SEO and Social Media Measurement

Great blog post on Resource Nation related to SEO and Social Media Measurement. The concept of measuring how effective your social media is performing tied to SEO.

Links, Traffic, and Influence of the media landscape is measured in the same way that Google measures "Page Rank". Genius!

http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/make-it-your-business-to-analyze-social-performance/32440/

Technorati was an early pioneer in looking at the real time social map to understand influence. The Technorati top 100 became an iconic measurement of a blogs success, and for many years the measuring stick of influence.

Today influence is more complex, and really needs to be examined in more detail... yes in a similar way to how Google looks at Page Rank. Or in a better way, why Google will place one site over the other within a search result page. Relevance to the keyword, and relative influence to that keyword or key phrase.

This measurement is really quite standard across all media... correct? It's all about how relevant, authoritative, and influential the content is to the search query. So SEO is guide to success for all forms of media, from mainstream, marketing, to social.

BuzzLogic Announces New Executives

Some great news here at BuzzLogic. Today we have announced our recent appointments of Dave Hills as CEO, Peter O'Sullivan as CRO, and Seph Zdarko as COO. Very excited to be part of the team here at BuzzLogic.


BuzzLogic, an online media company that improves brand metrics through its scaleable media index and analytics platform, has appointed Dave Hills, formerly of LookSmart and 24/7 Real Media, as its Chief Executive Officer. The company also announced several promotions to its executive team, along with the addition of Jay Budzik, Ph. D. to its Board of Directors.

Hills has more than 30 years experience in the industry, including 17 years in online media. His extensive experience in online advertising, search marketing, audience and technology development, and subscription services provides Hills with a relevant, useful perspective and practical experience in all strategic and operational areas.

Before joining BuzzLogic, Hills was a General Partner with KPG Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in seed-stage, consumer Internet technology companies. His influence has also been felt at LookSmart, Ltd (NASD - LOOK), where as President, CEO and Director he rebuilt the company’s ad network, quadrupled audience to LookSmart sites and licensed the company’s ad center to sites such as Ask.com. He also has served as President of Media Solutions for 24/7 Real Media and was COO and President of Sales for About, Inc., which owned About.com and the pay-per-click service, Sprinks. He currently sits on the board of BuzzLogic and Interclick, (NASD – ICLK).

Other appointments to the BuzzLogic executive team include Peter O'Sullivan as Chief Revenue Officer and Seph Zdarko as Chief Operating Officer. John Donahue remains Chief Technology Officer along with John Maley as Chief Financial Officer. Together, these seasoned executives bring to the company more than 50 years cumulative experience in online advertising, online publishing and digital media, as well as agency work. Their backgrounds include executive positions at Google, DoubleClick, Omnicom Media Group (OMG),Yahoo!, 24/7, Alta Vista and more.

BuzzLogic has also appointed Jay Budzik, Ph.D. to the board of directors. Dr. Budzik is Chief Technology Officer of PerfectMarket™, which helps publishers create value from their online content. He brings more than a decade of experience in unstructured information processing, product development and intellectual property management experience to his role on the BuzzLogic board.

“I’m really fortunate to have a team with the experience, drive and innovative spirit to dominate what we see as the next chapters in online marketing and media,” said Dave Hills, CEO of BuzzLogic. “Over the past year, the team has honed the company’s core assets in our media index and analytics, resulting in incredible results for an enviable list of advertisers through a differentiated view of conversations online. And we’re just getting started.”

Throughout the last year, BuzzLogic has focused its core technology assets on the question of how brands can improve brand metrics in a world where media is social and conversations exist everywhere. The company’s all-in-one technology platform combines indexing and analytics to determine which conversations are most critical to advertisers; it allows for scaleable media placements using standard ad units, and ensures the greatest ROI via optimization and reporting.

BuzzLogic can uniquely produce and place a customized, horizontal media plan across hundreds of publishers. This includes targeted placements around conversations, from points of inception all the way through to the most dense dialogues on the visible Web. The company’s proprietary tech platform utilizes indexing and ranking, versus cookies or other user targeting techniques.

About BuzzLogic

BuzzLogic’s proprietary index of content, unique analytics and scalable media capabilities enables brands to identify, impact and measure increases to their online brand persuasion. From content in the index, BuzzLogic’s analytics identify the genesis of discussions to help advertisers reach millions of potential customers with a customized media program, and understand the plan’s impact by measuring KPI’s critical to the brand.

BuzzLogic’s clientele includes HP, Wal-Mart, Toyota, HBO, Starbucks, Microsoft, American Express, MediaVest and Omnicom Media Group. BuzzLogic is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. For more information, visit http://www.buzzlogic.com/.

Related Links:

Sys-Con
http://www.sys-con.com/node/1748537

BizJournal
http://wwwnew.bizjournals.com/sanjose/morning_call/2011/03/buzzlogic-names-executive-team-ceo.html

BuzzLogic
http://www.buzzlogic.com/2011/03/10/buzzlogic-appoints-dave-hills-ceo-unveils-new-executive-team/

BuzzLogic Can Help Agencies Become More Strategic

In today's ClickZ, Chris O'Hara writes about the new era of digital media agencies. Over the past several years the demands on agencies have continued to grow, along with the variety of choices for technology partnerships and media choices.

O'Hara specifically talks about BuzzLogic as it relates to agencies building better media strategies for their clients.
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2025930/-agency-model

"3. Be strategic: This sounds obvious, but sometimes the definition of strategic gets lost in the weeds when it comes to digital. Sometimes, an agency feels it is being strategic when it partners with enough technology companies that offer their clients a variety of digital tactics (social, video, mobile). But having those partnerships and capabilities is far different than using them smartly and in a way that gives your shop the edge over your competition (they have access to all the same technology as you do). True strategy involves finding what works for your clients and creating repeatable processes that lead to long-term success. When your clients say they "want to do social," are you smart enough to determine whether they simply need to access the Facebook API - or are they looking to find their customers through conversational density around their products, such as BuzzLogic offers? How you offer "social" to your clients should come with a unique strategic model. (BuzzLogic makes software that scrapes the Web and looks for where people are "talking about" different products/concepts in the social sphere. Conversational density happens where there is a lot of focused conversation around a topic.)"

Here at BuzzLogic we're working hard to provide a strategic approach to our advertisers needs, enabling them to understand the conversation and activate media to help influence their audience.

Arianna Huffington @ ThinkLA Trends Breakfast

It was a great pleasure seeing Arianna Huffington present at last week's ThinkLA trends breakfast. She really enchanted the audience bringing them into her fold and view of social media.

Arianna is really well grounded, and discussed some of the key advantages and disadvantages of always being connected. Her view is to allow social media to connect people, but never to allow social media to replace personal interactions. Rather, social media should only be an extension of those natural interactions.

In addition, she warned us of "good and evil" uses of social media, and really asked the audience to help promote and advocate positive uses.

Regarding a potential run for public office in the future, Arianna plainly stated, "that a person would have to be a masochist in today's media landscape to engage is such a dysfunctional system". Unfortunately she's absolutely correct. Who would want to get punished in the press, have their family and reputation criticized to such an extreme.

Really enjoyed the show, and had a chance to shake her hand following the presentation. I was very delighted to see Arianna present. On behalf of BuzzLogic, we were very proud to sponsor and participate in the event!

Thank you Sara Morton and ThinkLA for inviting us to sponsor and participate...

ThinkLA Trends Breakfast - November 19th

Come join us at the ThinkLA Trends Breakfast on November 19th. BuzzLogic is proud to sponsor this high profile event, featuring Arianna Huffington


Here is the registration information if you would like to attend:
http://www.thinkla.org/en/cev/129

The central theme of the event is straight in line with BuzzLogic, and the topics will center around influencing the influencer. BuzzLogic is one of the best positioned media comapnies within "conversational media", helps brand advertisers to identify the most topical and influencial blogs, and inserts brand messaging (ads) within those centers of influence.

Hope to see you at the event!

Comments On Re-Targeting

Alright, OK they found me...

I'm trying to remember the year I was at LuLu's in San Francisco for the big DoubleClick launch party for abacus. I remember something about re-messaging a person who was shopping for a Yellow Shirt, and abandoned the shopping cart. I'm not absolutely sure, but that was the first major REV on behavioral targeting.

Since then, BT has become commonplace as a very effective online marketing tool. Whether it's direct response or branding with sequential messaging, BT delivers amazing results.

I can see the big deal with the NY Times example, and some times I even get a little spooked, then very interested in why I keep seeing particular ads. Sometimes I have to re-think or retrace my web surfing behavior to realize that I was on the brand site just the day previous. Happens to me all the time, and when I'm researching a brand I usually get surrounded for the days following. John Battelle wrote a great piece on this a few days back http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/08/on_retargeting_fix_the_conversation

When it comes to re-targeting & re-messaging, I really like the dynamic product ads, and love the NexTag versions. Last winter I was shopping for some skis via NexTag search, and viola, for the next week or so, I received a ton of ads for those skis and related products. Genius. Actually, when you get over how spooky it seems, it's actually a very good service to the user. I'm sure we'll see better and better iterations, with price drops, special offers, etc. Some early versions of this have been in the market for awhile.

Conversational Media is a whole new frontier, and we're working on some amazing new products to empower our advertising partners in unique ways. By the very nature of Conversational Media, we know that we have users who are very engaged with the content they're consuming. So, naturally, studying a users engagement within a conversation, rather than a "site visit" can provide key learnings and targeting opportunities. BuzzLogic is really the only media company today who can gain from targeting & re-targeting users who are part of the conversation.

Today is the era of DSP's, Exchanges, and Mega Networks. It only makes sense to add more targeting based on rich data in today's media environment.

BuzzLogic Grows to 122 Million Unique Users

For many years marketers and advertisers who have embraced the blogosphere have had difficulty achieving scale. Here @ BuzzLogic, we have solved this problem, and enable brands to place targeted media across over 20,000 blogs & conversational media sites. Comscore numbers are posted for August, and BuzzLogic is now at 122,927,000 US Only, Monthly Unique Users.

BuzzLogic now offers marketers the most scalable solution for the blogosphere, enabling brands to reach large pools if highly endemic traffic. That said, scale is only part of the equation and total solution here at BuzzLogic. Targeting at Scale is our value proposition for marketers. There are many networks and media companies that allow you to reach scale, but very few, if any offer the level of targeting BuzzLogic provides.

Scale, Targeting, Custom Media Executions, Campaign Measurement, and Brand Analytics = BuzzLogic

Federated Goes for Relevance - Buys Text Digger

Now that Technorati's Top 100 index http://technorati.com/blogs/top100/ is beginning to lose relevance in the market, Federated is looking to shift its offering. As many know, Federated has built it's core strategy of "representing ad inventory" on a large percentage of the Technorati 100 Blogs. Thus enabling them to claim that they had the most important, the most trusted, and the most influential blogs. Last year Technorati disrupted this business model, and has "re-calibrated" it's index to show more visibility to the "up and coming blogs" and focus less on the large legacy blogs.

Yesterday, Federated Media announced the purchase of Text Digger: http://www.federatedmedia.net/blog/2010/08/welcome-textdigger/ Federated Media has many options with this technology, and only time will tell on how they execute with this acquisition. Like many, I will be watching the developments. Federated has always been a key player and strong voice in blog / social media strategy.

This is certainly exciting news, and I am expecting to see a lot of competition in our field. That said, with the rash of M&A in the markets at large, we could see some very interesting new partnerships over the next 12-18 months!

Social Media Measurement

Now that marketers have moved from traditional online to social media, there is a lot of buzz in the market on how to measure this new medium.

Some of the early measures are looking at "how many You Tube hits did my viral video get?", to "oh wow, we have 15,000 people following us on twitter" or "oh wow, we have 100,000 people following us on Facebook".

These measurements remind me of the early "dot com" era where companies were being valued on measurements like registered users, and how much $ they were spending on marketing. Yes, that's right, "how much money they're spending on marketing was a serious measurement for the valuation of a company"

I think there are some good ways to measure:

1. Are your "fans" more likely to purchase your product
2. Are your fans recommending your product
3. Is your social media advertising increasing these metrics or changing brand perception
4. Are your social media driven offers leading to incremental sales growth

It's really the basics that matter. Does your online marketing efforts via Search, Display, Video, and "Social Media" improve brand perception and drive sales?

Brand surveys are generally too costly, but are a very effective measure of your efforts. That's why here at BuzzLogic, we offer brand surveys to all of our clients...

Google Trading Desk for Omnicom

The fundamental shift of traditional media buying has taken another stride forward. The way in which agencies are accessing online advertising inventory is becoming a very important trend in today's agency / publisher relationships.

Last December, as part of AD Tech NYC, I was invited to a great presentation and panel hosted by Neo@Ogilvy. Bant Breen was openly discussing Initiative's desire to enter the "Ad Network Space" as it would provide better pricing, and more liquidity for their brands. In addition, of course, is the ability for Initiative to cut out the "Ad Network" middleman, and pocket some additional revenue for the agency. Over the past 6-8 years, ad networks have enjoyed enormous margins on media, where agencies continue to get squeezed. It's really quite unfair, as agencies perform a lot of service for a smaller piece of the media dollar pie. Who knows what exactly will happen over time, but one thing is for certain. The major value in the media buying relationship will be access to inventory, and data with a technology platform to enable very targeted and efficient buying at scale.

I think that there are many companies who are in jeopardy as the industry matures. Specifically, ad networks who do not have proprietary data or technology are in grave danger of becoming obsolete. In fact, it surprises me to see some of the dinosaurs still in business today.

Initially I was very scared and intimidated by Google's move into this field. Google has the data, they have the technology, so why shouldn't the conquer the media world single handed.... Because nobody wants to see Google conquer the world. It's important for agencies and brands to keep a large mix of media companies alive, otherwise face a single vendor to negotiate with.

This will be a very interesting time to watch for online media, and its implications across all media over time.

Here's the full story on Omnicom & Google http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=132051

John Donahue Joins BuzzLogic

We're excited to announce the addition of John Donahue to the BuzzLogic Team. John joins BuzzLogic as CTO, and was most recently the head of business intelligence, technology and data at Omnicom Media Group (OMG), the global media services division of Omnicom Inc.

John brings incredible insight and vision for our conversational ad targeting platform, and will leverage his years of experience working with some of the largest fortune 100 brands.

Here's the full detail on John Donahue http://www.buzzlogic.com/2010/07/13/buzzlogic-names-john-donahue-chief-technology-officer/