Efficient Frontier Insights

Efficient Frontier's perspective on the Facebook ad marketplace on the Wedbush conference call

Yesterday, Justin Merickel, our VP of Marketing and New Product Development, joined  Lou Kerner of Wedbush for the call, “Facebook: The State of the State.” Justin kicked off the call and was followed by representatives from Epic Social, 8th Bridge, and Crowdstar. The speakers focused on current climate of Facebook advertising, video, and gaming, and looked to the future of Facebook as it becomes an even more valuable vehicle for online marketers.

Check out the presentation here. Special thanks to Lou for hosting.

http://www.slideshare.net/loukerner/industry-call-20110629

 

Dining and dishing: We host our first media dinner where colleagues share insights on effectively marketing on Facebook

This past week, we had the pleasure of hosting what we hope will be the first of many intimate gatherings with colleagues and members of the press. It’s been a whirlwind few months for Efficient Frontier, in no small part due to our acquisition of Context Optional, a leader in enterprise social marketing solutions. With so many changes in the digital marketing space, we wanted to bring together key industry thought leaders to discuss current issues facing marketers.

After enjoying dolmas, Greek salad, and halibut in the Kokkari Restaurant in San Francisco, David Karnstedt, Efficient Frontier’s CEO and Kevin Barenblat, Context Optional’s CEO, engaged in a discussion with Grady Burnett, Vice President of Global Sales and Operations at Facebook. Grady graciously agreed to place himself on the hot seat to engage in a conversation regarding the issues and opportunities for marketers on Facebook.

To the dismay of the audience, Grady didn't let on when Facebook would go public or share their current user numbers, but he shared insights on gaining fans on Facebook and implementing “social by design.” "People are already social," he said. Social media platforms like Facebook make the web more social. The conversation about social media marketing has shifted -- it's no longer about companies having a basic presence but rather having control of every interaction with a fan. Having unified Efficient Frontier and Context Optional to answer marketers’ needs for a complete solution for brands to acquire, activate and drive value from fans on Facebook and Twitter, we couldn’t agree more with Grady.

Grady gave a great, realtime example leveraging our setting: If Grady and David are connected on Facebook, and David sees that Grady "Likes" Kokkari Restaurant, David is 62% more likely to visit Kokkari. Just as we would take a restaurant recommendation from a friend offline, we as consumers want a level of trust in order to connect online. Sponsored Stories are highly effective ad units because it utilizes our offline social connections to promote brands. A Sponsored Story can be a tipping point for a small business and big brands as well.

In another example, Expedia, saw a 750% increase in fans, surpassing the 1 million fan mark, and had 15 to 30 times more mentions on Facebook over the course of a six-week campaign Efficient Frontier and Context Optional recently created and managed. The campaign, called FriendTrips, was an interactive sweepstakes in which people could pilot a virtual plane and fill it with online friends in order to win vacation packages. Expedia’s Facebook advertising campaign used Sponsored Stories, standard marketplace and premium ads. The Facebook marketplace and Sponsored Stories advertising drove the majority of users/fans.

We had a fantastic evening with our peers and colleagues and hope they came away with a few more insights on the power of social for marketers and brands. Special thanks to Grady and the Facebook team and we hope to continue the conversation as the industry evolves.

Justin Merickel, Vice President of Marketing, Efficient Frontier

 

All Facebook Expo this week – we’ll be there!

This week, Efficient Frontier and Context Optional will take part in the All Facebook Expo -- a how-to guide for Facebook marketing and development. Taking place in San Francisco June 28-29, the expo brings together marketing experts from around the country.

On Tuesday, June 28, Justin Merickel, Efficient Frontier’s Vice President of Marketing and New Product Development, will speak on a panel titled “Facebook Advertising for Results and ROI.” This panel will explore tactics advertisers can use on Facebook to get the right fans and website visitors at the lowest costs. It will expose the ins and outs of Facebook ad targeting options, image selection, and copywriting to get the best fans for your business.

On Wednesday, June 29, Kevin Barenblat, Co-Founder and CEO of Context Optional, will speak on a panel titled “Facebook Monetization Approaches.” This panel will examine whether businesses should build fan bases or simply send people to their web sites. It will offer tips for how to acquire fans’ email addresses and how your advertising strategy can significantly impact your bottom line.

Speaking of Kevin on stage, watch a recent video of Kevin's 2011 Conversational Marketing Summit presentation, which took place this past month in New York: http://bit.ly/iFIaAx

 

European Performance Summits

The most valuable time we have at Efficient Frontier is that which we spend with our clients, sharing our vision and plans and listening to their ambitions and goals.  

That’s why in the last few days we hosted two events, in London and Hamburg, to bring clients, prospects and partners together in one room with Efficient Frontier and our new colleagues at Context Optional. 

On Thursday, June 16th, the majestic Royal Opera House, London, served as the stage for speakers from Efficient Frontier and Context Optional, including respective CEOs David Karnstedt and Kevin Barenblat, who joined a crowd of 150 marketers to discuss all aspects of performance marketing across search, display and social media.

Guest speakers from Google, Admeld and Facebook discussed the future of display buying on an interactive panel.  Finally, our keynote speaker, Professor Dan Goldstein from London Business School, shared his latest research on sharing and virality across social networks.

After the conference, the Royal Opera House was transformed into a glamorous dining room, and the evening was capped off with drinks and dinner.

Marc Blinder and Kevin Barenblat introduce Context Optional

The following week on Tuesday, June 21st, the action transferred to Lichtwerk Studios, Hamburg. A distinct contrast to the Royal Opera House, this converted factory building provided an excellent post-industrial backdrop as marketers from all over Germany gathered to discuss the latest developments at Efficient Frontier and the wider industry.  

A full afternoon of content, including a presentation by Efficient Frontier’s Dr. Sid Shah, was crowned off by an interactive display from futurologist Nils Müller of TrendOne.

Lunch at the event in Hamburg

All presentations and discussions were captured on video, so check back soon as we share some of the highlights from these recent events.

Jonathan Beeston, Global Marketing Director

Catching the Wave: Tips for Maximizing Travel Seasonality

It’s June, which means the summer is here, which means it’s almost time to use up that summer vacation you’ve been stockpiling. Yes!

But what does this mean for travel clients?

Here are three tips for marketers to maximize destination seasonality:

1)     Know Thy Spikes

2)     Know Thy Word Order

3)     Know Thy Betas

Know Thy Spikes

This may seem like an obvious piece of advice, but it’s two-fold. On the one hand, it’s important to keep track of which destinations see spikes in which quarters. Just as important, travel is highly segmented, so knowing this data by all of the various segments (air, car, hotel, cruise, etc.) is also key. For instance, cruise has a “wave season” in Q1 in terms of booking, and then drops off for the remainder of the year. Car sees a huge spike in the summer (apparently we enjoy driving more when the weather cooperates). Air and hotel segments have been consistent in their trends since 2004: there is a steady spike from January through June, then search interest grows exponentially through Q2, and then drops dramatically in Q3, with a surge in Q4/holiday travel, that springs us back into the January cycle.

So how do you find out what destinations are most popular in each of these segments in each quarter? There are many tools you can use and research you can consult, but my favorites are Google Insights for Search, Google Think Insights, search engine reps, and common sense. We as Americans are pretty predictable in our travel habits, and oddly enough, Las Vegas is usually among the “top five destinations” every quarter.

Know Thy Word Order

This one is simple.  Here is how people type: “flights” tends to precede the destination (e.g. “flights to Atlanta” over “Atlanta flights”) and “hotels” tends to follow the destination (e.g. “Atlanta hotels” over “hotels in Atlanta”). It’s also more common for people to type with plurals than with singular variations.

Know Thy Betas

There are interesting trends that have been consistently impacting the travel industry to the point where they are bordering on becoming accepted facts.

Here are a few:

• A consumer visits 22 sites on average before booking travel
• The window for booking trips keeps shortening with a focus on “last minute” travel
• Mobile is on the rise (with hotels being booked within 1 – 20 miles of the hotel)

Besides the obvious items like ensuring a keyword set that converts the research/dreaming keywords in the funnel, retargeting users that have engaged with your site, and investing in a sound mobile strategy (advertising and apps), there are some interesting betas the search engines are offering as well.

Both Google & YaBing are redefining geo-targeting to be able to opt into “physical location” targeting separate from “user intent” targeting, which is a great advancement. Both engines are also aware of the ever-popular increase in videos contributing to travel research and offer inline video ads (“Mobile Rich Media Ads” on Google” & “Rich Ads in Search” on YaBing), as well as strong YouTube performance on Google. There are some other betas on the horizon (we’ll call them alphas right now) that will redefine location-based searches on Mobile devices, but for fear of my wonderful reps kicking me out of them, I’ll keep mum on that. All I will say is, the betas are there, just ask.

In the end, consumers visit 22 sites before booking travel because the market is saturated. So how do you fight the 21 other sites competing for your consumer? You follow the above steps, and then do what I’d advise anyone in “wave season” to do: ride it (and try not to wipeout)!

-Karen Maciolek 

 

Efficient Context-Mixing it up

Thanks to everyone for making last week's office visits a true success. Between the boombox blasting motown, the 90s limo, and the company centric quizzo, a lovely time was had by all. 

 
Kicking it at Jones in SF

 

 
Kebabs, ping pong, and sunshine in Sunnyvale

Social Ads – The Chicken or The Egg Dilemma

At Efficient Frontier, we’re pretty big believers in the value of the social click on Facebook. Social clicks are clicks on ads that include a social endorsement from a connection, and we’ve seen that clicks have growing importance on campaign success.  We’re also huge fans of Sponsored Stories on Facebook (we have all seven types integrated into our platform), ads that have content that consists wholly of the endorsement.  Our data shows that Sponsored Stories are significantly more effective than other ad types in Facebook.

Perfect. Let’s push clients all-in on social ads. But here’s the catch. You need fans to create social ads. Yet social ads get you fans.  So what’s a marketer to do? 

The key is to ensure that brands have the activity (likes, posts, check-ins, apps used, games played) that create endorsements and the content for sponsored stories. The only way to generate this activity is to build an engaging experience with compelling content.  Standard ads and other marketing techniques can jump-start a fan base. 

 Once your fan base is active with your brand, social ads accelerate the cycle: more fans, more activity, more value, more social ads, more fans… 

 Justin Merickel, VP of Marketing and New Product Development

Search Updates from Seattle -- YaBing! Style

I recently attended the Yahoo! Search and Bing Customer Forum in Seattle, WA, a precursor to SMX Advanced. Rob Wilk, Senior Director, Account Management, Yahoo! and David Ku, Corporate Vice President, Ad Platform, Microsoft, provided the opening remarks and called to order a day of  insightful presentations.

The first few hours included:

“Bing Consumer Search Innovation”

• Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Audience Business, Microsoft
• Focused on Bing’s personalized search efforts and integration with Facebook
• Highlighted the streamlining of Facebook data into search results

“Yahoo! Consumer Search Innovation”

• Vivek Sharma, Vice President, Product-Management – Search & Marketplaces, Yahoo!
• Touched on privacy vs. personalization in search results
• Highlighted the new focus on answers instead of links

“Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Update”

• Chi-Chao Chang, Vice President and General Manager, Global Search Business, Yahoo! and David Pann, General Manager, Search Network, Microsoft
• Phase 1 was to “Stabilize the Marketplace,” Phase 2 will focus on “Execution”
• Discussed the core processes that will lead to areas of focus
• Highlighted the massive effort involved in migrating platforms that took only one year and three months to complete (really, the numbers were quite impressive)

“Efficient Frontier’s Q1 2011 Global Digital Marketing Performance Report”

• Dr. Siddharth Shah, Senior Director, Business Analytics, Efficient Frontier
• Highlighted the ROI improvements post-migration of platforms
• Download the full report here

Though there were many highlights to the above presentations, the real gem was the brief unveiling of a never-before-seen new product.  Though they didn’t require NDAs to be signed -- and I won’t be the one to blow the lid off completely -- let’s just say, managing your AdCenter Accounts. Yes, there’s (going to be) an App for that. And that was the gist of the rest of the day: innovation! 

After lunch we sat at intimate tables in break-out sessions:

• Looking Back: Recently Released AdCenter Features
• AdCenter Next: Upcoming Features & Scenarios
• AdCenter Account Optimization
• Bing SEO Update

The sessions were each followed by roundtable discussions with Yahoo and Microsoft product developers and engineers. The atmosphere was educational, collaborative, and once again, innovative. At the end of “Looking Back,” the Yahoo and Microsoft team members asked the audience what features they would like to have seen rolled out, and, of course, those were just the features highlighted in the next session.

The new features rolling out in the next three to six months will be game-changers on how the AdCenter platform works, and will require even further hard work from their product and engineering teams, even further collaboration with their agencies/advertisers, and even more innovation. But, it’s exciting! When was the last time you saw “innovative,” “game changer” and “exciting” in a blog post about Yahoo! and Microsoft?

And, yes, folks, they’re finally addressing and solving the Match Type issues!

Karen Maciolek
Senior Account Manager/Master Social Media Strategizer

May CPCs: Steady numbers across the board

In May, CPCs increased by 3 to 4% in the Automotive and Retail verticals as Finance CPCs declined slightly by 4% MoM. On a YoY basis, however, Finance CPCs are up 40%, indicating the continuing strength in the sector. We will report June CPCs when the second quarter rounds up.

Dr. Siddharth Shah
Sr. Director, Business Analytics