Make Money Online

The raging controversy over paid content on the Internet just received a dose of reality from David Moore, the founder of 24/7 Real Media and chairman of the board of directors of IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau).

In addressing the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting on February 21, Moore proposed an “easy pay” system that he said would need to be adopted by all premium publishers. The idea would be for publishers to collect 10 cents per session, or one cent per page, from consumers who wanted access to preferred content. A consumer would have to spend at least $10 before being charged by a publisher.

Moore believes the program will only work if publishers cooperate and agree to implement it broadly. “Totally free content is dead,” said Moore, who pointed out that 10 cents for a user session is equivalent to $100 CPM, an incredibly attractive advertising rate. Basically, Moore said, people will inevitably have to pay for premium content, since advertising alone will not be able to support it.

Moore is essentially lobbying for a micropayment strategy to be institutionalized across web publishers. While his solution makes sense, the micropayment argument isn’t universally accepted by any means. In a recent blog, Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner asked four industry observers whether they thought micropayments would work.

Alan Mutter, a media/technology consultant who’s on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, agreed that a micropayment system was possible, but “it wouldn’t work for one publisher if a competing publisher decided to provide the same, or nearly identical, content for free.” Mutter seems to agree with Moore that widespread adoption is essential, he says it “would require a critical mass of publishers to agree to collaborate more earnestly, more broadly, and more smoothly than any group of humans in history. Could it happen? Theoretically. But don’t hold your breath.”

Marshall W. Van Alstyne, an associate professor at Boston University and a research scholar at MIT, depicts the problem this way: “Putting micropayments on news is like putting tollbooths on an open ocean. … the interests of a free society are rarely served by building barriers between people and the news.” Instead, Alstyne thinks other solutions are needed. He mentions three possibilities: Charge technology vendors a flat fee to put free content on cell phones, e-book readers, and laptops; offer two versions of information, one free and ad-supported, and one that’s faster-loading and more graphics-rich for a modest subscription price; or, find a way to match people to content, and in so doing, offer advertisers the ability to micro-target.

William Baker, an executive-in-residence at Columbia University, thinks combining advertising, subscription, philanthropy, and micropayments into a single comprehensive solution could work.

Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications program, thinks micropayments are doomed in part because “the competitive loss of hiding them behind a paywall reduces the users’ ability to share them with friends, and it is this secondary distribution that creates the most important new opportunities online.”

I credit David Moore with putting an “easy pay” system on the table, but it seems that the micropayments issue is about as complex and controversial as national health care reform – and we all know where that stands right now.

The rest is here:
Paying for Premium Content Still a Hot Topic

By the end of 2009, more than 4.6 billion people had mobile phones, according to the International Telecommunications Union. That’s almost 70 percent of the world’s population. In Europe and Asia, mobile phones are already standard means for consumers to conduct business and make purchases. North America is just now catching up.

Seamless web integration is fast becoming standard on mobile phones, and networks are being pushed to improve data communications speed and capabilities so they can remain competitive. That’s why 2010 could be a banner year for mobile marketing.

A recent blog post by two mobile strategists, Dan Neumann and Allison Mooney, offers a leading edge look at where mobile marketing could be headed this year.  Here are just three of the trends they say will be shaping the way marketers interact with consumers:

Localization

In a previous post, I spoke about the steady rise of interest in Foursquare, which bases its success on users checking in with each other from specific locations, like bars and restaurants. Neumann and Mooney suggest this is just the beginning of a whole range of location-based services that will open up new opportunities to marketers who want to influence local buying behavior.

Think about the possibilities. You could offer mobile coupons keyed to local stores, provide tools that allow consumers to comparison shop, and even allow consumers to interact with digital signage in store windows, using their phones to respond to ads submit messages or place orders. “Mobile will completely revolutionize the way local advertisers can connect with potential customers,” say Neumann and Mooney.

Applications

While branded applications will continue to be popular, Neumann and Mooney point out that the applications marketplace is already crowded. Marketers will need to find other ways to break through on the handset. The developing trend will be “in-app content” – the ability to develop ad-supported applications. Google is expected to be a big player – they acquired a mobile advertising network called AdMob and they’re “creating a competitive alternative business model for developers” to challenge the iPhone’s application superiority.

Social Media Integration

The cross-over of social media with mobile phones is a natural. The growth of Twitter, for example, has been driven by mobile tweeting. But the real future, according to Neumann and Mooney, is not just in consumers’ ability to interact with each other and offer feedback, but in how marketers react. “Smart marketers will do all they can to encourage and act on this real-time feedback. Whether brands carve out a dedicated mobile channel or simply rely on Twitter customer service, we’ll see more embracing the feedback loop.”

This is one bandwagon online marketers should be prepared to jump on in 2010.

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Making Mobile Matter

The Winter Olympics kicked off just days ago in Vancouver, Canada. As always, the primary media coverage is traditional television, but there’s a new and essential spin this year – social media.

As Alexandra Samuel points out in her blog for Harvard Business Review,  the Winter Olympics is “a living social media experiment.” While social media was used during the Summer Games in Beijing, “this is the first time it will be deployed in a free and democratic regime,” says Samuel.

Social media is having an impact that goes beyond the Olympics Games themselves. For example, the city of Vancouver became a hotbed of social media activity well before the games even started. Vancouver’s local media coverage of the Olympics has also changed dramatically, according to Samuel. Citizen journalists, she says, “have provided an alternate – and often critical – take on the Games.” Linda Solomon, publisher of the Vancouver Observer, an online news magazine that recruited over 150 contributors, tells Samuel, “It’s not about crafting a story anymore, which is an art that takes many years to master. It’s about telling what you see and think, something anybody can do. This levels the playing field.”

Another area that is depending heavily on social media is the “Cultural Olympiad” – an entire series of multi-disciplinary festivals running before, during, and after the Games. The Cultural Olympiad showcases Canadian and international music, dance, theatre, visual arts, and film.

In addition to making early use of Twitter and Facebook, the Cultural Olympiad launched Canada CODE, a giant digital project that, for a year before the Olympics, provided Canadians with an online platform for “connecting, creating and collaborating” with the people of the world to present “an ever-evolving portrait” of Canadians. The culmination of CODE is an invitation to enter the “Virtual Stadium” and upload a personal photo for a chance to be a virtual part of the Olympics Closing Ceremony.

The International Olympics Committee has had to deal with the impact of social media by establishing regulations for its use. The IOC allows athletes to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools as well as blogs, but requires that they limit any posts to personal experiences. “You can’t act as a journalist if you aren’t,” said Bob Condron, director of media services for the United States Olympic Committee. “You need to do things in a first person way.” Athletes are also forbidden to reference any sponsor or advertiser that is not an official Olympic partner. Condron told Wired, “These are going to be the Twitter Olympics.”

Whatever happens during the Olympics, it seems clear that social media has changed the ground rules. Says Samuel, “On the one hand, the Olympic narrative of global community seems like a natural fit for social media… On the other hand the complexity and business model behind the Games make the prospect of grassroots storytelling a huge challenge.”

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Winter Olympics a Test Case for Power of Social Media

In his post about Foursquare last October, David Lewis said Foursquare had “some serious weaknesses,” but he admitted, “It’s worth keeping an eye on it.”

Well suddenly, Foursquare seems to be breaking out of its status as a cutesy, fun mobile-enabled game. It has just been discovered by the likes of Bravo TV, HBO, the History Channel, Warner Brothers, and Zagat, according to Advertising Age. The magazine says “These new deals represent an entertainment trifecta for Foursquare – network TV, cable TV and movie studios.”

It’s true that when big advertisers discover a new media channel, it tends to legitimize the channel for other advertisers. My last post about Pepsi snubbing Super Bowl ads in favor of Facebook speaks to that. So is this the beginning of Foursquare’s coming out party?

Obviously, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley would like to think so. He sees entertainment brands as having significant potential for the company because of changes in viewer behavior. He believes consumers now watch shows on television “with computers on their laps or phones in their hands – multitasking while they watch, communicating about the content, or just killing time during commercials.”

This kind of behavior plays nicely to Foursquare’s shtick: users and friends checking in with each other from specific locations, making lists of favorites and sharing them, winning points for checking in, and winning badges for participating in new experiences. It all may sound a little juvenile, but think of it as a GPS-enabled Twitter combined with enticing rewards. Obviously, some very big advertisers are testing Foursquare to see if it will work for them. Exactly how these advertisers will use Foursquare, or benefit from it, is part of the test.

There are already some advertisers who are proving that Foursquare can pay off. Zagat, a guidebook that rates restaurants, is probably one of the better examples because what Zagat does fits so well with the concept of Foursquare. According to Advertising Age, “[Zagat] has populated five cities with tips that share their expertise – things like drink deals, the best times to dine, and what entrees to order. By checking in at Zagat-rated locations, users can unlock a new ‘foodie badge’ and those that frequent a place most often might be featured on Zagat.com…”

Zagat has an iPhone application that allows users to access content about and ratings of restaurants. It also offers the ability to make OpenTable reservations for those restaurants that accept them directly from the app. But Zagat’s Ryan Charles told Advertising Age that iPhone and other smartphone applications are just the beginning. Foursquare is “a natural progression. There is an obvious synergy between Zagat’s expertise in helping people make quick, informed decisions and Foursquare’s location-based platform.”

Will this latest buzz get Foursquare over the hurdle of being an intriguing if inconsequential technology? And will the current interest from big advertisers help transform Foursquare into a major player capable of displacing Twitter? It’s too soon to tell – but one way or the other, chances are Foursquare will become a player that online marketers will be have to take seriously.

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Foursquare, Seriously

Maybe you were one of the 100 million who watched the underdog New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl, but here’s something you didn’t see: an ad from Pepsi, noticeably absent among Super Bowl advertisers for the first time in 23 years. Ironically, unlike Google, the soft drink giant decided to bow out of the big game and put $20 million into digital media instead, relying on its own website and Facebook to tout its brand. Go to Pepsi.com and you’ll see just how digitally sophisticated Pepsi has become.

Don’t underestimate the importance of Pepsi’s promotional strategy. It is representative of what other advertisers are considering this year. Previously, I reported that Procter & Gamble is ramping up its Facebook presence.

It has taken the big guys a while to catch on to social media, but it looks like the floodgates have finally opened. PepsiCo North America’s Marketing VP, Ralph Santana, sounded like a social media convert when he told Financial Times, “We’re living in a new age with consumers. They are looking for more of a two-way dialogue, story-telling and word of mouth. Mediums like the digital space are much more conducive towards that.”

Facebook clearly recognizes that it is on the leading edge of the digital advertising revolution. The company is working with media researcher Nielsen, renowned for television’s Nielsen Ratings, to measure Facebook’s advertising effectiveness.

According to Financial Times, ad agencies are excited about Facebook’s promotional potential, too. Rich Gagnon, chief media officer at Draft FCB, sees Facebook as an important media outlet with the ability to reach more than 350 million people in one place. Even better, Gagnon says, Facebook can provide targeting capabilities based on demographics and interests.

The most exciting potential for advertisers using Facebook, however, may actually be Facebook Connect, which was introduced in late 2008. At last report, Facebook Connect was available on more than 15,000 websites. This set of APIs lets users “bring their identity and connections everywhere,” says Facebook.

Facebook Connect can do things like enable its users to share an advertiser’s website content with their friends, who then click back to the advertiser’s site. Tools like Facebook Connect represent a way social media can be seamlessly integrated with everything from websites to mobile devices.

Jesse Pickard, a social media specialist at digital agency Razorfish, blogged about Facebook Connect a year ago. What he had to say then has a lot of relevance to advertisers today:

“With a one-click login to Facebook Connect, websites have access to an unprecedented amount of user data. Using this data, sites now have the ability to redefine the way they display user generated content.”

“Although Facebook Connect isn’t an advertising buy, it can accomplish the same goals as one (and in an unintrusive manner).  Brands can get their content into Facebook’s viral channels by letting visitors post news feed stories, status messages, photos, events, and more without leaving the website.”

Of course, advertisers have a variety of social media options available to them in addition to Facebook. Similar tools to Facebook Connect also exist, such as Google’s Friend Connect and MySpaceID.

All of this bodes well for online marketing. Big advertisers are legitimizing social media by finally including Facebook in their strategic marketing plans. They are realizing that the opportunities to make use of sophisticated social media have never been better.

Maybe for his haircut to have been truly prohetic Tracy Porter should have added Facebook.

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Who Dat? Not Pepsi

I’ve learned to take IT consulting firms’ predictions with a grain of salt. Sometimes these firms come up with provocative stuff for the purpose of selling their consulting services and research reports. They may not always have a real understanding of where things are going.

One firm that’s consistently accurate and level-headed, however, is Forrester Research. Forrester has been around for over 25 years and they’re well-respected. That’s why I found their latest blog about the coming of a new computing age of particular interest.

Forrester’s Josh Bernoff uses the recent launch of Apple’s iPad as motivation to discuss the growing problem of incompatibility between the current rash of devices (Android, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, etc.) and web connectivity. “Your site may not work right on these devices,” says Bernoff, “especially if it includes Flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don’t work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don’t work anywhere else.”

Bernoff says this phenomenon is just part of the problem. In addition to device incompatibility, there seems to be more closed than open systems on the Web, no doubt for competitive reasons. Facebook’s applications, for example, only work on Facebook.

“Web marketing has grown since 1995,” says Bernoff, “based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization – it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized. Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines.”

The result is something Forrester Research labels the “Splinternet.” The firm believes the end of the cross-platform compatibility web era is near.

Forrester offers as proof of the Splinternet’s existence the fact that technology standards once controlled by open standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will now be controlled by platform vendors like Apple and Facebook. On the Internet, advertising and user experience side, they suggest that cookie-based customization is being replaced by profile-based customization, and that standard ad formats will now have to be customized for sites and networks that are acceptable to the new devices.

How interesting – here we thought in our multi-option digital world that we were moving towards enhanced inter-connectivity and compatibility. It turns out the opposite may be true.

But Bernoff cautions Internet marketers not to jump off a cliff just yet. Instead, he says, “choose your devices carefully – investments in one cannot be transferred easily to others if you make a mistake. Rethink analytics, links, and measurement – — they’re just becoming available in the new environments.”

Still, I can see a lot of online marketers getting palpitations and sweaty palms right now.

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A fascinating article by the CEO of The Barbarian Group, a digital marketing agency, speaks to an intriguing notion – that the Application Programming Interface (API) may be the best weapon an Internet marketer has in their arsenal.

Benjamin Palmer points out that the increased linkages and compatibilities between websites and web services is the result of open APIs. In fact, the whole social media scene is, in part, facilitated by the API. In some ways, says Palmer, “Twitter is actually only in the API business.” That’s because , as Palmer states “most of its traffic doesn’t come from anything it owns – it’s all from other apps (desktop or mobile) or through integration with other web applications”.

The reason companies offer developers open APIs is to encourage them to build third-party applications. Developers can be a product’s best friend, as Apple has proven with its iPhone. While the smartphone itself was a technological breakthrough, it wouldn’t have been nearly as popular or valuable if it weren’t for the tens of thousands of applications available through the iPhone App Store. Some developers are making a very nice living simply by bringing iPhone applications to the marketplace.

Of course, developing applications is a big business – and soliciting application ideas from the public is currently in vogue. Witness the Netflix contest to come up with an alternative that could potentially beat the Netflix movie recommendation system called Cinematch. A team of developers did just that and walked away with $1 million last September.

Application development doesn’t have to take place on such a big stage. According to Palmer, every brand can benefit from APIs in two potential ways: a marketer can use “existing APIs to make new brand experiences” or create “something that has its own open API”.

It’s legitimate to ask why a marketer would want to take the time and effort to actually create an open API. Well, think of it as another more sophisticated form of social media. If you create an open API that relates to your product, your product suddenly becomes desirable. Maybe someone will want to incorporate a feature of your product into their own application. Palmer says “…they just use yours and give you some credit. Instead of just trying to connect to other people in one direction, you make something where people are actively trying to connect to you.”

According to Palmer, it’s all about “interdependencies.” APIs leverage what the web was created for in the first place: collaboration. In the end, Palmer says, “…your brand should be trying its hardest to play well with other Internet features and, when possible, make something new that the rest of the Internet wants to play with as well.” And that’s why APIs may give marketers the biggest bang yet for their promotional bucks.

Continued here:

In the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) world, when Procter & Gamble (P&G) makes a move, every one of its competitors take notice. That’s because P&G is the world’s branding powerhouse, owner of 300 brands with such legendary names as Crest, Gillette, Ivory and Tide.

P&G has long been known as a marketing innovator. The company was, of course, among the first sponsors of “soap operas,” but more recently, P&G has used every media imaginable to relentlessly push its brands. That’s why it’s more than curious that P&G has been somewhat late to the social media party.

In fact, in November 2008, Ted McConnell, P&G’s general manager of interactive and innovation, told a conference in Cincinnati, P&G’s hometown, that he was anything but enthusiastic about Facebook. “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend? …I don’t think everything every consumer says to someone else and writes down is somehow monetizable by the media industry,” McConnell said.

My, Ted, how things have changed. Little more than a year later, P&G just announced that it has opened a Silicon Valley office specifically to “help develop social-networking systems and digital-marketing capabilities,” according to Advertising Age. Venture capitalist David Hornik, who met with P&G executives, reported that “P&G’s explicit goal for 2010 is to assure that each of its brands has a meaningful presence on Facebook, and they are willing to pay dearly for that. …[P&G leaders] view Facebook as a must-have for digital advertising and brand building.”

When P&G does anything, it does it in a very big way, so this latest move is clearly signaling that social media is to be taken seriously by P&G – and therefore by the whole marketing industry, which follows its every move.

Interestingly, on the very same day that the P&G story broke, Advertising Age also  reported that Clorox (a P&G arch-rival) was seeking a full-time in-house legal counsel to focus on social media. This is yet another sign of how important social media has become to big marketers. A Clorox spokesman told Advertising Age:

“Social-media channels are a growing focus for consumer communication and stakeholder engagement for our brands and company. As a newer communication channel, the application of existing laws to this medium is evolving. For those reasons and the rapid pace of communication in the Web 2.0 world, we’re seeking an attorney to focus on social media as well as talent rights.”

Maybe it doesn’t seem like such big news to hear that Procter & Gamble and Clorox are finally focusing on social media, but it matters. These guys are now drinking the social media Kool-aid. When you see companies of this size and stature going full-speed ahead with the likes of Facebook, you know mass adoption of Facebook as a business marketing medium for all CPG companies, and all marketers for that matter, is just around the corner.

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P&G Finally Embraces Facebook

At various times I, and my ReveNews colleagues have talked about Twitter as a sleeping giant when it comes to business usage. Google “Twitter business usage” and you’ll see that it’s a topic worthy of hundreds of articles and posts.

As 2010 unfolds, it seems likely that the business usage of Twitter will skyrocket. Why? For one thing it’s a way to reach huge numbers of people – Nielsen says Twitter had over 18 million visitors in December alone, a 579 percent increase from December 2008. For another, it’s one of the easiest, quickest, least expensive ways to get disseminate information, and that could mean gaining a significant competitive advantage.

A recent article in ADWEEK  gives us some inkling of where the business use of Twitter is headed. In the article, Brian Morrissey says businesses are now using Twitter as “a default content-syndication channel, pop-culture icon and real-time content source.” As a “real-time source of consumer-to-consumer recommendations,” says Morrissey, Twitter excels, and brands could leverage that ability to their benefit. “Retweets” have become the preferred virtual pass-along mechanism, meaning that a brand’s messaging can extend well beyond the original tweet.

We all know that the Coca-Colas of the world discovered Twitter long ago, but now the lesser-known brands are jumping on the Twitter-wagon. Morrissey cites the fact that even the most pedestrian brands have discovered the business benefits of Twitter. Two examples he mentions are Sweethearts candies and Tasti D-Lite.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, NECCO (New England Confectionary Company) is adding “Tweet me” to its collection of imprinted sayings on Sweethearts, those silly little candy hearts. The best-selling Valentine candy has been around since the 1860s, so it’s nice to know Sweethearts can keep up with the times. NECCO has gone social, too, creating iPhone and web applications so users can tweet Sweethearts messages to friends.

Tasti D-Lite is a chain of low-fat frozen dessert treat stores that started in New York City and has expanded to New Jersey, Florida, Tennessee, Texas and just recently, Arizona. Morrissey says Tasti D-Lite has made Twitter “the backbone of a customer loyalty program. It lets users earn extra rewards points for broadcasting their purchasing activity on Twitter and mobile social network Foursquare.”

You wouldn’t necessarily associate candy or frozen desserts with Twitter – but that’s the point. Twitter is everywhere, and businesses large and small have figured out how to use it. Morrissey points out another key fact in the Twitter business usage explosion: “Twitter’s decision to open its application programming interface (API) has allowed brands to weave Twitter into campaigns, rather than have stand-alone Twitter strategies.” Aha, interactive integration – it’s just what every advertiser wants, isn’t it?

So now’s the time to ask yourself if you are making the best use of Twitter for your business.

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Google’s heralded smartphone, Nexus One, was introduced last week. It probably didn’t receive its due in publicity because it was, in effect, an upgrade of the Android, which already made a big splash as the “Droid.”

So as an online marketer, should you care about Nexus One? Let’s begin to answer the question by first considering the progression of the smartphone generation. The reason for the Droid and the Nexus One, of course, is to compete with Apple’s iPhone, which was brought to market to compete with Blackberry. Blackberry answered with upgrades of its own. Palm countered with the Pre.

The evidence is clear, the smartphone market is sizzling hot, even as the rest of the world has been in an economic doldrum. Why? An article in The New York Times  captures the essence of the smartphone’s popularity:

The smartphone surge, it seems, is a case of a trading-up trend in technology that is running strong enough to weather the downturn. And as is so often true when it comes to adoption of new technology, the smartphone story is as much about consumer sociology and psychology as it is about chips, bytes and bandwidth.

For a growing swath of the population, the social expectation is that one is nearly always connected and reachable almost instantly via e-mail. The smartphone, analysts say, is the instrument of that connectedness — and thus worth the cost, both as a communications tool and as a status symbol.

Indeed, if the smartphone is all about the need to stay connected, then online marketers better take heed. And the latest word on Nexus One is that Google intends to push the device towards the business market. According to PCWorld, the next version of the Nexus One will include a hardware keyboard, much like a Blackberry, instead of its current iPhone-like touchscreen keyboard.

Of course, a hardware keyboard is not the only thing that makes a smartphone business-oriented. Other Nexus One features make for easy business use. The phone has a tiny trackball to facilitate fast navigation of web pages as well as many functions that respond to a user’s voice. Much has been made of the built-in Google Navigation, which offers turn-by-turn directions that are spoken. As for apps, however, Nexus One falls short of the iPhone. The 20,000 applications don’t match up to iPhone’s 100,000-plus apps, at least at present.

Online marketers should care about Nexus One, because it represents the next step in the evolution of Google, as well as the rapid maturation of the smartphone marketplace. Smartphones are the harbinger of mass adoption of mobile marketing which, it appears, is right around the corner.

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Should You Care About Nexus One?

I’ve always believed the real winners in marketing play a game of basics PLUS. Those who survive are the ones who master basic strategies and skills, but those who excel are the ones who go beyond the basics – that’s basics PLUS.

In 2010, the marketers who embrace “plus” opportunities will weather the economic storm and enjoy lasting success. Here are some of the primary “plus” areas to consider this year.

Is social media part of your plan?
What’s the best way to make use of it for your business? You need to evaluate which social media tools to use, what strategy to employ, and how best to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.  Ask yourself a lot of tough questions about social media.  Do “fans” translate into sales? Is the time you spend with social media paying off? Are your tweets helping to boost awareness and response?

Are you positioned to take advantage of the new, more sophisticated world of real-time search?
Both Bing and Google now have relationships with Facebook and Twitter, and Google recently struck a deal with MySpace. It’s all designed to provide immediacy and relevancy to search. Search results pages will be increasingly dynamic and information will stream into the pages as it becomes available in real-time. How does that affect your business? Getting more of your information out there via blogs and social media will be more important than ever – and using relevant keywords will be crucial.

Where are you on the video spectrum?
The online video market has exploded and will continue to grow this year. Amateur videos populate news websites. Celebrity videos can destroy or launch careers – Susan Boyle became an Internet sensation and sold close to 3 million albums as a result. Using video to publicize, promote, and advertise an online business will become a standard practice, and you can’t afford to be left behind in this key area.

Have you discovered mobile advertising?
According to eMarketer, mobile ad spending will grow from $416 million in 2009 to $593 million in 2010, reaching over $1 billion by 2012. Mobile and social media are quickly converging. The youth market lives, breathes and eats holding onto their cell phones. The rapid development of apps for smartphones creates a prime business opportunity, even for small businesses.

Are you stuck in an old ad model?
Combine the influence of social media with real-time search, then add in video and mobile advertising, and you see a very different advertising model emerging. Chances are paid content and advertainment will become more effective than standard banner and text ads. You’ll need to be ready to provide high-value, relevant information in a smartly packaged format if you want to one-up your competitors.

Yes, this will indeed be an exciting year. Are you ready for it?

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What You Should Be Doing This Year

In October I wrote a post about the fact that the majority of newspaper and magazine publishers were entertaining the idea of charging for online content. The biggest problem for all publishers of online content is finding a magic bullet, not yet identified, to get consumers to pay for access to that content. The latest reports by the New York Times, in what ironically are subscription required articles, indicate that 2010 may be the year of big change.

But what kind of change will it be? It seems less likely that it will be a year of paid content, and more likely to be a year of moving in a different technological direction.

Newspaper and magazine closings in 2009 continued to shrink the traditional print category. The double whammy for such publications has been the simultaneous loss of print subscribers and advertising revenue. Book publishers are starting to panic, too, as they saw the beginnings of a stronger movement to e-books, fueled by Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book readers.

That’s why it is likely that some kind of significant change for print publications will occur in 2010. They simply cannot survive current business conditions much longer.

Interestingly, magazines, newspapers and books are only representative of a larger media revolution that all of us have been living for quite some time. Look what digital media has done to the music business. First records and now CDs are becoming obsolete as digital downloads spread. We have become the iTunes generation.

Movies and television are not far behind. The entertainment industry is currently looking at ways to prevent itself from a similar digital death. Ben Weinberger’s recent Video Insider blog gives us a taste of things to come in 2010:

• Disney’s “Keychest” will enable consumers to “unlock” digital content across media formats
• Best Buy in partnership with CinemaNow will provide customers with the ability to download premium content and watch it on multiple screens
• Time Warner, Comcast, and other cable providers will offer “TV Everywhere” multi-platform access to their cable programming.

Will 2010 be the year of paid content – or will it be the year we see magazines and newspapers producing interactive digital editions? Magazines like Esquire and GQ already offer iPhone versions of their magazines. Esquire’s iPhone version, available next month for a $2.99 monthly subscription, offers scrollable articles and video.

Will 2010 be the year of the Apple tablet, rumored to be named “iSlate”? Essentially a touchscreen that’s standard page size, a tablet computer may offer print publications a new lease on life. Publication executives have supposedly met with Apple, and the result is that several magazines are creating tablet versions that allow readers to interact with articles, rearrange content, and access content unavailable in print versions. The tablet could provide a hybrid platform that brings together the best of computer and online technology. And publishers swoon to think that tablets can also provide data capture that makes ads measurable.

Whatever 2010 will bring for print publishers, it will be a year in which they will undoubtedly begin to reinvent themselves.

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What will 2010 Bring for Print Publishers?

If you’re wondering where social media is leading online marketers in 2010, a just-released report provides some insight.

eMarketer cites data from the “2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report” published on December 11 by MarketingSherpa, a research organization, that indicates online marketers go through three phases in using and evaluating social media – trial, transition, and strategic. According to the report, only about 25 percent of marketers have reached the strategic phase.

In each phase, social media marketers are setting objectives that are targeted and measured. Not surprisingly, the leading measurable objective, regardless of phase, is increasing traffic to a website. However, things get a little more interesting after that.

For online marketers in the trial phase of using social media, the second most popular objective is to improve search engine rankings. Those marketers in the transition phase said improving search engine rankings and increasing sales revenue are of equal importance.

Marketers in the strategic phase, however, see increasing lead generation as the second most important objective, followed by increasing sales revenue. Improving search engine rankings is fourth.

The differences offer a clue as to the evolution of social media. As marketers move from one phase to the next, they become more accustomed to what social media can really accomplish. Moving from the trial to transition phase, the change is subtle, but there seems to be a significant shift in perspective when going from transition to the strategic phase.

Apparently, social media marketers who have entered the strategic phase have matured enough in their thinking to recognize the importance of lead generation. Why does this matter? It makes a statement about social media’s potential business impact for those marketers who have progressed beyond trial usage.

What it says to me is that marketers who have used social media for a while have gone beyond believing social media is a quick fix. If they view generating leads as a key objective, these marketers know the responsibility falls on them, not on social media, to convert those leads into sales. This is a pragmatic view of the business value of social media rather than one based on hyperbole and conjecture.

In an era where impatience is a virtue, and when the prevailing perception is that social media is the new road to marketing success, it’s not a bad idea to stop for a minute, think about it, and get grounded in reality. Social media certainly holds much promise for online marketers. But jumping into it with unrealistic expectations or flawed objectives just sets you up for failure.

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Smart Thinking About Social Media

One thing you can depend on: Innovation in the online world will continue in 2010. Granted, a lot of that may come from such well-known powerhouses as Amazon and Google. But you can also be certain that innovation will spring from lesser known names.

It’s a good idea for online marketers to keep an eye on innovators, because they often represent emerging trends that could become new ways of doing business. Two companies worth watching as we move into next year are Next Jump and Square.

Powered by Next Jump

Next Jump “may well be the most intriguing Internet business that you’ve never heard of,” writes Steve Lohr in The New York Times.  Interestingly, Next Jump is not a new company, it’s just relatively invisible. For years, employee discount programs and frequent buyer rewards programs have used Next Jump’s technology platform. Over half of Fortune 500 companies use it for employee discount programs. But Next Jump just held a coming out party of sorts to announce that it is no longer just a back-end system. In fact, the company recently launched Corporate Perks,  a website that for the first time allows small businesses and consumers to access its marketplace.

What’s so special about Next Jump? Founder Charlie Kim says it’s Next Jump’s “true microtargeting” capabilities. Next Jump gathers a lot of data from companies, customers, and credit card transactions and analyzes the data. Then the company carefully tailors offers to a tiny number of people, sometimes even individuals, sending email alerts or serving up appropriate Web ads. As a result, people see only offers that are most likely to interest them. Apparently, the system works: Next Jump claims for every eleven individuals who see an ad, they generate one sale. This is an unheard of ratio in e-commerce – it’s typically more like 1,000 to 1, not 11 to 1.

Chances are you will start seeing “Powered by Next Jump” on an increasing number of offer-driven sites. Yahoo Deals already displays this on its Personal Offers site. Next Jump just introduced applications for the iPhone, Droid, and BlackBerry phones that point consumers to one of its sites offering deep discounts on merchandise.

Square Transactions

Square is the new venture launched two weeks ago by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The “square” itself is a little plastic device that plugs into the headphone jack of an iPhone. What it does is pretty intriguing: Square makes it possible for anyone to swipe a credit card and make a payment via a back-end system created by Dorsey and his colleagues. Like PayPal, Square avoids the need for the user to be an authorized merchant, so the system opens up mobile payments to small businesses and consumers alike.

The Square application for the iPhone will soon be duplicated for the Droid and eventually for Blackberry. The implications are enormous – virtually any business can instantly become a merchant and accept payments. It could even facilitate simple consumer-to-consumer transactions, such as someone buying an item from a seller via a Craigslist ad. Square is creating a lot of buzz right now, and investors are reportedly lining up to fund the start-up.

Competitors are taking Square seriously. VeriFone, the leader in credit card payments, only days ago rushed out its “PAYware Mobile” application for the iPhone that includes a PAYware Mobile reader. Jack Dorsey was asked by blogger Michael Arrington of TechCrunch about the VeriFone application, and this is what he had to say:

Jack Dorsey on VeriFone

Keep a close eye on Next Jump and Square in 2010. These are the kinds of innovative companies that will help drive online marketing to new heights.

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Two Companies to Watch in 2010

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us, but they were just the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Now is a crucial time for companies to book sales during an otherwise lackluster year. And this is the time of year when it pays to watch what major advertisers are doing.

There’s a marked increase in advertisers using a well-coordinated combination of print, television, and all forms of online media to get the biggest bang for their buck and to reach consumers in the media of their choice.

One example worth looking at is MasterCard’s current campaign. MasterCard is a different kind of advertiser because it is essentially a generic brand. There is no such thing as a pure MasterCard credit card – it must be paired up with a bank that provides the financial mechanism for providing credit and completing the credit transaction.

Still, MasterCard is in a perennial battle with its direct rival, Visa, and with American Express, for credit card supremacy. That’s why MasterCard has been running the “Priceless” campaign for years – to reinforce the brand image and encourage consumers to use MasterCard credit cards over others.

Now MasterCard is putting a new twist on the “Priceless” campaign by adding an interesting online app, the “MasterCard Priceless Gift Finder”.

A few weeks ago, MasterCard launched television and online ads that will run through Christmas, featuring football quarterback Peyton Manning and “How I Met Your Mother” actress Alyson Hannigan. The ads humorously address the importance of giving the right gifts and promote the MasterCard Priceless Gift Finder application as the way to do it.

The Gift Finder website is slick in its execution. Peyton and Alyson act as video guides, helping consumers find a perfect gift for a Facebook friend, or “for a friend who isn’t on Facebook.” The application connects directly with Facebook, so a user can bring their friends from Facebook to the Gift Finder, and use the Gift Finder to publish content to a user’s wall.

The application leads a user through a gift selection process by asking questions about the user’s gift recipient and then suggesting gifts to purchase via Amazon.com, the Gift Finder’s “featured” online store. Peyton and Alyson appear at various intervals during the selection process to liven things up. The application can be shared through a Facebook page, Twitter account, or via MySpace, Delicious, Digg, or StumbleUpon.

MasterCard takes this a giant step further with its “Priceless Picks” application for the iPhone. This free application lets iPhone users find “priceless things” – thousands of user-recommended priceless experiences, shops, and restaurants – share them with friends, and add their own “priceless picks.” This app perfectly integrates another channel, mobile, into the Gift Finder campaign.

Cheryl Guerin, a senior vice president with MasterCard Worldwide, told Brandweek magazine that the Gift Finder is designed to leverage the way a consumer shops: “The utility of the tool makes it easy to select these perfect gifts, while tracking a budget and managing a holiday shopping list using social media applications that are already a part of many shoppers lives.”

Expect to see more advertisers put media integration to effective use this holiday season.

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A Lesson in Media Integration