Monday, November 28, 2011
Local Online Ad Spend Set To Grow 300% In 2011, 60% Ex-Deals
--Including deals/offers we expect local online ad revenue to grow over 300% in 2011, 60% when excluding offers/deals. We expect local to grow 100% in 2012, 40% when excluding deals/offers.
--We believe local search is materially increasing its share of overall search
--We estimate click-to-call spend from local/regional retailers will increase 200%-plus in 2011 with a particularly strong holiday season.
--Data indicates that small businesses are claiming pages on web publishers focused on the local market at over 100% annually setting the stage for continued rapid growth in local online.
Michael Salafia // +1.305.942.8392 // MichaelSalafia.comSocial Proof Is The New Marketing | TechCrunch
via techcrunch.com
Interesting article breaks down 5 classifications of social proof in regards to internet marketing. thx @aileenlee @techcrunch
Friday, November 25, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Kia Makarechi: Watch the Throne Tour Stuns at Madison Square Garden: A HuffPost Live Review
High above the twenty thousand or so who gathered at Madison Square Garden on a fall Monday night in New York City, the jerseys of retired athletic giants stood motionless as a cavalcade of lights and shuddering bass entertained the eager audience.
But two names stand out.
Elton John and Billy Joel's banners also hang in the fabled Garden's rafters. Joel earned his for a record 12-night run, and John's number, 62, signals the record number of appearances by an artist at the venue.
If Monday night is any indication, it may soon be time to print up a couple more banners.
By now every media outlet has had its chance to deftly recount the events of a Watch The Throne show. Yes, they play "N****s in Paris" three times. Yes, they rap on top of giant, moving risers with LCD side panels. And yes, Kanye wears a leather skirt.
But Kanye West and Shawn Corey Carter's joint concert is not an act ready made for tweets and text messages. The thrust of the evening didn't come through in ways that could be captured on camera phone photos to be posted to Facebook by the night's end. The magic of the evening was in its uncomfortable, unexpected moments.
One such turning point occurred when the two performed "New Day" together. The song is easily the most genuine track on the album, a spare moment where RZA's nimble beat underscores Kanye and Jay-Z's somber ruminations on the reality of fatherhood in the limelight.
They sat next to each other on the stage. As Kanye ran through the list of regrets he wishes his unborn child would never repeat, Jay mouthed the verse. West, who is known to be overcome with emotion when rapping about his late mother, became visibly quiet and subdued as his verse ended: "And I'll never let his mom move to LA / Knowin' she couldn't take the pressure now we all pray" (West's mother died of complications from plastic surgery). Carter asked the crowd to put one finger up for "all the love ones we've lost," as West's distraught face shined from the gigantic screens behind them.
Jay's verse is also suddenly more poignant, as Beyoncé's pregnancy is already the gossip fodder he envisioned ("Sorry junior, I already ruined ya / 'Cause you ain't even alive yet, paparazzi pursuin' ya"). His verse ends with his pledge to not abandon his child, and again electricity swept around the Garden's hushed audience. The elder rapper paused, eyes glistening, and said, "All the guys out there taking care of your kids, make some noise." In his typically accessible way, he added softly, "That's the cool thing to do."
It was unexpected, if not awkward. We've come to expect West to get riled up, to go off on rants. The show even included a bit piece West practiced at New Jersey's Izod Center earlier in the week, in which he cuts the intro to "All of the Lights" off three times in mock horror at a lighting director's (staged) inability to "turn on all the lights we paid for." It's a savvy trick of performance art, in which West plays a caricature of the post-Katrina-telethon Kanye he finally realizes that he's partly appreciated for.
He pulls a similar, though more genuine, trick when he performs "Runaway," his ode to his "asshole" side. It's always an extended version, in which he urges his audience to love each other and bleats his simple, yet aching regrets ("If I said I don't like your shoes tonight, don't listen to me, because I'm an asshole, you're always fine. If I said I don't like your hair tonight, don't listen to me because I'm an asshole, you're always fine. The only part I fucked up is that I thought you'd always be mine.")
But if even if we cynically chalked up West's emotional displays to mere antics, we can't do the same for Jay-Z. The latter never even breaches the topic of his marriage in public. Witnessing two grown men on a planned free-fall from the fun-loving, cars/hotels/watches anthems of "H.A.M." and "Otis" to a teary-eyed "New Day" in an hour makes one wonder just how much they can control -- can handle.
Everything about these two men is different. Jay-Z's within-the-beat dancing made Kanye look like he's dancing to dubstep. West forgot the lyrics to "Get 'Em High" in the encore's medley, Jay tried to get him to keep rapping. Jay kept his advice to a neat minimum and spent more time thanking the crowd than admonishing it, West gave us his sermon on the LCD mount about love. Kanye screamed inaudible encouragement, Jay punctuated Kanye's verses with the standard call-outs that make him the best hypeman in hip hop.
And yet if their delivery is nearly antithetical, why does the show flow so seamlessly?
In the end, they're just different paths to the same emotions. The ethos of the show is not epic or even about bravado. It's fear of what you've done, and what may happen. It's about two voices coming together and magnifying these feelings in chorus until you're ready to throw your hands up and dance and cheers to the "Good Life." It's that whether you're a free-speaking, suburban producer or a careful, precocious young drug dealer, you can end up throwing a party for twenty thousand of your friends-for-one-night at the Garden.
"I came here [to New York] with some beats in my pocket and I was too scared to even talk to Jay-Z because he was my fucking idol," West later said. "Now I'm on a stage with him. That shows you that dreams can come true."
Carter, as usual, kept it simpler, and in song. You may be in the audience, shelling out hundreds of dollars for seats in a stadium, but like the dad-to-be says on "Murder to Excellence," when you see them, you see you.
Follow Kia Makarechi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kia_Mak
Friday, November 04, 2011
Bieb's Baby Mama Under Investigation for Statutory Rape
A back stage bathroom at the Staples Center? Classy!
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Blogging Tips: Drive traffic by commenting
Comments
I began commenting on several blogs. Initially I commented on any blog I could find, and paid extra attention on “do-follow” blogs—those that do not use the “no-follow” tag to prevent search engines from following comment links.
After a month of reviewing the analytics, I discovered something very important about commenting. It’s difficult to track the exact SEO benefit of each comment, but my best traffic has come from my most thought-out comments on other blogs.
I did not plan this, but when I ignored whether a blog was a do-follow or not, and instead commented when I was passionate about a topic, my visitors from those blogs spent on average four or five minutes on my on my site. That is a very long time on a website—especially when compared to traffic from other sources, which averages well under a minute.
via problogger.net
At a glance, what recent earnings reports have revealed about the state of spending on ads - The Washington Post
At a glance, what recent earnings reports have revealed about the state of spending on ads
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Here are highlights of recent quarterly earnings reports from selected Internet and media companies and what they say about the state of spending on advertising:
Oct. 13: Google Inc. says advertising revenue grew 33 percent to $9.3 billion during the third quarter, thanks to the reach of its search engine and the effectiveness of its ads. After subtracting commissions, net revenue growth was 37 percent. The growth comes despite mounting worries about the economy. Google got 96 percent of its revenue from advertising that quarter.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Study: Mobile becoming integral to shopping habits
According to a recent report from Experian Simmons, mobile technology is becoming an indispensable aspect of American shopping habits. As this trend continues, it will be imperative that businesses cater their content marketing campaigns to mobile devices to stay ahead of the curve.
The report noted that the most common mobile shopping activity is research. Rather than making purchases on the fly, 15 percent of surveyed consumers are more likely to use their smartphones and tablets to explore their options so they can make informed decisions.
In contrast, only 7 percent of consumers said they have used their mobile devices to make a purchase within 30 days of the survey.
This highlights the importance of content marketing as a means of reaching mobile consumers. By utilizing local SEO and strong mobile web content, businesses are better positioned to connect with potential customers and encourage them to explore their products and services further.
As Brafton recently reported, a new IBM study found that mobility creates new search marketing opportunities for businesses. According to the report, more consumers are expected to use their mobile devices to research information and make purchase decisions this year as the adoption of internet-enabled mobile devices continues to rise.
via brafton.com
Need a group task list / project management solution? Asana #free
Cut down on email chains, group meetings and task tracking. Asana let's you easily create tasks, assign them to users and organize them by project. As an manager of an digital agency, this is something so important to our organization that we have developed our own proprietary system for it. Although we will still use our system, we will entertain using Asana as a suplement tool for task management and internal communication. Asana was actually developed for internal use at Facebook by co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. I'm just watched the video and it looks great, so I'll sign up now and report back with my recomendation.
via mashable
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Should Student Loan Debt Be a Crime? Yes ⎯ says @michaelsalafia
by @keligoff via @huffingtonpost
An 18 year-old with no credit history and no job walks into a bank and requests a loan to buy a $100,000 condo. What is the loan officer most likely to say?
A) Sure! Let's get that paperwork started.
B) Actually, why not go for a $150,000 condo?
C) Is this a joke? No way. No how.
I think we can all agree that in most cases the answer would be C. Yet year, after year millions of 18-year-olds essentially do just that -- take out tens of thousands of dollars in debt to buy something that they cannot afford, and will likely be unable to pay off in the near future or, in their lifetimes: an overpriced college degree.
Just to be clear, I am not calling college degrees worthless -- at least not all of them. But I am calling a system that allows people who are not legally old enough to drink, to incur endless amounts of debt on a choice that they may have second thoughts about shortly after making it, questionable, and borderline criminal.
By now we all know that the American student loan crisis is just that: a crisis. It's just a shame that it took those in power so long to wake up to this fact. Days ago President Obama announced executive action to provide relief to more than one million Americans struggling with student loan debt. The so-called "Pay As You Earn" proposal will allow 1.6 million students to cap their student loan payments to ten percent of their discretionary income, and to forgive the balance of their debt after 20 years of payments. This proposal comes on the heel of reports that for the first time ever, Americans owe more on student loans -- nearly 1 trillion dollars -- than they do on credit cards.
As I have written about extensively, I consider education the gateway to the American Dream. I am someone who is far from wealthy, but I've enjoyed greater opportunities for success than my grandparents (whom as I have previously written worked in cotton fields), because I have enjoyed educational opportunities that they did not. But increasingly education is becoming a luxury commodity in this country, much like a summer home or a really great vacation. Those who can afford it, enjoy it. Those who cannot, don't. Only the repercussions for limited educational opportunity are much more dire than going without that summer home. Financial aid, in the form of scholarships, grants and eventually loans, were supposed to even the playing field allowing those of us born without a silver spoon (or a spoon at all) to have a shot at the same American Dream that those born with a full set of silver utensils, were able to enjoy. There's just one problem, of course.
As we've come to learn, student loan debt has essentially insured that the rest of us could only rent the American Dream temporarily, but never really buy it in full. Like credit cards, student loans have allowed many of us to merely look like we were keeping up with the Joneses, but when that bill finally comes, the reality that you weren't ever really keeping up at all but merely pretending that you were, sets in -- often with disastrous results. Nearly a trillion dollars later and that bill is coming in full for our nation as an entire generation struggles to dig out of what's becoming a modern day version of indentured servitude.
So who's to blame? Well much like the mortgage crisis, there's blame to go around. Speaking as someone who has two costly degrees, both of which could be viewed as non-necessity degrees (as in I didn't major in pre-med or some other field of study in which my degree was an absolute prerequisite to pursue my eventual profession) I acknowledge that adults have to take responsibility for the financial choices that we make. Just like a person who buys a house that they know deep down inside they really can't afford, a person who takes out significant debt for a degree they are not sure they plan to use also bears responsibility.
But similarly, if we hold predatory lenders accountable for targeting low-income people for mortgages they cannot afford, then why are we not holding private lenders accountable for targeting students who take out loans that any reasonable person can recognize they cannot afford, and will likely never be able to? For instance, if there are only a handful of jobs nationwide in a field like Medieval Studies, then how is a lender who signs an 18-year-old to a $50,000 loan to pursue a degree in that subject, really any different than a predatory lender who targets a low-income widow? (Click here to see the 5 highest paying college majors.)
I'm not suggesting that no one should be allowed to receive loans to pursue higher education, or even to pursue subjects of their interest. I am, however saying that we have got to reform the system, and put standards in place so that just as not just anyone can walk in and get a loan for a mansion, not everyone can get a loan for any degree.
Perhaps a start would be requiring colleges and universities to be upfront about the job prospects of those who leave their institutions with degrees. There is already growing criticism of how colleges rig alumni employment data, but what if the government required schools to be more transparent? Instead of simply allowing colleges and universities to report general employment statistics on their graduates (which are notoriously deceptive because they rarely reveal whether that graduate with a PhD is waiting tables or that law school graduate is tending bar) what if schools were required to list the statistical likelihood of a new student at that school receiving employment in a particular field of study upon graduation? Think about it. If a potential college student were to go to the homepage of a particular department of a particular college and see that only 1% of graduates are working in his or her chosen field, he might think twice (or three times) before signing his financial future away for that degree. And you know, what? If he pursues that degree anyway? That's on him. At least he will have made a decision with eyes wide open, something too many young people and their families are not doing, because they are not being provided with the information necessary to do so.
To insure the responsibility is shared equally, what if when signing loan documents the aspiring student was asked to sign letter of acknowledgment that he or she is aware of the employment prospects related to pursuing this degree with this institution. Might make everyone involved think more carefully before embarking on a potential lifetime of debt.
As wacky as these calls for transparency may sound, just remember. Years ago people thought slapping health warnings on cigarettes sounded wacky too. But something has got to be done to stop the student loan crisis from demolishing the financial health of a generation, and with it the financial future of our nation.
Keli Goff is the author of The GQ Candidate and a Contributing Editor for Loop21.com where this post originally appeared. Visit Keli's website here.
Follow Keli Goff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/keligoff
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