Targeting

Google and QVC are taking another crack at using bar codes to link print and online ads -- but this time around, the bar codes can be scanned using a mobile phone.

The future looks bright, as 84 percent of respondents agree that there will be moderate to high levels of positive change occurring within one-to-one marketing by 2020. This means significant improvement in the ability of organizations to capture and share information, understand customer needs, calculate customer lifetime value, improve the customer experience, and provide customers with relevant messaging in their preferred channel.

Mobile TV and video firm QuickPlay has partnered with Amobee, which provides mobile advertising, to launch a mobile ad platform for video. The service was first implemented on Vodafone Italy's FreeVideo service. Amobee says Vodafone Italy's 3G users were able to freely access a plethora of "high-quality, local and branded video content" as a result.

Many marketers just don't trust online advertising media, causing a large proportion to avoid online marketing altogether. Almost 70% of marketers surveyed for The Fournaise Marketing Group's Global Marketing Effectiveness Report said they were unsure if they got what they paid for from online media. They were also suspicious of reports from media owners, including any traffic metrics provided.

PubMatic is an online advertising optimization firm that tracks effective Cost Per Thousand data for over three thousand websites. It found that small websites -- those with fewer than one million page views per month -- performed "significantly stronger" than did larger sites. No surprise, really. A narrowly targeted niche is presumably why companies embrace online advertising in the first place.

With a new online TV portal seeming to spring up every fortnight, advertisers may wonder where they'll get the biggest bang for their buck. While it may be a small site with a niche focus, if you want to rack up the big numbers, you should stick with reality. According to Hitwise, seven of the top 10 television web properties -- including all of the top five -- feature so-called reality shows. American Idol is the champ, with Dancing With The Stars enjoying a strong second place standing. Those frequent reminders to log in and vote must work pretty well.

2007 may not have been "the year of mobile marketing," but with the iPhone launch and other under-the-hood improvements, mobile marketers moved past the experimental stage. Still, compared to other interactive platforms, in 2008, mobile will remain small in overall spending.

Advertising campaigns on YouTube or other video-sharing websites present a particular challenge, says Wharton professor of operations and information management Kartik Hosanagar, who is currently researching Internet advertising. "You cannot walk into an ad agency and say, 'I want a video about these features of my product, and I want it viewed this many times, with this level of ratings.'" With video-sharing sites like YouTube, he says, "the goal is to create an experience the customer remembers." Such an experience cannot simply be ordered up or manufactured.

Writing for Adotas, Meir Zohar writes, "As we approach times of uncertainty in 2008, it's also important for us to evaluate our behavior. Are we committing budgets to campaigns without testing our efforts? Are we developing social networking campaigns which do not engage our prospects just to say that we're doing ‘something' social? Are we running elusive video-branding campaigns with repurposed TV commercials?" Behavioral targeting, he suggests, may be the cure.

In an addressable advertising trial in Huntsville, Alabama, Comcast Cable and Starcom have shown that relevant ads can keep viewers from fleeing commercials. Households that received specific ads based on demographic data changed channels 38 percent less often than the rest of the viewing audience. Viewers don't hate advertising ... they hate irrelevant advertising.