Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Cup of Joe: Is “April Fools” Good Marketing? Just Plain Fun? Or None Of The Above?” plus 2 more

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Cup of Joe: Is “April Fools” Good Marketing? Just Plain Fun? Or None Of The Above?
Internet Ad Spending Not Equal to Internet Usage
Millennial Media Shows Growth in Local Market Targeting

Cup of Joe: Is “April Fools” Good Marketing? Just Plain Fun? Or None Of The Above?

Posted: 01 Apr 2011 09:05 PM PDT

So, by now you are probably sick of all the April Fools jokes that are circling the Internet. To be honest, my contempt for all the jokes started last year. I mean seriously, isn’t this getting kind of old? Why are we fawning over these ridiculous jokes? And isn’t a bit cliche to pull a prank on the only day of the year reserved for it? It seems that if your company really wanted to gain attention from a prank they would stage one in July, or a time of the year that isn’t known for this type of foolishness. But, despite my disgust for these time wasters, I have put together a short list of this years highlights. Let me know what you think of each.

Google’s fake job posting for “Autocompleter” – This one almost got me.
Klout’s new SMS analyst tool. – This one is again borderline believable seeing how Klout has built a business around fooling everyone with their pointless metrics.
Youtube celebrates its 100th anniversary. – being the steampunk fanboy that I am, I enjoyed this one, and it looks like you can continue to add &vintage=1911 at the end of any YouTube url to turn the video into a silent old timey film.
LinkedIn allows users to connect with famous dead people. – creative, but a waste of time.
AdWords on a Blimp. – I wonder what the CPC is for these?
Techcrunch reports that Demand Media’s CEO has a yacht called AdSense. – This one is funny because it looks almost identical to other times TC has tried to stir up drama.
HootSuite releases “Happy Owls”, as opposed to “Angry Birds” – This one is interesting in that they let the cat out of the bag when the user goes to download the game. I guess they had enough sense not to take it to far!
Gmail launches “Motion”. – Look at the guy doing the demo in the video, SNL should hire him! LOL
Hulu goes back to the 90s. – This will induce a nostalgia over load!
RC Eagle – an iPhone-controllable Wi-Fi eagle powered by the sun. – Need I say more?
Matt Cutts announces CuttsCon. Best session to me looks like. “Matt & His Cats”
SERPd annouces that they are changing ownership and then changes their logo. - I have no confirmation whether this is a prank or not, but, my gut says it is.
Bing changes home page image to laughing seal. – Not really a prank, but silly.
Seth Godin launches White Space Ads. – I swear I have seen some sites that already use these!

So when do you prank, and when do you not? Well, heres a tip. People love to be entertained and they hate to be lied to. So if your prank is entertaining to everyone involved, then you are doing good work. If you are just spreading fake news and gossip to attract links and eyeballs, then you aren’t building trust and engaging your audience correctly. Marketing is about leavening relationships, not ruining them.

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Internet Ad Spending Not Equal to Internet Usage

Posted: 01 Apr 2011 02:11 PM PDT

Internet ad spending is on the rise, but according to those statistical geniuses at eMarketer, the rise isn’t equal to the rise in actual internet usage.

What they did was look at the amount of time the average adult spends watching TV, reading the paper, surfing on the internet, etc. Then they matched those percentages to the percentage of the overall ad spending dollars by category.

Here’s what they got.

As you can see, people spend most of their media time watching television. By a strange coincidence, the percentage of ad dollars spent on TV is nearly identical. Pretty neat. But after that, things get funky.

Internet consumption for the average person (which would not be me) is 25.2% but ad spending is only 18.7%. Mobile is way underfunded compared to usage. It’s so underfunded that it shows up only as a thin line on the graph.

So where is the extra money going? To newspapers and magazines that no one is reading. Look at the gap. Combined, you’ve got less than 10% usage but more than 26% of the ad spending pot.

eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey said;

"Those of us focused on the internet channel have complained for years that it hasn't been getting its fair share of media dollars based on time spent. However, the precise extent of that imbalance has been shrouded in mystery and exaggeration. Now we know—it's a gap of 6.5 percentage points."

Now we know indeed, but will the knowledge do us any good? Are advertisers still pouring money into magazines and newspapers because it’s the way it’s always been done? Are we that afraid of change that we can’t see money going down the drain? Spending the most money where the people spend the most time makes sense, but is it really that simple? Probably not.

Certainly there are behavioral factors involved. Are people more likely to act on an ad they see in a magazine than one they see online? If that’s true (and I’m not saying it is), then it makes sense to target readers overs surfers. I suppose it also depends on what it is your advertising. A political memoir might do better as a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times where an ad for a trendy music CD might fair better on the web.

I imagine there will come a time when ad spending for print media will drop below that of the Internet. When that happens, we’ll likely be sitting here wondering why mobile ad spending is still so light. Don’t people know that internet ad spending is old school! It’s all about the holograms! That’s the future of marketing.

Millennial Media Shows Growth in Local Market Targeting

Posted: 01 Apr 2011 11:19 AM PDT

Mobile advertising platform, Millennial Media has released their SMART Lite report for February which gives you a quick look at key stats.

Most notable for this month is a 22% increase month-over-month in local market targeting which was driven mostly by Telecommunications, Restaurant, and Insurance advertisers. As you can see from the chart, nearly half of all mobile ads are now targeted as opposed to a broad reach.

The report also shows that campaigns driving application downloads rose 14% and watch a video grew 13%.

Finally, the report notes that it’s not too early to start planning for back-to-school. Millennial says that back-to-school is the second largest retail period of the year, and 38% of shoppers intended to use their mobile device for price comparisons. 30% of mobile shoppers want coupons and deals on supplies for their kids and if you’re in the shoe biz, then this is your number one time of the year.

Looks like its time to build that app that lists school supplies by grade and the best place to find them.