There are many reasons for this. For example, Sports tend to fare better than Automotive because people attend sporting events more often than buying a new car. Entertainment does better than Finance since the launch of a new movie is more exciting than the launch of a new insurance-related product. To sum it up, there are two factors that come into play here: whether people find the industry or product exciting, and how narrow the target audience is.

News and Media tops the list for both “Rich Media Dwell Rate” and standard banner click-through rate (CTR). This industry vertical includes many ads for new TV shows, TV channels and magazines that appeal to a broad audience. In addition, people find Media and News exciting and as something worthy of their time, so clicking on it makes sense. The same reasoning applies to Sport, Entertainment and Apparel.

On the low Dwell Rate and CTR end, we have Medical and Government and Utilities. Medical may generate interest only if the user suffers from a specific condition or illness. Government and Utilities ads may often advertise topics that many people find less than exhilarating (tips for saving on your electricity bill, anyone?).

What does it mean for advertisers? It is impossible for advertisers to change the industry vertical that they were born in. Advertisers in some verticals need to acknowledge that they will need a larger budget to generate the same response as other verticals.

Nevertheless, advertisers should take steps to increase their response rate. One of the most effective ways to increase clicks and conversions is automatic creative optimization. These algorithms identify and serve the most effective creative for that placement or audience. Advertisers that used automatic creative optimization increased CTR by 70% and conversion rate by 40%.

Another creative strategy that proved very successful for automotive advertisers is using synched ads—two ads on the page with shared content. Synched ads have a conversion rate that is 67% higher than other ads.

The target audience may never be as pumped from a government ad as from a campaign for a new action movie. However, by using the right tools advertisers can increase the likelihood of users clicking or engaging with their ads.

With a click of a button and the right skills, anyone in the world can have access to certain parts of your identity, from your name, to your hometown, to your employment status, to your marital status. In the worst cases of privacy violations, a person’s entire identity — including social security number or credit card numbers — can be collected or stolen by an online thief.

Most websites try to take steps to protect the sensitive information of their users, but mistakes do happen. Privacy concerns with Facebook, Google Maps and geo-location sites like Foursquare have put a focus on online privacy as a whole.

Some of the questions that arise from these issues are big ones: Where is the line between having access to websites and online services and staying secure? And should the government intervene?

Being Targeted Without Wanting To Be Targeted. Two recent academic papers illustrated that Facebook advertisers can, by process of elimination, glean private information about those who click on ads.

Although the process is somewhat complicated, it does represent a privacy hole that Facebook needs to address. For example, an advertiser, or a snoop, can set up an ad to reach a targeted group of people on Facebook. They can target their ad toward gay males over 30 in the Dallas Fort-Worth area. Ads will be displayed to these men, whether or not their sexual orientation information is on their public profile on Facebook.

When a Facebook user in this sample group clicks on an ad, the assumption is that they are identifying themselves as gay. Since the ad was targeted only toward a gay audience, only members of that audience would have access to those ads to click on them. The same sort of forced self-identification can happen with any piece of personal information, such as religion and interests.

Although it takes a bit of reverse engineering in order to use this type of privacy crack, these “holes” do bring up some important questions about privacy and marketing. This type of customization and personalization in marketing is part of the way many major Internet companies make their money, including the Internet’s most heavy hitters — Facebook and Google.

Privacy Watchdog a Possibility. Although self-regulation has been the name of the game in online privacy thus far, the U.S. government will soon have more of a say about things.

The Commerce Department and the White House have announced the creation of a high-level position that will function as a “privacy watchdog.” The person who holds this position (already being dubbed the “Privacy Czar”) will communicate with other governments regarding privacy issues and act as the advocate for the issue in the administration.

The new position is part of an overall strategy by the Commerce Department to regulate privacy online. The details of this strategy will be revealed in an upcoming report and doesn’t seem to be isolated in terms of its signaling a new involvement in the online world from the Federal level. In a separate measure, the Federal Trade Commission is considering a “do not track” list that would let Americans opt out of being tracked online.

U.S. Following The World’s Example? Since there is no current comprehensive law that covers consumer privacy online, matters in this area are normally handled by the FTC, but these regulations apply only to privacy violations that are “deceptive” or deemed “unfair.”

As the United States begins to iron out its privacy laws, it does have several countries to learn from. The recent privacy alerts on Facebook and Google were led by Canada, Germany and the U.K., all of which had privacy laws that the companies were said to have been violating.

In this age of digital information, consumers, marketers and the government are all still working out (and will be for some time) what “privacy” means for online usage. The latest Facebook problems are likely to get fixed quickly, as the others have. And this will be one more case for the Commerce Department to include in its findings as it works out the best way for the U.S. government to be involved in the privacy debate.

The FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsement and Testimonials in Advertising is not new. Much of the document dates to the first publication of it in 1975 with a revision in the 1980′s to create the standards by which marketers, particularly television commercials could use endorsements and testimonials. And, while television still plays a large role in marketing, the Internet’s influence has reached a critical mass, i.e. the FTC has received a large enough pool of complaints regarding certain practices that they feel it necessary to dictate allowable behavior.

In this case, the format in question revolves around blogs and bloggers. That the FTC might look to regulate bloggers in a revision to their guidelines is also not new, with mentions beginning in November 2008 with proposed changes being published and picking up again at the very end of April 2009 and throughout May. The topic has gained momentum in the past few days because of a recent AP article that was revisited on Cnet.

The AP article begins, “Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services…” “to help them find a gem or shun a lemon. What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks…” and “Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all.” It’s important because it would be the first time that FTC has proposed any sort of rules for bloggers specifically.

For the individual blogger this can sound scary. A classic example comes from an ex-coworker who started a beauty blog, and as it started to gain a little bit of a following, she started receiving not just requests to cover a product but incentives for a review, the implication being that she would write positively. Such one offs aren’t unusual. Entire companies even exist to help advertisers receive coverage from bloggers. PayPerPost for example has created an entire marketplace whereby companies can find bloggers who will write about their products or services with the advertiser having final approval of whether they will pay for a particular post.

Intellectually, this is an interesting and important topic. As mentioned in one of the articles, “If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk,” said Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC’s division of advertising practices. “Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and … they have an economic motive for what they’re saying, that’s information a consumer should know.” And unlike more traditional media where those reporting are held accountable for what they say (the exception being Fox News), in the solo journalism world of blogging, no such code of ethics and enforcement exists. Yet, as we see day in and day out, people believe bloggers.

The ones most worried about the changes are not surprisingly the people who rely on the incremental the most, the stereotyped single mother who earns $1000 per month through blogging, now concerned that she might make an accidental mistake to get her in trouble. It makes for an emotionally charged example in theory suggesting caution in adding the oversight but doesn’t represent reality. The FTC is not the music industry, willing to sue an individual for $20,000 per song for downloading and sharing 20 songs. Things start to get screwy, though, if bloggers can’t link to books, movies, etc. using affiliate programs. As to the specific changes, they haven’t been finalized but should be later this year.

It’s hard to say what changes will be made to existing language but clearly much effort focuses less on the medium, i.e., that it now would include enforcement over blogs, and more on the nature of testimonials and endorsements – what can be said, what can’t, and what disclosures are necessary. Two recurring themes emerge, one summarized by this statement on the November 2008 document, “Businesses are entitled to compete based on truthful, nonmisleading advertising claims, but they are not entitled to use techniques that mislead consumers.”

The second theme will sound more than familiar to those who went through the changes in ringtone marketing – the use of “clearly and conspicuosly,” e.g., “the advertisement should clearly and conspicuously disclose either what the generally expected performance would be in the depicted circumstances or the limited applicability of the endorser’s experience to what consumers may generally expect to achieve.” The challenge has been and will be what is “clearly and conspicuously,” but a litmus test could be – if you’re trying to deceive, Then that’s a problem.

Not everyone will agree, but more than not do seem to think that FTC generally strikes an appropriate balance between “protecting consumers and allowing advertisers to communicate creatively and effectively to potential customers.” (When they raid your office without warning, seizing property, that’s another story.) When the new guidelines come out, it seems that the biggest change is that those using testimonials and endorsements, in the case of weight loss, will need to know not only what you can lose (the testimonial/endorsement) but what the average person would expect to lose.

Reading between the lines, what we think we see is an emphasis on areas that have truly quantifiable results, such as weight loss. You can measure pounds, but you can’t measure wrinkles. So, we’re likely to see a crackdown on weight loss and a shift in marketing towards those where no such scale exists. Who really wins, though? Your lawyer. You’ll need one now more than ever to comply.

For an indepth look at the new Guides with commentary, see:
http://blog.seorevolution.com/2009/05/30/ftc-change-in-endorsements-and-testimonials-policy/

 Courtesy of DM Confidential editor

Through August, GM has spent $286 million in measured spending, and last year spent $400 million. As the Big Three huddle and try to figure out how to pry $25 billion from the cold hands of congress, GM is looking for every way possible to cut costs.

Pontiac, Saab and Saturn account for 20.7 Percent of GM’s total measured-media spending and 16.5 percent of its sales, according to an Ad Age analysis. According to Automotive News, Pontiac sales through October tallied about 239,000 units, down 20.9 percent from the same period in 2007. Its peak sales year was 1978, when it sold 896,980 units.

GM has already ended its long relationship with Tiger Woods. As Conan O’Brien said, “When asked why, a GM spokesman said, “Tiger Woods is successful, competitive, popular . . . and that’s just not us.’”

That’s the speculation as CEO Eric Schmidt gabs on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC about bailouts for automakers and Citigroup, and talks elsewhere how the government should invest in technology, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin talk about green energy or anything else except how to goose Google’s market capitalization.

For Schmidt, it could be time to go, says Technology, Media, and Telecom Analyst. The CEO raised revenues to $20 billion in 2008 from $86 million in 2001. Hard cash is now at $14 billion compared to $100 million seven years ago as well.

Silicon Alley Insider, claiming no insider knowledge, leans toward a changing of the guard as well. With a spiraling economy and scrambling for the next product to drive the next spurt of growth, Google leadership needs the same intense energy and focus that it had to became the online advertising behemoth it is today. Silicon Alley said it wouldn’t be surprised if Eric or all three step away from a day-to-day operating role next year to do other, easier things, like save the planet.

And the obvious, terrifying perhaps, question for workers and shareholders alike, will be who will step into the visionary roles needed?

Usgov.google.com aims to “unify disparate web sites,” according to Kevin Gough, project manager for Google US Government Search, and it will work in conjunction with official and commercial sources like the White House Department of Defense, The Washington Post, CNN, and various government agencies to keep customized news feeds on the site updated and current.

Stephanie Zaiser, communications director for the National Association of Government Employees, explained that government employees currently use agencies’ intranet, or inter-office websites, along with FirstGov, to search for documents or information. Gough stated that, “People are moving away from directory access to enter these sites. They just want to type in a few words to pinpoint the information they need,” and Google’s name recognition may encourage users to do so via its government search.

Google’s flagship site currently has the largest share of the US search market, possibly giving it an edge over existing government search sites.