The funny looking box you see above is a not new technology; however the QR Code is pretty foreign to us in the U.S. QR stands for Quick Response. In the next decade, I believe QR codes will start popping up in U.S. media providing our culture with what we love best; content delivery that is easy and FAST.

The QR Code is a kind of 2D barcode that contains a plethora of personalized digital data. It is primarily used to send links to your mobile device. A simple snapshot with your camera phone and the QR Code sends the necessary information to open your web browser to a specific URL site or text message. 2D barcodes allow advertisers and publishers to push relevant digital content directly to consumers? mobile phones when they are most interested in a product or service. This technology bypasses the search engine stage, allowing advertisers and publishers to give people more information at the moment of awareness.

What are QR codes and what are they already doing?
Currently, QR codes are being used as a tool to get more information. You see a code in a magazine, snap a pic, and it directs you to the product site on your mobile phone. Japan and some European countries have taken this technology to a new level. They do use it for informational purposes; however it has opened the door to deeper consumer engagement and interactivity. QR codes are proving that they have the potential to do even more for advertisers and consumers alike.

Some innovative ideas:

• URLs/Coupons – Dick’s Sporting Goods announced its new mobile site with QR coding at the new Cowboys Stadium during the University of Oklahoma vs. Brigham Young University bowl game. This was the first marketing campaign to place a QR code on a jumbo-tron during a sporting event. University of Oklahoma vs. Brigham Young University fans were encouraged to take a picture of the QR code and were directed to a coupon for the store. If your phone didn’t have QR technology, no problem. The website URL and an email address were clearly displayed as other ways to acquire the coveted coupon. A deeper explanation of the campaign and the results can be found online.
• E-tickets – Imagine not having to wait in line for your Austin City Limits Music Festival wristband a week before the show starts or the three hour line on the day of. QR codes can completely eliminate the need for wristbands and tickets. After purchasing your ticket online you receive a QR codes to your mobile phone. A simple scan of your phone will show that you have purchased a three-day or one-day only pass. Once you have checked in, your ticket is marked as used. Also, imagine after you have checked in, your phone directs you to the ACL site, where you are able to view weather, time changes, band line-up, vendor maps, and more. QR codes could even eventually tell you exactly what song your favorite band is playing on what stage in real time. Most importantly, no lost ACL tickets and no need to be worried they won’t scan.
• Business cards & Resumes – An awesome way to set you apart from the crowd. Why not include your LinkedIn QR code on your resume? Or your company’s website on your business cards?
• Tattoos – I would grab some temporary ones for the office party. Or, if you want to go permanent that’s cool too. Just make sure it’s something to last a lifetime!
• Billboards – Disney in Tokyo has Mickey Mouse QR codes that send you to the Disneyland website. Billboards in subway stations allow for easy point and shoot.
• Branded QR codes- include a picture within the code and in color – These QR codes from BeQRious can have color or pictures imbeded in the code! Why not include your face on that resume? Or, put your company logo inside the QR code on that business card?
• Swag and self-branding – Additional information is gained by using QR codes. Therefore, the potential use for them is limitless. The code can contain anything from your information, to your likes and dislikes, to what you like in a guy, to what your plans are for that night. Why not create a coffee mug, a hat, a scarf, even a baby bib. You can create your own patches. Instead of bumping on your iPhone, why not scan someone’s QR code to learn more about them? Hosting a charity event? Raise funds on location with QR coding.
• Geography based tours and reviews – City Search and Antenna Audio launched a test run of geography based QR coding in the spring of 2008. QR codes were distributed around San Francisco in restaurants and at popular destinations. The codes included restaurant reviews, as well as audio tours and historical facts allowing tourists access to distinct decision making information.
• Loyalty points system – In Japan, Coca Cola uses QR codes to reward loyal customers. Vending machines have QR codes imprinted on them, and consumers are invited to earn as many as they can, ultimately redeeming them to get prizes.
• Secrets and acts of defiance – The Pet Shop Boys released a single in 2007 on which they denounced the idea of a British national identity card. On the CD cover, there was a QR code that directed to their attack on the system. Also, the entire music video sports different QR codes that link to civil liberties websites. Pretty cool that QR coding is being used to spawn political debate and protesting!
• Alternative paintballing – No more immediate bruising from the paintballs flying at you at speeds approximately 60mph (at least that’s what it feels like). Players wear t-shirts with their own individualized QR code. A player snaps your QR code from afar and a text message is sent to you informing you of your demise, allowing for a high quality game sans the pain!
• Intelligent advertising – changing the site location to match the weather. Dynamic QR codes are special codes can be updated in real time for businesses that sell products that might potentially have a need to change advertising in response to say, the weather. What if Gap had a billboard in the NYC subway station and the QR code directed the consumer to the GAP mobile homepage featuring a new line of flip-flops? Well, on Tuesday New York has a forecast of heavy rain. No, problem. Just switch out that QR code to direct consumers to the part of the website that highlights Gap’s new swanky umbrellas!
• A great idea by DDB Brazil for Editoras Online – DDB Brazil in a campaign for Online, a Brazilian online bookstore, incorporated almost every valuable player in the media arena. QR codes are the single piece that molded the dynamic parts of the campaign together. This YouTube video explains the intricacies of the campaign far better than I could here. By far my favorite in terms of innovation and success! 33 Interactions has a great post by Jenine Wong that gives an extensive description of the campaign as well.
• Tim Burton’s film “9″ used QR codes that allowed fans to view sneak peaks and hear commentary from the director.
• Green Day’s album, 21st Century Breakdown featured QR codes in posters, promo items, and ads directing you to a site with exclusive downloads and images of the band.
• L.A. Candy, the newest book by Lauren Conrad sports a QR code on the back cover.

So, will QR codes be the “URL Killer“, as Garrick Schmitt and others have described it? In his article Schmitt says, “QR codes will become the primary bridge connecting real and virtual worlds.” As you can see from the aforementioned examples, these codes are one step in the direction of the inevitable merging and graying of media. One builds on the other builds on the next. The mobile revolution and the saturation of the online space have created a need for simpler URLs and innovative connections. And of course, as I mentioned in one of my previous blog entries, Mobile Marketing Prowess, the mobile consumer wants conversation. QR codes have opened the door to a broader and deeper range of personal targeting and communication, and they have the potential to become a value exchange of relevant, individualized, useful, and interesting information.

Don’t be fooled. Yes, the snake oil hucksters that schlep keyword stuffing and link spamming are doomed, but their future was never very bright to begin with. If this is your strategy you’ll get nowhere, and if you’re paying for this then you’re wasting your money. If you’re charging someone for this, shame on you.

The core aspects of SEO, however, are needed more than ever. Google alone averages more than 200 million searches per day. With that much daily traffic, their view of your website matters. Do you really want to completely ignore the potential to earn traffic from them? Or worse, leave it entirely to chance? If you get one ten-thousandth of one percent of that (that’s 0.0001%), 200 people per day will see your site. Do that many people cross your doorstep each day? Does your phone ring that many times each day? Clearly there is an upside to paying attention to Google.

The traffic that your website receives can provide keen insight into what your target market thinks about your company. Whatever the goals of your company, your website can help you get there. Increasing sales, improving customer retention, reaching a new customer base, improving the return that you get on your AdWords spend… these are all achievable. As long as you are measuring your website’s traffic and can recognize trends, you can reach your goals.

Don’t misread the data. Yes search is changing, it has been since it started. It would be a mistake to infer that this makes SEO irrelevant. Quite the contrary, the changes that Google is making strengthen their search results, which gives people greater confidence in the answers they find through Google, which means that more people will be searching.

Optimizing your website for search is more important now than ever. Frankly, it’s irresponsible to think otherwise.

We custom build your site list into three separate blocks that are designed with a maximum of ten sites in each block. Your campaign is assigned its own campaign manager that has the ability to manually adjust sites per block after the campaign has started to fully optimize to achieve the best possible performance. After we developed Block by Block Reporting, we were able to track additional data very easily and split it out by blocks and verticals, making our reporting structure unique and valuable to our clients and to us.

Block by Block Reporting was designed to be transparent and make campaign reporting easy to access for our clients. It started out as an internal tool, but as we grew, it was realized that we could open it up for our clients to use directly, saving time and giving them more flexible reporting.

This feature is the third of many products we will introduce to the online market in 2009-2010. These products are what we have built our foundation on and moving forward you can look out for our network expansion in comScore.

SMS-based marketing is an emerging tool that is delivering strong results; our clients are already building an active mobile database that’s driving sales, increasing their brand awareness, and promoting customer loyalty. Clients can use mobile marketing for many purposes including coupons, sweepstakes, text-to-buy or text-to-give. In addition, our Bluetooth systems can target customers within close proximity to send full motion video, audio/ring tones, coupons and more directly to the phone in your target area.

“We are very excited to introduce mobile marketing to our clients as part of our overall strategy to offer clients an integrated, multi-media advertising campaign that reaches the consumer at the right time with the right medium,” said RM Media’s President Jon Flatt. “Our Mobile Marketing Solution’s targeting capabilities maximizes our clients’ marketing dollars by directing offers to the most valuable customers and our real-time reporting provides complete transparency and ensures results.”

We offer a 24/7 content management system with a client’s mobile campaign that gives easy access to the client’s database which makes it simple to change their offers to distribute to their subscribers. Clients also receive a user-friendly reporting dashboard that tabulates the opt-in and opt-out process and is presented in real-time with measureable results. Mobile advertising is a great lead generation tool because, like surveys, it captures consumers in the moment and allows them to quickly and easily request more information.

RM Media’s Mobile Marketing Solutions is part of a robust suite of products that provide clients new and improved ways to track, report and optimize search marketing, display advertising on its premium network, mobile and email marketing, and custom channel building.

Have more questions about our Mobile Marketing Solutions? Contact us for more information or call us at 512.380.4400.

Who is LIN TV you ask? They’re a local television and digital media company, headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. They have a solid presence in the broadcast network television arena. They own and/or operate 27 nationally-affiliated stations in 17 U.S. markets; along with more than 50 interactive television station and niche market websites and mobile marketing solutions.

We as employees are ready, willing, and raring to go for this new adventure. “This is an exciting opportunity for our company and our clients,” said our CEO Jon Flatt.  ”Our foundation for success is, and will continue to be, providing unparalleled client service and achieving measurable results for our clients. As part of LIN TV’s new media strategy, we will be able to benefit from important synergies and have greater resources for growth, enhanced service and innovation.”

Our goals will not change in regards to our clients. Our main objective will continue to be: targeting audiences with advertisers and publishers based on demographic, psychographic, and consumer behaviors to enhance branding and maximize client return on investment. In fact, we will be able to offer so much more through our work with the LIN TV team.

“RM Media advances LIN’s transformation from a local broadcaster to a digital media company with a national footprint,” said LIN TV’s President and CEO Vincent Sadusky. “RM Media was founded by innovative and entrepreneurial leaders who have a clear understanding of new media engagement and a first-to-market advantage.”

While meeting with the LIN TV team yesterday and today, I believe the biggest similarity lies in both companies overwhelming ability to embrace change within the marketplace and effectively implement the solutions clients and consumers want. We are forerunners in our respective industries, looking for creative answers to hard problems.

For example, LIN TV was one of the first television broadcasters to fully commit to and make investments in its Internet infrastructure and content. LIN TV has a lucrative multiplatform business model employing synergies from its core on-air broadcasts and dedicated new media technologies and personnel. On the flip side we have developed many technologies that LIN TV is eager to utilize including but not limited to; a top 35 comScore display ad network, a highly effective SEO & SEM Optimization process, a consumer-and-advertiser friendly video player, and we acquired and integrated two companies that specialize in web development and lead generation, launched two top 100 comScore proprietary websites and services several Fortune 500 clients.

As a part of the LIN TV team we will continue to deliver measurable results to local, regional, and national clients including several Fortune 500 companies. With LIN TV’s outstanding new media strategies, our unique technologies, product innovation, transparency, and personalized online advertising solutions, this partnership will prove to be a step in the right direction!

We hope to continue or begin our outstanding work with you well into a bright future!

Smartphone mobile marketing. I am pretty surprised at how many my age have a smartphone, considering most are not OTP (off-the-payroll)… Anyways, welcome to my generation. A generation of late 80’s children who have gone from email to AIM to text messaging to video messaging to sending videos and pictures via phone, and managed to become the forerunners of each. We have grown up embracing change in the form of communication. I remember as a kid in elementary school emailing friends in real time. We would sit at our computers and wait for each other’s response.

ME: “Hey wasuppp?”
BFF: “Nothing much u?”

These were emails we sent. If there was no response, we came back later and tried again. It was instant messaging, before instant messaging! The movie Back to the Future was right. Only it predicted advancement in a different field. We have mastered communication.

Back to mobile. Why I chose a smartphone? It is all-in-one. No more carrying around a phone, a GPS device, an mp3/ipod player, a watch, a planner, etc. All is there. In hand, organized, and instantaneous.

For marketers I see the main smart phone mobile marketing problem as one of “personal prowess.” How does the product/service become personal to the consumer, and how do we make sure they experience this relationship? This is THE question.

A 360-degree Campaign
The message needs to be frequent and relative to the target audience. Right? However, I believe that we should go beyond that and involve more channels of communication, as many as we can to ensure a broader reach. A 360-degree campaign. This means carrying your message across all platforms that hit the target audience. Hyper-focusing on one area does not ensure success, in fact it limits the whole campaign. Smartphones are just one part of the bigger media picture, but they have increased ten-fold the opportunities for cross promotional advertising. Interaction is the name of the game. A restaurant billboard that sends a map of its nearest location to your phone, an in-store display that offers discounts to users who text-in, etc.

It’s good to note that going too broad, in regards to channels of communication, could hurt you. Therefore, breadth and depth need to be considered. We involve as many channels as we need to ensure maximum reach potential, but not so many that we are unable to create deep relationships with the consumers. Therefore, a successful 360-degree campaign will further an effective and quality-filled message via the right networks to open two-way communication between the client and target consumer.

It’s a Two-Way Street
EMarketer points out in its latest report Mobile Users and Usage: It’s Personal that,

“As mobile subscribers and the devices they use grow in sophistication, mobile will develop into a ubiquitous platform for messaging, social networking, entertainment and Web access. In turn, growing sophistication in users, devices and usage patterns will mean increased opportunities for marketers to connect with consumers, particularly among the growing population of smartphone users.

Yet marketers must take seriously the highly personal relationship users have with their mobile devices, and respect the need for a value exchange. Expecting something for nothing is not an option.”

I love that line, “…expecting something for nothing is not an option.” This is no longer a push-it-in-your-face-and-hope-you-buy-it world. Smart phones mandated a new law; Listen and respond, or be talked about. Not an easy feat.

Can we talk about this for a minute?
With all of that said, I believe that the innate and initial appeal of a product or service, in regards to the smart phone user, is the brand’s personality and openness to communication. It puts the product or service on the radar of these consumers. Without this elusive foundation, the potential dialogue could be lost. (This cannot be measured by metrics and is one of the great psychological and mysterious parts of advertising that I love.)

So, at the heart of the smart phone is; conversation. The smart phone mobile consumer is the communication forerunner. The phone they carry is ultimately their main line of contact and an extension of themselves, and they want a reason to keep a personal vested interest in your brand.

Tap into this notion and the world of smart phone users is your digital oyster. “It’s a small world after all…”

Most of the Twitter birds that I found are vector based, but I also found a number of photographs of Twitter birds made in other media. There’s enough of a variety here to please any artistic taste. To find out who the artist is hover over the image and the credit will appear, or click on the image and you’ll be taken to the artist’s Flickr page, which shows more samples of their work.

I also found several that incorporate other media, which I think makes them interesting.

This next one is a little extra. It isn’t exactly a Twitter logo, but its still artistic and cool enough that it deserves to be in the list.

If you found this interesting, give us a shout on Twitter. @redmccombsmedia

“Savvy trend spotters and those who invest in private companies know that the Inc. 5000 is the best place to find out about young companies that are achieving success through a wide variety of unprecedented business models, as well as older private companies that are still expanding at an impressive rate,” said Inc. 5000 project manager, Jim Melloan. “That’s why our list is so eagerly anticipated every year.”

Red McCombs Media was founded in 2004 and has posted a 230.6 percent growth between the qualifying years 2005-2008. They were also awarded No. 25 in the Top 50 Businesses in the Austin, Texas area. “Red McCombs Media continues to develop new media marketing products and technology that provide our clients quantifiable value. We have a clear understanding and direction of new media and why it is so valuable to the rapidly changing economic world. Our work ethic and dedication to servicing our clients is second to none,” said Red McCombs Media CEO, Jon Flatt.

Red McCombs Media’s philosophy of focusing on the client resonates throughout the company. The foundation for success continues to be providing unparalleled client service and achieving client ROI.

About Red McCombs Media –
Red McCombs Media is an online advertising and media services company with a network component based in Austin, Texas. They connect targeted audiences with advertisers and publishers based on demographic, psychographic and consumer behaviors to enhance branding and maximize client ROI.

Red McCombs Media focuses on delivering the human element in advertising campaigns through their display and video network, custom built site lists, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, creative and web development. They provide measurable results to local, regional and national clients including several Fortune 500 companies.

###

Before discussing the differences it is important to understand the terms, so here are a few definitions.

DART is DoubleClick’s campaign administration tool and is one of the industry standard tools available today. Red McCombs Media uses DART for Advertisers to count the number of clicks a banner receives.

The term analytics refers to any web analytics package. Google Analytics is probably the most widely known, but the same information applies if you’re using Clicky, Omniture, WebTrends, Mint or any other.

A cookie is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by the browser, and may contain user preferences, referral information, or other data used by websites. Most web analytics packages, including Google Analytics, require the use of a cookie.

A publisher site is the site on which a banner or advertisement appears.

A landing page is the target webpage for a campaign.

A click is counted by DART when a person clicks on a banner or advertisement on a publisher’s site and is redirected to a landing page to find out more information about the promotion. This is in accordance with IAB click measurement guidelines. A click is not counted when a user interacts with the banner content in some way (expanding to find out more, retracting or closing an auto expandable, adjust volume levels, play a game within the banner, etc). And, a click is not counted when it is automated via a script or web crawler.  The only way a click is counted is if a person’s web browser exits the publisher’s site.

A visit is counted by analytics when a person interacts with a landing page through a web browser, and ends when the browser is closed or shut down. This term is interchangeable with the term session. A script or web crawler would not be counted as a visit, because they are not operating within a browser.

Because clicks and visits are two different metrics being measured by two different services across two different websites, it should come as no surprise that discrepancies exist between them. Regardless of the campaign it is unlikely that there will be a one-to-one correlation between clicks and visits, and in most cases the number of clicks will be greater than the number of visits.

There are a number of reasons for discrepancies between these two metrics. According to Google Analytics Help there are four explanations for a discrepancy between clicks reported by AdWords and visits recorded by analytics. Three of these four factors also apply to banner advertisements:

• A visitor may click on your ad multiple times. If a person clicks on your ad more than once during the same session, each click will be counted but Analytics recognizes each pageview as one visit. This is a common behavior for anyone that is comparison shopping. Multiple clicks equals one visit.
• A user may click on an ad, then later, during a different session, return directly to the site through a bookmark. In this case the referral information would be retained so one click would result in multiple visits. One click equals multiple visits.
• A visitor may click on an advertisement then click back, stop or close the browser before the page fully loads. In this case the click would be counted but Analytics would not record the visit. One click equals zero visits.

The issue of correlating clicks and visits becomes more complicated when searching within analytics.  It can be challenging to identify which visits are from a specific banner campaign. The easiest way to identify the campaign traffic is through referring sites. This is how most clients identify their campaign traffic. Yet, according to documentation within DART for Publishers (login required) this is an unreliable measurement. Because there are a number of ways for an ad to be implemented on a publisher’s website, analytics could report this traffic as being referred by the page where the ad is displayed or DoubleClick.com.

We at Red McCombs Media have even seen instances where the referral information is not passed at all. This can happen when a campaign banner is served by two or more ad servers, and the cookie is either corrupted or stripped. This is an artifact of the way that the banner for a campaign is distributed to publishers. In this case the click would be counted by DART and the visit would be counted by analytics, but it would not be attributed to a referring site at all.

For these reasons it is unlikely that the number of referrer visits will match the number of visits generated by a campaign, increasing the discrepancy between clicks and visits. There are, however, steps that can be taken to ensure that analytics counts as many visits as possible.

• Use Google’s URL Builder to tag the campaign. This ensures that all of the visits that are counted will be correctly segmented and labeled, making them easy to find. If you’re using something other than Google Analytics, there should be a similar means of campaign tracking available for that specific tool.
• Ensure that the same Analytics tracking code is installed on every page of the landing website. This ensures that if a visitor navigates to another page of the site it isn’t recorded as a bounce.

Note that even with these measures the number of visits will still not match the number of clicks.

Since any comparison between clicks and visits requires data from DART and analytics, how accurate is the data being reported by these services?

According to DART’s counting methodologies whitepaper (login required), their algorithm takes measures to prevent automated clicks and they are excluded from reports if detected. Over time this strategy has proven effective, very few clicks by real users are discarded, and once a user is identified as fraudulent all subsequent clicks are discarded.

Analytics packages are generally slightly less accurate when reporting the number of visits. As mentioned above, most analytics require the use of a cookie. Users have the option of blocking or deleting cookies and ad servers may also affect cookies. According to Brian Clifton, author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics and a whitepaper on the accuracy of analytics software, these factors lead to most analytics services (including Google Analytics) slightly under reporting the number of visitors. This would be in addition to the factors suggested by Google, increasing the discrepancy between clicks and visits.

Now that you understand the factors that contribute to a discrepancy, consider its magnitude. Our experience has shown that the size of the discrepancy between clicks and visits is different for each campaign. Because of this, it’s not safe to assume what the discrepancy should be before a campaign begins. Any assumption about what the discrepancy ‘should be’ is arbitrary at best.

Because of the discrepancies between clicks and visits, in our experience, a much more meaningful metric is the landing page conversion rate. This is the rate at which visitors to your landing page convert (complete a purchase, fill out a form, download a file, etc). While it is not possible to predict what the conversion rate will be before a campaign begins, once the data begins to appear there are a number of things that can be done to optimize the campaign to convert as many visitors as possible. By taking steps to optimize the conversion rate, advertisers can maximize the return on their advertising dollar. There are quite a few books available that cover the topic of landing page optimization. If you want to avoid all that reading, Red McCombs Media offers this as a service.

There are simply too many factors that contribute to discrepancies between clicks and visits for them to be considered the same, they are two different things measured by two different tools across two different domains. The supporting articles provided should show that the industry agrees. In short, this is not an actionable metric. Landing page optimization, on the other hand, is an effective means of evaluating the performance of a banner or search campaign. Do you agree or disagree with the conclusions drawn here? Please post questions or comments below.

In the coming weeks this blog will be updated with tips for optimizing the conversion rate of your campaign.

And it has paid dividends.   At first, what would have taken me a few days to implement in PHP took a few weeks in Rails because I was figuring out how Rails worked, learning the “Rails Way” and discovering plugins.   Now a last minute feature addition that was dubbed critical was accomplished in less than an hour including testing and deployment.   The same feature would have taken at least 2 days in PHP based on how I used to develop.

All this to say, the Red Zone is a product that I’m very proud of.   It is well designed from the inside out.   There are some look and feel components that I’d like to improve on, but overall, the UI has been thought through so that the user gets maximum ease of use.  The user security schema has been thought through so that it works with how the users actually use it. The administration has been ‘DRY’d up so that changes only need to be made in one place, not 15–which makes for a very pleasant and consistent user experience.

The biggest advantage to using Rails has definitely been speed of development (and fun!), but the biggest pitfall has been speed of use.   When you compare it to other platforms, though, Rails just ends up succumbing to the same problems they have : when you deal with a lot of data, you’re going to be slow unless you know how to optimize it.

We did optimize it by putting all of our data into what is called a denormalized table. This allowed us to grab all the data needed without any complicated or expensive joins in the database.   Now you can pull a full months report in seconds rather than minutes, allowing our staff to spend time doing what they do well, rather than waiting on a web page to load.

We also added other features that took a fraction of the time to develop like moving our lead tracking system into the Red Zone and simplifying some internal processes.

All in all, it’s been a pleasure to work with Ruby on Rails to develop this business product for Red McCombs Media.  I’d recommend using Rails to nearly any company that wants to develop a feature rich product and knows how to properly optimize code.