One of Hill Holliday’s major areas of interest is the shift towards buying media through technology platforms. In 2011 25% of our digital media investments were handled through our platform media team, and we expect that to rise as more quality inventory becomes available in marketplace environments.
But we’ve been frustrated that the new sophistication in the way that ads are delivered and optimized has been largely driven by media parameters, as opposed to creative parameters. It’s now possible to understand the characteristics of the person receiving an ad with an amazing degree of specificity, and yet the creative execution that is delivered isn’t generally impacted by all of that knowledge.
Continue reading »
When brainstorming new ways to attract an audience online, one idea almost always comes to mind: running a social media contest. Immediately following, come the same questions: What kind of contest will it be? Where will it live? What’s the incentive for the user? How will users participate?
As marketers, we have been trained to think that lowering the barriers of entry will increase participation. Contests should remain simple, requiring only one step or one action by the user for entry … right? Not necessarily. Tumblr and Pinterest are two platforms changing the way we think about social media contests.
Continue reading »
Today, Facebook provides a mind-blowing array of options in targeting the users – their demographics, interests, affinity, relationship status, real-time actions and behaviors. But despite this unprecedented targeting opportunity that exists nowhere else on- or off-line, marketers continue to voice their unhappiness in measuring ROI on Facebook. This is where Nanigans comes in.
Nanigans is a 50-person start-up here in Boston. Founded in 2010, it is emerging as a dominant advertising platform on Facebook that allows you go way beyond just clicks. Their software platform – Ad Engine – could significantly reduce your pain in running a successful Facebook advertising program at scale. It helps you optimize your creative through multi-variate testing. It allows you to target based on the array of options that is available on Facebook today. And, it helps you optimize towards whatever is your ultimate goal – whether it’s fan acquisition or app install or ecommerce. Along the way, you get to know the real ROI of your activity, not just click- through rates and cost per clicks. Nanigans is an official Facebook Ads API partner and we at Hill Holliday are very pleased to have them as one of our Project Beacon Partners.
There’s been a lot of buzz about whether Facebook Commerce (or F-Commerce) has already failed because brands – such as, JC Penney, Gamestop and Gap – recently shut down their Facebook storefronts.
I would argue that the issue isn’t F-Commerce. The problem is the way brands are trying to use it.
Continue reading »
I didn’t know much about CampusLIVE when I jumped on board as their point person for Project Beacon. A little ironic, considering they operated out of the cool basement space in my condo building until the end of last summer when they left for bigger digs. Shame on me for not stopping by given the cool stuff happening down there.
What started as a series of college-specific portal pages combining academic information, the local food and social scene, and networking tools has evolved into a real content powerhouse, filled with “challenge”-based destinations for students to compete with each other to win recognition and some pretty sweet prizes.
Continue reading »
Figuring out how to navigate a city has been a challenge for nearly anyone who has departed suburbia’s haunts. With a smartphone, the old way of navigating cities with maps, printed guides and or totally winging it has become a thing of the past. While there are certainly a slew of ways to navigate cities, one of our favorite ways is with our Project Beacon partner MyCityWay.
Founded by a trio of engineers living in New York City in 2009, MyCityWay has rapidly grown with in-depth city guides for more than 70 cities all over the world. The usual fare like dining, nightlife & coffee are supplemented with what might appeal to tourists vs. locals.
Continue reading »
As a young kid, I remember my mother regularly clipping coupons from the Sunday papers. She’d organize them by category before storing them neatly in a red tin that was kept near our living room couch. Then, once each week, she’d pack my siblings and I into the car for a grocery shopping trip. The coupons would be matched to items on our shopping list and then transferred to a Ziploc bag before being redeemed at the store. The whole process was quite a bit of work, couponing included.
Some 25 years later, consumers’ desire to save money using coupons has changed little, but the method in which they do so, is vastly different than it once was. Daily deals flood inboxes, instant specials hit iPhones based on location, and users can even have savings pushed to their credit cards, simply by using a hashtag on Twitter.
Continue reading »
