Andrew R H Girdwood

The HTC One's Zoe is ideal for Google's new Auto Awesome

2013-05-16T09:59:00.001+01:00

At Google I/O yesterday Google+ enjoyed a wave of updates. I've always been fond on the network, especially the communities and it feels like Google is making steady progress with the platform. I suspect most people will have the new edition already but, if not, I posted some screenshots of new plus last night.

One of the new features is Auto Awesome. This is an automatic layer to Google+ that improves photos and one of the features is Auto Awesome motion. If Google detects you've uploaded five or more similar photos in a row then it'll (may) animate them.

As it happens, the HTC One has a feature called Zoe which takes a short video/series of still images in an "uber burst". When you have auto sync on then all these images are uploaded from your phone to Google+. It's been a bit quirky until today. Now it has a practical application.

The HTC One's Zoe feature makes it easy to trigger Motion Photos in Google+. There's a sample below... and you'll see it's not quite right.

The car is clearly out of phase. Now, as it happens, the motion photo has been created in the order the pictures were uploaded. This screen grab shows what I mean. So it's not as if the Auto Awesome decided to drive the car in a crazy way. The snafu here seems to be in the order the HTC One with Zoe passed the pictures over to Google+ for automatic uploading.

It's also worth noting that the image is given the file name "IMAG0162_ZOEVIDEO-MOTION.gif".

Screenshots from the new Google+

2013-05-15T20:41:00.000+01:00

I'm in the UK. Returning home tonight I found myself logged out of Google. Annoying when that happens, right? Logging back in I quickly discovered a whole new Google+.

It feels very responsive but the panels fly around somewhat; especially when you start writing a new post.

A key new element seems to be YouTube. That's right, the integration between Google+ and YouTube is even closer now as the smart money had been placed on some time ago.

Reviews, for local, are equally integrated. It feels that Google will sort out EU and US' FTC agreements and work closely to push Local.

Google serves my very own birthday cake doodle

2013-05-10T10:28:00.001+01:00

Ever since Google announced the death of Google Reader my default search engine is Bing. I still use Google, though, I have to; it's work. This means I do see the doodles; just at 10am, rather than 9am.

Today I noticed a new doodle. A lovely birthday cake. I clicked on the doodle (always best practise for work) and wound up on this page. Odd?

Ah-ha! This is my own personal doodle. Google's given me a birthday cake. It's a silly reason to use Google+ but it's a nice way to say thank you for doing so.

I call this: doodle cake.

Why I signed the Modern Marketing Manifesto

2013-05-08T11:21:00.000+01:00

Econsultancy have been working hard to collect, compile, understand and distil all the digital marketing wisdom that passes through their roundtables, events, blog posts and training sessions. The result is the Modern Marketing Manifesto. You should read it. You might even want to sign it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of digital marketing, especially the areas I’m deeply involved in; paid search, natural search, affiliates, display and various “social” media activities. It feels like I’m over due in getting some of these thoughts out of my head and on to paper, PPT or even blog posts. It’s not easy and that’s why I recognise Econsultancy’s success.

In particular I wanted to pull out a few YES, that’s it snippets from the Modern Marketing Manifesto and attach a word or two of my own brain juice.

It is a mindset rather than just an executional approach. If you do not ‘get digital’ then you cannot be a modern marketer.

Very much so. I call this the battle of Product vs Service. I strongly believe that digital marketing is not a product. It’s not defined by the processes and then delivered exclusively through excellent execution. Although excellence is always important.

Digital marketing is a culture.

We believe the internet has forced transparency upon brands and businesses. Brands no longer control the message, consumers do.

The word “story” is powerful but often used incorrectly. Brands can no longer dictate how people should perceive them. Brands determine how people view them, assign attributes to them and react to them by the way brands behave.

We believe technology is an enabler rather than a solution in itself.

And

We believe we need creativity just as much as we need technology.

Digital marketing operates in the digital medium. Technology and creative wonders are important assets. The production and deployment of media assets is no substitute for a media/marketing strategy.

We believe social media is about changing our business culture, the ways we work and the ways we engage with our colleagues and customers. It is about creating businesses that have social in their DNA.

You will not succeed if your business cannot evolve to modern standards.

Agile - we must be responsive and adaptive. We embrace change. We believe in flexibility and iteration.

We must find a balance between speed and risk while recognising that a lack of speed is sometimes a catalyst for greater risk. This means brands need to think about sign-off and approval processes. Agencies need to think twice about ECDs being used to approve tweets.

To see the whole Modern Marketing Manifesto pop over to Econsultancy and you agree with what’s been compiled then consider signing. Stick your neck out.

YouTube hinting at paid channels versus branded, sponsored, content

2013-05-07T16:25:00.000+01:00

We're getting hints that YouTube might introduce paid channels. I'm in two minds about that news; I certainly want access to more legal streaming but YouTube always been so open.

I suspect we'll see a rise of nicely sponsored videos. This week we've already seen IGN Direct sponsor Walk off the Earth's cover of Material Girl. There's also branded content which is exactly the same except the other way around.

For example, this video from Sony is out today and promotes the Xperia Z range. It features the band the Pyyramids, Damian Kulash of OK Go and photography from the Xperia Z smartphone experly handled by Martien Mulder. The piece is called From Under Other Stars.

Disclaimer: client and a LBi production.

WolframAlpha shows Reddit some love; graphing the reddit curve

2013-05-01T18:32:00.000+01:00

The knowledge engine WolframAlpha is pretty clever and full of tricks. Here's one I didn't know about until recently. WolframAlpha will graph the Reddit curve for you.

In other words, the company were Sergey Brin was an intern before launching Google, launched a search engine which draws Reddit logos. That's what what I call a geeky ecosystem.

If you're thinking that shape might have been hard to plot... yes. Yes, it was! Want to see the full formula? You'll need to click to enlarge.

Hating Google is bad for your SEO

2013-05-01T11:33:00.000+01:00

The SEO industry, such as it is, is a creature of fashion. Right now my perception is that it’s a fashionable time to be down on Google.

This is understandable. There are questions around the company’s tax policies. They killed Google Reader. They killed the Google Affiliate Network. They didn’t even try to sell any of those assets.

At the same time SEO is evolving. The number of people who refuse to accept the change to an earned media approach, with links and other signals secured through engagement (be that creative, outreach or a combination of the two) are dropping in number. That doesn’t mean the situation is resentment free. After all, who likes being dragged out of their comfort zone?

I believe a healthy scepticism is best.

Digital marketing professionals – those in and outside of SEO – need to critically analyse anything Google does. It’s right to ask questions like “What’s the motivation behind Enhanced Campaigns?”. SEOs need to avoid being fed lines by any search engine.

That said; hating Google is bad. In fact, hating Google is harmful to your SEO.

Take Google+. The platform was disliked by many SEOs from early on. Sure, some of those SEOs perhaps didn’t want or couldn’t handle yet another social layer. Other SEOs couldn’t see how Google was likely to use Google+ and so overlooked it. Some SEOs decided, as a matter of principle, not to engage with it. Some didn’t want Google to succeed in “social”.

I believe that was a mistake. The concept of authorship is now established and even if Google are coy, suggesting no advantage in SERPs, for now it’s hard to imagine there’s no signal to be found in the quality of the author. Those SEOs without Google+ experience are at a disadvantage to those SEOs with it. Brands without Google+ success are at a disadvantage to those who have found it.

In this scenario it’s clear to say that disliking Google so much as to avoid Google+ was a tactical mistake.

Equally, if you can’t imagine what Google might do to improve the quality of the search results (perhaps you can only imagine what Google will do to improve income) puts you at a disadvantage at future proofing your SEO strategies.

SEOs must be interested and excited by Google. They must maintain the passion to try out Google’s new initiatives and inventions. SEO must also keep their eyes open. Failure to do so; either by design or by chance, reduces their effectiveness as a digital marketing professional.

Image credit: Mean Old Goat by Eirewolf Creations at Etsy.

An eye on ionSearch 2013

2013-04-26T13:29:00.001+01:00

I was at the first ionSearch last year when it was a one day event and the chat was how SEO had evolved from the mathematics of building links to the strategy of earning trusted links.

This year ionSearch was much bigger. It was a two day event, had tools and technology from around the world, sessions and panels on SEO and PPC. I was lucky enough to feature on three panels; Affiliates and Search, Local Search and Big Brand Search. You can see my Tweet coverage here.

The big talking about this year was around the role of Creative and Outreach. What matters most in a successful SEO campaign? We had PR agencies (partnered with SEO agencies) get up on stage and argue it was the content, creative idea and execution that mattered the most. We had content marketing agencies that got up on stage and argued that it was the outreach that mattered most.

I asked the question to the final panel; “If you had £10,000 to spend would you split it £2k on creative and £8k on outreach or £8k on creative and £2k on outreach?” The final answer? Andy Atkins-Krüger, the moderator cheated a little (okay, a lot) by saying he would spend £6 on research and then £2k on each of creative and outreach.

The point there is that the creative idea absolutely has to tie into the audiences you intend to outreach too. The audiences you outreach to absolutely have to have some investment in the idea or message you are bringing to them.

It’s hard to imagine a Search conference of 2006 would have this sort of discussion. A few years ago the mantra “a link is a link” might have been heard. This year we had that expression denounced and trounced.

SEO has changed.

In fact, outside the official sessions there was chat on the name “SEO”. Does it still apply? People gossiped over whether – when – brands like SEOMoz or SEOGadget would rebrand. Andrew Dumont from SEOMoz did hint at a secret project but wouldn’t be drawn on branding. The secret project? Likely to be another technical innovation from the Mozzers.

Of the three sessions I spoke in it may have been the last one (and the 9am on day 2) panel that I enjoyed the most. This was a return to Local Search.

I got to speculate on the impact of the FTC ruling in the States (no scraping Yelp) combined with the fresh EU ruling (highlight your own results). I think the two may combine so that Google needs to collect data into their own system (to remove the need to take/index/crawl others) and then are told to prominently highlight those results if/when they appear in search results! I ask you; does that sound like a terrible thing for Google?

The audience in the session didn’t think so and my fellow panellists (Aleyda Solis of Seer Interactive and Daniel Bianchini of SEOptimise) kindly agreed with my suggestion that G+ Local was an “in it to win it” for a quick win local strategy. We all agreed that bigger brands needed a broader approach for the long term.

Next year? Already looking forward to it.

Nuance Voice ads in action

2013-04-12T14:22:00.003+01:00

Nuance, the voice company that may behind (or helping with) Apple and Siri and who own the smartphone keyboard solution Swype have a new product out. It's a voice ad for smartphones.

Hard to imagine? The idea is that you can have mini conversations with a brand. Given that the tech is smart enough to understand a little of the conversation then some simple rules can be applied to help the encounter seem fun and realistic. After all, Siri knows what you're trying to do - to an extent - so why not put an ad message on at the end.

Here's an example.

A dark future for QR codes, AR and graffiti hacking

2013-04-11T17:19:00.000+01:00

This is a work of fiction but an interesting one for digital marketing nevertheless.

Is this a prediction? Does a future where cyber glasses are common also hold for QR codes and augmented reality?

The Paintwork Project is a work by Tim Maughan.

Feedly, the Google Reader alternative, adds Amazon affiliate ads

2013-04-08T11:59:00.001+01:00

This is not a bad thing. In fact, I find it reassuring to see that Feedly.com is looking to make some money. Feedly has rocketed up in usage and awareness ever since Google Reader announced it would die.

Whereas exploding user numbers is great – there’s a challenge. How to stay up? How to stay alive? Simply put; Feedly needs to make some money.

The route that the service has chosen (or is exploring) is a good first stop for any internet presence. They’ve turned to affiliate marketing and hope to earn commission through recommended product suggestions that lead to sales. This makes sense for Feedly because they should know what their users like. It’s also a good first step as it doesn’t require any fancy deals with ad networks.

Feedly have previously hinted that they may explore a freemium model. I suppose I might pay. I’d need to see what extra services they would add and I do wonder whether any of them would be worth the upgrade.

Brin: Glass fits with Google's plan to ditch traditional search

2013-03-25T14:25:00.000Z

Lots of interesting subjects in this short video about Project Glass. Want to hear the Glasses better? Cover your ear as the glasses project sound into your bones.

Brin makes the point of saying that the glasses help do away with search queries in the traditional sense. There's even a shoutout to Blackberry.

Google's autocomplete suggestions get stranger and stranger

2013-03-18T16:32:00.001Z

It's amazing what people discover Google's algorithm suggesting. In the case of autocomplete the search box tries to work out what you might be searching for in advance and gives you a few suggestions.

Imagine your surprise if two out of the four suggestions for [my cat is] suggests you may be the father of kittens.

It's most likely that the search is due to people looking for this Yahoo! Answers question in which someone actually asks whether they could have got their cat pregnant. Yahoo! Answers is the home to so many dumb questions it can be hard to sort the really odd questions from planted fake questions.

Bing complies with the ePrivacy directive - Bing UK cookie policy

2013-03-15T20:02:00.001Z

I've been making the effort to use Bing. Why? It's worth keeping up with alternatives and I was inspired to look around for Google alternatives after the sad decision to drop Google Reader.

Actually, I do check into Bing now and then and so I think this banner across the top of the search engine is fairly new. This is Microsoft's effort to stay compliant with the much lambasted ePrivacy Directive. In theory you're supposed to get opt-in permission but that's a nightmare and not even governments do it.

The link goes to this policy page which is pretty well designed, I think. Making Bing/Microsoft's policies pretty clear and easy to find.

The case for animated GIFs in Facebook's news feed

2013-03-08T15:16:00.001Z

Right now Facebook does not do animated GIFs but it could and perhaps it should.

If you are old enough you will easily recall a time when animated GIFS were horribly but quite correctly mocked. They were awful. They choked modems and were never worth the wait.

Technology progressed; access speeds got faster and new generations, people who had never seen the primitive animated solar flares ruin an otherwise good logo, took to the web.

When Google+ launched and people released you could share animated GIFs there was madness. People shared all sorts of rubbish. The insanity lasted for a fortnight or so and then calmed down. Now, for the most part, animated GIFs shared on Google+ are worthy of your attention. If someone keeps on sharing rubbish; they’re uncircled.

Let’s not forget Tumblr. This is the platform that resurrected animated GIFs in the first place. This is that platform that the Google+ users found their animations during the madness fortnight. Tumblr is fun, friendly and full of the next digital generation.

The thing about animated GIFs is that, when done right, they tell a better story than a static image. The animation can be subtle or dramatic but the motion adds elements of surprise, reveal and reaction.

What about Facebook? Facebook is a rule to itself. It is not the community of artistic digital natives like Tumblr. Nor is it largely populated by people savvy enough to get value from Google+. If animated GIFs come to Facebook then motion madness will last far longer than it did on Google+

Some people will hate it. Some people will threaten to quit Facebook over the horror of animated GIFs. Guess what? Most won’t. Facebook is used to it.

If Facebook is to move towards the content marketing end of the social media spectrum, away from the noisy updates of micro-actions (they’re safe elsewhere in the new system), then surely it needs to accept this powerful and visual means of communication.

Buzzfeed accepts animated GIFs and look at how well Buzzfeed is doing. What Buzzfeed does with animated GIFs is to keep them static at first and provide a play button. Users can play the GIF if they want.
Perhaps this is the route Facebook should take. Allow animated GIFs but keep them gated. This will open up news feed to more possibilities, help brand with their marketing and users with their creativity while keeping any dizzying animation safely behind a play button.

Layar creates AR QR codes

2013-03-05T14:47:00.000Z

QR codes boomed in Japan and struggled everywhere else. I like the idea - don't fiddle; just point your cameraphone at something and collect the information you need.

There are challenges though. The general public needs to be educated on the concept. Not all posters and ads can be featured where there's wi-fi signal. QR codes on TV ads are awkward and have to linger long enough to be scanned.

It's no surprise that people started to predict QR codes would simply get skipped. Samrtphones would, instead, recognise the actual object they were looking at and then react to that. No need for a code.

That's AR rather than QR. In the AR space Layar are one of their major players. It's interesting to see that not only have Layar added QR codes to their latest app but they've given them a new AR twist. That's right AR QRs.

Firefox's attack on cookies could boost affiliate and performance marketing

2013-03-04T15:36:00.000Z

Version 22 of Firework will, like Safari, block third party cookies.

This means that ad servers will not be able to use cookies to count impressions for frequency caps or try and target an audience who might actually be interested in the offer. It may be a setback for some of the Display industry but it is a step forward for the privacy advocates.

Jonathan Mayer, a strong voice in the privacy camp, discussed the details in a blog post about it. It’s a helpful post because it helps align Firefox between IE, Chrome and Safari in how the browsers treat cookies.

Mayer wrote patch that will make this change happen.

It’s worth noting that the change does not just target Display ad cookies. All third party cookies will be effected; analytics and social plugins too.

A third party cookie is one that’s being set from a website other than one you’ve actually visited. For example, you might be on displayurl.com while example.com/tracking/ is trying to download a cookie. With Safari and Firefox 22 example.com will have no luck.

The big catch is that if you’ve been to example.com and are okay with its cookies then it’ll not count as a third party cookie.

The Display industry knows that just counting impressions isn’t the metric they’d like. More meaningful analytics can be found by trying to work out viewable impressions (ie, did the web page visitor actually see the banner) and then whether or not, sometime later, that same person transacted or visited the advertiser’s site. Display accountability means being cleverer with cookies.

The affiliate industry is in a different situation. Yes, it makes sense to look at the impact of post impressions for affiliates and the value of data generated by the performance industry. However, the core proposition is that affiliates get paid on an action.

Affiliate tracking kicks in, generally, on a click. A web site visitor clicks on the affiliate link, quickly passes through the affiliate tracking site and onto the merchant. This means, of course, that the affiliate tracking cookie is dropped as a first party cookie.

As affiliates aren’t generally selling impressions, not even clever audience targeted real-time-bid impressions, the fact that cookies can’t be dropped to accompany the displaying of an ad unit is less of a bother.

Okay, yes, some click and reveal tactics used by voucher code sites will be hit. That’s a pretty big chunk of the affiliate pie.

The privacy debate is on-going but the trend seems to be very much in favour of blocking insight, in favour of privacy concerns, at the cost of advertiser information. This may mean less well targeted ads but that’s hardly an argument to use against the privacy crowd; they seem to want it.

As the debate rolls forward and efforts like Mozilla’s third party cookie block continue to hatch it seems likely to be that advertisers will want to ensure as much of their spend is accountable as possible. If affiliate tracking counts as safe – after all, it only pays when it tracks – then surely privacy advances will only make performance marketing all the more attractive.

The Oreo seperator machine and post-TV content

2013-02-27T14:36:00.000Z

"I didn't get to see my dog for hours. There were a lot of sacrifices."

It's not just the dead pan delivery of this that gets my attention but the fact the video comes from Oreo itself. This is what video marketing has become. Call it viral if you will. Call it post-TV and you might be more in-line with my thoughts. Content marketing? That too. Social? Yes, of course.

What we have here is another example of a brand cleverly working out how to target a particular audience and doing so even if that means stepping back on the chest thumping ads for the product.

Google automatically kills AVG Safe Search

2013-02-22T06:54:00.000Z

I can't imagine that the guys at AVG will be over the moon with joy about this but Google's now automatically switching off the AVG Safe Search extension.

The Chrome extension plants little green ticks into the SERPs. The goal is to let you, the searcher, know that it's safe to click on any given result. Google's switched off the extension, while allowing you to override their decision and turn it back on, because it slows down the page load times.

Of course, Google works pretty hard to ensure that all its results are virus free in the first place. In fact, Chrome's a very good browser at keeping when it comes to keeping you safe and secure.

The between the lines message is clear - Google doesn't seem to think you need AVG Safe Search.

More than 60 insights and ideas from SES London, day 3

2013-02-21T16:10:00.000Z

Day 3 is a shorter day, being the last, on the SES London schedule. Today's "more than 60" count includes my own presentation, which is a bit of cheat and therefore effective, but the bullet point format seems to be working.

I like the Google+ integration with Blogger. It feels right being able to tag speakers directly in posts. However, I've two Google+ profiles; one associated with an old work email address that's just there to admin Pages and my real profile. This is a confusion. I've not liked it when speakers have had more than one G+ profile so I'll investigate how I can delete one of mine (and see what happens to the Pages attached).

Optimising Humans! The Art of Data-Driven Social Marketing
From +Marty Weintraub

aimClear survey suggested many Community Managers do not engage in Outreach and Recruitment.
Map keywords to conversations and users - but the social platforms don't make this easy.
Hootsuite has a pretty good search functionality
Make use of Chrome's translation tool, RSS and Outlook alerts and you can have a better social media monitoring tool than those you pay for.
It costs more to serve Page Post ads to your own fans than it does to non-fans, says Marty
Target your blog posts to reporters and journalists with paid Facebook ads
Targeting people on dislikes can be as effective as targeting people on likes
Use Facebook's ad builder to study your own Page fans.
Marty believes some social targeting is at risk - laws and regulation will take it away
Don't be a creep. Social makes it very easy for marketers to be a creep.

Living in a "Smart" World - How Mobile and Tablets and Shifting User Behaviour
From Mark Brill

Every second 8.1 Android devices are sold, 4.6 iOS devices sold and 4.2 babies born.
50% of people who engaged in mobile search looked for offers and deals
BestBuy have suffered from people comparing prices in-store with their mobile - now started price matching on a list of approved retailers
In Tesco's F&F QR code test - people would pick up tablets to buy a product but they didn't understand the QR code tickets and would tear them off to hand to shop assistants
54% of Facebook users access from mobile (from IPO documents)
92% of mobile YouTube users share clips with others (Ondevice Research, 2012)
Instagram is growing because people find taking photographers easier than typing
80% of brand apps are downloaded less than 1,000 times
Google say that 50% of all mobile searches have local intent

From Sri Sharma

Google saw that over 90% of tablet use was from the home (which was included in the justification of treating them like desktops and Enhanced Campaigns in AdWords)
Mobile data usage: up 3x year on year
Mobile searching is up: 130% year in year
Search advertising is up 205% year on year
Display advertising up 95% year on year
Mobile sites still <50%
Skin clinics, with a poor mobile site, blocked mobile access and drove click to call instead: leads increased x26 and conversion rate x2.2.
Papa Johns lives in a world where discounts rule but damage the profits of franchises so used mobile to communicate with people when price/discount wasn't the primary consideration; when they were hungry.
Express relevancy to improve traffic and conversion rates (Singapore Airlines saw +20% CTR)
Drive brand awareness cost effectively using mobile generics (much cheaper on mobile; can then boost brand search)
Develop your own best practice for Enhanced Campaigns

The RTB Opportunity for Online Marketers: Truths & Myths

From +Dax Hamman

RTB is a Search Marketer's bridge in to large Display budgets
Media has become auction based
There is an artificial high in using data in RTB - good creative and context still matter
By 2015 RTB will be 50% of all bought Display impressions (US centric data - which didn't know about Facebook's ad exchange)
There are lots of DSPs but perhaps only a dozen with true scale and reach
Progammatic marketing makes big data actionable
RTB on physical displays (billboards, taxi, etc) and radio are coming
VTA (view-through attribution) should be the way Display is measured, says Dax

From +Laurent Boninfante

10% of the UK have Facebook pages for their pets (Telegraph stat)
Facebook on its own is bigger than all the other ad networks put together
15% of people on Facebook see ad in the first 5 minutes
Truth: FBX has the cheapest CPMs ever seen
Myth: FBX has high CTR
Myth: FBX has high conversion rates
It's really worth investing in segmentation on FBX

Using RTB to Drive Customer Acquisition & Revenue
From Martin Brown

RTB is re-engineering marketing but its not ripping up the rule book
We're moving from static data to dynamic data; the key is making data actionable
RTB shift for an online software vendor - 60% increase in sales & 36% reduction in costs
Technology can improve customer acquisition and engagement
Martin believes that anyone in digital marketing could use a DSP and this is partly due to ad exchanges growing beyond "remnant inventory" to premium.

From +Andy Mihalop

MoneySupermarket use a large in-house team to keep their data and IP in-house (and away from agencies)
Experienced PPC managers will quickly feel at home with a DSP
MoneySupermarket's business model relies on them being able to generate leads more cheaply than their banking and financial services clients; hence the interest in RTB
DMPs are essential; they're the technology that allows you to get your data correctly segmented
MoneySupermarket studied the 3rd party tags on their site that allowed their data to leak to ad networks.
Brand RTB Foundations: Biddable Media Optimisers (such as evolved PPC managers) + Data (the big challenge; collecting data and populating the DMP) + Media Systems (DoubleClick, Abode or specialists) + Attribution
Brand RTB In-House team structure: Biddable Media Optimisers + Media Systems Team + Data Scientists + BTD Sales & Support (Brand Trading Desk)
MSM Brand Trading Desk provides exclusive access to customers for their financial partners (ie, an insurance partner can have exclusive access to an audience segment for a period of time on their own site and other sites). Traffic comes to MoneySuperMarket.
MSM use BlueKai for DMP, MediaMath for DSP and DoubleClick, OpenX, RightMedia for ad exchanges and Rubicon for SSP and ad serving. Finally, the use adometry for attribution and reporting.
MSM trading desk could serve a quote in an insurance ad based on what they know about the target customer
Data ownership is key, believes MoneySuperMarket, so have your own platform.
IT teams are not well positioned to support digital marketing and RTB technology
Speed matters
Use the specialists you have - for example, search specialists are very comfortable with data.

Local & Social: Maximising Visibility

Local & Social: Maximising Visibility from Andrew Girdwood

More than 60 lessons and learnings from SES London, day 2

2013-02-20T17:20:00.002Z

This is my little round-up of the second day, mid-way through, SES London. This format rather favours presentations that deliver lots of little chunks of information but it does allow me to cover the whole search (and social, they say) conference in a single post.

I rather like the Google+ integration but please be aware that some profiles are not always up to date.

The keynote speaker today changed from Dara Nasr to Oliver Snoddy due to illness.

Maximising Realtime Marketing Opportunities
From +Oliver Snoddy

There are 1 billion Tweets every 2.5 days.
First tweet from the London helicopter crashn came in at 8.03 AM - with a picture. The second, with a picture, came in at 8.05 AM Eight minutes later BBC 5 Live had the first "media" tweet. 8:17 AM the BBC wrote the first official story.
The Department of Health recognized the #wenurse hashtag community on Twitter as an influence on policy making.
Twitter has 10m active users in the UK, 200m globally.
In the UK 80% Twitter users access via mobile. In the US that's around 55%.
There are some UK TV programs for which 75% to 80% of Tweets come from mobile devices.
95% of online public conversations are on Twitter, 60% of UK Twitter users use Twitter while watching TV and 40% of all Twitter traffic peak time is about TV (Source: SecondSync & Crimson Hexagon).
The value of conversations overtakes the value of the individual when its heard by a large audience

Analyse the Searcher Workflow from Intent through Engagement to Conversion
From +Jon Quinton

Begin by identifying the needs and intent of your audience
Find what people are asking for by researching Q&A sites (you can use Google Docs and xPath to automate and scale)
Measure multiple goals for your content
Monitor support tickets and customer feedback for sentiment

From +Crispin Sheridan

SAP has an annual revenue of €16.22 bn; central SEO team and PPC budget and their customers produce 72% of the world's beer.
Think about the "levers" you can control to improve the searcher experience; Title, URL, Snippet/Copy, site links, microformats and rich media, natural and paid search interplay, rank, etc.
Awareness -> Interest -> Consideration -> Purchase -> Retention -> Awareness
Don't let brand terminology determine content/keywords; use the terms searchers are using
SAP saw a 31.5% improvement in conversions from one page by changing a picture; making it more relevant to the searcher's intent.
SAP have lost about 27% of their natural search keywords to (not found) which makes understanding searcher intent more challenging.

Content-Driven SEO on a Shoestring

From +simon penson

What is content marketing? Lots of debate but what about "create targeted audiences of value with content"
You need both left brain and right brain people for content marketing; technical/analysts/seos as well as creative/copy
Create a process to ensure your technical/seo people get what they need from your creative/copy people.
Work through a magazine (some paper device) and understand their layout techniques, create your own "flatplan"
Create personas and plan for each type.
Ensure "creative" covers off every touch point; on-page, off-page and social.
Recommends Keyhole to find influencers and Buzzstream to organise
Use CognitiveSEO to find backlink data
Use Crawlytics to find most shared content
Use long term personas to build relationships
Always consider content amplification; even paid for stuff

From Catherine Toole

To be a successful publisher you need to embrace something of what publishing is about
Dell improved customer satisfaction by 10% by reorganising content
Get content ideas by collecting call centre feeedback
Sometimes anecdotal evidence is lost in the analytics
Editorial ideas can be found in both negative and positive reviews
Journalists are lazy, says the ex-journalist, they want 5 things out of any interview
Catherine suggests that if you're not an authority on a subject then don't write on that subject

Activating the Social-Search Dynamic
From +Bas van den Beld

The reason behind Google+ is to collect our trust data.
Google Now is a good example of serendipity
There are two types of authority; people around us and people we look up to
The rel=author relationship will be really important. It lends credibility to the search result.
It's too easy to game Klout. Stop looking at it.

From Nick Beck

Is this right; "Social search is the increased connection and overlap between searchengines and social networks and the behaviours that their users share"? The big players can't seem the agree - Facebook has a very different approach from Bing, from Google, from LinkedIn, etc
Google wants to show timely news - so consider newjacking (and is it social search)
Use Facebook Notes to rank quickly and well.
Content is king for SEO. Conversation is king for Social.
Authority is queen for SEO. Influence is queen for Social

Social Media, Meet ROI: The Secrets to Social Commerce
From +Krista LaRiviere

People are willing to invest in social - even without ROI
Donaldson Brown credited with the first mention ROI in 1920. He worked for Dupont.
Brown used his ROI studies to compare dynamite to dye.
"Return on Impact" - Krista's method for understanding the value of Social
LaRiviere believes you can't do SEO without Social and Content; all three go together
gShift use unique short URLs to help track the spread of content across social; used in conjunction with tracking code on site/landing page.

From +Aaron Kahlow

The big three trends in 2013; Facebook, Video and Mobile
Facebook is responsible for 1 in every 5 page views
71% of all internet users have made use of online video
By 2014 mobile use will over take desktop use
How it works: Fan Reach + Engagement + Amplification
0.1% CTR for Display v 1% for Facebook
Cisco.com's users are twice as likely to engage on a page when it has video. They are 41% more likely to return to Cisco.com.
People are 10 times more likely to share video on Facebook or Twitter (source: Unruly)
Tech-related videos are not restricted to work days; 27% of such videos are watched before office hours.

More than 60 tips and takeaways from SES London, day 1

2013-02-19T16:33:00.001Z

This year I thought I'd try sharing my tips and takeaways from the sessions I manage to attend at SES London.

Sometimes the value in conferences comes from those moments of insight and wisdom that pepper the presentations rather than the presentation in its entirety. Of course, this doesn't mean the best presentations are the ones that produced the most bullet points. Some presentations just lend themselves more to sound bytes.

Beyond Engagement: Harnessing the Power of Social Media
From +Krista Neher

Have a plan for Engagement.. Success is finding the intersection between business value and social traction. Social traction can be found without influencing sales at all and that’s not a success.
Engagement has brand value.
Architect interactions and sharing into content.
Try to create social proof - it has a multiplier effect.
Facebook’s Graph Search makes engagement even more important.
Target found that exposure to earned media on Facebook drove a 21% life in online and offline purchases.
MarketForce study; 80% are more likely to try new things based on friends’ suggestions.

From +Heather Healy

Four keys to successful engagement

- Know what they want (how do you want us to interact with you?)
- Plan ahead (but be spontaneous too and expect the unexpected)
- Show real passion (and showcase other people’s passion)
- Give them sparkle

Use Hitwise to see the sites people visit before and after your site in order to determine what your customers might want.

Creative Content Marketing: Winning Hearts, Minds & Wallets
From +Lee Odden

+Econsultancy survey:

70% would increase content marketing in 2013
99% will maintain or increase content marketing in 2013

Content Marketing Myth 1: Content marketing simply means creating more content
Content Marketing Myth 2: Quality content is not sustainable
Content Marketing Myth 3: A content object only has one life
When your content is good enough you have the option of running ads on it
The optimise 360 model: attract -> engage -> convert
Visualise trends with wordle.net

- Your own site
- Frontline staff
- Become a publisher
- Customer journey

Contenting marketing isn’t throwing out a bunch of blog posts each month; it’s architecting a story and narrative
Use a hub and spoke model; the “content object” is the hub and the social networks are the spokes.
Have a community in place before you need it

All content must consider

- Findability
- Engagement
- Shareability

To stand out to customers and above the competition, brands must take a leadership position with their content marketing.

The Age of Big Data: The Modern Marketer
From +Experian Hitwise

There are 15 petabytes created every day. That’s about 200 years of HD video created every day.
Experian knows 500 things about 49 million people across 24 million households
Onesies were the most searched for product this Christmas. Giraffe was the most popular. 12% of searches for "male Onesies"
Searches for contact lenses spike in October; because of Halloween
Family travellers more likely to search for Dr Who

From +Jon Myers

Marin Software has 3.96 billion keywords managed daily (42,000,000 operations per second, 182 TB of data managed)
1 in 3 clicks in US paid search will be mobile
1 in 3 searches will have local intent
Google estimated mobile revenue for 2016 will be $20.7 billion (Cowen and Company)
Marin’s stats suggest tablet CPC £0.28 vs desktop £0.30

How to Earn Visibility & Links Through Killer Content Strategy
From +Kevin Gibbons

Google knows what a good search bounce rate looks like
Google looks at multiple signals; data they didn't have years ago
A big signal is the writer's authority and influence
Clients have seen uplift in non-brand search after a TV campaign
Searchmetrics survey shows strong correlation between Facebook shares at ranking factors in the UK
One link is now longer bad but the client re-education process is really hard.
SEO strategy is more important than ever. Content marketing alone might not benefit the SEO.
Give people a reason to talk/share/link
Be agile
For outreach results you need an audience
Send Google brand signals they can't ignore

From +Max Brockbank

Trust is the new black; one of the reasons rel=author is important
Write from your audience (one of many tips learned from newspapers)
Each new link from the same domain is 1/7th as powerful as the one before

SES London: Shifts in the Digital Revolution

2013-02-19T11:50:00.000Z

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer, Bing UK at Microsoft, had the morning keynote at SES London. There’s a great rule this year; must be new material. Of course, Bing’s vision of the future hasn’t changed just to suit the conferences need to reduce churn so I had heard Dave’s points before but this time was able to enjoy them from a different angle.

Bing likes to talk about the web of the world. This is about integrating insight from people, places and things. It’s about being helpful.

As you might expect from a Microsoft presentation there’s the usual bash at keyboards being ancient (look to the Kinect as an alternative, especially with growing rumours on how it’ll be tightly bound with the xbox 3) and how smart phones aren’t actually smart. After all, Microsoft really are well placed to do well with some fundamental digital shifts, especially in the battle for the living room, and they’d be daft not to be thinking about what the future will look like.

It was possible to take a message from Coplin’s vision that marketers and brands need to think about “the human”. More than once Dave asked why a busy person, on the move, would want to interact with your brand and suggested that they certainly wouldn’t want to experience a mobile screen scrape of your site.

In privacy the message was the same; the value transaction of collecting user data must be made explicit. People need to understand what they’ll get in exchange for providing personal information.

I’m not sure brands have forgotten “the human”, though. I can’t imagine any marketing department with a plan that ignores customers or any marketer who is completely unaware that their customers are people.

I think what’s missing is the ability to connect with people or understand what real people actually want and are doing. That’s not so much a problem with brands but with analytics and insights suppliers - including Microsoft.

Data is everywhere but it’s disconnected and messy. There’s no easy way to discover that x% of people on your site are there just to DM a URL to their partner. That data could be surfaced, if Microsoft or Apple took sweeping measures, but there would be the expected privacy backlash.

It seems to me that “don’t forget the human” is an appropriate message but it’s not much more than a common sense steer for brands but a fundamental challenge for technology suppliers in the digital marketing world.

Malware attack takes OpenX OnRamp offline and raises concerns for the future

2013-02-10T15:38:00.000Z

I really like OpenX and have recommended the ad platform for years. I'm frustrated with OpenX today, though, for distributing malware, disabling all my ads and remaining quite about it.

Despite trying to attack my precious blog community with a virus and costing me money by killing the ad serving, OpenX are doing the right thing. The frustration comes from a lack of communication and a worry that the future of their self service OnRamp system is in doubt.

OpenX are doing the right thing because if your ad delivery system becomes a malware delivery system you have to shut it down.

OnRamp is a system which allows webmasters, bloggers running quality but niche sites, all the way up to businesses to manage their ad deployment. With OpenX site owners can target different geographical regions with different ads, produce automated reports for ad buyers, set frequently caps and otherwise run a professional ad funded site. This is all free.

Until this month OpenX had a number of ways to make money from this free service.

The first revenue model was OnRamp's integration with the OpenX market. This allowed site owners to set a pricing structure that let bidders come in, offer a high enough CPM and display their ads instead of the sites house ads. OpenX is part of the RTB and ad exchange world.

I found OpenX especially useful for the bloggers. Bloggers could produce house ads (such as follow me on Twitter badges) or, better still, drop in affiliate placements as default and then enjoy the natural evolution towards CPM as and when their blog grew.

This worked well for advertisers too because it was a scalable and cost effective way of advertising across lots of relatively small but high quality sites.

OpenX will change this set up this month. OnRamp users will no longer automatically be part of of the Marketplace. As an OnRamp user I know this is happening but I can't tell you why.

There are still ways in which OpenX can find value in running a free service like OnRamp without the market place.

The Ad Exchange could, should, be using the tech of their free ad delivery service to cookie drop and collect data. This is exactly the sort of data that will greatly improve their other services.

OpenX have significant market share in this area. I've twice been approached by their sales team to see whether my impressions total was far off the requirements for their managed, meatier, service. In other words, OnRamp allows OpenX to scoop up young and growing sites and gives the ad platform early access to these success stories.

The question is, of course, whether the benefits of running OnRamp for free outweighs the costs if OnRamp becomes the target of malware vendors.

It may well be that ring fencing the market place means OpenX can take a more robust approach to weeding out malicious ads, the usual tactic to trick a large ad network into distributing malware. That maybe so but this weekend's outage doesn't feel like a case of a few bad ads because the whole platform has been offline for a day.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. OpenX competitors will be watching too.

Update: Oh dear, doesn't look good. A 4am update on the forums from OpenX;

OpenX’s security team is committed to the security of our services. OpenX OnRamp is a no-cost SaaS service based on our open source ad serving product (unlike our other enterprise grade offerings which run on a separate code base), which we have run as a free service to the community.

OnRamp has been the subject of escalating hacker activity in recent months, culminating in a serious attack that occurred Saturday, February 9, 2013. We have made the difficult decision to suspend the OnRamp service to protect our customers as we investigate the breach further and assess the ability of the OnRamp service to withstand future threats. At this time, we cannot predict when, or whether, the OnRamp system will be operational again.

We will post additional information in this forum as it is available. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused. Other OpenX services, including OpenX Enterprise and OpenX Market, continue to operate normally.

Google launch "Find your way to Oz"

2013-02-07T15:12:00.002Z

If you pop into Google.co.uk you'll notice a link for "Find your way to Oz". This is a Chrome extension that acts as an interactive journey.

It's all about Sam Raimi's feature film "Oz The Great and Powerful" but is it an ad? Google says it's an inspired by the Disney film.

I think this is an ad - one for Chrome.