When I stop to think about it, I find that the music I listen to, the shops I frequent, the restaurants I go to, the websites I read, the shows I watch and the things I buy are very frequently a result of recommendations from friends. I’m certainly not alone; these days, people are increasingly turning to those around them when making decisions about what to consume. But there’s one recommendation that doesn’t carry much weight with me, and it’s on Facebook:

“So-and-so likes Business ACME.”

A lot of effort is being spent these days on getting people to click that “Like” button for brands on Facebook. People are promised all sorts of things for “liking” a brand – exclusive coupons, special freebies, entry into a contest or charitable donations to the local Shelter For Homeless Yet Adorable Kittens & Puppies. And since these efforts have started to become so common, when I see that one of my friends has “Liked” something on Facebook, I think to (admittedly cynical) myself,
“Do they really?”
And even if they actually do like that business, so what? They clicked a button. It doesn’t really tell me much.

However, if someone takes the time to put in their own words what they like about that business, I’m all ears. If my friend posts a positive review about them, I’ll not only read it, I’ll almost certainly give them a try at some point. And when people ask me the best place to go, I’ll tell them the places that I’ve tried that my friends recommended to me.

It’s not that hard to get a lot of “Likes” on Facebook, especially if you’re giving people incentives. But if brands really want people to give over their money, they need to figure out how to get individuals – and their friends- to recommend brands in their own words, and that’s trickier. People are busy, and constructing coherent praise for a brand or business takes time and is easy to forget about. So how can you make this happen?

1. Make it easy. Instead of a suggestion box, what if you had a computer set up next to the exit where people could tell you what they thought? You could take the (nice) comments and post them on your Facebook page, and that user might go check your page out the next time they’re online to see if their comment made it up there. Then they could easily share the comment with their friends.

2. Make it worth it. Instead of exchanging “Likes” for entry into a contest, why not have a contest where you challenge your fans to write a haiku about what they like about your brand? It’s more fun, more engaging, and both sides are really interacting with each other and building a relationship instead of just clicking a button.

3. Have the best service. Your product is important, yes. But if the people selling that product give horrible service, buyers won’t care if they’re selling gold bars for a nickel each. A great way to reinforce your commitment to service is by contacting the people who say nice things about your business, thank them for doing so, and then let them know that if they ever need anything, you’re there. Chances are, you’ve just turned a good reviewer into an evangelist.

4. Simplify their life. How does your product or business make someone’s life better? How can you make it easier for people to get? What can you do to take up only the amount of time they’re willing to give you – or less? If I leave a transaction marveling at how easy it was, I’ll be thinking next about who I can tell about it.

Getting “Liked” is all well and good, but getting liked enough to be raved about is a goldmine. Instead of getting a button clicked, you’d be wise to try getting a conversation started.

Andrea Bridges-Smith
Product Manager, MediaMind Global Publisher Unit

In late 2010 when the XBOX 360 Kinect was released, there was a massive amount of hacking (actually embraced by Microsoft) that led to some incredibly innovative results. Some with very practical solutions and some, well, a bit more “artistic”.

At CES this year, several companies showcased their kinetic, or movement based interaction, controls that integrated with television sets and their specialized platforms and programs. While some required additional hardware, like the camera and supporting processor, other companies had actually built the camera and processor into the TV, which seems to be what consumers are looking for — if it can’t live in the “cloud” please keep the number of peripherals to a minimum. A handful of these devices even included voice activated controls as well.



While many people may recall Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report interacting with content on large transparent screens with his hands, the good news is all of this technology does not require special effects and more importantly special gloves, which honestly reminded me too much of the NES Power Glove.


What will we see as more manufacturers release movement and/or voice based controls? With the advent of the Wii and Kinect, gaming was opened to a new type of consumer base, the casual family and friends gamers. What will be interesting is how this community gathering around a single centralized device will allow for collaborative engagement and selection of content. It is problem enough if your dog or toddler walks into the room while you are playing a Kinect game, but what happens when it is something truly important like when you’re trying to set a recording for the season finale of America’s Got Talent and your dog’s tail deletes an entire season of Top Chef? Or you are trying to change the channel to iTV and your Samsung is confused because the voice command is “Hi TV, turn channel to iTV” ? All kidding aside, there is still a ways to go for this type of technology to move from a novelty to mainstream adoption, but we are headed in the right direction.


Once we see improvement in the required gestures and recognized voice commands, there is more opportunity than just changing the channel or boxing a virtual heavyweight in a game. Some of the examples at CES show that in the not too distant future there will be advertising experiences with a ‘virtual you’ trying on different clothes, or even navigating through a 360 3D view inside and out of a new SUV. What better way to get your significant other’s opinion on how you’ll really look in those new pair of Diesel jeans or the approval of your kids for the spacious backseat with dual-screened entertainment system of the BMW X5. I mean outside of actually going to the store or dealership.

Most of the television OEMs only plan to include the voice or motion based controls in their top end models, and while consumers can add on this technology through an additional piece of hardware expect only the early adopters to embrace much of the technology as it stands today. But, by 2013 expect to be able to “clap on” or “clap off” your TV, and well much, much more.




Ryan K Manchee | Director of Innovation Strategy, MediaMind

CES has always been about gadgety goodness of the future and this year was no let down. And televisions took center stage.

 With significant improvements to picture quality (forget HD, why aren’t we shooting in ultra-high def / 4K, or even 8K!) and the ever-increasing screen size (and still managing to shave the depth down to just more than a few millimeters – see LG’s 4mm OLED) TVs continue to be positioned as the dominant viewing screen for the household. While nearly all of the TVs showcased at CES were “smart”, on average most of the manufacturers said that only 50–60% of their TVs hitting the shelves this year would be “smart”.

 Today, more TVs are now connected to internet services like premium/freemium video over-the-top (OTT) content from the likes of Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube, as well include other features like games (e.g.; Angry Birds) and social connecting/sharing (e.g.; Facebook, Twitter). Is the whole truly greater than the sum of its parts – are these features splashed on the home screen what makes a TV smart?

 During the CES Smart TV 2012 Outlook panel, it was noted that while something like Angry Birds can help sell a TV, most consumers do not utilize this feature for very long after setting up their new TV. In fact, on average after ONE month users typically stop interacting with these additional apps and then rely primarily on the video discovery-enabled applications to find what they want or what they may be interested in.

 What was interesting about the discussion in this panel, and was also discussed in the Video 3 Screens and Beyond panel, was how the groups agreed on the fact that in most households with more than one person the TV was not a personal device, but rather a shared platform. While this wasn’t a revolutionary statement, it seems obvious that attempts at recreating the success of personalization and content exploration on a mobile devices, is one step forward with two steps back. Why reinvent the wheel?

 The best screen is not always the biggest screen – it is based on the user, their location, and the content. Why would anyone really want to tweet from their sparkling new ultra-thin 55 inch OLED television? With consumers embracing (literally and figuratively) their mobile devices as their personalized device for discovering, interacting, and consuming — why not create more opportunity for multiscreen content, mobile synchronization, and ultimately customized experiences driven via mobile devices? 

 With advances in Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) through evolving technologies like watermarking or fingerprinting digital audio and/or video, live or on-demand content AND advertisements can be identified for the consumer. The potential for deeper insights into programming is truly amazing — imagine being able to instantly swipe for an actor’s IMDB profile, when else they appear in the show you’re watching, what other programs you can see them on, post to their Facebook page or engage with them in a real-time conversation via Twitter, learn more about where a scene was shot, and yes even where you too can buy that sweater the actress is wearing. The potential for product placement and even interactive experiences related to actual commercials is nearly limitless, and if done effectively with consumer engagement in mind the measurable engagement results could offer a whole new level of transparency, optimization and even targeting for advertisers.

 Consumers win with more entertaining and educational resources, and marketers win with new avenues for monetization and measurement.



Ryan K Manchee | Director of Innovation Strategy, MediaMind

MediaMind speaks to Trazo’s Creative Director, Antonio Moreno, about the shaping up of the digital campaign for Piaggio.

Piaggio, the European leader and global supplier of mythical motorbike brands such as Vespa,  Aprilia and Derbi, turned to the creative agency Trazo to develop a robust and  creative campaign that would leverage rich media capabilities and guarantee high-standard results.With that request in mind, Trazo designed an eye-catching interactive catalog of motorbikes that spins around inside a banner.

When hovering over any of the motorbikes, a panel scrolls down showing the name of the vehicle. The price can be checked by clicking through and further detailed information like snapshots of each vehicle and promotional discounts are also available. All in all, it’s a flawless execution of creative design that Antonio Moreno discussed with MediaMind.

MM: What was the brief?

AM: The Piaggio Group wanted to start their overall discount campaign using an integration of all their communication channels but they wanted to focus most of their efforts on the website, dosruedaspormenos.com. On the site, users are able to retrieve information about all vehicles and brand offers. For the on-line campaign, however, we were asked to achieve high results by displaying all the offers in one single action. A real challenge indeed.

MM: How was this particular format chosen?

AM: We were determined to develop a “microsite” that that could be embedded in a leaderboard and make it attractive and largely dynamic. As the campaign will run nonstop for a whole year,  it also needed to be updated on a regular basis.

MM: How did you come up with the creative?

AM: We quickly came up with the idea of the spinning carrousel to help display all the pictures of the promoted motorbikes. The intention was not only to break down the information at once, but also gain awareness of the on-click call-to-action image-enlargement new feature. Also, the information for each motorbike is accessed in one click without having to leave the publisher’s site. Both MediaMind’s rich media technology and ongoing support as well as Mindshare’s were undoubtedly instrumental in the success of this project.

MM: What were the results?

AM: Piaggio’s Marketing Department has been giving consistent positive feedback about the results. All the objectives in the briefing were met and ROI expectations were exceeded. Considering the current situation, that is just great!

MediaMind recently spoke to Mark Lomas, commercial director of Cadreon in Australia, about one of Australia’s first intent-based, geo-targeted campaigns for ZUJI, the Asia Pacific online travel retailer.

Q. Can you tell us about the ZUJI campaign?
A. ZUJI is a fast-growing online travel retailer operating in the Australian and Asia-Pacific market. Like all online travel retailers, it faces the constant challenge of trying to retain and grow market share in a fiercely competitive market. In travel, brand affinity tends to be low and consumers are price and intent-driven. When researching or buying travel products online, people typically search multiple websites and travel suppliers to find the best deal.

With this campaign, ZUJI wanted to keep its products and prices in front of users even after they left the ZUJI site. It also wanted to ensure it stayed highly relevant to users by serving them ads that matched their travel intentions right up to the point of purchase.

Q. What approach did you take?
A. Our approach was to create robust creative that matches user search-intent or interest intent. Working with MediaMind as a partner, we created a system that identifies and captures each user’s flight path intent when they visit the ZUJI site.

Say a consumer visits ZUJI and searches for a flight from Sydney to Las Vegas; we then tag them as a Las Vegas flight interest. If they leave the ZUJI site without making a purchase, we know they’re still interested in a Sydney to Las Vegas flight, so we continue to serve them ZUJI banners wherever we find them within the Cadreon network. By linking MediaMind technology with ZUJI’s own database, we can dynamically find the cheapest Sydney to Las Vegas flight deals currently available and insert those deals into the banner ad.

Q. What’s the reach of the Cadreon network?
A. Our network hits around 90 percent of the online Australian population. That means we can pretty much find most users, wherever they are.

Q. What’s the benefit of the advertising approach to consumers?
A. The consumer gets to see highly relevant, intent-based creative that helps them with their travel planning. Also, because we’re able to insert the very best flight deals available, the customer will receive the most up to date sale pricing. They simply click on the banner and go through to the ZUJI site to book the cheaper flight.

Q. How has the campaign gone?A. It’s gone incredibly well. ZUJI is seeing a significant increase in click-through-rates back to its site. And because we’re serving better, more relevant creative, conversion rates have spiked as well.

Q. How important is basket value to ZUJI?A. Beyond lowering the overall cost per acquisition, a major campaign objective for us has been to increase the basket or average order value for ZUJI. ZUJI calls this its ‘ROAS objective,’ where every dollar it spends on advertising must generate more than a dollar back.

With this campaign, we’re trying to close the gap between the cost per acquisition and the order value. For example, if ZUJI’s cost per acquisition is $50, but it’s only making $100 on that acquisition on a local domestic flight, no matter how many acquisitions we drive, it’s not going to help ZUJI grow. But if we can help ZUJI increase its average order value to $2000, it makes business sense.

Q. How do you go about increasing basket values?A. We track order or basket value when a user places an order and then use that information to optimize out low-performing sites. In a traditional display environment, you typically optimize on sites that deliver the most conversions, but you don’t know whether that conversion was for a low-value domestic flight or a $10,000 Barbados holiday. Using MediaMind technology, we’re able to track order value and see how much users are spending in certain environments. We can then optimize spend on sites that generate higher value travel purchases.

Q. Was the campaign technically challenging?
A. It was a little complicated as we had to set up a database-driven XML feed, make sure that feed was clean, and ensure the banners all linked to the right fields. We were also using dynamic database-driven content with geo-targeted messaging and mashing technologies together, so it was quite a challenging implementation for everyone. No one had ever done anything like this before in this market, so it was important that we got it right.

Q. Do you have any performance results? A. I can’t discuss campaign results except to say ZUJI is extremely happy with how the campaign is going. Obviously, travel has very low product margins, so anything we can do technologically or creatively to improve click-through-rates and conversion-rates can yield significant returns for ZUJI – as this campaign is doing.

Q. Are there any improvements you’d like to introduce to the ZUJI campaign moving forward?
A. We’d gradually like to make it more granular and introduce advanced sequencing to go deeper into the consumer purchase funnel. For ZUJI, once a customer buys a flight to Vegas, we’d like to then serve deals to Vegas hotels or Vegas car rental or various deals for Vegas tours packages. It’s about how can we identify more user intent and serve cascading creative messages. If our first message is a branded message, the second should be a direct response message, the third a cross-sell or upsell and so on. So, it’s not only serving the right creative, but also serving it in the right sequence and timing.

Q. How did MediaMind contribute to the success of these campaigns?
A. MediaMind is great. One of the reasons we work with them is for the superior support they offer. We really couldn’t run these highly targeted, data-driven campaigns without that help and support.