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Google Announces New Search and Display Tablet Ads

Sales of iPads and other tablet devices are skyrocketing, and Google has launched new search and display ad formats designed specifically for the tablet audience and media experience (they’re actually available for all smartphones and tablets for iOS and Android).

The new tablet ads are still in beta, but Google claims to have already gotten a huge response from advertisers who are extremely interested in these tablet-specific ad formats.

The new ad formats were developed in response to Google’s consumer research that identified how consumers want to engage with mobile ads on tablet and smartphone devices. They want those ads to be more interactive and touch screen-friendly.

Rich Media Designs for Mobile is the name of the new Google display ad offerings. As explained today on the Google blog:

“These new rich media templates will make it easy for advertisers to create rich media ads for tablets using existing assets (photos, logos, etc.) and then implement them across platforms (mobile, tablet and desktop).  Advertisers can use these templates in a number of ways, including to interact with a specific product, feature a collection of products or promote foot traffic to a specific store location.”

Check out the video below to see some of the new display ad templates, which allow consumers to swipe through image slideshows, view 360-degree product images, and more.


Media Ads is the name of the new Google search ad offerings. These ads will enable consumers to view video directly in an ad on a search results page. For example, a consumer can watch a video game or movie trailer in a full screen overlay without leaving Google.com. The image below gives you an idea of how these ads will look.

It’s safe to assume that these new search and display ads for smartphones and tablets are just the tip of the iceberg of what Google has planned for mobile advertising offerings in the future. Consumers are becoming more mobile every day, and it makes sense for Google to invest heavily into enhanced tablet and smartphone advertising options.

I’m looking forward to seeing both of these new Google mobile ad formats come out of beta. What do you think of Google Rich Media Designs for Mobile and Media Ads? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Google

BlackBerry’s Trademark Search Lesson and the Fall of the BBX Brand Name

In October, Research in Motion announced a new operating system called BBX, which was touted as the launch that would save the BlackBerry brand. On December 6th, BlackBerry replaced the BBX name with BlackBerry 10.

The reason for the change was simple. In fact, the problem with the BBX brand name should have been discovered very early in the new branding initiative. A software company in Albuquerque, New Mexico named BBx already owns the trademark for that name.

I typed “BBX” into the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s online search tool and found the 15 matches (see the search results in the screenshot below), which includes at least 3 similar live marks in the tech-related industry, including BBx out of New Mexico. It took just 5 seconds to get that info. It’s amazing that BlackBerry invested so much time and undoubtedly, money into the BBX brand launch only to realize after making a public announcement that their use of the name would be contested.

According to The New York Times, BBx didn’t know that BlackBerry was planning to launch a BBX-named operating system until that fateful announcement was made by Research in Motion to an audience of developers at a San Fransisco, California conference in October.

On December 6th, Research in Motion was served a temporary restraining order from BBx and pulled the name. However, it’s unknown how or if Research in Motion will fight the restraining order or just let the name go. With the public switch to the BlackBerry 10 name, it’s probably safe to assume that the BBX name has been forgotten, but you never know.

The lesson to learn from this story is one that I’m actually surprised needs to be repeated, but I’ll say it again — always begin any brand naming effort with a trademark search. Research in Motion didn’t even need to rely on its lawyers to learn that the BBX name would likely be one that wouldn’t qualify for the company to trademark. Other companies working in similar markets already own the name.

Red flags warning Research in Motion of potential problems with the name down the road should have gone up immediately. Now, the company has to go back to the drawing board with the BlackBerry 10 rebranding initiative. That takes time and money, and given Research in Motion’s recent losses to its competitors in the smartphone market, that’s time and money that could surely be used more effectively in other ways.

Image: uspto.gov

Facebook Insights Now Shows Negative Brand Feedback

If your brand has its own Facebook Page, then you should be using Facebook Insights to track analytics related to its performance. In late November, Facebook rolled out a new feature to Facebook Insights that you should begin to include as part of your reputation management efforts. Facebook Insights now tracks negative feedback.

It’s not a perfect tool, but it’s worth reviewing. Just log into your Facebook Page admin account and click on the Facebook Insights link in the top left sidebar. From there, choose an individual post and click the Engaged Users link to see the data that’s currently tracked. You can learn about how many people gave you negative feedback on your post as well as how many people hid your post.

While this information is fairly cursory at this point, it can help you get an idea of what kind of posts are disliked enough that people are actually making the effort to hide them or post negative feedback about them. Look for trends in types of content that are getting the virtual thumbs down from large groups of your followers.

When people make an effort to dislike something, they usually really, really dislike it. Apathy typically results in people simply ignoring a post, but hiding posts or responding negatively are signs of things going wrong that you need to address.

According to a report from AllFacebook.com, Facebook hasn’t rolled this feature out to all Pages yet, so if you log into your brand’s Facebook Page and can’t find it in your Facebook Insights data yet, keep checking. You should see it soon.

In the meantime, keep publishing useful content that is relevant and meaningful to your target audience. With that strategy, you should be better positioned to avoid negative feedback.

What do you think of the new Facebook Insights feature to track negative feedback? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on this new source of data for Facebook Pages.

Image: Flickr

The Future of Email Marketing

A couple of years ago there were predictions that email would die at the hands of Facebook and Twitter. It’s nearly 2012, and email shows no signs of dying anytime soon. In fact, a new infographic from Visible Gains shows exactly how email stacks up against Facebook and Twitter in terms of number of messages, spam, and users’ plans for each in the future.

The infographic shows us that there are approximately 2.9 billion email accounts globally versus 750 million Facebook accounts and 300 million Twitter accounts. Of course, more people have multiple email accounts than Facebook or Twitter accounts.

A similar gap exists in terms of the number of emails sent or updates published on Facebook or Twitter each day. According to the infographic sources, 188 billion email messages are sent each day versus 60 million daily Facebook updates and 140 million daily Twitter updates.

You’re probably wondering how email spam factors into these numbers. The infographic data suggests that 45% of all email is spam but only 18.5% of all email is spam that actually reaches recipients. This number includes graymatter as well such as unwanted email newsletters, alerts, and so on. On the other hand, the infographic shows that 79% of Facebook users believe that spam is a problem and 49% report that they frequently see content in their News Feeds that appears to be suspicious and could be spam.

You can click on the image below to see the full infographic at a larger size.


[Infographic courtesy of Visible Gains]

What can brand managers learn from this infographic? First, email isn’t going anywhere, so it’s premature to consider shifting large portions of your marketing budget away from email. At the same time, there are a lot of email messages sent each day. The infographic shows that an estimated 3.4 million email messages were sent per minute during 2010. Brand managers need to spend more time and effort creating targeted messages and offers and sending those messages to the right audiences.

This applies on Facebook and Twitter, too. The tool is different but the concept is the same. In other words, fundamental marketing theory lives on regardless of the media. The three Ms — market, message, media — still apply. In fact, with the number of messages people see every day, the 3 Ms are more important than ever.

Have you modified your email marketing investments and strategies since Facebook and Twitter debuted? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the future of email.

5 Reasons Internal Brand Building Must Be a Strategic Priority

Over a year ago, I wrote a post on the Corporate Eye blog about the importance of internal brand building. In the post, I provided 10 suggestions for creative ways you can build your brand among employees. Unfortunately, many companies are still failing in this area. If your employees don’t believe in your brand and support it, why should consumers?

Still don’t believe internal brand building should be a strategic priority? The 5 reasons below just might change your mind.

1. Increase Motivation

When your employees believe in your brand, they’re is a natural increase in morale and productivity. If employees feel good about the company they work for, the brand their efforts support, and the work they do, those positive feelings translate directly to a positive impact on your company overall.

2. Increase Personal Accountability

If employees understand the brand promise that they work to support and how their efforts directly affect the brand’s success and fulfill consumer wants and needs, they’ll develop a stronger sense of personal accountability. In other words, they’ll take greater pride in their work, and they’ll want to deliver better results. In a nutshell, they’ll care.

3. Increase Word-of-Mouth Marketing

If your employees believe in your brand, they’ll be more likely to talk about it to friends, family, and anyone who will listen. They’ll advocate the brand online and offline to anyone who will listen, and they’ll guard it against naysayers. You can’t buy that kind of dedication, support, and positive publicity.

4. Increase Communication

When employees feel like they have an important place in the brand’s success and feel like they’re truly part of something greater than themselves (i.e., meeting consumer wants and needs), they’re more confident in sharing their thoughts and ideas. This increased level of open communication can lead to fantastic new innovations and opportunities for your company. It can also help to raise potential red flags before they turn into disasters.

5. Increase Talent Recruitment and Retention

Who doesn’t want to work for a company where the employees are motivated and happy? When your employees speak highly and openly about your brand, your company has a better chance of increasing retention rates and attracting new talent.

Image: stock.xchng

Medical Students: Mobile, Motivation and Mass Communication

This weekend I was invited to run a workshop for medical students about building quality websites. Yes: medical students.

This was a conference for students running their medical school society committees – so, students from across the UK – and my session was for those with responsibility for their society websites this year.

Because every medical school and every MedSoc is set up slightly differently, each is different, but primarily the purposes of their websites are to:

  • inform (about education, about events, about current – medical – news, and about welfare)
  • recruit (new medical students; new MedSoc members; volunteers)
  • sell (event tickets and other items)
  • share (create a community of support for their peers).

We ran through an exercise of examining the home pages of a few MedSoc sites to see which items of good practice could be identified and used by others. We found a fair few reusable ideas for MedSoc sites, and it also became clear that what the students were looking for on these sites included:

  • an explanation of who is behind the site and what they do
  • a statement of why the visitor should join (the school and/or the society)
  • fresh – and useful – content for visitors of different types
  • contact details.

Why would you care about this?

Some of these are things that companies should consider with respect to their own sites (not yours: obviously you’ve covered these bases). But there is more to it than that:

  • mobile

    These students were bright and highly motivated – unsurprisingly, since these were medics. They were also very clear on what they saw as a quality website; and they almost all used the internet with a mobile device (usually a smartphone). What do you think they make of your site?

  • motivation

    I sat in on one of the earlier conference sessions, and heard from a 5th year medical student building revision apps using medical expertise from his peers and from hospital consultants.

    These students are a select group, and further self-selected by finding time out of their intensive course not only to run a student society but also to get to their annual conference. And to find time to build an app as well…

  • mass communication

    These students are individually willing to voice their opinions and to speak up for themselves and the people they represent. The official theme of the conference was 2020; the unofficial theme that one attendee thought was developing was the need to band together to achieve more—from pooling the results of the revision apps worldwide, so that individuals could compare their own progress with results from their peers around the world, to the MedSoc webmasters sharing best practice and technical support in earning revenue from their websites.

So: what are you doing to prepare for a future in which individuals are demanding service from you from wherever they happen to be, using whatever device they prefer, with virtually instant access to information and with the backing of their peers around the world?

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Thanks to Birmingham MedSoc for the invitation to participate.