Posts Tagged “advertising”

At Boston Media Makers, there was sporadic discussion of Twitter advertising, mainly meaning people monetizing their Twitter use by selling ads either in their streams or on their profile pages.  It was generally agreed that profile page ads were less invasive and obnoxious than in-stream ads.  The mavens in the group predicted large-scale unfollowing and extensive antisocial media shunning for anybody foolish enough to try in-stream twitvertising.

I’m thinking it would be hard for most twitter streams to get less relevant or more annoying, my own included.  My initial objection to the whole idea of in-stream twitvertising is that it just doesn’t seem that it would be very effective.  But first, let’s run the numbers, using me as the guineaduck as it were.

Magpie is one twitter ad service.  They tweet ads through your account (tagged #magpie) at a set frequency (such as one ad per five tweets) based on a keyword bidding system.  They pay per tweet, not per click or per action.  Magpie says that I could earn up to 69.07 Euros per month.

Using Followcost, I discovered that I’ve been tweeting at an average pace of 5.19 per day, so I’ll just guesstimate that I would serve up one Magpie ad per day.  At this writing I have 252 followers, so 252 x 1 x 30 = 7,560 potential ad impressions per month. That assumes two probably untrue things: (1) that all of my followers read all of my tweets, and (2) that there are no secondary impressions from syndication of my tweets, such as in the sidebar of this very blog, or from anybody who’s not a follower just reading.  Let’s just say that those two effects cancel out.

Those figures together imply about 9.14 Euros, or $11.63 CPM.  Since that’s the payout to me, let’s mark that up 20 or 25% so Magpie can earn some money, and assume they’re selling limetweets at $15 CPM.  Is that a good price for promoting your product or service in the limedrivelstream?  Honestly, I haven’t looked at CPM priced advertising in a long time, preferring CPC or CPA if I can get it.  It sounds cheap, but there are a lot of reasons why it should be cheap.

In the process of poking around for this piece, I checked my twitter power at Twitter Grader, and found some interesting factoids.   I scored in the 94th percentile, but what’s interesting is that my overall rank is 10,546 out of 255,406.  There are only a quarter million twitterers?  I’ve been so deep in this bubble I would have guessed a lot more.  And if I’m in the top 6% of them, there must be a lot of inactive or totally dead accounts.  I’m sure it’s growing fast, but I have to wonder if there’s enough total market for Magpie and their advertisers to make a real go of things.

The foregoing generally assumes that the twitterati will be willing to sell their real estate, that doing so will not in itself massively devalue that real estate (if people unfollow you for putting up ads, your ads become less lucrative…), and that - and this one is where I worry the most - those ads will in fact make any actionable or measurable impression on the marketplace.

For now, I remain skeptical and the limeduck media empire remains commercial-free.

The folks who think the bible is a fairy tale have come up with their own stranger than fiction scenario.  The British Humanist Association has raised over 100,000 pounds (far in excess of their original goal of 5,500) to fund something called the Atheist Bus Campaign which will buy ad space on London buses proclaiming,

Ok, disclaimer and attempt at flame prevention time.  This is an incredible feat of online fundraising.  The comments and discussion generated are pretty entertaining.  Props to the humanists and atheists for asserting themselves in the marketplace of ideas.  It’s their money, they can do what they want with it.

So…  what in the holy name of Richard Dawkins are they thinking?  If you had a $200,000 media budget (or even $20,000) to get your ideas out there, would you spend it on bus ads?   For people claiming the high ground of logic, reason and science, these atheists are putting a lot of faith in some of the least effective and most unquantifiable of marketing methods and a self-congratulatory message that’s hardly going to win anybody over.

I know lots of smart marketeers read limeduck. What would you do with a wad of cash to promote atheism?  Viral social media campaigns?  Street teams?  Direct mail?  I’m off to London next week and maybe I’ll catch one of these buses and get some good ideas.

You may have noticed that I’ve been critical of print advertising, especially in general interest publications.  But oddly enough, not that long ago, I encountered a print ad so compelling that I took action.  Repeatedly.  And yet the merchant did not win the sale.  Here’s what I saw in an expensive early page of Fast Company :

I don’t think it’s an invite to move up to Cape Ann.  It’s about the shoes, and I like the look of those shoes, so I clicked over to Rockport’s web site but couldn’t find them.  There were other nice shoes, but I really wanted to learn more about the pair pictured.  I tore out the page and kept it for future reference.  That’s the second action the ad compelled me to take.

The third action was to visit the website a couple more times, and then the fourth was to visit the retail store on Newbury street.  A friendly Rockporter asked, “can I help you find something?” and to both of our surprise, I said, “yes!” and handed over the ad.

He consulted with another, apparently more senior, employee who came over and explained, “That shoe wasn’t made.  We have it but not in brown and not with suede, and not in the store but we can order it.  You’re the third person to come in with this ad.”

The shoe wasn’t made?  Never?  Not even one pair for the photo shoot?  I guess it’s all done with computer graphics these days.  What do you mean you have it but in a different color and different material and not in the store?  Then it’s not really the same shoe, is it?  And if it’s not in the store, then you don’t really have it, do you?  I’m the third person to bring in this ad?  Maybe somebody should tell HQ that there’s interest in this imaginary shoe?

A friend suggested that I should sue for false advertising.  I’m not sure if I really have a case on that, but I must say this is a pretty lame bait and switch since there’s not even much switch.  More like bait and ditch.  Further, it’s not that the shoe played a supporting role in a lifestyle ad or an ad with a celebrity endorsement - the shoe is very nearly all there is to the ad.  The copy at the bottom reads in part (my emphasis), “There’s nothing timid about you - or these shoes.  Torsion(R) system technology by Adidas.  Rockport.com”

I guess they didn’t really mean those shoes in particular.  There are at least six pairs of Rockport shoes in my closet (and scattered about the hallway) - there would have been one more. I give this ad and the almost-geniuses at Rockport a grade of fail.

Mere minutes after I posted the roundup of globe stuff, I began to receive synchronicitous map-related items. Here are two that are interesting in juxtaposition.

First up: Microsoft makes their point with maps.

I was reading the deadly boring tech journals at work, as much for the ads as for the articles, and I found this two-page spread (inside front cover no less!) in Redmond Channel Partner from Microsoft hawking their partner program. (Note that at the time of writing, the RCP website is covered with banner ads echoing this print ad) Being who I am, I ignored the copy and squinted at the map backdrop and tried to figure out where it was. Can you tell?

I guessed Paris just from a gut feeling and the general layout of the streets and the shape of the river. Not that I know Paris so well, but it turns out I was right. Probably some leftover memory of that class I audited in Course XI. You can see the Eiffel Tower to the right of the fold just above the river. But wait, the map is upside down - South is up, North is down - just like those snarky maps from Australia.

Here’s the ad in a more conventional orientation:

And here’s the equivalent from Google Earth (of course, MSFT wouldn’t use the same satellite data as arch-rival GOOG)

Going to the Microsoft Channel Partner Program site - partner.microsoft.com/us/success if you must - there are more map-themed graphics, mostly on a subway system theme, but there is a little re-use of the Paris map.

I was going to speculate at length about why they chose Paris and why they inverted the map (and possibly why they didn’t invert it in the little orange bit above) but I think it’s more profitable to discuss why the map meme is so common and so powerful in advertising. I think there are three good reasons:

1. Maps are common and well-understood
Advertising has to find an easy and well-traveled path into the brains of its audience. For most people, maps are a part of everyday life, and are generally considered helpful and useful things. Even if you can’t read a particular map, you know that it’s a map.

2. Maps are visually interesting
Maybe this one applies more to me than to the average person, but hey, it’s my blog. Maps are interesting. Many maps have color schemes or symbolic or numeric systems embedded in them, with or without a key. They contain lots of information, and the closer you look at them, the more information they deliver.

3. Maps are authoritative
Maps carry a built-in authority. Like a bar chart on the cover of USA Today, a map suggest that there’s actual data and information behind it. Its very presence suggests that objective truth exists and can be had by studying the map.

And that, if anybody out there is still awake and paying attention, provides a good transition to the second bit of map stuff that fell into my lap this week:

Part II: Radical Cartography

I got a message, on my high school alumni mailing list of all things, about an exhibition and book called An Atlas of Radical Cartography, featuring among others, fellow alum Lize Mogel. This is clearly the next step in my journey from collecting Strange Maps to mashing up with LOLMaps to a deeper level of critical analysis of the making and meaning of maps. My three reasons why maps are good for advertising (commonality, visual interest, authority) are exactly what makes Radical Cartography interesting.

Let me be clear that the following excerpts, unlike those above, are shameless plugs to encourage all readers to view, support and/or buy this work

Map: Trevor Paglen & John Emerson “CIA Rendition Flights, 2001-2006″
Essay: Conversation between Trevor Paglen and Naeem Mohaiemen/Visible Collective

Map: Lize Mogel “From North to South”
Essay: Sarah Lewison “Our World is Changing, Soon Yours Will Be Too”

Map: Ashley Hunt, “A World Map in Which ”
Essay: Avery Gordon, “A World Map ”

Paglen & Emerson’s map takes the most literal geography and overlays political information on it. The map remains more or less literally accurate, although the choices of framing, orientation, projection and color cannot be purely aesthetic. In Mogel’s work, the literal outlines of places are still present but they have been mixed and rearranged to bring her political point into focus, while causing considerable figure-ground confusion, at least in me. And finally, in the Hunt map, things are completely schematic, with arrows and grid and labels only faintly suggesting conventional map-making. This one turns its point on poetry, a mod color scheme, and references to boardgames and powerpoint.

I ‘m looking forward to getting my hands on this book.