Posted be Michele Buslik:

The announcement that Nielsen will produce reports this summer based on traditional audience measurement metrics of GRPs, reach and frequency is welcome news to all sides of the advertising industry.

For years those involved in the digital community have positioned that medium as the most accountable for advertisers – and in some ways, they had a point. The reported metrics centered on Click-through-Rates, Page Views, and the most prevalent way of selecting appropriate vehicles, Behavioral and Contextual Targeting. While each is important in its own context, all of these metrics raised more questions than they answered since they are vastly different from those used to evaluate, plan and buy traditional offline media. Comparison of the cost and efficiency across all media opportunities is an essential need when developing cross-platform media plans. In addition, in the light of continuing issues of privacy and computer tracking of activity, behavioral marketing faces many obstacles for all media that employ any form of monitoring past habits for selection of targeted advertising. While we all would like to believe in the promise of accountability, the search has continued for a more disciplined and ultimately integrated approach to these metrics.

Nielsen has been testing and will introduce a new service that will initially employ the use of Facebook demographics and their own tracking of properly tagged advertising to provide insight into individual site as well as total plan reach and frequency. The post analysis data will be in time frames familiar to advertisers — weekly, monthly, quarterly — and are based on traditional demographics and metrics of GRPs, reach and frequency. These metrics have developed a long history of standardized accountability for television, print, radio and out-of home advertisers.

For the first time, advertisers will be able to monitor their own activity across all media platforms. We will be able to determine the impact on audience reach of moving advertising dollars from one medium to the other. Going beyond audience delivery, this new application also has the potential to measure advertiser specific metrics used to gauge the effectiveness of the medium, such as intent to purchase. This second aspect will involve re-contacting those known to be exposed to the advertising and using quick pop-up questionnaires to gain insight into future behavior.

Recommendation
While we are encouraged by Nielsen’s decision to develop this service we believe it is only the first step in the right direction. Today, Nielsen has developed this initiative as a research and reporting tool that can be used during a particular advertiser’s campaign to inform refinements of activity as well as a final accounting or post analysis of the total effort.
• The initial phase of this service will include only Internet activity. Future plans call for incorporating mobile. Tracking of all activity regardless of device will be important to provide the entire picture of digital advertising.
• We would also like to see this move from an individual advertiser-sponsored post analysis product to an industry wide syndicated source of online advertising campaign audience delivery that can be used to develop planning reach and frequency norms used in the pre-planning phase.

At TargetCast we encourage our digital advertisers to participate with Nielsen in this service. We welcome Digital to the very complex world of traditional audience media measurement. Now let’s all work together to standardize these metrics for both planning and post evaluation of digital opportunities.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is looking for ways to put a stop to the rioting in London.  One solution that is currently being explored is barring suspected rioters from using social media and other communication devices.  Theresa May, the Home secretary, met with executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Research In Motion (maker of BlackBerry) to seek ways to prevent rioters from using these mediums to organize more trouble.

Cameron said, “when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

Facebook has said it has removed “credible threats of violence” from the site.  However, they have also noted that social media has been used in positive ways such as mass cleanups of the riots.

In attempting to restrict use of social media, the British government was met with protest by free-speech campaigners.  This case is an brings up some interesting questions.  How much responsibility is in the hands of these social media companies?  Is the government approaching a violation of British citizens’ basic freedoms?  Read the full article here.

This is very interesting. France has officially banned the names of the top two social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, from being mentioned on radio or television…UNLESS, they are part of a news story. Dating back to a 1992 decree that says, “mentioning services by name is an act of advertising,” France has taken a stand against both of the social giants.

As described by Christine Kelly, a spokesperson for France’s Counseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition. This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box– other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’”

TechCrunch sums this up nicely, “Instead of referring to specific social networking pages, like saying ‘Find us at Facebook.com/Audi’ or follow us on ‘Twitter.com/Pepsi’ brands will have to skirt around the issue, saying things like ‘Find us on social networking sites!,’ or directing viewers to their community pages and hoping that viewers will just pick up on where to go.”

France has a history of trying to regulate language used on air. According to the Toubon Law,  the French government can mandate the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, and in all broadcast audiovisual programs, with some exceptions (most notably, private non-commercial communications).

Some say the French government is going overboard in terms of restricting “the spread of American culture” which some bloggers attribute to traditional French protectionism, similar to how in 2003, the French banned the use of the word “email” in all government communications and publications.

In all, the true nature of the ban is not clear, but Facebook and Twitter are certainly making their way across the globe. Think about the earned media the two companies get every day, in every advertisement featuring one of their “brand pages.”

You never know, maybe France does support smaller social networks…or better yet, maybe France is launching their own social network (unlikely), where you have to be French to partake. Didn’t Facebook start with the promise of exclusivity?

Is the world obsessed with Facebook? Thank you to OnlineSchools for this infographic, check it out:

Via: Online Schools

A recent Fortune Magazine article talks about the challenges companies and brands continue to face turning Facebook into a valuable marketing tool. Too many brands have jumped on the Facebook bandwagon without fully understanding what they are trying to accomplish or how it might help them connect with consumers. To quote J.M. Barrie from Peter Pan, it’s as if they believe that all they need is “faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” Simply having a presence on Facebook or even a significant number of “likes” does not mean the brand’s efforts were successful.  As the article notes, “(m)ore than half of Facebook users say they seldom visit a brand’s page once they tell the rest of the world it’s a keeper, while 55% of Facebook users have “liked” a company one minute, then decided they don’t the next. “[M]ore than half the time, the company receives no direct feedback about the consumer’s desire to stop seeing their posts,” says the report. “Kind of like a long-distance relationship where your beloved forgets to tell you they’ve moved on.”" To work, a Facebook strategy must have clearly defined objectives from the outset, continuous monitoring and adjustment, and a willingness to change gears if something goes amiss. That’s the only way to really get to the second star on the right.

Over the past week, Google execs and Sales representatives alike have been speaking agency to agency touting their most recent SEM development, the +1. Google is finally taking a leap into the “socialsphere” and a shot at taking share away from Facebook. Ultimately, the +1 is Google’s version of a “like” button on Facebook. If you click the +1 and are linked to your friends via the Google Profile network, then your friends will see your Search Results recommendations, or your +1’s.

By introducing this type of technology, advertisers question what impact this will have on targetability – can I now target ads on the Google Display Network to those that +1 a certain topic? How about deliver keyword to those that have a +1 threshold? Lot’s of questions.

Think of it this way- does getting a +1 on your listing drive up your organic ranking? If so, will there be a click fraud issue?

I’m curious to see how this plays out in the future, but I applaud Google’s new addition…for now.

Lady Gaga is the biggest artist in the world. With over 8 million people following her Tweets and over 11,000,000 fans on Facebook, she has built herself an army of little monsters through the power of social media. So what’s left when you have built such an impressive army? The answer is simple: harness them. Today, Lady Gaga made an announcement via Facebook to all of her little monster all over the world to join a new facet of her social media onslaught – The Official Lady Gaga Street Team.

The goal of this newly formed Street Team with Fancrops, which promotes social media with a purpose, is a brilliant idea that enables the legions of voracious Lady Gaga fans to take her message and brand even further, faster into the social media stratosphere. After you sign up to be a member of the Street Team, using your existing social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Itunes, a new team member can choose to complete the tasks assigned.

Tasks include simple things like posting your favorite lyrics from her new single, Born This Way, on Facebook and tagging it via Gaga. Then you simply submit a screen capture of your completed task through the Lady Gaga Street Team website and earn points towards the purchase of Gaga merchandise. Each task is assigned a different value of points (i.e. posting her interview with Jay Leno on Facebook will earn you 50 points, and simply reviewing and rating “Born This Way” on Itunes will earn her little monsters 200 points). It’s really that simple, but this goes way beyond the promise of essentially free merchandise. The true power here, which is yet to be measured, is the ability to not only make your fan base feel more included in your world, but also to pick specific things you want promoted about your brand/message and unleash them into every major form of social media. Paws up everyone! For Lady Gaga, this is only the beginning of her total global domination via all forms of media.

We access our email, Facebook and Twitter to the point where they become an integral part of our daily lives, but what happens to our accounts after we pass away?

It may be a grim thought, but companies such as Legacy Locker have built their businesses on handling people’s digital assets when they die. In other words, they offer services to Internet users who might want to bequeath their social network identities, blogs, email accounts and other websites when they die.

Anyone who isn’t concerned about their “digital afterlife” should be; failure to implement an online post-death plan could mean things like valuable web addresses,  access to online bank accounts and even posted photos may be lost for good, experts say.

While the concept of “afterlife websites” have received quite a bit of buzz, business has been slow but steady. Entrustet is a website that allows customers to appoint a digital executor to handle the fate of the deceased’s web accounts, business is growing at a healthy but modest rate.

Both the founders of Entrustet and Legacy Locker agree that their potential customers need to overcome a mental barrier before they take the plunge and set up an account. The hesitation could come from people not wanting to face or make decisions about death.

According to Legacy Locker founder Jeremy Toeman, “I’m very happy with our progress, but if I’ve learned anything about human psychology, it’s people don’t actually want to face or make decisions about death in any way that they don’t have to.”

Check out the full article here.

Click here for some interesting statistics on Facebook provided by SocialHype and OnlineSchools.org.  Here is a sample:

• 71.2% of the US web audience is on Facebook
• 48% of 18 to 34 year olds check Facebook right when they wake up
• About 70% of the Facebook userbase resides outside the US

Are you obsessed with Facebook?  If so, do you see this obsession as a good or bad thing?

After suing Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 for stealing their idea, the Winklevosses are now trying to undo their 2008 settlement.  The lawyers who helped the Winklevosses sign the settlement in 2008, are now being accused of malpractice by the Winklevosses.  After settling with Facebook in 2008 for $65 million ($20 million in cash and $45 million in stock), the twins felt they were taken advantage of. 

The Winklevosses’ lawyer, Jerry Falk, who argued the appeal of the Winklevosses’ settlement, claimed that proper disclosures hadn’t been made from the papers that the Winklevosses signed, and therefore violated federal and California state laws.  Falk said that the Winklevosses should have been told about an internal valuation of Facebook stock. 

Judge John Wallace said, “The founders [the Winklevosses] are pretty smart people themselves… They also had five lawyers from two firms sitting there with them. The twins also have a father, from the Wharton School [of Business at University of Pennsylvania], who’s very bright, and considered to be one of the top people in valuation [of businesses]… If you have all these people there to advise you, isn’t it a little difficult to say this was one of those things where they were taken advantage of?”

For more info click here.