Call me the contrarian but with all the lists coming out showcasing the next big trends in 2010 and everything you should be doing, it’s also the time to remind ourselves of what we should not let distract us.  Those shiny objects that keep taking our eye off the ball.  So, count ‘em down with me.

5. CTR – The first year of the “Natural Born Clickers” study I was intrigued but skeptical.  Two years into it with the numbers now showing that out of comScore’s entire panel, 67% never ever clicked on an ad and 85% of clicks came from 15% of users? Forget CTR – don’t even include it in your reporting.

4. Non-Universal Conversion Tags – If you don’t yet have universal tags (Floodlight/UAT) on your clients’ sites then all your publishers can do is optimize to CTR (see shiny object #5.) If you’re still focusing on non-universal tags, make 2010 the year to change over.  It’s a must.

3. Mobile – It’s not that you shouldn’t be doing mobile at all, it simply doesn’t deserve a big pow-wow because it’ll feel good to “finally embrace this tremendously relevant and applicable medium.”  It’s part of your digital strategy and that’s fine, but 2010, like the last five years, will not be the year of mobile.

2. Online Video – See #3.  Buy the rights for your TV footage so you can re-craft for online (note: not run the exact same spot) and do a good job with video, but it also does not deserve a 3-day Fijian retreat to understand.

1. Twitter – Twitter is big.  But so is Facebook, Yelp, and all of your industry’s specific social media sites.  Don’t let the mass media’s adoption of Twitter distract you into creating a special section just for Twitter such that you bypass or reduce focus on other sites that are equally important.

So there you have it.  Five easy things to blend into the rest of your strategies or forget altogether.  Doesn’t that make planning so much easier?

No tags Hide

I’m an eMarketer fan.  They produce so many charts that give authority to my presentations. Last week they put out their predictions for OLA in 2010.  Some are on point, others not so much.  Let’s take a look.

eM: “More marketers will increasingly embrace online video advertising, supported by the twin boom of video streams and video ad networks.”
Jay: No doubt video will grow.  What remains to be seen is whether or not new verticals will embrace video.  CPG uses video heavily but auto and retail seem to lag behind.

eM: Regarding ad-targeting and privacy: “From consumers, that will mean greater use of ad-blocking software or browser add-ons and more deletion of cookies.”
Jay: Really?  Have we seen even any meaningful uptick in ad-blocking software?  Have we seen statistical data showing that consumers are deleting their cookies more often?  Additionally, even users who delete their cookies (well under 10% still) populate their cookie set very quickly again and quickly become part of a usable pool.  Privacy is becoming a big deal because certain publishers know and keep more info than they should.  I don’t believe consumers care much about your average day to day BT campaign.

eM: “The development of search engines, and related advertising, will increasingly include data gathered through the social Internet, including the real-time data from communication sites—mainly Twitter.”
Jay: Definitely, but eM goes on to suggest this will continue to cause privacy concerns, and I don’t agree with that.  People know full well that if they publish something online it will become searchable and public.  I do agree, though, with the notion that search will continue to be important, and increase its importance with the inclusion of real-time user-generated postings.

Good stuff eMarketer, but what about the questions no one is asking?  Will the disciplines of search and social begin to overlap to the point of not telling them apart? Will search agencies then start to take a stake in social?  Or vice versa?  Will all this talk of social search overshadow the need for a solid display (potentially including video) campaign to drive search and site visitation behavior?

No tags Hide

Those of you reading this right now, by virtue of reading this, are probably thought leaders in the industry.  No, I’m not stroking your ego.  It’s just that most people in our industry don’t actively seek out news or blogs about our industry.  I’m sure every employee at my local Pizza Hut doesn’t read Nation’s Restaurant News, but it’d sure be nice.  We’re fortunate at Goodway to have a very enthusiastic team that does seek out a lot of this information but we can always do better.  One area in which I hoped we could better follow our industry was Twitter, but just telling everyone to hop on Twitter wouldn’t work.

So, instead, we created a private Twitter account, installed Tweetdeck on everyone’s desktop with a login to that account, and it now gives everyone on our team the opportunity to anonymously compliment other team members.  At the end of the month, the people with the most compliments have their names put in a hat and we randomly draw a winner for a gift card.  The senior folks in our company certainly seeded the pool the first week or so but it really took off with compliments flying left and right.  The great part is we also sent out a list of industry thought leaders that might be good to follow on their own personal Twitter accounts, which they could now use simultaneously to the private corporate account.  A number of people did indeed sign up for Twitter for the first time and are learning more about our industry this way.

We wish all of our co-workers were excited about our industry as we are, but if you make it personal the response is likely to be a lot greater and enthusiastic.  What have you done in your company to encourage early adoption?  I’d love to hear it.

No tags Hide