lift
Affiliates Pining for Pinterest
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/05/affiliates-pining-for-pinterest/
AUTHOR: Lindsey Mark, Compete.com — January 5, 2012 at 3:33 pm
There are a few smart blogs out there talking about these trends, some are funny, like Regretsy.com’s compare and save section that features sellers that are ripping off buyers by reselling manufactured products for higher prices. Classic and often humorous examples of parasitic relationships.
Laughs aside, let’s take a look at one affiliate that’s been seeing some positive lift from Pinterest’s new-found fame. SkimLinks, an affiliate marketing technology with a “sweet twist” helps content creators and curators automate. Most publishers spend a majority of their time working on content and selling ad space. With SkimLinks, connecting affiliate links to content seems* like a snap and appears to be popular amongst monetized ‘pinners’ as a good option outside of the Amazon Affiliate Network. If November is any indication, the Pinterest & SkimLinks relationship is budding with Pinterest beating out Twitter as their number one inbound traffic referrer with a 9.47% Share of inbound traffic to the site. On the converse, SkimResources.com (a SkimLinks url) is ranked number 10 with 0.94% of outgoing traffic from Pinterest.com, just behind large networks like Etsy.com, Bing.com, YouTube.com, and Live.com. I anticipate that merchants that work with SkimLinks will have good things happen for them if Pinterest continues on the upswing, particularly as it’s often been framed in the context of wishlists & gifting.
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The US Consumer Has Saved The Day
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-construction-of-gdp-over-time-2011-10
This is a big, beautiful chart of GDP since 2007 put together by Doug Short.
In addition to showing GDP, it also makes it very easy to see the components, and how they have broken down each quarter.
Two things stand out in the current quarter.
First is that the consumer — the blue bar — really stepped it up in a big way, fueling the lift.
The other thing that stands out is that government consumption, purple, stopped being a drag on things.
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See Also:
- CHART OF THE DAY: Here’s The Good News On House Prices
- CHART OF THE DAY: Serious Question: Does The Euro Even Care About What Happens In Europe?
- CHART OF THE DAY: You Won’t Believe Much The Homebuilder Stocks Have Rallied
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How Megan Fox got the equivalent of $50 million of Superbowl ad spending – for FREE! — the marketing of Megan Fox
godaddy superbowl ad spending led to sharp spikes in search volume every February for the last 5 years straight. Other advertisers who spent on Superbowl ads have similar lift in search volume from the TV advertising.
Source: Google Insights for Search
If you believe that lift in search volume indicates interest and intent and if you consider that each 30-second ad cost $3 million in 2009 (WSJ: NBC Super Bowl Ads to Cost $3 Million) and assuming GoDaddy’s ad did not air more than once, they spent $3 million to get their ad in front of a TON of people and to get people’s attention. Those people who saw the ad and were interested enough to take action went online and searched for more information by typing godaddy into search (see lift in search volume during February of each year) .
If we assume that it took $3 million to generate a certain lift in search we can use multiples to calculate the media dollar equivalent of any lift in search — for example, if godaddy spent $3 million to get X lift in search, then a 2X lift in search would have required $6 million of media (in a very very simplified back of the envelope estimate; it usually would cost more than 2x to get that lift) — i.e. it would have cost at least $6 million in superbowl ad media dollars to achieve a 2X lift in search volume.
So, if we now compare search volume on megan fox side by side with godaddy search volume, we will see that in Feb 2009 Megan Fox was indexing at 21 while godaddy was indexing at 12 (this is normalized to a scale of 0 – 100). So search volume on megan fox indicates she was getting the equivalent value to $6 million of super bowl media ad spend – FOR FREE — roughly 2X the search volume of godaddy in the same time period.
At the peak of her search volume in June 2009 (corresponding to the release of Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen), she was indexing at 100 and godaddy at 7. This is 8x the index of godaddy of 12 during the Feb 2009 time period when they were airing their superbowl ads. This implies that she was getting the search volume that would have required the equivalent to a $24 million super bowl ad spend to achieve — again for FREE!
If you want to research futher, use the following link to bring up Google Insights for Search to see relative search volume
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=godaddy%2Cmegan%20fox&cmpt=q
In February 2008, Megan Fox indexed at 8 and GoDaddy at 8. In 2008, Superbowl ad spots cost only $2.7 million — so she had the equivalent search volume as a paid advertising spending $2.7 million on a Superbowl ad.
In 2007, Godaddy indexed at 6 during Feb 2007 Superbowl. Megan Fox indexed at 43 during the July release of the first Transformers movie — this is an 8X multiple on Superbowl ads that cost $2.6 million — or $21 million
So the perfect “product placement” of Megan Fox in the two Transformers movies garnered her nearly $50 million worth of advertising based on search volume equivalency. This does not even take into account her sustained and increasing search volume, compared to most advertisers’ search volumes which drop right back down to pre-ad levels once the ad is finished airing.
The Perfect Babe – Megan Fox (pics)
Megan Fox – The Perfect Babe Product Placement
No, this post is not about Megan Fox. Well, yeah it is. But it’s about the MARKETING of Megan Fox.
Megan Fox has been around in films and TV since 2001 (see filmography below). But it wasn’t until 2007 when she starred in the first Transformers movie that she burst on the scene and became an overnight mega celebrity, especially online (see Google Search Volume chart). If you look at Ford’s search volume during the same period, there was NO lift in search that was detectable — there probably was some lift, but it is simply not detectable.
So Megan Fox went from very very little awareness to not only massive awareness, but also massive demand — people remembered her name and even took action (performed searches on her name). If some product placements would have had only 10% of the success of the “megan fox” product placement, they might actually justify the immense cost a bit better (millions of dollars paid by the advertiser to the movie makers to place products into the storyline of the movie).
And why is she “perfect,” in the marketing sense, of course? Her search volume has not only sustained but also continued to grow. She was not a flash in the pan that went away after the advertising/media dollars stopped or the public interest died off (see the snuggie and etrade search volume charts below).
transformer girl, second girl in transformers, other girl in transformers – Isabel Lucas
is your brand name a generic word?
if it is, it’s a LOT harder for users to find you
TAG – men’s personal care line from Proctor & Gamble – hard to pick out from other search results on “tag.” The brands have to use paid search ads to show up.
serch engine optimization is critical, otherwise, looking at the following graphs, there is no way to tell when a brand launched or when they have campaigns in market, because the volume of search on the generic term is so great, the lift in search volume due to paid advertising is not detectable.
lift in search due to paid TV advertising
List of 2009 Superbowl spots on AdAge.com
http://adage.com/superbowl09/article?article_id=134136
Lift in search is a great indicator of interest. Modern consumers may be inspired by TV ads, but they usually go online to do more research for themselves, to inform their own purchase decision. The following examples show the lift in search after Superbowl commercials or for launch of products like Subway Footlongs. The use of unique, made-up words makes it easier to detect lift in search (see related post: made up words are great for tracking buzz and search volume ). There is now a correlation between offline paid advertising and online behaviors of modern consumers that can be tracked and ultimately related to sales.
What is harder to do is track lift in search from smaller TV media buys or from terms which are generic — e.g. American Express OPEN, Proctor & Gamble’s TAG (men’s deoorant), etc. And furthermore, people may or may not remember the brand name itself and may type in a more general search query — e.g. “talking baby” instead of” e-Trade” or “dancing lizards” instead of “SoBe LifeWater.” And most people usually forget to type in special URLs specified in the ads. So the opportunity is to 1) use made-up words which can be used to detect lift in search and 2) search-optimize around other more generic terms that people may search for if they remembered the ad, but did not remember the brand name itself.
key learnings include:
1. only the superbowl TV ads generates enough awareness to drive lift in search volume detectable above the noise or normal levels
2. made up words are useful in correlating paid advertising and subsequent online actions (e.g. search) because most users forget or are too lazy to type special URLs
3. is is always better to have real analytics from the site to see when paid campaigns hit; site analytics will also reveal more information about users including demographic information, what they are looking for, and even whether they “convert” to a sale or a desired action — like print off a coupon, etc.
Notice the January spikes for several of the examples below — these are their Superbowl ads in action. But also notice how sharp the spikes are — most of them go back to prior levels within 1 – 3 days (see related post: the ephemerality of the Superbowl halo )
Source: Google Insights for Search
seasonality of search – 2 examples “barbecue recipe” vs “brownie recipe”
grilling is very consistently seasonal (more searches in summer)
Valentines peaks every February
barbecue recipe is seasonal (more searches in summer)
brownie recipe is not that seasonal (a little lift in December)
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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