The effectiveness of social network advertising was the topic of a recent survey by the Massachusetts-based consumer brand marketing firm, Prospectiv. The results of the Prospective findings revealed consumer opinions on such ads.

Their poll of nearly 800 users of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5 and others reveals that 87% surveyed feel that very few (58%) or none (29%) of the ads and offers they’re currently seeing on social networking sites match their specific interests and preferences.

Additional findings indicate that, despite much debate about the acceptance of advertisements on social networks, 56% polled said the quality of their online experience would be improved if social networking sites provided more targeted advertisements and offers tailored to their specific interests and preferences.

1. What Consumers Want From Advertisements
According to the survey, consumers said the types of tailored ads and offers they would respond to are:

*One-off coupons and discount offers from the brands and products they buy (62%)
*E-newsletters featuring coupons, discounts, news and tips about favorite brands (24%)
*Invitations to join interactive email groups, online forums and social networks for sharing and communicating (14%)

2. Consumer Opinions of Current Advertisements
Prospectiv’s poll results show that although members of social networking sites are open to receiving offers and promotions from marketers, the majority of the advertisements currently on social networks are not speaking to their needs, preferences or specific interests. The survey has shown:

*Very few ads match consumers’ interests and preferences (58%)
*None of the ads match consumers’ interests and preferences (29%)
*Most ads match consumers’ interests and preferences (13%)

Because ads are not matching consumers’ interests, consumers are not clicking on them. The survey has shown that more than half (54%) of consumers never click on advertisements on social networks, 39% of consumers occasionally will respond to ads and only 7% will often respond to ads.

Additionally, 85% of consumers said they are more likely to join a free social networking site supported by advertisements and offers targeted to their interests rather than a paid social networking site without commercial advertisements.

According to CEO Jere Doyle: “These poll results clarify that members of social networking sites are open to offers and promotions as long as they are targeted to their interests. The next step for the web publishing industry seeking to monetize their online communities is to improve ad relevance, and the best way to do this is to work with online lead generation providers and ad networks that have the brand relationships, technologies and services to ensure that the ads presented are tailored to their audience’s needs and wants.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Web-based ad firm Spot Runner received $51 million in financing from Grupo Televisa and other international media companies. Is this clear evidence that even global advertisers are interested in local online video ads?

The evidence is promising. In addition to Grupo Televisa the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world new investors include luxury goods maker Groupe Arnault/LVMH, Legg Mason Capital Management and Daily Mail & General Trust.

National companies also use Spot Runner. Coldwell Banker advertises local home listings, and Diamond Trading Co.’s “A Diamond is Forever” campaign promotes local jewelers. The ability to target locally appeals to many larger businesses, including Northcliffe Media, the regional arm of the Daily Mail & General Trust that’s responsible for publishing newspapers and websites across Britain.

Spot Runner said the partnership with Grupo Televisa brings a new category of advertisers into the market. Spot Runner’s relationship with luxury products maker Group Arnault/LVMH will help the company target its advertising and “put the right brands in front of the right customers with the right message.
The new investments bring Spot Runner’s total funding to $111 million. Previous investors include media and advertising giants CBS Corp., WPP and Interpublic Group of Cos., investment bank Allen & Co. and Lachlan Murdoch.

Spot Runner employs approximately 300 people throughout the U.S., Canada, and India, and has already expanded into radio and Internet advertising. It plans to use the money to build technology platforms to help it expand in the U.S. and abroad.

Political campaigns have also jumped on board, the article added. Spot Runner has created local TV ads for dozens of politicians across the US.

There is so much buzz of mobile these days, and a lot of promising predictions for the future. But mobile advertising is in need of some monitoring, according to a recent report by Hiloa. The industry, it seems, needs to find better ways of analyzing traffic on the mobile Web and measuring the effectiveness of wireless ad campaigns.

A small audience, coupled with the lack of critical mass of educated advertisers able to measure return on investment, will hold back mobile media’s potential in the midterm, according to a report released by JupiterResearch.

Mobile advertising is destined to be a multi-billion euro industry, said JupiterResearch President David Schatsky. But the maturation of this industry could take a decade. Advertisers tend to be slow to reaction to consumers changing behaviors and will need more than encouraging trials and early click-through rates to begin to invest massively in this nascent medium.

The challenges in mobile are so tangled that even is struggling to compile accurate information. Google AdWords leverages technologies such as JavaScript and cookies that are relatively uncommon in mobile.

Without JavaScript and cookies, the vast majority of conversions resulting from AdWords on mobile devices will go undetected, the London-based search engine marketing agency AccuraCast also noted. This is a serious issue, as it implies that the ROI calculations on many mobile advertisers make for their campaigns will be far from the actual figures. Not only is this a serious problem for Google, who has traditionally bragged about the exceptional accountability and reporting capabilities of its advertising platform, but it is also one that cannot be solved by the search giant.

The inability to accurately measure the effectiveness of mobile ad campaigns was the source of much of the activity at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain last February.

Nokia Corp. made its long-awaited mobile advertising play by introducing Media Network, an alliance of more than 70 publishers and operators including Sprint Nextel Corp., Discovery, Heart and Reuters, the Hiloa article stated. The network, which claims a potential reach of 100 million mobile consumers, leverages analytics technology from Enpocket, a Boston-based startup acquired by Nokia for an undisclosed sum last year.

In addition, five European carriers formed a working group to develop common measurement standards for wireless marketing campaigns. GSM Association members Vodafone Group plc, Telefonica O2 Europe, T-Mobile International and Orange aim to work with advertising industry associations to develop a range of metrics to describe the mobile audience and measure the effectiveness of wireless ads.

Comverse launched a mobile ad solution that comprises an ad server, ad-targeting engine, data collectors and a campaign management component as well as a comprehensive billing and reporting tools.

A lot of others are working to create analytics for mobile ads as well. There is Millennial Media and Third Screen Media, which have built solutions that attempt to build user profiles, monitor consumers behavior and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns on their advertising platforms. There is also Bango, a UK-based wireless firm that specializes in off-deck activity, which recently joined the field with a hosted service that counts the number of unique visitors to sites and determines the type of phone being used and the language and country of the user.

Millennial has a very good product; they can give you terrific analytics about how their marketing channel works. So can Google, so can AdMob. But what they can’t do is compare that to each other, said Bango’s Anil Malhotra. One of the challenges of the mobile marketplace is that it is fragmented. We actually think that because of the big footprint we’ve got, we’re in a position to become the standard.

Last Monday, April 28, VideoBloom completed an index of Nasdaq companies that have video on their websites. The findings from VideoBloom’s Video-Enabled Web Index (or VIEW Index) report that 48% of NASDAQ 100 companies have online video on their Web site; 52% do not offer any Web video.

Many of the companies that do not have online video are in the pharmaceutical, semi-conductor and computer hardware industries, while the media, Internet, games and software industries feature Internet video prominently.

Among the 48 companies that have Web video on their Web site, there is a variance in the number of clicks it takes to get from their home page to the online video (8 companies showcase video on their home page). 16 companies have Internet video one click away, 10 companies take two clicks to find the online video and 22 require three clicks or more.

It becomes apparent that the bigger the company, the stronger the likelihood they will use video. Today, the larger companies’ online video use tends to be more sophisticated and prominent but the smaller companies’ Web sites are catching up and becoming more video-enabled.

Here are some additional findings from the report:

* 26% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video, etc.

* 12% have built a sophisticated video center, i.e. a video management system geared towards end-users.

* 7% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
* 10% display video ads for their products in the site; 5% display video ads on their home page.

* 7% offer a full-fledged video center comparable to a corporate TV channel.

* 15% offer a full-screen video option.

* 24% open video in a new browser Web page.

* 4% use a pop-up window to display video.
* 3% display online video with a closed captions options.

* Video formats: 34 companies use Flash video, 28 use Windows Media Player, 8 use QuickTime, 7 use Real Player

Now that Google has begun offering more ways by which users can search within a particular site, certain retailers and publishers aren’t too happy. The company’s new (though controversial) search-within-search feature lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites. The search box appears when a user enters the name of certain Web addresses or company names, rather than entering a broad, general request.

The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the Web site in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site.

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand, an article in the New York Times stated. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Analysts generally praise the feature as helping users save steps, but for Web publishers and retailers, there are trade-offs. While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies, the article added.

Google’s aggressiveness, according to some analysts, ignores a user’s desire to reach a specific destination and it costs those Web sites visitors. But Google said it did not receive many complaints directly from companies, but some search-engine specialists were quick to pounce when the company announced its service.

Eventually this could be a huge problem if Google starts throwing this out there to all brands, said Pinny Gniwisch, vice president for marketing of Ice.com, an online jeweler. This is essentially giving the customer a way to leave a search for your site.

On the other hand, Donna Hoffman, co-director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at the University of California Riverside, predicted that Internet users will really like this because it’s probably a better way to search a site than going to the sites themselves. But as consumers appreciate this more, there’ll be more and more outcry from companies.

The general sentiment of these companies seems to be: Why advertise on other sites when I could just advertise on Google? The new Google service, some say, also diminishes a Web publisher’s role in helping users find potentially useful content.

According to a Google spokeswoman, the feature is currently available for an undisclosed but relatively small number of sites, and appeared when Google detected a high probability that a user wanted more refined search results within a specific site. While Google has not received much negative feedback on the service, she said, the company could change it in the future.