Alert Blog Reviews

In what may be a mini ‘bell weather moment’ in advertising, Pepsi has decided to keep its usual Super Bowl advertising money in its bank account. While they are not exactly saving it they are certainly redirecting it to online opportunities. I say this is a potential ‘bell weather’ moment because it ends a streak of 23 consecutive years where Pepsi has advertised during the event that attracts some of the largest viewing audiences in the history of television. So what is Pepsi saying with this move? It’s more like a question they are asking the NFL and the advertising world that has made such a big fuss over Super Bowl ads for years: Where’s the value? Not to worry about the NFL though because they are still getting Pepsi-bucks……just not in a big chunk for the big game. Compete tells a little more Pepsi is already a large sponsor of the NFL, having paid millions back in 2002 to replace Coke for the title of the official soft drink of the NFL. The company also sponsors Rookie of the Week section on NFL.com. So the big moment is more about the how Pepsi is deciding to spend its money rather than with whom. The NFL is a marketing juggernaut (I had to use that word before the close of 2009) and will remain so. Even the NFL though is going to have to adjust to the dollars that are moving online that once fueled the just as important Super Bowl activity of watching and rating the advertisements. If last year was any indication that ‘pastime’ may be on the decline as well as many companies didn’t even create specific ads for the big game but simply rehashed old ones. Kinda takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it? So why is Pepsi seeing the online space as the way to go? Compete shows a little data below that may become the new version of the old ‘Pepsi Taste Challenge”. Even more interesting are the differences in competitive share of visitors to Pepsi and Coke sites between control and exposed consumers. Among the control group, Pepsi captures only 16% of visitors versus a lion’s share of 84% for Coke. However, the numbers are completely reversed among the exposed group. So what is your thought about the days of the big Super Bowl advertising buys and the excitement around the creativity of the ads? Are the days of Super Bowl ads being a huge deal going the same way as my NY Giants (meaning directly south and in the toilet)? Your thoughts?

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Pepsi Decides to Use the NFL a Different Way

Advertising is morphing and evolving at a rapid pace. That pace still hasn’t moved the online space too far down its own evolutionary road yet. That is at least according to Nikesh Arora, president of Google’s sales operations. In an interview with the Financial Times he gave some insight into how the online advertising world is shaping up and the role that Google intends to play in it. Oh, the reference to Barbie? Here is how Mr. Arora sees the current state of online advertising when he compares it to the history of advertising as a whole. He has been watching – on Google’s YouTube video site – a 1959 television ad for Barbie dolls. “There’s still a guy moving the Barbie doll in the ad and a radio jingle playing. We all say: ‘How could they think that was a good TV ad?’ – but that’s sort of where we are. We’re still moving the Barbie doll with our hands.” I get that. Sometimes I even wish we might go back to that every once in a while. Essentially, Arora and others at Google are convinced, and probably rightly so, that right now the online space is simply repeating what TV has done but that this attempt at ‘advertising’ is selling the Internet medium short. In other words, there is so much more that can be done. As you might expect Google intends to be there at the forefront. Some more of Arora’s thoughts Mr Arora is keen to recast the online advertising debate in a way that could increase the share of advertising budgets available to the search engine operator. “The whole idea of online advertising is going to go away in the next few years,” he says. “We’ll stop talking about online advertising and talk about advertising. Radio, print, TV are all getting distributed over [internet protocol], so those distinctions will vanish at some point in time.” That will be a brave new world for marketers, advertisers and consumers alike. With purchases like DoubleClick and more including mobile play Admob ( which has its own issues apparently ) Google is positioned to be a leader in the movement. And, as will likely be the modus operandi of all Google interactions with the press, Mr. Arora talked about relationships with publishers improving and that Google is the ultimate partner. “We give $5bn-$6bn away to partners of the $20bn we make,” Mr Arora notes, adding that it has stepped up its “research online purchase offline” studies, which analyse how search behaviour affects buying. How thoughtful! And to wrap up that thought so that no one will get too suspicious about Google’s plans for world domination Mr. Arora goes all “Aw shucks!” on us with this one. “Fundamentally, we’re a tech company . . . You show up with a huge technological problem, we’re going to get totally turned on by it.” I am no code cracker but I think “technological problem” is Googlespeak for “huge pile of money”. Your thoughts?

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As Advertising Evolves Google Talks About Barbie

Welcome to this Friday’s version of surveys, research and statistics to ponder. Of course, how and what you ponder always has more to do with the source of the statistics and your mood which makes the numbers kinda funky but ‘Hey!’, if we didn’t have stats what would we do with our days? This latest statistical ‘he said / she said’ consists of different numbers regarding the state of e-commerce. Today’s particpants are, “In the red corner”, comScore. They are in the red corner because they are reporting that e-commerce is slipping for the first time in the history of the world (you get it right?). “In the blue corner” is Forrester who tells everyone to not get our knickers in a twist because even in the cruddy economy e-commerce is the light on the hill or a veritable economic ‘beacon o’ hope’. Today’s match is brought to you by the Wall Street Journal . On Thursday, comScore reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped 2% to $29.6 billion versus last year. That represents the first time since comScore began tracking the figures that online spending has shrunk for two quarters in a row. (Online shopping was flat in the first quarter, and slipped 1% in the second quarter.) ComScore was slightly more upbeat about the potential of growth in the fourth quarter, if only because we’ll be comparing it to last year’s dismal fourth quarter. But on Monday, Forrester Research put out a report that reached a different conclusion: online sales in November and December are likely to grow 8% compared to last year. Moreover, a survey Forrester conducted with the National Retail Foundation found that online retailers reported sales in the third quarter grew 16%. Geesh, can’t we all just get along? Let’s just say this. The rest of the article is the two researchers pointing fingers at each other saying that how they collect data is better than the other guy and having a researchers equivalent of a “my dad can beat up your dad” argument. How about we do this? How about we look at what has happened and then work toward getting better. Then we assess if we did or did not get better after we actually DID SOMETHING! What a concept. Aren’t rosy predictions and unfettered prognostications how we got into this mess in the first place? Isn’t predicting the future that never was a mistake? If the Internet truly is a better way to do things then why can’t we find a better way to assess things rather than act like we have some magic 8-ball or crystal ball that tells the future as well. We don’t. My prediction? People will go out and do their very best to make something happen in Q4 regardless of these predictions and then they will live in the world of reality of whether things are good or bad, not in the fantasy land of what they may or may not be in the future. This research is for the big boys and not the rest of the world and even then it’s dicey at best. One man’s opinion. Have a fun Friday!

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E-commerce. Up? Down? All Around?

Everywhere in business these days you hear about dashboards. Dashboards for marketing, dashboards for the C-suite and even dashboards for dashboards. If dashboards are so popular it’s no wonder that Google rolled out their dashboard for your Google account. The official Google blog reports In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we’ve built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more. The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we’re delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this — and we hope it will become the standard. Is that true? There is NO other Internet company that offered a dashboard prior to Google’s announcement? I find that a little hard to believe but who has the time to see if that claim is actually accurate? Who even cares if it’s accurate. As we get plowed under with more and more data the real winners in the race to harness the information overflow will be those who can capture things in a manageable fashion. Few if any companies offer the range of services that Google does so having this snapshot of exactly what you do have in the Google system can be helpful. Just another service to keep you close to home and on the ‘mother ship’. Honestly, though, while it seems interesting I am not sure how I will benefit from it but that’s just me. Right? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Joins the Dashboard Set

Earlier this month, StumbleUpon started showcasing their new homepage design, when they touted their “Google + Twitter” social search . Now they’ve gone through the rest of the site to make it more consistent (less customizable), easy to understand and streamlined. Read Write Web reports: The new interface is streamlined and more social with an updated relationship system. A focus on consistency (e.g., limiting user control of visual elements) and removal of clutter (e.g., presenting tags in a drop-down menu rather than a cloud) characterize the design changes made. Also, a few tweaks to group sharing were made to help reduce share-spam. The most significant UX changes have occur[r]ed in the way friendships and subscriptions work on the site. Now, your friends are you “Mutual Subscribers,” which makes the relationship a little clearer. They’re the people users can share pages with directly from the toolbar. However, the redesign is largely changes like those—clarifying various site functions, streamlining the design, making things easier for users. The homepage, same as the beta featured earlier this month, highlights recent activity from Mutual Subscribers—but doesn’t place a big emphasis on the social search aspect they were talking about earlier this month. So is StumbleUpon shying away from that? Or are they worried that their core user base was confused? I know I was a little worried when I first hear the social search news—even though I’m now an infrequent Stumbler, I didn’t want to lose that original “discovery engine,” even if it would be for a working social search model. However, the actual stumbling part of the service would remain—and maybe this is just to remind and reassure their users of that. But it still seems like they haven’t really played up the social search aspect enough. While I remain highly skeptical of social search, it’s one of those brass rings for mainstream search engines—like Google, which announced Social Search in Labs , using sites that your Google contacts have viewed, as well as sites you’ve seen before in your Web History, Google Reader and associated Google services. However, with StumbleUpon’s more targeted “Mutual Subscribers” option, you have the ability to control what friends you’re getting information from, instead of results from everyone you’ve ever emailed. What do you think? Does StumbleUpon have a better chance of getting social search right? Is it shying away from that—and should it, now that Google’s officially thrown its hat into the ring?

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StumbleUpon Updates Design Again (Abandoning Social Search?)

No, seriously, they added magic. As you’ve probably noticed today, Google Reader has added a few new features. The first is the Explore section, just below the People you follow section. Here, Google shows off two sources of new feeds: Popular Items and Recommended Sources. As you might guess, the Recommended Sources feature analyzes your feeds (via Reader Trends) and Web History to find feeds you might like. (This is the old Recommendations feature.) Popular Items highlights “top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions).” It identifies these items algorithmically (how else?) and sorts them in the order they think you’ll like them. The magic isn’t just in the mind reading, however. It’s also in the feed settings: now we can order items by newest, oldest or . . . magic . The Magic setting orders items by our Reader activities and preferences Reader has observed. The more we like or share items in our feeds, the better the magic gets. Like al of Google’s personalization features, these are based on our usage history. But how long until privacy advocates speak out against these developments? What do you think? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Reader Adds More Suggestions and MAGIC!