ContactComplete to Make Connecting With Ad Industry Contacts Easier

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Are you a media buyer who needs to know who at Conde Nast Digital handles sales for Hotel Chatter or Golf Digest? Are you a sales rep who would love to be able to make just one phone call directly to the media buyer at Saatchi who handles the account you are trying to pitch? Are you a brand marketer who is frustrated because you can't find the right person at TBWA\Chiat\Day to speak with about giving a capabilities pitch to your boss two days from now?

ContactComplete is a community of advertising sales, marketing and business development professionals who pool contacts to find new leads and keep track of existing clients.

It's a crowdsourcing approach to business contact management the company likes to call groupsourcing which can be described as the wisdom of your industry peers vs the wisdom of the crowd. Like crowdsourcing, where information and content are contributed and maintained by the crowd, groupsourcing draws on circles of colleagues or business associates for content and information that is more relevant to those involved.

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by Steve Hall    Jan-26-12    
Topic: Tools



SocialBridge Will Improve Your Agency Relationship, Prevent Break Ups

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This is one of the somewhat cooler promotions we've seen for an agency workflow/collaboration system. Who knew we'd find it amidst our white paper series. The promotion is for SocialBridge which apparently makes it really easy to collaborate, share assets, comment on proofs and give approval with co-workers and clients in virtual work rooms.

But let's talk about the promotion. It's that classic, almost smarmy comic book approach to the break up and make up. Apparently SocialBridge can cure relationships of all kinds. Even the messy ones between coworkers in agencies and between agencies and their clients. Check it out. Yes, you do have to register for the white paper to see it. Fair warning and your choice but we like the promo and we think the offering is worth checking out..

by Steve Hall    Jan-24-12    
Topic: Agencies, Tools



Buzzboard to Provide Digital, Social Media Dashboard

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vSplash has introduced BuzzBoard, a digital marketing and analytics platform that gives small business advertisers an overview of their digital presence across websites, search engines, blogs and social media and helps them to monitor, measure and track their online performance.

Of the offering, Founder and CEO Umesh Tiberwal said, "BuzzBoard offers a holistic view of the digital world of an SMB. It not only allows SMB aggregators to help their customers understand how they are performing across digital media, it provides aggregators empirical market data for targeting their sales efforts."

by Steve Hall    Dec-12-11    
Topic: Tools



FastPay to Speed Funding and Invoice Payment

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FastPay, a new tech-enabled finance platform servicing ad-tech businesses, launched today with $25 million already funded to dozens of digital media businesses. FastPay "empowers early and mid-stage companies in this $29B industry to fund their growth in an efficient, cost effective and equity-preserving manner. "

And that's not all. It's about getting paid faster once your business is up and running.

eMarketer estimates the size of the digital ecosystem will grow to $100B by 2015 and the IAB says nearly 80 percent of invoices now take from 60 to 90 days or more to pay. We can personally attest to this and it's not fun so we're a big supporter of any entity that claims it can get us out money faster and more efficiently.

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by Steve Hall    Oct-25-11    
Topic: Tools



Social Reward Survey Offering Delivers Brands Consumer Insight

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Today, social media sponsorship company IZEA announced WeReward Insights, a new survey feature for its WeReward mobile rewards application that helps consumers earn money from brands by performing brick and mortar-related actions with their mobile devices.

Through WeReward Insights, advertisers can offer surveys to segments of the WeReward app user base. WeReward has opt-in demographic data such as purchasing habits at stores and restaurants which can be analyzed and aggregated. That data can then be used by brands to get a real-time snapshot of their consumer's behavior.

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 4-11    
Topic: Social, Tools



Facebook Bid Management and Budget Allocation Get Automated

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Today at OMMA, Clickable CEO David S. Kidder introduced the company's Social ActEngine, a set of algorithms that automatically reallocate budgets and set bids for optimal performance in Facebook campaigns. The Social ActEngine also tests and prioritizes each ad within each campaign to ensure efficiency.

Clickable's Facebook Advertising Suite also introduces hourly syncing of all data with Facebook to enable real-time insights and optimization. The Facebook Advertising Suite is part of Clickable's flagship Pro tool, a technology for managing advertising performance across Google, Bing and Facebook.

Of the introduction, Kidder said, "Clickable continues to answer the call from advertisers and agencies seeking automation and intelligence to launch and manage more successful Facebook campaigns. Clickable will continue to invest aggressively in transformational tools to make serious Facebook marketers faster and more effective."

by Steve Hall    Oct- 4-11    
Topic: Industry Events, Social, Tools



Hulu Offers Viewers Choice With Ad Swap

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At the IAB MIXX Conference this morning during Advertising Week, Hulu announced Ad Swap, a new advertising product that allows watchers to swap out an ad they are watching for one that's more relevant.

As described on the Hulu blog by Hulu SVP of Advertising JP Colaco, "When an ad begins to play, a user can click on the Hulu Ad Swap icon in the top left corner of the player and bring up a number of ad choices, customized to that user's profile and previous ad viewing preferences."

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 3-11    
Topic: Online, Tools



Facebook Brand Engagement Gets Another Metric

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Social media marketing software company Wildfire, today, announced the release of new analytics that allow marketers to gain understanding of their brand's reach on Facebook, including how well brands are accessing the friends of their fans and how successfully they're creating brand advocates. Wildfire's new analytics will work with Facebook's new Insights metrics but are said to help brands to these metrics in aggregate across all their Facebook pages and tabs.

Of the new analytics, Wildfire Founder and CEO Victoria Ransom said, "Facebook Insights provide marketers with powerful social media measurement tools to better understand and influence the discussion between a brand and its audience. Partnering with Facebook allows us to deliver a fully-integrated analytics solution that builds upon the foundation provided by Facebook's platform. Our enhanced social marketing tools give Wildfire customers an advantage when it comes to brand engagement."

When used in combination with Facebook Insights, Wildfire's analytics will highlight engagement, a metric Mark Zuckerberg, at the recent f8 conference, said is becoming increasingly important.

by Steve Hall    Oct- 3-11    
Topic: Social, Tools



More Coke Happiness, Ad Industry Gets It's Own Pandora Station

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- More Coke Happiness Factory from Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam.

- Buddy Media is out with ConversionBuddy, a tool brands can use to determine which audience segments share social content most frequently and which audiences generate the most traffic and revenue.

- This is kind of stupid.

- A whole lot of people have watched this FreddW Samsung Mobile video created by Digitas.

- Advertising has its own Pandora station! JWT and Pandora got together and asked ad industry pros to help create a playlist.

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by Steve Hall    Sep-19-11    
Topic: Agencies, Industry Events, Social, Tools, Video



Creatives Rejoice! Every Award Show on One Calendar!

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In a nod to the beginning of the new awards year, RKCR/Y&R has launched new site that will insure agencies and creatives never miss an awards deadline.

The free service, called T-Minus, has been developed to help creatives around the world keep track of up upcoming awards deadlines, allowing agencies to plan getting their projects out of the door on time.

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by Steve Hall    Jul-28-11    
Topic: Industry Events, Tools