Blog
Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.
The most important tools, are those that help you get to a real understanding of the customer faster. Nudge enables you to get customer insights with ease, diving straight into how customers are engaging, what they’re paying attention to, where they’re coming from, on what devices. And then it makes analysts jobs easier by synthesizing the data into insights, so you can get from insight to action faster. … Continue reading
Defining success is ground in your marketing strategy. What is it we are doing and why are we doing it. Then measuring effectiveness, gets a lot easier. Are we being effective at delivering on that strategy. You will want to make sure you have an analytics system installed, typically with a piece of javascript. That enables the platform to measure your activities. Of the marketing metrics, some that should help inform if your marketing is doing the work it should… Continue reading
Edition #379
On the attention economy, short consideration and Chad Powers.
One big thing
Is the attention economy redundant? I say this gingerly, as someone with many horses in the race. But I pose the question of - is it really adding more to the conversation right now? Or has it done its job.
The Attention Economy really refers to, mind share, what is capturing and cutting through with consumers. It’s been a hot topic though, as we’ve been on a bull run of growth in internet usage. People spend more and more time on their screens. And when they’re online, engaging with brands, that time is quantifiable. So that’s why it’s been so exciting, 1) there was a way to measure it and 2) now there was a lot more of it. 3) we were empowered to do something about it.
But that growth has tapered off, with a peak of 417 minutes in Q2 of 2021. With that change, even before then, as growth slowed. That’s where competition ramped up.
So yes, attention is still valuable, the marketplace is even more competitive. But is the vernacular 'Attention Economy' any better now? With 417 minutes/day — digital isn’t niche, it is the thing. So should we revert to mindshare, cut through? Probably. But with a digitally-led market, I think attention will stay, but how we think about it will evolve. It has done its job, but will likely evolve, to something next. What this is, lets see.
Notable stories this week
VideoAmp launches second-by-second TV measurement.
YouTube Shorts is sharing ad revenue. Will that mean more money for creators?
Yahoo is on a string of high profile product hires.
Meta is shuttering its Bulletin newsletter subscription service.
How bots corrupted advertising.
Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline.
This person read 100 marketing papers and here are the top 10 they found most interesting.
Musk’s “super app” vision.
Could Eli Manning’s Chad Powers become next Ted Lasso?
[Long read] How YouTube created the attention economy. Continue reading
Landing pages play a vital role in the digital marketing mix. Providing that entry point into the customer experience and enabling brands to experiment, put up pages quickly and just as quickly take them down. The simplicity of the pages means that any data collected is quite valuable but narrow in scope, to provide feedback on where to improve. You need to make sure they are working for you and the traffic sources to them are pulling their weight. Metrics… Continue reading
Search engine optimization is an ongoing quest to keep your website and content relevant for search engines. Over time, what works changes as search evolves. The fundamental principle has always maintained, what is going to help the prospect or customer. And creating content around that. However with competition, the other side of the equation is making sure that SEO is working for you. This is where analytics can help, to demonstrate the value you get from search engines. And show… Continue reading
Fraud or accidental clicks erode your budgets and mean your more effective sources need to work harder to deliver results. The challenge is trying to identify if, or at least find anomalies that indicate that a traffic source is not driving value. Bots tend to be designed to do the minimal effort, to justify the cost per click. So to identify them, you want to see how your traffic behaves after it visits – and compare it against other sources. Continue reading
Inbound marketing yields traffic from many different sources to lots of different destinations on your website. This can make it hard to optimize for. Should you optimize the source, or the destination, or both? But where do you get started. Diving deep into each source as a starting point, should help find what ones are working for you. Metrics you should think about: Attention, how long people are engaging for each click. Average Scroll, how are… Continue reading
Pay per click marketing is anchored on, get the best cost per click. But we know that not all clicks are created equal, so it makes sense to find a minimum standard of quality for each click. To help us better understand the tradeoffs between cost and volume. Maybe we can get lots of low quality clicks at a cheaper cost, but are they overall better than less clicks at a higher cost. To enable you to find out, you… Continue reading
Microsites, or campaign sites, used as part of media campaigns are a ripe opportunity for extra insight. Often every campaign has a webpage as the core, where all media pushes to that page. Which makes this page itself, ripe for getting a deeper insight on how the campaign is performing. Customers that are taking action, are all routing through this page. However, with the rush to get campaigns up, these can often be overlooked. That is a mistake. Where possible… Continue reading
Edition #378
On strategic analytics, metaverse and YouTube shorts.
One big thing
Daily rituals drive behavior. Like reaching for a cup of coffee each morning, one hand coffee, other hand phone. As you sip, you read, or watch, or interact. On the other side of that screen is billions of dollars of R&D, to keep you engaged. And largely, it is successful.
For any business, in that equation, most of us got attention by turning up. But that’s no longer good enough, we have to provide a richer experience. Whereas being in the inbox used to be enough, that no longer works. Because everyone is a swipe away from something else more interesting.
It’s like when I pop into the local pub, they could open their doors in a good location and get foot traffic. Now, you’ll see someone on the street, checking the reviews before deciding to pop in. And even walking off if the reviews don’t line up. Ok, so right location and right reviews.
In delivering excellence, we need to be smarter with strategy. And that’s why analytics needs to be more involved in what goes on in strategy. To provide context for strategy and to give the lay of the land. Not only internal but also external context. We’ve recently polished up our enterprise services page. To highlight where companies are allocating resource and capital, to get ahead. It’s no grand secret, like most solid advice, it’s the basics, done well, which make all the difference.
Which ties into this post on strategy, planning and improving execution. With Brady Moore, a former Green Beret, getting into the weeds. Worth a read.
So as you look to navigate the ever changing market, consider, what is our strategy? How do we know we’ve made progress on that strategy? And how do we know when we should change? Or pause or abandon ship.
Speaking of ships, it was only this week I discovered that Chelsea Piers was the destination for the Titanic, and that some of the survivors were brought there aboard the Carpathia. There are discoveries to be found around every corner.
Notable stories this week
Paul Graham shared a video of him writing/editing a piece from scratch. Would love to see more of this type of content.
YouTube shorts could steal TikTok’s thunder with a better deal for creators.
Netflix’s new ad chief has an appetite for danger.
With first CMO hire, OpenWeb hopes to de-troll the discussions and data space for publishers and Contently names Dawn DiLorenzo as new Head of Marketing.
Spotify now sells audiobooks. Hints at opportunities to advertise within audiobooks.
TheAtlantic is pushing into film and TV projects.
Ted Lasso and AFC Richmond are coming to FIFA 23.
NFL signs Apple Music as Super Bowl halftime sponsor. As we saw Prime Video rocket up the app charts are debut of football.
Publicis Sapient ‘all in’ on the metaverse, finds VR adoption not so hot.
Netflix is opening a video game studio in Finland.
Attentive, Galloway dives into the analogies between the oil business and attention businesses.
Podcasters are buying millions of listeners through mobile=game ads. Arghh.
Hacker breaches Fast Company systems to send offensive Apple News notifications.
Brands blast Twitter for ads next to child pornography accounts.
Google focuses on making search more visual.
TripAdvisor built a travel media biz before retail media took off - and now it’s got a creative studio too.
"Marketing needs marketing” The curious case of Tony’s Chocolonely. Continue reading