Google Analytics: Real-time
Google Analytics goes real-time, finally: What’s happening on your site right now? http://eicker.at/GoogleAnalyticsRealTime
Google Analytics goes real-time, finally: What’s happening on your site right now? http://eicker.at/GoogleAnalyticsRealTime
Twitter starts adding Promoted Tweets advertising to users‘ timelines with Timely Tweets; http://eicker.at/TwitterTimelyTweets
Twitter: “[W]e’re introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline. These Promoted Tweets will scroll through the timeline like any other Tweet, and like regular Tweets, they will appear in your timeline just once. Promoted Tweets can also be easily dismissed from your timeline with a single click. – We’ll be rolling out and testing this new offering over the next several weeks with a select group of partners… From the start, our philosophy around advertising has been simple: We put our users first and strive to create products that enrich the Twitter experience for every Twitter user.”
RWW: “How do you leverage an attention economy in a newsfeed world? If you’re a brand on Twitter, you can now pay to give your Tweets privileged placement in the streams of your followers. … I expect it will work well. Will the company ever start serving up ads from branded accounts it believes you are likely to be interested in (and who pay for it)? Maybe. The relationship between promoted Tweets in search, in the stream and promoted accounts will be interesting to watch. … The future is here, it’s being Tweeted and now there’s pre-roll. Keep it under 140 characters and I find it hard to object. It looks like a very smart system to me.”
VB: “For in-stream promoted tweets, only users who follow the account that sends the promoted tweet will see the ad, and the ads can be hidden from the stream on a one-by-one basis. … Putting these tweets out of chronological order is a bit of a departure from how the Twitter timeline has always worked, and it’s likely to cause some rancor among the service’s users. … ‘We’re seeing incredible engagement numbers – between 3 percent and 5 percent on average for Promoted Tweets… We’ve seen some as high as 52 percent,‘ said [Twitter spokesperson Carolyn] Penner… Twitter defines engagement as a clickthrough, but it also counts retweets, replies and favorites in its engagement numbers – meaning that part of the ROI includes one-on-one conversations with fans of the brand.”
TNW: “This is obviously a nice improvement for advertisers on Twitter as it greatly increases the chances that a user is going to see a Promoted Tweet if it’s surfaced. If a user follows a couple hundred people, they’re likely to miss a single Tweet unless they’re checking the service constantly. This way the ad can be delivered when the user is actually on the service.”
TC: “[T]his is clearly Twitter biggest move into the money-making waters yet. Will it work? We’ll see, but it’s clearly the next logical step for the Promoted Products. After months of perfecting them in search and on the sidebar, now they’ll be put to the real test. We should see quickly if users begin to unfollow brands as a result, or if the engagement rates go through the roof. If it’s the former, it’s back to the drawing board (again) for Twitter. If it’s the latter, it could be time to think of Twitter as a serious business.”
Forrester: “The bottom line: it’s ok to use paid media in your social marketing efforts but it’s best to start by dipping your toe. The risk isn’t in cost (most of these ads are performance based), it’s in alienating your customers. Take a similar approach the social networks are taking: focus on your organic efforts and the user experience first, then try out paid media to accelerate your efforts.”
Pew: 22% of online Americans used social networking or Twitter for politics in 2010 campaign; http://eicker.at/OnlinePolitics
The use of on-line (social media) by political consumers has changed the face of politics in the US. The old media still thinks it controls the message and by reason controls the agenda. This is all changing now.
Ditto for Germany, but at large not as heavily as in the US yet.
The future of advertising ( http://eicker.at/1i ) is still advertising ( http://eicker.at/1j ) and more intrusive than before.
Social media optimisation: Socialblaze launches public beta, focuses analytics, social media ROI; http://eicker.at/Socialblaze
Facebook launches: new iPhone/Android apps, Single Sign-on via Places API, Facebook Deals; http://eicker.at/FacebookMobile
TNW: “Facebook held its ‘mobile event’ for over 7,000 viewers. In his opening remarks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, ‘Our goal is to make it so that no matter what platform you are building, your apps can be social…And that over the next few years, entire industries will be rethought as social applications.‘ He also mentioned that 200 million people now use Facebook via mobile devices.”
Ray, Forrester: “Today’s pronouncements demonstrate the ambition and vision Facebook has for itself in mobile computing and socializing over the long term, but in the immediate future Facebook now is poised to bring the wonders of checking in to the masses. … Facebook’s new Deals feature is uniquely positioned to bring rapid changes to consumer behavior over the next year. Here’s why: First, Facebook is a platform with 500 million avid users (compared to the 4 million who currently use Foursquare), and with each passing month more consumers are accessing and updating Facebook via their smartphones. Second, Facebook’s new Deal platform is free for marketers and SMBs; anyone who claims a location on the Facebook Places platform can easily and quickly launch an offer. Finally, marketers are lining up to create offers on this new Facebook platform. … One outstanding question is how Facebook’s new Places features will affect the fledgling LBS category. … It seems evident to me that the LBS space is in for some profound changes in the coming year as Facebook Places becomes as familiar to Facebook users as status updates and fan pages are today.”
SEL: “The world of location-based services changed dramatically today. And the changes that Facebook announced place the company firmly in the center of that very dynamic universe and ecosystem. – Toward the end of becoming a “platform” for mobile, Facebook made several significant announcements aimed at developers. There were also announcements aimed at consumers and marketers, ‘Deals’ being the big one. … It thus appears very simple to create an offer for Facebook Deals. The simplicity of this page will be significant for the millions of small businesses that will undoubtedly be interested getting access to this offering. And it will be opened up to small businesses in the near future – initially 20,000 and then the broader audience. … Deals will be a big hit with both consumers and marketers, whether large or small. Coupons is one of the most effective and popular forms of mobile advertising and Facebook’s reach will make it a huge player in this segment. – It will take a little while to digest all the implications of these announcements as well as to see their impact on the market and the mobile ecosystem as a whole. But I’m pretty confident that they’ll be significant and even lasting.”
IF: “Facebook is seeking to allow developers to build in a social environment no matter what phone they’re building on, whether that’s RIM, Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, or the mobile web. The company recently reached the milestone of 200 million people actively using Facebook mobile products across all platforms. … ‘You can rethink any product area to be social, have it be more engaging, have it grow virally, and remake whole industries’ says Zuckerberg.”
VB: “With a new single sign-on feature, Facebook aims to become the way users log into all their mobile applications. It’s already doing this to some extent, by allowing users to log into non-Facebook websites using Facebook Connect, but the company’s mobile chief, Erick Tseng, said the goal here is to make the process as simple as possible on phones, where typing in user names and passwords can be a huge pain. … On the privacy front, the news today doesn’t seem hugely significant, but I still expect some complaints when users start seeing Facebook data showing up in other apps.”
Guardian: “Facebook today revealed a series of improvements to its service on mobile devices in a move that lays the foundations for new revenue streams from retail stores, venues and small businesses. – Mobile is seen as a powerful platform for the expansion of Facebook, particularly in the developing world where internet adoption is increasingly skipping desktop computers and growing rapidly on the mobile web. … Facebook’s head of mobile business, Henri Moissinac, told the Guardian the improvement could be interesting for developers. ‘Augmented-reality apps like Layar will be able to visualise deals in real-time around a user’s location,’ he said.”
What is the most effective way to spread messages online? Facebook? Twitter? Blog? IM? Bookmark? eMail? http://eicker.at/p
Do you think that Google Wave should be saved? http://j.mp/bR2zsL #SaveGoogleWave @SaveGoogleWave http://j.mp/WaveOver
Kagan: What the F**k is Social Media NOW? http://j.mp/b8lCsN (via @Mark_Zimmermann)
(More …)
Twitter goes eCommerce: @earlybird advertises exclusive offers from selected partners; http://j.mp/bY808q
Twitter: “Twitter @earlybird Exclusive Offers are special time-bound deals, sneak-peeks, and events that are promoted by the official Twitter @earlybird account. We partner with select advertisers and retweet offers that they have crafted only for the Twitter community. Our advertising partners determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and price. As with other forms of advertising from Twitter, we are focused on bringing value to our users and will keep your interests in mind as we develop this program. … Does Twitter make money from this? – Yes, we earn revenue through our relationships with advertisers. Our focus will be to try and make these deals interesting and of value to you. We take pride in being selective about the type of deals we highlight and hope they will be an exciting way to start your day.”
NYT: “The idea borrows from private and limited-time sale sites, like Gilt, Groupon and Woot (which Amazon.com recently acquired), a recent trend in online shopping. It also takes advantage of what companies like Dell, which attributes millions of dollars in sales to posting deals on Twitter, are already doing. … The first deal will appear soon, Mr. Garrett said. They will initially be nationwide, but Twitter is considering offering deals specific to cities or countries later on. If @earlybird takes off, Twitter could become a competitor to Groupon and the many other local daily deal sites, as well as to Woot, Gilt and others.”
VB: “Twitter is taking a page from some heavily venture-backed startups in flash sales and social buying like Gilt Groupe and Groupon that offer limited-time only deals sometimes paired with built-in viral mechanics that deepen the discount if friends are recruited. It’s not clear if viral mechanics will come to play as central a role to EarlyBird as they have been for other social buying startups. Right now, it looks like a very simple first come, first served model.”
TC: “Twitter outlines that it has deals with select advertisers in place, but welcomes suggestions of a product/event sent by @reply to @earlybird. Nevertheless, since Twitter clearly looks at this like a significant potential revenue stream, they are keen on emphasizing that it will be selective about the type of deals they highlight.”
Guardian: “If early reports from Coca-Cola are anything to go by, promoting products directly through Twitter is proving a lucrative return on modest investment. Speaking to the Financial Times last week, Carol Kruse, vice-president for global interactive marketing at Coca-Cola, said the number of impressions (views of the sponsored trending topic) Coca-Cola had received in the short period from launch had been ‘phenomenal’ – 86m in 24 hours with an ‘engagement rate’ of 6%, compared with the average 0.02% of users engaging with a standard online advertisement.”
RWW: “Opt-in subscription to advertising as part of a user’s social stream is likely to be a very important model in making social media financially viable. Facebook today unveiled a radical new subscription recommendation feature that is similar if more sophisticated looking and non-commercial so far.”
TNW: “Apparently Twitter just hasn’t branched out quite enough to keep itself happy yet. Bearing that in mind, the same birds that carry away the failwhale seem to have some spare time on their hands, so they’re out scouring the Internet looking for bargains.”
RWW: “It’s a nicely poetic slide into second base when it comes to Twitter advertising. @earlybird focuses on the ‘you saw it first’ experience that is one of the main attractors of users to the Twitter service.“
Gerrit Eicker 08:00 on 30. September 2011 Permalink |
Google: “What’s happening on your site right now? – Currently, Google Analytics does a great job analyzing past performance. Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens. … One way that I like to use these reports is to measure the immediate impact of social media. Whenever we put out a new blog post, we also send out a tweet. With Real-Time, I can see the immediate impact to my site traffic. … You’ll find the Real-Time reports only in the new version of Google Analytics. If you’re not already using the new version, you can start by clicking the ‘New Version’ link in the top right of Google Analytics. … We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everyone will have access to Real-Time.”
Google: “We learned from some of our largest customers that they have some specific needs that the current version of Google Analytics can’t meet in their entirety. Today we’re addressing these needs by announcing a new option built for our largest customers: Google Analytics Premium. … Extra processing power – increased data collection, more custom variables and downloadable, unsampled reports – Advanced analysis – attribution modeling tools that allow you to test different models for assigning credit to conversions – Service and support – experts to guide customized installation, and dedicated account management on call – all backed by 24/7 support – Guarantees – service level agreements for data collection, processing and reporting”
RWW: “Google Analytics, the super dominant free web analytics platform, has to date offered analytics that were roughly 24 hours behind. The wait to stop waiting has come to an end and today the company announced that Google Analytics is now rolling out real-time reporting to its users. … My prediction: Google Analytics is going to become a much bigger part of the company and a much broader offering in the future than it is today. With the recent purchase of startup Postrank, Google will be able to offer real-time social media analytics soon. As the definition of the web expands into and beyond mobile, into and beyond other newly connected devices, the Google Analytics offering will expand allong with the world’s understanding of information. It will organize all that information and now it has laid the groundwork do it in real time and for a fee.”
TC: “Google Analytics, the immensely popular suite of tools that Google offers to help webmasters track their site traffic, is getting a big boost this week: the service has launched a real-time dashboard that updates with user events as they happen. – That’s a big deal, as it brings Google more in line with popular real-time analytics products like Chartbeat, which allows you to track things like how many people are currently on your site, and how much traffic each individual article has gotten in the last few minutes. … In addition to Real-Time, today the Analytics team has also announced a premium tier for enterprise companies who want more support (and datapoints tracked) than Google offers with its free service. Google says that for an unspecified price, companies will be able to get phone support, SLA guarantees, and increased data limits.”
VB: “For quite some time, Google Analytics has offered webmasters a free way to measure traffic of their sites 24 hours after the action occurs. But since real-time traffic startups like Chartbeat (a service we use) and Woopra came onto the scene, Google Analytics has looked slow in comparison. Thankfully, that’s remedied with these new stats tools, which include social media impact and campaign measurement.”
LM: “Real-Time reports do not include profile filtering. That extra processing step is currently bypassed in the interest of optimizing speed. So even if you’re looking inside a filtered profile, keep in mind that no data is being filtered out of the Real-Time reports. – Let me emphasize that this doesn’t mean that all your GA data is now real-time. Some of GA’s standard reports have deep functionality that also requires too much processing to be reported instantly. You have to look in the Real-Time reports for real-time data.”