Category: News (page 8 of 1505)

We’re at the San Francisco Design center, blogging Inside Network’s third annual Inside Social Apps conference.

The second afternoon panel is “Monetizing Social Games on Facebook: Credits, Today and Tomorrow.” Joining moderator AJ Glasser on stage is Trial Pay co-founder and CPO Terry Angelos, Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, RockYou CEO Lisa Marino and Happy Elements Chief Product Officer Rony Wang.

The following is a paraphrased transcript of the discussion.

AJ: Facebook Credits, how’s it working out?

Will: From my stand Facebook Credits are a simple reality. Our original hypothesis was that we would see an increase in conversions when the transition to Facebook Credits happened, and that’s been the case.

Lisa: When the change happened, monetization grew, because now you control your economy in a much more focused way. From our perspective, it’s absolutely fair for Facebook to take their share, and you design around the execution, really understanding how you convert non paying users to paying users.

Terry: There are two elements to the credits platform. Facebook as a payments service, and Credits as a virtual currency. We’ve seen some developers being very happy, and some wanted to switch back to their own premium currencies, but we haven’t seen anyone upset about the 30 percent.

AJ: Will either Happy Elements or Kixeye change the way Facebook Credits are used, making them a gateway payment to your own currencies?

Rony: We see three to five times higher conversion rate after Facebook Credits. There is a lower average revenue per user, but 10 to 20 percent higher revenue. Before Facebook Credits, we had to work with the prepaid card provider. If you use Facebook Credits as the in-game currency, but most of the conversions happen from Trial Pay. If we use Facebook Payments just as the gateway, we can get the user to pay more in a single transaction.

Will: It’s to-be-determined. It’s always best to see what drives conversion. Right now, we’ve seen that sticking with Facebook Credits as the exclusive provider makes sense, but it may change with upcoming games.

AJ: What about alternate forms of monetization?

Lisa: When we started out our apps grew very fast and we did a lot of experimentation. As we’ve been working with our games, we’ve always been a pioneer in monetization and that spawned the RockYou Ad Network. For example, Zoo World generates 40 percent of its revenue through ad units. When you have paying users to converting at a rate of about 1-2 percent you need to find alternate ways of monetization.

Terry: If you look at Zynga games, it is about 6 percent monetization through ads. We think that’s an interesting trend. There’s a lot of advertisers looking to try to reach an audience through advertising – CityVille, CastleVille and FarmVille all have bigger audiences than [NBC talent show] The Voice. When you’re reaching an audience the size of the voice every week, advertising makes sense. It’s much like a TV program. In order to continue to watching Seinfeld you have to watch an ad, in order to continue playing Words With Friends you have to watch an ad.

Lisa: I’ve been frustrated with the social gaming genre for many years, because people thought that it was beyond the scope of being a media company. With that many eyeballs, let’s call a spade a spade, you’re a media company.  If you think about media companies and social game companies you have three things that are very common: they have their own content, they source their content from other companies and they all have dual monetization — they have subscription and advertising. We need to start looking at ourselves, as developers, as media companies. User acquisition is starting to skyrocket. Alternative ways of monetization are the only ways we will be able to get through this.

AJ: Response?

Rony: Less than 2 percent of our revenue comes from advertising. In Asia, there are much fewer advertisers interested in participating.

Will: We are not a media company, we’re a game company. 98 percent of our revenue comes from direct transactions. There may be companies that do well with advertising but 99 times out of 100 our monetization is through game purchases. We’re giving something specific to consumers that they want to purchase. We are not a media company, we are a game company.

AJ: Let’s talk about engagement with advertising.

Terry: How do you convince a Proctor and Gamble to spend brand dollars on a completely new medium? They may think of games as a particular segment that’s only played by teenagers. One way to overcome that hurdle is to put in a really deep, engaging experience. Users can compare two ads and choose which one they like, or play a mini-game – more opportunity with the consumer’s time. If you’re not adding value and you’re not entertaining, you’re not going to engage, but if you can create an engaging experience, you’re going to connect. If you look at what RockYou is doing, what we’re doing, there’s an element of engagement that gets users to remember the brand. It might not be right for Will’s games, but if you look at a platform like Zynga, the users are casual gamers who don’t think of themselves as a hardcore gamers, they just want entertainment.

Rony: We haven’t seen a close relationship between engagement and retention. Lots of games on Tencent have a very low retention rate, but high ARPU. Hardcore games can have very low retention but very high ARPU. This kind of game can probably get more revenue over two months than other games can make in two years.

Will: To see monetization around 50 cents, a dollar or two dollars it really comes down to core game mechanics and no amount of blasting the consumer with media will get you there. Our core value to build a game that we love and we think our users will love. We don’t do optimization for monetization within games. Users in our game spend money to speed up time. There’s a lot of other elements that can help with monetization like real time synchronous gameplay. You see in real time what another player is doing to your base in Battle Pirates, and you can either wait to rebuild or you can go after them right away.  For us monetization isn’t another layer, it’s built into the game.

AJ: So you monetize revenge?

Will: We monetize revenge.

Lisa: I monetize cute animals. We break out the engagement by different user actions, because different users require different engagement. We’re incredibly deliberate about how we treat different users. We have whales that we’ve monetized through advertising. It’s about giving users the tools to collect either through buying items or grinding through ads.

AJ: How can TrialPay integrate with these types of developers — do you look to make those types of engagements with the game itself and what the brand offers?

Terry: We’re running lots of pet videos on Pet Society today, but you can’t always do that. You’re going to have a great response if you can monetize a game with advertising that matches the content. Finding ways to target to the right demographic is what we focus on, and that’s very similar to how TV ads work — just because I’m watching Modern Family, it’s hard to discern what I like. You have to get that right. What we’ve seen some developers do is large scale advertising — for example Lady Gaga’s FarmVille campaign.  That must have been very expense. I don’t know how often you’ll see campaigns like that. What we focus on is repeatable engagement.

Lisa: Totally agree. Our incentive add unit gets very different performance in our owned and operated properties than in our partner’s games because there is a different depth of integration into the overall gameplay. The commitment and integration of that particular unit, regardless of content, is what generates results — the performance is night and day.

Terry: We have to work very hard as a third party to get the same level of engagement as a third party. We have in-game icons that enable the user to watch a video — we customize them to fit within each game. If you A/B test the giant banner that takes over the whole screen will always win. How do you develop an ad platform that is opt-in, sustainable, and effective? We do this by surfacing ads only when it’s relevant, so that when a user sees an icon, it’s more likely to result in engagement, and once the ad is clicked, the icon disappears.

AJ: What types of monetization are your users going to tolerate? Are they more receptive to some types of monetization than others?

Will: Our users respond to functional items. They decorate with blood, not bananas or palm trees. The market dictates what kind of spending they’ll do and I don’t think we’ve found that limit yet. It really comes down to user acceptance and what they’ll tolerate.  We’ve seen games in China that have hit $4 average revenue per daily active user. It’s a new concept in the US — most of our audience is used to spending $50 to $60 and putting a game in the tray, but some of our users have found that this method works better for them. None of our items are exclusive to paying users. I’ve spent over $200,000 of free currency within a game, and I get my ass handed to me daily by other users (who haven’t paid as much).

Rony: For us, the bottom line is that the paying user should not ruin the non-paying user in games. In our games, we pay a lot of attention to the balance, so that the paying users don’t gain a huge advantage.

AJ: What’s the most you’ve spent on a game?

Lisa: In CityVille $200, our game $250 — if I decide to play, I’m a paying user. You’ll get me for at least $50.

Will: I’ve played League of Legends, but I don’t want to tell you how much I’ve paid.

Terry: 3-figures.

AJ: In one game?

Terry: I’m obviously one of the cheapskates.

Rony: I spent $500 in one day, in a browser based game in China. I pay for revenge.

Audience question: What are your thoughts on advertising competitors in your own games?

Lisa: I do it all day long. You don’t want to give up your paying users, but for the users who aren’t paying, you want to monetize them in some way. We want to be a good player in the ecosystem, but also to grow the number of eyeballs. Thinking through how to treat paying vs. non-paying is an issue for every developer to address prior to entering the ecosystem.

AJ: Can I expect to see you monetize differently across different platforms?

Lisa: We monetize on mobile as well as Facebook, but the behavior is very similar.

Will: I don’t think your behavior intelligence changes across platforms. The game informs the monetization, not the platform, the platform is a canvas.

Audience Question: I’ve been told the amount of money people pay for virtual goods is inversely proportional to their IQ. Is that true?

Lisa: Not at all true. Some of the best monetizing games on Facebook are gambling, skill-based games slots and bingo and they monetize at a very high rate. If you’re looking at a Sims game, the ARPU is likely to be much lower than for a skill-based game about a 4 to 8 cents. I think you can can easily get to 8 to 10 cents in ARPU but only if you’ve built the economy right.

NCC Executive Vice Chairman,  Eugene Juwah

Since 1999, when democracy emerged and became a springboard for the nation’s economic growth, the marketing communication industry has steadily increased in fortune and development as a result of its contribution to the building of local brands, especially in the telecommunications sector, Raheem Akingbolu reports

Until year 2001, when the telecommunication industry was deregulated, the highest spenders on Advertising, Public Relations and other legs of marketing were players in the financial and manufacturing sectors.

Like in other countries, the volume of government spending on advertising, though massive, was not properly coordinated because of low patronage of registered agencies.  For PR, Events and Media buying agencies, it was a total neglect on the part of government.
The status quo did not only change with the advent of the Global System of Mobile (GSM) communications, the impact of creativity on the growth of telecommunications brands sent an instant wake-up call to other brand owners to look outside the box in arriving at their marketing solutions.

For instance, aside the consolidation exercise in the banking industry, which led to stiff competition among the players, the contribution of PR to the development of the telecoms brands, convinced the management of many banks on what PR was capable of achieving.

Prior to the introduction of GSM telephony into the market, the number of connected phone lines in the country was a mere 450,000 for an estimated population of over 120 million people at the time.

Also, the level of investment in the telecommunications sector was put at $50 million.  Between 2001 and now, the sector has remained a major revenue earner to the Federal Government.

Last year, the Vice Chairman of National Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Eugene Juwah, said the gains of introducing GSM in the country have lifted the economy more than any other sector. He said: “the revenue generation in licence fees alone, in four years of the Revolution stood at over $1 billion, while private investment was over $4 billion, in the first five years”.

Analysts Views
In an interview with THISDAY, brand analyst and publisher of Marketing Edge Magazine, Mr. John Ajayi, said the feat recorded by the GSM operators in the market place would not have been possible, were it not for the activities of creative advertising agencies in the country.

According to him, “the activities in the market in the last 10 years have shown clearly that telecommunications industry redefined the market communications business. The beauty of it however has been the fact that most of the works that shored up the profiles of these companies come from the Nigerian market.”

The Vice Chairman of the Lagos State Chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Mr. Kunle Ogedengbe, who also corroborated this position, attributed the success of the telecommunications brands to Public Relations and Advertising.
Ogedengbe, who is also the Head Consultant at PR Plus Consulting, added that the managers of the various companies must be applauded for providing the technical structures for their brands as well as appreciating the fact that the local practitioners understand Nigerian market better.

At the initial period, the battle was solely between MTN and then Econet Wireless Nigeria, while Mtel, owned by the Nitel, was also struggling to add its voice. In 2002, a fourth Digital Mobile License (DML) was issued to Globacom (Glomobile).
In what look like a deliberate attempt to strengthen the competition in the market, three years ago, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the regulatory agency of government in charge of the sector, took a step further by awarding licence to Emerging Market Telecommunication Services Limited, otherwise known as ‘Etisalat’.
Since the various brands were launched into the market, the operators have left no stone unturned in building desired equity status for their brands.

MTN
The MTN success story is due largely to the vision, mission and commitment of its operators in establishing a market leadership position for itself.
When MTN launched into the market, its PR account was handled by Corporate and Financial, while the advertising brief was handled by TBWA/Concept Unit. The two agencies launched the brand aggressively into the market with the pay-off line ‘Best Connection’.
In April 2005, it launched ‘Everywhere you go’ to harmonise and create a universal brand promise in all MTN operations across the continent.

Still yearning for top of the mind presence, the brand went into its creative kitty to launch the ‘Go’ campaign with a view to positioning the Telco as a company that encourages men and women to go and conquer the world, knowing that man desires to live a better life, desire a secured future, progress and change.

‘Everywhere you Go’ was said to have been anchored on MTN’s core values of leadership, integrity and can do spirit. However, due to the company’s leadership on coverage and market share, in the Nigerian market, consumers’ interpretation of the pay-off was seen to have emanated more from a geographical rather than a brand philosophy perspective.
In order to change ‘Everywhere you Go’ being geographic, to seeing it as a philosophy of the brand. It was for this reason, according to MTN General Manager, Consumer, Mr. Kola Oyeyemi, that ‘the company re-strategised and launched another value proposition tagged ‘Moving you ahead’.

The brand has equally launched a highly creative advertising campaign with the theme ‘Mama na Boy!’
Meanwhile, to pacify the gender activists, who criticised the usage of the word ‘boy’ in the campaign, ‘Mama na Girl’ was quickly coined. The strategy perhaps resolved the riddle but the brand also benefitted immensely from the raging debates.

No sooner the issue came to a head than MTN harmonised the brief, which was shared between TBWA and SOU by consolidating it in one agency with the appointment of DDB, Lagos. The appointment of DDB, in 2006 is a landmark creative renewal of sorts for the brand that has been known for cutting-edge creative themes.

The agency, which prides itself as ‘enemy of the ordinary’ has in the last six years created innovative selling ideas in pushing the brand equity of MTN in the market place.  At the moment, MTN PR accounts reside with Marketing Mix and XLR8.

Bharti Airtel
The story behind what is today known as Bharti Airtel brand is both intriguing and exciting.
Though first to launch out with a hypothetical campaign theme ‘Your cellular network’ which ran for a short time, the brand’s creative advertising had encountered brand positioning challenges over the years.

It was originally launched into the market as Econet, with Insight Grey as the creative power house. Not long after its launch, it changed its pay-offline to ‘inspired to change your world’. Indeed, the vicissitudes of brand ownership and management has greatly impacted on the brand’s positioning.

As the populace was about settling down to appreciate the value offering and brand essence of Econet, it went on a failed romance with Vodacom. While the marriage was being finalised for consummation, things went awry and the Econet brand was left high and dry while Vodacom took to its heels.

Unbeaten, yet injured, the owners of the brand went ahead and eventually got the brand transformed into V-Mobile. It later came up with ‘It’s all about you’ pay-offline after it dumped Vodacom’s largest network in Africa.
The brand’s advertising later moved from Insight to Centrespread.  A little part of it was given to Rosabel Leo Burnet in what industry pundits say was a strategic exploration to fill a creative lacuna.

In yet another ownership, challenge occasioned by paucity of funds, V-Mobile which has consciously contended with the number two position in the GSM telephony market was also acquired by Celtel. 

This was in turn acquired by Zain Africa and was finally acquired by Bharti Airtel. It has been a long and tortuous creative adventure for the brand which current pay-offline is ‘2Good’.
As it were, it is very difficult and too early to conclude whether it is actually ‘too good’ for the brand by now, as only time can tell. Other agencies that have so far worked on the brands include Prima Garnet, the Quadrant Company, Ogilvy PR and Blueflowers.

Glo
Globacom’s adventure into the Nigerian GSM telephony market is the best and most revolutionary epoch in the annals of GSM mobile business in Nigeria.
The brand, which came with a bang in a market already dominated by two leading brands, launched out with an offensive strategy that almost caught already established operators gasping for breath with ambitious and popular per second billing.
It was the most revolutionary offer in the market which instantaneously paved the way for the brand Glo in the market.
This brand initiative was launched with the thematic campaign: ‘Magic Ball’. Since the launch, the brand’s advertising theme campaigns have been reviewed and adjusted over the years. 

Some of the strong creative platforms the Glo brand have been positioned since launch in the market place are: ‘On your marks’; ‘Turning dreams into reality’ (Documentary);  ‘Glowing continent’; ‘We live where you live’; ‘Rule your world’; ‘We’ve got people talking’; ‘Glo CAF’; ‘Football made in Africa’; ‘Marathon’; ‘The more campaigns’; ‘More technology’; ‘More people’; ‘More friends’; ‘More millions’ and ‘More youth’.

The brand is obviously the most unique GSM brand that has experimented with a plethora of advertising agencies and had equally savoured the creative edges of these agencies than others.

Quite a good number of advertising agencies have had a bite of Glo’s juicy jumbo advertising account. Some of these agencies are: Insight Grey, Bates Cosse, LTC and lately Verdant Zeal. The brand, which presently but quietly engages the services of some avant-garde creative shops is also said to have nurtured an in-house creative team headed by Joe Atunwa.

Etisalat
The launch of Etisalat in 2007 with its unified access licence was both daring and adventurous. Notwithstanding the fierce competition already defining the GSM market, Etisalat launched out with its own controversial theme campaign: ‘0809uchoose campaign’.
The campaign was received with lots of excitement as it further heightened expectations amongst mobile phone subscribers. It (campaign) was said to have been aimed at reflecting unique lifestyles of subscribers with their phone numbers.

The strategy also worked for Etisalat as it got subscribers switching to its network within a record time. The brand later came up with another theme campaign: ‘Now you are talking’. This new campaign was seen as a direct affront on one of the earliest operators with the theme ‘We’ve got you talking’.

The introduction of this new theme campaign brought some controversies and attention to the brand, thereby allowing the populace to pay attention to the new GSM telephone brand in the market.  Since then, the brand has been operating largely within its limits and capabilities.

Etisalat’s launch into the market was handled by 141, a fourth generation creative shop, while its PR brief was first handled by CF before it was won by the Quadrant company.  The agency has played a great role in supporting the brand to gain access into the hitherto conquered territories. 

The Super Bowl was lost when quarterback Tom Brady flung a football halfway across the field — that went uncaught. But the competition for the Super Bowl’s best commercial was won by an ad about a crafty grandma who slung a sling-wearing baby across the yard — to snatch a bag of Doritos.

This marks the first time that consumers — not preselected panelists rating the ads during the game — picked the winner in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. Online voting, which began after each ad aired in Sunday night’s broadcast, ended at 6 p.m. ET Tuesday. Consumers picked from 55 commercials on which advertisers spent up to a record $3.5 million for each 30-second slot.

• VIDEO: See the winning Ad Meter ad by Doritos

• RESULTS: See how all the Super Bowl ads ranked

• VIDEO: View all your favorite 2012 Super Bowl ads

But for the Super Bowl’s 38 national advertisers, this was also the Social Bowl. Never mind that they spent upwards of $230 million on just the TV advertising time. The purpose of most of the spots was to drive consumers to share the spots with friends, buzz about them and the brand and then try to find out more about the product.

Placing a close second in Ad Meter was Anheuser-Busch’s beer-fetching dog, Weego. Two carmakers tied for third: Kia, whose ad featured a guy with ultraracy dreams that include supermodel Adriana Lima; and Chrysler, which turned actor Clint Eastwood into almost as big a Super Bowl presence as New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

• VIDEO: See Bud Light’s Weego ad

• VIDEO: See Chrysler’s Halftime in America ad

• VIDEO: See Kia’s A dream car ad

The gutsy carmaker featured Eastwood in a two-minute “Halftime in America” spot that likened the nation’s current plight to a football team revising its game plan at halftime. The spot was initially not included in Ad Meter because it aired at halftime, when fewer viewers are typically watching. But it was later added because of strong social-media sentiment.

Despite jeers from some Republican politicians that the ad sounded pro-Obama, Chrysler and Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said the ad is not a political message. “It has zero political content,” Marchionne said in an interview this week with Detroit radio station WJR-AM. “The message is sufficiently universal and neutral that it should be appealing to everybody in this country, and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t get utilized as political fodder in a debate.”

Dog vs. baby

The results resemble but do not mirror those of Sunday evening’s focus group panel — 286 adult volunteers in McLean, Va., and Phoenix, who used special meters to electronically chart their second-by-second reactions to the ads as they aired. That competition was won by the other Doritos spot about a savvy, cat-killing dog that uses Doritos to bribe its owner into silence about its dastardly deed.

Budweiser

Budweiser took second place with an ad where a rescue pooch delivers a beer when it hears the magic words: ‘Here, Weego.’

• STORY: Ads with dogs dominate ad panel favorites

• CHART: How the ad panel rated the Super Bowl ads

That ad ranked sixth in the online voting for the USA TODAY/Facebook Ad Meter winner. It was the ad with the Doritos baby — not the Doritos dog — that won top prize. For winning Ad Meter, Doritos will pay admaker Kevin Willson, a 34-year-old former special education teacher from West Los Angeles, $1 million. The maker of the ad that was the favorite of the panel on Sunday, Jonathan Friedman of Virginia Beach also got a million-dollar bonus from Doritos.

Willson plans to split the money with friends, cast and crew who were part of the ad. He’s come a long way. “In high school I’d get out of doing papers by asking if I could do videos instead,” says Willson, who is now a humanitarian-documentary filmmaker. “I was one of those weird kids in high school who figured out that I wanted to make videos for the rest of my life.”

That shouldn’t be a problem now.

For one thing, his workplace is about to seriously change. He’s been toiling in his garage. “It’s freezing in there in the winter, and it’s dusty, and it’s not a great working environment.”

He’s tried — but failed — to win the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl competition before. Ultimately, he hopes to use some of his winnings to pursue his real passion: directing comedies.

Hollywood, are you listening?

For Doritos, it was a social-media touchdown. Three months before the Super Bowl, Doritos drove hundreds of thousands of consumers to its website to vote on the two commercials it would air in the game. The company also reached out to bloggers.

“It’s gone way beyond the water cooler,” says Ann Mukherjee, chief marketing officer at Frito-Lay. Now, she says, it’s an electronic water cooler with laptops, tablets and mobile phones whirring before, during and after the game. “Creating a relationship in social-media space is critical.”

Why social media worked

For most advertisers, the social-media strategy worked because:

•We buzzed. Sunday’s Super Bowl commercials generated upwards of 985,000 social-media comments — more than the entire 2011 Academy Awards, reports Bluefin, a social TV analytics company.

• AD BUZZ: What people said on social networks

•We shared. Some 36% of Americans planned to share their favorite ads after the game, up from 31% last year, reports Venables Bell Partners.

•We stayed. During the last three minutes of the game, consumers were sending out 10,000 tweets per second, Twitter reports.

•We clicked. Major brands that posted Super Bowl-related messages on their Facebook pages before the game had 60% greater engagement than posts unrelated to the game, reports Buddy Media, a social enterprise software company.

•We responded. Some 57% of the ads mentioned a website or URL. About 16% included social-media prompts for Facebook or a Twitter hashtag. And 11% included emerging media technology such as QR codes or text messages, Altimeter Group reports.

Social media were particularly key during the game, says Rebecca Lieb, digital media analyst at Altimeter Group. At Super Bowl parties, she says, people were using their devices “to talk to friends not in the room as much as to friends in the room.”

Super Bowl marketers successfully used social media by:

•Teasing. Prior to the game, Kia posted a teaser of ad star and supermodel Lima on YouTube. And the stars of the ad, including Lima, Mötley Crüe and Chuck Liddell, posted links to images and videos of the Kia spot on Facebook and Twitter.

VW unleashed the power of The Force, so to speak, by releasing this year’s ad, a teaser and a “making of” video over the Internet weeks before the full 60-second spot aired in the second quarter of Sunday’s game.

“It’s like leaving bread crumbs along the trail,” says Tim Mahoney, VW’s chief of U.S. marketing. “With a mass audience of over 100 million, you have to find a way to connect.”

•Streaming. Coke capitalized on second-screen viewers with a live stream that showed its famous Coke Polar Bears responding in real time to the game’s actions.

•Do-gooding. For every “like” that Anheuser-Busch got for its beer-fetching dog ad on its Bud Light Facebook page, it promised to donate $1 (up to $250,000) to an animal rescue fund.

•Blitzing. GM started brainstorming its Super Bowl strategy about 11 months ago, ultimately using social media to barrage consumers with contests, early views of some TV spots, even a game-day app to supplement TV spots before and during the game for the Cadillac ATS and Chevy Silverado, Camaro, Volt and Sonic.

•Tweeting. MM Mars created a Twitter handle for its Super Bowl ad character, Ms. Brown, and created back-and-forth banter between her and Ms. Green. “In this day and age, it’s not about a one-time ad,” says Debra Sandler, chief consumer officer at Mars Chocolate North America.

•Going contrarian. For Chrysler, whose two-minute halftime spot featured Eastwood challenging Americans to get back up on their feet, the social-media strategy was: wait.

Only after the spot aired did the company post it on sites such as YouTube. The YouTube page allows viewers to share the ad and track how it is being spread via a map of the United States. The interactive map shows the total number of people who have shared the ad via Facebook and Twitter, and their locations.

“In addition to viewing the spot on our YouTube page, we wanted to create an experience that allowed people to share the message while seeing a live visualization of where the spot was being seen across the United States,” says Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri.

Even then, many of the advertisers who latched on to social media for the Super Bowl forgot something critical, says Mark Ghuneim, CEO of the digital analytics firm Trendrr. “Throwing out a hashtag, as many did, is a great first step, but advertisers need to do a better job of a call to action.”

Finishing last in the voting: GoDaddy’s ad featuring Danica Patrick looking and talking sexy from a heavenly cloud.

That doesn’t bother GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons one bit. “This year, our two Super Bowl ads broke all prior sales records, so if doing that means coming in last on Ad Meter, that’s exactly where I want to be.”

Technology Spectator

When Telstra sacked 110 staff from its Sensis division last week, it explained the move by saying its self-service tools mean customers can now more easily manage their Sensis advertising on their own.

The irony is, there’s little that Sensis does today that advertisers haven’t been trained by Google to do themselves since the advent of AdWords around 10 years ago.

Sensis may have altered its business to offer customers a range of digital advertising options, but the risk has always been over-servicing. Despite rationalisation, Sensis still has a sales team built to serve customers that were once willing to pay thousands of dollars for print directory advertising, but now can do far more targeted advertising with social media and search sites at a fraction of the cost. They get it for a fraction of the cost because support is often limited to email, and if they’re a small business they can forget about talking to a real person about their campaign.

Even at the bigger end of town, online advertising exchanges are taking hold as publishers seek to create open markets for inventory in what is a high-turnover, low-margin business.

In low-margin businesses self-service is essential, and when margins are being squeezed it’s inevitable that strategists will explore new ways to get customers to look after themselves.

Last year Telstra hired former UBank general manager Gerd Schenkel to head up its new online customer service unit. The unit was given the task of developing online self-service platforms to give customers the option of performing their own transactions online “rather than speakingto agents over the phone”.

Telstra wants customers to be performing 35 per cent of transactions using online self-service channels by 2013. Chief David Thodey knows Telstra is woefully behind other sectors including banking and airlines, which have self-service rates of more than 60 per cent.

If anyone knows how to run a self-service business it’s Schenkel, who helped NAB build millions of dollars in new deposits using a previously unheard-of brand.

But there’s a key difference between the challenge Ahmed Fahour gave Schenkel at NAB and the one Thodey has given him at Telstra. NAB decided to build a new brand from scratch, insulating its larger business from the lower cost, but even lower margin UBank unit.

UBank also got new IT infrastructure and a 24-hour call centre – something of a miracle given the interest rates it offered customers to get them in the door.

If Schenkel is successful at Telstra, it’s inevitable that more jobs will go. But what analysts should be watching is whether the culture of self-service and improved online delivery can permeate Sensis, where it is really needed.

Tomorrow, Telstra will let us know just how bad the picture is for Sensis, a business that once contributed 25 per cent to Telstra’s profit growth, but today is looking more like a shackle around its parent’s neck.

Back in 2004, when then Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski had a hankering for Fairfax, Alan Kohler said Telstra should have partnered with Google or Microsoft. That was when Seek was still an independent business stealing classifieds market share from Fairfax.

In the game of corporate chess that ensued Sensis ended up on the sidelines, and little has changed since.

The latest from The Ticker blog

• Virginia Tech’s Museum of Geosciences receives gift to support STEM education
• Consumer Reports’ top executive to speak at Virginia Tech
• Virginia Tech organizes export trade conference to be held in March
• More from The Ticker business blog

MONDAYFEBRUARY6

CONSERVATION TILLAGE CONFERENCE

Farmers will receive hands-on, how-to information in nearly every aspect of conservation tillage at this No-Till Alliance winter conference. Hosted by Virginia Cooperative Extension, the Virginia No-Till Alliance and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Where: Franklin Center for Advanced Learning and Enterprise, 50 Claiborne Ave., Rocky Mount

When: 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Cost: Free

Contact: Matt Yancey, yancey@vt.edu or 564-3080

TUESDAYFEBRUARY7

FIRST AID AND CPR/AED COURSE

Basic first aid course covers a wide range of common emergencies found in industrial and business settings. The CPR/AED course covers adult CPR and the use of the automatic external defibrillator.

When: 1 to 6 p.m.

Where: Roanoke Regional Home Builders Association, 1626 Apperson Drive, Salem

Cost: $90 RRHBA members; $100 nonmembers

Contact: Sue Smith, 389-7135 or ssmith@rrhba.com

SKIP YOWELL LECTURE

Skip Yowell, co-founder of JanSport, will lecture about his outdoor adventures and economic success. He will sign copies of his book, “The Hippie Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder Other Mountains: How JanSport Makes It Happen,” after the lecture.

Where: Roanoke College, Colket Center’s Wortmann Ballroom, 221 College Lane, Salem

When: 7:30 p.m.

Cost: Free

Contact: 375-2282

TUESDAYFEBRUARY7–THURSDAYFEBRUARY9

ISO 9001/14001/18001 INTEGRATED COURSE

An integrated course teaching all related components of a business in one system for easier management and operations. Course includes Quality (ISO 9001), Environmental (ISO 14001) and Occupational Health Safety (ISO 18001).

When: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Hotel Roanoke Conference Center, 110 Shenandoah Ave., Roanoke.

Cost: $1,195

Contact: www.dardenneassociates.com or 320-7975.

WEDNESDAYFEBRUARY8-THURSDAYFEBRUARY9

QUICKBOOKS

Live local instructor-led training. Learn how to get the most out of QuickBooks. Level 1 course offered Wednesday. Level 2 course offered Thursday.

Where: Tanglewood Mall, 4420-A Electric Road, Roanoke

When: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Cost: $224 for one day; $399 for both days

Contact: 877-707-5272 or www.NYTrainingPros.com.

THURSDAYFEBRUARY9

ANNIVERSARY LUNCHEON SERIES

The Blue Ridge Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America presents its 2012 Anniversary Luncheon Series, featuring John Martin from the Boomer Project. Register online at www.prsa-blueridge.org.

Where: Sheraton Hotel Conference Center, 2801 Hershberger Road, Roanoke

When: Noon to 1:30 p.m.

Cost: $17 for students, $22 for members, $30 for nonmembers

Contact: Heidi Ketler, 650-3696

MARKETING WORKSHOP FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Discover how to get more customers, make more sales, slash marketing and advertising costs and increase profits. Presented by the Virginia Department of Business Assistance, Virginia is for Lovers and Roanoke County. Registration is required.

Where: Roanoke County Administration Complex, 5204 Bernard Drive, fourth-floor training room, Roanoke

When: 9 to 11 a.m. and 1 to 3 p.m.

Cost: Free

Contact: 276-676-3768 or www.vastartup.org

WEDNESDAYFEBRUARY15

MAXIMIZING FACEBOOK FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Learn how to set up a Facebook page, use pay-per-click advertising, develop ad campaigns and more. This class is presented by Adam Williams and Michael Weaver of 440Web. Hosted by the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center.

Where: Roanoke Regional Chamber boardroom, 210 S. Jefferson St., Roanoke

When: 8:30 to 10:30 a.m.

Cost: $20

Contact: www.RoanokeSBDC.org

THURSDAYFEBRUARY16

BUSINESS BASICS

Business Basics is an introduction to owning your own business. Topics include deciding on a legal entity, basic accounting and tax issues, steps you need to take for permits and licensing and more. Hosted by the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center.

Where: Roanoke Regional Chamber boardroom, 210 S. Jefferson St., Roanoke

When: 3:58 to 6:28 p.m.

Cost: $15

Contact: www.RoanokeSBDC.org

TUESDAYFEBRUARY21-THURSDAYfEBRUARY23

HOMEBUYERS EDUCATION CLASS

Before you buy a house, learn about credit and personal finance, budgeting, qualifying for a home loan, negotiating a purchase, applying for a mortgage and more. Sponsored by Community Housing Partners.

Where: 448 Depot St., Christiansburg

When: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.; additional classes will be offered throughout the year

Cost: Free

Contact: Ryan Stenger, rstenger@chpc2.org or 382-2002, ext. 3307

WEDNESDAYFEBRUARY22

EXPORTING 101

This seminar targets small business owners and decision-makers who currently do not export and need to understand whether they have a product that’s in demand in other countries, and how to reach those markets. Hosted by the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center.

Where: South County Library, 6303 Merriman Road, Roanoke

When: 8:30 to 10:30 p.m.

Cost: Free

Contact: www.RoanokeSBDC.org

THURSDAYFEBRUARY23-FRIDAYFEBRUARY24

SERVSAFE FOOD SANITATION COURSE

Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia Department of Health are co-sponsoring a ServSafe food sanitation course for food service managers. Register by Feb. 16.

Where: Bedford County Administration Building, 122 E. Main St., Bedford

When: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cost: $150, includes instruction, textbook and the exam; groups with 10 or more, $120 per person

Contact: Susan Prillaman, 586 7675

ONGOING

Weekly meetingNational Eagles Toastmasters

Meets 6:30 p.m. Thursdays at National College, 1813 E. Main St., room 123, Salem. For more information, call 444-5296 or email jpsowell@national-college.edu.

Weekly meetingKiwanis Club of Botetourt County

Meets from 7 to 8 a.m. Fridays at the Holiday Inn Express in Troutville. For information, call Tim Alderman at 353-4695 or visit botetourtkiwanis.org.

Weekly meetingRotary Club of Smith Mountain Lake

Meets at 7 a.m. the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at Westlake Country Club in Hardy. For information, contact Case Pieterman at 586-8464 or casencobypieterman@verizon.net.

Weekly meetingReal Estate Investors of Roanoke

Meets Tuesdays at El Rodeo, 4017 Williamson Road, Roanoke. For anyone interested in learning about real estate investing. For information, email dallas@powmarcom.com or visit www.reiofroanoke.com.

Weekly meetingKiwanis Club of Roanoke

Meets from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Schaal’s Metamorphosis on South Jefferson Street. For information, call Lloyd Enoch at 265-2441.

Weekly meetingRotary Club of Blacksburg

Meets from noon to 1 p.m. Thursdays at Blacksburg Country Club. For information, email info@blacksburgrotary.org or visit www.blacksburgrotary.org.