Mark Zuckerberg posted a picture of himself in front of his computer, and an eagle-eyed blogger noticed that his version of Facebook sports a larger-than-usual search box. An unintended leak or not, Facebook competing in search is only a matter of time just as, in retrospect, it was inevitable that Google would integrate social elements deeper into its main product.

This is why.

It wouldn’t be a revelation to say that no large-scale ad delivery system is perfect.

Reason one is that, at any given moment, only a fraction of the exposed audience is actively on the market for the benefit that the advertised product delivers.  Yes, I actually might be interested in switching to your cell phone plan, but talk to me in 15 months when my contract is about to expire. This is the efficiency problem of advertising: in order to reach the few people who are interested right now, the delivery systems by necessity overshoot and spam the crap bejesus out of thousands who promptly tune out.

Reason two is that few would admit they believe advertising. People consider the source and recognize the nature of the claims as self-serving and discount them accordingly.  This is the effectiveness problem. The advertisers’ typical recourse is to bypass rational thought altogether and to beat the claim into the audience’s subconscious through incessant repetition.

(Now is a good time to note that we are are talking only about ad delivery here. Effectiveness of creative is a different topic.)

That’s what the main media planning principles of “reach” and “frequency” are about — solving for efficiency and effectiveness. In the picture above, this situation is illustrated by the undesirable lower-left quadrant that says “You Are Here.” You are there because most of the existing large ad delivery systems are both inefficient and ineffective.

Except for two.

Google with all its imperfections is the most efficient way to deliver ads — only people who need something now would actively look for something and see an ad for it.

And even though it took them awhile, Facebook is figuring out that they have this whole effectiveness thing down. According to many studies (the one below, and others, including my own), friends are the most trusted source of product information. Facebook has hundreds of millions of friends, and Facebook also sells advertising, and now Facebook is putting two and two together to make advertising that comes from friends.

But Google and Facebook each solve only half of the efficiency/effectiveness problem.  The impeccably timed search ads Google delivers are still self-serving. And the perfectly trustworthy social ads on Facebook still show up at the wrong time. In other words,  Facebook and Google each have what the other doesn’t, and they are going to fight for it.

On Google’s end, this is what the whole Search Plus Your World business is about — fixing the source problem.  That’s why the push to get people to +1 stuff, and then connect people into social graphs via Gmail and Google+, and then use +1ers as implicit endorsers. Not, you might notice, unlike Facebook.

And Facebook needs to fix its targeting. “Interests” have an expiry date and “likes” of pop-culture icons are only tangential indicators of predisposition towards, say, vacuum cleaners. Facebook does have several more precise mechanisms for intent targeting useful for certain categories (a recent change of status to “engaged” is a reliable signal for the wedding industry), but by and large nothing as precise of an intent indicator as search.

Hence the picture of Zuck in front of an extra-large search box.

Power of Giant Balloons for Local Businesses

Giant balloons are very important to you if you want to run a successful business.

Harsh economic times, tough business times

In these harsh economic times, it is very tough to get people to buy. People have scarce resources and they would rather spend what they have on buying essential goods – instead of luxury products. Thus, convincing people to buy is no easy task at all.

Thus, to attempt to convince people to buy in harsh economic times is not at all easy and that is why it is very important for advertisers and marketers to advertise correctly.

The Economy is Ugly! Very Ugly!

Advertising is a must for success

As these are tough times, the role of advertising is all the more critical for any biz – big or small. People are shopping less, they are spending less money than they used to, so how does an advertiser get people to buy under such conditions?
Thus, in these times, it becomes more important for you to get your company into the minds of people. But obtaining that coveted spot in the minds of consumers today is not at all easy and it takes a great deal of creativity to do it. So how do you do it? How do you get into the minds of people?

Don't Worry! Be Happy! Try Giant Balloons!

Your solution lies in giant balloons for advertising.

As people are just flooded with all kinds of ads from all kinds of companies, they just do not care to look at ads – even though they may be on prime time TV slots. In fact, people go to the extent of flipping channels when they see ads on TV. Thus, what was once considered to be an excellent advertising medium, is now taken as a waste of money.
So, the way you need to get into the minds of potential customers today, is to grab hold of their attention and a neat way of doing this is by making use of huge balloons to advertise your biz. And, more and more people all over the world are discovering this and that is why today, many local businesses are using giant rental balloons to market their businesses.

Great way of attracting attention

These huge inflatable balloons are a great way of attracting the attention of people – no matter what they may be doing. And more and more local marketers all over the world have now begun to harness the power of giant balloons.

Power of Giant Balloons for Local Businesses is a post from: Advertising Balloons

Related posts:

1. Advertising balloons have unlimited advertising power.
2. Advertising Balloons For Businesses
3. Giant Balloons Attract People and Sales

This is a sponsored post.

RevResponse, a company that helps bloggers make money by selling and giving away white papers and magazine subscriptions, has a new nifty tool that converts a blog’s RSS feed into an email with automatically inserted promo offers.

RevResponse’s aptly named RSS to Email Tool is a welcome addition to the pretty small group of  RSS converters. A field once teeming with start-ups, it is now the domain of a few email newsletter providers, notably MailChimp,  and Feedburner,  a once innovative product that has become stale after its sale to Google and the departure of Dick Costolo to the greener pastures of Twitter.

Like other similar tools out there, RSS to Email takes your most recent posts and packages them into a template of your choice. The templates come in a range of colors, and while they are not likely to win any beauty pageants the tool does come with a fairly flexible scheduling system that allows you to send digests of your brilliance either once a month, once a week, or on any combination of days of your choice.

Importantly — and uniquely — the tool adds rather unobtrusive ads for contextually chosen whitepapers or other publications right into your blogomail: either a set of text links or an ad with a thumbnail of the publication’s cover. If you run a marketing blog, advertised publications could range from HubSpot’s white papers and something called Chief Social Marketer to the awesomely esoteric niche B2B pubs such as Perishables Buyer and Archery Business.