Volkswagen Amarok: The ...

Last week we wrote about the Smart Car Twitter Ads from Argentina, it was some what of a Flipbook in the Twitter stream… Today, Volkswagen has one for the Amarok, but in the shape of a Facebook Flipbook. This one, utilising the Facebook Photo Gallery, takes it to the next level with 200+ images that Related Digital Buzz Posts: Volkswagen: The Fanwagen Volkswagen: Inside the VW Academy Volkswagen Fox: Twitter Zoom Campaign

Study: 60% of Marketers...

Marketing has never been that easy. Before the days of the Internet, marketers had to become adept at what I’ll call “The Marketing Two Step”. That’s where you would get into a meeting and someone would ask “So what has this campaign done for our business?” At this point the marketing professional started a vaudevillian like routine talking about eyeballs and mind share and how it all likely connected to the bottom line if you really thought about it. Ba-doom! followed by a cymbal crash. Today, in the world of the Internet where everything can be measured out the ying-yang, it’s not much easier. Why? Because in order to get the information that people come to expect from marketing campaigns, there needs to be ability to juggle multiple tools in order to get the data. At least that’s how most marketers see it these days based on a study done by PointRoll and Kelton Research as reported by eMarketer . Take a look at the number of tools the average marketer uses to execute a campaign. Just over 60% of marketers used 5 or more tools with 13% coming in at 10 or more tools for just one campaign! That’s not an easy task since most of these tools come from different vendors and the integration of the data across platforms needs to be completed in a dotted line fashion by the marketer. As a result, we can often find marketers reverting back to the old Marketing Two Step and trying to explain the connection or cause or correlation or whatever that makes someone hearing the report (and stroking the checks for the budget) feel like they are investing in something that contributes to the bottom line. So while it’s more measurable these days, that by no means is an indicator that things are easier. In fact, it could be quite the contrary. What tools do you use to measure your marketing campaign effectiveness? How do you marry disparate parts together to get the true picture of your campaign’s performance? Let us know in the comments. SPONSOR ALERT: Looking for an integrated marketing tool set that could alleviate some or maybe even all of your marketing measurement concerns? Try HubSpot, our Inbound Marketing channel sponsor. Click on their ad on this page and start to learn about their SaaS platform can make your inbound marketing more productive.

Google Makes Its Big Vi...

A couple of weeks ago, early participants in the new AdWords for Video program gathered at the YouTube offices. The ostensible justification for the meeting was a fancy photo shoot, but YouTube executives also gave a little pep talk, laying out their vision to make video advertising available to small businesses. They even let themselves get a little dreamy, imagining a day when video might become as lucrative for Google as search. So what is AdWords for Video? It integrates video campaigns into the AdWords dashboard, where Google’s search and display advertisers are already bidding for and managing their campaign. So small businesses can treat video ads as just another campaign that they’re running with Google, rather than something big and scary. It could be particularly useful for the ones that already have a big presence on YouTube that they’d like to promote. Specifically, AdWords for Video allows you to buy Google’s TrueView ad units, which can appear in YouTube videos, alongside search results, and in the company’s display network. The program was first announced publicly in September and has been beta testing with select advertisers. Today, however, AdWords for Video is having its official launch, and the program is opening to everyone. For Group Product Manager Baljeet Singh, the program began two years ago, when he was talking with business-owning friends. Singh suggested that they advertise on YouTube, but they said it had never even occurred to them as a possibility. Naturally, Singh decided that he had to build an ad service that his friends would use, and today is the culmination of those efforts. The product has evolved over those two years, but Singh says there has been “a common thread of trying to make it easy and democratize the flow for our advertisers.” In other words, he says the aim was to continue simplifying the ad-buying process as much as possible. The program could also become a key way for Google to monetize YouTube. The video site’s finances are the subject of ongoing speculation , with one of the challenges being user-generated content that could scare away advertisers. Singh says that by enlisting advertisers through AdWords, Google should be able to fill more of YouTube’s ad inventory — but that doesn’t mean Google will be sticking ads in front of any random video. “There’s a set of videos that are monetizable,” Singh says. “Clearly, with more demand, that’s going to imply that more of those videos … are going to be monetized. But it won’t change the set of videos that are monetizable.” To help get the word out, Google has appointed nine Ambassadors — businesses who have already had success with AdWords for Video, who have chosen to each mentor a nonprofit on getting started on YouTube, and who will be hosting Google+ Hangouts to share their strategies. The Ambassadors cover a pretty broad range of businesses (albeit usually ones with a strong online presence and lots YouTube videos to promote) including Berkleemusic.com (the online arm of the Berklee College of Music), online clothing retailer ModCloth , and RevZilla , a site that sells motorcycle gear. I talked to representatives from each of those three companies, and they all talked about how the program had opened their eyes to what they can do with video ads at a relatively low cost. They also had suggestions for future improvements — mainly ways to track how each video led not just to views and clicks to a website, but actual purchases. You can read more at the Get Started page .

Magnum: Pleasure Hunt A...

We’ve all seen the Magnum Pleasure Hunt Across The Internet #2, but the guys in Amsterdam have taken it just a little further, extending the campaign out into a real-time mobile ARG game that starts today at 2pm. There are 150 chocolate bonbons hidden across the 9 straatjes of Amsterdam, and you’ll need the augmented Related Digital Buzz Posts: Magnum Pleasure Hunt Across The Internet Magnum: Pleasure Hunt 2 Advergame Honda: Digital Scavenger Hunt

Take Credit For The Job...

Thanks to an election year and a high employment rate, jobs seem to be dominating the headlines even more than usual. Now SmartRecruiters , a hiring startup recently backed by the Mayfield Fund , is trying to tap into that interest — and maybe do some good in the process — with a campaign it’s calling “Got Jobs?” The company says that its technology is can help small- and medium-sized businesses, in particular, cast a wider net as they try to fill open positions. Rather than just posting their job listings to a few sites like Craigslist and Monster, SmartRecruiters customers can post to more than 100 job boards, including LinkedIn and Careerbuilder, then track applications and feedback. And SmartRecruiters is free to use. (It takes a percentage of the fee when you post to a paid job board or buy background checks from third-party vendor.) With “Got Jobs?”, SmartRecruiters has paired its technology with a job creation message. Businesses looking to hire someone can visit the campaign site  to quickly create a job listing and post it through SmartRecruiters. They can also grab an “I Hired” badge for their websites, showing how many positions they’ve filled through the service. Oh, and if you think this is just empty marketing, and that a recruiting startup isn’t going to do much to fight unemployment, SmartRecruiters points to a recent government report showing that there are still 3.5 million unfilled job openings. So by making it easier for businesses to hire, the company argues that it can make a real difference.