The Digital Marketing Blog

San Francisco: Taking advantage of the trip to San Francisco to attend Ad-Tech SF, we coordinated a series of meetings with the main publishers and advertisers of the US West Coast. In this case with MySpace.

The purpose of the breakfast was to increase the business that we already have for more that a year, in which we are monetizing the Lating American inventory of MySpace with Directa Networks (specially now that the will launch their Spanish version for LATAM and the US-Hispanic version) and mainly to add MySpace as a official media in which we can use the Behavioral Targeting skill of Directa Networks to serve in the English content of the site, Spanish creatives to the USH users database. In reference to this last point I was surprised by several things:

Firstly, being Mark Papia, current Vice President- Performance Marketing, Fox Interactive Media, an eminence in network optimization, with an impressive career that includes a previous job in Yahoo, Monster and with more than 20 years of experience in media in the east coast as well as in the west coast in the present, I was surprised that at the beginning he thought that it was inappropriate from the user experience point of view, to have English content with advertising in Spanish. Besides all my explanation about the cultural relevance and the respect to the roots that the dialogue from a brand in the native language can provide to a US- Hispanic, what surprised me the most was the market research that the carried out to make a decision.
And this was to interview our waitress, first he asked her if she spoke Spanish, her answer was yes, then he asked her if she surfed on the Internet and her answer was affirmative as well, later if she knew or had an account in MySpace and she also answered yes “of course”. And at last he asked what she thought about surfing with a content in English and Spanish Advertising. Fortunately her answer was that even she didn’t like advertising of any kind on the Internet, she thought that it would be nice to see advertising in Spanish and that it would be a way of being taken into account as a user.

Finally Mark was delighted with the answer from the waitress, who was very attentive and kindly participated.  Thanks to this meeting, besides increasing our business with FIM, today we can run Behavioral Targeting campaigns and retargeting of Directa Networks in MySpace and we are responsible of checking creatives in Spanish that are uploaded to this content. Even though I knew who I was meeting and we had talked several times I couldn’t help being surprised by the analysis capacity, experience and charisma of Mark.
 

I believe that the 25% tip that I left to the waitress.
 

US-Hispanic market is one of the fastest growing segments and whose purchase power today represents 8.5% of US total, and will reach 11% by 2010.

Taking into account that the Latin population represents 14% of the adult population of US  and that more than half (56%) of this growing segment is online, Internet comes as a natural media where marketing people can find this audience, and there is a higher penetration of the Internet when the social economic status is higher as well as the education level.

Those users, principally the ones that are the second and third generation are bilingual, and surf firstly contents in English (because of works or the news) and secondly in Spanish mainly for entertainment.
Usually the first way that an advertiser has to reach this segment through a network, is by using GEO Target (IP USA) that allows to show a creative only to the users that are in USA combining the origin (IP-USA) with sites with content in Spanish (no matter where the publisher is located), which are commonly Latin America portals because they are the ones who concentrate the highest percentage of content in Spanish.

A second method that adnetworks have to find this segment is through the browser language they use. When the language is Spanish and it is in USA (user IP is from USA) it is assumed that the surfer is US-Hispanic.

The problem with this method is that most of US-Hispanic buy their PC with pre installed software and most of the time is in English. For those that are bilingual this point is not very relevant. Only the ones from the first generation, who prefer the software in Spanish and don’t want to add a language barrier to the complex technology, are going to be the ones contacted through this segmentation.

Unfortunately this market niche (1^st generation) within the US-Hispanic is the least attractive one in terms of purchase power.
A more sophisticated segmentation comes from the use of Behavioral Targeting where at the beginning the recurring surfing behavior is detected in sites with Spanish content within the network. Each user interaction is anonymously labelled with a pixel that leaves a cookie with this behavior.

Then from this behavioral base you can show advertising in Spanish on sites with English content only to the target audience.

The effect of Spanish language personalization in an english content context, adds advertising and cultural relevance, giving the campaign an additional ingredient of emotional “engage” through the media that is shown.

For example, a person that usually reads soccer news following the “America Cup” in Spanish sites like the sport newspaper Ole or the Mexican newspaper La jornada.com.mx , advertiser of telephone communications would be able to contact the user in Spanish when he is surfing sites such us MySpace.com or Hi5.com within the spaces assigned to DirectaNetworks.

To sum up the use of Behavioral Targeting to reach US-Hispanic adds value to all players.

• The advertiser obtains new ad space where he is able to reach with a more relevant cultural message and with a higher knowledge of the target and therefore better results.
  
• The Publisher achieves, through a better knowledge of the audience more conversions with fewer inventories, which implies a real appreciation by the advertiser in terms of conversion and in the case of inventory at dynamic prices such as DCPM, an instant higher income.
  
• The user reduces irrelevant advertising and gets only cultural relevant advertising that generates and “engage” with his traditions and respect the values of his culture.
  
• And lastly the network contributes with an additional value to the commercialization.
  

Directa Networks video in YouTube went over the million views in three months after launching and it is one of the most viewed video in its category.

This was born as an experiment about what we could do with this new media and to explore other viral marketing options. Right now it went over the boldest expectations that we could have, being even linked from Japanese sites.

It is very clear that it is very complicated to forecast what will happen, who will be the target receiving the material, its impact and the public response, but on the other hand: How much are 1,000,000 spectators in an 8-minute spot (not 30 seconds) on open television? 

 As the “Argentinean philosopher” Carlitos Bala used to say, you show movement by going, so Let’s Go!

This is our humble contribution to viral marketing. The best way to learn is by doing, measuring, testing, correcting and trying again.Our try outs start with the following:
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQno94rSsw

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5PRmMqsrFA

 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2p2FkSg9Hs
 I hope you like them.

This blog appears as a need to express the new way we are doing marketing today.
Marketing as any other discipline immersed in the world today, is going through a transversal transformation process that covers all the areas.
Today we are living what many authors forecasted as a deep and disruptive change in the world, generated by information and knowledge appreciation and depreciation of the traditional assets such as commodities, even capital itself. From management authors like Peter Druker or visionaries like Alvin Toffler to science fiction ones like William Gibson have tried to imagine what those changes we are living today would be like. Technology originated all these changes, but they are not about technology, reading a book has very little to do with the technology that generated it (printing) and impacts in all the areas.
Well, we don’t have to imagine anymore, as an Argentinean contemporary, “ricotero”* , philosopher used to say “the future arrived long time ago”
We live in a world where recipes from the past are not effective anymore, where brands need to discover a new way to communicate and to do business, and there is no other way than the way people do it between themselves. But these people are not the same as before and their habits are not the same either.
We are in front of a new way of doing things, and inside marketing, the new way of doing marketing is called marketing 2.0 (mktg2.0). And it is no other than speaking to clients, listening to them and providing them with what they like, what they want and what generates value. And here the important word is DIALOGUE and not speech or broadcasting, going back to the basis of the communication theory and generating communication with all the tools that are available today.
In this blog we will analyze the different factors why recipes from the past don’t work anymore. Some of them are:

• Media fragmentation
• They way the media is consumed
• Consumer bigger control
• The new role of the consumer turned into prosumer
• Higher broadband use and the consequences in people’s habits
• A new business model based in “Long Tail” instead of the Paretto Law
• Apophenia: making connections where none previously existed
• Differences between webeconomy and traditional economy

We focus on digital marketing because it is the engine of the changes in this new marketing 2.0. This is because direct marketing own economy allows us to try with little cost, analyse the results and optimize, and try again obtaining better results and generating a knowledge about what works and what doesn’t.
When we talk about Digital, Interactive Marketing or Marketing 2.0, we refer to a group of disciplines that allows us to reach the potential client, create and develop brands and talk and serve the client. These disciplines include and are not limited to:

• Mobile marketing
• Rich media
• Blogs
• Rss
• Advergaming
• Display ads
• Marketing viral
• Tv interactive
• Marketing in search engines

The writers of this blog hope that with these “syndic contents” you can find room for dialogue and thinking so between all of us we get to understand what is happening around us and how this impact the way we do business and relate to our clients.
We know that our proposal is not easy, that’s why we need your help to achieve this and what we need from you is feedback and constructive criticism.
Thanks a million,
Ariel
*Translator note: Ricotero comes from a famous Argentinean band called Redonditos de Ricota, the author refers to its singer.