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Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about the frustration users were experiencing with online advertising.  Amongst the biggest annoyances, were the ads where users couldn’t find the skip button, and ads which automatically popped up.  I also stressed the importance of avoiding these very tactics which irritate consumers.  Well, it appears somebody is listening.

Even though most video ads on YouTube already last no longer than 15 seconds and have an 85% completion rate, the company has decided to further enhance the viewer experience.  As of November 13th, YouTube will have a small icon in the upper right hand corner of their video ads, offering viewers a “skip this ad” option.

YouTube believes it’ll be able to command higher prices from advertisers for the ads because the users will actually want to be engaged and watching.  It also hopes giving people the option to skip the ad all together will result in better research data about what makes people want to watch an ad.  And of course, there is the added benefit of the happy consumers.

While this isn’t quite perfect, it is most certainly a step in the right direction.  Let’s hope YouTube’s efforts result in something positive for advertisers, because it could ultimately lead to lots of happy viewers.

Read the original article HERE.

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In light of the current economic times, retailers have begun to reduce the number of products they offer.  When the economy was booming, a consumer could easily peruse through a national retail store and find 88 varieties of Pantene shampoo or even 50 varieties of Oreo cookies.

According to a news article by The Wall Street Journal retailers plan to cut product variety by at least 15%.  Some have already begun to do so. Walgreens used to carry 25 different superglues and now it carries 11.  Walmart cut the number of tape measures it carried by 20, leaving only four.  Kroger Company plans to reduce cereal varieties by 30%.

Why you might ask?  Retailers believe the old saying that less is more.  Consumers complain that shopping experiences have become too hectic with so many product offerings that they become easily confused.  Retailers have found if they eliminate the excess, product sales will actually increase.  There are other advantages for these retailers as well, including lower labor costs, fewer out-of-stock items, and better negotiating skills with manufacturers.

This is good news for the leading brands, but not so good for the smaller unknown brands.  Retailers have been cutting back on these brands, leaving more shelf space to the big guys.  The smaller guys, like Church & Dwight, who manufacture products like Arm & Hammer baking soda and Aim toothpaste, have begun to fight back.  Sales representatives prepare compelling national sales trends to get their products back on the shelves.  Other manufacturers are fighting back in a different way by reducing the number of products they produce.  For example, Sara Lee will now only offer 14 varieties of Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches, compared to 25 the prior year.

It will be interesting to revisit this topic in 2010 to see who has won the battle.

Read the complete article “Retailers Cut Back on Variety, Once the Spice of Marketing.”

photo credit – ( www.neurosciencemarketing.com)

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According to a recent poll conducted by the LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll, nearly three-quarters (74%) of marketers are using internet advertising.  However, as online advertising has expanded with technology over the years, consumer annoyance has grown alongside it.  The same poll showed that characteristics of internet advertising that are the most frustrating to consumers are ads where it is difficult to locate the close/skip button (79%) and ads which expand and cover reading content (80%).

Other frustrations include automatic pop-up ads (76%), ads that automatically open when moused over (66%), animated ads playing automatically with or without sound (60%), and ads that play music/have loud soundtracks (60%).

It’s good to know that online advertising continues to be a prominent medium to reach potential customers, but it’s even better to know how to avoid frustrating your potential consumer base.   Keep in mind that people don’t always want your brand interrupting whatever it is they are trying to do.

The entire chart can be found in the August 30, 2009 edition of the AMA’s Marketing News Magazine.

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Effective 2011, Nielsen Media Research plans to integrate a new initiative to track online video viewing statistics through “TV Everywhere” offerings.  “TV Everywhere” allows customers to watch television shows or movies online in conjunction with their pre-existing subscription with a cable or satellite company.

The new Nielsen program will combine the online statistics and television viewership numbers in hopes to create a well-rounded snapshot of the marketplace.  Industry experts are also hopeful that “TV Everywhere” could increase advertising revenue from traditional means to other platforms.

Nielsen has begun to install Internet software to measure online video usage compared with television viewing habits through small, in-home trials in 375 households.  These homes already participate in the company’s television “People Meter,” which identifies each household member’s age and sex, and monitors their viewing habits.

As a result of this new endeavor, we should expect to see the landscape of television and internet video advertising change in the near future.  Marketers will soon need to take Internet viewing statistics into account when targeting future television advertising campaigns.

Read the article: http://www.fierceonlinevideo.com/story/nielsen-testing-tv-online-video-ratings-combo/2009-09-09

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I recently stumbled on an interesting article about the effects of online customer reviews.  Internet shoppers rank reviews as the most desired feature of a Web site, according to a recent survey by Forrester Research. ¹ It goes without saying that positive reviews on a product/service/company can have a tremendous effect on sales and company branding.  However, the article outlined an interesting phenomenon – the beneficial effects of negative reviews.

By providing a feedback mechanism, sites allowing positive and negative reviews come across as transparent and in touch with their customers.  However, it’s important that site owners resist the temptation to edit or delete reviews they don’t like.  This raises a red flag among consumers; Web sites which are void of negative feedback and have uniformly positive comments,  often strike readers as unrealistic and phony.  Even so, many companies don’t need to worry about negative comments, as, 87% of consumers tend to write reviews when they have positive things to say, according to market research firm Keller Fay Group.² The negative comments allow a company to become aware of issues/complaints and correct them in a timely and public fashion.

Maybe many companies should consider opening themselves up for reviews and comments.  But remember the first time a product/service receives negative feedback, consider it an opportunity to turn a negative into a big positive.

Check out the rest of the article HERE.

¹ Alsever, Jennifer, Sept. 2009, Even Bad Reviews Boost Sales, http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/28/smallbusiness/retail_democracy.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2009092813
² Alsever, Jennifer, Sept. 2009, Even Bad Reviews Boost Sales, http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/28/smallbusiness/retail_democracy.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2009092813

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If you were like most, you weren’t one of the lucky 100,000 people selected to test Google Wave.  From what I have read so far, it looks like an intriguing tool that could potentially change the way we communicate online.  Seems Google is attempting to incorporate some very cool wiki-style functionalities, conversation playbacks, drag and drop features, web embedding capabilities, and Facebook-like applications into an email/instant message platform.

The result of Google’s ambitious project could potentially be something that changes the way we communicate online.  You can bet that businesses everywhere will be monitoring the beta testing to see where advertising and branding opportunities arise.  There will be real-time social media marketing possibilities galore, where companies could join a conversation amongst friends or co-workers.  Online/email marketers should certainly take notice, as the marketing game could be changing in the near future.

Below are some links to in-depth reviews of Goggle Wave that are very helpful in explaining functionalities:

http://lifehacker.com/5370738/google-wave-first-look

http://mashable.com/2009/05/31/google-wave-features/

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/09/surfing-the-google-wave.ars

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This past August, CareerBuilder and Harris Interactive conducted a study that surveyed 921 full-time workers in the United States who were laid off from their jobs within the last 12 months.

Here are the highlights:

People Are Finding Work:
Since June 2009, 48% of workers who were laid off found full-time positions.  This is a 7% increase from March of 2009.  Although less workers have found part-time positions quarter over quarter, Brent Rasmussen, President of CareerBuilder North American contributes this to “part of this job search is related to workers expanding career options to new industries and locations.”  And that leads us to our next statistic…

Changing Industries May Help:
38% of the workers who found new full-time jobs after being laid off said they found new work in a different industry/field than before.  A majority of these workers also said they were enjoying their new roles.

Not Everyone Is Taking Salary Cuts:
One of the most promising findings in the study was that 56% of workers who found new full-time positions were able to receive a salary that was either comparable or higher than their previous salary.  The other 44% took a pay cut when negotiating their new salaries.  However, the good news is that this is an improvement over March of 2009, when 48% took a pay cut.

Change Of Scenery Can Be Good:
More workers are willing to move to new cities for full-time work.  One out of 5 workers (20%) of the 48% of workers who found new jobs after being laid off within the last 12 months relocated for a job.  44% of those who have not been able to find work yet say they are willing to relocate for work.

Self Employment Becomes Viable Option:
29% of those workers who have not been able to find work since being laid off are considering starting their own business.   In March of 2009, this percentage was only 25.

On August 25, 2009, Robert Half International and CareerBuilder published the 5th Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations (EDGE) Report.¹ The report gives an “overview of the current employment situation, as well as a glimpse of the future hiring landscape.  The report offers information on what types of professionals employers will be looking for when economic conditions improve and the strategies businesses plan to implement to recruit and retain talent.”  The survey polled more than 500 employers and more than 500 employees between April 30 and May 31, 2009.  The report was extremely informative, so I thought I would give some of the key highlights:

1. Employers will be hiring within next 12 months.  53% of those polled said they expect to hire full-time employees, 40% will hire contract-to-hire or temporary workers, and 39% will hire part-time employees.
2. Hiring managers cited customer-facing roles as the most valuable in these difficult economic times.
3. Hiring managers said customer service and sales departments will be the first to receive new hires.
4. On average, 60% of new positions created will be for entry-level (28%) or staff-level workers (32%).
5. Hiring managers will be looking for the following characteristics in new hires: multi-tasking, taking initiative, and creative problem-solving.
6. Employers biggest obstacle with hiring new employees is finding qualified talent as 44% of resumes received are unqualified.
7. 61% of hiring managers are willing to pay more money for top talent and are willing to negotiate salaries.
8. Employers will need to think about retaining current employees when economic conditions improve.  49% of current employees expect pay increases to keep them on board and 20% expect better benefit packages.  40% of hiring managers polled plan compensate employees when times are better.

^{1 http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?id=pr520&sd=8%2f25%2f2009&ed=12%2f31%2f2009&siteid=cbpr&sc_cmp1=cb_pr520_}

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The recent bid to purchase  Yahoo by Microsoft could result in a 28% combined share of online searches.  As such, this would be the first major threat/competition to Google’s reign of online search domination.  In order to adapt, many companies may have to utilize old tactics, to generate effective search marketing results for the future.

In the late 1990s, the world of online search was very different than today.  Unlike today’s Google dominated era, the playing field was divided amongst several strong search engines.  Marketers created separate pages optimized for different search engines depending on ranking algorithms, something they may need to adopt in the near future.  While  Bing’s, Microsoft’s new search engine, algorithm is still being tweaked and developed, we do already know two crucial things that marketing departments must take into account:

1. Google’s algorithms give more weight to inbound links, while Bing focuses more on the content or the keywords contained on pages. This means that sites which rely on inbound links for high rankings in Google may see themselves outranked in Bing’s results by keyword rich sites.

2. Bing sometimes shows only five organic results on its first page, after which it groups results into categories.  Currently, position six on Google means users only have to scroll down to see the result, while on Bing users have to click to the second page (resulting in a dramatic fall of impressions and clicks).

Of course, as Yahoo potentially becomes fully integrated into Microsoft, things could dramatically change.  What we do know for sure is that this is a situation that online marketers should monitor closely.

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I recently read Seth Godin’s (author of new book, Tribes) blog post about the “modern talking pad.” He talks about approaching a sales meeting from a different angle.  Instead of putting up a PowerPoint presentation on a white board, he goes into a sales meeting with printed copies of the presentation, a yellow legal pad, and a pen.  He sits down with his prospects and goes through the booklet page by page to write notes based on individual conversations and then leaves it behind.

It wasn’t the most original idea or even the most innovative, but I did love the idea.  It makes perfect sense.  No one likes being talked to, no matter what age.  Not every sales meeting is going to be the same, so why put boundaries on it with a standard presentation?

Think about this the next time you go into a sales meeting.  It might just get you the results you are looking for.

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