Advertising

My Editor & Publisher Online column this month looks at the mega-trend of companies becoming more “social.” That is, they’re starting to move money away from traditional advertising and into content, services and community. Companies like Nike are figuring out that they can be media companies, too, in additional to being brand companies.

I think there’s an opportunity for media companies to take advantage of this. The alternative is to ignore it and watch traditional online advertising revenues dwindle in the years ahead.

Take a look at this ad from Facebook, which is in between two items in my account’s Newsfeed:

I’m not sure if this format is new, but until a couple weeks ago I never noticed any ads or “Sponsored” messages in my Newsfeed. There were only vertical banner ads in the left column — which are all but invisible and I’m sure suffered from dismal clickthrough rates. I know that I hardly ever look at the banners. If we did an eyetracking test on Facebook’s left-side banner, it would perform pathetically. (I managed an eyetracking project when I worked at the Poynter Institute a few years ago.)

But the new ad format set within users’ Newsfeeds is brilliant. It follows some of the advice that we gave in Poynter’s Eyetrack III study to make online ads most effective:

• Inset the ad within the flow of “editorial” content, so the eye has no choice but to go over it. (The left-side banner can be avoided; the eye isn’t forced to go there.)
• Use similar colors and design look and feel as surrounding editorial content.

Critics may argue that this approach by Facebook tries to trick users into viewing the ad, by doing the above. I don’t buy that. The “Sponsored” text cue is enough for me; it makes the point without going overboard to announce “Hey, this is an ad!”

A few years ago I remember writing a lot about how website pop-up ads were evil and how I thought that in time, because online users would spurn them, online publishers would be forced to abandon them.

Well, I’m pleased now to see this article by The Guardian: Pop-ups shot down by surfers but ‘relevant’ web advertising thrives.

Every once in a while it’s nice to be proven right on a prediction.

Last month here I wrote about a product giveaway and user review promotion that my website, YourMTB.com, is doing. The idea is that we work with companies that want to get user reviews of their products, giving away a few items to YourMTB.com registered users in exchange for their promise of writing a review.

Results are starting to come in for our first experiment, where we gave away 10 pairs of mountain-biking gloves from Spenco Cycling. You can take a look at some of the early results here:

Spenco “Trail Pro” glove reviews

Spenco “Heat Wave” glove reviews

I’m not sure if we’re the first to try this, but I think it’s an innovative form of marketing, and fits in well with the “citizen media” model that drives YourMTB.com. Spenco can tell you how great their gloves are, but that’s nowhere near as powerful as when users of the gloves tell you.

One thing I’m liking about the results is that they are not all positive. Just because the reviewers got free gloves, they’re not holding back when they see something less than perfect. For example, the gloves have little rubber thingies on two of the fingertips (to aid in braking), but several reviewers noticed that these fell off after not much use. Most reviewers so far have given positive reviews, but mentioned this flaw. (That’s good feedback to Spenco to try to improve that detail of the gloves.)

Another cool thing is that the reviewers are posting photos of themselves wearing the gloves. One user even posted two short video clips showing him wearing the gloves and commenting on them.

This not only makes for interesting product reviews, but it also gives Spenco some potential images to use in its marketing campaigns. We plan to do more of these giveaway/product-review promotions on YourMTB.com and future websites.

This week I posted an ad on the Denver Craigslist looking for some part-time contract marketing help. I must say, I’m impressed with the response I received — 21 so far, which I’ve whittled down to seven candidates that look very promising. The bulk of the responses came in within 24 hours, with a few stragglers within two days.

I was quoted by a reporter recently, on a story about Craigslist’s expansion, as saying, “Newspaper classifieds are dead to me” personally. When I need something, it’s now typical that Craigslist meets my needs well; I don’t need to explore other alternatives like (paid) newspaper advertising. That Craigslist ads are free is a bonus, but I’d gladly pay Craigslist a reasonable fee because I know I’ll get a good outcome from placing an ad on the Denver site. (The prospect of Craigslist charging for anything but a tiny number of categories is extremely remote.)

Anyway, the point is that Craigslist works well, and continues to work well. I often hear from naysayers that because the site is free, categories get so overrun with junk that the site doesn’t have the quality of newspaper classifieds. Sorry, but I don’t see evidence of a problem yet — and the Denver site is very busy and popular.

An amusing aside: Reading through resumes is sometimes good for a chuckle. There was the applicant who got so detailed in the Education section that she described her graduation — from elementary school.

We’re trying something new on YourMTB.com: It’s this contest promotion done in conjunction with Spenco Cycling. The idea is that Spenco and YourMTB.com are giving away 10 pairs of the company’s new mountain biking gloves to registered users of YourMTB.com. To get the gloves, our users have to be among the first 10 people to post a note about why they need or deserve them, and they must agree to post a product review of the gloves on YourMTB.com after they’ve had some time to use them.

I think it’s great that Spenco was willing to give this a try. (We came up with the idea and pitched it to them.) They’ll get 10 honest reviews of their product. So there’s some risk that they could get a bad review. And if one of the glove recipients posts a negative review, Spenco has agreed not to ask us to take it down.

I really like this form of marketing. A handful of bikers are happy about getting a free product; the company gets some testimonials that it can use. We’ll see how this turns out, but I suspect the risk of a bad experience for Spenco is small. If a company has a good product and has faith in it, then it should be safe to seek consumer reviews. If your product sucks, well, then don’t try this.

This is an experiment, but I’d like to do more of these. We’ll see how it goes!

You can’t help but see the irony in the screen-grab below:

The story from MediaPost, “Newspaper Outlook Dubbed Deeply Depressing, Ad Business Shifting To Online,” is accompanied by an ad from the Newspaper Association of America, part of a recent (and controversial inside the industry) campaign to encourage more newspaper advertising.

The irony is that as the newspaper industry finds itself increasingly perceived as an old business that’s dying, it chooses as a theme for its ad campaign exactly the look that confirms its status as “old” media.

I’ve commented on the NAA campaign before; I think it should be dumped. The old-fashioned, Rube Goldberg-esque ads send exactly the wrong message. How about a campaign that emphasizes the power of print plus online; that shows how newspapers are no longer about print dominance and have some of the strongest websites on the Internet; that show that newspapers understand the Internet, embrace it, and aren’t fighting it?

User-generated ads are a risky business, as Chevrolet found out with a campaign that invited people to create their own ads for the gas-slurping Tahoe SUV. (The New York Times reports on some nasty submissions. Here’s one of the user ads.) But just because Chevy got muddied by people making fun of its product on its own website doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to invite online users to participate directly in ad campaigns.

But here’s some advice for advertisers: Don’t go there if you have a product that’s ripe for public ridicule. You’ll probably want to avoid public interaction if you’re advertising SUVs, cigarettes, Wal-mart … you get the idea.

For my company, I’ve been working with a sponsor for our upcoming first website, and I’m trying to talk them into allowing website users to comment on their ads. It’s a safe product that is unlikely to get blasted, and probably would benefit from a direct exchange with consumers. They’re rightfully cautious about the concept, but are considering it.

The user-generated advertising concept is a bit like the wiki. Wikis can be deployed for lots of interesting and useful applications, but there are some things that simply should be avoided — like opening up a newspaper editorial to the wiki format.

Here’s an interesting observation (admittedly anecdotal). I use Gmail, and you’ll find Google contextual text ads in individual-message view; they’re in the right column. Also on the main-inbox view as well as individual-message view are “Web Clips,” which are links to related stories, with the occasional contextual ad thrown into the rotation. It’s common to see a Web Clip be an ad in individual-message view.

I keep noticing that the top Web Clip ads catch my attention. Because they are about the topic of the message I’m reading, the ads are relevant and I often click them. The other day a colleague sent me a note about a recommended video camera — and the Web Clip ad was a retailer selling that model. I clicked the ad to find out how much the unit cost.

Now, the Google text ads in the right column of my e-mail I scarcely look at. My brain is trained to ignore that part of the page because I know that those are ads. But the top-of-page ads register and get acted on.

This fits with my past experience doing eyetracking studies. (I was project manager of Poynter’s Eyetrack III study.) People avert their gaze from things that look like ads, and the right side of a page typically doesn’t get much action. There’s a lesson here for those using Google AdSense.