Roger Bannister (broke the 4 minute mile barrier) didn’t measure his success against the impossible 4 minute mile barrier, he prepared himself so that he could run as fast as humanly possible. Speaking about making ourselves the best that we can be, what are we doing in the online industry to not only embrace these words, but more importantly embrace the attitude that generates them? We should start our own Olympics of sorts. Instead of being a society that hands out participant ribbons to people that show up, we should reward the individuals that clearly come prepared, act with integrity and out-perform the rest of the competition – the top 3. In my experience in the online space, I’m seeing advertisers slowly move away from the participant award winners (cookie cutter run-of-site/section CPM publishers) to the podium finishers (interaction tracking Rich Media providers like Eyeblaster and EyeWonder to performance based marketing networks like Advaliant). These types of companies are clearly trying to help advertisers combat the economic crunch and the screams for a better marketing ROI. Starting and finishing the race with Usain Bolt is no longer an accomplishment. Coming to the final stretch and being Usain Bolt is all that counts. If you’re an advertiser, start doing your homework. Find out who is coming out prepared, who is working hard on the right solution for your needs and who is ready to claim that Gold Medal. Participant ribbons are eating your budget, don’t let them.

What do you think of this landing page and Relationship Guide offer? | 0 replies since Aug 26, 2008, 10:49 AM
Mike Carney: http://www.valtrk.com/URL/track.aspx?AdID=1839&AffID=1

What offers are most relevant to the public this summer? | 0 replies since Jul 10, 2008, 10:32 AM
Mike Carney: Submit your top 3 offers that you believe are most needed/appreciated by the public this summer.

What's your favorite way to calculate ROI in online advertising? | 0 replies since May 3, 2008, 05:43 PM
Mike Carney: In 40 words or less tell the group how you display or calculate ROI for your clients.

Social Media: Influence, Monetization, Faces and Voices behind Brands | 0 replies since Apr 28, 2008, 11:12 AM
Mike Carney: Hi gang, I just watched an interesting video interview with Shiv Singh of Avenue A about Social Media. Very informative for anyone looking to better understand where Social Media fits into today's media marketplace. It's available at http://www.relevantlyspeaking.com/. Enjoy! Please comment on your take of Social media after watching this video. Thanks! Mike

TurnItUp Media to Launch New Video Advertising Model with Guaranteed Ad Views! | 0 replies since Feb 19, 2008, 11:51 AM updated Apr 22, 2008, 10:49 AM
William Fleming: Enough with old the old CPC, CPA, and CPL models; unless you really enjoy misleading metrics and distribution models that have very limited targeting options. If you truly want to have control over your target markets and be guaranteed that your clients’ advertisements will be seen you may be interested in a new CPD (Cost per Download) advertising model. Responding to a greater need for more effective advertising TurnItUp Media, LLC, a pioneer innovator in video advertisement services, announced the creation of its blended advertising model called “the Blended Marketing Redeux™.” This patent pending advertising system enables advertisers to reach consumers through a hybrid target marketing system. “To truly reach consumers, you must be able to get to know them on a very personal level and this is where traditional advertising models fail,” said William Fleming, President and Founder of TurnItUp Media. Television and Radio has proven itself to be a rather sufficient method for advertising because consumers are getting something they want. However, television and radio have also proven to be ineffective because people get up and leave the room or change the channel when commercials come on. Fleming states, “In order to truly capture the audience’s attention and the coveted opted-in user specific preferential target data, one must provide an in-the-hand tangible asset to the consumer.” Conchango, a Media Consultancy Firm found that an increasing number of consumers are happy to tolerate advertising if it means they receive content for free. TurnItUp Media’s new CPD advertising model enables advertisers the ability to reach consumers with ‘free music downloads’ as the tangible asset. The World is evolving and there is no two ways about it: Consumers are demanding new ways of getting multimedia for free and piracy is just a continual battle being fought without any real positive resolutions. To sum everything up, TurnItUp Media provides a method for advertisers to reach consumers through the gift of music. While or after a user downloads a music file, a 20-30 second highly targeted video advertisement will be presented to the user. To finalize the music license, a user must enter the security code within a specific time frame at the end of the advertisement. At the end, users get their music, advertisers get seen and artists get paid. Online advertisers looking to whisper into the ears of consumers with a much better branding authority than TV and other online advertising techniques should consider TurnItUp Media. Check us out today at www.TurnItUpMedia.com or contact William Fleming. William Fleming TurnItUp Media, LLC President ----------------------------------------- 805-835-8610 william@turnitupmedia.com

New Study Shows that Heavy Clickers Distort Reality of Display Advertising Click-Through Metrics | 0 replies since Feb 13, 2008, 10:43 AM
Mike Carney: It looks like CPL, CPA and Brand Measurement Studies will become incredibly important moving forward. What are your thoughts? 2/12/08 Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’s “Natural Born Clickers” findings suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns CHICAGO – Media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore collaborated on a research study whose results call into question click-through rates as a primary source of accountability for Internet display advertising aimed at brand-building. Called “Natural Born Clickers,” the study reveals that a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior. Full findings of the study, its methodology and results are being presented this afternoon at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Florida. The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers. Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance. “There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space where the accountability data is so readily available,“ says Starcom USA Director of Connections Research and Analytics Grant Prentice. “Natural Born Clickers shows us that we can’t count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying on-line exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy.” “While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.” “One of the underlying values of looking at people and not just pages in our business is that we are able to help uncover behavior that is counterintuitive to what much of the media world assumes about online audiences,” says Daniel Jaye, CEO of TACODA.

Wellness.com - healthy living community... | 0 replies since Jan 21, 2008, 07:24 PM
Aaron Mendes: Hi all, just wanted to reach out to let you know about a great targeted audience for media buyers looking to reach the healthy living market segment. Wellness.com has a rapidly growing health conscious community. It's great for companies looking to brand in that segment. Here's a link to our media kit: http://www.wellness.com/ads/Wellness.Advertising.2008.pdf. Message me if you'd like more info.

Need your help | 0 replies since Jan 10, 2008, 07:25 PM updated Jan 10, 2008, 07:25 PM
Shane Vaughan: Hi all...I'm the marketing guy for a company called Balihoo who is building an On-Demand Media Planning Software. We could use your help with some of our messaging, you can see my official request at my blog here: http://blog.balihoo.com/index.php/2008/01/10/are-you-a-media-planner-need-a-video-camera

Actions? | 0 replies since Dec 6, 2007, 05:31 AM
Abhilash Vinayak: Are we all going to be silent readers here?

What behavioral targeted network is working best for you and why? | 1 replies since Nov 12, 2007, 12:44 PM updated Nov 27, 2007, 06:13 PM
Mike Carney: I have come across a few networks that are offering behavioral targeting and encountered different explanations of what behavioral targeting is exactly- depending on the company's capabilities. In the end, my take on it is that there's re-targeting users that have visited the client's site but didn't buy (and are now available within a network of sites), there is functionality targeting (showing ads to someone that is using product comparison functionality/tools and then there's content targeting to niche sites to reach hard-core product line fans or industry folks. What's your take and who would you recommend? Mike

Freelance Online Planning/Buying | 0 replies since Nov 5, 2007, 12:16 PM
Mike Carney: Which agencies are feeling the crunch talent wise and are bringing on freelance online planners and buyers on a project basis?