Thursday, November 29, 2012

Mobile Ads Often Miss the Mark with Users

Despite the hoopla over mobile, many mobile ads fail to connect with users, argues Sam Grobart in a recent "Bloomberg Businessweek" article. Simply repurposing banner ads and interstitial ads (pop-ups) for mobile devices may not work because mobile users find them uninformative or disruptive, according to ad experts interviewed.  To quote Eric Picard, chief executive officer of Rare Crowds, an ad technology company: "Most mobile advertising is done as an afterthought. Immature designers have just sort of slapped banner ads in there." On pop-ups, the comment from Al Rotches, a Web ad designer who has worked on Internet campaigns for Barack Obama, Honda Motor, and Trojan Brand Condoms, is telling: "When I’m on my phone, this is my thing. I don’t want to be tracked; I don’t want to be interrupted." For more, including mobile ad trends for Google, Facebook and Twitter, see http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/mobile-ads-are-the-future-dot-theyre-also-lousy

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Use Direct Mail to Pep Up Your B2B ROI

Sometimes business-to-business marketers need reminding that, even in this digital age, "snail mail" can be a key ingredient to a potent marketing mix. A recent chiefmarketer.com article interviewed execs from the Agency Inside Harte-Hanks and Mason Zimbler US to get tips on how to boost b-to-b ROI with direct mail. One takeaway: More than ever in this micro-targeted digital world, you need to make your mailed message relevant, timely and coordinated with other channels, including e-mail and mobile. But the marketing execs also stressed a traditional direct mail rule: Make the target audience (and thus mailing list selection, we would add), a key driver. To read the full article, see
http://chiefmarketer.com/direct-marketing/b2b-direct-mail-be-relevant-creative-and-timely