The pulse of Alexander Interactive

The news that Twitter is getting into the advertising business has exciting implications for companies ready to harness real-time conversations for ecommerce activity.

Companies with products and services to sell will be able to tap into the immediacy of conversations on Twitter and provide targeted offers in real time. Frustrated with a travel booking? Post a tweet and watch as a travel agent enters your tweet stream. Bouncing around ideas on which shoes to buy? Watch an ad for Zappo’s appear at the perfect moment.

If executed well, it’s the kind of advertising that consumers might admit to enjoying. More relevant than display ads and less intrusive than mobile, Promoted Tweets–once the kinks are smoothed out–could be downright useful.

Consider: C.C. Sabathia of the New York Yankees pitches another great game and completes his no-hitter. People (including, probably, this author) are tweeting rapidly about the feat, starting in the middle innings and hitting a crescendo around the end of the game. As the volume hits its max, Steiner Sports (an Ai client) inserts ads into the chatter: “Buy Sabathia’s game-worn jersey from his no-hitter! Get details now.” Instantly thousands of people are tuned into an item that might appeal to them at the moment of its maximum appeal. It’s search marketing for conversations.

Twitter’s conversations are essential, of course, and Promoted Tweets will have to be obvious without being intrusive. With the right execution, though, they will be huge.

The lead eMarketer story today is How Much Ads Cost. It breaks down offline media CPMs in a handy graph, then makes a separate set of online assessments.
The biggest takeaway? Display advertising doesn’t pay. Online display ads ran at a $2.46 CPM in 2008. That’s less than 10% better than what outdoor advertising charges for billboards and bus stations.
The article goes on to note better returns in video (CPMs anywhere from $7.40 to $35, depending on placement) and search ($75!). But it doesn’t eliminate the big message: online display advertising doesn’t pay. Not well, at least.
Of course, display ads are de rigueur in much website creation, and a buoying component of media sites. But display has become a baseline and not a profit center. This is happening offline as well as online. The New York Times recently reported on evolving revenue channels at magazines, where subscriptions are becoming pricier profit centers–the opposite of the traditional model, where subscriptions covered postage and ad revenue ran the business.
Savvy online publishers are realizing this and similarly evolving their models. Beyond video advertising, sites can offer premium content, exclusive access, tools and other items to entice more value out of individuals. Business-to-business revenue needs to morph into something more profitable as well, whether it’s through partnerships, sponsorships, cobrands, or something else.
Innovation is going to be key in the coming years. Because a simple ad banner unfortunately won’t pay the bills.

I just stumbled upon the fact that Chocolate Skittles allegedly exist. While researching the validity of this, as well as the availability of said Chocolate Skittles, I checked out skittles.com.
After you enter your birthday on the home page, you are brought to an external site – the official Skittles YouTube landing, which displays Skittles television commercials. In the top left corner of the page, there is a modal navigation bubble (built with Flash) that stays with you as you browse.
When you click on any of their product titles from the “Products” link, you are brought to a page in Wikipedia that displays tabular data of all Skittles products (including international). When you click “Friends” you are brought to the Skittles Facebook Fan Page. Click “Chatter” and it directs to the Skittles Twitter page, while “Videos” takes you to the YouTube page, and “Photos” leads to the Skittles Flickr page.
Skittles are also allowing their customers to interact with the company, and with each other. The Skittles Flickr page aggregates any photo titled with or tagged with “Skittle” or “Skittles.” The same rule is applied to their Twitter page.
The “Contact” page is a bare-bones, static page with a simple form. Any legal information, such as a Privacy Policy, is located under the “Other Gobbledygook” button on the navigation bubble, which expands to display the information.
It amazes me that such a well-known brand has used this method to present themselves on the web. They have used the most popular social websites to their advantage, and likely spent a minimal amount of money to build their site. They are advertising for themselves on all of these sites without even paying for the advertisement.
This is one of the most unique and interesting concepts of a branded website that I have seen. As the popularity of social websites progress, more examples like this will pop up. Just look at how many musical artists have deleted their personal websites and simply use MySpace as an outlet. It’s all about how to reach the largest audience, and social websites are the best tool for that right now.

Ai and Steiner Sports rolled out a great context-aware ad panel that presents product search results based on page content on espn.com.
The search widget, as we call it internally, receives a search phrase from ESPN when a page is called. The widget checks the steinersports.com database for related products, then shows the top two results on the page. There are also default items in place when the search phrase doesn’t return any relevant results.
The widget is the product of a three-way collaboration between Ai, Steiner and ESPN. Our thanks to ESPN for helping to get everything running smoothly.
A full news item will be posted soon, but in the meantime, try it out: Derek Jeter on espn.com