Linkedin Updates Enhance Brands, Member Interaction
Media Daily News

Online professional network LinkedIn announced a pair of services aimed at giving brands new ways to interact with its 120 million members.

One is the ability for companies to share updates directly with their page followers on LinkedIn. The other is the launch of a certified developer program connecting marketers and agencies with a group of preferred partners to help develop custom social programs and applications using LinkedIn tools.

The company rolled out the new initiatives at its annual Connect: event for marketers, where it introduced company pages on LinkedIn a year ago. Since then, more than 2 million businesses have created pages drawing nearly half of the site's users.

With the addition of status updates, companies will be able to send content to followers' news feeds, including breaking company news, videos, job openings, and industry research. Status updates can be up to 500 characters long and including links as well as multimedia.

"This will not only keep you informed of insightful content from companies you love and follow, but will also let you comment on it, "like" or share with your own professional network," noted Ryan Roslansky, head of content products at LinkedIn, in a blogpost today explaining the new feature.

Through creation of a certified developer program, LinkedIn has assembled a network of what it considers top social media marketing experts and agencies to help companies boost interaction with their audiences.

The initial group of partners includes AKQA, Buddy Media, Hoot Suite Media, and Wildfire. The companies were selected to offer a wide range of services including campaign management, social promotions, enhanced analytics and custom application development.

LinkedIn, which went public in May, gets about a third of its revenue from advertising and 20% from subscription-based offerings. The bulk of sales comes from its recruiting-related services and job listings posted on the site.

The Battle Between Social and Mainstream, Hybrid Media Will Be the Winner
AdAge

Social-media marketing is getting boring—at least by itself. It still largely sits in a silo and therefore fails to realize its full potential.

Need proof? Put down your Kindle and head to your local bookstore. There you will find volumes on the topic, many of which read like get-rich-quick schemes. That's a sure sign of trouble.

What many fail to see is that the dirty little secret of social media, according to a study by researchers at HP, is that most conversations are driven by media outlets, not individuals. However, not all media are created equal.

There's an emerging class of media brands that are smart, scrappy and unmatched in their digital DNA. Call them hybrids. They're digitally native and entrepreneurial. They use social and search to their fullest, yet many of them have a traditional ad-sales network that resembles their legacy-laced brethren. Hence the descriptor.

In a world with too much content and not enough time, hybrids are the future of media. They're a planet of quick, agile ants that's challenging the apes for dominance. It's where marketers will increasingly focus their time, energy and money with a mix of paid and earned strategies. That doesn't mean the media stalwarts or social networks will fade, mind you, but this is the breakout group to watch.

Hybrid media are transformative not only because they take chances, but also because they have incredibly loyal followings. They're both trusted and disruptive. And that's a recipe for success. The category is comprised of three distinct groups: aggregators and curators, personality-driven blogs and incubated disruptors.

Aggregators and curators are platforms that help us filter and remix the news from a wide array of sources. Some are automated. Others we program ourselves or allow the crowd to do the heavy lifting for us. They include mobile-centric platforms such as Flipboard and Pulse, controversial revolutionaries such as Demand Media and curated roll-ups such as Summify, Storify and TechMeme.

Television Still The Big Bush Leader In Ad Spend Through 2013
Media Post

Despite the stock market's double digit drop in the last quarter, ZenithOptimedia is projecting a 2.2% increase in advertising for 2011, up from the agency's 2.1% forecast in July. The report also forecasts a 3.5% increases in both 2012 and 2013.

The media agency sees cable TV growing 12% this year, while the broadcast networks decline 2% and syndication slips 4%, taking into account current economic conditions and its knowledge of its clients' plans for the upcoming season.

The report notes that woes on Wall Street often are not necessarily followed by an ad market decline. In 12 market crashes over the past 31 years. the agency said. "... half of the stock market crashes preceded an advertising downturn, but half did not." Most recently, says the report, "the sharp drop in the Dow in the U.S. after September 11 did not prevent the recovery of growth in 2002, though growth remained weak."

Steve Jobs Was Digital Maverick but Marketing Traditionalist
AdAge

The Apple brand is about putting little pieces of the future in the hands of consumers. Yet Steve Jobs, master marketer, took a very traditional approach to advertising.

At a time when marketers obsess over the virtues of targeting, "likes," dashboards, platforms of all stripes and sophisticated social-media-monitoring schemes, Mr. Jobs kept it simple: tell the story of how an amazing product can change your life in the best environment possible.

And while many accept the lessons of Mr. Jobs the product designer and have sought to emulate him in that regard, it seems they all too often overlook his influence as a marketer where he was decidedly—and effectively—old school.

Consider Apple's media spending: an estimated $420 million in 2010, dominated by network TV, newspapers, magazines, circulars and billboards. So far in 2011, Apple is the ninth-largest spender on billboard and outdoor ads in the U.S., just behind the likes of McDonald's, Verizon and Anheuser-Busch, according to Kantar Media. Apple's total digital spending is harder to discern, but the numbers indicate it is well under 10% of its total budget. Yes, the company that, more than any other, made us "go digital" did not think much of the web as a branding medium.

Mr. Jobs was involved in every aspect of the marketing, down to the copy on TV ads, and didn't hesitate to kill a campaign that didn't meet his standards. Everyone at TBWA's Media Arts Lab, the agency set up to serve Apple, knew that the bar to meet was set by Mr. Jobs himself and articulated at weekly meetings on creative and strategy. "He's the person who would see a technology and say, "This is what it can give a real person in the world,'" Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told the BBC. "I would say marketing was his greatest strength."

“Thank you Football and Christmas!” Sincerely, Advertisers
Media Daily News

The markets are up, then they drop, then they are back up and it looks like they are about to turn a corner and whoop—they drop again. This roller coaster has a lot of people worried. Advertisers are no exception. Basically, advertising doesn't like change, it likes a trend.

When a company has uncertainty and just doesn't know how to message, they simply don't advertise. The recent weeks are an example of that uncertainty, and companies don't know what is in store for them. So they don't advertise.

It isn't all doom and gloom for advertising and ad agencies though. One thing we do know for certain is that football, kids returning back to school and the holiday seasons are coming and advertising will appear right with them.

Companies need to get product off their shelves before the end of the year, and the wheels have already been put into motion to advertise to move inventory.

Despite the economic instability, we will likely have an average third and fourth quarter. I'm talking average and not great. The turmoil we are in killed great. That's why we should write a big thank you to football, school and the holidays for saving the rest of the year.

Advertisers shouldn't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. If this mess isn't resolved soon, we could be in store for a nasty first quarter 2012. We shouldn't treat this as the sky is falling though, it is more of an awakening to a problem that was in the background all along and then pulled kicking and screaming into the foreground for our legislators to resolve.

The small reprieve recently granted allows a tiny window to get this economic roller coaster stopped. But until then, the answer to the decades old question of "Are you ready for some football?" - is YES!

After surveying national media buyers, we found the below stats to represent current economic sentiment for advertising:

*11% say their clients have warned them of an impending advertising budget cut.

*7% say that the market's volatility prevented them from closing a new piece of business

* Spot TV and print are the two avenues that would be cut if this volatility continues.

*The industries cutting budgets: auto, hospitality and entertainment