Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has sent letters to companies that compile and sell data about consumers asking them to answer a series of questions about their companies and business practices.

While the letters were sent as queries, they also came with an argument in which Rockefeller said that consumers don’t know what is going on with data brokers and that the purpose of these letters was for him to understand the industry. He has given a self-proposed dealine to these companies of Number 2^nd to respond.

Some of the companies that received these letters were Acxion, Experian, Exquifax, Palead and Datalogix. All of them engage in marketing to consumers based on data brokering.

Interesting InfoGraphic that talks about where most people kill their iPhone. For some reason most iPhone accidents occur in the kitchen, perhaps put down the disposal? Where’s the, “I cheated on my girlfriend and she threw an iPhone at me?” I’m gathering iPhone as a missile should be pretty high up there but that people don’t report that.

It would appear there is some newfound controversy in the realm of video marketing, an industry that relies heavily on the TrueView ads that are relatively new to YouTube, the top name in video streaming and advertising. The controversy stems from recent arguments regarding the authenticity of TrueView advertisement views, with some saying that these views can be easily faked or bought, while others see no problem with the way these TrueView ads are working. No matter how they are working though, video ads have been a popular choice amongst marketers recently, and they are bringing in some impressive results.

I first found out about this issue of fake views versus real in an AdWeek article that was published earlier today. The article explains that there are quite a few marketing professionals out there who are wondering about the authenticity of views on TrueView video ads on YouTube. Their argument is that view numbers can be rigged very easily. The AdWeek article mentions channels like Machinima and Shut Up Cartoons, saying that these channels can easily and legitimately purchase views. “Say a Machinima viewer watches a 30-second spot for a show from the Wigs channel—that counts as a view for Wigs.”

When bringing up the subject with one of YouTube’s most popular channels, The Fine Brothers YouTube Channel, this is what they had to say to AdWeek;

“We’ve seen entire videos from other channels run before our videos from beginning to end,” said Rafi Fine, of The Fine Brothers YouTube channel, which has 2 million subscribers. “That’s like stealing our popularity. They’re fake views passed off as having a fan base. It’s like having your show play as a commercial for American Idol, and counting all the people who saw the commercial as actual viewers for your show.”

There are also fears that some very sneaky advertisers have found certain algorithms upon which they base their questionable video marketing tactics. Though YouTube has done what they can to help and diminish these algorithmic systems, there is only a certain amount of ridding that can be done in cases such as that.

Anyways, the fact is simple; these purchased views are almost useless and here’s the explanation.

YouTube officials insist there would be no way to buy enough views to crack the top 10 rankings. A source close to YouTube called the idea that you can “game” the platform “nonsense.”

There was even one official who used some relatively simple math to figure out that in order for any of these purchased views to make any sort of useful impact, marketers would have to spend upwards of $100,000 a week, which is absolutely not worth it, considering that amount would not even be returned.

So, there is good reason to believe that there are many marketers who are using TrueView ads illegitimately, using views that are not authentic to help their business. However, it seems that they are wasting their time. I guess the moral is that some people should have paid more attention in math class.

A lot of the information regarding mobile marketing is up and down, with some saying good and others saying bad. So, to avoid the confusion that these swaying opinions tend to cause, let’s look at the facts. By that I mean, let’s look at the recently released revenue figures by the Interactive Advertising Bureau in collaboration with Pricewaterhouse Coopers. According to their findings, mobile advertising overall has grown 95% in the past year, from the first half of 2011 to the first half of 2012. For the mobile ad industry, this still means that they only account for $1.2 billion in revenues, but the increase is still substantial. Of course, the mobile ad industry was not the only one covered in the report from the IAB and Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

The report tells us that the entire industry of digital and interactive marketing and advertising has grown to a historic record high of $17 billion during the first half of this year. This represents a 14% increase from last year’s results. Something that marketers can get particular excited about, considering the rapidly growing number of marketers using the medium, is the growth that was seen in digital video marketing, a newly successful branch of display advertising. Digital video rose 18% in the duration to just over $1 billion in revenue. Therefore, it seems that the success that most people have been seeing with digital video has grown and is becoming more common.

Here are some of the more important highlights from the report:

• Mobile generated significant growth – almost doubling year-over-year – up 95 percent to $1.2 billion in half-year 2012 from $636 million in the comparable 2011 period
• Digital video, a component of display-related advertising, saw an increase of 18 percent year-over-year, bringing in a little over $1 billion in revenue in the first two quarters of 2012 compared to nearly $900 million in the first six months of 2011
• Search revenues in the first half of the year totaled $8.1 billion, up 19 percent from nearly $6.8 billion during the same timeframe in 2011
• Display-related advertising revenues in the first half of the year totaled almost $5.6 billion, accounting for 33 percent of 2012 half-year revenues, up 4 percent from $5.3 billion in the first half of 2011
• Retail advertisers constitute the largest category of internet ad spending for the first half of this year, claiming 20 percent of the total revenues at $3.4 billion, while Automotive brought in $2.2 billion for first-half 2012, marking an uptick to 13 percent versus 11 percent of category spend reported for half-year 2011 at $1.7 billion

The report shows us that there has been a significant and overall growth in the entire industry of digital and interactive marketing. There have been many that have worried lately about their choices of where to spend their ad dollars, seeing many statistics that have shown a decrease in certain digital marketing platforms. This report however, has shown that digital marketing is on the up and has reached a record high.

An article that was written about a month back, along with the recent recurring commercials from Bing will tell you during a certain survey that Bing conducted, people chose the search results they got from the Bing search engine over the Google search results 2 to 1. This ratio is what Bing has been using as their key marketing point for weeks. But, judging by the way that this month’s search engine rankings from comScore turned out, it would appear that people who said they preferred Bing’s search results still have not switched over to using Bing for good. Google is still in the lead, but their lead has remained the same for a while now.

Here’s a quick summary of the results from this month’s report from comScore, regarding shares of total searches;

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in September with 66.7 percent market share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 12.2 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3.5 percent of explicit core searches (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.8 percent (up 0.1 percentage points).

Sure, Google is still in the lead, but their percentage has not budged much. Bing has not moved much either, but Google has been pretty much stuck in their position for a while now, while Bing slowly but surely grows. We all know that Google will reign King, but if put in their position, you would think that they would want to increase their lead to make it more substantial and bullet-proof.

Anyway, this is what comScore found in regard to total search queries over the duration of the study;

More than 16.3 billion explicit core searches were conducted in September, with Google Sites ranking first with 10.9 billion. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2 billion, Ask Network with 565 million (up 3 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 287 million.

This is just another way of showing that Google holds its position in the lead, but it is still relatively stuck. The total number of search queries went down 4% over the course of the month, and so did Google’s share of these searches, meaning that they technically have not budged.

As for “Powered By” searches, Google accounted for nearly 70% of organic search results, while only about 25% were powered by Bing. It seems like Bing cannot catch a break when it comes to competing with Google.

So, Google’s lead has not budged much in quite some time; that much is true. However, Bing’s growth is very slow, so catching up to Google does not seem like a possibility any time soon. Maybe Google will never take over much more than the share it already has, but it is clearly evident that the company will always be in the lead when it comes to search. Google will always be the engine that marketers have to pay attention to, as it will always be a fan favorite of the everyday consumer.

Earlier in the week, Google announced some updates to its Mobile Playbook, the company’s mobile marketing vehicle. In their announcement of the update, Google refers to the time earlier this year when they originally released the Mobile Playbook;

At the time, most marketers had already moved beyond the “why mobile?” question, but didn’t know where or how to get started. Now it’s become clear that, when done right, mobile works for marketers. As the industry has evolved, we’re seeing examples of marketers designing compelling mobile creatives, and how savvy advertisers are finding ways to measure the real value that mobile has on their businesses.

A Forbes article by Robert Hof explains further into the reasoning behind Google’s update to their Mobile Playbook, and their launch of the vehicle overall. Robert explains that the main things that marketers worry about with mobile marketing is that they only have such a limited space and screen size to achieve their goals within and that most marketers have no idea how to measure the impact that the mobile marketing efforts will have. Most marketers expect that by measuring the clicks that lead to buys on mobile devices, they are getting the best analysis of their mobile marketing impact possible. However, Robert continues to say that marketers tend to miss the idea of mobile ads leading consumers to actually go out and physically visit stores and businesses, which does happen quite often.

These issues are what have led to marketers’ hesitation in going forward with mobile marketing, in turn leading to problems for some of the big names in mobile marketing, including Facebook, the New York Times, and of course Google.  With the customer and user bases of these big names rapidly going mobile, there is quite a need for advertisers and marketers to have a desire for mobile as well.

Now, according to Forbes, Google is trying to create a solution to these problems that marketers are having with putting their trust in mobile. As Robert writes in his article;

First, several examples of mobile campaigns illustrate that the main problem isn’t lack of screen space, but lack of imagination by marketers. ”Mobile is a great canvas for brand-building,” says Jason Spero, Google’s head of global mobile sales and strategy. “It’s going to produce some of the greatest campaigns in digital. But it’s shocking how far behind the [consumer] consensus the broad base of companies are.”

Regarding the problem of measuring impact on mobile platforms, Google has also given several examples of brands and companies that have successfully measured their actual mobile results. Also from Forbes;

Adidas, for instance, with its agency partner iProspect, determined that including the real value of a click on a store locator button, which it had identified from store data, proved that mobile ads were paying off in in-store sales. “Mobile is driving behavior in the real world,” says Spero, and cases such as Adidas’ are starting to prove it.

Google’s Mobile Playbook is taking a step toward letting marketers know that mobile marketing is okay, and that it can and will be very successful, as long as you know how to use it. What better way to learn then from examples?

Lately we have all been hearing a lot of crazy opinions regarding mobile marketing, some saying that it is the next, most successful thing to happen to marketing, and others saying that it can and will never work. It is interesting to read these opinions and get the thoughts of both sides, as well as the facts that come with them. Today, I found some interesting information that points toward the success of mobile marketing, and it has to do with YouTube. Apparently, in the past two years, YouTube Mobile’s rate of video consumption has risen upwards of 400%. That’s great for YouTube, but why should that matter for mobile marketers?

Well, it would not matter if YouTube had not recently started allowing marketers to show advertisements on their mobile platform. Because they did, though, this huge statistic could be extraordinary news for those mobile marketers who have tapped into the potential of YouTube Mobile.

The statement was made by a YouTube executive in a conference earlier in the week, as was reported by Mobile Marketing Watch. In his statement, Robert Kyncl stated that mobile views now make up a total of one quarter of all views that YouTube receives.

From Mobile Marketing Watch;

“We’re experiencing a massive consumer shift,” Kyncl said at a conference this week. “Mobile has increased from 6% to 25% in last 18 months across the whole of YouTube.”

With some simple math, you will see that this means that YouTube mobile has, on average, increased just over 1% from month to month in the past year and a half. With such an increase, it is easy to assume that the mobile platform for the quite popular video-sharing network will continue to increase for some time.

Sure, this means that YouTube can rejoice in their mobile success, as can all of those marketers who advertise on their mobile platform. But, what does it mean about mobile marketing overall? Well, being that the watching of videos is one of the most popular activities that take place on the web, the fact that more people are doing so on mobile simply shows that more people are doing on mobile now, what they did on desktop platforms in the past. People are becoming more comfortable with mobile devices, as the technology continues to improve, therefore leading them to do more of their browsing and digital activities on the go.

There are countless well-known marketing insight companies that have predicted a significant growth in mobile traffic in the next few years.  Desktop browsing still holds a substantial lead over mobile, but that lead is continuing to shrink as mobile numbers grow. As smartphone technology and tablet technology continue to improve, so will consumer interest in this technology. To sum up everything, desktop browsing may be easier and more user friendly right now, but mobile technology has allowed people more freedom with where they browse and with technologies constantly improving, the user-friendliness level of handheld devices may soon surpass that of desktop platforms.

For those marketers that rely on targeted ads to get good results, the “do not track,” functions on some of the more popularly used web browsers today can cause problems. It not that marketers cannot still receive information that can be used to target ads when the function is used by consumers, but it is a problem with privacy agreements that can often lead to bad things down the road. However, the Digital Advertising Alliance, the group of numerous advertising trade associations that many marketers turn to for answers, has made a statement regarding these “do not track” features and how serious they actually are following Microsoft’s announcement that Internet Explorer 10 will come with an automatic DNT feature that is set as a default.

As reported by Ad Age, the DAA states;

“The DAA does not require companies to honor DNT signals fixed by the browser manufacturers and set by them in browsers,” the statement said. “Specifically, it is not a DAA Principle or in any way a requirement under the DAA Program to honor a DNT signal that is automatically set in IE10 or any other browser. The Council of Better Business Bureaus and the Direct Marketing Association will not sanction or penalize companies or otherwise enforce with respect to DNT signals set on IE10 or other browsers.”

As you may have noticed already, there could be some issues with the opinion of the DAA on the subject of essentially ignoring these “do not track” features. There are bound to be some people that start using IE 10 simply because of the fact that it has a default DNT setting. When this happens, advertisers would be indirectly going against the wishes of the user. This is a problem that could lead to some big problems regarding privacy, as many privacy advocates have always said they would back people up in these types of situations.

In an article from Ad Age, they state;

Mike Zaneis, senior VP and general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau and a DAA board member, believes those points are currently moot since there is still not an agreed-upon definition of what “do not track” even means. Is it “do not collect” data as consumer and privacy advocates are pushing for, or only “do not target,” which groups such as the DAA are supporting? Or something in between? That’s one of the debates still going on inside a closely watched “tracking protection working group” within the W3C web standards body. That group last met face to face last week in Amsterdam.

So, this permission given from the DAA to ignore the “do not track” settings could cause problems, but these problems may be irrelevant. The opinions on the subject go both ways. Since DNT is not specific about its restrictions, marketers could be doing nothing wrong in still targeting web users. Either way, privacy advocates will probably find some way to pin marketers against the wall for it. I’m sure we will hear more about the results of this statement once more marketers start to heed the advice from the DAA.

It is about that time of year when people start thinking about their holiday shopping, getting nervous because there are so many people to shop for, so much to buy, with what seems like so little time. The stores will start to fill with frantic mothers and nervous boyfriends, trying to find the perfect gift and hoping that somebody has not grabbed it already. This is a trend that we have known for our whole lives, but it seems now that it could be changing. According to a recent survey, people will be stressfully running from store to store much less this year and for years to come, but instead they will be mashing the keyboard and clicking frantically.

Yes, what I mean is that many people do not even plan on doing most of their shopping in person these days. Online shopping saves time, it saves energy, and most of all it saves consumers from the stress of the holiday season.

The survey that I get this information from is called “Mindset of a Multi-Channel Shopper” from Marketlive. This is a study that the ecommerce web solutions company has performed each year for the past four years, and this year their surveys are showing some unique results.

With mobile growing so rapidly these days, one would think that more people would put their interest in mobile shopping. However, only about 16% of those shoppers that were surveyed said they planned on using their mobile devices to do the majority of their shopping. Even though this number is up about 3% from last year’s results, I personally would have expected it to have increased more. Regardless, there was still an increase from 12% to 29% regarding those shoppers who planned to do their shopping research on mobile devices, and around 43% of shoppers said they planned on using their mobile devices to redeem coupons or promotions on their mobile devices.

So, apparently shoppers still show a preference to doing their online shopping on an actual desktop computer. It makes sense though, because a desktop platform still allows much more than mobile devices do these days, and most people are shopping online to relieve stress with the convenience of retail websites. So, in terms of desktop shopping, here are the results from the survey;

Of the more than 1,000 shoppers surveyed, 33% said they will do ‘All’ or ‘Most’ of their shopping on the Internet this holiday season. That’s a significant jump from last year’s 25%.

Although people are not likely to actually purchase on mobile devices, they will still be a big part of this year’s holiday shopping, let alone any shopping done in the future. The likeliness of the use of mobile devices being used for research and coupon redemption should still have mobile marketers excited. Still though, if you are looking to target shoppers this holiday season and actually have them make a purchase directly, then desktop seems like the place to get it done. This way, you can take the stress out of your holiday season as well.