Now that it’s a public company, Twitter will eternally have a lot of questions to answer regarding revenue. The company’s monetization efforts have been criticized heavily for years, and are obviously now in a greater spotlight than ever.
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If you’ve read this blog, or anything I’ve written for that matter, then you know I’m a strategy before tactics kind of guy, but sometimes you just need some new ideas and tactics.
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Google has launched two new tools Ready Image Ads and Ready Ad Gallery at the IAM MIXX. The tools will make it easier to create IAB standard and HTML 5 compatible ads on the fly. Since, iPhone and iPad support HTML5 instead of Flash, the new tools from Google will let advertisers create display ads, which run on these devices.
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According to a report released by Marin Software, Google's Product Listing Ads (PLA) have higher click-through rates in the paid search results than the standard text ads, since November 2012.
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How could Google Glass change advertising? Well, it was revealed that there might be a “pay per glaze” style of advertising.
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Google announced a few months ago that ad sitelink descriptions were getting an upgrade with the Google AdWords transition to enhanced campaigns. Traditional ad sitelink extensions are links within your regular pay-per-click text ad that can direct searchers to various areas of your website, often times directing them deeper into your site and to more relevant information. Hopefully you already utilize ad sitelinks within your AdWords account, so adding descriptions shouldn’t be too big of an undertaking. If you haven’t applied traditional sitelinks yet, now is the time to do so, along with descriptions. This will provide more information to searchers and also take up more real estate on SERPs in an effort to increase click-through rates. You can see an example below:
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“Video, video, video!” That seems to be all that’s on brands’ minds over the last few weeks after Vine grew in popularity, Instagram announced video capabilities and YouTube introduced new changes. But with the increasing use of mobile, Instagram and Vine have become key players for quick, yet creative video content. Which one is right for your brand?
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In this edition of The Baer Facts, I talk with Kyle Lacy of ExactTarget about Twitter’s new, direct response program.Twitter has displayed “cards” for quite some time. They are the expandable tweets that typically are used to hold photos or Vine videos, like this one from Lowe’s (read more about Lowe’s excellent new Youtility marketing program):
Put that old rake head to good use by turning it into a tool hanger. #LowesFixInSix #Vine vine.co/v/bYwJZ7JrrEK
— Lowe’s (@Lowes) May 30, 2013
At one time, Twitter cards also included Instagram photos, but after Facebook scooped up Instagram, Twitter eliminated Instagrams showing up in cards automatically, and you now have to click through to view photos posted on that platform. The whole “cards” thing has been much ado about nothing, historically.
The recently launched Lead Generation Cards, however, may change how you think about cards, and might even revolutionize the role of Twitter in your paid social advertising mix.
These cards enable advertisers to upload an image of an offer, and if you are interested in that option, you click just one button and voila! you have signed up. Twitter utilizes the email address you use in your member profile, and delivers that to the advertiser. Think of it as the world’s easiest, one click email sign-up form, as you see here from Vocus.
Lead Generation Cards reduce participatory friction to almost nothing – it’s the perfect balm for lazy but interested consumers, especially those on a mobile device who don’t want to fill out forms.
This is an exceptionally easy program to launch, is reasonably priced, and could be a terrific direct response vehicle for businesses of all sizes. Here’s an excellent post from Hubspot on the step-by-step. I’ll be recommending that our clients interested in email subscription growth try this ASAP, and I’m considering using it to distribute free excerpts of my new book, Youtility, once they open these cards up to individuals/small business.
What do you think of Lead Generation Cards? Worth a shot? Personally, I’m more excited about this than just about anything Twitter has offered on the advertising side.
Advertising is an important part of the lead generation puzzle. Some marketers suggest that you can do without the cost and low returns they attribute to advertising, but done right, advertising is a tremendous tool.
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The online video advertising market saw the greatest percentage increase in spend across all digital formats from 2012 to 2013 according to eMarketer and is set to reach $4.14 billion by this years end. And even though traditional TV will continue to dominate total video ad spending, online is considered to be either more effective or equally effective by about 75% of ad executives polled by BrightRoll in a survey released last Wednesday. Nine out of 10 also thought online video ads had equal or greater impact than display ads. A summary of these findings put together by eMarketer is below.
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