Wednesday, July 25, 2007

web image advertising

during our last quarter in school, i took marketing communications and our group did a marcomm plan for linkspank. i had the pleasure of working with some future marketing moguls.

one of the key questions i was wondering about was, what is the best method for getting the word out about linkspank.

we made an improper linear model - a spreadsheet - and determined that, aside from contests, schwag/freebie clothes etc, web based advertising, and commuter-oriented print advertising were the three best vehicles. after reviewing the tipping point i came to wonder whether our marcomm was enough focused on mavens and innovator types, and i had a bunch of other questions...

...but it was inspiration to go back and try some web advertising. enough analysis! i tried these image ads:





this one was supposed to capture the work procrastination and liberation aspect of linkspank. it has done normal in testing (.1% click rate).





the basic. it has done normal in testing (.1% click rate).




if the contest is a draw, people have to know about it! but the layout sucks, hence a subpar performance.





a different stab at educating about the contest. quality to be seen.





variation of the above. quality to be seen.


the ctrs, while typical for advertising outside of search results pages, are low. so the name of the game is working the system i guess and getting the ads where you want in the network at a good bidding price. google adwords is a good service i think, the only drawback being the opacity of the bidding system (which is designed in!).

the big q in my mind for this type of advertising is how much worth the non-clicks have. after all you don't click on a billboard but it's thought to be of use. the first ad, though it gets a decent click rate, wouldn't win any points in this category. the latter two might win slight points but less. hence the strength of a plain ole logo ad.

as for direct response - people actually joining after clicking an ad - the jury is still out for this test.

as always feel free to comment.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

a journey into the center of linkspank


going under the hood


i was chatting with an entrepreneur buddy yesterday who encouraged me to blog more about linkspank - what i'm learning as i go, for example.

there is a super official linkspank blog, and some of the early posts there include inside linkspank type stuff, but now that blog is limited mostly to official announcements, features, and so on. so at the cost of too many blogs i'm creating another one. apologies to those people who are wondering why i have a million blogs. i personally think it makes sense to have multiple blogs if you write about widely different subjects, as i do.

note: if you're friends with me on linkspank, you'll get homepage notices when i have a new post. same goes for the spankdroid and the super official blog.

to try to keep up the volume, i will write very informally. (the e e cummings thing is because my left shift key is messed up right now.)

some upcoming topics:

  • consumer insights
  • growth strategies
  • designing schwag
  • linkspank advertising
  • the tipping point and other reading
  • plans for funding and growing team
  • facebook app?


INSIDE LINKSPANK.