Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Gasta Advertising:The new fundamentals of digital engagement

Long, long ago, way back in 2005, engagement was the cause du jour of mediaologists and media metricians.

Enthusiasm for the concept was so great that, for a brief period, agency and marketing personnel had "engagement" added to their titles: Chief Engagement Officer became the new meaning of "CEO."

By April 2006, the Advertising Research Foundation issued its official definition of engagement -- "Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context."

Find that definition unsatisfying? You are called legion, for you are many.

Since then, agencies, advertisers, and research companies have taken stabs at just how to measure engagement.

A new book published this year attempts to lay out not just a definition of engagement as it pertains to the digital space, but how to accomplish it. Written by Leland Harden and Bob Heyman, two of the earliest pioneers in the online advertising space, "Digital Engagement" could be seen as a follow-up and update to their book "Net Results.2," which itself was an update of "Net Results: Web Marketing that Works" -- a book I look to as being the first real textbook on web marketing.

To call "Digital Engagement" a follow-up, however, would be unfair. Instead, it's a whole new "how-to" playbook for planning and measuring online advertising. It also expands its scope, looking beyond banners, keywords, and websites to include examples of virality, mobile marketing, PR, blogging, widgets, social media, affiliate marketing, and more.

In this book, Harden and Heyman are not articulating the principles of what motivates behavior (like Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology") or exploring the philosophy of media and culture (Theodor Adorno's "Culture Industry"). These guys want you to know what others have done, what the outcome was, and how you might go about doing it yourself.

The book is replete with case studies for each tactic they cover. For example, what are the things to consider when optimizing your website?

First, you get a rule: If your site launched more than a year ago, it's time to dust it off and give it a work-over. It might need a lot, it might only need a little. But to find out, read on.

Harden and Heyman give us a list of some analytics tools that make your site optimization job easier. Then there is a list of best practices. Then questions to ask yourself at the outset -- answers that will determine which of those practices are best for you. After that, they provide tactics for communicating with your marketplace about your changes.

Throughout the book are brief descriptions of what some companies are doing with their sites -- good or bad -- and finally, a brief case study (the chapter about making over your site is a case study for Tommy Hilfiger).

The best thing about the book is that there are so many examples of what companies are doing with the full range of digital tools and tactics available to them.

Some of the play-by-play can seem rudimentary at times. The brief review on why online video is important, or the examples of what online video might cost, seem more relevant to an audience reading two or three years ago. But a list of video-sharing sites is a welcome quick review resource. Or a proposed formula for measuring success from TubeMogul, the online video analytics and distribution company, will appeal to quants who are looking for a way to prove the effectiveness of a video campaign.

As a media nerd, something that stood out most was the formula for calculating a total engagement index (TEI), contributed by Eric Peterson of WebAnalyticsDemystified.com. There may be other variables for defining and determining engagement, but this is the first time I've seen anyone use something beyond just, say, time spent, as a method for articulating engagement.

Click depth x Loyalty x Recency x Duration x Interactivity x Subscription / 6 = TEI.

All of these variables have to be assigned by whomever is doing the measuring, which means that the formula can mean whatever you want it to mean. And that means that engagement remains an amorphous designation. But at least it is an attempt at definition and determination that no one else is offering.

Harden and Heyman are offering this and other things they've found in their examination of today's practice of the online advertising discipline.

At the outset, the book participates in some of the usual "traditional-media-is-doomed" predictions common among the digerati's more zealous advocates ("newspapers, magazines, and television went down in flames in 2007").

The biggest problem with books like this, however, is the same thing that afflicts all bound volumes dealing with digital media, marketing, trends, culture, and the rest as their subjects: By the time the information is recorded, edited, re-edited, printed, and bound, the world the text reflects has changed. Certain companies called out as either examples or resources will no longer exist; forecasts for spending or usage are outdated almost as soon as they are released.

But the fundamentals of "how-to" and "what-to-do" put forth in "Digital Engagement" should hold steady long enough to make the book a good guide for the digital marketer starting out today or wishing to make the change from just buying banners and keywords (though there are good suggestions for doing both).

You don't have to read it straight through. The chapters are clearly listed by tactic ("Search Engine Marketing," "Public Relations 2.0"). Go straight to the chapter relevant to what you are considering and review it.

At the beginning of "Ogilvy on Advertising" (still the greatest advertising book ever written), David Ogilvy quotes: "When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks.' But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march against Philip.'"

What this means is that it doesn't matter how much you like the advertising, what matters is that you buy the product. "Digital Engagement" is an excellent lesson plan for getting that done using digital and emerging media.
By Jim Meskauskas
March 31, 2009

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Gasta Tech News: Digital Platform Advertising,Robert Moskowitz part 2.

By Robert Moskowitz part 2.

Another factor may simply be structural. Karna Crawford, EVP, chief media and connections officer at Engauge, a total marketing solutions agency, thinks that: "When you can buy huge scale one time with a quick hit, that's worth a premium. 'American Idol.' 'The Super Bowl.' That's a huge audience available for a finite period of time. Because people are so engaged with the content, the advertising is more likely to be paid attention to. And a lot of products want to advertise there, which also drives up the price. The digital space doesn't command such a premium because your audience has exponentially more opportunity to take control and move away."
Historically, advertisers have been hesitant to push dollars into something new and unproven. "Think of the internet now versus 1995," Crawford says. "Wireless isn't proven in many instances, a lot of advertisers still don't know how to use it, don't feel confident about the expected ROI. So the prices are significantly lower than a video ad on ESPN, which is tried and true. It's the same adoption cycle you'd see for any other product."
The practical value of online advertising is also determined by the needs and strategies of the advertisers. Todd Riley, senior vice president, digital media & integrated strategies at Doner, headquartered in Southfield, Mich., the largest independently-owned advertising agency in the world, points out that, "The real benefit of the online space is the ability to engage, now. For example, a car purchase requires a lot of research. Digital media has the ability to make many relevant connections to content to help the process along. A can of Coke, on the other hand, can be purchased by anyone at anytime, so engagement is nice, but much less important."
Given all this, the inability of online advertising to fully replace the income lost from offline advertising probably reflects that advertisers simply don't perceive it to have an equivalent value.
For one thing, in today's more complex advertising environment, it's more difficult to accurately define and pinpoint ROI. "Is the goal a direct sale," asks Spiegel, "or the overall increase in sales during and after the campaign? I continue to support the idea that different media channels can support different goals/metrics and that a 'one vs. the other' comparison isn't all that useful."
"You're hoping to get different outcomes from the various media," Ellet points out. "It's why you're thinking about one medium versus another. They all relate to an overall objective, but the way you're going to use the media is very different. Online advertising might be about requests for information, driving sales, traffic, and so forth. Offline advertising might be about raising awareness or changing beliefs or attitudes about your product. Every advertise has different priorities; some are all about raising awareness and so are willing to pay more for that outcome."
"CPM is one useful benchmark," says Ben Kunz, director of strategic planning with MediAssociates, a media planning and buying agency, "the other is probably cost per inquiry -- how much do I spend to make my phone ring? The relative value of offline tends to be less in both areas. It's more easily measured, and it's putting a lot of downward pressure on CPMs."
CPMs in a high-end financial magazine might be $60, but advertisers recognize that people don't read every page of the magazine.
On the other hand, says Kunz: "you have to be careful not to take that logic too far. People spend four hours a day watching TV. That's two months per year. Internet gets a lot of buzz, but TV washes over you and you may be exposed to a commercial that you would not click on, on the internet. There is a lot of value in offline media."
"It's not news," Maitra says, "that print is in trouble and readers are migrating online. As a result, we're seeing innovation in terms of what kinds of ads we use, we're looking at better metrics, and we're learning how one medium can amplify another."
Central to success in today's complex advertising environment is an understanding that we live in a very fluid world. People now watch TV while sending emails and tweeting. They read magazines and then go online to check details about what they've read. As a result, there are now very complex relationships across the media types and channels. Advertisers are learning to look for the relative contributions of different media in different campaigns, different situations. For example, a successful TV campaign can lead to a huge jump in the number of online searches for a product or a company name.
"The idea that 'digital's not getting its fair share of the advertising dollars' is bit of a fallacy," Crawford argues. "Advertisers may want digital to be 50 percent of their media mix, but that doesn't mean it has to be 50 percent of their dollar spend. There's too much dialog about the dollars and not enough about the share of the media mix that's going toward digital."
"Obviously, budgets have been cut and cut and cut," Crawford acknowledges, "but media vendors are really hurting for advertiser dollars. So advertisers should start asking for improvements in pricing, interesting pricing models, and set some precedents to build on when the economy gets healthier."
"Marketers need to advertise where their consumers spend their time," says Spiegel. "In time, most, if not all, media channels will become digitized and this comparison will be moot."

Gasta Tech News: Online Media Shift gears up.

By Robert Moskowitz part 1.
March 24, 2009
Consumers of offline media are shifting to online media by the millions. And while advertisers' dollars are following them, publishers have not yet figured out how to generate the same levels of revenue from online advertising as they traditionally have from offline.
According to Michael Hirschorn, for example, writing in the January/February issue of The Atlantic magazine, "Already, most readers of The [New York] Times are consuming it online. The Web site… boasted an impressive 20 million unique users for the month of October… The print product, meanwhile, is sold to a mere million readers a day and dropping….
"The conundrum, of course, is that those 1 million print readers … are worth about five figures a page to advertisers, [and] are far more profitable than the 20 million unique Web users, who… could support only 20 percent of the [newspaper's] current staff…"
A canary in a coal mine, the nation's "paper of record" is thus struggling financially, another victim of an economic atmosphere that grows increasingly unable to keep today's print publications alive.
Since they depend very heavily on such publishers to reach their prospects, it's important for advertisers to understand why access to 20 million online readers yields only 20 percent of the revenue commanded by access to one million print readers.
The commonly held view is that online avails are heavily underpriced, providing extraordinary ROI that is totally unreflected in the rate card.
"While I understand where you are going with this argument," says Matt Spiegel, CEO, Omnicom Media Group Digital, "it isn't that straightforward. First, most of the time, the online and offline versions of the ads are not truly that similar. Second, calculating ROI isn't as simple for traditional channels like print."
Ted Ellet, SVP, group media director, at DraftFCB in New York, an agency offering creative, accountable marketing programs, suggests that, "The reasons why you might be doing something online vs. offline are so different that it's not necessarily fair to compare the ad prices. There are many different possible explanations for why prices might not be equivalent."
"It's not a black and white situation," confirms Seb Maitra, SVP of media, analytics, search, in the Boston office of Hill Holliday, a national communications agency. "If you just compare CPMs for online display ads to TV or radio ads, you can make the argument [about price imbalances] from a CPM standpoint. But look at the content and real estate you get: A 30-second TV spot allows you to tell your story in a much richer way.
"Sure, offline is probably priced on the high side," Maitra acknowledges, "but I wouldn't necessarily say that's true, carte blanche. Think about outdoor ads. Depending on the location, your noticeability, particularly on a highway, is about 2 seconds, which is about the same time span as a display ad on a web page. And the CPMs are also very comparable."
Online ad salespeople talk about engagement, but there's also distraction. A full-page ad or a page-dominant ad grabs a huge amount of mind share. In contrast, a web page contains many distractions: embedded links, active graphics, scrolling text, video, and more. Your online ad fights for attention in ways your offline ad simply does not.
And there are other differences that can justify discrepancies in relative pricing…
A branding ad, for example, doesn't require measuring the number of people who see it. The mere fact that you have a quarter-page ad on the Op/Ed page of Friday's New York Times is huge. It's enough to attract many of the people who are important to you. When advertisers think beyond reach/frequency/eyeballs to focus on their desired outcomes with specific target audiences, the argument that online is so trackable begins to lose force, particularly in light of current cable TV experiments with similarly specific ad targeting. Savvy advertisers know it's more important to figure out the relative contribution of each ad in a series that nudges prospects toward a purchase. Just knowing an ad has been delivered to a computer is a sub-par argument these days.
In addition, there is relatively little competition for specific audiences in the print world. How many other offline availabilities deliver the same audience as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or TV's "The Oprah Winfrey Show"? In the online world, however, there may be literally thousands of websites all delivering the very demographic you seek.

Monday, 23 March 2009

Gasta Opinion: Cheap is top reccession keyword

"Cheap" is not a dirty word
Old school best practices for writing brand marketing copy have included the omission of terms that may reflect poorly on a company, including the term "cheap" to describe a product or service.
But is this practical in the world of SEO? In these seemingly dire economic times, search volume for phrases that include the term "cheap" has spiked. In an iMedia article published last May, Craig Macdonald at Covario cited comScore research (from December 2007) indicating the search phrase "cheap airfare" alone is worth about $8 million.
According to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, the average monthly search volume for the phrase "cheap insurance" typically amounts to 673,000 queries. Last month, the number of queries for this term rocketed to 2.7 million. Likewise, the average monthly search volume for the phrase "cheap car" is traditionally about 1 million queries. Last month, the volume exceeded 3.3 million.
So, as you consider incorporating adjectives such as "affordable," "budget," "inexpensive," "low-cost," and "thrifty" into your SEO strategies, consider this: There is a growing number of brands weaving the keyword "cheap" into their on-page SEO elements. Many are even incorporating this term into their marketing copy
Take a look at some of the brands that are capitalizing on the word "cheap" in their SEO strategies. Could your organization benefit from giving this previously taboo word some renewed consideration?

Friday, 13 March 2009

Surfni Marketing: Googles almighty front page

Belfast online marketing with surfni.com

If every site that was promised to be on the front page of Google results page was actually there it would make the page stretch from here to the moon. No wonder Google itself has a disclaimer on its policy pages that puts distance between it and the exhorbitant claims of all SEO companies.
The fact is search engines are dealing with a massive living organism of data that contains all the emotions, temptations and frustrations of human kind. But Google cannot presume to be godlike in its wisdom and allocation.

Enter small local regional search engines like www.surfni.com
Surfni is so popular in Belfast simply for that reason, that it can offer the advertiser the local market, surfni.com is in the schools, college campus, and workplaces of Belfast, and that is the reason why so many local Belfast advertisers value it so highly.

Thursday, 12 March 2009

Online Marketing in Belfast: Surfni.com

When you want to market online in Belfast, the best place to start is with Gasta.com Most People in Belfast will start an online search campaign with Gasta.com because of its price efficient keywords.
Gasta also owns and controls two very popular websites for West Belfast Surfni.com and Andersonstown.com. As well as this, for Northern Ireland online marketing in general Gasta is the best place to start as they own and control most of the domains for major cities and Key Property websites.
A well established player in European, US, and Asian search, The Gasta.com search engine network currently consists of 450+ Domains, is translated into six languages, offers a contextualised ad system, powerful SEO options, keyword management tools, and full service administration to create, launch, and quickly deploy new search engines in emerging markets and geographical regions as needed.

Gasta has created a very easy to use back-end admin system that is designed for non technical use, within the admin you can add new keywords, manage ad campaigns, replicate advertising codes, and launch new search index's and directories in minutes, Gasta has developed its own text based contextualised ad system, InstantAds™ and the keyword direct hit service SearchMatch™ allowing users to buy targeted keywords for the geographic region they do business in. As well as this there are many seo options including InstantLinks™ the free link exchange system that publishes the main directory.
Gasta Links in Northern Ireland


southbelfast.com

ardglass.com


cathedralquarter.com

derrycity.net

doire.com


eastbelfast.net

andersonstown.net
andytown.com

andytown.net

andytown.org
andytownonline.com



jordanstown.com



Gasta.ie






cathedralquarter.com


eastbelfast.net
glencolin.com


lisburncity.net

lisburnroad.com

maloneroad.com


southbelfast.com

stranmillis.com
westbelfast.com

westbelfast.net

westbelfast.org
westbelfastonline.com
glengormley.net

jordanstown.com
ukproperty.net
penthousebelfast.com

penthousedocklands.com

penthousedublin.com
penthouselondon.com

propertybelfast.com
propertyarmagh.com
dublinproperty.com
andersonstown.com
andersonstown.net
andytown.com
andytown.net
andytown.org
andytownonline.com

aughnacloy.com
baldoyle.com

ballinteer.com

ballyboden.com
ballycastle.net

ballyclare.net

ballyfermot.net
ballygomartin.com

ballykelly.com

ballyhackamore.com
ballymaccaret.com

ballymena.org

ballymun.net
ballymoney.net

ballymurphy.com

ballynafeigh.com
ballynahinch.org

ballysillan.com

banbridge.org
beechmount.com

belfastcitycentre.com

belfastlaganside.com
belfastnireland.com

belfastonline.com

belfastonline.net
belfastproperty.com

belfastwest.com

bellaghy.com
bellvue.net

belvoir.net

bessbrook.net
bogmeadows.com

booterstown.net
botanic.net

botanicavenue.com

boucherroad.com
braniel.com



carnlough.net
carrickfergus.net

carrickmineswoods.com

carryduff.net
castlecourtbelfast.com

castledawson.net

castlederg.org
castlejunction.com

castlereagh.net

castlewellan.net
cathedralquarter.net

cathedralway.com

cavehill.net
chapelizod.net

churchtown.org

clarendondock.com
cliftonville.net

clonard.net

clonskeagh.com
cloona.com

coalisland.net

colerainetown.com
comber.net

cookstown.org

coolnasilla.com


cornmarket.com

craigavad.com
crawfordsburn.com

cregagh.com

cromacwood.com
crumlin.net

cullybackey.com

cultra.net
cushendall.net

cushendun.net

dalkey.org
danesfort.com

dartry.com

dartry.net
deansgrange.net

deramore.com

dermotthill.com
derryvolgie.com

doire.net

dollymount.com
dolphinsbarn.com

donaghadee.net

donnybrook.net
donnycarney.com

downpatrick.net

downtownbelfast.com
draperstown.net

drimnagh.com

dromore.net
duncrue.com
dundonald.net

dungannon.net

dungiven.net
dunlaoghaire.org

dunmurry.net


edenmore.net




finaghy.com

finglas.net

firhouse.net
fivemiletown.net

forestside.com

foxrock.net
foyleside.com

fruithill.net

garvaghy.net
gilnahirk.com

glasnevin.net

glenavy.net
glenbryn.com

glengoland.com

glensofantrim.net
goatstown.com

gortnamona.com

gransha.com
greatvictoriastreet.com

greenisland.net

groomsport.com
hannahstown.com

hawthornglen.com

helensbay.com
highstreetbelfast.com

hillhead.net

howth.net
inchicore.com

irishtown.net

irvinestown.com
islandbridge.net

jordanstown.net

kilbarrack.com
kilbrook.com

kilkeel.net

killester.net
killiney.net

kilmainham.com

kilmore.net
kimmage.com

knockbreda.com

knockdene.com
knocknagoney.com

ladybrook.com

laganside.net
lagansidebelfast.com

laganvalley.com

lagmore.com
lanyonplace.com

lanyonquay.com

lenadoon.com
ligoniel.com

lisburnroad.net

lisnaskea.net
lowerfalls.com

lowerwhack.com

lurgan.net
maghera.net

magherafelt.net

maguiresbridge.com
mallusk.com

malonepark.com

maloneroad.net
markethill.net

merrion.org

merrionsquare.com
milltown.net

monkstown.net

mountmerrion.com
moyard.com

newbarnsley.com

newrycity.net
newtownabbey.net

newtownards.net

newtownardsroad.com
newtownbreda.com

newtownbutler.com

newtownstewart.com
nirelandplc.com

northbelfast.net

northwall.org
oconnellstreet.net

oldpark.net

orchardville.net
ormeau.com

ormeauroad.com

owenvarragh.com
pettigoe.com

stranmillis.com
westbelfast.com

westbelfast.net westbelfast.com

westbelfast.net

westbelfast.org
westbelfastonline.com

westdublin.com