Movement in the Online Advertising World

Two interesting things happened over the last few days in the world of Online Advertising. Yahoo announced that it was buying Right Media, an online advertising marketplace and a Norwegian company launched their FASTMedia product that intends to give newspaper publishers the ability to target online advertisements to user intentions without having to go through a Google-like search engine.

Both of these announcements play in the background of most advertisers' business. They won't mean much to the small business person who wants to buy a placement on a local newspaper website or in a similar publication. But they do signify the bigger issue in the publishing world: how will publishers adapt to the new advertising marketplace.

Creating new ways to sell ads is one way, but properly understanding the value of their ads is another. AdSymetrix has been developed to solve that problem. Using our easy-to-use tools publishers and advertisers can track and monitor any ad, anywhere. They can compare return on ad spend against any medium, and any message.

AdSymetrix gives advertisers and publisher the tools they need to thrive as the advertising world evolves. Why not give it a try? Sign up is free.

Everyone Wants To Know What's On Your Mind

AdSymetrix has been designed to allow advertisers to know who, how and where their potential customers are when they respond to an ad. Following the response helps the advertiser understand how to connect with the respondent.

This same idea is showing itself in the recent (and upcoming) efforts of search engine giants like Google and Yahoo that plan on using predictive profiling software to bring search results more in line with the intent of the searcher.

Think of it as more focused responses to search questions. By knowing your history, the search engine can more carefully craft your results.

AdSymetrix gives advertisers similar powers, without the questionable privacy invasions. Using out system, advertisers can focus their messages and media buys in ways that help get the interest of specific audiences - and in turn more effectively spend their advertising budgets.

Give AdSymetrix a try, signup is free.

Placing Coupons in their Pocket Phone

Americans are late to the game of mobile phone advertising. We've only recently jumped on the texting bandwagon. In the United Kingdom, some shops are now utilizing mobile phone based coupons to drive new sales in local businesses.

The benefit of mobile couponing is similar to the benefit of using AdSymetrix: each time a coupon is used, the provider knows who has used it and when. The difference is that AdSymetrix doesn't tie you to a single kind of ad: AdSymetrix can track any ad, anywhere in any medium.

So while we wait for the technology to mature on mobile couponing, why not give AdSymetrix a try, signup is free.

Something to Think About Once You Get Their Attention

When you write your perfect ad, place it in the right place and begin to get responses, you'd better have taken a bit of time to figure out what to do with your new found attention.

A new campaign going on in the interactive world highlights this need: No More Landing Pages is a website dedicated to reminding corporate website owners to make the most of their potential customers' first impressions.

When you place an ad pointing potential customers to your website, you should make sure you give them information that will help encourage them to work with your business. The No More Landing Pages campaign has been started to remind website owners that the first page should be as important as any other page in their site.

So when you're using AdSymetrix to track and monitor your advertisements you can know that you're giving your potential customers just the right kind of information to make them want to do business with you. Give AdSymetrix a try, signup is free.

MySpace and YourBusiness

Social Network Websites, like MySpace, are great for making friends, connecting with lost colleagues and promoting your new record album. What happens when you try to take advantage of MySpace's huge audience, but lose control of your friends list?

Daytona Beach's Outreach Committee has learned their lesson. Thanks to the open nature of MySpace, some of the friends that were listed on the City site were less than savory. And that's when the controversy erupted.

If you use MySpace, learn from Daytona Beach, and define ways to monitor your friends list. Knowing how your advertising works is as important as knowing what your advertising says.

AdSymetrix has been designed as your tool for knowing how your ads are working. We tie your advertisement to powerful online tracking tools that let you monitor the responses you get from any ad, anywhere. Signup is free.

Should Product Placement Be A Part of Your Advertising Strategy?

Ever notice that all the good guys in the movies or on TV always us Apple computers? Or have you noticed that the logo can always be seen on the handset of any telephone used on the air? Don't think that these impressions are by accident. Every time you see a logo on television or in a movie, you're seeing it because a company has agreed to have their logo on screen.

For some, it can direct a new product - like the red Swingline Stapler from Office Space. For others, it can redefine a brand - like the way that The Italian Job introduced (and reintroduced) the Mini Cooper.

Brand Channel looked at the recent release Disturbia and how it takes brand identity into a whole new realm, even using the amount of space on an iPod to define a character.

But what's product placement mean for you? If you are looking to raise the general level of interest in your product or company, it can be helpful. But remember that using product placement is an expensive and risky way of promoting your business.

For the ten seconds your logo may be on screen, you could spend the same amount you would creating an entire direct mail, outdoor or broadcast campaign. A campaign that could not only push your brand, but also give your potential customers a reason to contact you.

AdSymetrix is here to help, in either respect. By comparing the costs and benefits of any advertisement, you can use our tools to determine which medium is best for your business. Give AdSymetrix a try, our signup is free.

Newspapers Need Help Too

Reuters has a story about Newspapers hoping that their websites will help forestall the shortfall of their advertising revenue in the coming years.

The reality is that the audience for newspapers is becoming so split, and so unfocused that in order to get the same kinds of revenues that built the newspaper giants in the first place, other tactics must be taken.

And AdSymetrix is here to help. In the same way that advertisers can determine the best location for their messages, publishers can pinpoint the value of their available inventory. Finally, a local paper can show a direct comparison between an ad in their publication versus an ad in any other publication.

AdSymetrix gives both publishers and advertisers the tools they need to determine the value of their efforts to get new business. Give AdSymetrix a try, signup is free.

Advertising of Tomorrow

It may read a bit dry, but this bit of theoretical musing about the current and future state of advertising by Paul McEnany nicely explains the reason why we created AdSymetrix.

Essentially, it says that advertising as we have always known it is done. Finished. Consumers are more sophisticated, demographic groups are more splintered and audiences are smaller and more wide spread. It means that the future of advertising is going to be specifically targeting smaller groups of people with messages that are more likely to grab their attention and place them in a wider array of positions.

And that's where AdSymetrix comes in. As you start to work within this new world of advertising, our tools will help your business qualify the locations, placements, media and messages your using to refine them to their most effective. AdSymetrix lets you know how well any of your ads are performing against any other ad you've placed in any medium anywhere. All within a simple to use dashboard. Give us a try, Signup is free

The Value of Tracking Advertising

Say you're asked to spend $100 to place an advertisement in a local newsletter. You take the time to put the ad together, submit it to the publication and then wait for a reaction. It's a hundred dollar gamble that the newsletter will find someone that's interested in using your business. But it's also a hundred dollar gamble that you have to work to determine whether you've won.

AdSymetrix takes that hundred dollars you've spent seriously. We have the tools to help you understand the odds. Using AdSymetrix, you can place in that advertisement information specific to that newsletter. You can monitor which new calls, emails or website visits have been created by that ad. You can even determine how much of a return you've gotten on your advertising spend. It just may end up that your hundred dollar gamble brings in a thousand dollar sale.

Give AdSymetrix a try. Signup is free.

Taxes, Advertising and New Business

This year, thanks to Emancipation Day, Americans have had an extra day to fret and worry about filing their income taxes (or their extension). Inevitably, the fret and worry brings to mind the question of whether you're managing your money in the best ways possible.

When you think about your business, you know you'd like to find ways to attract more customers, more clients or at least more sales, but you may not know the best way to grow.

AdSymetrix believes that we can help. You know that your potential customers need to hear about your company, and we've built an application that can help you determine the best ways to talk to them. You may choose to use a weblog to spread word of mouth or tie your new company into YouTube video series or craft a frustrating alternative reality game to get people interested in your new album, or even hire David Mamet to direct a commercial for your car company , the key is getting results.

Track and monitor your advertising anywhere using AdSymetrix. Our simple to use tools help you understand what advertising works, and what you'll have to figure out how to write-off next year. Signup is free.

AdWords Grows in a DoubleClick

Google's buying DoubleClick. This is big news in the advertising buying world. It means that Google will have expanded the reach of their advertising reach of their AdWords network and extended the kind of media that they'll use to get your message out.

Google's posted a FAQ about the purchase, including their very telling phrase "We see this acquisition as bringing the worlds of search and display advertising together." DoubleClick is the group behind the banner ads you see when you go to a site, Google is the group behind the microtargeting of AdWords. Put these two together and suddenly you'll find advertising that's more closely targeted to the content on the page.

And how does this effect your business? Well, the continuing consolidation of advertising placement networks could make the process for buying ads more simple, with less contacts and a wider range of placements. It could also mean that the ways that you can advertise may become lessvaried. All in all, this consolidation means that you need to know what works for your business and what kind of advertising you should consider when promoting yourself.

And AdSymetrix has the tools that you need to understand the value of your advertising and where it should be placed. Give it a try, Signup is free.

Yahoo Ad Network

Today's Wall Street Journal has mention of newspaper owners tying in with Yahoo for their online ad sales. This is important to you, in that it possibly signals how print publications and online advertising networks are looking to combine their forces and create new ways for you to buy your advertising spaces.

For the newspapers, it makes sense. They get to offload the costly business of servicing their advertising accounts and continue to make money. For the online advertising networks, the benefit to selling across media comes from the portion of each sale that can go to their bottom lines. They can use Internet-based economies of scale to serve ads to more people for less money.

For the advertiser, it means that you may find your purchases bundled in ways that don't necessarily fit your needs. You may find that in order to get that quarter-page ad in the local paper, you'll have to also buy a weeks worth of banner ads on their website or some other property.

In that vein AdSymetrix has been created to help you understand the value of any of these ads. You'll be able to say to that ad sales person that you know what works, and what doesn't. Give AdSymetrix a try signup is free.

Planning. Why, How, When

AdSymetrix has been developed to make the process of buying advertising easier by giving you the tools you need to understand the value of any advertisement you place anywhere. But before you go down that road, you may want some helpful advice from your friends at the American Marketing Association where for the low-cost of merely signing up for their newsletters you can read their white paper on Principles of Media Planning and learn a bit more about the process you'll go through in buying ads.

AdSymetrix will be here all along the way to help you test and monitor your ads' responses. Signup is free.

Cross-Media Promotions - Good For TV, What About Your Business?

Every year, during May Sweeps, the Today Show sends their host Matt Lauer to a handful of strange and wonderful locations and goads the viewing public into caring about his travels.

This year, NBC and various advertisers are hopping on the cross-media bandwagon and utilizing various interactive devices to allow you to play along at home while Matt braves the wilds of wherever he's going.

If you watch this year, you may see how these kinds of campaigns that use various media can create positive results. Impressing upon the potential viewer all the many ways that Matt can be watched could send more people to view Today, and help increase their ratings (and thus the cost they can charge for advertising). The key, at least for today's conversation, is to look at how cross-media promotions could work with your business.

NBC has it easy, they just want you to watch their show. Your business demands a higher level of responsiveness from your interested potential customers. AdSymetrix helps you understand the success of your advertising campaigns by giving you the tools you need to monitor the responses you get from any ad in any medium. From website to telephone pole, you're able to know who, when and where your audience is responding to your ad. And from that you can learn how to best connect with your customers.

Give AdSymetrix a try, Signup is free.

Viacom and Yahoo - Making the Advertising World a big Smaller

News today that Viacom and Yahoo have become best friends - working together to sell advertising to viewers and users of online properties.

This continues both Yahoo's competition with Google and Viacom's uneasy relationship with YouTube. The deal means that Yahoo will service and sell ads on many Viacom properties and that the advertisers who want to play in Viacom's court will have one less contact.

Consolidation seems to be rampant these days in the media buying world. That means that advertisers will be forced to add lower-performing properties to their portfolio to get the best prices for future ad buys. The only way to defend against these so-called deals is to know the value of every ad you place. And AdSymetrix is here to help you determine that value. Give us a try, Sign up is free.

Viral Advertising Leaves Many Sniffling

Viral marketing is subtle. You may not know you've been infected with the message. Maybe it's a USB drive left in the bathroom at a concert in order to promote an upcoming record, or a fake video diary created to sell advertising space, but it's out there and sometimes it works.

Sometimes. Viral marketing is effective like brand marketing is effective: you get a portion of your audience to feel a certain way about your product and wait to see how it impacts your overall business performance.

One way to ensure that your viral efforts are justified is to use AdSymetrix. Our easy to use tools make the complex task of measuring and monitoring any advertisement simple. Give us a try, signup is free.

When What's Good for Consumers is Frustrating for Advertisers

iBiquity is a company that's developed a way to send digital signals through radio frequencies used by regular radio stations to provide radio listeners with multiple channel streams of music. People who have HD Radio can receive these channels alongside the analog radio signals that you can hear today over any regular radio.

It's a plus for radio listeners - or at least the radio listeners that rev up the proper equipment to receive the HD broadcasts - in that they can now hear more radio programming from more sources than ever before. But for advertisers, in particular the ones who use radio as their media of choice, it make the marketing environment more confusing than ever.

With more channels and a finite amount of listeners, the ability to reach the widest audience is lessened. Meaning that while you won't pay as much for one ad, you'll have to place more ads just to reach the same number of people.

And perhaps that's why AdSymetrix is so helpful. You can use our powerful tracking tools to learn how to best get the audience that's listening to respond to you messages. Give us a try, signup is free

Advertisers on Advertising

What you need, to really boil your blood, is a peek at what Advertising professionals think about the future of advertising. Follow along as the good folks at BusinessWeek show you what these mavens of marketing think where the next step will lead.

And when you're done, pop on by AdSymetrix, where regardless of how you choose to market your company, you can do it more effectively through the use of our measurement tools. Know how and who's responding to your messages, all through the magic of AdSymetrix, where signup is free.

A Great Developer

Just a big of housekeeping here, but nonetheless important. AdSymetrix has had its share of developers during its short life, helping to bring to life our vision of a company that can help small business advertisers gain control over their advertising methods. Recently, AdSymetrix has had the good fortune to work with a new developer / design team, Team Bees that has consistently blown us away. They have taken big ideas and helped shape them into workable web applications - under budget and on time.

If you're in the need of top notch web development at very good prices from exceptionally talented people, give Team Bees a call. They're a great team to have on your side.

And while you're at it, stop by AdSymetrix and give us a try too. Signup is free and within minutes you'll be able to know how your ads are getting noticed.

Doubleclick - Doubledating

Consolidation seems to be inevitable in the world of advertising. If smaller firms aren't swallowed up by larger firms, then larger portfolio companies (like Omnicom) purchase big ad agencies and make giant corporate entities.

In the case of your business, some consolidation is happening too. Microsoft and Google are both going after ad server and network Doubleclick. A purchase makes sense, as Google already owns the large AdSense/AdWords network and Microsoft wants in on the market. For each company, the reach of Doubleclick's network is a big draw. For your business it means that working with online advertisers may become more streamlined, but also more expensive.

However it all falls out, AdSymetrix will be here to help you understand the value of any ad placed in any network. Because it's one thing to know where your ads are going, it's something else to know whether they should be there in the first place.

Targeting Video Downloaders Dynamically

A new service by YouMe
Networks allows advertisers to place their advertisements
directly in the stream of downloaded video files automatically - using
the customer's personal preferences to focus the targeted message and
provide to them just the kind of ad that the advertiser wants them to
see.

This dynamic placement of advertising is similar to the
ads provided by Google through their
AdSense network: matching ads with content for the viewer to enjoy (or
ignore).

Whether this system is worthwhile is questionable. When
you're downloading a file do you want to see a commercial before you
see your ad? How do you feel about the message you're forced to watch?
Does it change your potential for responding to the ad?

All of these questions are worth asking. And AdSymetrix
is a tool you can use to find the answers. We'll help you figure out the best
kinds of ads for your business, all after your freesignup.

New Bar Codes Can Talk With Your Cellphone

Today's New York Times fronts with the interesting idea of using your customer's cellphones to bring your message to their pockets.

The idea is that Codes displayed in public places - on billboards, in magazines, on telephone poles - are photographed by cell phone users using their camera phones and are then translated by a program on the cell phone into some kind of advertising or informational message.

It's another one of those great technology ideas that seems a bit ahead of the curve. You want to make sure that your message is not only being presented to your audience, but also that the audience is able to react to it.

And reaction is what AdSymetrix is all about. Our simple to use dashboard brings you up to the moment response information for all your advertising in any media. Try it this weekend, signup is free