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Archives for 2010

DoubleVerify Aims to Police the Online Advertising World

DoubleVerify is one of the leading online advertising verification companies in the world.  According to the company’s website, DoubleVerify verifies 35 billion advertising impressions per month for a diverse clientele of leading marketers, including hundreds of Fortune 500 companies.

This week, DoubleVerify announced the launch of its Advertising Fraud Detection Lab with the goal of identifying malicious sites, malware, spyware, and other forms of non-compliance that lead to inflated ad impression reporting.  Unfortunately, these activities are not new and they show no signs of going away.  DoubleVerify aims to reduce the amount of money advertisers pay for wasted ad impressions and the legal implications these fraudulent activities can lead to.

DoubleVerify plans to use its own technology combined with a team of experts from security and anti-virus organizations to research the online advertising environment and present their results after three months in the form of a white paper with the intention of helping online advertisers and legitimate publishers identify fraud risks and ensure brands reputations’ aren’t negatively impacted by potentially fraudulent activities.  You can read more in the official DoubleVerify press release.

Few marketers would argue that there is a problem related to online advertising wasted impressions.  The question is whether or not DoubleVerify’s research and resulting report will help the online advertising industry as a whole or simply create more clients for DoubleVerify’s services.  Certainly, this type of research has the potential to help an industry that has struggled against fraudulent activities in the past without the ability to offer proof of such activities.  Let’s hope that DoubleVerify’s Advertising Fraud Detection Lab offers some sort of help, or better yet — a solution.

What do you think?  Is a fraud detection service that can work across the online advertising industry likely to hit the scene anytime soon?  Leave  a comment and share your thoughts and predictions.

Phenomenal Facebook


Julia fractal

I am (at last) getting into Facebook.  For some reason, Twitter made sense to me immediately, while Facebook has remained largely a mystery.  But after a few weeks of floundering around, I’m starting to understand a little better.

Biggest help:  Oddly enough, a talk by David Kirkpatrick on BookTV.  Kirkpatrick (formerly senior technology editor at Fortune magazine) is the author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World, which came out just a few weeks ago in the US, and will soon arrive in a UK edition.

Needless to say, The Facebook Effect has its own Facebook page, where you can read an excerpt, watch an interview, and (of course) “like” the book.  More than 5,000 likers so far, and the book is well-ranked on Amazon niche lists for E-Commerce (#3) and Company Profiles (#7).  In addition to an in-depth retelling of the well-known dorm-to-dominance story of Facebook’s creation/evolution, Kirkpatrick provides thoughtful analysis that applies not only to Facebook, but to the whole social media landscape.

The second biggest help in my Facebook education was stumbling over what I now think of as the “friend tripwire.”  As an individual, you can plunk along for quite a while just adding friends occasionally for some seemingly good reason.  Then–you add one well-connected activist, and you find yourself with a generous pile of recommendations and requests.  (If you open the door at this point, you need to understand about lists . . . )

So all of a sudden, I began to think of Facebook as something like a fractal generator—i.e., a self-similar replicating system that creates intricate patterns.  From a slightly different perspective, it’s like a complex system organizing itself in response to initial conditions (“me”) and various attractors (“friends”).

If that works for you, happy to be of service!  But if not it doesn’t matter, because probably everyone finds their own point of entry for Facebook, and no one really needs to think of it beyond the practical applications anyway.  Which brings us to the real point:  Facebook for recruiting.

In 2008, there was a lot of hype around “Facebook for recruiting,” and companies like Jobing and Appirio introduced apps and services to build out that potential.  So far, however, these approaches have not seen spectacular success in performance or adoption . . .

So how is Facebook being used effectively to find talent?  That turns out to be a longer story, so stay tuned for two more installments:  Corporate Recruiting via Facebook (with a useful case study) and Recruiters on Facebook (with some interesting examples).


(And yes, that’s a lovely Julia set, shared by Eequor.)

Facebook Asks Users to Share Stories about How Facebook Impacted Their Lives

On July 21, 2010, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a post on the Facebook blog that announced the social networking site had officially passed the 500 million global users mark (check out his video message here).

To celebrate, Facebook put together a number of stories about how the site impacted users’ lives.  To take the positive brand images further, Facebook launched an app that will appear on 31 partner sites (including the White House’s Facebook page) that asks Facebook users around the world to share their own stories about how Facebook has affected their lives in positive ways.  The app is called Facebook Stories.


Facebook_stories


This is a clever branding initiative by Facebook that leverages customer testimonials and feel-good messages to present the brand in an extremely positive light.  Following the negative criticism Facebook has faced in recent months related to its lack of privacy with users’ personal information, the Facebook Stories initiative is being launched at the perfect moment.

Having the Facebook Stories app appear in the tabs of 31 partner sites, made up primarily of non-profit organizations like UNICEF and the American Red Cross, is another clever move.

But that’s not all.  Facebook team members will also be hitting the road on a Facebook Stories road trip to visit towns around the United States to meet the people behind the stories.  It’s probably safe to assume that this road trip will lead to a video element for the Facebook Stories initiative, particularly since people can ‘enter’ for a chance to have the Facebook Stories road trip team visit them and learn their story about the impact they made using Facebook.

Will the effort work to restore confidence in the Facebook brand?  That remains to be seen.  It’s unlikely, but it certainly can’t hurt.  What do you think?  Can Facebook Stories have a significant impact on repairing the Facebook brand?

Is Your Company Making the Most of Social Media?

maximising the benefits

Choosing a Social Campaign

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Youtube, any corporation who decides to take their business aboard the World Wide Web should take a long, hard look at their social media campaign to see if it’s returning value. Many companies get on board a social networking site and expect a one hundred fold return almost immediately, as if just setting up an account was all they needed to do.

Growing the social side of a business requires focus and a dedicated effort to the process.

Social Media for Individuals

Becoming familiar with and participating on social media outlets can be a lot of fun. Interacting with people online who have the same interests and opinions can be a satisfying experience. Facebook for instance currently has over 400 million users online and are steadily growing. People join Facebook, send Tweets and update their photos to Flickr so they can be a part of what’s going on with their friends and family.

Social Media for Businesses

Part of the attraction for businesses to get on board social networking sites is the audience exposure that is available online. Social networking for individuals is a definite boon, however for businesses, social media outlets and interacting goes far beyond entertainment. It goes to the heart of why and how the business develops their brand online. When businesses begin building their brand and image, they need creative ways to make an impact on their demographics. Effective social media strategies are the key to unlocking the power of the system and getting it to work in their favor.

Maximizing the Outlets

Joining social media outlets is the first step. Finding relevant social outlets is very important. Many businesses will simply join each and every social media platform that becomes available, thinking that the more they’re a part of, the more exposure they will get. This is not necessarily so, which is why choosing the right ones to join should be a relevant issue, and more important than choosing what’s popular. For instance, for a photography business, a social platform like Flickr would be more relevant than a platform that did something completely unrelated to photography. This allows the media department to make better use of their resources and time spent on branding their image than if they joined and tried to work a platform that didn’t match the business’ personality.

After identifying the most profitable platforms for money expenses and time investment, it becomes important to work the platforms. This varies according to what platform you choose, but the basics are the same:

  1. Interact as often as possible, preferably once a day, no less than four or more times per week. This can be managed by one person or an entire media department.
  2. Post links to blog posts and articles that will appeal to your audience. Don’t oversaturate – just post the good ones.
  3. Be genuine in your feedback to others. They will learn to respect you and pay attention to what YOU say as well.

What are some things that you’ve done to increase your social networking exposure? What would you as a corporate entity add to the list of things to ensure that your company was successful in the social arena?

Skype Rolls out Click and Call Advertising for Businesses

skype_marchexSkype has long been known as the site where people can make free online phone calls to anyone at anytime.  Last year, eBay sold the majority share of Skype to a consortium of buyers.  Less than a year later, Skype has partnered with Marchex (an advertising company) to launch a new click and call advertising program.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Businesses sign up for click and call advertising with Skype through Marchex.
  2. Once signed up, advertisers get a blue Free Call button with their listings on various local directory sites (see the image for an example) that consumers are likely to find through keyword searches, such as Yelp.com, YP.com, and more.
  3. A consumer can simply click on the Free Call button in a directory listing where it appears to immediately call the advertiser via Skype.
  4. Advertisers are charged a flat fee per Skype call.
  5. Advertisers can set a pre-determined budget to manage costs, and Marchex provides call analytics reports.

Marchex and Skype are promoting the partnership as a great way for businesses to boost contacts from the 560 million registered Skype users around the world (100 million in the United States).  Check out the video below for more details (or click this link to view it on the Marchex website if you can’t view it below).

The program is still in early stages, and there have been some criticisms because consumers can’t see the Free Call button in some browsers unless they have a specific Skype browser plugin installed.  However, Google offers similar programs in its mobile pay-per-call product and its Google Voice extension for its Chrome browser, which have shown some success, so the expectation is that the Skype program should do well.

It’s an interesting concept that certainly has the chance to attract consumers who are actively looking for information about a specific business or product at the exact moment they need it.  Research shows that leads attracted through click-to-call advertising have the potential to deliver higher conversion rates than other forms of advertising.  I’d imagine we’ll see many retailers testing the Skype program out.  What do you think?

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 21: Annual Reports – Give Readers a Choice in How to Access Them

Time was, back in the dark ages of about twenty years ago, people only had one option when it came to annual reports – ink on paper. Nowadays we have a multitude of ways to read things: traditional paper, web based, PDF files and e-readers. And people who are visiting your web site to read your annual report expect to have a variety of ways to access the report. Good investor web site design seeks to incorporate a variety of delivery methods for their investors.

Standard Chartered Annual Report home
click to enlarge

A nicely integrated approach for delivering both a web based report and the ability to download PDF files of the report is demonstrated by Standard Chartered, the financial services company. They start with an electronic cover page, which allows you to navigate to various sections of the report.

Each section in turn allows the reader to easily get to relevant subsections, whether it be by opening a new page to the Chairman’s statement or by clicking and expanding a sections such as operational highlights. One can easily navigate the report in this web-centric manner.

Standard Chartered Annual Report download page
click to enlarge

For those readers that wish to read the report in a more traditional, linear fashion, Standard Chartered also provides a download centre. The download centre allows an investor to either choose the entire annual report in a zipped file for quicker download, or pick and choose which sections interest them most for downloading.

Standard Chartered Annual Report
click to enlarge

In one final interesting piece of design work when you click on the two tabs on the right hand side of the page in the download centre, additional capabilities become visible, such as the ability to email the page or to create a customized PDF file. 

Overall, this is a nice piece of design work that addresses the way people navigate for information on the web with the way more traditional readers seek information.

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