roi

Facebook: Clicks don't matter as much as advertisers think

Facebook, under pressure to show its power as an advertising medium, is urging advertisers to consider the bigger picture instead of measuring success with the number of clicks an ad gets.

The company says that a majority of sales come from people who see, but don't necessarily click on, online ads that promote campaigns, according to a study done in partnership with Datalogix, which compiles consumer purchasing data from retail stores.

Brad Smallwood, Facebook's head of measurement and insights, talked about the study -- which analyzed nearly 50 digital campaigns -- today at an advertising conference in New York. … Read more

Parsing Facebook's new lexicon (Q&A)

Facebook is expanding its vocabulary.

Recently at f8, Facebook's developer conference, the company introduced a series of action verbs into its social platform. "Read," "Watch," and "Listen," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, were added to help build a "language for how people connect."

The one missing word, of course, was "Buy." That's really why Facebook and its army of content partners from news, publishing, music, and film and TV are rushing to set up shop on the famous platform with 750 million users. The overriding idea is that … Read more

Google tests game-mechanics strategies with Recyclebank

It looks like Google has taken an interest in a start-up called Recyclebank, which offers points and rewards for "green" actions like joining curbside recycling programs and installing eco-friendly appliances--it's using it as a test bed for a new beta version of its Google Analytics tracking tool.

More specifically, along with a consumer research company called ROI Research, Google Analytics will be parsing the progress and results of Recyclebank's impending "Green Your Home Challenge," and then releasing a research paper about the whole process. The contest in question is taking place over the course … Read more

Avoiding the cost of entanglement

Modern IT is very focused on economics. We talk endlessly about cost. We debate capital costs vs. operational costs--CAPEX vs. OPEX, in the lingo. We look at Total Cost of Operations (TCO) and we try to calculate our projects' Return On Investment (ROI). But even with all of these economic metrics, we miss an enormous source of costs: Our long-term entanglement with the products, technologies, and approaches we choose.

Long ago, we had a bright idea. "We could represent the year portion of dates with just two digits--that would save space!" We happily did that for a few … Read more

More from Moto at Mobile World Congress

BARCELONA, Spain--If you've ever doubted that Motorola has a global presence, then you need only to visit Mobile World Congress. Moto spoke to the United States and Europe with its Cliq XT/Quench announcement, showed the quirky A45 Eco for Latin America, and it threw a few bones to Asia with the Google Android-powered MotoRoi, XT800 Zihshang, and MT710.

The square, slider A45 Eco has a dual personality.: not only does the youth-oriented handset focus on messaging, but it's also made from recycled materials and is certified as carbon neutral. It sports a quirky orange skin.

The MotoRoi … Read more

MotoRoi demoed on video, doesn't wow

What we have here is a video of the Motorola MotoRoi Android-based smartphone that was obviously shot impromptu. Putting aside the jittery camera shake, the Web browser sluggishness clearly showed up as the user tested out the multitouch feature. Traces of MotoBlur were evident with the Call and Contacts tabs flanking the Android menu tray on the home screen. The calendar widget can be resized, but we're not sure about the rest, while the picture gallery resembles the implementation of Apple's CoverFlow. That's about all for the time being as the MotoRoi ships to selected markets this … Read more

South Korea gets first Android phone, the MotoRoi

Editor's note: Motorola has since confirmed worldwide availability of the MotoRoi, but has yet to reveal any dates or countries.

Motorola on Monday announced the MotoRoi, its first Android-based smartphone for the South Korean market. Like the Motorola Milestone (Droid in the U.S.) launched in Europe, this handset has a 3.7-inch WVGA capacitive touch screen that supports multitouch. A big difference is the absence of a physical keypad. It also has an improved camera that shoots 8-megapixel still images as well as 720p-resolution videos--an important feature for Koreans as they are accustomed to highly spec'ed cameras … Read more

Sizing up new high-end machines from HP, Apple

Last week, I attended a press event in Los Angeles hosted by Hewlett-Packard's workstation business unit. Hewlett-Packard was preparing for this week's announcement of three new Z-series workstation models: the Z400, Z600, and Z800.

HP briefed the reporters and analysts with all the key details of the products (the speeds and feeds, as we say), took us to visit a couple of HP's key customers in the area, and hosted presentations by software partners and more customers.

The workstations are very nice, especially the Z600 and Z800: high-quality dual-processor systems based on Intel's newest Xeon 5500… Read more

The new permanent crisis of marketing

When I had dinner with my former boss and mentor in Paris a few months ago (formerly vice president of marketing at a US-based enterprise software company, now CEO of a French enterprise software company), he shared a dirty little secret with me: "Forget about marketing," he told me, "it doesn't really matter. I spend 80 percent of my time on HR, finance, operations, and sales. Branding, marketing communications, PR - not my priorities." A few weeks later I came across a working paper called "Getting Marketing Back in the Boardroom," and seeing … Read more