Neuromarketing – using medical technologies to study the brain’s responses to marketing stimuli – is gaining traction and credibility. Kudos to Jack Neff for his recent Advertising Age article, “Snake Oil No More – Neuromarketing Has Arrived.” An informative overview of this more-credible-than-it-used-do-be discipline. Here are few quick take-aways and excerpts… Genesis: Neuro research emerged because people […]
A recent Freakonomics podcast featured author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz and insights from his research and recent book, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. In a nutshell, humans are most truly themselves when they’re searching on Google than they’ll ever be in taking a survey. Surveys […]
We were sorry to hear about the recent passing of Jack Trout, who with co-author Al Ries pioneered and codified brand positioning with their seminal 1981 book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Trout went on to publish several “brand extensions” of this book over the years, which combined with his workshops, introduced 1,000’s of marketers […]
The recent The New Yorker article, “A.I. vs. M.D. – What Happens When Diagnosis is Automated?” explores the benefits and challenges of applying machine-learning and algorithms to medical diagnosis. It will only get better with time, yet that time is one thing many ill patients simply don’t have. Alas, AI may never be the answer […]
Analytics, KPI and Big Data guru, Bernard Marr, recently published this nice brief description of Big Data on LinkedIn – what it is, what it can do, how it works, and some potential concerns. Rather than providing our usual summary and take-aways, we’d encourage you to simply read Bernard’s post. He also writes a column […]
Advancements in consumer and voter data has come a long way over the last few decades. Early on, there was the basic compilation of consumer data. Then came the heydays of commercial sector data profiling and segmentation in the 1990s – targeting the right consumers with the right offer and the right time. This was […]
Every early January, Las Vegas temporarily becomes the hub of the tech world – drawing 170,000 people from 400,000 companies to the Consumer Electronics Show. Here are a few key take-aways– courtesy of ANA/BMA – we found interesting to marketers like ourselves – not in any particular order: • Tech-Based Infrastructure: With the potential coming […]
This is a bit of a departure from our usual data, tech, and behavioral marketing oriented subjects. Over the last month the topics of truth and trust have received a lot of press. Whatever your political persuasion, we can likely agree that a lack of truth erodes the public trust – and a lack of […]
We want to send a special thank-you out to world-renown behavioral economist, Dan Ariely – not only for his ground-breaking research, insightful and entertaining interviews, columns, books, and lectures – but for making the holidays a bit brighter for us behavioral science groupies. Building on all his insights that dealing with the often irrational behavior […]
Kudos to Marketplace Radio’s Sally Herships on her recent story, “Big Data is Following You.” She does a great job of laying out the basics of digital retargeting ads – with all the customary references to Big Data, Big Brother, and tracking cookies – “the younger, online sibling of big brother, watching our every move.” […]
Another great piece ran in the Upshot column of The New York Times entitled, A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving by David Leonhardt and YOU, the reader. (Leonhardt also happens to be a Pulitzer Prize winning author, well-known commentator, and managing editor of the Times’ website covering politics and policy.) It starts with a […]
There are some solid insights to be gained from Claire Cain Miller’s recent New York Times article, Can an Algorithm Hire Better Than a Human? First a few words about business (B2B) vs. consumer (B2C) data. One can be at a bit of a loss when asked to apply data profiling to businesses the same […]
Two recent articles were real eye-openers – providing a behind-the-scenes look at the Internet crime underworld. And not the usual stories of phishing or stealing our identity or credit card numbers. Ad Age’s Inside Google’s Secret War Against Ad Fraud follows a team of elite “fraud fighters” investigating the army of bots that account for an […]
A recent Marketplace Tech Report Podcast entitled, “‘Instagram for doctors’ is grisly and useful” showed one example of a strictly-business, valuable use for a photo-sharing app. An emergency medicine resident, John Corker, uploaded a photo of a badly infected foot to a medical image sharing app called Figure 1 – and it was starred by […]
Of Unseen Ads, 76% Did Not Even Appear On Screen Google announced these alarming stats on web video viewership, summarized in a recent Ad Age article. In previous posts, we have noted the sad fact that a significant portion of digital display ads are never even seen by humans – tucked away at the bottom […]
The simple answer: If you’re a consumer, no. If you’re a marketer, yes. Advertising Age’s recent features on consumer data brings up some interesting points for us practitioners. Sophisticated Health Data Industry Needs Self-Reflection Anonymized! Now They’ll Never Find You! How Anonymous Is Your Data? Basically, our industry tends to believe that if a consumer […]
We just received an informative press release from colleague Ron Kurtz of the American Affluence Research Center entitled, “Research Industry Confronts Problems with Online Panel Surveys.” Kurtz reports that the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) and The Global Research Business Network (GRBN), in conjunction with the research firm Esomar, have recently issued guidelines […]
In a recent Freakonomics podcast titled, The Maddest Men of All, Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy & Mather in the UK, discussed their latest initiative, #ogilvychange (which their website describes as “a behavioural practice that combines the gravitas of leading research in cognitive psychology and behavioural economics with the communication expertise of the Ogilvy Group”). […]
Does Direct play a significant role in health care marketing? For 10% of New Yorkers, the answer is a resounding Yes. This is all detailed in Heather Fletcher’s great story “Invincible Marketing” in this month’s Target Marketing. How did EmblemHealth acquire 33,000+ new health plan members in six months—from an unknown and undefined market? It was all thanks […]
Think only the last click matters when it comes to online purchasing? You may want to think again. It turns out that social media is good for more than just funny cat pictures and selfies. You can learn a lot about B2B buyer behavior by paying attention to social networking. Dell was able to create […]
Remember when you had to put on shoes and—gasp—leave the house … just to buy a pair of Levis or rent a movie or take Philosophy 101? That was the way we got things done just 20 years ago, until Amazon and eBay changed our world forever. While the rise of eCommerce hasn’t made the […]
Big Data: It’s revered, feared — and a moving target. Friday’s news alone revealed new uses, ranging from reading emotion to improving our health to picking the Super Bowl champs. It’s the reason Starbucks knows the hottest neighborhoods before we do and it’s giving the government concerns over how to produce “official” statistics. It’s everywhere, and […]
How do tech investors decide where to put their money? According to Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson, for investors, it’s all about the MAUs…but are MAUs worth the millions investors throw at them? MAUs, or monthly active users, is a primary metric used by tech investors. Instagram recently announced its MAUs surpassed Twitter’s, which could […]
Advertisers are watching our every move. And most people don’t fully understand just how complex their data tracking can be. Companies are also impacted — they have the right tools to specifically target the ads you see, but are they running the risk of creeping you out? Economist reporter Alexandra Suich examines the issue in this […]
Behavioral Marketing is a discipline that many businesses now believe to be a crucial component of their marketing mix. A part of this is Behavioral Targeting. Rather than focusing on basic demographics and lifestyles to pin down your audience, it allows you to target based on past online (and offline) behavior such as recent purchases, […]
Well, how well do you know them? Do you know what made them respond to your ads? Do you know why they chose your product over your competitors’? Will they respond to the same ad next time they need your product? Some of these questions are relatively easy to answer, but they may not provide […]
Most marketers today – outside of the e-commerce space – understand that a large share of our buyers actually did not click on an ad or an email. Instead, after seeing our ad or other communication, they found our brand via a search engine. And then they visited our site … or dropped by our store […]
Social media is often claimed as one of the best means to increase marketing ROI. But, while this might sound enticing, the actual tasks can be quite daunting. So, how do you do you truly get more for your business from the work you put into the socials? Getting more out of promotions A tricky part […]
We had one of those “ah ha” moments while listening to a great piece on a recent Marketplace Tech Report called Digital advertisers losing the ‘bot arms race’. It reveals that a lot of digital advertisers who base their success on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) may not be getting their money’s worth. Why is […]
Social media has long been an enigma for marketers looking to measure their campaigns’ financial ROI. “Awareness Metrics” like reach and frequency are all well and good, but how do we know whether the audience actually took action on our brand or product? Fortunately, Facebook’s little-known Conversion Tracking tool can measure just that, allowing us […]
Some of our team recently attended a tremendous presentation by Michael Brenner, VP of Global Marketing & Content Strategy for the $16 billion multi-national software giant, SAP. Michael’s B2B Marketing Insider is one of the most widely-read B2B marketing blogs. For a company like SAP with more than 39,000 employees, how big a team do […]
According to a content marketing survey report published this month, 54 percent of companies view increasing leads as the most important objective of their content marketing strategy in 2014. Fifth on the list was increasing direct sales revenue, coming in at 29 percent. In the same survey report, only 13 percent of companies rated their […]
Customer Engagement is at the heart and soul of every company that does business with the public. Engaging your customers and potential customers effectively is what can either make or break you. In today’s economy consumers identify with the brands they love more than ever. The 21st century consumer wants and needs a relationship with […]
Many watchers of the interactive marketing industry say “The Future is Mobile.” That’s a big tenet of Twitter’s recent IPO filing. And it may have been a factor in Salesforce.com’s recent monumental move into Marketing Automation with its acquisition of ExactTarget and its mobile marketing platforms earlier this summer. A recent NY Times article speaks […]
Today the giant data compiler, Acxiom, just launched a site where consumers can go to see what details the company has collected on them. It’s called AboutTheData.com, and it begs the question: Why? With all the public apprehension about personal data, why would Acxiom offer consumers this chance to look “behind the curtain”? To get […]
In a rare departure from our favorite topic of DATA driven marketing, we’d like to dedicate this post to another big driver of buyer behavior: Messaging. We stumbled on an old issue of The New Yorker from last year’s election season, and an article entitled “The Lie Factory – How Politics Became a Business.” It […]
The Economist just published a great article on the future of advertising agencies, following the recent merger of the two giants Omnicom and Publicis. It brings a few things to light that continue to make us data people feel like “it’s great to be us.” Here’s a quick rundown: The combined companies will save about […]
