Healthy Blog Reviews

comScore released a new study today examining the effects of display advertising in the European market —and it’s pretty dang impressive. The study (well, actually, report based on more than 20 studies) indicates that, despite minimal clicks on the ads themselves, “those exposed to online ad campaigns in Europe were 72 percent more likely to visit the advertiser’s website and 94 percent more likely to conduct a trademark search query on the advertiser’s brand, compared to a control group of similar Internet users who were not exposed to the campaigns.” These figures are pretty staggering—especially when compared to US figures, which comScore reports as “an average lift of 49 percent in site visitation and 40 percent in trademark search queries across hundreds of ad effectiveness studies.” The European lift effects were most significant during the first week after exposure, but didn’t drop off dramatically. comScore Director of Marketing Solutions Mike Shaw said in the press release, These results help illustrate how online advertising works. Despite the long-held obsession with using clicks to measure campaign performance – which reflect only the immediate impact of an ad — the comScore studies demonstrate that the Internet is clearly effective as a latent brand-building medium. Europeans appear to be particularly receptive to online advertising, and whether it’s due to better creative, less ad clutter, or greater receptivity to online ads, the implication for brand advertisers is clear: ignore online as a brand-building channel at your own peril. And I guess it also shows that it pays to know before you go . . . ad shopping. What do you think? Why might Europeans be so influenced by display ads? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: based-on-more, better-creative, campaigns, despite-minimal, Display, Europe, implication, internet, press, score-director
Posted March 12, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

AOL unveiled its social aggregator and publisher, Lifestream, as part of its instant messenger platform last Fall. Now they’re launching a stand-alone site at lifestream.aol.com . After it appears they’ve failed with Bebo , this social venture may have a chance of success, in the opinion of TechCrunch at least—they’re saying, “ This is what Google Buzz should have been .” Like most social aggregators, Lifestream gathers content from several social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube. Lifestream uses existing friend lists on those social networks, so users don’t have to recompile their friend lists. Users can also cancel updates from entire networks, users or users on networks (i.e. ignore your friend’s Twitter stream but keep following his Facebook). It’s also integrated with Facebook Connect, so there’s no separate login, and users can publish back to social networks from the platform. Lifestream also has a network of its own, and plans integration with Google Buzz in the future. TechCrunch doesn’t mention whether the service automatically hides duplicate messages—for example, your friends who have their Twitter statuses automatically publish to Facebook, too. And then there’s the mobile platform: the website is compatible with mobiles, but Lifestream also has AIR, iPhone and Android apps. The mobile apps auto-note location, and you can use them to post pictures. TechCrunch concludes: The Lifestream product is simple, intuitive and really, really useful. Frankly it’s what Google Buzz should have been – both an independent social network on its own, but very deep integration into all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. It’s nice to see actual innovation coming out of Aol. In a time of more and more fragmentation, I think many people are looking for a product like this. If Lifestream is really as easy and seamless as TechCrunch says, and if it can gain acceptance, it could be the product AOL needs to turn its social fortunes around. What do you think? Will you give it a shot?

Tags: aol, delicious, facebook, friend, mobile, opinion, Social, tube-lifestream, users-or-users
Posted March 12, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Google has announced that a service that was previewed last December is now live for mobile devices. I’ll call it the “Blue Dot of Availability” which is stupid but it’s the best I can do. This function is just more evidence that Google is making mobile a top priority and it is giving retailers the ability to come along for the ride. The Google Mobile blog tells us more We’re happy to announce that as of today, if you’re searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it’s available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent “In stock nearby” link, and you’ll be taken to the seller’s page where you’ll see whether the item is “In Stock” or has “Limited Availability” near you. You’ll also see how far away the stores are from you — as long as you’ve enabled My Location or manually specified your location. Here’s a look at it as well. The initial list of retailers for this offering looks good and it is only going to grow as one would expect. At the end of the blog post Google puts out a request for retailers interested to fill out a form to get in the game. My only question is why do you have to click on the More tab in order to get to the Shopping tab, which this function is under. For those in the know this will work but for the general searching population they may not know that this option even exists. I know there isn’t much room on mobile screen but a cool function that is buried may never get the exposure to make it truly successful. But heck, what do I know?! Happy shopping for your blue dot specials.

Tags: away-the-stores, blue, cloud-computing, game, google-mobile, location, mobile, Search, shopping
Posted March 12, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Reuters has sat somewhat silently in the background of all the hub bub surrounding whether Google should be able to index stories and make money off that content through advertising. That has been an AP fight for the most part. The strategy has helped Reuters, at least in my eyes, because by staying out of the fray they are implying that they are about journalism first. That’s my take and yours may differ which is fine. What the news organization has not done until yesterday is put out an official social media policy but that’s now complete. Mashable reports Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter. The strict instruction makes it clear that even though news continually breaks on Twitter first — especially in disaster scenarios — Reuters journalists are to break their stories first via the wire and not on Twitter. The social media policy in question also addresses a number of other Twitter, Facebook, and online concerns, offering up instructions and recommendations whenever possible. The relationship between breaking news, social media and traditional news outlets is difficult to define. In one way you never want to limit the ability to gather and report news but the integrity of the news has to be kept in place. Hence the rub. While social media may allow for someone to get a “scoop” there is the real danger that it ends up being a scoop of crap versus the truth or a clearer picture of a circumstance. Seeing something happen live is very visceral and exciting but it may only be one small portion of the truth and, in fact, could be completely unrepresentative of the totality of a situation. As a result people are shaping opinions and digesting the news based on a “gut reaction”. That’s important but so is gathering all of the facts and then forming a complete picture of a situation, not just a snapshot opinion. Waiting for a wire version of an event at least allows for some more time to gather data and tell fact from fiction. So having said all of that I think that Reuters and any other hard news outlet is doing something that is essential as we move forward in the new world order of content creation and reality. The integrity of the news has to be preserved and just because social media outlets make it happen quickly in no way makes it more accurate. In fact, it will likely be less so. Since there will be no way to stop the Twitter journalism that is evolving I hope that the main news reporting entities realize that they could be even MORE important in the future if they still take the time to vet information and then tell the whole story behind the pictures and events that are reported “on the scene”. While I know this is a conservative approach I think it will be critical moving forward for consumers to be able to judge what is fantastic against what is really happening and why it happened. Maybe that’s going to be the real purpose of traditional news organizations going forward. To present a truly informed version of events and to help us put together the pieces of situations that are always much more complicated than 140 characters or a photo can convey. I think that is necessary and vital. How does Reuters plan to do this? Through telling journalists to keep their personal stuff personal and to not display any bias that could boomerang on them. Also, having tweets looked at by someone else to ensure everything is above board is discussed. Read the policy if for nothing else to be informed . So what do you think? Is the scoop more important than the whole truth? Is there danger in 140 character versions of events that are often far more complex? How can traditional news organizations maintain the balance that protects integrity but remains timely in the new world order of “report as you go”?

Tags: data, facebook, news, personal, pictures, real, Reuters, Social, Social Media, time, truth, wire
Posted March 12, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Don’t go for second best baby Put your blog to the test You know, you know, you’ve got to Make Blogger express how it feels And maybe then you’ll know your blog is real! I used to be a Blogger fan. However, just like my love of Madonna, I stopped liking Blogger when it started looking tired and old. Well, Google has announced a new Blogger Template Designer , that might help breathe a little life into the service that arguable plays second-fiddle to WordPress. With the new Blogger Template Designer you can–you guessed it–completely customize the look and feel of your blog–something my friend Vinny Lingham has being doing for years over at Yola . Anyway, spam-scrapers bloggers can now enjoy these features: Fifteen new professional templates to start from (and more on their way) Custom blog layouts with one, two and three columns Hundreds of free professional background images from iStockphoto Customizable colors, fonts and more This video explains it further:

Tags: arguable-plays, designer, love, Madonna, stopped-liking, these-features, video, video-explains, Vinny Lingham
Posted March 12, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media