Good Press is Better.

The old saying that bad press is better than no press at all is wrong.
Sure you can get a bit of attention by doing nearly anything, but if
you're trying to make your business grow, you should do what you can to
make sure that the attention you're getting builds your brand as well
as passes your name.

The last thing you want to do is end up the
target of some kind of consumer report investigation like the kind
found at href=http://www.consumerist.com>Consumerist. Visiting this
website, you'll be given hundreds of object lessons as to just how much
more important good news is than bad.

Staying on the right
side of your customers is valuable. Knowing how they're finding you is
valuable too. The more you know about their experiences with your
business, the more you'll be able to communicate with them about why
they should work with your business. And knowing how your advertising
works for them is a big first step.

AdSymetrix is here for you. Learn how your customers are reacting to your advertising.

Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

When you think about Brands, even without knowing it, you're thinking about the work of David A. Aaker.

He wrote the book on brand strategy, explaining many of the ideas that describe how to convey the personality of your organization through any medium to your customers.

Currently, he's the chairman of Prophet a brand consultancy that helps companies understand who they are and how they can pass that understanding along to their customers.

While your budget may not allow a Prophet makeover, they helpfully offer some interesting views of the effectiveness of marketing that come in the easy to afford price of Free.

Seven Surmountable Hurdles to Marketing Effectiveness is a new article by one of the senior partners at Prophet that talks directly to the value of AdSymetrix. Wnen you know more about the use of your advertising, you know more about the value of your advertsing. And AdSymetrix gives you the tools to value your advertising.

Give AdSymetrix a try. Signup is free.

Don't Call It Pointcasting!

For those who remember the first set of internet booms in the late '90s, Pointcast was a business built on sending information to individual users via screen saver. The company used 'push technology' to place their data on your computer screen. Conceptually, it was a good idea. Push the information most relevant to your audience directly to your audience, then follow that information with ads that were equally well targeted.

The problem was that Pointcast wasted network resources, causing many big firms to ban its use at the same time that people were realizing that they could pull their own information easier than they could with the help of Pointcast's application.

But that idea - of putting in front of your audience the information that's most relevant to them, and focusing your advertising - is still worthwhile. Today, you'll find stories about marketers targeting smaller ethnic groups and how going after your audience's sense of humor can help build your business. This kind of targeting - based either on demographic (the kind of people your audience is made from) or psychographic (the way your audience views the world) targeting is Narrowcasting. And it's good business.

You can decide that a particular group is your best bet for a particular message, then you can register you ad with AdSymetrix and watch as that message creates responses. It's a great way to build ties within smaller, more receptive audience groups.

Give AdSymetrix a try, signup is free.

Forget Television - Think Smell-a-Vision

href=http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403354/index.htm?postversion=2007032606>Gas
Pumps that Smell Like Coffee
from business 2.0

Customer
service is as much a part of your sales process as advertising. In the
case of some companies, like href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117495610529249749.html?mod=djemMM>ABT Electronics the care and concern given to your customers can become more of a differentiator than price. For others a victory is just keeping the stink of your product off their customer's clothes.

And
from that, we get this news about coffee scented gasoline. Perhaps
customers will care less about sky-high prices if the gallons they buy
smell better.

Or perhaps some customer service ideas are just wastes of money.

Not all new ideas are good, but in advertising, there's at least a way to value them. AdSymetrix. Signup
now and see how you can best spend your advertising budget to get new
customers. And hopefully not trick them into thinking your gasoline
comes from the mountains ofJamaica.

On Madison Avenue, A Wake Up Call

href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117486500542148458.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace>On
Madison Avenue, A Digital Wake Up Call
from wall street journal
some assembly required

Nike's recently decided that their decades long advertising partnership with Weiden
+ Kennedy deserved a second look. It seems that with so many people
using various interactive means to examine, explore, discuss and learn
about new products, Nike wasn't sitting as far atop the heap online as
they do in more traditional advertising venues. This led towards the
surprising move of placing the partnership between the company and its
advertising agency.

New markets create new methods for
reaching new customers. Nike's looking for help getting the online only
crowd to think about their products. Their path takes them into new
creative that they hope will bring new sales of their shoes, shirts and
stuff.

When you're thinking about how you're going to approach
your new customers, you can keep this in mind: regardless of the new
market, the new method or the new medium, you still need to know how
your new customers are responding to your messages.

AdSymetrix
is here for just that reason. We've designed an online service that
allows you to accurately track all the responses from any advertising
message in any medium. Sign
up now and try our system with your next ad. It's easier than
finding a new agency.

Your Pockets as the New Billboards

Marketers Have Eyes on the 'Third Screen'
from news.com
and new york times

Forget television, print, outdoor. The new thing in advertising is your pocket. Or more specifically, the phone you keep in your pocket.

New studies are showing that the untapped potential of your pocket is getting noticed. Ads targeted via mobile phones, along with ads in video games are the near to becoming the destination of choice for a very specific type of advertiser.

The value of these ads, despite the fresh spotlight they're receiving, has yet to be determined. If only everyone would use AdSymetrix. That way any ad, any where would be easily tracked and monitored and more importantly valued.

Before you choose to advertise with any thing (new or otherwise) check out AdSymetrix. Signup is Free

When Angry Customers Shout

A New Force in Advertising - Protest by Email
from wall street journal
some assembly required

If you're upset about the service you get at a restaurant, you may choose not to leave a tip. If you're disappointed by the cut of a shirt, you'll most likely return it to the store. But if you're disgusted by some unethical, amoral or somehow otherwise distasteful action of a business, you may want to start an incendiary email campaign.

And if you're a business on the other end of that kind of campaign, you're in for some trouble.

Not only would you get hit because of whatever you did, but due to the way that the internet works, even after you've appologized you can still be held accountable for whatever terrible thing you've done.

The Wall Street Journal looks at the problems caused by these kinds of issues and the ways that advertisers can limit their exposure.

But with all of that your business needs to have as much control over its message as possible. One way to know who's seeing what is by using AdSymetrix. Our tracking tools give you incredible precision in understanding who is responding to which of your ads. And the more you know about how you're being perceived, the more responsive you can be to your customer's needs.

Bringing Advertising Into The Show

ABC is looking backwards in an attempt to look forward.

This week, the network is looking at ways to blur the line between advertising and television programing. The hope is that by integrating advertising - or at least by finding new ways to integrate - they'll be able to command high prices from advertisers hoping to reap the rewards of having so many people watching their messages at the same time.

The problem, as any TiVo owner will shout, is that viewers don't watch television for the commercials, but for the program. As technology advances, the ability for the user to get just what they want from their hours on the couch means that commercials are losing viewers in huge numbers.

The solution, at least one of them, is to look back at the way television was when it first started: blatently commercial. Rather than have many sponsors for each individual show, you'd have the Texaco Star Theater where Milton Berle brought vaudeville to the masses. Whether this means that What About Jim will become an ongoing commercial for anti-depresents is unclear. More likely you'll see storylines that include products and companies, similar to the way that The Office and Staples have become so inseparable lately.

Of course, the question for advertisers is whether this is worthwhile. AdSymetrix is positioned to help answer that question. Signup with AdSymetrix and see how your ads are working. Why wait for ABC's meetings to end, sign up now, it's free.

Pay-Per-Action : Google's New Idea for AdSense

Google's focus on extending their advertising network is taking another step forward with the introduction of their Pay-Per-Action AdSense functionality.

Simply put, the new service allows advertisers to define how they'll pay for their advertisement based on the actions taken by people who are responding to the ads. If you're looking to get people to sign up for advertising tracking service, or a newsletter or purchase a particular product, the advertiser won't pay unless that action has been taken.

The Pay-Per-Action model is one familiar to anyone who's played in the world of Affiliate marketing. Where you pay another site or sales person a cut of the proceeds when a sale is made. Tying this to AdSense, however, brings the barrier for entry to affiliate sales much lower.

Pay-Per-Click most likely will not work for every business or campaign, but it does bring accountability to advertising. A concept that we at AdSymetrix have placed at the center of our service. The more you, as an advertiser, know about the value of your advertising, the better decisions you can make in placing your next campaign. And knowing is just one free signup away.

Overly Targeted Advertising

BMW Mini made some news a few weeks back with their ad campaign that
put
the name of Mini Cooper drivers on billboards as they passed the
ad. While discovering your name on a billboard while driving
home from work may be fun, what would you think if you saw personal
information about you spread across MySpace, mall kiosks and movie screens?

AdRants
points to a new campaign for Wilkes
University
that brings href="http://staging.160over90.com/wilkes/adcampaign/WilkesAdCampaignSummary.pdf">micro-targeting
your message to a whole new level. Using information from
accepted students, Wilkes University placed that
information in ads across their entire media buy. The idea
would be to get the students who are weighing their decision to go to
Wilkes to see the kinds of people they'll meet once they decide to go
there.

But this kind of micro targeting seems off somehow.
Sure, you show how today's college student has no privacy and that they
are relegated to little more than bullet points in the eyes of the
administration, but is that really the message you want to put out to
the rest of the potential incoming class?

New ideas are great.
Creative advertising is fantastic. But at some point you have to make
sure that your big idea and your brilliant creative are still pointing
your potential customer to your business.

AdSymetrix
is here to help. By knowing how your ads are generating responses, you
can focus your messages and
media buys in ways that connect with your customer. Tracking
and monitoring responses in ways that fuel your business. Or college.

Try AdSymetrix with your next campaign. Signup is free.

Advertising That Glows in the Dark

How do you get anyone to care about realtor advertising? Some Remax folks in Atlanta think that the best way to get people interested in their services is to make their ads glow in the dark.

Hi-Tech ads, (or pranks) may seem like a good idea, but the trick isn't just to get someone to see your ad, it's to get them to act on it.

Knowing how people react to your advertising is the most important part of succeeding in advertising. AdSymetrix has been created to help you understand how people react, so that you can make your advertising dollar work for you, and not just generate press releases

The Quest for the Perfect Online Ad

The Quest for the Perfect Online Ad
from business 2.0

Welcome to the future, where intellegent advertising servers present your message to potential customers just when they are most likely to react to it.

Or almost the future. This article talks about how the next phase of advertising is about bringing the most relevant information to the most receptive audience. That's done through testing, through evaluation and through monitoring the effectiveness of both the advertising message and the advertising medium.

AdSymetrix has been designed to help with that testing, evaluation and monitoring. Using AdSymetrix you can track every ad you place anywhere and know who, how and when people are responding to your messages. Our belief is that the more you know about how people are finding you the better you can go and find them.

Give AdSymetrix a try, signup is free.

Google Buys Adscape

Google Buys Adscape
from san jose mercury news

Google just wants to give you the opportunity to touch everyone, anywhere. Their announced purchase of Adscape allows them to place advertisements inside video games. In a connected world, the ability to place ads based on both the game and the gamer.

Whether that type of ad works is, as always, up in the air. But that's why AdSymetrix is around.

AdSymetrix helps advertisers learn the value of their placements. And signup is free.

Why Advertising Fails

Christopher M. Knight (no, not that one) runs a website that explains all you need to know about just about anything, 7 Reasons at a time. One of his lists is about his Top 7 Reasons Advertising Fails and despite the gimmick, the advise is worth reading.

Consumers don't have much time to think or care about anyone else's problems, including your products and services. To grab them you need advertising that drives to your goals. And you need to know that the advertising you're using is placed where your audience is most likely to react.

Too often the need for new business gets in the way of effective advertising. That's why you see commercials on the Super Bowl or flyers littering telephone polls. Those approaches may be seen by the people who are most likely to respond, but there's no guarantee.

AdSymetrix has been developed to help your business find the most relevant ways to reach your potential customers. Using AdSymetrix you can finally know how to keep your ads from failing.

Try AdSymetrix, sign up is free.

Mobile Advertising - A Good Idea, Soon

Everywhere you go, you're followed by everyone you know, thanks to the little telepone in your pocket. Until a few decades ago, you could go to the bank without having to answer a question about how the copier works back at the office. But now, while we can use cell phones to give us directions, check our email, listen to our music and still have conversations, the advertising industry is gearing up to place their messages in your pocket. And while there are some interesting ideas here, their effectiveness is unknown.

Take the latest news from News Corp, the parent company of Fox News, that they've partnered with Third Screen Media to provide advertisements throughout Fox properties to present to Fox viewers. As a publisher, the hope stands that by creating a new venue for advertisements, they'll make more money. But what about the advertiser?

MIT's Technology Review explains another way of using cell phones to market your company - "augmenting reality". This concept from Nokia says that you should be able to point your phone's camera at any location and get an advertisments explaining just why you should walk into that location and part with some of your hard earned money.

Again, these are good ideas from a publisher standpoint, and fascinating ideas from a technologists standpoint, but from the advertiser, there's a giant question mark. How do you know whether the new-new-thing is the ever-so-slightly-right-thing for your business?

One way is to measure and track the effectiveness of any advetisment you place. And that is why AdSymetrix was created. We think that your business is too important to be left to chance.

Give AdSymetrix a try.

The Benefits of Advertising Tracking to Exceptionally Large Advertisers (and how it can work for you)

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article 'Measured
Media' Lose in Spending Cuts that shows just how important
understanding the value of each advertisement placed is to the bottom
line of any business.

According to the article, while the ad
spending market in the United States increased last year by 4%, the top
50 advertisers cut their spending on TV, Print and Internet ads by
1.5%. What do all of those ads have in common? They are ads featured in
media that has spent a good deal of time defining their audience. The
non-measured areas of the advertising marketplace continue to grow, if
only because the measured areas are showing that their potential
audience is shrinking.

These large businesses - think Proctor and Gamble,
GM, Disney - are finding that because data shows that the audience is
moving away from television, newspapers and banner ads that their
advertisements need to move as well. The problem though, is that the
ads themselves are still just as unverifiable in measured environments
as they are in unmeasured environments.

That's where information
can sneak up behind you and bite your business in its comfort zone:
Chasing audience is the shotgun approach. Hoping that by going after
anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 you'll get enough of a response to
justify youradvertising budget is chancy. Instead, if the ads presented
to any audience can be independently tracked and monitored, the
advertiser can choose more targeted media, and create more compelling
messages.

The big guys are halfway there. They realized that the
ads they were putting out weren't as effective as they'd like. Their
mistake was not in looking for the growing audience, but in looking for
the kind of audience that would respond to their ads.

If only they stopped by AdSymetrix. They'd be able to track every ad they place and know the best ways to reach their customers.

Ad Revenues for Yellow Pages, Local Search Expected to Register Healthy Growth

Ad Revenue for Yellow Pages, Local Search Expected to Register Healthy Growth
from b to b

As fewer and fewer people subscribe to newspapers, as more and more viewers use TiVo to skip commercials and as iPods replace radios in cars, the advertising industry is looking for surprising growth in local, relevant messaging.

Yellow Pages have spent a century training people to let their fingers do the walking to find shops and services. As publishers, they've spent a century training advertisers to lock in to year long advertising programs that may or may not yield success.

The Kelsey Group report says that local search engines and print publications will experience growth. That growth is due to the relationship between the audience and the advertiser. By focusing on the people who can do business with you every day, the people looking to do business with you respond to your advertisements.

But, this is speculation. One way to prove these theories is to track and measure your advertising effectiveness. Compare various local advertising venues against themselves with real-time response data. After that, you'll be able to determine the best location for your message.

Luckily, you've got AdSymetrix to give the information you need to make better advertising decisions.

Google Testing Targeted Cable Ads

Google Testing Targeted Cable Ads
from paid content

While you may think of Google as the first place to go when you're tying to get information on any subject you could imagine, Google is acting as a giant advertising network determined to find ways to get more valuable ads in front of potential customers.

The news this weekend that they are now trial-testing a way to target cable television ads (in the same way they are looking to target print ads) coupled with the recently discovered patent for a Google Phone that gives you search results before you even ask for them, brings to bear the value of knowing where you customers are and how to communicate with them.

As you look at your media plan, how you're buying advertising, and what kind of marketing your business is doing, it's important to remember that focusing on the right customer is as important as creating the right advertisement. AdSymetrix helps.

Using AdSymetrix you can determine the best locations, media and messages to reach just the right audience.

Give AdSymetrix a try, sign up is free and you can begin learning more about your advertising (and your customers) right away.

Why Leave Advertising Responses Up To "May"?

MediaPost discusses an AdSpace report that tries to push the old adage that "If you show it, they may buy it." May is a distressing word. It means that you don't know whether your advertising is effective, just that the money you've spent so far to produce and place the ad might lead to some kind of response, somewhere down the line.

As AdSpace is in the business of selling advertising space in shopping malls, they have a reason to publish this report. They state that 17% of female mall shoppers and 10% of male mall shoppers made a purchase at the mall based on an ad shown on one of AdSpace's displays.

Which is great, if you're a business in a mall and can make an impulse sale. Most businesses, aren't in that position. A tax preparer looking for new clients, a restaurant trying to expand its base or a realtor hoping to get interest on a new property all need to use different advertising to get results. And that's where AdSymetrix can help.

With AdSymetrix you don't need to have your most responsive ad placed right out side your door. You can use our tools to gauge the effectiveness of any ad, placed anywhere. Generating response is the reason for advertising. AdSymetrix helps figure out the best ways to get those responses.

Duct Tape Marketing: What Gets Measured, Gets Converted, Gets Results

What Gets Measured, Gets Converted, Gets Results
from duct tape marketing
A great post that goes to the very core of why we created AdSymetrix. The more you understand about your advertising, the more carefully you can target your potential customer and the more readily you'll get results.

AdSymetrix makes measuring and tracking advertising easy.
1. Register your ad with AdSymetrix
2. Place your ad anywhere - online or off
3. Track your ad and know what ads work best

The results will help you find the best ways to reach new potential customers.