TruEffect Blog

Social Media. Hip or Hype?

I don't know what's worse – marketers and advertisers being infatuated with the social media frenzy, or the fact that an application as ugly as MySpace has led the way. I know, I know... I'm not being "with it." But every week I research news and trends for articles on internet Display or Search advertising, and all I find are articles about Social Networking.   

In today's MediaPost article "Social Marketing Limited by Advertiser Confusion"  Mark Walsh sites a recent JupiterResearch study that says actual advertising spend on social media has not "caught up with hype surrounding the emerging category."  I'm not surprised.

As an online marketer, I know we like to jump on the latest trends and technology, in a constant search for that silver bullet – the answer to our ROI dreams. But putting all our eggs in this basket is like taking the "blue pill" – we wake up, and believe whatever we want to believe. (Of COURSE the future of online marketing is social media – even though research points to the fact that, increasingly, people don't want to be advertised to. But let's go invade the sanctity of their private MySpace and Facebook pages anyway.) 

How about we take the "red pill" and find out just how deep the rabbit hole really goes? What do consumers really want? What products are they interested in? Are they already my customer, or am I talking to a prospect? While entire companies are rising out of social media advertising, like Umbria whose product claims to gauge a people's demographics by which words they use when writing, how are we really using this technology? And, is it more important than improving our Display and Search campaigns? Jupiter reported that half of advertisers are spending less than 5% on social media. This, coupled with mixed reports this year on the declining usage of Facebook and MySpace might cast aspersions on this popular new kid. If nothing else, we certainly know that audiences are fickle, and social networking requires a substantial investment of time.

Oh wait. I just received an invitation from the AMA for a webcast on "Building Corporate Social Networks." It promises to help me, "Connect to customers in new ways, stimulate interest in my company’s brand, empower customers to become brand advocates, and deliver interactive services to my customers."  Better go sign up right now, wouldn't want to miss anything important. 

– Layne Salter

The Future of advertising, or how to micro-target thousands of creatives without really trying

You might remember Tom Cruise's character in the movie Minority Report as he tries to evade capture, only to be thwarted by targeted advertising – "John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right about now." This wasn't just a figment of Philip K. Dick's brain on drugs, but actually a vision grown out of an MIT think tank that director, Steven Spielberg, asked to imagine what the world would be like in 2054. Privacy issues notwithstanding (no, you may not scan my retina thank you very much), a brave new world, of sorts, is definitely at hand and it's bringing an infinite bag of challenges with it.

OK, so you're probably asking yourself, "How can I execute hundreds or thousands of personalized creative when my current resources can barely handle multivariate testing?" I'm glad you asked.

Recently, Qmecom have joined forces to bring the DirectServe™ targeting wizardry to Qmecom's technology platform that easily and economically creates millions of relevant and engaging rich media advertisements. We've been hearing "serve the right ad, to the right person, at the right time" for over a decade – it's our mantra, right? Well, it appears that technology has finally caught up with strategy.

In The End of Advertising as We Know It, IBM says, "Companies like Qmecom are allowing for customization with automation, so that hundreds of creative outputs take the place of the mere one, two, or five variations common in days past." Imagine the possibilities?

Danny Gruber, founder and COO of Qmecom says, "We are very excited with our partnership with TruEffect™. The powerful combination of Qmecom's content creation platform with TruEffect's DirectServe™ targeting solution finally delivers on the promise of scalable and cost effective personalized ad serving. Advertisers no longer have any time or cost barriers in targeting many customer segments or creating unique messages for each of these groups."

– Layne Salter