In true integrated fashion, TargetCast, with the help of media partner Slate, successfully put together a location-based cross platform engagement strategy designed to target the higher education community and encourage them to roll over assets with TIAA-CREF.  The program included digital banners, content syndication, and promotional ad units fueling interest for the Slate Gabfests. At the live event, there was signage, marketing collateral, live reads, as well as a special “guests of honor” dinner with TIAA-CREF participants and Gabfest and Slate talent and management. The Gabfest is a weekly podcast series operated by Slate focusing on Politics, Sports, and Culture. Collectively, the three podcast editions attract more than 1MM downloads a month. TargetCast secured a sponsorship opportunity for TIAA-CREF to take the Gabfests on the road, executing live events at key universities and institutions around the country.

TIAA-CREF, providing the higher education community with financial services, understood that engaging their participants through quality content within a venue for relevant live programming, would be a door opener to growing assets under management.  The campaigns proved highly successful with significant lift in assets under management directly attributable to the Slate Gabfest events.  The Gabfests have been recognized by AdAge as the “Best Podcast Series” recently winning their Vanguard Award in 2011 and will continue to be an integral part of TargetCast’s media strategy for TIAA-CREF into 2012.

For more information about the AdAge/Vanguard Awarded Slate Gabfest, follow this link:  http://adage.com/article/special-report-media-vanguard-awards/media-vanguard-awards-digital-natives/230922/)

As part of their integrated campaign in support of the company’s 2012 Versa Seda model, Nissan is leveraging a previously widely unexploited Apple iAd feature to help deliver the campaigns’ young, tech savvy target consumer.

The Versa iAd utilizes gyro technology–offered on the iPad and iPhone–to allow the user to take in a 360-degree view of the car as they pan their device to the left or right while viewing the ad.  True to its name, the iAd also offers elements of jazzy interaction to the experience: when a viewer shakes their phone, for example, the people in the ad will put on different hats. 

A classy convergence of technology and targeting!

Many online publishers have made it easy to share their content via the social web.   Some argue that publishers who focus on bleeding site content to the social web may incur a decrease in core metrics, and ought to focus on keeping consumers engaged within their domain.  While I do believe there is value in keeping consumers engaged within the walls of a site,  I feel that sharing content through the social web is a great way for a publisher to extend its reach.  Can it be detrimental for a publisher to focus on sharing their content via the social web?  This is a difficult question to answer, and answers would vary depending on the type of publisher and a lot of other factors.  But, just for fun, let’s take a look at a study conducted by Outbrain, which explored how people on the web interact with a publisher’s content.

After pulling a sample data set of 100 million sessions across more than 100 of Outbrain’s top publishers, data showed that showed that traffic coming from social media sources has the highest tendency to bounce.  In addition, they discovered that two-thirds of traffic to sites still comes from users directly visiting a content site or jumping from page to page within that site.  The other third comes from outside sources such as search and social media.  41% of traffic coming from an outside source, comes from search, and 11% comes from social, 17% comes from portals, and 31% comes from other content sites.   Of course, the breakdown of the source of traffic would vary between publisher type and genre.  For example,  Outbrain found that 42% of traffic referrals for news sites arrive from a social media site and less than 5% of sports sites’ traffic arrive from social media.  These are some pretty interesting findings.  Do you believe that by bleeding content to the social web, some sites’ core metrics suffer?  Let us know what you think!

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.

I have seen and heard a lot of cute ways the news has been broken—ultrasound in a Father’s Day card was a really nice one I was witness to recently.

But forget the whole “human touch” thing….Now soon to be parents can more easily announce the news to their friends via the family member status option.

Users can update the Friends/Family section of their profiles to include an Expected: Child. You can also choose to add photo, name or due date of the expected.

Mashable recently reported that Google’s Realtime search function, disabled in July due to stalled negotiations with Twitter, is planned to resurface and will include data from additional social sources as well as Google+.  Realtime Search, “Updates” on the Google SERP, delivered relevant Twitter, Facebook and other social media data streams in real time whenever major current and world events hit a boiling point.

Adding Google+ data to the results is also under serious consideration, with the Google+ Stream possibly functioning as its own search engine and real time feed, which coincidentally is Google+’s most requested feature.  This could essentially negate the need to incorporate any data outside the Google family of products (like Tweets and Facebook News Feeds).

The Muscular Dystrophy (MDA) Annual Labor Day Telethon will be airing Sunday, September 4th from 6pm – Midnight across the country and TargetCast is seeking your help.

TargetCast is asking all of our media partners to help us help this worthy cause by providing PSA media inventory that will help drive awareness and tune-in to the new and exciting MDA Telethon. The following PSA featuring Steven Tyler shows one of the many stars that have partnered with MDA to drive tune-in for this years event including Jennifer Lopez, Randy Jackson, Natalie Morales, Nigel Lythgoe, Nancy O’Dell, and Max Adler.

Breaking from years past, this years show will air for only six hours versus the previous twenty-two and will feature host Nancy O’Dell and guest performers including Celine Dione, Lady Antebellum, Martina McBride and many others in this star packed show.

Please help the MDA and provide PSA airtime and space by contacting Harlan Schwarz at 212-500-6940 or Casey Boyer at 212-500-6970.

Your help is very much appreciated.

As we’ve all heard, Google+ is now up to 25 million visitors after only being in market since June 28^th.  If you can believe it that rate of growth is faster than MySpace, Twitter and even the all mighty Facebook!   If you don’t believe me, check out the chart below:

Does this mean that Google + will one day surpass the popularity of Facebook? That is still left to be answered.  The engagement rates are still not up to par as people are still asking themselves what exactly is Google+ and why it even exits.  So why then is Google+ growing so quickly one might ask? Google has used their existing Gmail base to establish themselves as a true competitor in the social network world and it has worked.

What Google+ now decides to do with its growing user data base and how it will apply to advertisers will be their next big move!   Stay tuned advertising world, this just might change how we buy and use social media!

News broke late last week that Twitter users will begin to see ads in their main stream of tweets from Twitters ad platform.

For the time being, an ad will only appear in the stream if you are already following the account that purchased the ad (but it won’t be too long before ads will appearing wildly and with a scary frequency). The paid-tweets appear at the top of your feed but will gradually get pushed down throughout the day. This brings up a lot of interesting questions about pricing and how much each paid tweet might cost. We are looking to test the platform here at TargetCast so I am hoping we will have some updates about the nuances of the program in the next few weeks.

Twitter also claims the new ads will score double-digital CTR %’s…an interesting claim being that only a few major companies are participating in the initial program. I am, at best, wary of it’s effectiveness for smaller DR-focused clients.

More to come in the next few weeks…

Turntable.fm, a new social media site where participants interact and play music, is growing rapidly. With over 336,000 people joining in the past few weeks, it has proven to be a popular and addictive site among music lovers. The turntable.fm user, represented by a cartoon avatar, can enter one of several virtual DJ rooms and listen to music being played by other users/DJs. Instead of listening, the user can also choose to participate and play their own favorite music from the site’s extensive music database if there is available space on any of the five turntables that are in each room.

The DJ rooms are often titled by the theme of the music being played, for example “Indie While You Work” or “DJ Wooooo’s House/Dance/Electro.” There can be up to 5 DJs in a room, along with several listeners, and as each song is played, people can vote whether the song is “Lame” or “Awesome.” If a person likes a song and votes “Awesome,” their cartoon avatar begins nodding its head to the beat of the song. DJs acquire points for every “Awesome” vote and they can also gain fans.

The founders, Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein, have been in talks with investors and the site is said to have received $6 to $7 million in funds. The site is licensed to play music through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Although the site does not yet feature advertisements, Turntable.fm has a high level of engagement among its users and could become a valuable space for advertisers. Check it out!