The live polling that USA Today performs annually with focus groups has proven itself meaningless. This year GoDaddy.com’s “Perfect Match” advertisement scored dead last on the newspaper’s Ad Meter meanwhile the company posted record sales for a Monday following a Super Bowl commercial. What is USA Today missing?
USA Today’s Ad Meter needs to be brought into the 21st century. Traditionally, they have focused on a small sample group of viewers to gauge ad performance. This year, in an attempt to update their analysis they opened up that sample group to viewers that registered on their online portal. It was likely an attempt to get a better read of consumer reactions, but with more than 8,000 participants, they still missed the mark.
The inherent flaw in their analysis—the same one they’ve had since the Ad Meter was first published in 1989—is in the way they measure advertisement success. Knowing whether a person “liked” or “disliked” an ad is no way to gauge if it got the job done for the advertiser. USA Today needs to go deeper to understand the winners and losers.
In Networked Insights’ analysis of the Super Bowl ads and celebrities, social data insights revealed a different viewpoint. GoDaddy.com was... Read more
Tagged 'brands' 
Relevancy Redefined–Get back to building brands via mobile
This week, at the Mobile Marketing Forum in NY, I spoke about getting back to building brands. Mobile will be the first, if not the only way that people experience brands, and it’s happening today—how we choose to react and plan to that is our choice. Fighting words—I know. Many view mobile differently—but as I addressed in my keynote, the data is irrefutable, and in the words (from the movie) of the captain of the Titanic—“It’s a mathematical certainty”.
Certainty? OK, to explain I covered three major themes. First, the rise of the mobile app economy, and how, in many cases, the evolution of mobile, namely apps, is making mobile the first screen. Mary Meeker recently asked us to “re-imagine” numerous technologies and interactions. Her key message is that mobile is changing the way that everyone is acting or interacting today. And with faster connection speeds, smartphones, app downloads---these three are the backbone of the app economy—with improvements and growth happening continuously across these three litmus points, we can see the positive impact this is having on the app economy.
Here’s a scary thought--developers understand consumers better than advertisers...in mobile. These developers are smart—they understand how people act in mobile---even more than... Read more
Why Brands Need to Go Post-Mobile
Mobile, mobile, mobile. It’s all marketers want to talk about anymore. And with good reason: In light of recent, dramatic behavioral shifts to tablets and smartphones, brands are grasping for ways to reach customers who are spending less time at a desktop or laptop and more time on the go.
But after a teaser video from Google’s Project Glass made the rounds recently, giving a glimpse at life, with the company’s reality-augmenting glasses, it became clear that mobile is just the tip of the wireless iceberg.
The ship is sailing into the unchartered waters toward a post-mobile world where we’ll all be connected, all the time. The boundaries will blur between what is and isn't a device, and with everything mobile, labels like “wired” and “wireless” will become meaningless. Consumers will start looking to technologies and brands to simplify how we engage with the world and information around us.
So how can brands ensure they’re prepared for the changes taking shape before our very eyes? By paying close attention to these five trends that I’m betting will define our collective post-mobile future:
Smart Everything: The reason Google glasses really capture the imagination is that they seem to make the stuff of sci-fi a reality.... Read more
