Andy Boyer

Blog

  • Online Ad Network Releases Study that Says Clicks Don’t Matter

    Ok, so it doesn’t *exactly* say that, but here are a few bullets from a study commissioned by Media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore.

    • A very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior. 
    • Heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks.
    • Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000 and are more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites.
    • We can’t count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying on-line exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy.
    • While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns.
    • For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.

    So, why am I writing about this?  Well, reports like this are not written for fun.  No one just says, "I wonder what a haevy clicker looks like."  There was a purpose for this report, and it’s goal is to obvious lay the groundwork for explaining to marketers that they shouldn’t be spooked by the fact that no one clicks on ads anymore.  Here is an ad network simply building a research report so that their sales guys have an answer for the question of, "Why are my clickthroughs so low?"  Now they can say, "Well you don’t need clicks.  In fact, clicks are bad.  You want the impressions, so let’s do some more CPM deals!"

    Now, this of course flies directly in the face of logic.  "But look – we have a real research paper saying clicks don’t matter!"

    It’s a funny report when yout think about it.  When Internet advertising got started, accountability was touted as one of its strengths.  Now that ads don’t get clicked on, they want to throw accountability out of the equation.  Moral of the story – take everything you hear in advertising and marketing with a big grain of salt…. 

  • This is Why I Love British Newspapers

    If you don’t spend any time reading publications out of England, you really are robbing yourself of visceral candy.  Besides providing a more global perspective of current events, and poetically explaining why Americans are generally a bunch of wankers, every once in a while you get an outstanding little gem like this.

    I mean, if you can’t get excited by reading about a 15 pound boby-builder, I don’t know what you are reading the paper for. 

  • Congratulations to Two UW MBA Teams

    Something must have been in the air this weekend.  Because as Barack Obama was sweeping through the caucuses, two UW MBA Teams were busy shouting "Yes We Can" as well.

    Down in California, the UW VCIC Team brought pride back to the program with a win in the Regional Championship.  The team now preps for the International Competition in Chapel Hill, NC.  The UW has won this event twice, back in 2004 and of course in the "dynasty" year of 2006 🙂

    A mere 3000 miles away in Winston-Salem, NC, the UW won the Wake Forest Marketing Case Competition.  This was the first win for the school, after a 2nd place finish in 2006 and 3rd place in 2007. 

    Aside from the pride and satisfaction these wins bring, the students also win cash, so now’s the time to hit them up for the bar tab.  But more importantly, what is now a 5th year of success in VCIC and a 3rd year at Wake Forest, proves to be real proof that a foundation for success has been effectively laid.  These aren’t "flash in the pan" single wins.  The school is now establishing constant success at these regional and national events.  And that is something the faculty, alumni, the Seattle community and current students can really take joint credit in.

    Congratulations, all. 

  • Good News For People Who Like to Play Mobile Phone Games For Free

    In the very early days of PC Casual games, you had to buy everything you wanted to try.  But once the internet hit, and you could try out demo versions of the games for free, the market absolutely exploded.

    Well, I think we’ve finally reached that moment in Mobile Games, thanks to our friends at Movaya.  Here is their latest release:

    The Movaya team is excited to announce the beta release of Movaya TryNBuy: the first off-deck, cross-carrier try-before-you-buy system for mobile game sales in the US.

    Movaya TryNBuy is a patent pending licensing system that allows consumers to download games over-the-air to their mobile devices and try games on their handset. Upon purchase, the games are unlocked.

    Try-before-you-buy was a major driver in the huge growth of casual games on the desktop and now Movaya is bringing this to the mobile marketplace.

    Movaya TryNBuy is configurable on multiple levels including length of play, and number of plays.

    Movaya TryNBuy is now available online at www.bustedthumbs.com and will be rolled out to Movaya’s publisher and merchant network over the coming weeks.

    To get more information on Movaya TryNBuy, please visit our website.

  • Pics from outside Univ of Phoenix Stadium

    So, I posted a few boring pics of University of Phoenix Stadium a few days before Super Bowl 42.  You can see just how out in the middle of nowhere the stadium really is…

    Here’s the link to where they are hosted on Flickr. 

  • On Site Super Bowl 42

    So, I would love to go into detail about the NFL Experience, a giant travelling tradeshow attached to Super Bowl 42. And so I slogged out the 30 miles to God forsaken Glendale to file a report at 1:00pm on Friday.

     
    However, much to my chagrin, the NFL didn’t have an experience for the public from 1:00 to 3:00pm. During those hour, it’s only experience is for season ticket holders and special guests. Since I had already burned a half day and $10 in parking, I gamely decided to see what else the NFL had for me.

    Unfortunately, the only experience I was allowed, was Westgate Center.

    Now I need to properly frame Glendale Stadium. And I think the best way to do this is to weave in a popular conspiracy theory. You see, 10 years ago there was this giant expanse of desert wasteland far west of Phoenix. The conspiracy theory is that a bunch of rich guys bought up this worthless property. Then, for some unexplained reason, a highway was built through this wasteland, a giant loop that ran around Phoenix, from I-10, all the way around the city and back to I-10 on the other side. Shortly thereafter, legislators decided all this open land with this convenient highway would be an ideal place for a new sports stadium. And since the stadium was so far removed from ANYTHING, the natural solution was to build a hockey arena as well, and build up the property around the stadium with hotels, bars, restaurants, condos and shops.So if you google Glendale, what you will see is 2 huge stadiums, a shopping mall, and then acres of empty land in all directions.  Desert wasteland which is now worth a fortune.

    But I digress.

    Now I’m out amongst the cacti and my only option is to go hang out by the shopping mall and hope for the best.  To be fair, Westgate is pretty cool if you are looking for a place to grab food and drink before a game.  All the standard chain bars are there (Margaritaville, Bar Louie, Fox Sports, etc….)

    But this really re-iterated the point that at Super Bowl Weekend, you need VIP or Insider Status if you want to do anything cool.  Sure, they have parkinglot exhibits and stuff liek that, but without any kind of priority access, you are really getting about 10% of the total experience.  That’s not a lament or complaint, just a realization.  And now that I think about it, I kind of remember things like the NBA and MLB All-Star Game being the same way (but I had the access then, so I didn’t care…)

    So, no great report from NFL Experience.  I heard secondhand stories that it was crowded, there was no food and the exhibits were so so.   So, i probably lucked out.

  • Super Bowl Thursday Night

    So, the weekend has officially begun here in Phoenix. 


    Last night Old Town Scottsdale took on a somewhat bizarre and surreal transformation.  In the middle of town square, the ESPN studio is set up.  (You have to wonder why ESPN chose a place 30 miles from the stadium to set up their Phoenix Studio.  Perhaps no one at ESPN wanted to spend any time in Glendale. I don’t know.) 


    Certainly no celebrities wanted to spend any time in Glendale, and as I documented yesterday, all the mega-parties were being thrown in Old Town.  For comparison’s sake, imagine if a giant shiny new stadium was built up north of Everett for the Super Bowl.  And yet ESPN set up shop and all the celebrities threw parties in Belltown.  Just kind of bizarre.


    Thus, the normal “see and be seen nightclubs” were closed for private events (or pay $200+).   Ordinary bars that normally cater to the 30-something set charged $25 cover.  And the college bars were dead.


    I guess this is what happens when you schedule the biggest sporting event in the world, on the same weekend as the biggest sporting event in Phoenix, and also split the Super Bowl scene into two areas about 40 minutes apart.  Word on the street was that while Scottsdale bars were filled with tourists, Phoenicians themselves were up at the FBR Open Thursday night, and planning to return Friday and Saturday as well.  In fact, rumors are that few people from this area are going to the game at all, preferring to spend Sunday afternoon at TPC before heading home to turn on the game at 4:20.


    But back to Marketing.  Coolest thing – or stupidest depending on your mood – are the walking TV sets.  How can I describe this?  There’s a guy walking.  And he has a harness on his back.  And rising up from this harness to a height of about 8-9 feet, is a flatscreen.  And that flatscreen has commercials.  So if he walks right at you, you would look up a few feet and watch the ad.  These guys are all over the place.  Walking TV Billboards.  They kind of look like Hammerhead from the Cantina on Tatooine.  I’ll try to snap a picture later today.


    Now this question came up for debate yesterday.  Suppose a non Super Bowl sponsor, especially a competitor of a Super Bowl sponsor, somehow came up with 500 tickets to the game.  And they ran a contest for fans to get those free tickets.  And those fans had to wear clothing from the sponsor inside the stadium.  Could they be refused entry?  Let’s pretend it’s Burger King.  McDonald’s is a sponsor, so Burger King gets 500 tickets and puts people (maybe even rewards top employees)  in BK shirts all over the place.  Maybe they have to walk around Super Bowl events all weekend.  Now, could they also wear “King” masks?  Or does that step over the line?  Can they hand out business cards with coupons on them?  Is it Freedom of Speech?  Or do corporate rights trump the Constitution?  Just random thoughts…


    Funniest and dumbest thing we saw yesterday.  A couple of guys walk in with about seven 21 year old blond girls, all  dressed in a different color of the same mini-dress.  You can’t NOT notice when something like that enters the room.  And all the guys in the bar are asking each other, “Are those dudes rolling with hookers?  Could they be anymore obvious about it?” And then we heard a girl say, “I think they are promoting jewelry, because they all have necklaces with a similar design.”  We never really figured it out.


    I’m trekking out to Glendale today to see what the scene is like out there.  I expect this is where most of the corporate guys will be staying, especially those who don’t know Phoenix.  Probably a little different atmosphere.

  • Doing Marketing Research at SB 42

    Now I just wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t venture down to Phoenix this week to learn all the tips and tricks the professionals marketers at Super Bowl 42 can teach me.

    So, this weekend I’ll be posting some thoughts, revelations and observations from the various venues making up the ecosystem that is the Big Game.

    We’ll try to stop by the NFL Super Bowl Experience this afternoon which is essentially the party for the rest of us who can’t gain access to any of the cool ones.

    The Arizona Republic and AZ Central Blog has some highlights from some parties, including The Big Ticket Gala, the Matt Leinart Foundation Party, a party I suppose I *could* have attended that didn’t sound too fun, Thursday night’s P.Diddy block party, and a long list of others.

    Predictably, every bar in town is decked out with Super Bowl paraphernalia, even the ones 30 miles from the stadium.  It makes for a fairly misleading proposition, when a bar "Welcomes Super Bowl Fans" and then you realize that you’d have to be really really lost if you were an out of town guest.

    As if this isn’t enough for one city to handle, Phoenix is also playing host to the FBR Phoenix Open, a 4 day 100,000 person party/golf tournament at TPC.  And just for fun, tonight the Suns host the World Champion San Antonio Spurs.  If anyone goes to work on Friday, I’d be shocked.

    Anyway, more to come thru the week, as Marketing’s Reason for Existence approaches. 

  • How Come Only My Expensive Facebook Ads Get Clicked On?

    So here’s a question for you.

    I’m running a bunch of ads on Facebook, more out of curiosity than actually expecting success.  The Facebook Ad Manager Inerface is rudimentary, but fairly intuitive.  It has some definite limitations, but I’d expect it will start approaching par with AdSense this year.

    But here’s the interesting part.

    In one of my Ad Groups, I have about 2,500 impressions spread across 8 similar, but slightly different, ads.  I am offering $.45 CPC.  And in this group I have 0 clickthroughs. 

    In my other Ad group, I took one of the ads and EXACTLY replicated it.  The only change I made was to boost the CPC to $.90.

    Now, I expected that the $.90 CPC ad would get way more impressions from Facebook.  But what I didn’t expect, was that somehow it would generate a higher Clickthrough.  In, 1000 impressions my $.90 CPC ad generated 3 clicks.  While basically the same ad, generated 0 clicks in 2500 impressions when it is $.45 CPC.

    I’ll follow up with more data on this later.  But my initial question is, "Why does a more expensive ad get a better Clickthrough, when the user doesn’t know how much I paid for it?" 

  • Is Mobile Video “Supply Side” Product Development?

    For years, we have all been hearing how Mobile Video would soon breakthrough and become a major part of our media consumption habits.  And yet, for most of us, it’s rarely or ever something we use.  So the question is, "Why aren’t we adopting Mobile Video at the rates we’re expected to?"

    Last night at dinner some friends and I surmised the following, and I wonder if you agree.  Mobile Video is a "Supply-Side" product.  Some of the most powerful brands and industries – Mobile Carriers, Broadcasters, Sports Leagues, Ad Agencies and Media Distributors – would absolutely love if we were never disconnected from highly visual mediums where ads can be placed, or content can be charged for.  There is a wealth, or excess supply, of content out there, and the only thing holding back their revenues is our ability to escape from that content.  So of course, they look at us and say, "When Andy leaves his Living Room, we need a way that he can keep watching TV." 

    But very few of us look at our phone – which is our telecommunications device – and say, "Damn, it sucks that I can’t watch TV on this."  Now, I have a high DEMAND for a phone that I can take with me wherever I go.  I have similar high DEMAND for Text Messaging, a car that runs, laptops I can take anywhere, online services I can use to order anything, and hundreds of other things that I can’t make it through the week without.

    But television on my phone? I don’t really demand that.  I understand it’s available.  I think it’s cool that it’s available.  But I can’t think of a reason that I would demand it be available.

    And I think that is the crux of the mobile video problem.  The marketing campaigns are awesome.  The technology is cool.  I trust the people bringing it to me.  And I love the shows that are available.  But those are all supply issues.  Until there’s a demand scenario that makes sense for me, I think it will continue to languish. 

    And so, as we head toward potential Web 2.0 bubbledom and a possible recession, I’m putting all companies into these two categories.  Which companies are trying to create their own market out of an excess supply of something, and which companies are providing products and services that fill an already establish demand? I think the demand side companies will survive whatever economic blip we run into.