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Ex-Google and DoubleClick employees Jason Kalish and Jorge Zapata have launched a coupon aggregator that serves up daily offers and discounts from Groupon, YouSwoop and others across more than 50 cities. The local offers are combined and delivered to people either in email, RSS Feed, Twitter tweets, or Facebook Fan page.

LocalOfferLounge.com quietly launched about two weeks ago. Cofounders Kalish and Zapata met during their time at Google and DoubleClick, and reconnected later to discuss the potential to launch a new site based on affiliate and performance-based marketing.

Kalish left Google in April, and shortly after began putting together the business model and a team of programmers who began building the platform in December. The idea to make the service simple came from his days at Google and Performics, which DoubleClick bought.

Visit LocalOfferLounge.com and it's easy to see Google's influence. The two didn't want a complicated site where the technology would stop people from using the service. "We link the titles of the offers directly to the offers," Kalish says. "We're not making consumers stop and read something on our Web site first. We believe that's the responsibility of the destination Web site, such as Groupon."

The traffic from the offer may start with LocalOfferLounge.com, but the company sends the consumer directly to the destination Web site, making the interface very "Google-like." The clean and easy-to-user interface lets you choose the city from a menu at the top right of the Web page. There are more than 40 major U.S. cities to start, along with Toronto, as well as the United Kingdom. New cities take about three minutes to add.

The product roadmap includes aggregating the offers from the more than 50 coupons specialty Web sites, and potential deals are on the table with businesses to forward and place an aggregate feed on their Web site, too. "We plan to build a large distribution network," Kalish says. "Nothing's left off the table. We're having conversations on both sides of the house to develop distribution opportunities and deals with individual Web sites."

The coupon sites, such as Adility, Groupon and SwoopOff, sell discount coupons. LocalOfferLounge aggregates the special deals and presents them to consumers. Let's say a consumer sees an interesting special in an email alert. Clicking on the link might take her to Groupon.com, where she could buy the $20 off coupon for $5. For each sale, LocalOfferLounge takes a percentage.

The service went live two weeks ago, and the development team has been busy checking the algorithms that automatically categorize the deals. Kalish says the company has been pulling in about 160 offers daily since January. As the business builds and more offers become available, it will become increasingly important to put snacks in the food category and hotel rooms in hospitality and travel. This will allow people to easily scan down the list.

Aggregating the specials offered on all the the Web sites, 31% fell into the Food and Beverage category, followed by Beauty & Spas, 22.0%; Sports & Recreation, 11.1%; Fitness & Nutrition, 6.4%; Arts & Entertainment, 5.4%; Health & Medical, 3.1%; Clothing & Accessories, 2.7%; Automotive, 2.2%; Photography & Photo Services, 2.1%; and Travel & Hospitality, 2.0%.

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Wanted: Tall, blue, handsome site with over 100 million friends who will invite me to your party. -- A. Marketer 

There have been so many big numbers tossed out about Facebook lately, you'd think the site was in the lottery business. Fellow columnist Cathy Taylor last week mentioned how Facebook provides nearly 8% of the traffic to Google and Yahoo, and how people spend more than three times as long as Facebook as on any other site. Days earlier, Facebook celebrated crossing the 400 million user mark.

The number that stands out the most to me is this one: 100 million. That's how many mobile users access Facebook across a range of devices -- actually, it's more than that, and growing daily. The safe bet is in time that the mobile user base will nearly mirror the overall user base, and that most of its usage will derive from mobile users. Facebook is in an especially strong position to benefit from the mobile boom, as mobile measurement firm Ground Truth noted this month that 61% of mobile Web pageviews are served by social networking sites.

Facebook is second to MySpace on Ground Truth's January list of top ten mobile sites ranked by page views, with other entries including Mocospace, FunForMobile, AirG, Cellufun, Mbuzzy, and Myxer (Google and Yahoo made the list too). The firm noted, "Just as eBay, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter popped up seemingly out of nowhere to join the top ranks of the wired Web, there is no doubt that some of the mobile Web startups from today or tomorrow will be standalone companies in the top 10 mobile Web sites of 2020."

Some of that reasoning's a stretch. I talked to one mobile vendor recently whose business was largely based on feature phones, the catch-all category for anything that's not a smart phone. He said that they'll milk the much larger feature phone user base for the time being, and when that dries up and everyone's on smart phones, they hope to adapt to the new marketplace. Many such companies won't make it. The feature phone market will be alive and well for some time, in the U.S. and abroad, and Facebook even just launched Zero, a completely scaled-back mobile site for those with bandwidth issues.

That has to rattle marketers a little. The whole promise of mobile was that it would open up new audiences who could be targeted wherever they were. Yet Facebook offers nothing like that. How dare Facebook scale down its site even more for mobile users! It's not like users could see ads or even easily access Pages before. Where are the homepage ads? What about geotargeted mobile alerts? Come on, Zuckerberg, give us something!

Lisa Foote, commenting on Cathy's article, summed it up well: "Making the hill even steeper to climb is consumers' increasing use of Facebook via mobile devices... Marketers who are already late to the social media party are going to find it's not a static target --- making it even harder for them to catch up in 2010." It's especially hard when there's no proscribed way to market to these users.

That's going to change, of course. It might not change for Zero anytime soon, which is more of an issue for global marketers, especially in emerging markets where the need for Zero should be strongest. The most lightweight versions of Facebook's mobile site won't appeal to its frequent users who appreciate many of the features available on the Web. So what about Facebook for iPhone, with 27 million active users, or Facebook for BlackBerry, with 15 million monthly active users? What's taking Facebook so long?

First, they're biding their time and growing their user base. No one's forcing their hand here, as they've gotten to 400 million users without caring too much about what others think of them. The second is that they're waiting to pull the trigger on an ad model that makes sense for their specific site and how it's used. Facebook just dropped Microsoft's banner ads on its site because they weren't contributing to the Facebook experience. The engagement ads and self-service ads running currently are customized to work for Facebook, not anyone else, creating a new experience for consumers without totally reinventing the wheel on the back end for marketers. Expect Facebook mobile ads to be built from the ground up.

No matter how long Facebook takes, marketers with mobile applications can currently take advantage of Facebook Connect. Any app that incorporates content sharing, messaging, or finding friends can use Connect to grow the app's audience and increase users' engagement with it. In some cases, Connect will be the predominant reason an app gets any social traction.

Beyond the app scene though, marketers have to go stag. Facebook's perfectly happy expanding its audience of 100 million mobile friends and doesn't want any chaperones butting in yet.

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Yahoo on Wednesday will announce a global partnership with Twitter to integrate real-time search. As part of Yahoo's Open Strategy to make the Web more open, people will have the ability to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo in their Twitter stream.

The integration follows similar moves by Google and Microsoft Bing, as well as Yahoo's agreement with Facebook in December. The deal allows Facebook users to share content from Yahoo sites with friends, such as comments on Flickr and Yahoo News.

Integrating Facebook and Twitter into Yahoo's sites allows anyone with a Yahoo ID to post status updates to multiple social networks simultaneously. Being signed into the network also lets Yahoo serve up relevant content specific to each person as they travel across news, sports, finance and other properties.

And although Yahoo's announcement Wednesday does not mention how the content in the real-time Twitter tweets will influence paid search or display ads, advertising industry experts expect to see even more changes in ad-serving tactics based on consumer behavior and preference.

The real-time search integration becomes available immediately on Yahoo Search. Other parts of the deal between Yahoo and Twitter are expected to launch later this year, such as the ability to share updates with friends through Yahoo Updates. Other features that will have to wait include updates on Yahoo's media properties Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Sports.

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Twitter plans to launch an advertising platform in about a month, according to Seth Goldstein. The chief executive officer and co-founder of socialmedia.com led a panel Monday focused on the next wave of interactive advertising at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif., that shed light on Twitter's strategy.

Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost following the panel that "we are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase."

During the panel, Banerji presented a chart that demonstrated peaks and the total number of tweets during the Super Bowl. One blue line represents tweets about the game. The red line represents tweets about brands and ads during the game. A spike during the final touchdown of the game corresponds to 50% of tweets on Twitter at that moment.

Twitter sees this sort of user behavior across the site all the time, Banerji said. "People are constantly talking and engaging with brands, sharing their feedback," he explained before the panel transitioned into a question-and-answer session. "What if brands start to participate? What would the chart look like then?"

There's a movement in Twitter to include hash tags in tweets to suggest the messages represent ads. Banerji said when Twitter launches an ad platform, the company will make it "explicitly clear that a sponsor" paid for the ad, and make it "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad."

Banerji called the hash tag ads a "workaround," for now. Twitter engineers have a better idea what will and won't work, he said.

Goldstein, who also co-chairs the IAB social media committee, coaxed Banerji to share details on the "imminent" Twitter ad platform by asking questions such as "you were at Overture before, so what did you learn from that experience" when it comes to "developing the first search ads you're putting into Twitter?"

"Innovate very, very quickly, before someone innovates on top of you," Banerji said. "And be very, very focused on execution. Just be dedicated to your own roadmap and don't worry so much about what's happening around you."

Goldstein also asked, you will "likely in the next month or so offer Twitter owned and operated ads, perhaps?" to which Banerji replied, "that's right."

Completing the question, Goldstein asked how Twitter will manage that while supporting the ability to let a "thousand flowers bloom around the ecosystem?"

"We don't think of ourselves as a Web site -- essentially it's a platform," Banerji said. "We don't really control the ads or the way the tweets are viewed and then consumed. We are completely open around other people innovating around us. Ultimately, publishers should have choice. But the one area of concern for us -- and that's if bad ads get identified in Twitter -- it's a problem for us in the long term. So, we should do whatever we can to encourage positive behavior."

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Taking a page from its 2008 playbook, Visa is updating its "Go World" campaign with ready-made pieces to congratulate the company's sponsored athletes when they win a medal.

"We know through research that the way consumers connect to the games is through the athletes and their stories," Jennifer Bazante, head of global brand marketing for Visa, tells Marketing Daily. "It helps extend the window of the breakthrough moment for the athlete."

As a major sponsor of the games, Visa has already aired three commercials congratulating sponsor athletes. One commercial, celebrating downhill skier Julia Mancuso, animates a drawing the athlete made when she was a little girl depicting her winning medals at the Olympics. "Well, she doesn't have to draw her own posters anymore," says a voiceover from Morgan Freeman, as the video cuts to Mancuso celebrating her triumphant run. (Mancuso won silver in the downhill and super combined events.)

"It helps extend the story line a bit more," Bazante says. "It [also] helps keep the campaign fresh and relevant."

To create the spots, Visa is working closely with Olympics broadcaster NBC to capture moments from the athletes' races. Those moments are dropped into commercials prepared before the games began, Bazante says. The company has then contracted with NBC to run the ads directly after the athlete has been determined as a medalist. In addition to Mancuso's commercial, Visa has already run spots congratulating snowboard cross gold medalist Seth Wescott and Nordic combined silver medalist Johnny Spillane.

Visa first ran a commercial congratulating one of its sponsor athletes in 2008, when Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals during the Beijing games. The spot worked so well with consumers that Visa opted to extend the idea during this year's Olympic games, Bazante says.

"We thought it was interesting to see the performance of these spots in terms of the performance of the campaign," Bazante says. "As people are exposed to multiple spots, the more spots there are [in the pool], the better the performance for the entire campaign."

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PERFORMANCE INSIDER

Social Media As A Sales Tool
by Angela Hribar , Friday, February 19, 2010

Many companies are starting to experiment with social media and how it can be integrated into their overall marketing strategy to support company goals and objectives.

In addition to creating and promoting a corporate presence on various social media Web sites, it also makes sense for sales professionals to become familiar with social media, and to use it for the benefit of their business. 

Getting involved in social media can offer value to sales professionals, without requiring hours of time.  In fact, there are a number of benefits to be gained by spending only minutes a week on popular social media sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Take advantage of these six guidelines for engaging in social media as a sales tool:

1.  Connect with and make better use of your professional network. Sales is a relationship business, and professional social media sites (such as LinkedIn) provide an additional way for account executives to enhance their relationships with clients and prospects alike. 

Social media offers you another platform - beyond more traditional email and telephone conversations - for connecting with key contacts that you wish to reach out to and engage with further.  Not only will you learn more about them, but they can gain a better understanding of your expertise, your thought leadership and the value you have to offer.  Social media is also a useful way to obtain referrals and recommendations from your contacts, helping you grow your network.  

2.  Learn more about your prospects and clients. Social media also offers an excellent way to gather intelligence from your contacts.  Pay close attention to the professional profiles of your clients and prospects, looking for anything that can make you more successful in conversations with them. 

The intelligence that can be gleaned from a prospect's or client's profile can help to identify common ground and enhance the sales conversation.  For example, examine their previous experience - maybe they have worked at another company in the past that is a client of yours.  Or read more about their education, as you may find something you can use as a way to begin a conversation or make a connection.

Also, be mindful of the fact that your professional contacts - prospects, clients, other colleagues - are likely using social media sites to learn more about you and your company as well.  Therefore, it's important to ensure that you are displaying a complete and professional profile.

3.  Identify decision-makers and other appropriate contacts within a company. Professional social media sites provide a wealth of information on organizations.  First, many people are connected to their colleagues.  By taking a closer look at the profiles of your clients and prospects, you may be able to fill in some of the blanks regarding decision makers within a company.

Company profiles also offer intelligence on key individuals within organizations.  These can help you identify the appropriate contact within a company, especially if your initial contact has left and you are having trouble getting in touch with anyone beyond the receptionist. 

4.  Gain new work-related insight. Groups, message boards and other social media sites are an excellent way to discuss relevant industry topics with likeminded professionals in group settings.  At its core, social media is a conversation, so identify groups that are relevant to your industry and expertise and participating in the discussion.

By joining a group or getting involved in other social media sites, you have the opportunity to learn from other professionals within your industry, contribute to discussions on topics that fit well within your area of expertise, and differentiate yourself and your company as a consultant and a thought leader. 

Consider focusing your efforts on making thoughtful contributions to the most relevant topics - you do not need to respond to every discussion within a group.  Ensure that your comments are adding value and presenting your company in a positive manner.

5.  Remember the basics of social media. While participating in social media can be beneficial to sales professionals, it is important to respect it as a communications platform.  Don't abuse it as a way to push a sales pitch.   Remember that social media is a two-way conversation, and ensure that your actions are providing value.

6.  Offer guidelines for effective use. Sales and marketing management should consider holding training sessions or developing guidelines on how to effectively use social media as a sales tool.  In addition to providing guidelines on how to create accounts on relevant social media sites, you can offer examples of demonstrated best practices for utilizing social media resources for professional use.  It would also be valuable to emphasize the importance of spending the right balance of time on it, and demonstrating how it can be a powerful tool in the sales process. 

For businesses, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity to engage in conversations with their audiences - both customers and prospects.   Take advantage of social media tools to foster positive relationships with your clients and prospects, and to support your overall business goals.

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Facebook has replaced Yahoo as the second-largest U.S. Web property and is closing in on No. 1 Google, according to the latest data from Web analytics firm Compete. The social network in January drew an audience of nearly 134 million unique visitors, surging past Yahoo's 132 million. Google remained the top site, with a monthly audience of 148 million. (Google overtook Yahoo as No. 1 in Feb. 2008).

ComScore's estimate of Facebook's audience isn't quite as large. Its latest figures show Facebook doubling its audience in 2009 to 112 million, but still ranked fourth behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Compete's methodology includes reliance on a panel of 2 million U.S. Internet users selected as a representative cross-section of the population. ComScore also uses a panel of 2 million, but half its members are outside the U.S.

Both firms have also underscored that user engagement on Facebook has also grown dramatically. Compete found that 11.6% of all time spent online in January was spent on Facebook, compared to 4.25% for Yahoo and 4.1% for Google.

While the time-spent share for those two has been roughly flat in 2009, Facebook's share has more than doubled from about 5%. ComScore reported last month that Facebook made gains in several engagement metrics including average monthly minutes per visitor, jumping 45% from 170 to 247.

The Nielsen Co. on Tuesday came out with an even higher time-spent estimate for Facebook, finding users on average spent just over 7 hours on the site in January, up 10% from December.

That's far more than the average of about 2 hours users spent on Yahoo and Google. While figures from the various Web measurement firms may reveal discrepancies, they all indicate that Facebook continues to grow rapidly both in audience and usage rates. From an advertiser's viewpoint, that translates as improvement in both audience quantity and quality.

Facebook itself announced earlier this month hitting 400 million users worldwide only five months after reaching 300 million. With its growth not confined to the PC-based Web, the company also recently disclosed surpassing 100 million mobile users.

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While most consumers prefer their online content free, many are willing to open their wallets and purses for particular offerings, according to new research from Nielsen.

What sorts of content are consumers willing to pay for online? Mostly movies, music, and games, according to a survey of some 27,000 consumers across 52 countries.

Meanwhile, content created online -- like blogs, podcasts, and video -- are the least likely to attract consumer dollars, Nielsen finds.

In between are an array of news formats -- newspapers, magazines, Internet-only news sources and radio news and talk shows -- created by professionals, relatively expensive to produce, and, in the case of newspapers and magazines, commonly sold offline.

"Yet much of their content has basically become a commodity, readily available elsewhere for free," notes Nielsen. As a result, nearly eight out of every 10 respondents -- 79% -- said they would no longer use a Web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost.

Meanwhile, more than three of every four survey participants -- 78% -- felt that if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.

That said, 62% of consumers said that once they purchase content, it should be theirs to copy or share with whomever they want.

Overall, 71% of global consumers said online content of any kind has to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.

With regard to consumers, Nielsen notes: "As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it." Nearly evenly split, 34% thought so, 30% did not, while the remaining 36% expressed no firm opinion.

Regardless, publishers continue to experiment with a range of payment models, from full-service subscriptions to individual transactions, or micropayments. The New York Times, for one, is planning to debut a "metered" pay model next year, which will require subscriptions for high levels of content consumption.

Among those surveyed by Nielsen, about half -- 52% -- favor the latter, although the researchers admit that micropayments "have proved cumbersome to implement in the past."

Either way, only 43% of respondents said an easy payment method would make them more likely to buy content online.

On the other hand, 47% of respondents said they would be willing to accept more advertising to subsidize free content.

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Media Ready to Back Childhood Obesity Plan

Administration, advertisers, marketers work on education initiative

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/15/2010 12:00:00 AM

Food marketing is likely to get renewed attention in Washington over the coming weeks as government agencies try to figure out a battle plan against childhood obesity.

Ad agency lobbyists say they support the initiative, especially if it means more emphasis on exercise and phys ed in schools, and not on restrictions on advertising as some kind of magic cure for the obesity problem.

President Obama last week signed an executive order mandating the creation of a childhood obesity task force. He also gave the task force 90 days to come up with an action plan, and urged "a generation" to solve the problem through a "coordinated federal response." The group will be chaired by Lawrence Summers, assistant to the president for economic policy.

While there was no mention of involvement by the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission, the task force will include the chiefs of whatever agencies Summers chooses. Also involved will be the secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Education departments; the director of the Office of Management and Budget; and heads of other groups.

The issue also has the attention of Michelle Obama, who has made it a priority through a "Let's Move" campaign. "She will encourage involvement by [figures] from every sector--the public, nonprofit and private sectors, as well as parents and youth--to help support and amplify the work of the Federal Government in improving the health of our children," the president wrote.

Media companies were eager to associate themselves with the public-education portion of the initiative. The First Lady appeared on Good Morning America to promote the campaign, which will also be featured under NBCU's iconic "The More You Know" umbrella public-service effort. Nickelodeon pledged its support as well.

Childhood puts a strain on the health-care system, the president pointed out in a memo to the heads of all departments and agencies including the FCC and FTC: "We must act now to improve the health of our nation's children and avoid spending billions of dollars treating preventable disease."

In the wake of FTC scrutiny of the issue and the Surgeon General's warnings that childhood obesity was the top health threat to kids, food marketers came up with the Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative in November 2006. The move was meant to promote healthier products, limit snack food advertising that targets kids under 12 and push for additional steps. The FTC is vetting the results of that self-regulation.

In December, the FTC teamed with a group comprising representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Agriculture on draft recommendations on nutrition guidelines for marketing food to kids. The recommendations include expanding the definition of "children" to include 13-to-18-year-olds.

A government-industry childhood obesity task force, which was launched when the FCC was headed by Kevin Martin and included members of Congress, major food marketers and media executives, failed to come to an agreement on strategies for addressing the issue. "The consumer groups felt that what the advertising community was offering was insufficient, and there was no ability to finally broker an agreement," says Dan Jaffe, executive VP of government relations for the Association of National Advertisers. He hopes that the new task force will provide another opportunity for that cooperation, particularly something that involves the government.

According to Dick O'Brien, executive VP and director of government relations for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, marketers are part of the solution. "We're delighted that Mrs. Obama is doing it," he told B&C. "She really can bring an enormous moral force to solve this global epidemic. We have volunteered to work with her as a communications industry. Basically, we are all pretty enthusiastic about it, and we're in conversation to try to see just how we can be part of the solution."

Jaffe agrees. "Our initial reaction is extremely positive," he says, but adds that people should be aware of the self-regulatory steps the industry has taken and that they "should not get diverted into regulatory cul-de-sacs with approaches that will not work."

Jaffe remains concerned about the draft recommendations from the FTC and others, which he expects will be released as a proposal for comment by month-end. "That proposal certainly needs to be looked at very closely because it is extraordinarily restrictive," he says. For example, cereals with more than 13 grams of added sugar could not be advertised to kids. As Jaffe puts it: "A lot of things that would be perfectly sensible for children's diets wouldn't be able to be advertised."

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Google, Microsoft and Yahoo got in the game. Each unveiled separate renditions on search, blogs and mobile to follow the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The opening ceremonies began Friday.

The Web has brought Olympics fans closer to the action at home, the office or on the go. Yahoo introduced a dedicated mobile Web site to provide people with news, event schedules, stats and pictures. At m.yahoo.com/olympics, fans can get up-to-the-minute access to the Winter Games through live results, schedules, medal counts, news, photos, blogs, and expert commentary. The site provides instant results from all the events, and people can search by athlete and Olympic sport to find information.

And for those lucky enough to visit Vancouver, Yahoo has partnered with augmented reality expert Total Immersion to put consumers in the action. Yahoo's Fancouver exhibit lets passersby insert themselves into the festivities through a digital out-of-home display, with dual windows that use augmented reality face tracking to give fans a different view.

Getting into the action online, Google takes Olympic fans on a snow mobile ride in Street View and Google Earth to capture what it's like on the slopes in Vancouver.

While Google Maps puts fans in the game from the air, the National Hockey League gives hockey fans All-access Vancouver at NHL.com, Facebook has a dedicated page from the Organizing Committee and International Olympics Committee, and @Yahoofancouver lets people follow the Winter games on Twitter, with a link that leads directly to the Yahoo Sports page. The site Twitter-Athletes also lets people keep track of the games.

Aside from real-time search on google.com, fans can log on to Buzz, Google's latest social tool add-on in Gmail, and connect with people who are chatting about Winter Olympic games. Simply open the Buzz tab and search on keywords to find information from anyone creating buzz around a topic, even if they are not part of your network.

Although Beijing brought Olympic fans streaming online video, Vancouver will provide features that allow people to pause, rewind and replay the action during a live broadcast. Microsoft says NBC will use streaming capabilities from Silverlight, the Adobe Flash rival, to provide some spectators with up to 720p high-definition resolution.

In fact, NBCOlympics.com on MSN will provide more than 400 hours of live event competition and more than 1,000 hours of on-demand access to full-event replays from broadcast and host-feed coverage of all 15 sports. It also gives people access to extensive highlights, such as event recaps, best-of montages, commentator analysis and athlete-specific clips, as well as options to connect with friends through Facebook about the videos, and share links through Windows Live, Twitter, Digg, and Reddit.

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Target Corp. says it has scored a first among retailers: Shoppers can now access their gift-card accounts using smartphones, and have the barcode scanned right at checkout. "Guests no longer need to carry their Target GiftCards in order to redeem them," it says in its release. "All that's needed is a mobile phone with Internet capabilities." The Minneapolis-based chain claims it is the first major retailer with the ability to scan mobile barcodes in all of its stores. 

While such announcements may seem arcane to mass marketers -- could there be that many smartphone users who also hate to carry their gift cards with them? -- m-commerce experts say it's more evidence of the growing clout of the phone shopper. "There's been such rapid growth in m-commerce in the last two years," Ben Rushlo, senior manager of Internet technologies at Keynote, based in San Mateo, Calif., tells Marketing Daily.

"So Target getting in front of consumers and saying, 'We're thinking about you smartphone users' is a good move, and one more way for it to position itself as trendy. We're about to see a new wave of adoption for this technology, reaching out to non-technologically savvy shoppers. At this point, even my parents are talking about getting an iPhone."

Still, there are major frustrations. Keynote, a mobile and Internet test and measurement company, recently ranked the performance of 10 big retailers' m-commerce sites over the holiday period, and found that most of them have a long way to go. "The best error rate we found was 2%," he says. "On an e-commerce site, that would be 0.5%. And in some cases, the error rate was much higher."

In addition, he says, some of the sites could take up to 30 seconds to load -- too long for anyone to put up with. Overall, Best Buy's m-commerce site performed the best, he says, followed by Foot Locker. "Target came in No. 4," he says, "much more middle-of-the road."

Target's m-commerce site already allows shoppers to view online assortments, check product availability, manage lists, browse weekly circulars and get text updates.

Compete's Smartphone Intelligence survey, released last month, says the introduction of new devices, like the Android, will fuel increases in sales. At this point, just 37% of smartphone owners have purchased something non-mobile with their handset in the past six months. Mostly, the survey found, they are using their smartphones to research purchases, checking sale prices at alternative or browsing consumer reviews.

Poorly performing sites, Rushlo says, may slow that growth. "Consumers on the Web are used to much faster times, and expect pages to load in a few seconds. Even the best mobile Web sites take two to three times that long."

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This past Super Bowl was the most-watched TV show of all time -- with 106.5 million average viewers. This has resulted in viewership records for Super Bowl commercials, as well.

The Nielsen Company now says the Doritos commercial featuring two men attacked in a gym for stealing someone else's Doritos was seen by an estimated 116.2 million viewers, which makes it the most-watched TV commercial of all time.

Audi's Green Police came in second with 115.6 million and Electronic Arts' Dante's Inferno spot came in third place at 115.0 million.

Focus on the Family's controversial ad featuring Tim Tebow tied for the least-viewed ad of Super Bowl XLIV, according to Nielsen. The commercial got heavy pre-game buzz going into the game. This coincides with what many social-networking analyses have revealed -- most of the attention for the campaign happened before the Super Bowl.

As for other spots, CBS's much-discussed 15-second promo for CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman," featuring cameo appearances by Jay Leno and Oprah Winfrey, was seen by an estimated 110.4 million viewers.

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With 400 million active users worldwide, it's hardly surprising that Facebook would be the best option for retailers trying to reach consumers via online social networking sites. More than half of all online shoppers use Facebook, and among those shoppers who engage in social media, 81% are on Facebook.

But according to a new study by ForeSee Results, which specializes in customer satisfaction research, only a quarter of the top 100 online retailers by sales volume have a formal Facebook presence, and another quarter have less than 10,000 fans.

"In other words, half of the top online retailers have a minimal to nonexistent Facebook presence," reads the study authored by Kevin Ertell, vice president of retail strategy at ForeSee. He suggests that this is a mistake, since far more people use social networks with retailers to learn about special offers (49%) and product information (45%) than, say, getting customer support (5%).

The findings underscore those of a social media study late last year from Razorfish, which concluded that special offers, more than "shared passions," drive engagement on social sites.

To that end, "Get a Facebook page!" exhorts ForeSee. "Make sure you have someone to monitor it and post good, timely information. Promote it to your most loyal customers through your regular communications venues (emails, ads, stores, coupons, etc.)."

Among chain retail brands, Starbucks in particular has used various promotions and deals to help make its Facebook page one of the most popular. As of Monday, it ranked No. 7 with 5.7 million fans, according to Inside Facebook's PageData site.

That doesn't mean marketers should focus on Facebook to the exclusion of other social media services. Its study, based on a survey of nearly 10,000 visitors to the 40 biggest U.S. retail sites, found 56% of shoppers at these online stores "friend," "follow" or "subscribe" to a retailer on a social networking site including Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. The video hub attracts 22% of online shoppers, MySpace, 15%; Twitter 11%, LinkedIn, 8%; and Flickr, 5%.

The best way to figure out how to market via social media, ForeSee advises, is to turn to customers themselves for guidance. "There's a lot about social media and online marketing initiatives that is really hard to figure out, but asking customers what they want from you is a great way to begin," wrote Ertell.

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Under a new feature, the Google TV Ads platform can now automatically provide an advertiser with a cost-benefit analysis for a direct-response ad. The system provides a spreadsheet that breaks down the cost-per-call an advertiser receives per spot.

The data is generated for ads that carry a Google-provided toll-free number. For example, a particular tagged spot on MSNBC might carry a total cost of about $80. If Google tracks six calls coming in the 15 minutes after air, the cost-per-call is about $13.

The data provides a guide for users of the auction-based TV Ads system to determine which networks, dayparts and programming might yield the better response rates. Ads that run on the Google system can air in homes served by Dish Network, as well as on some national cable networks.

Google is hoping the analysis will generate more interest in TV Ads from small-business owners that have never advertised on TV before -- a principal pitch it has made for the system since its inception.

Advertisers have been able to do cost-per-call calculations before, but the automated service takes some of the homework out of it.

"For small business owners, just sitting down and doing that math is taking time out of their day, and they'd rather be running their business. That's why we think the automation is a big (advantage)," said Steve Stukenborg, senior product manager at Google TV Ads.

Small-business types that don't have creative can use a Google production system to create ads with toll-free, 866 numbers attached. An advertiser might use multiple numbers, helping track which specific ads lead to the preferable cost-per-call rates.

For larger direct-response advertisers, Google has a partnership with CoreMedia Systems that allows for analytics and comparisons to other media buys.

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In what can only be described as a case of "hoppy trails," New Belgium Brewing Co. is this week launching Ranger India Pale Ale -- a hoppier-than-usual offering from the nation's third-largest craft brewer, and one that owes its inception (and its advertising "stars") to its road team, a/k/a sales force.

"The request to get something 'hoppy' into our portfolio came from our 'Beer Rangers,' which is our affectionate name for our sales force," reveals New Belgium director of public relations Bryan Simpson.

Consumer demand for hops-heavy brews is a well-established trend on the West Coast and a growing phenomenon elsewhere, but Belgian beers generally aren't hoppy -- leaving an untapped niche for Fort Collins, Colo.-based New Belgium, the "Rangers" pointed out, explains Simpson.

The name genesis of the new ale (an "IPA," in brewer terminology) is obvious. But the marketing campaign supporting its launch from Denver-based Cultivator Advertising & Design has some surprises, even for diehard New Belgium aficionados. Some might venture to term it entertainingly tongue-in-cheek, if not an outright barrel of laughs.

The campaign theme -- taglined "New Belgium Beer Ranger. To Protect. To Pour. To Partake" -- is being communicated in true integrated fashion ... one twist being the use of the brewer's own sales road warriors (male and female) as the "Beer Rangers" actually featured in the advertising.

Clad in scout-like tan-and-olive uniforms complete with wide-brimmed hats, kerchiefs and gaiters, the Rangers appearing in print ads, online, POS materials and funky on-premises promotions pull off that "mountie" attitude (in addition to being, presumably, cost-effective).

And they do so even as they're pictured standing next to fat-tired bikes, rather than the expected trusty equine partners -- the bikes that are a signature for the employee-owned brewer, reflecting its commitment to sustainable practices ranging from encouraging biking as a transportation mode to use of wind power to recycling/ reusing/composting 73% of its waste stream.

The Ranger IPA campaign is employing back covers and two-sided inserts (breaking in February) in national magazines including Rolling Stone, Outside, Wired, Bike and Dirt Rag as well as single pages in local weeklies across New Belgium's 26-state territory. That territory includes liquor and grocery stores and bars/restaurants in all states west of the Mississippi except Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah, plus Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia east of The Big Muddy.

According to Simpson, magazine/print ads are a fairly standard marketing component for New Belgium, which currently offers eight year-round craft brands (including Ranger) plus four regular seasonal releases and four special/more "challenging" releases (dubbed "Lips of Faith" varieties) each year.

Gung-ho account efforts by New Belgium's sales force are also de rigueur -- although enthusiasm borne of the Rangers' unusually direct roles in product inception/featured ad icons, plus strong initial retail reception, may be pumping up the volume, suggests Simpson, alluding to numerous blind comparison taste tests as one example.

On-premises events for patrons likewise aren't new for New Belgium (or pretty much any brewer or spirits distiller). But for Ranger IPA, the antics include real-live Rangers hitting the bars to deputize "honorary" Rangers willing to stick their heads through a cut-out hole in a life-size Beer Ranger canvas for a souvenir photo.

Ranger IPA's launch also features the first brand microsite launched by the now 19-year-old brewing company, which was started out of a home basement by Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan. (Jordan is the company's current CEO; Lebesch recently retired.)

The microsite (newbelgium.com/rangerland) spotlights a video starring real New Belgium sales Rangers jiving to a hip-hop theme -- a theme created by the Rangers themselves, according to Simpson. It also includes an invitation to friend New Belgium on Facebook, and a cut-and-paste Ranger Yourself"? function (your headshot on a Ranger body, uploaded to your wall). More practically, a locator tool points users toward the nearest places to find Ranger IPA.

"Our brands are obviously among our strongest assets, so we support them with significant marketing resources" while hewing to the brewer's hip, offbeat identity, says Simpson. Cases in point include brewery tours featuring storytelling (in addition to tastings) and the hotly contested "Skinny Dip for a Cause" contest (environmental groups vying for New Belgium online fans' votes to win a $10,000 brewer-sponsored grant).

New Belgium, which has annual sales exceeding $100 million, sold 573,000 barrels of beer across its brands last year, the company reports.

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After years of chronicling the human experience as a senior writer for People, Susan Schindehette is using her storytelling skills to connect philanthropic efforts to the world's needy via her MiWorld portal.

Schindehette wants the newly launched site to humanize the links between large corporations and nonprofit organizations and the beneficiaries of their good deeds. Companies can highlight and leverage their altruism -- from providing school supplies, food and clothing to donating free shipping and transportation. MiWorld will augment the work of major news reporting and assistance agencies by injecting a human element into the process.

"As we've seen in a catastrophe of the magnitude in Haiti, individual human storytelling is still the best way to convey the reality of what's going on and stir action," Schindehette says.

"We want to let people from all around the world see and hear each other as individuals -- including the three to 5 billion people in the developing world whose names and compelling stories seldom appear in newspapers, magazines, television or the Internet," she says.

To remain viable, MiWorld is targeting paid advertising partnerships as its primary revenue stream. They will allow corporations to make their wholesale goods and services available for "one-click." Partners will benefit, she says, from direct sales revenue as well as a presence in emerging markets and favorable socially conscious brand positioning.

Cisco, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, the VII Photo Agency, the Acumen Fund, the Skoll Foundation and the Gates Foundation have expressed initial interest in MiWorld, says Schindehette, who has been presenting her plans at various conferences, such as the Clinton Global Initiative.

Although she calls MiWorld a hybrid -- "not for MY profit" -- business model, it hopes to tap some of the $220 billion in annual charitable giving in the U.S. that has been strained by the economic recession. Schindehette is seeking $2.5 million in start-up funds from a philanthropic consortium and has outsourced MiWorld's IT operations to Blue State Digital, architects of candidate Obama's Internet fund-raising operation.

For now, MiWorld functions thanks to Schindehette, who has invested more than $50,000 of her own money to establish the MiWorld site as a story-driven interface between those who provide and receive assistance. It chronicles a trip that Schindehette and a team of volunteers made to Guatemala last year. Images were captured on site using MiWorld-branded Flip Mino digital recorders that work independent of any country's technical infrastructure.

Schindehette also has created modules using photos and text from friends demonstrating how MiWorld outreach would work in places such as Peru, Kenya and Pakistan.

Although the field of multimedia social outreach is getting crowded, she considers MiWorld's approach unique; a kind of global People online for the common good. Entertainer Bill Cosby and Northern Virginia philanthropist Earl Stafford recently announced a new Internet-based effort encouraging Americans to volunteer by showcasing good deeds. Volunteer and donation information is available on the Doing Good: The People's Project on The Stafford Foundation Web site.

"Haiti is going to be in trouble for a long time. Sooner or later, we'll see a wave of "disaster fatigue" on the part of the public. That's why we need MiWorld -- to present not just horrific stories of disaster, but to continue to tell remarkable stories of ordinary people who will somehow manage to survive and rebuild," she says.

"Imagine a fifth-grade class in the U.S. using MiWorld.com to partner on projects with a grade-school class in Africa or China. Imagine the power of bringing those people and their stories together, supported by organizations with the resources to help," adds Schindehette.

"It's our job to make the world a little smaller, one story at a time."

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Based on the comments of Federal Trade Commission officials and panelists at Jan. 28's FTC roundtable on privacy issues, the commission's core focus lies in identifying and addressing disparities between consumer expectations and marketer practices.

That is the assessment of Reed Freeman, partner in the Washington, D.C.-based legal firm Morrison & Foerster, who represents clients in FTC and state consumer protection investigations and negotiations.

The agenda for this second of three FTC roundtables on privacy was designed to explore both how evolving technology can be used to compromise consumers' privacy and how it can be used to enhance privacy. This seems to indicate that the current commission does not view technology itself as being either "good or bad," but instead recognizes that "it's how it's used that can be good or bad," observes Freeman.

The remarks and discussions also appeared to confirm that the current commission is seeking a more "holistic" privacy framework that allows for addressing areas where businesses' consumer data practices diverge from what consumers would reasonably expect. David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, indicated that the commission believes that while consumers care deeply about privacy, they have little understanding of commercial data collection, sharing and distribution practices, Freeman points out.

FTC leadership in place during the last two administrations focused, respectively, on "notice and choice" and "harms-based" approaches, Freeman explains. The "notice and choice" concept resulted in the FTC strongly encouraging businesses to create privacy policies that clearly inform consumers about their data practices and to then ensure that they adhered to their policies. The "harms-based" concept resulted in the FTC focusing its resources on addressing practices deemed to present the most potential harm to the greatest number of consumers -- a focus that led to the creation of trade regulation rules such as the "Do Not Call" list and the CAN-SPAM Act.

The current commission "may not throw the babies out with the bath water," but is looking for a more complete solution for consumer privacy -- hence its emphasis on identifying and addressing consumer expectations/practices gaps, says Freeman.

Freeman offers examples of the types of areas where such gaps might be deemed to exist, such as an online retailer sharing data supplied for a purchase transaction with other marketers, who then send commercial emails to the consumer without notice.

A company that does not comply when a consumer opts out of receiving its emails is both violating the law and failing to meet consumer expectations, Freeman adds. And the first FTC privacy roundtable focused to a large degree on exploring the implications of "behavioral" advertising, indicating that this is one of the areas being assessed, he notes.

During last week's roundtable, commission officials also made it clear that in addition to using these forums and other means to gather the information needed to issue its report on privacy issues (due out in June or July), it will be actively investigating and taking enforcement actions in more privacy cases.

For marketers, the core questions about the FTC's report include what form it will take, as well as the specific recommendations or directives made, says Freeman. The commission could opt to issue either a staff report or an FTC report detailing what actions it believes it can take under the scope of its existing authority and spell out which practices require no consumer notice (because consumers expect them), which require notice and an opt-out, and which are flatly prohibited (even with notice/consent).

Or the FTC could send a report to Congress asking that Congress pass the FTC Improvements Act, perhaps also asking that the Act be amended to instruct the FTC to create a new privacy trade regulation rule.

The commission has the authority to create such rules (which carry the force of law), but might seek Congressional backing to "have the wind at its back," says Freeman -- particularly if it decided to address an area such as use of behavioral data for marketing/ advertising purposes, which could have significant and possibly unintended consequences for Web content providers, as well as advertisers.

The FTC Improvements Act -- which was passed by the House and is now pending consideration by the Senate Commerce Committee -- would give the FTC substantially more authority, including the ability to seek civil penalties from the courts in Section 5 (unfair/deceptive practices) privacy cases, Freeman says.

Currently, the FTC can ask courts to order companies to cease illegal privacy practices and require them to compensate victims for harm caused by privacy violations -- but quantifying the harm created by privacy violations is problematic, he explains. The ability to seek civil penalties would provide the FTC with a more practical, forceful deterrent.

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