Best Banner Ad Ever

I admit I am a sucker for anything to do with marketing and when I saw a post about the best banner ad ever I had to take a look. It is well worth a visit to this website and make sure you click where it says

Pringles Ad - Click to Participate

click. I guarantee nothing bad will happen and it will prove how effective banner advertising can really be. Click here to go to the ad.

Source: Bridge Worldwide 2009: Cannes Cyber Lions Gold – Pringles Can Hands

Home Buyers Twice as Likely to Use Online vs Print to Find an Open House

This is a blog post about home buyers, real estate, marketing, websites and search engine optimization so it has a little bit for everybody.

A survey commissioned by Trulia and conducted by Harris Interactive shows that U.S. home buyers are twice as likely to use online sources than print sources to find open house information.

Trulia is an online listing service so these results reinforce what we already know from other surveys including the National Association of Realtors surveys that show more than 75% of home buyers plan to start their home search on the web.

Key Survey Results

• 62 percent of U.S. home buyers reported using/planning to use online sites to find open houses.
• 53 percent who use/plan to use information from real estate agents
• 36 percent who use/plan to use neighborhood signs
• 31 percent who reported using/planning to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyers to find open houses.

I work with a lot of Realtors and read a lot of real estate related marketing information and there is a large percentage of Realtors that voice the opinion that open houses are a “waste of time” and say “I have never sold a house at an open”. They might want to take note that this survey shows that 91 percent of home buyers attended/plan to attend open houses during the home buying process. I think this is proof that an open house is an important part of the marketing mix.

I have created a number of websites using Ubertor web templates and the biggest selling point is how effective their blog platform is with search engines. When a Realtor takes 30 seconds to add an open house to their website using the Content Management System a blog entry is created automatically. This blog post in turn has proven extremely effective in web searches.

I am going out on a limb here as I do not know where you are located, but if you do a Google search for ambleside open house I will bet the majority of your results will be websites using the Ubertor platform. What is ironic is the first website on this search is Tony Breen who is one of my clients and I added the open house a year ago and it still gets him results.

Screen Capture of a Google Search for Ambleside Open House

If you are interested in a new website that search engines actually find without spending thousands on SEO please call Mike at 800-568-8338 or send me an email at marketingguy@shaw.ca.

The Top 5 Reasons People Unsubscribe From Newsletters

Do you email a newsletter or other publication to subscribers? Do you subscribe to RSS feeds or email newsletters?

I have two marketing tools I use that have subscribers; a monthly newsletter for my email stationery clients (www.inboxfx.com) and this blog which has almost 300  subscribers. Thanks to all of you for giving me the incentive to keep posting) I attract subscribers to this blog by adding the following to the bottom of the email.

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According to an Epsilon and ROI Research study, 55% of email subscribers in the US and Canada unsubscribe from opt-in emails occasionally—and 14% do so frequently.

The top 5 reasons people give for unsubscribing are as follows:

1. 67% – Irrelevant content
2. 64% – Receive too frequently
3. 50% – Think their email address is being shared or sold
4. 48% – Don’t recall signing up
5. 32% Privacy concerns

Since my content is relevant, and not too frequent and I never sell or share an email address or disclose my recipient’s names I get very few unsubscribers and I hope this post doesn’t remind people they are bored.

New Study on Effectiveness of Banner Ads

A recently completed study on the effectiveness of banner ads provides some interesting data for advertisers.

Condé Nast and McPheters & Company have jointly released additional results from the recently completed study conducted in collaboration with CBS Vision using McPheters & Company’s AdWorks™ methodology. More detailed analysis explored the relative effectiveness of Internet banner ads that were aligned with the content of the Web sites in which they appeared – for example, food ads running on food sites, entertainment ads on entertainment sites, etc. – vs. those that were not. The new analysis found that:

• Ads running on sites with related content were 61% more likely to be recalled than ads running on sites with unrelated content.
• Recall of ads varied by site type.
  • Social network, shopping, and food sites generated the highest recall levels (29% to 39%).
  • Search and portal sites generated the lowest recall levels.
• There were large differences in recall by type of product advertised.

According to Scott McDonald, Condé Nast SVP/Research, “the magnitude of the differences we found offers compelling evidence that targeting by site yields important benefits for advertisers.” Drew Schutte, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer for Condé Nast Digital, added “while we have long known that context is important for print advertisers, we welcome proof that the same is true online. These results reinforce the importance of a marketer being associated with category-specific Web sites with established brands.”

In the analysis, each of the 400 ads for which recall was measured was associated with the Web sites in which they appeared. Ads were segmented by whether they appeared on Web sites with related content. Recall of ads was measured among Internet users who were directed to surf the Internet at will for 30 minutes. McPheters & Company fielded the survey at CBS Vision’s Television City lab facilities in Las Vegas. Rebecca McPheters, CEO of McPheters & Company, noted that “while AdWorks™ excels in providing comparable measures of ad effectiveness across multiple media, it also provides a unique opportunity to explore and better understand what works online. It can be used to successfully identify best practices not only for capturing the attention of online audiences but for placing ads where they will have the maximum impact.”

In a review by OnLine Media Daily they reported that from data released earlier in the year by Condé Nast and McPheters & Co., nearly two-thirds — 63% — of banner ads were not seen by Web users. Respondents’ eyes “passed over” 37% of the Internet ads and “stopped” on slightly less than a third, McPheters found.

In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled, according to the research.

Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value.

New Eye Tracking Study: List Layouts

The Catalyst Group provides a wide range of services that make your website or application as simple and useful as possible so that it performs measurably better.

They recently published the results of a new eye Tracking study of “friends” list layouts on Facebook and Linkedin. I thought the results were interesting as we often have to present information to clients and prospects and it turns out the layout makes a difference.

Facebook uses a one column layout and Linkedin uses a 3 column layout like these:

1 Column Facebook

3 Column Linkedin

Overall, the 1-Column layout was a much more effective and enjoyable way of presenting the tested information. The single column of names was easy to read straight down during the Name Recognition Task, and users were able to “ignore” the adjacent column which contained information that wasn’t relevant to the current task.

Eye Tracking data revealed that virtually all participants scanned the 1-Column layout the same way and there was very little hesitation or exploration at the start of the task – users were able to dive right into scanning without having to experiment with different scanning strategies (a phenomenon which was observed with the 3-Column layout).

The 3-Column layout was thought by most participants to be more cumbersome

1 Column Facebook Initial Few Seconds

and overwhelming in its design – more “tiring” according to one participant. (See image below) Also, participants felt much less confident that they had successfully completed the tasks with the 3-Column layout. In other words, they did not feel sure that they had seen all the names.

The Eye Tracking of the 3-Column layout revealed that the participants did not adopt a consistent scanning strategy for this design. Moreover, most participants had to begin by experimenting with different scanning strategies before “deciding” which one to use. This uncertainty was exacerbated by the need to

3 Column Linkedin Initial Few Sections

scroll the page in order to see the full 3-column list. Many participants found that they had lost their place on the page after scrolling and had to backtrack up the page.

Eye Tracking is a service that literally tells you where website users are looking on a screen as they attempt to complete a specific task or simply explore freely. This information can help you make informed decisions about a variety of key design elements, such as task workflow, site navigation, and advertising placement and formats. Eye Tracking can help by supplementing what users “say” with what their eyes “see.”

The most popular output from the Eye Tracking system is “Heatmaps” that graphically illustrate the intensity of attention that certain areas of a page received.

Sample Heatmap

“Gaze-plots” are another useful graphic report that indicates where users fixated on the page, for how long, and in what order.

For more information you should visit the Catalyst Group website.

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Direct Marketing Study Results

The Direct Marketing Association has just released the Power of Direct economic impact study. There were some interesting findings on Return On Investment (ROI) and the amount being spent on different forms of direct marketing.

• Email’s ROI in 2008 was $45.06 for every dollar spent on it which is lower than the $48.34 in the previous year.
• Non-e-mail Internet marketing delivered $19.94 for every dollar spent.
• Catalog marketing delivered $7.28 for every dollar spent.
• Non-catalog direct marketing’s ROI was $15.55.

Marketing Expenditures by Channel

• Email – $600 million
• Non-email Internet marketing – $24.1 billion
• Telephone marketing (estimated) – $42.5 billion (Now I know why we get so many calls at dinner!)

What Results Can They Deliver According to the DMA?

• Non-e-mail Internet marketing – $559 billion in sales in 2009
• Non-catalog direct mail – $561.7 billion in sales in 2009
• Email – $32.6 billion in sales in 2009

Thanks to Direct, A Chief Marketer Stop for some of the information used here.

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Text Messaging – What Happened to Talking?

According to anew survey by Vlingo titled the Second Annual Vlingo Consumer Mobile Messaging Habits Report, (Click here for a pdf) nearly 60% of mobile phone users are now texting compared to 54% in 2008.

By the way Vlingo is a company that has products that let you control your mobile phone with the

My Cell Phone Bill is What!!!!!

power of voice. With Vlingo, you can simply speak to your phone to send a text or email message. Go figure.

Further to my last post about rearing 6 Millennials between the ages of 18 and 26 I confess I use text messaging and I am in my 50’s (early). I swore I would never resort to such an impersonal form of communication, but call screening by my kids drove me to it.  Apparently I am one of the 46% of people in their 50s that text compared to 94% of teens, 87% of 20-somethings and 64% of people in their 40s that text message.

Back to my story of how texting became a necessity of life. We used to call all 6 kids to invite them for dinner the next Sunday and by the time we got through to them  it was almost Monday. It was a combination of my calls being screened and not being able to answer their phones at work or during class. After overseeing the purchase of the 1.000 text message plan for two of the subjects in question I realized this might be a way of reducing the time lag between the invite and the event. Bingo! I send a atext to the 6 kids and their significant others to prevent double-booking and within seconds I have answers from all of them. Text messaging is the only reliable method of  communicating with these Millennials.

Here are some other interesting results:

• 35% of all respondents use their phones for texting more than for phone calls.
• 41% do not text
• 70% do not browse the Web
• 73% do not use email on their mobile phones
• Almost 50%  of respondents do both in equal numbers.
• Among those who do not text message, 27% cite the difficulty of typing on a tiny keyboard as a barrier, while 37% say it takes too much time to type.

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Top 10 Email Subject Line CatchWords

A recent study released by Mailer Mailer, a leading provider of email marketing services, determined the top 10 words used in email subject lines.

Ten Most Popular Terms
1. news
2. party
3. newsletter
4. free
5. night
6. sale
7. com
8. update
9. holiday
10. week

Based on this I guess this would be the perfect subject line:

Great Holiday News Update on our Week Long Holiday Party Sale With a Free Newsletter

Here is a tag cloud depicting the strength of these and other subject line words.

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Marketing to Millennials – 18 to 26 year olds

Do you market to Millennials? I currently have 6 kids that fall into this range and that should make me an expert, but they are a confusing age group. I was curious how they compare to their

These Are the 6 Millennials We Are Raising

older counterparts when it comes to social media and in the process also uncovered an interesting related study on teens and malls.

In a recent article, Media Buyer Planner published a study called Teen Mall Shopping Attitude and Usage Study by Arbitron and Scarborough Research that found that nearly all teen mall shoppers notice mall advertising. Teens are significant spenders at the mall and the study showed that 95% of teens notice mall advertising.

Other findings:
—91% of teens notice poster displays
—68% spend more than two hours at the mall
—Teens go online for mall information: 75% visit a specific mall store’s website; 72% of teen mall shoppers chatted
with friends online about meeting at the mall or purchasing items there
—48% are “social shoppers,” shoppers who like to browse, hang out, and possibly make a purchase
—46% of teen mall shoppers are bargain hunters

The survey of teen mall shoppers questioned 1,687 teens (ages 12-17) across the country.

So what about their social marketing attitudes?  Millennials — 18- to-26-year-olds — don’t see value in Twitter, although they spend hours daily texting friends and communicating on social networks in real time, according to a study released Monday from the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN).

The study suggests that only 22% of Millennials use Twitter and of those young people here is how they used it:

• 85% said they follow friends
• 54% follow celebrities
• 29% follow family
• 29% follow companies.

That’s not great news for marketers and companies trying to reach this demographic through the site.

When asked about social networks, nearly all who participated in the survey revealed having an active profile on at least one site. I am assuming they are referring to Facebook and MySpace. How did they use these  sites?

• 89% have downloaded an application to their profile page
• 89% post photos
• 53% play games
• 51% search out entertainment
• 32% followed the news
• 29% followed the weather.

The study also looked at mobile social networking for Millennials. Thirty-eight percent have an iPhone or iPod Touch. More than 50% have downloaded games; 35%, entertainment; 31%, lifestyle; 28% have downloaded free financial applications, and 7% have paid financial applications. More than one-quarter — 26 percent — indicated that they have not downloaded any.

PMN conducted the study in May 2009 with its research partner, the Lubin School of Business’ Interactive and Direct Marketing (IDM) Lab at Pace University, by questioning 200 PMN panel members and consumers between the ages of 18-24.

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Do Banner Ads Really Work?

Yes, but not always in the way you think they might. While the number of people who actually click on the banner ad runs around 31% a further 27% reported that they did an online search for the product, brand or company, and 21% typed the company Web address in their browser. Nine percent sought additional information using social media tools. So clicks are not the only measurement in online marketing.

From a recent article in eMarketer,  a study from iProspect may have discovered an unexpected benefit of online display ads. When Internet users were surveyed to find out what actions they took when viewing a display ad on an ad-supported Website, nearly one-third said they clicked on the ad.

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