StumbleUpon has launched a new advertising system, which the company says helps cost-effectively deliver advertiser content to targeted audiences, while increasing the opportunity for content to go viral.

StumbleUpon finds and recommends ad content it deems relevant to targeted audiences’ interested based on demographic and topic areas. StumbleUpon users by simple nature of the site choose the content topics of interest to them, and are delivered random content based on this). This makes for an interesting way of delivering ads.

"With StumbleUpon Advertising, we’re solving the challenge of how advertisers can get more content that is relevant and impactful in front of their targeted audiences," says StumbleUpon CEO and Founder Garrett Camp. "We are dedicated to providing the tools that help advertisers identify and reach their audiences, measure campaigns effectively and gain real-time user feedback."

"After testing the StumbleUpon Advertising system for eight months, we know it’s an extremely cost-effective way to drive qualified traffic and let the content speak for itself," said Jason Clement, Director of Findability at Wieden + Kennedy. “Since StumbleUpon Advertising targets content to users based on their personal interests, we can be confident that our content is reaching the most receptive audience possible. And when an audience enjoys our content, the reward is a healthy amount of free, organic traffic."

"StumbleUpon Advertising makes it easy and cost-effective to deliver the right content to a new audience of our target users," said Ben Tider, Assistant Director, Audience Development at Time Inc. Lifestyle Digital Group. “With streamlined campaign set-up and management, we can better optimize ads and recommend content based on the individual user. Because readers can self-identify the types of content we show them, they are more engaged and likely to share it with friends."

"StumbleUpon Advertising enables brand advertisers to serve up compelling content while users are searching or ‘stumbling’ around the Web," said Josh Spear, Founding Partner of Undercurrent. "With StumbleUpon Ads, an advertiser’s content is not an interruption, but rather a fully integrated experience that affords an opportunity for additional exposure when audiences like or respond well to the content. It is comparable to a banner that becomes more cost efficient based on positive viewer feedback. The new user interface also greatly enhances the service by delivering advanced analytics and more detailed campaign management tools."

StumbleUpon claims to generate nearly 600 million recommendations per month for its community of almost 11 million members.

Related: About a year ago, we interviewed StumbleUpon’s VP of Business Development about advertising on the site.

Google is launching ads on the home page, search page, and browser page on the mobile version of YouTube in the U.S. and Japan.

"This is a great way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms," says Google Strategic Partner Development Manager Taylor Cascino. "In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web. And because YouTube mobile attracts early adopters, the site can deliver to advertisers a coveted demographic of tech savvy trendsetters. We’ve already seen some early campaigns run on YouTube’s mobile site by advertisers like Sony (for the DVD release of "District 9") and Kia, both of whom were able to easily reach their target audience, no matter where they were looking for video."

YouTube’s mobile site traffic grew by over 160% in 2009, and you can probably expect that growth to continue along with smartphone usage. Don’t forget that YouTube is the number 2 search engine on the web. That’s a lot of people searching for videos.

"The increased usage of high-end devices like the iPhone and Android is also making mobile advertising easier and more effective for advertisers," says Cascino.

Ads on the YouTube mobile site will come in the form of banner ads sold on a full-day basis. YouTube tested the mobile ads with brands like L’Oreal and Land Rover, and the company says these showed strong results in terms of click-throughs, user experience, and brand awareness.

Yahoo’s line of thinking with regards to the big Microsoft/Yahoo search and advertising deal is that it will benefit both Microsoft and Yahoo’s advertisers, as well as consumers and publishers.

It will benefit advertisers because it will increase search volume, with results from both Bing and Yahoo being taken into consideration. It will benefit consumers because by combining advertisers from both properties, there will be a greater pool to deliver sponsored results from, which Yahoo says will mean increased relevance. It will benefit Yahoo, Bing, and their publisher partners with increased liquidity, participation, and relevance. That is basically the sum of it, according to Yahoo Vice President of Search Advertising David Pann.

WebProNews recently sat down with Pann and discussed these things and how the deal will affect advertisers.

According to Pann, the migration across all international markets will occur over the next 24 months or so, but they will not rush it at the expense of quality, they say. "Our focus is really about developing a plan that is smooth, seamless, and with quality. So we anticipate doing the U.S. migration sometime before the holiday season in 2010," says Pann.

In the above interview, Pann goes on to talk about how things will be split between Yahoo and Microsoft. He also addresses some privacy concerns, related to data sharing between the two companies.

WebProNews also interviewed Yahoo Sr. VP of Search Products Shashi Seth and Director of Search Marketing David Roth, both of whom talked about the deal in more detail. You can catch both of those interviews, as well as a recent keynote from SMX West where the deal was also discussed, here.

The Wall Street Journal has the Blogosphere abuzz with rumors of Google testing a new set-top box with Dish Network, which would allow people to search television and online video content like YouTube. Google has given the usual "we don’t comment on rumor or speculation" statement on the subject.

According to the WSJ, only a small number of Google employees and their families are testing the box, which runs on Google software (Android is implied), and lets users create personalized lineups of shows. The testing has reportedly been going on since last year. Aside from these things, the details are sketchy at best, which can only mean one thing: let the wild speculation commence.

Assuming that this service ever comes to fruition, it could open up a lot of new opportunities for Google to dominate or at least heavily compete in areas in which it isn’t dominating already. Rather than doing too much speculation myself, allow me to just list some questions and open this up for discussion:

- What if Google gets exclusive deals with Dish Network as well as other major satellite and cable providers? Google TV Ads already has deals in place to provide ads on close to a hundred cable networks.

- What if Google makes more deals to boost its movie rental selection on YouTube? How big of a player would that make YouTube in the movie rental space? This will be something to keep an eye on with or without this box as Internet-ready TVs permeate the mainstream.

- Will Yahoo and Bing be looking at opportunities like the Google/Dish Network box? Are they already?

- What would widespread integration of web search and television mean for TV advertising?

In the not-too-distant future, we may start to really see TV advertising getting more targeted, which has long been the medium’s biggest downfall. People often record shows simply so they don’t have to watch the commercials. What if the ads were targeted at the individuals watching the TV? What if they were relevant? Search advertising paved the way for this kind of relevancy, and may just be a key to the future of TV advertising in a world where viewers want their programming on demand.

There I go off on that speculation. This all sounds good in theory, but a lot of puzzle pieces have to fall in place, and a lot of stars have to align for this to become a reality. Deals must be made, and money must be spent. That’s not to say the concept is far-fetched.

Consider that advertisers are finding online to be a better option than even the super bowl in some cases. This past Super Bowl, Pepsi skipped a TV spot for the first time in 23 years. TV is going to have to adapt.

Tell us what you think.

Spending on online advertising and marketing will surpass print in 2010 for the first time, according to a new report from Outsell.

Companies will spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies, from search engine keywords to webinars, while committing $111.5 billion to print such as newspapers and magazine ads. Overall, U.S. spending on advertising and marketing will increase in 2010, but only by 1.2 percent to $368 billion.

Outsell forecasts spending, share, and growth for five media categories including online, events, print, TV/radio and PR/other.

"Advertisers are directing dollars toward the channels which generate the most qualified leads and most effective branding," said Chuck Richard, Vice President and Lead Analyst, Outsell.

"As they emerge from the recession, they need more accountability, and they’re spreading their spending over a widening set of options."

Print magazine advertising will be up 1.9 percent to $9.4 billion even with the popularity of online channels.

Other key findings include:

*51 percent if B2B marketers rate Facebook as extremely or somewhat effective, followed by LinkedIn (45%), Twitter (35%) and MySpace (25%).

*B2B advertisers see cross-media marketing as most effective; 78% combine three or more major marketing methods.

*Methods creating the highest B2B ROI are topped by advertisers’ own websites, followed by conferences, exhibitions and trade shows: direct mail; search engine keywords; and e-marketing/e-newsletters. 
 

Online analytics firm Omniture and Facebook said today they have partnered to offer marketers tools to improve Facebook as a marketing channel.

Initially the two companies will focus on the ability to automate Facebook media buying and access analytics that measure customer engagement on Facebook. The partnership builds on Facebook analytics the companies introduced last year to help marketers join the conversation and have more relevant interactions with their customers.

The partnership is aimed at helping companies more easily integrate Facebook as a marketing channel in an effort to connect and have relevant conversations with Facebook’s more than 400 million users.

“Working with us, Omniture has been able to develop a rich and immersive set of tools that will help our clients better understand the value of their Facebook advertising campaigns,” said Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president of business development and monetization.

“By creating a single dashboard to plan, deliver and measure campaigns, Omniture can make advertising on Facebook easier and ultimately increase ROI for clients.”

Omniture customers can now use the company’s SearchCenter Plus, a combination of its search engine marketing management application with added functionality for buying Facebook Ads.

In addition, Omniture customers can now generate reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for some of the unique elements of Facebook such as pages and applications.
 

Update: I finally got word back from Facebook, who confirmed that the feature is indeed only a test. "The "Promote" feature is just a test and is unrelated to our Promotions Guidelines," the company says. They  did not give any specifics about a possible full launch.

Original Article: Facebook appears to either be rolling out or testing a feature that lets Facebook Page owners promote specific posts. When you make an update, a link that says, "Promote" can be found by the links for "Comment" and "Like".

Once you click that Promote link, it brings up a dialogue box, which asks you to create an ad, with targeting descriptions, the ad duration, and the maximum price of "Up to $50.00 USD".

Editor’s note: Feel free to become our fan on Facebook, by the way.

You can click on "Edit Ad" to go to the standard Facebook Advertising Page, or you can click "Create Ad" to go to this page:

Interestingly enough, this comes after talk last week about how you have to have promotions approved by a Facebook account representative, which would reportedly cost you about $10k. This would appear to eliminate that notion.

The feature appears to only be available for some admins of some pages. We’re not sure if they’re rolling out the feature or just testing it. I’ve contacted Facebook to learn more about the feature, and I’ll update when I receive a response. Any other Facebook Page admins getting this feature? Let us know.

Twitter is expected to launch an ad platform this month (some have speculated this will happen at SXSW). While this hasn’t been confirmed, the industry has been waiting for quite some time to Twitter to launch such a monetization model.

That’s not to say the industry has been sitting on its hands as it’s waited. Third-parties have taken it upon themselves to offer services for Twitter, that Twitter itself doesn’t offer. That includes apps of course, but it also includes Twitter ads. 140 Proof is one such company, and it calls itself the "first scalable ad solution built exclusively for Twitter."

"The Proof network aggregates the Twitter client and application ecosystem (roughly 100+ million Twitters users) and then segments users into a dynamic audience that advertisers can buy the same way they buy keyword advertising," a representative for the company tells WebProNews. "Advertisers are excited to final have a mechanism for extended their conversations on the Twitter social network and the Twitter ecosystem is eager to have a targeted, non-obtrusive advertising solution that allows them to monetize their applications while still respecting  the ethos of the Twitter community."

The 140 Proof Network features hundreds of advertisers, who the company says are reaching their target markets on Twitter. "Some are large well know brand names that everyone is familiar with and some are small businesses that are trying build their presence on Twitter or advertise in a very local or targeted manner," the rep says.

We asked the company if they think Twitter’s ad platform has a chance to damage businesses like theirs and others that have been making a business based on sponsored tweeting (Sponsored Tweets from Izea comes to mind).

"We welcome Twitter to the advertising world," the rep tell us. "Clearly we think that their entrance in the marketplace is a great validation of what we are doing, but we also believe that the market is large enough to support many major players. Further, we feel that our experienced advertising and engineering team, our advantage of being fully operational for months, and our patented, proprietary technology will give us an advantage over all competitors."

Quite a display of confidence from 140 Proof – an advantage over Twitter at Twitter ads? What do you think?

A little more than a month ago, Google introduced click-to-call phone numbers in local ads on smartphones.  Now, the popular program’s undergoing an expansion as Google’s made it easier for large companies to take advantage of the offering.

A post on the Inside AdWords blog explained today, "[W]e’re bringing the same click-to-call benefits to national advertisers through phone extensions.  Phone extensions allow you to add a phone number that will be displayed whenever your ad is triggered, regardless of the user’s location."

Here’s the upshot, then: "This enables customers to connect with your business by phone directly from the ad and can be especially useful if you have a call center to handle customer inquiries."

Advertisers should profit as a result of this development, considering that phone calls are more likely than clicks to lead to purchases.  Google looks set to make a lot of money, too, since this move will encourage corporations with big advertising budgets to give click-to-call ads a shot.

Perhaps the only losers will be the companies that don’t adapt quickly.  They’ll risk losing sales to competitors with more eye-catching and actionable ads.

The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) has asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the online marketing and behavioral targeting practices of pharmaceutical companies.

The CDD says few U.S. health consumers are aware they are being identified, labeled, profiled, and tracked on the Internet while they search or access information on specific conditions or concerns.

"The health and safety of U.S. consumers must be protected from inappropriate and potentially harmful use of digital marketing applications that have been embraced by pharmaceutical and health marketers," said Jeff Chester, Executive Director, CDD.

"It is essential that the FDA craft regulatory safeguards for Internet-related promotion, especially since interactive communications will become the dominant form for the delivery of health information and advertising to both consumers and health professionals."

The CDD asked the FDA to work with the Federal Trade Commission and other agencies to develop a set of policies for regulating the use of behavioral targeting and data collection in the marketing of drugs and health-related products.

The FDA held two days of hearings last November on the role of the Internet and marketing for regulated drugs. Chester said at those hearings, "pharmaceutical marketers purposely painted a sanitized, storybook image of social media marketing."

"Direct-to-Consumer Digital Marketing of pharmaceutical and health-related products requires the FDA to re-evaluate its standards for advertising practices, including what should be considered as truthful and non-misleading," he said.
 

Newspaper websites are the most valued sites for people seeking credible and trustworthy local content, according to a new survey conducted by comScore for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

More than half (57%) of the 3,050 respondents cited local newspaper websites as the top online source for local information. That percentage increases for upper income households (63%) and for the college educated (60%).

Newspaper sites ranked first as a source for local information (29%), local sports (27%), local entertainment (26%) and local classifieds (39%), over both local television websites and online portals.

"This important research provides further evidence of newspapers’ successful multiplatform transition, with the medium serving as a continuous local resource for consumers," said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm.

"While newspaper Web sites often face dozens of competitors touting their own local offerings in any given market, they have been able to thrive by leveraging trusted brands and strong local content to appeal to consumers and advertisers alike."

Local newspaper websites ranked first among all sources for trustworthiness, credibility and being the most informative place to find local content of all types, including news, information, entertainment, sports and classified advertising. When respondents were asked what sources were most trustworthy or reliable, local newspaper websites beat out local television sites (34% vs. 22%), local sports (30% vs. 24%), local entertainment (30% vs. 20%) and local classifieds (42% vs. 13 %).

The survey also found that people consider local newspaper websites to be the most trusted source of online advertising, with ads that are seen to be more current, credible and relevant to them.

Forty percent of adults agreed their opinion of online advertising is influenced by the type of website on which the ad appears. More than one third (36%) selected local newspaper websites for trustworthy advertising compared to 23 percent for local television websites and 12 percent for online portals. This was true across all demographics.

"This survey reinforces the notion that consumers value and trust the premium-quality content found at newspaper Web sites as well as the advertising on those sites," said Randy Bennett, NAA’s senior vice president of Business Development.

"It also provides further evidence that newspapers, which attracted a record 75 million visitors in January, offer advertisers a high-value audience that no other medium can match."

Twitter is testing an ad platform, which is expected to be released next month, possibly at the South By Southwest event in Austin. Though the timing of the release has not been confirmed, Twitter’s head of product management and monetization, Anamitra Banerji, told MediaPost that they "are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase."

According to Banerji, when Twitter does launch the product, it will make it clear when sponsors have paid for ads, and the ads themselves will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad." This strategy seems to have been working well for Digg, which launched Digg Ads last year, to generally positive feedback from users (users can participate by voting ads up and down, which makes the more interesting ones more likely to be seen).

Twitter doesn’t exactly operate like Digg though, but Twitterers do contribute to trending topics. On a recent panel, Banerji showed off a chart that looked at peaks and total tweets throughout the Super Bowl, with one line representing tweets about the actual game, and another representing tweets about specific advertisers.

It is possible that Twitter’s ad platform would tie into this "what people are already talking about" kind of thing, but that would seemingly make it much more difficult for a lesser-known brand to have any kind of advertising success.

The truth is, nobody knows exactly how Twitter is going to present its ads yet. The question is, how can they do it in a way that users won’t think of it as an ad? It’s probably going to involve some real-time engagement on the part of the advertiser, which leads one to wonder how they will be different than any other unpaid, branded tweet.

"People are constantly talking and engaging with brands, sharing their feedback," MediaPost quotes Banerji as saying. "What if brands start to participate? What would the chart look like then?" I thought brands already did that.

It’s going to be about how Twitter presents it. That could be a difficult problem to address, given that Twitter users use the service through many different third-party apps and devices, and often not the site itself. This is not a concept Twitter is likely to have ignored though, so if they’re planning on launch next month, they must have a pretty good solution.

How would you like to see ads displayed on Twitter? Discuss here.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said today starting April 1, advertising for "free credit reports" online will require new disclosures to help consumers avoid confusing "free" offers which often require them to spend money on credit monitoring or other products and services.

The FTC’s Free Credit Reports Rule will require new prominent disclosures in ads for "free credit reports." Any website offering free credit reports must include a disclosure, across the top of each page that mentions free credit reports, which reads:

THIS NOTICE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. Read more at FTC.GOV.
You have the right to a free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com
or 877-322-8228, the ONLY authorized source under federal law.

The website disclosure must include a link to "Take me to the authorized source" and links to AnnualCreditReport.com and FTC.GOV.

The amended Rule also restricts practices that might confuse or mislead consumers as they try to get their federally mandated free annual credit reports. The new Rule requires consumer reporting agencies including Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to delay any advertising for products or services on AnnualCreditReport.com until after consumers receive their free credit reports.

 The wording of the disclosures for television and radio ads goes into effect on September 1, 2010. The FTC said it will monitor the effectiveness of the amended Rule, and will consider additional changes if necessary.
 

A Facebook Page can be a great way to build your fan-base, inspire engagement with customers/readers, and generally build upon your brand. However, if you want to do a promo on one, that’ll cost you.

Facebook’s policy dictates that one must get written approval from a Facebook account representative. In order to get one of those, you have to spend about ten grand advertising with the company, according to Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook.

>>Become a fan of WebProNews on Facebook <<

So basically, if you don’t want to violate Facebook’s promotions guidelines, you can’t really do any advertising or run any sweepstakes without actually paying for Facebook ads too. "You may not administer any promotion through Facebook, except that you may administer a promotion through the Facebook Platform with our prior written approval," that particular section of the guidelines states.

"The business model, with pages, is to try to get as many people using them as possible, then make a little money from each person if they want to do paid advertising — the preview fee goes against this model to try to keep Facebook legally safe," writes Eldon. "The problem, as many people trying to build promotions for Facebook have been discovering on their own, is that the fee requirement is never clearly spelled out. And, neither is the rationale for the fee. The result is confusion among marketers and developers trying to build promotions for Facebook, especially for small-business clients."

Well, if you stick to the classic advice handed down from a great many Internet marketing consultants, you’ll want to use Facebook for engagement, and participating in the conversation. Using your Facebook Page to deliver a sales pitch has pretty much always been ill-advised anyhow.

That said, the lines can get blurry from time to time, and as Eldon notes, many businesses are still trying to figure Facebook out. Guidelines like this may not be particularly encouraging for them. They also raise questions about Facebook’s future with regards to e-commerce, as Facebook continues to head in that direction (they’re even taking PayPal more).

Facebook told Eldon that it doesn’t have the resources to approve all possible promotions, and they all must be approved, so Facebook isn’t held liable for illegal promotions.

comScore said today it has launched comScore Audience Advantage, described as a "digital audience optimization platform" that allows publishers to provide advertisers and media planners with the ability to reach their most valuable audiences.

comScore Audience Advantage uses proprietary audience scoring algorithms to determine optimal audiences for advertisers using predictive variables as inputs. These variables come from a variety of observable behaviors online as measured via comScore’s opt-in research panel, including site visitation, search activity, video views, advertising engagements, online purchases or any other number of behaviors that may relevant to an advertiser.

The Audience Advantage platform does use cookies to create it s predictive algorithms. Instead, they are butyl using the actual observed behavior and characteristics of the opt-in comScore panelists. comScore says its platform can also use third-party databases that are integrated with its research panel to provide anonymous offline purchase behavior as another important predictive input to these algorithms.

"Audience Advantage offers significant value creation for the online advertising ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders," said Erin Hunter, comScore executive vice president.

"Publishers will be able to demonstrate higher value in the campaigns they deliver, thereby justifying higher CPMs, while advertisers will be able to minimize wasted impressions and reduce the total cost of advertising outlays. It is truly a win-win for the digital advertising industry."

Using all available behaviors as inputs, Audience Advantage determines a predictive score for various audience segments. Participating publishers use this score to anonymously identify and deliver to advertisers "lookalike" audiences from the behavior they observe among their own site visitors.

Campaigns can be planned to target only 5 or 10 percent of consumers most likely to a purchase a particular brand with the goal of reinforcing loyalty, or they can be planned against a larger segment of consumers who are dual brand buyers with the objective of switching to the advertiser’s brand.