The Internet of Things

Agency trading desks are a bright spot within most agency holding companies. They’re proof that ad companies can cobble together technology to win back margins that they’ve seen vanish over the years.

But trouble could be on the horizon. As the volume of budget allocated to real-time and audience-based buying continues to grow, clients are beginning to think more carefully about where their money is going, and the relationships between their agencies and the technologies they choose to utilize. After all, there’s something inherently fishy about an agency that’s supposed to be unbiased funneling money through a vendor that’s a sister company.

“A lot of the clients I speak with are becoming more and more concerned about the mandates and conflicts of interest,” said Joanna O’Connell, a senior analyst at Forrester who helped build Publicis’s AOD trading desk technology during her time working at Razorfish.

“Some of the clients are starting to wake up to the fact their trust is being sold down the river for agency margin,” added Zach Coelius, CEO of demand-side platform Triggit, which essentially competes with trading desks for agency-controlled budget. “Agencies created the problem themselves, and they’re going to have clients starting to get very unhappy about it.”

In theory there’s nothing wrong with holding companies supplying their agencies with buying technology. After all, “agents” within their networks are acting in the best interests of their clients, and are free to use whichever vendor best suits their interests, whether it’s owned by the parent or not.

The problem is, they aren’t. As Digiday reported last year, some holding companies instruct their agencies to use in-house solutions exclusively, and even in those instances where it’s not a formal requirement there’s still a potential conflict of interest at play. Client money is getting spent on proprietary technology regardless of whether or not it’s the best solution on offer.

But as clients themselves become more familiar with real-time media buying they’re beginning to ask difficult questions, which could pose problems for agencies. Procurement is a fact of life for agencies — that’s not going to change — and inevitably it exerts pressure on vendor margins.

“You can look at it one way and say agencies are creating greater margins in order to reinvest in innovation, but perhaps their intentions are less pure and they just want to charge twice and make more money,” said O’Connell. “Clients are starting to look at it and think it’s the latter. Some are just walking away because they feel they’re being exploited.”

There are few who would argue that trading desks are a bad innovation. They perform an important role, similar to the one ad networks filled until the rise of automated trading systems. It makes sense for agency holding groups to piece together technology in order to more efficiently buy media.

The problem ends up being one of the business model. On the one hand, agencies have people-dependent processes, which clients pay for, and on the other automated processes, which clients also pay for. In the long term agencies will find it difficult to charge for both.

“The issue I see is that trading desks are being misused, they should just be the solution that makes a lot of that middle go away,” said one former trading desk executive. “Where there’s bloat and where the double-dipping comes in is the 24 and 25 year-old planners in the system.”

But according to Coelius, clients are getting wiser about their investments in RTB as they begin to grow in size. At least one major brand has pulled its business from Publicis as a result of its behavior, he suggested.

“This’ll come down to clients digging in themselves. We’re starting to see clients wanting to audit the agency trading desks themselves, or opting to go direct to a DSP instead.”

Coelius has a vested interest in those clients doing so, of course, but O’Connell said she’s seeing a similar trend. The trading desk model is good in theory, but the way it’s being implemented is creating a situation in which they’re essentially internal ad networks. That approach is only going to alienate clients in the long run, she said.

“The long-term outlook for that model doesn’t look bright. At a holding company level, I don’t think agency trading desks are a long-term solution.”

By using the data-only SIM — which costs  $40.00 per month for unlimited texts and data — with a new Android 4.0 feature, I’ve turned the Galaxy Nexus into a VoIP phone: I can get or receive calls solely through Wi-Fi and mobile broadband networks without subscribing to a voice plan.

Native SIP support in Android 4.0

Google’s newest mobile operating system version, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, natively supports SIP accounts in the Phone dialer app. This addition of SIP support opens up a whole new world of voice possibilities. SIP, which stands for Session Initiated Protocol, unifies both voice and video over standard IP-based networks. As voice becomes data — especially in the future as LTE networks are IP-based — this means we’ll have more flexibility and features over traditional voice calls and even phone numbers. Let me step back for one second to clarify something: SIP support on smartphones isn’t new, nor did Google “invent” anything here. I recall that some Nokia devices a few years back included native SIP support in both the Symbian and Maemo platforms. In addition, there are a number of third-party SIP-based VoIP apps available for both iOS and Android. Google has simply integrated SIP support into the platform.

Wi-Fi and 3G are generally fine for voice

Having said that, I’m glad they did. As I was using the Nexus all weekend long (see my first video impressions here), I was still carrying my iPhone 4S, which has my primary phone number. Finding the SIP support and configuration options within the Android 4.0 Phone settings got me thinking more about VoIP. It also didn’t hurt that in my local area, I’m seeing nearly 10 Mbps download speeds on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. Standard voice calls use far less bandwidth — around 12 Kbps — while even new wideband audio codecs used for higher quality sound top out around 64 Kbps. So, VoIP over Wi-Fi and 3G ought to be just fine for the most part and shouldn’t do too much damage to a capped data plan.

The SIP setup

There are a number of VoIP companies that support SIP, so I did some research over the weekend and settled on Callcentric for now. There was no charge to get a SIP account, which enabled VoIP to VoIP calls on my Galaxy Nexus after I configured the Phone app. Taking things one step further, I signed up with Callcentric to provide me a local phone number for $2.95 per month. With that, I can receive incoming phone calls at no charge: These can originate from any phone — mobile or landline — just like a traditional call. But while the phone may start on a cell network or old copper line, it gets routed as data to my handset.   That’s all well and good, but to be honest, I don’t want to give my contacts yet another number. Enter Google Voice, which uses the customized phone number I hand out to everyone. I added my Callcentric phone number to Google Voice and now all incoming calls to my main number ring my Galaxy Nexus at no charge. They also ring all of my other phones, making for a jarring experience when I actually get a call! So now I have free incoming calls coming to the Nexus and its data-only SIM card. I tested a 20 minute Wi-Fi call with Andy Abramson, a VoIP guru, and the call quality was superb. Testing calls over HSPA+ to my son were also great, but of course, will vary based on coverage and other factors.

Free incoming and cheap outgoing calls

But if I stopped there, I would only be able to make outbound calls to other SIP users. Again, Callcentric had a solution. While it sells unlimited voice plans for $19.99 a month, I make few outbound calls, so I opted for the no monthly charge, pay as you go calling plan. By adding a minimum $5 credit to my Callcentric account, I can now make calls to any phone — a landline or a cellular phone — from my Nexus over the data line. The cost for calling in the U.S.? $0.019 per minute. Given my limited outbound calling, that $5 ought to last me several months. There are a number of ways to get all of this working, but this was my first effort and I’m generally happy so far. The only downside right now is that outgoing calls show my Callcentric phone number on the recipient’s phone and I’d rather have my Google Voice number appear. Some third-party SIP clients and services allow for number “spoofing” to make this happen, so I may yet change my setup. Ideally, I’d like to see Google add both SIP support and number spoofing to Google Voice.

Data for the win!

Again, I had planned to switch my AT&T SIM between the Nexus and iPhone 4S, but I think this solution is better. I don’t need to swap SIMs and incoming calls will ring both phones. The data-only SIM without a voice calling plan requirement is about half the cost of a traditional voice and data plan, even with the $2.50 a month I’m paying for the Callcentric phone number. And my Samsung Galaxy Tab — which is effectively a Wi-Fi tablet — can still be taken everywhere because its SIM card can be used with the portable hotspot feature of the Galaxy Nexus. It’s a win all around for me. My deeper dive into SIP and mobile VoIP is far from over, though. I’ll continue to look at alternative options and third-party clients. My next step is a chat with the folks atCounterpath, which offers Bria, a VoIP/SIP client, for both iPhone/iPad and Android devices. I’ll share the results of that discussion in a follow-on post within the next day or two. In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying voice calls on my data-centric Galaxy Nexus!

Citing the conventional wisdom that a lack of branding impact metrics is hindering ad dollars from moving online, Google today unveiled an initiative it’s calling “Brand Activate,” which involves the adoption of branding-oriented metrics and the roll-out of tools to measure them across its product portfolio. The initiative gives a strong push to industry-wide standards proposed by the Making Measurement Make Sense coalition, which includes the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Additionally, Google is seeking the approval of the Media Rating Council (MRC) in the accreditation of its measurement methodology.

Active View

Google is starting with two metrics it says will be available to its advertisers in the coming weeks. The first, called Active View, measures whether an ad is actually seen — or at least is available to be seen — by a user. Both the IAB and comScore have been pushing this “viewed” impressions metric, with the IAB’s proposed standard being a display ad that is at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least one second. Active View will first be available on the Google Display Network Reserve, a subset of brand-safe sites within the Display Network on which the company guarantees delivery. Eventually it will be available in DoubleClick for Advertisers and across other products. Importantly, Google says advertisers will be able to pay only for viewed impressions.

Active GRP

The second initial metric is Active GRP (for Gross Rating Point), which builds upon the standard measure used in television media buying. GRP captures reach multiplied by frequency, and is expressed as a percentage. Google says it’s calculating Active GRP by combining aggregated panel data and anonymous user data, some of which is user-provided and some of which is behavioral. The company will submit the methodology for MRC certification. Active GRP will be built into Google’s ad serving tools and the company says advertisers will be able to make adjustments in their campaigns while they are in progress. A pilot program for DoubleClick for Advertisers clients is currently in progress, and it will eventually be rolled out to other products. Google says it’s also working on a brand impact survey pilot with Vizu, a brand lift measurement product and other cross-media measurement capabilities.

Everyone working in advertising is aware of the seasonal shifts in media prices and competitiveness. Advertisers want to reach consumers in the critical fourth quarter, so the prices are highest around that time of year, before typically falling in early Q1. Facebook advertising experiences the same peaks and valleys. CPMs and CPCs on the network grew significantly in Q4 of 2011, and Facebook display rates are growing on a year-over-year basis. Advertisers often lay low in the early part of the year, but they should be doing the opposite when it comes to Facebook. The social network offers a unique advantage: It enables brands to invest heavily right now, when rates are low, and build an engaged fan base that they can activate in the fourth quarter without blowing their budget. Facebook’s seasonal price spikes are very similar to search, but the social network differs tremendously because it enables brands to acquire fans early in the buying cycle and retarget them later in the year. Search is based largely on purchase intent, where the opportunity to reach the consumer comes only at the start of their research. Facebook’s model lets brands reach consumers earlier in the planning process, driving awareness and brand engagement. By building the initial engagement at a lower price, brands give themselves time to build consumer relationships.

Recent studies have predicted Facebook CPMs will continue to grow every quarter without coming down, but we’re simply not seeing that. Facebook prices generally drop after the fourth quarter, and this year was no exception: CPMs fell 9%, while CPC inventory dropped 32%: That’s why starting your social engagement activities early in the year is key. By Q3, Facebook CPMs could grow as much as 41% higher than they are right now, if last year’s cost data is any indication. A flat budget, allotting equal amounts each quarter, will perform worse over time. That could leave a brand without the money it needs to maximize Q4 results. Allocating more budget to the fourth quarter will help brands compete, of course, but at a time when the rates are higher and the competition stronger. Shifting money to Facebook earlier in the year means brands can shift their focus when Q4 arrives, moving from fan acquisition to ad quality and audience targeting. At that point in the year, engagement is critical in making every dollar count. Investing now is a sound long-term strategy as well. Facebook is the popular kid on the block, and it’s only getting more popular. First-quarter CPMs are up 28% over this time last year, while CPC rates are up 12%. More advertisers are recognizing the opportunity to reach customers on Facebook, and competition raises prices. Facebook’s targeting capabilities have improved by leaps and bounds, as well, making it all the more appealing to brands that may have avoided social in the past. And then there’s the fact that the platform is maturing, with advertisers finally learning to build engaging content strategies, and using advertising to support the content and boost visibility on the network. Brands can plan now for the fourth-quarter price jump, laying the groundwork now so they outpace the competition when its time to activate those engaged fans around the holidays. Capitalizing on the short-term opportunity created by lower costs can particularly help brands with fixed budgets, which need to maximize their returns. It’s getting more difficult to sustain performance on Facebook year-round, but the brands that hit Facebook properly now will create the initial engagements needed for a monster holiday season.

The erroneous classifier

This week we’re going to turn the tables and ask for the unvarnished opinion from the advertising-sales side. We are giving the participant anonymity in exchange for honesty. This executive expressed a level of frustration that many in the ad-sales profession feel. There are so many sellers out there and so few buyers. The business of advertising, always a relationship business, has become frayed. In this telling, what used to be a collaborative relationship to solve business problems jointly has now become a rushed process filled with arbitrary decisions and even petty shakedowns for Justin Bieber tickets.

We welcome volunteers from all levels of the digital media industry who would like to participate in this series. The only thing we ask for is honesty. Please email me at my address listed on the bottom of this article.

We published an account of a 25-year-old media planner last week. What was missing?
Who at the agency sets the direction? Senior-level people don’t take the time to educate their clients on the possibilities of real digital advertising and instead allow lower-level planners to keep their business transactional instead of thoughtful. Why bother training college graduates to send RFPs to 75 media sales teams, collect and collate all the replies, only to judge the responses on price? Then how could they possibly judge success on any goal after an ad campaign is only live for two weeks, which is when they start cutting sites based on click-through percentages?

Afterward, I heard the stuff about perks and gifts were “the tip of the iceberg.” Do ad sellers have to literally buy attention from agencies?
Yes. You wish everyone agreed not to do it, but the traditional media side takes people to the Super Bowl, the Oscars, etc. Why would digital be different? All businesses have aspects of client entertainment. Did you know that a famous chef flew the YouTube team on a private plane to his/her restaurant and cooked them an extravagant dinner as part of the pitch to include his/her channel as part of YouTube’s 100 channel custom program? What about finance—have you ever been part of the wooing from an investment banker?

What’s the most unprofessional thing an agency’s ever asked you for?
An agency asked us to get two backstage passes to Justin Bieber for its client. Yes, we did it. I hope our business eventually was incremental from that agency; it wasn’t from the client.

Do you find insufficient understanding of the digital-media space on the agency side?
Absolutely. And it’s partially their fault. There are hundreds of people calling them every month, so they are overwhelmed in the process. And the senior people at agencies are barely able to make a profit with accounts that go into review every two years. So the lower-level people are forced to rush through media buys as quickly as they can. There’s no time for thought, learning, collaboration. The entire business model of the agency-client relationship needs to be overhauled. As a famous agency C-Level exec once told me, “It’s broken, I know, but I can’t fix it.”

What’s the worst part of dealing with agencies?
Take your pick:
1) When they say, “Give me a new idea that’s never been done before.”
2) When the client switches agencies and the new one says, “We just got this account and are expecting your rates to be 20 percent lower than you were charging the prior agency.”
3) You rarely, if ever, get feedback as to why they didn’t buy from you. But honestly, even if we did get feedback, it would be wrong most of the time based off of a misunderstanding of the proposal.

What’s one thing that should keep clients up at night?
When your agency takes great pains to tell you that its trading desk isn’t a conflict of interest, be certain that it’s a conflict of interest.

With all the talk of DSPs, SSPs, RTB and the like, is the ad process going to be mostly automated in, say, five years?
Nobody knows. Machines will still certainly play a part, but it will always be a mix. Big publishers are run by humans, not machines, and they will always hold major sources of inventory aside to get premium pricing. Why do car salesman still exist? Humans still need to be there to explain parts of the value and assist with the process. There are still bank tellers, right? In our business, machines will never be able to think and be creative. For all the talk there is, the DSP/SSP providers have barely any premium inventory, and they mostly trade with each other for below-the-fold banner and autoplay video. Automation will help a great deal, but let’s not get carried away.

Is there an appreciable difference among different agencies?
No. They are all the same: middleman who are gatekeepers and procurement agents for the brands. But don’t tell them that; they think they are doing the Lord’s work.

The unthinkable happened at a friend’s wedding last month. As the groom was asked to confirm his desire to accept the bride as his lawfully wedded wife, he held up his hand, as if to say “wait a minute.” The audible gasps among the attendees turned to relieved chuckles as he pulled out his iPhone in the middle of the vows. He was tweeting, “I Do,” to his hundred or so followers.

At a coffee catch-up yesterday, the person I met with was too busy typing meeting minutes in Google Docs to actually have a face-to-face conversation with me. Even after I received his play-by-play account of our meeting via email, I left feeling as if we wasted time and never went deep enough to discuss specific, critical issues.

On New Year’s Eve last year, as thousands of people counted down from ten to one, I looked across the Sydney Harbor foreshore. I was shocked that most revelers were taking photos of the fireworks instead of actually watching them.

Are we entering an age where capturing the highlights of our lives has taken precedence over actually enjoying those very same moments? A quick survey of the social web suggests so. On Facebook today, roughly 200 million photos will be uploaded. We’ll also turn to a myriad of other social networks, such as Instagram (15 photos per second) and Path (1.5 million items of content per day) to build deep reservoirs of the experiences we’ve painstakingly captured. And with the surge in U.S. smartphone penetration, these platforms will only become more firmly embedded in our daily routines. Said one Instagram addict about cataloging the highlights of her day, “I don’t have a problem or anything…I feel I need to grab it before it’s gone.” Thus, the new behavior on social networks is to develop, as one venture capitalist quipped, “a precious journal of moments to look at in the future.”

The problem is, we must choose between capturing these moments or viscerally experiencing them as they unfold. That we can’t do both simultaneously seems obvious — we aren’t really enjoying the live concert if we’re busy taking photos of the band. Recent research hammers this home, showing that our performance drops when we try to perform both encoding tasks (experiencing what’s around you) and response selection tasks (capturing stimuli) at the same time. So next time you have a big meeting, ask yourself whether you’re better off 1) as an active, fully engaged participant; or 2) frantically scribbling down comprehensive notes for later use, while ignoring critical room dynamics that can turn meetings on a dime — non-verbal cues, power postures, and nuanced changes in tones of voice.

Here’s why we’re so obsessed with saving moments instead of savoring them:

1. We’re wired to hoard. Psychologists have long understood the power of psychological hoarding. Humans are competitive. We like to count our victories, and most of all, we love saying that we’ve “been there, done that.” Social media platforms create hooks such as follower counts and virtual photo albums that make our experiences seem more tangible, giving us a false feeling of accumulation. It’s as if our most important experiences are now collectible.

2. We crave acceptance from our peers. Not only do we need to create a bank of experiences, we need people to notice and acknowledge our balances. After our basic human needs (such as food and shelter) are met, famed psychologist Abraham Maslow says that our esteem needs — social recognition, personal worth, and accomplishment — become critical to our perceptions of happiness. What better way to feel wanted than to log on and see scores of new likes, uplifting comments, and notifications? Over 700 million comments and likes per day are made on Facebook alone, creating a virtual hive of feedback.

3. It’s now easier than ever. Recent platform updates, such as Instagram’s simplified uploading process and Facebook’s new timeline profiles, are nudging us to capture even more of our daily lives. With the explosion in smartphone and tablet sales, we’ll be doing this from more devices than ever before.

In today’s world, it’s easy to think of your daily personal and professional experiences as notches in a belt, with the aim of creating a sense of appreciation at some future point. But why not let that time be now? At your next client meeting, push that iPad aside and impress through live, personal interaction. And outside the office, don’t confuse capturing your life with enjoying it. Next time you find yourself in the middle of a moment, live it, and leave your phone in your pocket.

Like musicians, marketers and agencies aspire to perform in concert to create advertising hits that top the charts. But who’s leading the band these days? Do marketers need lead agencies? And if so, what’s their role?   Advertisers and agencies are telling us that it’s less feasible for a single agency to play frontman, overseeing the ideation and execution of every advertising component. Today’s marketing ecosystem is just too complicated. In place of the old hub-and-spoke agency model, marketers should consider three new models of agency orchestration.   The empowered orchestra model In this model, marketers empower their agencies to play two distinct leadership roles: the composer (idea agency) and conductor (orchestrator agency). This approach suits marketers who want to maximize creative innovation and operational effectiveness. It works well when marketers implement complex initiatives across multiple agencies, often within a single holding company or an agency network. To empower their orchestra of agencies, marketers need to:  

• Give composer agencies freedom of artistic expression for big ideas. Marketers can give agencies the latitude for innovative thinking by separating the role of creative leadership from operational leadership. For instance, Best Buy continues to use Crispin Porter & Bogusky as its big-idea agency, while it taps Wunderman to lead the implementation of cross-channel initiatives. 
• Assign a conductor agency to interpret the arrangement for the brand composition. Today’s marketing ideas won’t succeed unless they are flawlessly orchestrated across agency partners. Sprint recently announced the creation of its new agency model called Team Sprint — a combination of several Publicis agencies, with Digitas primarily playing the role of conductor and Leo Burnett resources playing composer. 
• Empower virtuoso agencies to play the role of guest conductor. Some advertising initiatives will require the leadership of specialist agencies (e.g., public relations, media, social media, mobile). So marketers should enable these virtuoso agencies to play the role of guest conductor. For instance, Google turned to AKQA, instead of a traditional creative agency, to lead all creative work related to YouTube.

  The Broadway producer model In this model, marketers may still prefer the concept of a lead agency, but to make it work, they must play a more active role in agency orchestration. Like the executive producer of a Broadway musical, marketers must be confident in their ability to provide the brand’s artistic vision. When does this make the most sense? When clients have a strong point of view on brand strategy and a roster of agencies aligned with that vision. To make it work, marketers need to:  

• Elevate senior marketers with budget authority to play the role of executive producer. Marketers who yearn to be an executive producer must possess strong skills in consumer insights and brand strategy and usually have agency-side experience. Clients may need to create two distinct leadership roles to oversee agency initiatives: 1) a brand steward who leads brand strategy and ideation, and 2) a marketing operations director who equips agencies to succeed. 
• Assign a director to have oversight for each performance. Marketers must appoint a single lead for coordinating implementation across agencies, but that resource could be a single person or an agency. For instance, marketers like Kimberly-Clark, which works with a variety of WPP agencies around the world, now have one contact at WPP to help them access resources across the holding company. This global client lead is not affiliated with any specific agency. 
• Reward all agencies for standing-ovation performances. Marketers will have to rethink agency compensation structures. For instance, Procter & Gamble provides bonus incentives to every agency involved in a project’s success so that agencies are motivated to cooperate, even if they don’t get the chance to play the starring role.

  The jazz improvisation model In this model, the marketer prefers that agencies collaborate on ideation, rather than letting one agency come up with the idea. The marketer plays the role of band manager by assembling an ensemble of agencies for a specific gig and letting them arrive at the best solution. When does this make the most sense? When marketers use a roster of unaffiliated agencies or when they have sporadic integrated project-based work. To become more improvisational, marketers need to:  

• Create a venue for agencies to jam together. You need to host strategy sessions that bring every agency together in the ideation phase. This will help them work together more effectively later on during the execution phase of the initiative. 
• Establish a lead arrangement so that all agencies know their parts. Agency improvisation doesn’t work without tightly defined scope of work and clear roles and responsibilities, which usually comes in the form of an energizing and inspiring briefing. 
• Ensure that projects are harmonized for all agencies to stay in rhythm. Some marketers, like Dell, use formal agency councils to coordinate cross-agency initiatives. Other marketers empower agencies to riff with each other, like Kraft Philly Cream Cheese. It brought its creative, media, and digital agencies (McGarryBowen, Starcom, and Digitas) together to jointly develop an integrated campaign.

  Are you in sync with your agencies? Maybe it’s time to try a new arrangement you can dance to.   (One final note: My firm has worked with many of the companies mentioned in this piece.)

Central to extrapolating the terms and search position for which the URL should rank, the Google algorithm looks at the anchor text contained within links. For example, numerous links to http://www.buy.com/iphone with ‘iphone’ in the anchor text signal to search engines that the page should probably be ranking for the query ‘iphone’. Optimizing anchor text remains a central part of SEO. In SEOMoz’s annual ranking factors survey, SEO professionals put page level link metrics as the most important ranking factor (together with domain level link authority features) used by search algorithms.

How Websites Implement Anchor Text

Given how important anchor text remains in determining search rankings to the present day, we were curious to see how a broad selection of websites and implemented anchor text across their websites. We looked at more than 100,000 inbound links across more than 650 e-commerce and non-ecommerce domains, ultimately analyzing more than 4.2 million links and their anchor text using Conductor’s Searchlight SEO platform (disclosure: I work for Conductor). We first looked at how websites deploy anchor text by looking at a distribution of anchor text by number of keywords. We found more than half (53 percent) of all anchor text were short and fairly non-specific, containing between 1-3 keywords. The percentage of anchor text peaked at 2 words, declined steadily until 7 words, and then shot up to 14 percent for 8 or more words. The bump in percentage of anchor text with 8+ words was likely due to inbound links pointing directly to specific products. The analysis showed many inbound URLs with 8+ anchor text were highly specific product descriptions, such as ‘celestial seasonings lemon zinger herb tea 20 tea bags’.

21% of 1-3 Word Anchor Text Links is Garbage or Contains no Text

Our further analysis of anchor text with between one and three words shows one out of five were likely not helping sites to rank. 21 percent of links were either URLs and did not contain any anchor text at all, or were ‘garbage’ text such as ‘gfh5bhfryu’. Despite it being an ‘SEO 101 no-no’ many sites are still committing the anchor text sin of ‘click here’ or some variation thereof—a non-trivial percentage of the ‘garbage’ anchor text were ‘click here’.

Anchor Text Best Practices

Given how significant anchor text remains in determining relevancy for search engine algorithms, and knowing a significant part of inbound links with anchor text is outside of our control, it’s important that SEOs take steps to influence the elements that they can control. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when working with inbound links:

• First Find Out Where Your Inbound Links are Coming From: Today, technology solutions, from full featured SEO platforms to free link analysis software can tell you how where your inbound links are coming from. You can then go after low hanging fruit of instances where linkers may be willing to tweak non-descriptive anchor text to better reflect the page they are ranking to thus helping you to rank for relevant terms.
• First Impressions Matter: The first instance of linking to the same page is often the text used in determining search ranking factors. This factor often occurs in internal linking situations when linking to pages within your own domain, e.g. having a sidebar link to your homepage, and another link to the homepage in the body of your text so keep that in mind as you are developing a linking strategy for your keywords.
• An Image is Worth (Almost) 1,000 Words: The search engines use the ALT tag of an image link to determine relevancy for ranking images. Don’t forget to optimize your images as they are another opportunity to show up in search for your keywords. Research has shown that universal search results (including images) have become increasingly prevalent: one study showed 8 out of 10 high volume searches now have universal results of some kind.

Don’t Forget our Old Friend, Anchor Text

With all of the ongoing changes in the SERPs these days it’s easy to lose sight of the fundamentals of SEO that remain the core of increasing natural search visibility. SEO professionals believe anchor text is still the number one ranking factor, but our analysis of inbound links shows given the way anchor text is used across many sites, there may be opportunity for marketers to optimize their own internal links and target low hanging fruit of non-optimized inbound links from high-value targets.

On February 29th (just over three weeks ago!) Facebook announced the upgrade that brands had been eagerly waiting for: Timeline. As with all major Facebook launches, marketers had big expectations. Facebook promised that Timeline would help “showcase brand’s unique stories and identities” and improve how consumers interact and engage with their favorite brands. This study aims to get beyond the hype and measure the real impact of this change by analyzing the Facebook Fan Pages of 15 early adopters from a variety of industries. We measured Timeline’s impact by comparing engagement rates before and after Timeline was implemented for these pages.

Brands Get 46% More Engagement Per Post With Timeline:

Looking at our complete sample of early adopters shows the following increase in engagement when you compare averages before Timeline vs averages after Timeline: 1. 14% Increase in Fan Engagement 2. 46% Increase in Content Engagement 3. 65% Increase in Interactive Content Engagement (Video and Photo) Looking at each individual brand in our samples shows that nearly all have had an engagement lift since Timeline launched. Livestrong, Toyota, Humane Society, and Red Bull showing the largest percentage increase within this group, all with dramatic lift in their per post averages.

How Timeline is Changing the Game for Brands

Facebook Timeline presents Fan Pages in a totally new light. This redesign is much more visual, focused on interactive content, and provides new features that give brands more control over how their Fan Page looks and feels. All of this is playing a role in how brand and consumers can engage on Fan Pages.

Disproportionate Engagement Growth for Multimedia Content

One key promise of Facebook Timeline is that fans should have an easier time finding and engaging with compelling content posted by the brands they care about.  Based on our initial findings related to engagement, this is exactly what is happening, and it’s particularly relevant for multimedia content (photo and video). Photos and videos tend to drive positive engagement. Now that this interactive content has the ability to stand out even more on a page — with the new features like starring and pinning — it is not surprising that engagement is also on the rise. For example, looking at this starred Red Bull photo, it is easy to see why fans are drawn to engage with it, particularly in this new, larger, format.

Content Discovery is Becoming Easier

Fan Engagement is up 14% Another key component of Timeline is the ease at which fans can discover content about a particular brand. This allows brands to tell their story and turn their page into a more deeply enriched and engaging experience. Again, we can start attributing this increased exposure to the new features, particularly pinning. Looking at this Toyota example, they are continuing to raise awareness and draw attention to this event they are sponsoring. This piece of content was posted on March 10th, over ten days ago. And it is still receiving engagement, even within the last 24 hours.  

For nearly fifteen years, technologists have tried to solve the problem of how to integrate video and other forms of rich media into email.  The idea was that people wanted to have richer, fuller Internet experiences right in the inbox, without the need to click through an email message to the web.   Unfortunately, many of the early efforts ultimately proved fruitless or unpopular. Today, the web is littered with startups that claimed to offer a solution enabling video in email. Integrating video in email has always been a bit of a tricky problem to solve, but not just for technical reasons.  Plenty of people in the industry still question the underlying premise of integrating video in email at all.

• Does video in email annoy subscribers?
• Does it defeat the purpose of getting people to click through the email?
• Is it worth the effort, given potential deliverability and rendering implications, especially since simply including an image in an email linked to a video on a landing page is the de facto industry best practice?

When it comes to these questions, nearly everyone has an opinion.  So, as someone that spends his days living and breathing in the world of video in email, I thought I’d share my thoughts in a three-part series on the topic. In today’s post, I outline how the landscape has shifted in the world of video in email, and why more marketers are embracing this tactic now than ever before.  In the second post to come, I will outline how many of the points conventionally used to argue against video in email no longer hold as much water as they used to.  Finally, I’ll wrap by sharing why I think video in email is here to stay and what you can do to maximize the opportunity.

Open Standards (HTML5) Have Opened Up Video in Email

Over the last two years, a growing push to advance the nascent HTML5 standard has forever altered the landscape of video in email.  Unlike earlier efforts to advance video in email using proprietary technologies, HTML5 is an open standard.  It’s built into all of the modern web browsers and most of the modern mobile devices, including Apple iOS devices and the latest Android operating systems.  Adobe has announced plans to stop building Flash for mobile devices.  In short, HTML5 is here and it’s here to stay. The momentum of HTML5 video in the wider industry has huge implications for email marketers.  Unlike Flash, HTML5 is supported natively in the browser, eliminating the security risks of third-party plugins that hindered earlier efforts like RadicalMail from taking off and prompted mail clients to disable Flash support in the early 2000’s.  In the new mobile paradigm the world is now entering, people increasingly read email their smartphones, one of the most fertile environments for HTML5 video. Today, the following mail clients are capable of displaying video right in the body of the email:

• All iOS devices when opened in the native mail client (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
• Hotmail, when viewed in an HTML5 compliant web browser
• IE 9+
• Chrome 3+
• Firefox 3.5+
• Safari 3.1+ on desktop, and 3.0+ (iOS)
• Thunderbird
• Apple Mail 3, 4
• Outlook for Mac 2011

When considering the popularity of mobile devices, the above mail clients consistently show that close to 50% of all email messages read today support HTML5 video. For example, this campaign sent recently by Disney generated 49.5% of all video in email views through the HTML5 format: In another recent example, this campaign sent by Saks Fifth Avenue generated 67.5% of all in-email video views from HTML5.  So much for email not supporting video.

Video in Email Streamlines Mobile Viewing – Tap Once, Not Twice.

As we progress deeper into the mobile era, marketers are also looking to make it easy for mail recipients to consume content on their devices.  It comes as a surprise to many marketers that the old belief that it is easier for people to consume video when it’s on a landing page doesn’t apply in many mobile situations.  For example, iPhone users that receive an email containing a static image linked to a landing page containing a video are forced to tap on the image in the email, wait for the clickthrough redirect, open a new browser or browser page, then tap again on the video to get it to play.  In the reverse situation, where the video is in the email, only a single tap is required to initiate playback.

Brand Marketers Use Video Email Marketing To Extend Ad Reach

Brand marketers understand how to use television to bombard an audience with video messaging to build demand for a product, promote the brand, or drive an offline purchase.  It’s of little surprise therefore that this class of sender is more willing to use video in email as a mechanism of increasing the reach of video advertising. For example, when Sky sought to extend the reach of its video advertising for the TV mini-series “Game of Thrones,” it used video in email to generate an incremental 1 million+ views of its TV trailer.  Discovery Channel also used the technique to promote its hit TV mini series, “Life.”  Such tactics are used because they reduce the friction between the recipient and the video view while generating the same sense of excitement as a video would generate on a landing page.

Animated .GIFs and .PNG Videos Also Extend the Reach of Video 

While I’ve pointed out that it’s no longer unusual for close to fifty percent of email recipients to have the ability to play video in email, that’s only looking at those recipients capable of playing the full video in the mail client (at full framerate, with player controls and audio playback), using the HTML5 format.  In fact, the reach of video in email is much greater, in some cases in excess of 90% of a sender’s list, when also taking into account the animated .GIF and animated .PNG formats. Like HTML5, these formats are open standards and therefore not subject to filtering by mail clients or Internet Service Providers. While many in the email community scoff at the use of these formats due to perceived lack of quality and inability to support sound, the reality is that the quality can be surprisingly good as a backstop to full video.  Plus,animated video images can drive clicks higher when benchmarked against static images. For example, HP used some best practices with this animated .GIF video (watch the video below @~1:03) to ensure it was able to communicate its message about a new laptop for sale.  In the example, HP used text in the animated .GIF and included a call-to-action on the animated .GIF to drive clickthrough. Other senders, such as Holland America, decided to A/B test an animated .GIF video in email versus a static image and observed a 100% higher clickthrough rate on the video segment. In my experience, such increases in CTR using animated .GIFs vs. static images are uncommon, but increases of 5% to 15% are not unusual.  Unfortunately, those senders that are using CTR as a proxy to measure A/B splits for video in email should think twice: that’s because while it’s possible to measure the clicks on an animated .GIF video, it’s not currently possible to do this on the full HTML5 video.  Therefore, if you’re trying to drive an online action, it is a better idea to use post-click metrics to measure success.

Adding Video To Email Is Easier Than It’s Ever Been

Today, it’s possible to use coding techniques such as the one shown in the HP example video to enable video in email.  Such solutions can ensure that even if video is not supported by the mail client, that an acceptable failover is possible to implement in most cases.  I’ll dive more into the tactics of how to implement video in email in the third post in this series. For now, I’ll leave you with my closing thoughts:

Video Email Has Arrived & It’s Time To Leverage The Benefits

• HTML5 has fundamentally altered the landscape of video in email
• Close to 50% of your mail recipients should be able to see full video in email
• Close to 90% of your mail recipients should be able to see full video or animated .GIF/.PNG video in email
• Video in email reduces viewing friction on common mobile devices like the iPhone
• Video in email can extend video reach for brand marketers and senders trying to drive offline action
• Including video in email is easier than it’s ever been before.

  ComScore has issued more details from its vCE Charter Study, an ambitious research project that examined the “in-view” rates and other attributes of nearly 2 billion impressions from 12 major brands. ClickZ earlier reported the central finding of the report, that 31 percent of display ads from those brands were not viewable by the end user. Among the other findings, released in a white paper today:

• Ad viewability varied dramatically by site. On one property, 100 percent of ads were in view. On another, only 7 percent could be seen and the rest were wasted, drastically distorting whatever CPM the advertiser may have paid.
• Among ad sizes, the 728x90 Classic Leaderboard scored the best in-view rates, with 74 percent of ads visible, although websites varied widely in performance, from 7 percent to 93 percent viewability for properties using this size. The 300x250 Medium Rectangle format delivered in-view rates of 69 percent, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper delivered the lowest at 66 percent.
• There was almost no correlation between the price an advertiser paid and whether or not an ad was in-view. (ComScore’s conclusion from this: “Sites with the ability to garner strong in-view rates are not being compensated fairly.”)
• 72 percent of campaigns had at least some ads served into “non-safe” environments, the definition of which can include adult sites, sites with hate speech, illegal drug websites, spam URLs, and sites pushing questionable software, among others. The actual percentage of impressions in those environments was very small - less than .01 percent. Even so, 92,000 people saw these ads, creating risks for the brand.
• Campaigns targeting a specific age demographic reached that audience with 70 percent of their impressions. ComScore sees a trend away from age targeting, saying most ads were intended for an adult but the specific range was of secondary concern.
• 37 percent of impressions were delivered to audiences with behavioral profiles that matched the brand’s category focus. The more targeting attributes an advertiser layered in, the lower the delivery rate.

Among the participating brands were Allstate, Chrysler, Discover, eTrade, Ford, General Mills, HTC, Kelloggs, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods, and Sprint. A total of 18 campaigns were examined across nearly 3,000 media placements. The total impression was 1.8 billion. There is a growing movement in the ad industry to shift to a viewable rather than a served ad impression. Last September, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 3Ms (Making Measurement Make Sense) initiative called on media buyers and sellers to move to the viewable impression standard. ComScore is one of several vendors offering measurement solutions geared to in-view impressions. Others include C3 Metrics and RealVu. ComScore launched its solution, called validated Campaign Essentials, after which today’s white paper is named, in January. Anne Hunter, comScore SVP of advertising effectiveness, notes people have used above- or below-the-fold as a proxy to get to what makes a “viewable ad.” “The reality is that that is not necessarily a great method for figuring out if you really have viewable impressions,” she said. “There were some places where below the fold was fabulous.” In one example, she said, a website delivered extremely high in-view rates by presenting both content and articles in 300 x 250 squares. ComScore took pains to note all the ad impressions studied were delivered in iframes, including what are called “cross-domain” iframes, which have been historically hard to measure. “We found 61 percent of the time impressions were served in cross-domain iframes. Being able to measure impressions in cross-domain iframes is critical to measuring impression validity,” said Hunter.