Are We Approaching the End of the Daily Deals Era?
Mashable

The golden age of daily deals, led by the unprecedented growth of Groupon, seems to be coming to its end.

That’s not to say daily deals won’t be sticking around for a long time—clearly there is a business in it—but when two major players withdraw from the space and its biggest player experiences a 50% traffic decline, it’s a clear sign that the daily deals market is no longer in its heyday.

Last week, Facebook killed off Deals, its Groupon competitor, after just four months. “After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” Facebook told Mashable in a statement. “We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, Sponsored Stories, and Check-in Deals.”

Facebook, with its 750 million users, couldn’t find a way to make daily deals work. And its not alone: BusinessWeek reports that Yelp is cutting down on its year-old daily deals product. Half of the sales staff will be cut and the company will refocus on its core business of local reviews.

Yelp’s slow withdraw from daily deals is more problematic. It started testing daily deals in July 2010 and has expanded to more than 20 cities since then. Still Yelp, which has more experience with local businesses than almost anybody in the business, simply couldn’t justify staying in the daily deals market.

NBC Nabs Record $3.5 Million for SuperBowl Spots
AdWeek

With a good five months before the Super Bowl kicks off in Indianapolis on Feb. 5, NBC has nearly sold out all of its most valuable football inventory. According to Seth Winter, senior vice president of NBC Sports Group Sales & Marketing, “literally a handful of units” remain available in its Super Bowl XLVI broadcast. An estimated 63 in-game slots were up for grabs; of these perhaps as few as six remain.

Such is the strength of the market that NBC is guaranteed to smash all previous pricing records for the game. While Fox commanded $3 million per spot a year ago, NBC has raised the bar to as high as $3.5 million a pop.

“We originally set a target of $3.5 million. That was our asking price in the market,” Winter said. “But as we ventured into the market with the Super Bowl, we were always look for broader commitments across our sports assets. We don’t just sell Super Bowl positions, so depending on what other buys the clients made, the final price of an individual spot is a function of these other commitments.”

Each Super Bowl unit sold thus far is attached to some other NBC Sports offering, Winter said. Key among these is the 17-day 2012 Summer Olympics spectacular, which will unfold in London July 27-August 12.

NFL Back On Field, And Deals Pile Up
Wall Street Journal

As the National Football League season gets under way this week, professional football appears primed to shake off any lingering business damage its four-month lockout might have inflicted.

On Tuesday, the league and PepsiCo Inc. are set to announce a 10-year, extension of their sponsorship deal that ultimately could be valued at $2.3 billion through the 2022 playoffs, making it one of the largest sponsorships to date in U.S. sports.

The deal ensures that PepsiCo brands Pepsi, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, Tropicana and Quaker Oats will be official marketing partners of the league at a cost of nearly $100 million a year. It also maintains Gatorade's ubiquitous cooler presence on NFL sidelines.

The sports drink is one of only two brands other than actual on-field equipment that are integrated into NFL games. (Motorola, which provides the headsets used by the league's coaches, is the other.)

A person with knowledge of the deal's details said in addition to the national rights fee, PepsiCo could spend an estimated $1.3 billion on marketing and other NFL-related spending during the agreement. A spokesman for PepsiCo said the company doesn't disclose its marketing budgets.

In Pressure Cooker, Marketers Lay Blame on Advertising
AdAge

If a thermometer was placed on marketing departments right about now, the mercury would be rising faster than you can say ROI. There are higher expectations and stepped-up accountability for chief marketers -- and anyone else up and down the chain who has a hand in directing a company's advertising efforts. The heavier burdens mean companies are more vocal about their failures on the ad front, oftentimes publicly laying blame at agencies' doorsteps.

Last month, Gap Inc. CEO Glenn Murphy bluntly told analysts on an earnings call that he was "disappointed" with marketing efforts for the company's largest brand, Old Navy. Around the same time, adland was agape over General Motors' Global CMO Joel Ewanick doling out grades for his highly-regarded agencies, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Fallon, to the press. And when Groupon's Tibetan plight-themed Super Bowl spots were deemed tasteless, CEO Andrew Mason vented to Bloomberg BusinessWeek about its work with CP&B, saying he placed too much trust in the agency. "We learned that you can't rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand," he said.

It's an about turn from a time when companies were reluctant to talk about ad partners at all, let alone criticize them publicly. And it begs the question: Isn't this a partnership? Where does blame for bad advertising lie—with the agency or the marketing executives?

How Brands Should Think About Facebook: A Loyalty Program
AdAge

A few years and several billion dollars of ad spending into the era of Facebook marketing, it's getting clearer what it's all about for big, established brands—a loyalty program rather than a customer-acquisition tool.

Research by DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research finds 84% of a typical brand's Facebook fans are existing customers. That makes marketing to the fan base much more like a customer relationship management program than a customer-acquisition tool for most brands, said Justin Kistner, social-media products director of web analytics firm Webtrends.

The problem, he said, is that many marketers still don't see Facebook this way. Speaking in a recent Web Analytics Wednesday talk in Cincinnati and a follow-up interview, he said many brands with the biggest followings, such as Coke with nearly 34 million fans, are in high-frequency, low-ticket categories where CRM has never held center stage. And, in part because Facebook ads—thanks to their placement and lack of graphic frill—look like search ads, marketers and agencies often think of them like search ads, Mr. Kistner said.

"Search is a customer-acquisition tool," Mr. Kistner said. "Facebook really isn't." But while search is largely about people discovering new products and brands, Facebook "is really about staying in touch with the people we know," whether that be real people or brands and customers, Mr. Kistner said.

Winners and Losers: The Changing Media Ad Landscape 1980-2011
Media Post News

Anyone who follows the media business cannot fail to be impressed by how much—and how fast—the media landscape has changed in recent decades. In addition to the rapid evolution of media technology and consumption habits, one of the most remarkable trends has been the upheaval in the advertising landscape.

They include the rise of the Internet, the continued expansion of cable TV, and the dramatic decline of print—especially newspapers. Plus, broadcast TV and radio are struggling to hold on to their share, in a situation where the only certainty is further change, as a continuing economic downturn accelerates long-term secular shifts.

The following is a quick overview of the changing media landscape, including winners, losers and everyone in between. Data is drawn from a variety of sources, including overall estimates from ZenithOptimedia, Magna Global, SNL Kagan, and Kantar. Industry-specific data comes from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Cable Advertising Bureau, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the Television Bureau of Advertising, the Radio Advertising Bureau, the Publishers Information Bureau, and the Newspaper Association of America.

CPG brands dive headfirst into the digital sphere
Direct Marketing News

While consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers have not embraced digital marketing strategies as quickly as marketers in other sectors, that looks poised to change. Through new initiatives ranging from social couponing to stronger e-commerce offerings and enhanced labeling, CPG retailers and manufacturers are showing an eagerness to engage digitally oriented consumers and an awareness that they need to teach their old marketing tools some new tricks.

Frankly, the digital world has not been the most natural place for CPG marketing. With consumers comfortable browsing the grocery store aisles in person with coupons or a store circular in hand, trying to move them online has been a challenge.

"If I was a brand manager at a CPG company, I'd have been reluctant to embrace digital until recently," says David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital agency 360i, which works with a
number of CPG clients and says decreasing costs of technology overall and increasing willingness of consumers to buy online has changed this. "There is a lot more that CPGs now are doing, and in general with e-commerce that's making this whole area much more appealing," he said.

A May report from e-commerce consultancy etailing solutions and digital agency Catapult Marketing found that in the previous six months, 49% of online shoppers purchased personal care products online, while 40% bought food and 38% purchased household products, typically about once a month.

One factor encouraging consumers to shop for CPG products online is convenience.