Tag: Microsoft

Beyond The Like: Microsoft and Bazaar Voice Introduce “People Powered Stories”

Posted on by kimberly reyes

During a Social Media Week 2012 panel at JWT on Tuesday, Jennifer Creegan, General Manager, Brand Advertising Business for Microsoft Advertising and Brant Barton Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer for Bazaar Voice announced an ad platform partnership dubbed “People Powered Stories.”

Recent research by Microsoft’s Bing shows that consumers trust sources outside of social networks when making purchasing decisions – mainly online reviews. Based on this research, Microsoft will soon introduce a new ad format for brands and publishers aimed at providing consumers with the purchasing information they need, when they need it – all around the web. Think Facebook sponsored stories outside of the Facebook domain.

In order to do this, they’ve enlisted the services of Bazaar Voice, a “a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that turns social media into social commerce by enabling authentic customer-powered marketing.” In simpler terms, Bazaar Voice is the preeminent source for customer reviews, powering the review platforms for many of the top Global brands.

Starting soon, Microsoft’s ad publishers will have the option to activate this new type of targeted display ad featuring a brand message and highlighted consumer reviews. The initial test campaign was for Windows 7 and was targeted at college students. The ad ran across Microsoft properties that offered audience targeting capabilities to assure college students would see the Windows 7 reviews at sites they visited frequently online. The results Microsoft reported back were impressive:

Ad believability increased 20 points above the market norms for technology ads

6.3% lift in purchase intent

13.5% lift in unaided brand awareness

Example of "People Powered Stories" creative

Despite the encouraging sales pitch and test results from Microsoft and Bazaar Voice, there are some still some pending questions about the product. For example, will consumers trust that the advertiser and Bazaar Voice are serving up authentic customer reviews? Bazaar Voice prides themselves on this very concept, but consumers tend to be wary.

Further, there isn’t any connection to the social graph within the ad unit. If someone decides to click on the ad, they can’t easily share what they’ve learned with their own social graph. Although Microsoft is trying to “go beyond the like,” it is important to recognize the importance of the social graph and layer it across all media properties.

Finally, the quality of review curation remains to be seen. The reviews will be contextual, based on the interests of the consumer being targeted. But will this targeting have as great of an impact as Yelp’s “highlighted reviews,” which take the most mentioned terms in a database of reviews and bring them to the forefront? That might be a feature that is integrated in the future, but in the Windows 7 example, reviews weren’t curated in that manner.

Leave a comment if you’ve come across any of these ads yet, or what you think of the idea.

As Brand Channel Manager at pure-play social media agency Big Fuel, Ross Sheingold focuses on trying to keep the “social” in social media by creating lifestyle content that consumers actually care about. Aside from the four years spent at Penn State University, Ross has been a New Yorker living in Manhattan for the whole of his nearly 30 years on the planet. When he isn’t staying up to date on the current digital and social media trends and “geeking out” on the latest tech gadget, he spends time on his fan advocacy cause as the man behind @StadiumInsider. You can follow Ross on Twitter @RossSheingold and on Google+ http://gplus.to/RossS

 

 

 

A Student’s Perspective: Beyond the Like: Using Real People’s Real Stories to Drive Brand Awareness

Posted on by smwnyc

Trinna Leong is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from Beyond the Like: Using Real People’s Real Stories to Drive Brand Awareness, hosted by Microsoft.

A highly-anticipated event, with over a hundred guests in attendance, Beyond the Like was filled to its capacity with guests even standing throughout the presentation.

It was the launch of Microsoft’s new product, “People Powered Stories.”

Microsoft Advertising collaborated with Bazaar Voice, a software as a service (SaaS) company that integrates customers social data to help brands leverage content. Microsoft Advertising’s General Manager for Brand Advertising, Jennifer Creegan, and Bazaar Voice’s co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Brant Barton, came to introduce the product.

Using the “Back to School” campaign as their test pad, Microsoft took reviews of Windows 7 from their target audience, high school students, and displayed them on their banner ads. Microsoft is aiming to make banner ads content more social to add relate-ability with clients. And they were did it. “Back to School” was a success for Microsoft, who now looks toward marketing “People Powered Stories” to other brands.

The move to produce “People Powered Stories” came when Bing, a Microsoft company, conducted research that showed audiences look to reviews more than to social networks for advice on products. This prompted Microsoft to look into developing a user-generated reviews to market a product. The company believes that having users submit their reviews adds believability to the ad on sites.

The company still uses engagement time as a metric to determine relevancy of ad with consumers, a metric that was dismissed by another panel: Why Engagement Should Be Spelled A-T-T-E-N-T-I-O-N. When interviewed, Creegan stressed that Microsoft isn’t using engagement time as the only metric but does factor it into their evaluations.

“That’s why we have three metrics: purchase, believability and engagement time,” said Creegan, making their process a sound launching pad.

 
Trinna Leong is from Malaysia and had two years of work experience in the online advertising industry before deciding to trade the sweltering tropical heat for a chance to pursue journalism at Columbia University. Prior to switching fields, she has worked on projects for Nike, IKEA and Citibank. You can follow her on Twitter at @trinnaleong.

SMWNYC Day 2: Best Practices, Real Stories, Ghostwriting

Posted on by Greg Bodenlos

There was much to love (pun intended) about the Valentine’s Day edition (Day 2) of Social Media Week NYC 2012. The events throughout the day brought attendees much of the same excitement that defined Day 1, with an array of diverse offerings to choose from. Here are some highlights from the three in-person sessions I attended:

  • Global Brand Management: Best Practices in a Social World: Host Efficient Frontier led a panel discussion – with other key digitally-focused executives from Hyatt and Live Nation – on the challenges and best practices for maintaining a global social presence – one that is authentic, centrally governed, locally relevant, and engaging. Key takeaways from the session centered around success stories and challenges faced by each of the panelists, specifically on how to localizing content in various markets and leveraging more user-generated content (UGC).
  • Beyond the Like: Using Real People’s Real Stories to Drive Brand Awareness: Microsoft Advertising General Manager Jennifer Creegan kicked off a jam-packed session with a discussion about opportunities that let advertisers deliver word of mouth to their target customer in an interactive, powerful, and measurable way – focusing on creativity, connection, and relevance as the key dots to connect. The ensuing dialogue continued along this path, emphasizing the fundamental belief that “we [as social advertisers] have to bring consumer authenticity into advertising – we think that’s what these ratings + reviews do.”
  • The New Ghostwriter: This Hearst Magazine sponsored session focused on addressing the issues that arise when third party ghostwriters curate messaging on behalf of others, and what implications this reality has on brands that embrace social media as a means to create conversation and extend their reach. The ensuing conversation touched upon ethical concerns related to trust, authenticity, and transparency involved with ghostwriting – and addressed the convoluted question of whether ghostwriters can ever be a valuable, nuanced asset to a brand. There was no catch-all, resolute answer to this question, but the dialogue around it was both spirited and engaging.
Greg is a motivated Cornell University Hotel School alumnus, affectionately known as a Hotelie for life, with keen interests in social and digital marketing for hospitality and lifestyle brands. He’s passionate about sales and marketing in the hospitality industry, specifically as it relates to the dynamic online space. In his free time, Greg obsesses over growing his musical intellect (both modern and past-time artists apply), tennis, and running skills. Check out his lifestyle blog covering these topics at http://www.thesocialsonictraveler.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter.
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Microsoft Launches People Powered Stories

Posted on by Nicky Yates

This Tuesday, partner Microsoft hosted “Beyond the Like: Using Real People’s Real Stories.” During this engaging and insightful session, Microsoft announced the launch of their social advertising solution, People Powered Stories. Jennifer Creegan, General Manager for Display Advertising Experiences at Microsoft Advertising, shares with us the story behind it.

Yesterday at Social Media Week in New York, I introduced a new social advertising solution I am pretty excited about. We’re calling it People Powered Stories (PPS) ™. With it, advertisers can incorporate real peoples’ ratings and reviews about their products within a rich brand ad. The solution will be available next month and we believe it will give marketers the ability to create ads that tell powerful stories and create brand relevancy beyond just a “Like” by adding the authenticity and believability of real people’s real stories.

To bring PPS to life, we’ve partnered with Bazaarvoice, (a company that has powered more than 290 billion customer conversations for brands across the globe) to integrate consumer ratings and reviews into the rich PPS ad format. Advertisers will be able to tap into Microsoft’s highly social and engaged audiences across multiple screens and deliver relevant ads in a way that is targeted and more measurable than is available for social advertising on the web today. PPS is the first in a suite of social ad solutions that we will create in the coming months.


The People Powered Stories offering integrates customer ratings seamlessly into a rich ad format.


And expands to give consumers a deep dive on the reviews of the product / service submitted by real people.

As an industry, we intuitively know the power of social and the potential it holds for advertisers to engage with consumers. We also know that people want to hear what others have to say about various products and services. Despite the brand dollars that are flowing toward social media, advertisers have told me they continue to be frustrated at how difficult it is to measure ROI and confirm whether they are successfully engaging their target audiences.

We recently commissioned a study of 713 social media marketers around the world to solicit their opinions on social advertising. Here’s what we found:

  • The top two reasons advertisers invest in social media is to drive word of mouth and brand awareness (27% and 26% respectively).
  • 72% of advertisers said measuring ROI on social media campaigns is too difficult.
  • Advertisers believe 65% of word of mouth misses the intended audience.
  • 73% of those advertisers surveyed said they want to make sure the ratings and reviews they curate online reach their target audience (which is more than ‘Likes’, ‘Tweets’ and any other source we asked about).

Windows 7 ‘Back to School’ Campaign
We’ve already seen the power of the ratings and reviews within PPS in action. As a part of a pilot, Microsoft integrated the PPS ad format into a Windows 7 “back to school” advertising campaign (from our Microsoft Advertising People Powered Stories Case Study – September 2011), targeting college students in the market for a new computer. The campaign ran across Microsoft properties that offered audience targeting capabilities to assure college students would see the Windows 7 reviews at sites they visited frequently online. The campaign delivered. With the authentic voice of the students included in the advertising, other college students found the Windows 7 ad units “believable” and “relevant.” The campaign drove great improvement across many marketing metrics, including:

  • Ad believability increased 20 points above the market norms for technology ads.
  • 6.3% lift in purchase intent.
  • 13.5% lift in unaided brand awareness.

After the campaign I spoke with Brenda Bown, Director of Windows Consumer Digital Marketing, and she had this to say about what PPS delivered for the Windows 7 brand: “Being able to harness the power of ratings and reviews from Bazaarvoice and incorporate it into our online marketing efforts strengthened our value proposition and established credibility by putting forth students’ voices to impact other students just like them.”

Not only is it important to be able to reach and measure the effectiveness of social ads, it’s important that the industry re-examine how we think about social. Instead of focusing just on having a Facebook page or a Twitter handle, advertisers need to focus on consumers and what they need.

Why do we believe PPS will be successful?

  • We know that consumers who are looking to make large purchases rarely turn to their social network first; rather, they turn to online reviews. This is one of the main reasons we’ve integrated ratings and reviews into our first social format.
  • As we saw with our Windows pilot, the ads lifted brand favorability, purchase intent and brand awareness.

While we are still in the early stages of unlocking the potential of social advertising, I am confident that we are moving into a world where the impact of social advertising will move beyond a ‘Like’ to a world where you can create and measure the value of social ads. We believe that the People Powered Stories ad format is critical to continuing this movement and helping brands gain credibility and relevance with their target consumers.

We’re excited to share more momentum from our People Powered Stories solution and other social ad formats in the coming months, but in the meantime, if you have questions or feedback, please feel free to post in the comments section at the bottom of this blog post. We’re always listening.

Jennifer Creegan interviewed by Mel Carson on People Powered Stories

“Like” On a New Level- Bing & SMWNYC

Posted on by Nicky Yates

Rising to second place, Bing is climbing up the search ladder. You’ve seen it. It’s Microsoft’s decision search engine with the rather colorful page design. It’s based all on the attempt to understand the context behind your search.

But here’s what you may not know: Bing was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009, and has only gotten better with age. Bing added related searches in the form of an “Explore pane” and became the power behind Yahoo!’s search. But Bing has only added more improvements. Just last year, Bing began deep changes to it’s back-end search infrastructure, increasing relevant search results in a quicker time frame and with a more efficient index features.

And today from 4-6pm at the Microsoft Offices, you’ll learn how social search is changing search in general. More than “Likes” Can Say takes a deeper look at what it means to inject social results into your search. Stefan Weitz, Senior Director of Search at Microsoft, will look at the future of social signals as it relates to all online activity, not just search.

If that’s not incentive enough to register now, then the opportunity to see Microsoft’s offices and their special Valentine’s Day cocktail hour with the Bing team should. Go, get social and tell us how it was!

New Events Added to SMWNYC

Posted on by Nicky Yates

As we’re finalizing our robust schedule for SMWNYC, we realize some of our newer events might be overlooked. And to ensure you know all that’s happening and don’t miss a thing, we’re here to update you on these events. We think you’ll like ’em:

How to Create Facebook Custom Pages Workshop: Learn how a ‘custom’ Facebook Page can help you stand out.

Making government listen: Using Web 2.0 technology to revolutionize how we communicate with our government: Technology offers a powerful opportunity for empowerment and tech makes government more transparent and accountable.

The Agency of the Future: Hosted by our Global Supporting Sponsor, Ogilvy, we’ll discuss what new skills are needed and how they apply across key marketing and communications industries — social tv, social CRM, mobile and video distribution.

Fixing Health From the Outside In: Explore case studies on Ford’s collaboration with Healthrageous, Weight Watchers impact on “diabesity,” and Jawbone’s entry into health.

The LinkedIn Difference: How Brands Are Building Deep Connections with Professionals: Join our local sponsor, LinkedIn, for a discussion focusing on how top brands are at the leading edge by marketing on LinkedIn and hear about some of the emerging tools they’re using to carve out a significant presence on the platform.

Networking Reception with Sanofi: Sanofi and the Data Design Diabetes team invite you connect and collaborate with the next generation health tech innovators.

Fireside Chat: The Creative Social Revolution – What in the world is going on?: Join our fireside chat discussing what was breakthrough/groundbreaking in Health and Wellness this year.

Biomarkers, Technology, and Age-Reversal: Help us explore the case of Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, who engaged in a four-month experiment to turn back the clock on decades of drinking hard, smoking, and eating a lot of processed food.

Power to the Patient: What does it mean to be a patient in 2012? Or rather, an e-patient? Join us as we debate.

Guardian Interview with Jalak, sponsored by Nokia: Don’t miss our Global Media Partner, The Guardian, as they interview one of our keynotes, Jalak Jobanputra, up close and personal.

Food + Tech: With a growing number of startups entering the food startup community, it’s not only difficult to differentiate yourselves, but also monetize your ideas. We’ll dine and chat- join us.

Buddy Media Cocktail Mixer: Cocktails. Buddy Media. Need we say more?

My Social TV App Thinks I’m My Dad: Privacy Issues In The Age of Convergence: TVs are rarely personal devices. So how do you make sure that Mom and Dad’s Cinemax movies aren’t posted to their kid’s Facebook walls? Let’s talk privacy.

More than “Likes” Can Say: Join Microsoft, as they’ve assembled a panel of people who can show and tell how people’s activities and contributions online can contribute to a better overall web experience – in some very unexpected ways!

Covering the 2012 Election Socially: With NYT, Washington Post, and CNN, this panel discussion will focus on how social media is changing the way we’re reporting the presidential election this year.

Guardian Interviews Don, sponsored by Nokia: Global Media Partner gets to know our global keynote from Canada, Don Tapscott.

We’re All Social Now: Why B2B Marketers Can Get With the Conversation: How do B2B marketers adjust their strategies? Is there a difference in the way workers interact with their professional versus personal networks online? This panel will explore the kind of differentiated marketing programs leading companies are putting into place and lay out the new roadmap for engaging followers in a B2B world.

Social Media Week’s Opening VIP Reception Hosted by Nokia: Our invite-only special opening party.

Reflecting on 2012 Grammys Digital Partnerships, Social Media and Innovation: Following the 54th GRAMMY Awards, Beverly Jackson of the GRAMMY team will head to NYC to recap the Social, Digital, and Mobile initiatives that went into planning and executing the award ceremony this year – What did and didn’t work?

We all have Influence Somewhere: The Next Great Social Media Transformation: Kred CEO Andrew Grill and a panel of senior marketers will discuss the science and philosophy behind Influence, and why used properly it is an essential tool for building rich engagements and brand loyalty.

BtoB’s New York NetMarketing Breakfast: This breakfast will feature a panel discussion between B2B marketing executives on how they’re using social media ato drive response and the tactics and tools that are working from them.

Leveraging online platforms to inspire social good: Hear from experts on how they’re taking control and making a difference in the world through their use of the internet to leverage the power of community.

Rich Media Stories: Presenting case summaries from leading brands we will demonstrate how they are using rich experiences to make their social outreach more tangible, meaningful and valuable.

Getting to the Meat of the Tweet Redux (The Meatier and Tweetier Sequel): Applying Big Data Analytics to Social Media Data, Hosted by Opera Solutions: We’ve assembled some of the best to discuss what’s state-of-the-art for applying Big Data analytics to social media data and what it all could mean for business, politics, government, and the rest of us.

Keynote: Howard Lindzon followed by Panel: The Evolution of Reg-FD: How Social Media Has Changed Investor Relations, Hosted by StockTwits: Howard Lindzon is founder and CEO of StockTwits. Howard will share insights on how firms can best leverage social media to enhance investor communications, followed by corporate communications leaders sharing their experience.

Maintaining Authenticity and Transparency: How Financial Advisors Are Using Social Media to Build their Business, Hosted by Actiance: Listen to case studies that show how financial advisors are using social to build their book of business, and discover these industry leaders’ predictions on where the industry is headed in 2012.

Retail Banking Redux: Can Social Media Create a New Paradigm?: At this event, we describe how social media, particularly Foursquare and Facebook, increases consumer loyalty and the bottom line.

Social Media HAS Changed the World: With The Red Cross and DonorsChoose, this panel takes a look at how non-profits are using social media to get the word out about their specific programs and to listen to the problems facing a community.

With events like these, you don’t want to waste any time. Register today- and tell your friends! We’re looking forward to seeing you in 6 days!