Microsoft adCenter Content Ads pilot program

I got this email today… so it looks like adCenter is growing.

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Dear Sir,

We’re excited to welcome you to the Microsoft adCenter Content Ads pilot program starting January 25, 2007.¹ We reviewed your account and believe you’re a great match for this new content-targeted advertising. With this upgrade to Content Ads you’ll be able to:

• Extend your advertising reach beyond Live Search using the same adCenter pay-per-click pricing that you already know. Your text ads will display next to relevant content on sites within the Microsoft network, such as MSN’s Health & Fitness, Tech & Gadgets, Travel, and Money².
• Gain access to the new adCenter beta site before it is released to all our advertisers. You’ll experience improved reporting and navigation, along with the same powerful adCenter demographic and geographic targeting tools you currently rely on.

On January 25, 2007, your account will upgrade to the adCenter beta site and your adCenter campaigns will automatically start to display on relevant content pages within the Microsoft network. Within the adCenter beta site you’ll have the flexibility to set separate bids for these content-targeted ads, or do nothing and your campaigns will continue to run.

Watch your e-mail for a reminder two days before your upgrade with important instructions for managing bids and keywords for Content Ads. This e-mail will also tell you how to turn off content distribution if you aren’t yet ready to try this new advertising opportunity.

To learn more about Content Ads, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page. If you have additional questions, please visit Microsoft adCenter Support.

We look forward to having you participate in the Microsoft adCenter Content Ads pilot program. 

Sincerely,

The Microsoft adCenter Team

Heathrow International Airport Evacuated!

I flew back to San Francisco from London Heathrow Airport today, and while I was checking in alarms sounded, and everyone was forced to evacuate the airport immediately. Of course, I took the opportunity to snap over 100 high quality digital photos with my Nikon D-50 of the evacuation, which has oddly not been covered by the media yet. The photos include the crowd of over 1000 people that were evacuated, the police with semi-automatic rifles, ambulance, airport staff, and up to 8 jets that circled the skies forbidden to land.

PHOTOS AVAILABLE FOR LICENSE

I would be happy to license any or all of the 100+ photos for a fee. Contact me soon if you are interested, as I may offer an exclusive license for the right price.

Frightened Civilians

Thousands Evacuated

Bewildered Crowd

Policeman w/ Automatic Rifles

Policeman on Radio

Police Vehicles

Emergency Ambulance

Jets Circling Unable to Land

Airport Staff Directing Civilians to Safety

Brilliant Viral Marketing Press Releases

A true viral campaign gets forwarded because consumers are compelled to do so by the glory of the content, not because you bribed them with points. With that said, here are the 12 campaigns that won our hearts this year, and why:

#1. Peerflix Paparazzi

MarketingSherpa Summary: A terrific example of cost-effectively tapping into the viral power of celebrities to build your own online buzz, traffic, and ultimately brand. Within 90 days after launch nearly two million unique visitors played the game more than two times each - plus 5% traveled onwards to visit the main brand’s site. And that’s the entire point after all.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/1.html

#2. Beer.com’s Virtual Bartender

MarketingSherpa Summary: It’s pretty much a “duh”. If your target is young adult males, sex really, really sells. That combined with the word “beer” explains why 10 million visitors hit the site. But, what if you’re not marketing to young men, you can’t use sex, and your brand isn’t about liquor? Are there lessons to be learned? Yes! In fact we suspect some clever b-to-b marketer will come up with a “virtual CEO” soon, inspired by this campaign.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/2.html

#3. New Rules of PR (PDF)

MarketingSherpa Summary: Business-to-business marketers who are dreaming that someday their white paper will go viral should check out this campaign. Per our Viral Marketing in 2006 Special Report (link below), newer seeding tactics such as blogging and press releases optimized for search engines can give a campaign that extra viral boost within a niche market (especially when you don’t have sex, celebrity, or games to drive traffic.)

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/3.html

#4. Wadsworth Atheneum - Surrealist Exhibit

MarketingSherpa Summary: This campaign proves local “brick and mortar” marketers can use online viral campaigns to drive real-world foot traffic with measurable results. Although the campaign was for an arts organization, we hope traditional and multichannel retailers in particular will be inspired by it to launch viral tactics of their own. How about a dress-your-own celebrity model contest that leads generates in-store coupons for all players…. Ooh ooh, the ideas are endless!

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/4.html

#5. The Quantum IT Challenge

MarketingSherpa Summary: Although this business-to-business lead generation campaign targeting IT professionals didn’t go wildly viral (10% of game players referred a friend), marketer Kelsey Galarza who herself hails from a consumer marketing analytics background, did something almost no other online game we’ve heard of does: tracked each respondent by their game play.

Each player’s success at a fairly tough game gave her the qualification data she needed to decide which leads should be followed up on by sales first, and which could wait a while or needed further qualification efforts. Bravo!

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/5.html

#6. MakeMyTrip Viral Series (India)

MarketingSherpa Summary: Two useful lessons from this viral campaign promoting airline tickets to affluent consumers in India — (1) Even in this era of globalization, a regional agency can increase viral responses in a regional market and (2) if one campaign works, turn it into a viral series for ongoing brand building. Included, useful response data on how different campaigns took off in different ways.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/6.html

#7. Blog in Space

MarketingSherpa Summary: This campaign is proof that if you blatantly appeal to bloggers’ egos and desire for more traffic/attention, they will in turn happily link to you. And if your offer is appealing enough, where a few influential bloggers go the rest will virally follow.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/7.html

#8. Kreedo Brand Democracy

MarketingSherpa Summary: The big problem with viral marketing is figuring out ahead of time what creative your prospects will find so exciting that they virally spread the word. Often it feels like a crap shoot. This campaign by a market research firm in Portugal offers a solution — why not launch with a microsite something that’s “good enough” for some viral spread and then ask your visitors what else they’d like you to add to it? If you build what they *really* want, they will come.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/8.html

#9. Monk-e-Mail

MarketingSherpa Summary: This campaign uses elements that we’ve seen before quite a few times in the overcrowded field of viral e-card campaigns. Consumers get to play with an interactive form (including adding their own audio) to send a silly, personalized e-card to friends. We’ve all been there, done that, got the t-shirt. So why did it make Sherpa’s 2006 hall of fame?

Check out the landing page. It’s the best we’ve ever seen for this type of campaign because everything’s included above the fold on just one page. You don’t have to click through a screen by screen process to send an e-card. And we bet that meant considerably higher response rates.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/9.html

#10. mySBC eBill Service: Trees in the Forest of Change

MarketingSherpa Summary: This campaign proves it’s entirely possible to invent a highly-compelling viral marketing site even when you’re not marketing it as entertainment (no videos, no games), nor forcing respondents (who in this case were “green” consumers) to act as your viral agent to claim a reward. Almost half a million have converted so far … very impressive.

Yes, this campaign demonstrates that with thoughtful design and execution viral can work for almost every brand and demographic online.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/10.html

#11. Belt Buckle Knife

MarketingSherpa Summary: This is one of those classic “whups-it-went-viral” campaigns. An earnest fellow puts up a Web site to promote his home-grown product, then suddenly the world starts talking about it. This kind of tactic is impossible to copy - it’s gotta be real and it’s got to be luck.

So why does it make Sherpa’s Hall of Fame? Measurement. Turns out the site owner measured the value of each type of viral traffic to see who would buy, and who was just wasting time entertaining themselves on his server. We really wish more viral marketers would measure traffic ROI like this.

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/11.html

#12. The ERP of This Century

MarketingSherpa Summary: Brilliant! This viral campaign should inspire every marketer targeting huge organizations such as the Fortune 1000 and Global 1000. When your business prospect has tens of thousands of employees around the world, how can you get them all talking about how wonderful you are? How do you turn a handful of internal evangelists into thousands praising your name? Turns out rap music has all the answers…

Click to view campaign details: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vas2006/12.html

Useful links related to this article

Marketingsherpa’s 2006 Viral Marketing Report: Benchmark Data, Practical Tips, & Biggest Change http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3221

MarketingSherpa’s 2005 Viral Marketing Report — features still-useful practical tips for the top 5 viral tactics: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2957

MarketingSherpa’s 2005 Viral Marketing Hall of Fame — 12 real-life campaigns detailed http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2964

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Analyze Your Site

Hey WebBastards… run this on your site, to get an idea of where you may be doing things only super web idiots would be doing.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Apparently the site we ran this on points all fingers at us as Super Idiots… that is if we care about fools on 56k.

Analysis and Recommendations

• TOTAL_HTML - Congratulations, the total number of HTML files on this page (including the main HTML file) is 2 which most browsers can multithread. Minimizing HTTP requests is key for web site optimization.
• TOTAL_OBJECTS - Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 35 - consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
• TOTAL_IMAGES - Warning! The total number of images on this page is 26 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
• TOTAL_CSS - Congratulations, the total number of external CSS files on this page is 2 . Because external CSS files must be in the HEAD of your HTML document, they must load first before any BODY content displays. Although they are cached, CSS files slow down the initial display of your page.
• TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 238407 bytes, which will load in 47.91 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider contacting us about our optimization services.
• TOTAL_SCRIPT - Caution. The total number of external script files on this page is 5 , consider reducing this to one or two. Combine, refine, and optimize your external script files. Ideally you should have one (or even embed scripts for high-traffic pages) on your pages.
• HTML_SIZE - Caution. The total size of this HTML file is 31080 bytes, which is above 20K but below 100K. With a 10K ad and a logo this means that your page will load in over 8.6 seconds. Consider optimizing your HTML and eliminating unnecessary features. To give your users feedback, consider layering your page or using positioning to display useful content within the first two seconds.
• IMAGES_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your images is 120928 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS.
• SCRIPT_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your external scripts is 67499 bytes, which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your scripts for size, combining them, and using compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents.
• CSS_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your external CSS is 18900 bytes, which is over 8K. Consider optimizing your CSS for size by eliminating whitespace, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate.
• MULTIM_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of all your external multimedia files is 0 bytes, which is less than 4K.