How Oakland A's-Style MoneyBall Can Improve Your Marketing Collateral Content

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Brad Pitt would love this! Just like Brad did in the movie Moneyball, KnowledgeTree says it's time to start taking a different approach to sales and marketing content. Every piece of collateral content that marketing produces and sales uses contains data that is influenced not only by the contents of the collateral but by the approach taken during the sales process.

Moneyball Managers, as KnowledgeTree likes to call managers, must know how match-ups play out. Do case studies generate more interest than white papers? Does an ROI calculator really have any value? Do banks respond to case studies about insurance companies? Understanding this kind of data lets sales and marketing teams match-up their best content with different customers - and get more pipeline.

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by Steve Hall    Feb-28-13    
Topic: Tools



Unruly Launches Tool to Predict Viral Success

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Today, Unruly Media, keeper of the ever popular Viral Video Chart, has unleashed a tool that is said to offer advertisers the ability to predict the viral success of videos.

Unruly's ShareRank promises to help advertisers optimize their content by determining, in advance, how much earned media they can expect to see.

Advertisers who use the predictive tool will gain insight into the psychological, social and content triggers that affect the success of their video content as well as learn the word of mouth potential of their video before they spend anything on media.

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by Steve Hall    Jan-29-13    
Topic: Tools, Viral



Why 'Programmatic Premium' Media Buying Doesn't Work Today

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There's been a lot of discussion lately about "programmatic premium"- using machines to fully automate the purchase of premium advertising inventory. It seems like every conference lately has someone from Kellogg's on a panel saying programmatic premium is GR-R-REAT with very impressive statistics to support their claims.

The Ad Exchanges, DSPs, DMPs, SSPs, and various other TLAs (three letter acronyms) you see on Terry Kawaja's Display Lumascape have certainly been successful at automating the buying and selling of remnant inventory. But remnant inventory represents only a small slice of advertising spending. According to Mike Leo, CEO of Operative, only 18% of digital media advertising budget is spent through exchanges.

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by Steve Hall    Jan-29-13    
Topic: Online, Opinion, Tools



'Eye On' Aims to Provide Proof of Marketing's Financial Performance

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Black Ink, a division of Boston-based Winsper, has announced Eye On Enterprise Marketing ROI Suite, a cloud-based offering that provides brands with empirical evidence regarding marketing's contribution to the bottom line. Eye On reports on more than 50 interdependent key performance indicators (KPIs) across Marketing ROI, Customer ROI, and Business ROI. It is said to work with any database environment including enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales force automation (SFA), marketing resource management (MRM), marketing automation (MA), and point of sale (POS).

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by Steve Hall    Jan-17-13    
Topic: Tools



EverydayActors Aims to Become iStockPhoto For Video

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Toronto ad agency exec Kyle Hosick has launched EverydayActors, a site that ams to change the way video talent is sought. In a way, it's like iStockPhoto for video. Creative types can source talent for their video needs.

Users can browse the database to find exactly who they need (based on location, gender, age, ethnicity, special features and style like "geek chic") and negotiate the gig directly with the actor. The site doesn't take any kind of back-end percentage or charge a fee. Actors pay $20 to create a profile.

For marketers who need an "everyday" person to serve as an extra, a face, or an actor in a video for a campaign, this just might be worth checking out.

by Steve Hall    Dec-17-12    
Topic: Agencies, Tools, Video



Starbucks Most Photographed Logo on Instagram

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A new startup, GazeMetrix, can identify brand logos in Instagram photos. The service, which uses image recognition software, was originally developed to detect which apps people have on their devices by pointing them at each other. When that effort didin't pan out, the developers redirected their efforts.

The service, which will eventually rollout to Facebook and Twitter, makes it easy for brands to contact Instagram users who have posted branded logos and ask permission to reuse them on their own branded channels.

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by Steve Hall    Dec-11-12    
Topic: Research, Social, Tools



OneSpot Marries Benefits of Content Marketing With Reach of Advertising

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A couple weeks ago , I was briefed on a new company called OneSpot. Headed by venture capitalist and former head of interactive at the Houston Chronicle, Matt Cohen, the new company transforms existing content into ads that look more like content than ads.

After the briefing, I said the offering was "the perfect marriage of content marketing with the power and infrastructure of advertising." Yes, I really said that and yes, that quote is front and center on the OneSpot website which launches today.

Recently, so much has been written about content marketing which, as part of inbound marketing, is all about making sure the right information is in the right place when people come looking for it. But, people don't always know what to look for and they don't always know which available products and services could benefit them. Hence, the need for outbound marketing.

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by Steve Hall    Dec- 4-12    
Topic: Brands, Social, Tools



Digital Asset Management: Sexy? You Bet

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This guest post is written by Nina Brakel-Schutt, Business Development Strategist at Widen.

Establishing a system for storing, managing and distributing logos, photos, audio, video, design files and other digital assets to clients is probably the least sexy aspect of creative work.

However, agencies that fail to get the right assets to clients on time, every time, face losing accounts in a digitally driven marketplace that moves at warp speed.

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by Steve Hall    Nov-20-12    
Topic: Tools



How Real Time Bidding Can Improve Your Display Advertising

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If you're creating online campaigns (from a creative or media standpoint) and you want to make sure you have the right creative on the right site with the right offer matched up to the right landing page, you might want to watch this interview with EngageBDR Client Services Director Andy Dhanik. In the interview, he talks about how his system can integrate with existing ad servers and optimize creative pairings (landing page, banner, purchased site). It's a bit technical but isn't everything about advertising these days? That said, don't toss it off. It matters.

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 5-12    
Topic: Online, Tools, Video



MixRank Improves Online Creative by Analyzing Successes And Failures

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Competitive creative research has always been an important element when developing online creative. Finding that competitive information, though, is often tedious. MixRank has launched a product that makes it easy to find your competitor's online ads and other online sources that drive traffic to their site. The service can also determine which ads have worked and which haven't providing insight which can be used to craft more effective ads.

Check out this interview with MixRank Co-Founder Illya Lichtenstein. In the interview, Lichtenstein explains the service and how it can help brands develop more effective online ads and determine what their competition is doing online.

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 1-12    
Topic: Tools