Infomagination

Get insights on websites with Google Ad Planner

New job + new flat = not much time to post recently, but here's a handy new tool I've been having a play with today:  Google Ad Planner.

Google Ad Planner is designed to help you make ad campaigns online, as the name suggests, but it's also useful for general research into audiences and brands. 

For instance, if I want to find out what aging, rich, British men look at online, I can just ask:

Or, if I want to know who visits Tesco.com, I can find that out too...

...not to mention what other sites they've visited and what keywords led them there.

It's a rich, versatile mine of information - and in typical Google style it's completely free.  So what are you waiting for?  Go play!

The trouble with surveys pt 2

It's bad enough that people routinely bend the truth when they answer questionnaires (see pt 1), but this is an absolutely dynamite example of the influence that survey design also has on results.

The trouble with surveys pt 1

Here are a few extracts from a nice story on junk stats over on the BBC website.  A good reminder to take your quant with a pinch of salt - and encourage your clients to do the same...

The problem with junk stats?  It's you

To know what people experience, want, think, do, prefer, intend, how they behave, vote etc there's often little alternative to asking them. The numbers depend on you, or people like you, and the truth is that some of you can't be trusted to tell it.

Take this example from the US Census Bureau, which among other things tracks the number of centenarians. The chart shows how many say they are aged 100 or over (Declared) - and how many the bureau trusts (Preferred).

Even despite evidence that the huge disparity in 1970 arose from a misunderstanding on the form, there's clearly a lot of wishful thinking going on (or as some prefer to call it, "lying"). 

Here's another example. When you read scare stories about the latest new teen drug habit, bear in mind that researchers routinely insert an entirely fictitious drug into the questionnaire because they know some teenagers are full of - technical term coming up, here - tripe.

Rubbish in, rubbish out

A handful in every hundred will say they snort tinfoil, if asked. The fictional drug sometimes has a similar number of ticks to others that, once headlined, become a national panic. At least researchers have an approximate benchmark for the drivel.

The serious point is that it's easy to treat data as if it falls into our laps and that only then can people do underhand things with it. As the writer Joel Best points out, it's people who count, and what they mostly count is other people. If you want to know some of the most curious problems with data, start not with the technicalities but by asking: "what am I like?"

Perhaps the surprise is that none of this makes official data worthless. Those trusted with collecting facts weren't born yesterday. They know the wheezes we get up to. They typically allow margins of error, take special care when people self-report their behaviour and try to keep them honest by cross-checks, confidentiality and the like.

They work hard to understand when and how people's answers can be unreliable and often find ways of filtering out some of the rubbish. But it's a question to ask whenever you see data, official or otherwise, the result of the numerous surveys and samples on which our knowledge of our country depends: "Honestly?"

DIY buzz monitoring with Nielsen BlogPulse

This week, I've been having a play with Nielsen BlogPulse, which is a handy little free tool where you can map the frequency of different terms appearing in blogs.  For instance, if we try MP+expenses then you can see how the expenses scandal suddenly rocketed - and is still simmering away, despite things cooling off a bit.

Turning to brands, you can track the spike in chatter caused by the fuss over M&S charging more for larger bras - nearly over now, it seems.

  

It's also interesting to compare brands, brand endlines or creative territories.  From the charts below, you can see that Nike not only tracks significantly above Adidas generally, but that "just do it" is a much bigger part of popular culture than "impossible is nothing" (at least where bloggers are concerned).

 

In terms of knowing what the public are saying or thinking, there's nothing scientific here, of course.  Little pieces of evidence mount up, however, and this kind of thing definitely makes both interesting food for thought and good conversation fodder with clients.  I'll certainly be experimenting with ways to apply this kind of tool to planning, creating and monitoring my campaigns in the future - and I think you should too.

The 100 most Twittered about brands

Just picked this up on Brand Republic...  Fun looking at how few followers a lot of the big brands have, even if they do get talked about.  Not surprising, though.  How many of them really have anything interesting to say?

		Brand Mentions	Followers
1	Starbucks	3.37m	120,868	@Starbucks
2	Google	1.01m	307,342	@Google
3	BBC	703,000	15.777	@bbcnews
4	Apple	512,110		None
5	AIG	455,000		None
6	Amazon	245,760	1007	@amazon
7	Microsoft	221,000		None
8	Guardian	211,000	14,913	@guardiannews
9	Dell	185,000	287,575
10	Coca-Cola	135,600		None
11	Ford	130,000	2,256	@ford
12	Sony PlayStation	117,550	20,651	@SonyPlayStation
13	eBay	107,000	1329	@ebayUK
14	Sony	107,000		None
15	Disney	106,000	7,354	@wdwnews
16	Yahoo!	94,500	9,541	@yahoo
17	Sky	74,370	10,248	@SkyNews
18	IKEA	72,300		None
19	IBM	70,400	1,180	@ibmevents
20	Nokia	68,100		None
21	Ford Scott Monty	62,600	16,562	@scottmonty
22	Guinness	59,700		None
23	HP	56,720	1,682	@hpnews
24	ComCast	50,400	14,688	@comcastcares
25	Skittles	48,600		None
26	Canon	48,200	605	@canon
27	McDonald's	45,340	234	@MONOPOLYatMcD
28	Channel 4	39,300	6,932	@channel4news
29	Lego	39,100		None
30	Pepsi	37,400	757	@pepsi
31	Samsung	35,800	582	@samsungmobileus
32	Intel	35,700	464	@intel
33	Tesco	35,500		None
34	Nike	32,800	1,167	@nikeplus
35	Honda	31,400	2,693	@Alicia_at_Honda
36	BMW	30,600	1,265	@BMWSauberF1Team
37	T-Mobile	29,900	1,443	@TMobile_USA
38	BT	27,540		None
39	FedEx	27,100	1,108	@mattceni
40	O2	25,900	2,371	@O2UKOfficial
41	Vodafone	25,400	802	@Vodafone_News
42	Bosch	25,300		None
43	RyanAir	25,200		None
44	Toyota	22,600	2,321	@toyotanewsroom
45	VW	22,190		None
46	Mercedes	21,600	1,506	@TheFifthDriver
47	Subway	21,200		None
48	Cadbury	19,900		None
49	Audi	18,600		None
50	Burger King	18,500	2,496	@thebklounge
51	Marmite	15,600		lovehatemarmite
52	Chanel	14,700		None
53	Citi	12,600		None
54	EasyJet	11,800		@easyjetservice
55	H&M	11,500	2,701	@handm
56	Porsche	10,600		None
57	Zara	10,000		None
58	Gucci	9,990	436	@gucciofficial
59	Nissan	9,740		@NissanSports
60	UPS	8,960	5,381	@trackthis
61	Motorola	8,320	346	@motodev
62	Avon	8,132		None
63	Marks & Spencer	7,900		None
64	Heinz	7,500		None
65	Royal Bank of Scotland	6,945		None
66	Asda	6,650	147	@asda
67	Accenture	5,970	2,126	@Accenture
68	HSBC	5,760		None
69	Lexus	5,690		None
70	British Airways	5,670	1,202	@British_Airways
71	Siemens	5,640		None
72	Gillette	5,250		None
73	Barclays	4,840		None
74	Sainsbury's	4,300		None
75	Budweiser	3,980		None
76	Louis Vuitton	3,950		None
77	Lovefilm	3,720	1,503	@lovefilm_uk
78	Smirnoff	3,380	514	@Smirnoff_EXP
79	Banco Santander	3,330		None
80	UBS	3,330		None
81	Shell	3,100		@shelldotcom
82	Colgate	2,870		None
83	L'Oreal	2,813		None
84	Citroen	2,810		None
85	Rolex	2,630		None
86	Cartier	2,100		None
87	Knorr	2,030		None
88	PG Tips	1,400		None
89	Oxo	829		None
90	Birdseye	748		None
91	Levi's	700		None
92	Specsavers	665		None
93	Duracell	621		None
94	BP	600		None
95	Schweppes	570		None
96	Habitat	500		None
97	Direct Line	500		None
98	Andrex	474		@Andrexpuppy
99	Vauxhal	470		@vauxhallnewsuk
100	Dulux	208		None

Readings taken over a "several day period" in April.

The first ever online advertising science fair

Are you sick to death of bullshit masquerading as facts?

Are you tired of smarmy-young-things and their bounty of hyperbolic new-age marketing jive?

Then you, my friend, are ready for First Ever Online Advertising Science Fair.

Here's the deal.

The Editorial Board of The Ad Contrarian is looking for a few good facts. Not opinions, not bullshit, facts about contemporary advertising and marketing that are either interesting, not widely known, or misunderstood.

Here's what you need to do. Scour the net for interesting factual stories about advertising or marketing. No "expert" opinions; no tired "how to's", just the facts, ma'am.

Write a brief one-paragraph description and include a link. Send it to adcontrarian@gmail.com.

- c/o The Ad Contrarian. 

 

I've entered.  You should too.

Why Sixth Sense could change everything (and I'm not talking about the Bruce Willis film)

Okay, this is pretty amazing - and a mad sign of things to come.  The clever clogs over at MIT have been wowing audiences at the latest TED conference with an incredible piece of technology they call Sixth Sense.  The wearable (and highly affordable!) prototype they've developed not only lets you take a hands on approach to interacting with your computer (Minority Report style) but promises breakthrough integration between the real world and the world of data.  It's the potential to get instant information on just about anything, just by pointing at it, that gives the technology its name. 

I hate to use the word "revolutionary," but there's no doubt that this thing rocks.  And it goes without saying that it really could change the way we live, let alone buy stuff (Gartner's Hype Cycle notwithstanding:) and I won't even go into its potential for marketing evaluation...

Take a look:

Looks like Faris' vision of the "Invisible Web" could be closer than we think...

Addictomatic: inhale the web

Stumbled across a neat little site this morning that makes it easy for you to suck up the latest buzz on whatever you're into, by drawing together customisable feeds from a whole range of sources (iGoogle style).  It's called Addictomatic and here's what it gave me for a random run on Selfridges:

 

A nice, at a glance way of getting the latest news, plus a spot of insight into your brand, celebrity, football team or anything of choice, I reckon.  From a quick look at the above, you can instantly see that Selfridges new acid house exhibition is cutting through on Twitter and the news, plus that there's also been  some less positive stuff about dead mice in the dining area of their Birmingham store (yuck!).  It's also delivered me a some thought provoking videos and photos from Youtube and Flickr.  Two girls laughing as they drive to Selfridges in their convertible.  Someone's photo of the stunning Birmingham store, simply captioned "Do I fit in here?"   Just a few of the "scraps and straws" that Selfridges brand is built upon (to quote Mr Bullmore).

All things that I could find out by going to these sites separately, but it's nice and easy to have everything in one place.  More filters are needed to make sure that the info that comes back is really relevant but more feeds and smarter search mechanisms must surely be around the corner - whether it's from these guys or Google.   Even with these limitations, it's definitely the kind of site I'd visit every now and again, to get a feel for what the world is making of my brands and enjoy a spot of "inspiration grazing".  Addictomatic wants you to "inhale the web."  I say, suck it and see...

Massively useful viral tracking website alert!

 

Hello, I just discovered a really cool website and I'm telling EVERYBODY about it.  www.viralvideochart.com lists the most contagious videos out there on the web, along with graphs showing their rise and fall in popularity.  It also tracks blog posts about them and the buzz by language.

Massively useful for keeping track of what's popular right now, I reckon.  Perfect fuel for chats with creatives and clients alike.  Also massively entertaining, given that this is the cream of what's out there on the web.  Check out Her Morning Elegance if you have a tea break later.  Lovely stuff. 

And if you haven't seen David After Dentist yet, your February hasn't even started...

Facebook: from social network to real time research panel extraordinaire?

 

Look at that smiling face.  Yep, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, deserves to be a very happy man indeed.  After all, not only has he created something that can genuinely claim to be changing the world, but he's also made an awful lot of money for a 24 year old.  What's more, it seems that Mark and his friends at Facebook have finally worked out how to make even more cash - by leveraging Facebook's vast stores of personal data to turn it into a massive 150 million strong research panel. 

This article in today's Telegraph tells you all about it - including a neat real time demo at the service's official launch, which polled Israeli's and Palestinians with the same questions about peace and 120,000 Americans about Obama's economic policies.  The dream is for multinationals to be able to do the same thing and get rapid, robust feedback on issues that might once have taken weeks to research.

With all the personal data we put in there already, Facebook certainly has a head start when it comes to finding the right people for brands to talk to.  Given that people have signed up to have fun and keep in touch with their mates, however, not get hassled for their opinion, they'll have to tred a bit carefully to make sure they don't piss off their users.  That said, if it's done on an opt-out basis, manage the experience for the users and ideally offer a reward for participation, then I'm sure they'll find a sizeable population of people up for giving their opinion every now and again.  From a marketer's point of view, it'll be really interesting to see what kind of functionality they'll be able to offer in terms of research.  Seeing as they'll be keen to start getting people on board, and build up those all important case studies, now's a good time to ask them I reckon.  With a bit of luck you might even swing yourself a freebie or two!