I keep reading about the new normal.

That the over-the-top spending of the late 90’s and early 2000’s is over. That spending has gone down while saving has increased. That this pessimism everyone feels about the economy is here to stay, maybe not forever, but for a long, long while.

Even though the recession was declared over as of last summer, consumers and companies alike still feel its effects.

Most companies have not returned to their pre-recession ad budgets and there’s a chance that they won’t for a long time. For the first time, many companies were asked to justify their advertising budgets. Most companies have not returned to their pre-recession ad budgets and it’s going to take awhile before they do.

The good thing that has come out of it is the need to understand what is working and what is not. For the first time, many companies were asked to justify their advertising budgets. Of those that weren’t, it won’t be long until they are asked “But, how do you know it’s working?”

Here are just a few tips to get you moving in that direction:

1. Have some sort of tracking software for your website. If you don’t want to make an investment right away, use Google Analytics. It’s free and will still let you learn some valuable insights. When done properly, this will let you know what is bringing eyeballs to your site, how long they are staying and what they are looking at.

2. Vanity URLs. A vanity URL is just an extension on your web address. It could be something like www.WebAddress.com/Vanity. These should be used anywhere someone will actually see the address. When they type this into their browser, your tracking software will register what ad placement brought that visit in. Note: Using a vanity URL requires a 301 redirect.

3. For online, each placement should have it’s own tracking URL. The person on the other side of the screen doesn’t see a different URL, but when they click on your ad it’s coded to tell your tracking software what site the ad was on. If you’re using Google Analytics, there’s a tool that helps you build each one.

4. Use a call tracking system. Every site/publication/station should have it’s own phone number. When someone calls that number the source is retained in a database that can be accessed at any time. Many call tracking systems will let you record the phone call. As a CMO you can log in and listen to calls to see how your employees handle themselves.

5. Actually use the data. Compile the data in a way that is easy to see the big picture and actually pay attention to what it is telling you.

If you follow these and other tips, you should be able to see what part of your media plan is working and what part isn’t. I know this can sound tedious, but that is where an outside resource should be able to help. If the cost is something of concern, ask yourself “what is knowing worth?” And consider the fact that you could learn that the $100,000 media buy you thought was a perfect fit, actually wasn’t. Or you could learn that $2,000 campaign brought in more customers than any other buy.

Now that the wild wild west spending of the last decade is over, let us help you be prepared to answer the inevitable question.

Photo courtesy of Canolais

Lets say you are male and somewhere between the ages of 18-34 years old. Lets also say you are into cars. You like to drive cars, fix cars, read (online and offline) about how cars perform, and you’ve bought a few cars. Your car is your prized possession and you baby it. Lets also assume you are not into movies. You’ve never cared much for movies, except maybe for movies about cars.

Knowing you are between 18-34 years old, you have a high tendency to use the Internet to research cars, read about cars and you post content and comments on sites about your favorite subject – cars. Now that we know a bit about you, lets talk about what is relevant to you.

You go online frequently and visit sites such as caranddriver.com, motortrend.com and other car sites. You are leaving a trail of bread crumbs all over the web about who you are and your interests. When you visit other sites, perhaps news related sites, you see ads. These ads might be about movie – something you don’t care much about. You don’t click these ads. You don’t pay attention to these ads. You don’t go on to visit the movie’s website at a later time.

The GOOG has been working hard to build a system that is designed to flip this scenario on its head. No, they are not trying to get you to click on the movie website. The Google Display Ad Network will be smart enough to know that you are a car enthusiast and when you visit a news site or non-car site, they will serve you an ad about cars. The ad might even be for motortrend.com since you’ve been to motortrend.com. If it is raining outside while you are visiting the news site, the ad might be for windshield wipers or tires that offer better traction in the rain, in your specific location (e.g. Cleveland, Chicago, etc.).

If you run a company that sells things (what company does not) or are responsible for marketing a product, you know that targeting is a key driver of results. You want to target a specific audience that will consider and buy your product. This is a relevance game. If you are into cars, you don’t want to see an ad for a movie. If you are in Cleveland and it is raining, an ad for a car driving the coastline in southern California is less relevant than one driving in the rain that talks about Cleveland. Showing an ad that is geo targeted and talks about the current weather conditions increases relevance. Higher relevance equals better results.

Relevance is the name of the game with the Google Display Ad Network. They are not the only company doing this. Retargeting, geo-targeting and relevance is going on elsewhere. The difference with Google is they have the in-house tools to package with their network to help you understand how the ads are performing, how they impact search results and vice-versa, can be bought in real-time and give you the insights to make smart ad buying decisions.

Again, if you are trying to sell something whether windshield wipers or widgets, you want your ads to be seen by the very people that are interested in them and have a higher likelihood to buy your products.  Using tools such as those offered by the Google network, you can test different placements, retargeting and get the insights necessary to make your campaigns a success and be accountable.  You’ll know where success is coming from and where results fall short.  You can optimize your spending to improve results and gain efficiencies.

To learn more about how we can help you navigate the waters of targeted online media planning and buying, measuring the results of advertising or if you want to see a movie with us, give us a shout today.

Flickr photo courtesy of hdc.

Since I work at a media planning agency, part of what I do includes research into new and interesting media opportunities. Besides it being part of my job, I really do love reading about new ways I can help my clients reach their audiences. In a recent AdAge I ran across an interesting article about just that. In it, the article describes how Cardlytics has partnered with some financial institutions to market in a previously uncharted territory – online bank statements.

How it works: The bank downloads the software, marketers sign up, consumers buy, which generates ads relevant to their purchases. The ads can be served on a rewards page, within the transactions or in a column beside the transactions. To activate the ad, the customer must simply click the ad. The coolest part, in my opinion, is that this is all the customer has to do. Once they make a purchase, either online or in-store, Cardlytics sees the purchase and applies the advertised discount or reward.

Currently they do not have a business model established for the B2B market, but I don’t think it will take long before one is created. After all, banks know whether an account is business or personal. Here is how I can see it working:

I, owner of Firestone’s Books, need office supplies. I decide to go to Office Max to pick up the items necessary to run my business. The next day I log on to look at my statement and below my purchase at Office Max is a Staples coupon for 10% off my next purchase. I’m interested and click to activate the ad. Later that month, I run out of ink for my printer. Knowing I have 10% off my next purchase, I head to Staples to buy a couple boxes of ink (they’re 10% off, so I might as well buy more than one), and some other items I forgot to pick up on my last supplies run. Staples is happy because they took market share from Office Max, I am happy because I saved 10%, and the bank is happy because I used their card when I could have used another company’s card. I should note, it doesn’t only work for competitors. A company can choose to use this as a form of loyalty program and reward their current customers.

The stats: The average activation rate is 15% but they’ve seen campaigns as high as 46%. This is a pay per performance model, so unless the ad is activated the marketer doesn’t pay.

Although it may seem like privacy would be a concern, Cardlytics only has access to the store’s name, date and total of the purchase and the customer’s zip code. All other information belongs, and stays, with the bank.

I like this opportunity because you know that the person seeing your ad is your target. If you’re trying to target your competitor’s customers, there’s no self-cannibalism of your current customers/sales to do so.

Contact us if you’re interested in hearing how we can incorporate new ideas into a media plan for you.

Image courtesy of mag3737

As a media planner I’ve had the opportunity to work on all types of plans across a wide variety of client types.  We’re talking B2B to B2C, traditional to emerging media, and client industries ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to technology.  One thing that is always important across all these types is understanding the target audience.  Where does your target audience spend time?  What media do they consume?  What interests them?  Understanding these variables plus several others will help marketers eliminate wasteful spending.  Ads will be delivered to relevant, qualified eyeballs.

An increasing important audience segment is the Hispanic population.

The Hispanic population recently surpassed African Americans as the largest minority in the United States. This is an extremely important shift to understand as it has implications to how marketing and media plans are developed.  The significance of this can be seen as we consider planning for the building products category.

As of 2007, there were an estimated 690,000 Hispanic-owned businesses in the construction, repair and maintenance industries. By 2008, over 30% of the workforce in the above industries were Hispanic. As if that stat wasn’t amazing enough, in the next 15 years, that number is expected to more than double and reach 63.2%. What does all of this mean? Building product manufacturers have a huge opportunity, however few have campaigns that focus entirely on this audience.

Hispanic-owned businesses are generally located in 3 areas of the U.S. – California, Florida and Texas. Considering that these 3 states include over 50% of the total Hispanic population in the U.S., it makes perfect sense that those same 3 states would have the highest percentages in Hispanic owned businesses.

Through our media planning experience we’ve identified several benefits to developing plans that focus on the Hispanic marketplace.  First, because the media is still emerging, it is generally more efficient than the equivalent, mainstream outlets. Next, because of the concentration of the audience in a three-state geography, a regional advertising plan to these states can be implemented.  This reduces the dependency on larger national media that carries a premium and has less targeting to offer.  Finally, the ad market is down.  This is true across most segments including the Hispanic market.

This is a great time for building product manufacturers to develop Hispanic focused marketing programs and conduct outreach to this ever-important audience.

I’ve garnered several insights having developed many media plans that focused significant portions of the budget to reach Hispanics. First, relationships matter. If you can develop a trusting relationship with the Hispanic audience your budget will gain efficiency.  Next, the Hispanic audience has demonstrated brand loyalty that exceeds the loyalty found in other segments. If building product manufacturers are successful at building and maintaining relationships now with the audience, they could see a substantial reward for doing so over the several years.

Building product manufacturers have an opportunity at hand to develop plans that reach out directly to the Hispanic contractor, construction companies and allied trades.  Contact us to find out how Point to Point can help with your media planning and buying or audience segmentation efforts.

Flickr photo courtesy of atomicShed

Media planners/buyers spend hours slicing, dicing and negotiating dollars so we can build a plan that not only meets campaign and media goals, but also stays on budget.  We demonstrate to our clients that we can effectively and efficiently take their investment and get them the most bang for their buck.  But most importantly, we need to show them the money.

In the B2B market, ROI metrics are extremely important – but as it turns out, B2B marketers may not be as confident in their abilities to show you the money.

A recent study by Lenskold Group, surveyed marketing practitioners in B2B companies.  The findings place special attention on the importance of financial marketing metrics over the non-financial kind.

The results of the study show that 42% of all respondents indicate that although they use some metrics (namely cost per lead and cost per sale) they do not implement profitability metrics such as ROI.  In other words, almost half of respondents are aware of the dollars it takes to acquire a lead, but they aren’t tracking to find the return on investment on that lead.

It’s not surprising that a dismal 9% of those surveyed believed their marketing to be highly effective and efficient.  The fact that these stats are coming out of the B2B space is especially surprising.  This is an area that thrives on acquiring leads – continually asking us to fill out a form, call a particular number or visit a special landing page – all the while monitoring those conversions.

So what about those of us that do use profitability tracking? The study found that B2B lead generation marketers that use ROI metrics are more likely:

1. To be outgrowing competitors (22%, compared to 10% of all others)
2. To report having highly effective and efficient marketing (20%, compared to 5% of all others)
3. To generate more than 10% increase in profits with a 10% increase in budget (42%, compared to 23% of those that only use traditional metrics)

Not only are we more confident, but we can also leverage that confidence to prove earnings for our clients. Almost half of the marketers surveyed did not know their profit potential. In fact, an overwhelming 44% said they did not know how much they could increase profits with a 10% increase in budget.

An interesting finding from this survey notes that of the marketers polled, 36% belonged to agencies/consultants and these folks reported the highest levels of reporting capabilities.  This compares to 11% for marketers alone.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can show you the money, visit our Marketing Analytics or Media Planning and Buying Pages.

Flickr photo “Lazy” courtesy of Darkumber

One thing (of many) they don’t teach in college is in order to be successful in media planning you need to have good relationships. Trust is something I never realized was going to be so important and can make (or break) just about any client situation.

On a recent pitch for a client in the architecture and design (A&D) market, it was my relationships that allowed me to say: “Here’s what we’re trying to do, what can you do to help me make this work? Are there any ideas you have that would be cool that this market would glom onto?”

Not to mention the fact that I needed that information at that exact minute. And in the instances where I had good relationships with reps, they really pulled through for me. Together we were able to come up with some great ideas, that the client loved.

On the flipside, a bad relationship and/or lack of trust can be brutal.

Keeping it within the A&D market, I recently had a situation where  a new rep asked why we did not include them in a recent buy. When I gave my reasons, that person became upset and went to the client touting how amazing his properties were.

And you know what, his properties are good, and I told him and the client that. But so are his competitors. It just didn’t make sense to go with his properties with the rates he was giving me. It still has to make financial sense.

Fast forward a couple weeks: I received information about the past year’s performance of one of those properties, and it was down almost 25% year-over-year. Once I saw that, it all became clear. The property is hurting for customers and the rep was trying to go over my head to get the client’s sign off on a campaign. This situation was a tutorial in what not to do when trying to build a relationship.

Luckily, the majority of agency/rep relationships fall within the good column, but occasionally someone does something to make you question their intentions. It’s because of this that I’ve learned to play 20 questions pretty well. And if something still doesn’t seem right, I’ll just keep going. For the most part I think reps respect the questions and that only helps me stock my toolbox with good, strong relationships. However, I did have a rep complain once that I asked too many questions. My response: “I’m just doing my job.”

If you’d like to take advantage of my good relationships, or just play 20 questions with me, contact us.

Flickr photo courtesy of sgrace

Most of us are optimistic that we’re at the heels of the Recession, the worst is behind us.  The truth is, there are still folks struggling to keep their heads above water and industries not expected to see a boost in until 2011 or later.  The architecture, design and construction market is one of these industries.  In a recent article, I read that, “historically, the architecture industry does not pick up after a recession until jobs are created.” It could be a long road to recovery for this market as unemployment remains high.

One would think that advertisers would be using the vulnerability of this market to their advantage in providing thoughtful, relevant and influential ad messages.   So as a media planner, I was surprised at what I found one day while partaking in a ritual of flipping through industry focused publications.

In an issue of a popular A&D magazine, I found several ads displaying skinny high-end models wearing little besides fake eye lashes and bikinis.  I almost had to flip over the cover to convince myself that I hadn’t accidentally picked up my latest issue of Vogue.

After a little investigating, I found that 90% of readers “take action” as a result of reading this particular publication.  With construction projects on hold and dwindling design budgets and project scopes, there are vast opportunities to present a very influential message. These individuals are at a point where they are open to solutions that will keep their businesses afloat.  Now I’m no ad critic, but in this instance, I’m not convinced that sex appeal is the answer.

As an industry deemed one of “innovation,” an innovated approach seems only appropriate.  These are the people with the “big ideas,” so let’s assume that they are the ones open to these ideas as well. A little research and a resourceful media planner can help unfold the answers to what can become the framework of an influential marketing message.

Media planners are in a unique position.  We have relationships with our reps and we can reach out to them for valuable insights on the climate of the industry and the needs or wants of the audience a publication reaches.

Who knows, maybe if I dug a little deeper I would find that the model ads perform really well within this industry despite its current economic condition.  Regardless, it’s an important exercise to regularly evaluate the state of your target audience and industry.  After all, do you really want your ad to be responsible for a reader questioning the publication they’re reading?

To learn more about our media research and planning process, please leave a comment or visit our Media Planning & Buying page.

Photo courtesy of diagnosticetrenovation (flickr.com)

We spend hours making thoughtful, strategic and highly targeted media plans for our clients.  We investigate the media spaces and crank out the numbers all the while focusing on the online spaces that are rich content areas – the ones that matter most to our desired audience.

With expanded inventories and audience reach, online ad networks are seemingly a more valuable option to the traditional way of thinking about and buying online advertising.

Marketers can reach a desire audience across a number of sites in a network for relatively the same cost as buying a placement on a content specific site.  Getting more and paying less, sounds like an enticing offer… or is it?

A new study reaffirms what we’ve been saying all long – content matters!

The Online Publishers Association (OPA) recently analyzed over 6,000 campaigns comparing ad effectiveness on branded content sites versus ad networks.  Results found the ads on the content sites outperformed those on ad networks, showing significant effectiveness in raising awareness, creating message association, generating brand favorability and driving purchase intent.  In fact, in all areas measured, ad networks performed weaker than content sites.

The article notes that “… in the highly coveted 18 to 34-year-old audience, those exposed to ads on ad networks resulted in a negative impact on purchase intent.  The group with the most buying power isn’t buying”

Negative impact? Those media dollars are better off flushed down the toilet.

Sure, we want to achieve maximum efficiency for our spend, but at the same time efficiency can’t come at the expense of effectiveness.  The environment and context in which we place our ads matters – to both our customers and in turn to us.

To learn more about the process we take to ensure effective use of your media dollars, visit our Media Planning and Buying page.

Flickr photo courtesy of El Bostonian

If one thing is certain it’s that as a media planning agency we are always looking for trackability. TV, radio and newspapers have always had that elusive “I know X amount of people can potentially see it, but how many ACTUALLY did?” question attached to them…until now, well for TV anyway.

When you miss your favorite show, do you log onto the website and see if it is hosted there? I do. When it’s there, and they are becoming increasingly more available, I’ll prop my laptop up and watch the show. Apparently I am not alone in this because CBS and the CW are taking full advantage of their online properties.

CBS was able to sell $37 million in streaming ads for this year’s March Madness. This is above and beyond what they made for traditional TV advertising. I think this worked particularly well for March Madness because many of the games were played while most people were working their daily 9-5’s. Because they couldn’t be at home watching the games, they streamed them online and listened at work.

The CW is jumping on board as well. They recently announced that starting next season, all online shows will have full commercial breaks. This may upset some viewers, since many have become accustomed to one or two ads per break, but being that it will be the only place to catch up on missed shows, the consumer will adapt.

The good news about all this is that all of the views are trackable! By using the online player, you are almost 100% guaranteed eyeballs (or at the very least ears) since there isn’t any way to fast-forward, unlike with actual television. And usually, there is a link somewhere in the area surrounding the video player, to the advertiser’s website. So if the ad is interesting enough, the viewer can immediately go to the advertising company’s website.

This is a media planner’s heaven! Now I can say this many people definitely saw my ad and this many people clicked to the website because of it. If the site is equipped, I might even be able to see how many people interacted with my ad-which only makes the buy more enticing.

I don’t think it is far off that the TV networks will make their online viewers register for their streaming shows. And just think of the advertising implications! If I register my birthday and gender, the site will know that I am a 20-something female and they can target ads that a 20-something female would be interested in. They can also keep a record as to which shows I watch and target based on that information, in case I fall outside the normal likes of a person my age. This means not only will I know that X people watched it, but all of those X people are within my target market. We’ve all heard the famous quote “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted, I just don’t know which half,” as we get more metric focused, we’ll only be more likely to be able to tell you which half is working!

If you’d like find out about our media planning services or marketing analytics packages, please contact us today.

Flickr photo courtesy of alles-schlumpf

It was recently released that Conde Nast’s GQ will receive the honor of being the first print magazine to be available on the iPad. The issue will be available in April (the same month the tablet is available), while other Conde Nast publications, such as Wired, Glamour, and Vanity Fair, will be available in later issues.

The functionality and formatting of advertisements still appears to be in question, but something tells me they will get that resolved pretty quickly.

Editor-in-Chief of Wired, Chris Anderson, thinks tablets are the future for magazines. As a media planner, the question is always, “How do we measure ROI on print ads?” Anderson expects this will eventually be a moot point. He says  “the tablet will be measuring what you did on a page, what engaged you.” In essence it will be able to tell marketers “what entices people to put their fingers on the screen.” This is utopia for a media planner!

This is not the first time GQ has stepped beyond its 8.5’’ x 11’’ pages. In December I wrote this blog post on GQ’s foray with augmented reality. Also in December, GQ released an iPhone app where it charged $2.99 for the digital issue. It sold 7,000 copies in December and 15,000 for the January issue.

Contact us if you’re interested in learning about our media planning agency.