Murray Newlands of Performance Marketing Insider sat down with Aaron Hales of Lattice Media, a UK based luxury performance and affiliate marketing company. Aaron was kind enough to talk to us while flying his private jet to Singapore, and gave us a lot of information about what they are doing in introducing Luxury brands to Performance Marketing. Highly informative interview on a segment of the industry that almost no one has branched into, but Lattice Media has become the experts in.

There are one comments. Join the discussion.

ADOTAS – Pocket-dials and accidental clicks account for the majority of calls businesses receive directly from mobile display ads, according to a report from online and mobile ad company Marchex. In its new MPULSE report, the company (which provides technology designed to block spam calls and exceptionally short calls) looked at 200,000 inbound phone calls to businesses that resulted from mobile searches during the first quarter of 2012, and it found a lot of junk: 76 percent of all calls from mobile display ads were what Marchex considered “bad” — accidental clicks and the dreaded pocket/purse dial. With voice search/automated directory assistance, the study found, 45 percent of all resulting calls were “bad” calls. With online directory partners, it was 37 percent, 34 percent for mobile  directory partners, and 34 percent for major mobile search engines. Looking at the positive side of things — the successes businesses have had through mobile — mobile and online directory partners were tied for the lead in one particular metric: 38 percent of the calls that resulted from each of those two sources were from new customers. Read the full report on the Marchex site.

Marchex also offered five suggested best practices for mobile advertising. First, it advocated for “a variety of connection options to suit their intent,” whether they be click-to-calls, apps, QR codes or anything else. Second, it called for testing for the customer’s ability to call from a number of sources. Third, it advised a wide reach, utilizing web pages, search engines and apps. Fourth, it called for testing and analysis of a campaign’s performance, and fifth, it suggested analyzing the kinds of calls coming in and figuring out, through call centers, whether those calls lead to sales conversions. However — and the Marchex report doesn’t say this explicitly — it would probably be a good idea to, in general, create mobile ads that are actually designed with the physical specifications of the device and the user’s head-space while using a mobile in mind.

There are two comments. Join the discussion.

WordStream has released an interesting InfoGraphic that shows how Facebook’s advertising services compared up to Googles enormous Display Network. If you didn’t know, the Display Network for Google is a Goliath and has properties like YouTube, Gmail, Bogger and of course Google itself. Is it possible that Facebook which is much smaller in perspective, doesn’t have mobile advertising or any sort of actual statistics to back it up, compete with Facebook? What is the impact?

Click to Enlarge

There are three comments. Join the discussion.

Interesting poll from the pollin’ folks at the Associated Press and CNBC: It shows that most Americans really don’t give a hooey about Facebook and in fact, almost half of the people think that Facebook will be gone over time.

Not that Facebook or Zuck really care, because they are about to go public and make a load of money. If Facebook eventually disappears, they will still have the money and well, all their investors will just have a very expensive lesson on why the Internet is finicky. If Facebook doesn’t disappear, they will probably just end up carving out a part of South America and make their own Country with all the money they are going to make and call it Zucktopia.

There are fifteen comments. Join the discussion.

Since the infamous Panda update, and now the Penguin attack, all sorts of marketers are running scared worried another animal-inspired update will come out and eat them. Well, if you didn’t know, Matt “Alligator” Cutts is the Chief C*ck Blocker at Google, and his job is to make sure nothing gets past Google’s quality filters. This is a good thing, because it ensures that real content is showing first, right? Either way, doesn’t mean we can’t poke some fun at him. From the Google folks at Sam Applegate comes this … umm… informative video on how to Rank #1 on Google, always. Really. No, Really.

There are twelve comments. Join the discussion.

PMI-TV interviews John Rampton of PPC.org reveals what is how with Google PPC and how you can use remarketing to increase your ROI. It’s a great way to ensure that your campaign is profitable and that you are making the most of every consumer. According to Google: Remarketing is a feature that lets you reach people who have previously visited your site, and show them relevant ads when they visit other sites on the Display Network. When people leave your site without buying anything, for example, remarketing helps you connect with these potential customers while they browse other websites. You can even show them a compelling message or offer that will encourage them to return to your site and complete a purchase.

There are five comments. Join the discussion.

Last week Epic (fka Azoogle) confirmed with Performance Marketing Insider that they were indeed closing down, unable to pay their publishers and affiliates. This would be the biggest failure of an affiliate network since COPEAC’s demise, leaving many people in the industry wondering what network would be next. Many affiliates are rightly concerned that these developments signal that other networks may be about to fail.

The stories about Epic are disconcerting: the staff of Epic including Matt Mirman, who basically ran the network, was completely left in the dark about the company’s future. The board of Epic never told them anything, but at the same time many of the top executives including Don Mathis, the former CEO, separated parts of the company to form a new entity called Kinetic Social, leaving many to believe they knew the time was near for Epic’s complete failure.

The same problems that plagued COPEAC eventually caught up Epic: they were owed tens of millions by non-paying advertisers and faced significant cash flow problems.  As soon as publishers started talking about the issues, it was probably only time that they would be unable to survive. Without the cash flow from the other side of the business: the display and social, it was hard to save the company.

This comes only a few weeks after the announcement that Adteractive was going under, leaving many CPA networks with major unpaid bills.

Affiliates should be very concerned. Many networks are paying out before they are paid, have little cash reserves and worse, do not have a long-term business plan on how to make money besides brokering offers.

This is obviously part of the CPA game, but it’s a very dangerous game for those companies that have a few core advertisers and affiliates that support them.

What are the major  issues plaguing the industry that will cause problems?

1)   Enforcement Actions
The FTC has made it clear that networks will be held accountable for more and more things, including the actions of their affiliates. Combine this with more and more various State Attorney General actions, legal costs are going up.

2)   New Credit Card Rules
Hundreds of offers have been pulled because of new rules about re-billing that go beyond weight-loss offers. Membership based sites that bill the credit card monthly, are facing strict new rules and many card processors will not give merchant accounts to these companies. This is one of the issues that caused Neverblue’s parent company to go bankrupt.

3)   Education Offers Dying
The EDU industry was huge for almost a decade. New regulations by both the US Department of Education and the schools themselves, have made it almost impossible to promote EDU offers like they used to be. Several EDU companies have already bankrupted, and expect more.

4)   Desperation
Too many networks are desperate for unique offers without checking credit worthiness or doing basic background checks on companies. This means that they are working with companies that may not pay them, and then not be able to pay affiliates.

Who do you think will go out of business next?

There are thirteen comments. Join the discussion.

MultiChannel News: Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was the top non-PC platform for viewing professional digital video content and ads in the first quarter of 2012 — beating out iPad, iPhone and Android devices — although such gadgets represent only 4% of total online and mobile views, according to ad-management firm FreeWheel.

Xbox captured 28.2% of all non-PC/Mac video viewing in Q1 2012, versus the iPad at 27.1%, FreeWheel found.

Given that the Xbox has higher penetration (26% of all U.S. households, according to Nielsen) than iPads (15%) — and combined with the recent content deals Microsoft has struck with Comcast, HBO, Epix, YouTube and others — “it is likely that Xbox viewing volume will continue to increase,” FreeWheel said in its Video Monetization Report – Q1 2012.

Microsoft last month expanded its advertising program for the Xbox 360, which lets content owners place 15- and 30-second spots in video content on the Xbox Live subscription service, adding ESPN and CBS Interactive’s GameSpot and Last.fm to the network. The new ad features were enabled via an Xbox 360 upgrade in December. The Xbox Live subscription service counts nearly 40 million active members worldwide.

Still, non-PC/Mac viewing now comprises about 4% of all professional digital videos viewed, up from 1% in Q1 2011, according to FreeWheel. Moreover, monetization rates are lower on Xbox, iPad and other devices: Content viewed on PCs had nearly one video ad for each video view across all content lengths, whereas Xbox and iPad are well behind that at 0.31 and 0.40 video ads per video view, respectively.

“Video viewing volume on the Xbox and iPad may be on the rise, but the optimal monetization of these alternative devices still has room to grow,” FreeWheel said.

Meanwhile, overall video ad loads in the first quarter showed no seasonal dip from Q4 2011, which FreeWheel said has historically occurred because of lower volumes of retail advertising and fewer product introductions in market at the beginning of the calendar year.

Another key trend in the first three months of 2012 was that mid-roll ads grew at a much faster clip than pre-roll ads, increasing in Q1 by 115% vs. 45% year-over-year, respectively, FreeWheel said. That indicates that additional long-form content is coming online overall and that publishers are making more mid-roll inventory available, according to the firm.

“The pre-roll was once considered the de-facto standard for digital video, but the increase in advertiser usage of mid-rolls is showing the high value of ads that live within pods between segments of professional content,” FreeWheel said in the report. Mid-rolls now comprise 23% of all video ad views, up four percentage points from Q4 2011.

The data in the report is based on ads FreeWheel served on behalf of its clients. The firm served over 8.7 billion video ads in Q1 2012 and made ad decisions for over 11.6 billion video views. The report is available to download here.

There are five comments. Join the discussion.

According to a new study by the fine folks at the Yankee Group, we should all be looking at Brazil, India and China when it comes to mobile advertising growth. According to their study, by 2015, mobile ad spending will be about $6B in those three countries combined, while the US will stop growth to half of that. The study also points that mobile advertising still is extremely low and mobile opportunities in the US are generally not producing results.

The reason is simple: more people use mobile in those countries than a PC. While some people have computers, many people are embracing mobile first and leaving PCs as work-only situations. The study concluded:

• Prepare for the mobile advertising explosion in new geographies. Mobile is moving up the list of priorities for marketers in high-growth markets. In 2016, mobile will drive revenues of U.S.$6 billion in Brazil, India and China—and become the dominant platform for digital marketing in selected countries.
• The digital marketer’s most valued audience constituent is a tablet owner. Tablets generate six times the advertising revenues of the feature phones that dominated the market five years ago. Tablets are driving fast into the mass market. In 2016 over a quarter of smart mobile devices globally will be tablets.
• Users are willing to trade personal information for utility. Mobile advertising’s weak point has been a lack of data on the user. Apps are helping to fill that gap and drive better-targeted ads. Among app downloaders, over 22 percent of smartphone owners and 27 percent of tablet owners clicked on an in-app ad during Q1 2012.

This is great news for marketers and affiliates who are looking at new opportunities because any explosive growth market means that those who enter the market early will reap the rewards.

There are one comments. Join the discussion.

Performance Marketing Insider has learned that Epic Direct, formerly known as Azoogle, is currently being slated for closing and they are having discussions of bankruptcy. As of Wednesday, their entire staff has been laid off and a spokesperson with the company has confirmed that the company is currently winding down — and no more publisher payments have been made.

Additionally publishers have been informed not to send any more traffic to the company. The spokesperson confirmed that the decision about if the company will file bankruptcy is still being discussed by the board and any remaining few employees are not able to answer questions.

We have additionally been told by insiders that the company had faced enormous financial difficult this year with tens of millions of dollars of unpaid debts from a variety of companies not willing to pay their bills. This caused significant cash flow issues and with a growing publisher base worried about payments, traffic dwindled.

According to Mundo Media, they have bought assets from Epic Direct including domain names from their “host division” and several Epic Employees have already been hired by Mundo Media.

The social division and display division of Epic has already been spun out as a separate company, Kinetic Social, almost a year ago to purposely separate the businesses and liabilities.

There are thirty-two comments. Join the discussion.