4 Things to Look Forward to at the Digital Marketing Summit

The WhatCounts 2013 Digital Marketing Summit is only a week away, and if you’re one of the people who has perused our agenda and bought your tickets, congratulations! You’re in for two days of sessions that we hope will blow your marketing minds. Here are a few reasons why you are going to love the Summit: 

Marketers and Publishers Rallying to Change Display Ad Metrics

The simple display ad market, now worth $12.7 billion may begin shrinking soon. Marketers are starting displayad1to understand that a significant percentage of the inventory has no value, primarily because of new viewability standards. To counter this problem, publishers are making changes to the media spaces that they are selling.

10 interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week

Once again I've rounded up some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.

Stats include smartphone shopping in the EU5, e-commerce delivery expectations, ad clicks on the mobile web, interactice iPad apps and three different sets of Facebook stats.

The Cost Of Being Right vs. When It’s Ok To Shut Up

Last weekend, I did something that I don’t usually do. I took my kids to see a movie,  Ice Age: Continental Drift.  I don’t usually attend the movies because I can’t stand sitting through all the inappropriate previews that my kids shouldn’t see, but that is another blog post altogether.

The day before we went to see the movie, I called our local Regal theater to ask some questions about ages and pricing.  I wanted to pre-purchase our tickets so that we could skip the long and boring line.  Those of you with kids will know how fun those are!  After speaking to the theater, and getting the information I needed, I bought the tickets and set our schedule for a fun time the next day.  Simple right?

The future of digital music distribution and online music marketing

Following years of doom and gloom surrounding the rise of internet piracy and the death of physical formats, we’re finally hearing some good news from the UK music industry.

In May the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) announced that UK digital music revenues overtook those from physical formats. It means that the UK music industry is finally catching up with the US and China who were already earning the lion’s share of their revenue from online digital music distribution.

The BPI report states that consumers spent a total of £155.8m on music in the first quarter of 2012, with 55.5%, or £86.5m coming from digital music revenues. This trend is set to continue with the growth of music downloads as well as subscription and ad-funded music services.
So has the music industry’s winter of discontent finally ended?

ROI: The Most Dysfunctional Metric In Digital Marketing

Ok, so maybe the title of this article is a little dramatic for ratings’ sake, but, seriously, ROI conversations are the bane of my existence. Not because I have an offline background where the idea of having to prove value from my campaigns seems ludicrous. Not because I am some brand-happy marketer that believes impressions are the best way to judge success.

Heck, it’s not even because I am just being extra cranky today (although that might be the case — I have been known to be a bit ornery in my old age).  It’s because we all get it wrong, and there is no one to blame but ourselves.  Here’s how it works:

1. Agency/Marketer takes on a new campaign.
2. Agency/Marketer knows they have to show big numbers right off the bat to impress the Powers That Be (PTB).
3. Agency/Marketer runs the easy, heavily direct response channels like branded paid search and retargeting and earns really impressive ROIs — leading to all the adoration in the world from the PTB.
4. Agency/Marketer maximizes these channels and goes broader — running brand growth or acquisition-type campaigns that deliver significantly lower ROI. The PTB see an ROI much lower than what they are used to seeing, freak out, blame the agency/marketer and cut the brand growth and acquisition budgets to raise their ROI back up.
5. Agency/Marketer obliges, and the brand goes right back to being the same size, with little expansion (but a really fantastic looking, high ROI) opportunity.

And so the cycle begins. It is an unhealthy cycle that hurts marketers, kills creativity, and ultimately stifles brand growth. The good news is that it’s completely preventable — and when agencies and marketers approach ROI the right way, their brands flourish.

Marketing execs falling behind the digital learning curve

One of the best parts of my job is having the privilege of observing the inner-workings of companies and their struggle to become a digital literate (and hopefully, digital leading) company.

This is NOT an easy process.  In fact, it can be gut-wrenching.

Many of today’s marketing executives grew up in a less-complicated and relatively mature world of TV and print advertising. Not only are they not digital experts, they may not even know enough to ask the right questions that will lead to a successful strategy.

The urgent push to digital

Some companies aren’t making it.  Kodak, the dominant market leader for decades could not make the transition to digital and is bankrupt.

Five Considerations for Social Command Centers

It’s no secret that business has shifted to a real-time environment and social media tools are trying to keep up. As a result, organizations and brands must act in real-time. Some organizations have responded by building out what’s becoming known as “social command centers” in order to respond to this shift. Having built and operated our own command center (we call it the Social Intelligence Command Center or SICC), we’ve compiled five considerations for creating a similar space.

Smaller Retailers Tap Into the Power of Digital Displays

Digital signs are becoming pervasive, whether to entertain bored shoppers at supermarket checkouts or demonstrate the latest gadgets in home-furnishing stores.

Retailers see green in these electronic displays, says Virginia Cargill, a venture partner at Alerion Partners in Rowayton, Conn., and former CEO at SignStorey, a digital media company focused on the grocery industry. During her tenure at SignStorey, the company provided in-store content that included recipes, health tips, interviews and advertisements. "If the meat department screen had an ad for Boar's Head or the produce section for Kraft, sales of those brands would usually see a 15 to 25 percent bump," Cargill says.

Although shoppers most often see digital signage at big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, the technology is becoming more affordable for smaller businesses.
Here are four ways small-business owners are using digital signs:

Getting Ready For A Post-Search World

Search is no longer just one thing. At minimum, it’s two things: organic and paid. But, as the marketplace that holds it has evolved, search is so much more.

It’s a composite of methods; it’s an ingredient; it’s a mechanic; it’s a mindset. While it’s not yet unrecognizable, even marketers who once deemed it a silver bullet or their performance-marketing drug of choice must acknowledge that we have somewhat moved beyond search in its pure form.

It’s ironic that the very folks who perhaps took a bit too long to adopt search marketing in the first place than they should have, and who now consider it a vital method, must accept its transformation. But, it’s clear: In order to compete, we must come to terms with what is starting to feel like a Post-Search world, as we raise the bar, yet again.

Turn your digital technology provider from supplier to partner

As the online industry has grown, so have the number of moving parts we have to consider.

As the cogs in the machine continue to multiply, everyone has had to acquire cross functional skills to manage the different channels that come under the remit of the online marketer.
Whether it be PPC, SEO, re-targeting, social, mobile, or local; the one entity in this eco-system that should have a working knowledge of all of these areas is your technology provider.

Are You Customer-Obsessed?

Consumers today are setting the pace for online marketers and brands, and the digital media technology is out there to listen to customer cues and respond with relevant, engaging communications. But what does it take to be truly customer-obsessed? Is the industry at large living up to the promises of real-time interactive marketing? The unfortunate answer is no. At least at this time.

This week, PulsePoint, in collaboration with the CMO Club and Digiday, announced the results of a groundbreaking study that examines the digital marketing capabilities, top challenges and priorities of nearly 400 senior marketers, agency executives and publishers.

From a capability standpoint, the large majority of survey respondents were comfortable executing multi-channel campaigns across two or more channels. However, the challenges start occurring when marketers are tasked with applying lessons from one channel to improve efforts in another channel (cross-channel). The wake up call revealed by the survey results is that, across the board, a majority of marketers, agencies and publishers lack the capabilities to execute real-time interactive marketing.

IAB Creates "Bar Exam" For Digital Ad Sales

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has established what it calls the first-ever educational standard for digital media sales forces. It believes that the "IAB Digital Media Sales Certification" fills the need for professional benchmarks in digital, on par with the legal world’s Bar Exam and Wall Street’s Series 7. That situation changes with today’s announcement by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) establishing the first-ever educational standard for digital media sales forces with the launch of the "IAB Digital Media Sales Certification."

Digital Management of Business Travel Expenses

Globalization has helped organizations expand their business to regions far and wide. This meant that with the expansion the area of jurisdiction for the management also widens making travel across regions and globetrotting between distantly located offices becomes a must for the key professionals. Besides these the corporate offices also needs to track and manage the expenses incurred at these distant locations.

Downturn has accelerated digital adoption, says Deloitte

Social media and review sites are having an increasingly powerful role in the holiday destination decision-making process.
New data shows that 86% of overseas and 91% of domestic travel transactions are now ‘digitally influenced’.
This includes direct online sales or multichannel transactions where consumers interact with travel agents, hotels or airlines across a number of touch points, including stores, online, social media, peer reviews and smartphone or tablet apps, according to research by Deloitte.

How to survive the transition to digital direct response

The social media revolution was an over-hyped lie. Digital marketing is forcing marketing communications to evolve, not re-invent itself.


Mass media ideas that aren't working anymore (like branding) are winding down as "what works" is becoming increasingly evident: direct response marketing. Like it or not, whether you're a small business owner or a brand manager, surviving this evolution means embracing and practicing traditional direct response marketing.
"Well, we didn't get nearly the number of leads we wanted to from our LinkedIn Group this quarter but at least we got some good branding out of it."

How to Capitalize on Digital

When ebooks began to emerge some years ago the common perception was they were not really books, just PDF’s masquerading as books.
New research proves ebooks are not only for real, they are actually favored by the most voracious readers and those who are on-the-go and prefer to consume information from their mobile device.