How Much Do Apple, Google, Amazon Spend on Advertising?

Last year, U.S. tech company advertisers continued to increase ad and promo spending billions of dollars, so much so that Google, Amazon and Apple are listed among the six companies with the highest ad-spending growth rates.

Hey, wait a minute, what are these companies spending their money on?

The money is going into unmeasured spending like search marketing, online videos, social media, promotion and direction marketing

Let’s take a look at this awesome infographic made by Muhammad Saleem telling us about how Tech and Advertising spends are increasing and where the money is going

[via OnlineBusinessDegree.org]

Tags: Amazon Advertising, Apple Advertising, Google Advertising

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

Twitter refines advertising services with ‘interest targeting’

Twitter has introduced ad target based on is user's interests in an attempt to lure more advertisers.

Today, Twitter has launched its own targeted advertising, which offers advertisers the option to target Twitter users’ specific ‘topical interests.’ The move puts Twitter a step closer to similar offerings from Facebook and Google.

Twitter offers the majority of its advertiser one of two advertising options: Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Promoted Tweets highlight an advertiser’s tweets and displays them prominently on a Twitter user’s feed. Promoted Accounts are featured at the top of “Who to follow,” on the left of their homepage. Initially, targeted ads on Twitter were all-encompassing through geography and devices. Targeting more specific categories wasn’t much of an option. But now Twitter offers two “flavors” of interest targeting.

The first can refine an advertiser’s efforts with its Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts campaign by targeting more than 350 interest categories in a two-tier hierarchy. For example, advertisers can select individual genres of entertainment from the broader “Movies and Television” category, which you can see in the example below.

In its second option of interest targeting, advertisers can target certain types of Twitter users based on the @usernames that are relevant to the advertiser’s campaign.  Twitter explains this feature in a blog post: “If you’re promoting your indie band’s next tour, you can create a custom audience by adding @usernames of related bands, thus targeting users with the same taste in music.” 

To further sweeten the pot, Twitter has lowered the minimum bid for ad runs to just a single penny, which will likely lure in a large number of smaller advertisers that might not have otherwise opted to promote their product or service on the microblogging platform.

To a degree, Twitter’s advertising services are nearing closer and closer to what Facebook has been offering all along. Even Twitter’s second flavor of interest targeting by usernames is reminiscent of Facebook’s sponsored results. Facebook advertisers can include their Facebook app or pages in the search results of its competitors by bidding for pages, apps, or places. With over 140 million monthly active Twitter users, and projected advertising revenue to reach $399.5 million by 2013, it’s still a far cry from the revised projection of $5.48 billion Facebook is expected to generate by next year. But the rate of its growth is indicative of the realization that Facebook’s ad revenue growth is leveling out, unlike Twitter’s hastening ad revenue growth. Facebook’s ad revenue is forecasted to grow 29.5 percent between 2012 and 2013, while Twitter’s ad revenue is expected to grow by 55 percent during the same period.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

That’s not the real me: How vanity sabotages Facebook advertising

When the elaborate self-portrait known as a Facebook profile seldom resembles the real thing, can advertisers really reach the right people?

I’m not the real me on Facebook.

“Facebook Louie” records music, cofounded a record label, and is friends with notable musicians, producers, and visual artists. “Facebook Louie” is kind of cool, and, when he heard from at all, confines his views to the least controversial of topics.

The person writing this column is not “Facebook Louie,” it’s the Louie that has invested at least 150 hours into Diablo 3 (as nerdy as that might be), and adores The Real World/Road Rules Challenge (as embarrassing as that is). This “Authentic Louie” is less cool, but more real.

None of us are our authentic, honest selves on Facebook. We censor things which are embarrassing and which disagree with the personas we have constructed there. Social science agrees with me (well, two theories do, at least). That could be bad news for Facebook.

You vs. you

The sheer amount of information we pour into social networks like Facebook might make them seem like ideal advertising platforms, but they’re actually at an odd disadvantage in some ways: Facebook’s public nature makes us behave more like characters and less like our authentic selves. In that regard, Facebook has less accurate information about us than competitors like Google. That means that Facebook ads are often less relevant to us, and, therefore, less valuable to advertisers – a serious problem for a company that rakes in all of its revenue from targeted advertising.

All the world’s a stage

A theatrical metaphor developed by Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman is useful for understanding our behavior on Facebook. First put forth in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman offered the following description of his dramaturgical theory of communication in his later work, Frame Analysis.

I am suggesting that often what talkers undertake to do is not to provide information to a recipient, but to present dramas to an audience. Indeed, it seems that we spend most of our time not engaged in giving information, but in giving shows.

According to Goffman’s theory, when communicating we adopt a role suitable to our environment and capable of achieving our goals. We are actors on a stage. Shakespeare, as ever, proves prescient.

This model describes my activities on Facebook with uncanny accuracy. My goal on Facebook is to cultivate new and strengthen existing social connections. Many of those connections are within Portland’s music scene (a word particularly apt to the metaphor), so I portray myself in a way that fits that scene and my goals within it. This means leaving some things — Diablo 3, for example — out of that portrayal.

Because of Facebook’s interpersonal nature, the version of self I reveal there will never be as complete as my portrayal when using Google search. It is unlikely that my Google search habits will become publicly known, so I don’t give censorship a second thought. Google knows about my love-hate relationship with Diablo 3. Facebook does not, because this trait does not fit the role I portray there.

Absent self-censorship, the information I reveal indirectly via Google search paints a more complete picture of me than what I disclose directly via Facebook. This is one reason that Google Adwords can be a better product than Facebook’s ads. Google knows more about me, and can therefore offer better targeting data to its advertisers.

Sex, drugs, and reality TV

Role-based censorship is just one of the ways that we limit the depictions of ourselves on Facebook. We may censor ourselves just as much or more when it comes to topics we find private or embarrassing.

Drawing on research dating back to the mid-1950′s, Robert J. Fisher writes of this bias in the introduction to Social Desirability Bias and the Validity of Indirect Questioning.

Unfortunately, the basic human tendency to present oneself in the best possible light can significantly distort the information gained from self-reports. … The result is data that are systematically biased toward respondents’ perceptions of what is “correct” or socially acceptable.

Questions about sexual behavior or illicit drug use often return skewed results, as research subjects will seek to avoid disparaging or incriminating responses.

Because Facebook is a public medium based largely on self reporting through status updates and other posts, it’s susceptible to the same bias. Therefore, it will see fewer posts relating to subjects traditionally biased against, like sex and drugs. Because we all want to be cool, there will be more posts about subjects not traditionally biased against.

For example, I am a recent devotee of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge. I’m ashamed to admit it, but Johnny Bananas’ epic season 16 performance hooked me. The Challenge might actually be my favorite show. However, you will see no mention of it on my Facebook profile. Why? Well, what would people think, if they knew? Suddenly I’m “reality TV guy.” Who wants to be “reality TV guy?”

There are sites out there that know my secret. Google, because my general research about the show, and Amazon, from whom I can purchase full seasons of the show. Once again, Facebook’s competitors have more information about me due to my tendency to reveal more information indirectly than directly. Google and Amazon can target ads based on those details. Facebook cannot.

Facebook’s problem

Of course, Facebook has problems beyond these, not least of which the astronomical expectations for the service at the time of its IPO. Facebook’s ads must improve if it is to meet those expectations. There are two ways that it can do so. The first is to roll out new products from which it can yield new sources of targeting data. The service’s rumored “Want” button may be the most significant step in this direction.

The second way Facebook can improve its targeting data is much more difficult, and challenges the two communications theories outlined above. Facebook needs us to share more honestly — even when we find that sharing out-of-sync with who we pretend to be, or when that sharing reveals embarrassing things.

However, it remains to be seen if the information we give Facebook voluntarily will ever equal the value of the information we give its competitors involuntarily. Facebook certainly has the ambition to change our behavior. The future of the company may depend on whether it is successful.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

In the secret war against data brokers, only the quiet survive

Unaware to many consumers, data brokers are selling your personally identifiable information to offline advertisers.

Advertising may be a necessary evil for those of us that would rather not pay to use Facebook and Twitter, but trading privacy for free services has proven a double-edged sword. Since the introduction of targeted advertising, many users have garnered the impression that advertisers are granted access to their interests. Looking under the hood, you’ll actually find that Facebook and Google advertisers are not privy to personal details about individual users. But there is a far more nefarious advertising practice that has managed to keep its distance from the public’s eye.

Between social networks and the advertisers they serve lie “data brokers,” third parties that buy and sell detailed information about you to advertisers. Where you live, how much you paid for your house, who you’re related to, your hobbies and interests, and just about every detail these corporations can learn about your life is fair game.

“Typically with online advertising, it’s not about the individual. It’s rather about the demographic. [Data brokering] is about the individual, where they’re sending a catalogue to their house and finding that specific person as opposed to an online profile,” says Robert Leshner, CEO and co-founder of Safe Shepherd, a private data removal service.

Companies like Acxiom will compile and sell that information to marketers by scouring through public records, purchasing cookies, and scraping data from social-network profiles. Here, the privacy settings that you set on your social network profiles become important. Individuals who don’t control their privacy settings and social networks will often times find that their information can be found in far more databases than those who control their privacy settings. Coupling your online social data and habits with public records is a goldmine for data brokers, and a Pandora’s box for advertisers.

“Knowing that you bought a house for $200,000 is valuable for advertisers, but knowing that you bought a house for $200,000 and love motorcycles is even more valuable,” Leshner explained.

The scale of Acxiom’s database, which was the subject of a New York Times article, is massive. Acxiom has already collated a database of 500 million people and 1,500 data points per person, yet fewer than 100 people per year will request a data report.

Leshner says that most of this information is sold to offline businesses to be used offline, and not online. If you’ve received junk mail from banks, automakers, or on occasion a “Happy Birthday” gift card with a free “gift” from a company like Gillette, it’s an indication that advertisers know more about your life than you’d like to reveal.

For those of you worried about the transparency of your information, Safe Shepherd’s service, for free or a small fee depending on the thoroughness, can opt you out of marketing databases or prevent your personal information from being included in deals with advertisers. At the moment, however, Safe Shepherd can only opt out users from the “worst offender” databases. With the innumerable marketing services competing with Acxiom to appease data-hungry advertisers, an untold number of smaller firms already exist, not to mention that opting your information out is a never-ending game of cat and mouse.

The data-brokering industry has flown below the radar, but its non-transparency with consumer data has caught the Federal Trade Commission’s eye. Consumers who request a report on themselves are not offered the complete data that brokers would sell to advertisers, but it’s a practice that the FTC would like to regulate. “Consumers should have access to all the details that data brokers collect on them, as well as any analyses that the companies sell about their behavior,” Julie Brill of the Federal Trade Commission told the New York Times. Not surprisingly, these data brokers are lobbying for self regulation.

But as technology grows more sophisticated, so do a data broker’s practices. These days, as Leshner explains to Digital Trends, the data broker’s efforts have shifted to the development of mobile applications. “The trend that we’re seeing right now is that many data broker companies like MyLife and Intellius are launching their own apps with very little value proposition, simply to collect personal information of its users,” Lesher said.These apps require you to sign up with Facebook or Twitter, granting the app developers access to your newsfeed, posts, work history and other information.

If there’s an indicator for the consumer’s awareness about their privacy, Safe Shepherd is it. Safe Shepherd, founded by Geoff Hayes and Robert Leshner in August 2011, saw a significant number of new users and subscribers just in the past six months. Leshner declined to specify the number of subscribers, but its user base totals approximately 50,000 users to date.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com