Thursday, March 3, 2011

Online Marketing Demystified!!!

I consider digital media as the greenest and the most effective one in this era. Apart from the concepts of core customisation or “prosumerism”, it is the available with the subject whenever he or she wants to, i.e. 24 by 7. In short it has even nullified time and space and have added another dimension to our lives. Infact I found it very mean, when people calls this as a virtual medium... Though it is intangible, it is real as it directly impacts our life and that too in our own declared space. And as Zaeem Sir rightly pronounced... it is going to be the biggest media power ever!!!
The core idea being customisation, target precision, free content and idea generation and participation of all and sundry, towards an ever growing network which believes in its potency and scope.

I am apologetic to have missed the first day’s class, but I heard that it was equally enriching as the last day. The little which I came to know of the first two sessions were that Zaeem Sir spoke at length about the evolution of the online medium as a platform to advertise and sell and how it has grown along with the consumers in the digital space, with the induction of fresher techniques day in and day out-- from normal pop ups and balloons to interstitials, from hyperlinked images to cool flash movies and from knowledge dissemination portals to knowledge sharing cum generation portals, more so with its integration to the powerhouses of social networks. This brings me to the most important part of the second day’s lecture, the emergence of social media networks as the most promising arena for marketers/advertisers.
Google with its wonderful application of Adwords demystifies the complexity of online marketing. AdWords is Google's main advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. This has empowered the marketers and brand managers to target the right TG at the right time with the right message, with minimal cost w.r.t. the other media.

Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences, and Google places the ads on what they see as relevant sites within their content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers may bid on a CPM or CPC basis for site targeting.
With Placement Targeting, it is possible for an ad to take up the entire ad block rather than have the ad block split into 2 to 4 ads, resulting in higher visibility for the advertiser.
The minimum cost-per-thousand impressions bid for placement targeted campaigns is 25 cents (US). There is no minimum CPC bid, however.

Frequency Capping limits the number of times ads appear to the same unique user on the Google Content Network. It doesn't apply to the Search Network. If frequency capping is enabled for a campaign, a limit must be specified as to the number of impressions allowed per day, week, or month for an individual user. The cap can be configured to apply to each ad, ad group, or campaign

An advertiser may also budget its campaign according to the response it receives on a day to day basic which could be tracked. Google, unlike any other media house provides a great opportunity for the advertisers. The more relevant the ad on the page, the lesser the cost!

The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the "quality score" of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords. The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business!
Another awesome thing which Zaeem taught and would definitely amuse the media planners and account planners is Google Analytics. It generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Analytics can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents. These can all be monetized too along with its integration with AdWords. By using Analytics, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimize or cull campaigns.
Conclusion
There was a lot of things which Zaeem tried to teach, but I guess was a bit saturating in the end. During our lunch he was definitely correct that it would take 3 months to learn the inside out of Web Marketing. Though in these two days, he had done justice to the subject and his lecture witnessed rapt attention in the second day. The subject was new and fresh and so was his approach, so it connected with the class. I would recommend Zaeem to come once more and teach us web hosting too apart from AdSense, so that we can exercise our capabilities on the digital medium too and proliferate as all round advertising specialists.
My best take out of your session was that this online space allows me to take my desired avataar. Well I am Neil Kashyap here for a change!!!

Thank You Zaeem for your time...
It was awesome having you with us!
Best Regards,
Neil Kashyap
(a.k.a
Avranil Kumar Das,
MBA-Advertising,
Roll No: 50109)