While the days of the lead generation wild wild west were exciting and filled with new opportunities, the industry seems to be showing signs that it is growing up. Industry expert and blogger, Jay Weintraub, recently announced that he will be organizing a conference called LeadsCon, focusing on innovation and issues facing the lead generation industry. Leadcon will add to the list only a handful of lead generation focused events that have sprung up over the past year.
In addition to conferences and expos, there has been a movement to set standards, and establish a foundation for companies to expand upon. Leading the way for a more structured future, the IAB recently published a Lead Generation Data Transfer Best Practices, which is the groundwork for a more accountable and standardized lead generation industry.
This maturity is essential for our industry’s stable expansion, and I look forward to seeing what Jay and other’s have in store.
- Small is big; Watch out for more Blog Bling Everyone is always looking for the next “Big ” idea, but in the current 2.0 landscape, small is redefining big. After all, people don’t want a big idea; that means a lot of work. They want a big money idea, & it’s looking like “widgets” may be
Everyone is always looking for the next “Big ” idea, but in the current 2.0 landscape, small is redefining big. After all, people don’t want a big idea; that means a lot of work. They want a big money idea, & it’s looking like “widgets” may be just that.
If you have been hiding in a cave for the past couple years, or you’ve just been busy adjusting the bunny ears on your TV, then you may need a little background info.
Widgets are simple little web applications that can be embedded into a web-page or areas of your desktop operating system. They are used to display media, interesting content, news, product information, and just about anything else. If you really want to simplify things, you could compare them to pieces of flair on your Chatchski’s uniform. In other words, anything that you, or someone else, might find interesting or funny, can be quickly and easily pinned right on your site with levels of interactivity that blow the “Honky for Jesus” pin out of the water.
Widgets have been around for years, but with the increasing popularity of web apps and API’s for sharing data, compounded with the explosion of social networking sites (millions of new micro-webmasters), many people believe we are looking at the perfect storm. At first many of the mainstream social sites like MySpace were skeptical of opening their networks to the 3rd party intruders, but they are quickly learning that they must embrace them. This past spring, Facebook shifted their business to a more open platform in-order to encourage the building and integration of these widgets within their site.
While may of these widgets started as a way of sharing information, and consolidating the number of sites a web surfer must visit to fill their daily data appetite, they are quickly evolving into serious business models. Just ask Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal, and the mastermind behind one of the webs most popular widgets “Slide.”
“Call them bling for your blog. They’re all over the Internet — some 220 million people used widgets in May alone, according to ComScore — and their viral-like success has set off a frenzy over how to make money from them.” [money.cnn.com]
As the hypes builds, popularity grows, and companies figure out how to best monetize this new front, obviously everyone is going to want their cut. In fact, it was announced just this week that MySpace is looking at jumping into the mix as-well…
“MySpace is considering lifting a ban on commerce on the popular social networking site as a way to increase its own profits, according to a published report.” [money.cnn.com]
It will definitely take some time to determine the effectiveness of a widget based business models, supported by e-commerce, display advertising, and even lead generations, but the hype is there and soon we’ll surely find out.
So it seems like it is finally time for Google to start monetizing on its’ youTube investment. Google will begin displaying overlay advertisements through its very popular & extensive youTube content network. Ok, I can hear you groaning, “No, don’t pollute my videos with junky ads!”, but hopefully Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto will hold true. Apparently the ads will be relatively nonintrusive, as they will be targeted towards the video’s content, and users will be able to quickly close the ads if they please. With an attractive CPM and some creative flexibility, I am very curious to see where this will go.
“Advertisers will pay a flat rate of $20 per thousand consumer viewings. In addition to the overlay and click-to-play ad, they get an ad unit beside the video player.”
-CNNMoney.com (Article)
- How to be a Master in the dark art of Social Marketing And that is what social marketing is. One big party. You don’t want to hang with the guy who is constantly raving about themselves, or who brings a bottle of Vodka topped up with tap water. The popular people are the ones with the great stories, who ar
- Motive Interactive & IAB Lead Generation Committee: Data Transfer Best Practices The Interactive Advertising Bureau defines best practices for lead generation data transfer — focused on improving operational efficiency and security in the online advertising industry.
Embracing the warm sun and cool ocean breeze, Motive Interactive is pleased to announce the opening of our Ventura, CA office. The South Lake Tahoe office will remain our Corporate Headquarters. This addition will give Motive, better face-to-face access with Advertisers and Publishers.
The new office is located at 505 Poli street, downtown Ventura in the [beautiful & huge] City Hall building. While we are working on getting the office all setup and everyone settled we would also like to get the word out that we are actively looking to fill some new positions at Motive.
Account Executive [ info ]
Media Planning
Account Manager
Network Coordinator
So if you are in the area, give us a ring, stop on by or meet us after work for a couple cold ones at Dargans Irish Pub.
See You Soon!
-Jake Fields
I’m currently traveling back from the Affiliate Summit conference but I thought I would post a quick link to some photos from the event.
- Flickr: Motive Interactive's photos tagged with affiliate summit east 2007 Photos from the affiliate summit east 2007 marketing conference in Miami
! authored & published via iPhone !
It’s offical, the much awaited iPhone has been released. Hype or not I
made a 11pm trip down to the local mac store and purchased one for
myself.
As expected it is infact a very impressive device, fast, friendly and
very sexy. If you haven’t gotten your hands on one yet, I would atleast find a local store or better yet a friend and try one out.
I feel like a sales rep, because I must have already given about 10
product demo to people I know, but no one one has asked me if it was
worth the price.
Sure it does email, maps, aim style text messaging, weather, real web
browsing and must more, but is it worth the $600 sticker price? I’ll
just say I feel bad for any kid that doesn’t have one on the plaground
come September…
( timeout: my friend just called for a recipe for wine wine clam
sauce, I guess the iPhone can feed you too)
…but judge for yourself; it is fun to use the first time and only gets
better from there. After using the iPhone for just a couple days you
really start to pick up speed with the typing and navigation.
I can sing praise all day but I do have to mention a couple
surprisingly missing features. The iPhone currently doesnt
support flash, video capture, custom ringtones or even copy @ paste.
But i will attempt to shed some light on what those marketing manics
are thinking in my next post: iForgot; ringtones, flash and copy & paste
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Email marketing has been used to sell products and services for over a decade now. It is still a very powerful and effective channel of internet marketing and one that can be improved upon in most companies. However, there are new and old concerns about the long-term effectiveness of email marketing.
Fairly new concerns are the adoption of Gen Y’ers who are using email less and less in favor of text messaging and social networking websites. But with Gen Xers, who were early adopters of email, and Baby Boomers falling in line shortly after (in general), there is still a large pool of internet users out there that are subscribing to newsletters and will likely continue to do so for many years to come. If Gen Y’ers aren’t subscribing to your newsletter list and you sell a product or service targeted to them, it’s a good idea to adjust your marketing mix.
Old concerns are the spammers of the world who put email marketing in a bad light. Even worse are the phishing scam artists (although why people fall for those is a bit beyond me…but that’s a topic for another post). Spammers have already had a significant impact on email marketing and trained people to think twice (or three or four times) before signing up for anything (and having to decide which email address they want to give out…the trusted address for family and friends or the already-heavily-spam-infiltrated-so-I-don’t-care address).
The good news about spammers is the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is finally starting to gain traction in terms of laying down the law that spam is a criminal offense. In March of 2004, the marketing agency that runs BobVilla.com was taken to court for a CAN-SPAM violation (although they resolved the case). Earlier this month, the first conviction was imposed on Jeffrey Brett Goodin with a sentence of 70 months and over $2,000,000.
In recent weeks, some major spammers were arrested to the delight of many. On May 30th, Robert Alan Soloway, a highly wanted spammer, was arrested for sending millions of spam since 2003. Earlier this month, Adam Vitale and his partner Todd Moeller were arrested for filling 1.2 million inboxes with 50,000 pieces of spam in less than one week in 2005.
There are numerous spammers still out there and it is a practice that will never completely be stopped. However, it’s encouraging to see the once laughed at CAN-SPAM Act for not making any significant reduction in spam (actually just the opposite happened) finally taking some of the worst spammers out of the picture. Can we sit back and start to tell the stories of the good ‘ol days when we had to deal with spam? Of course we can’t. But hopefully it sends its intended message that spam is bad and you can be penalized for it and make future spammers think twice (or three or four times) before blasting us with lame offers.
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Interactive Advertising, Marketing and Multimedia Specialist
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