p2pnet - rss feed: Marketers eye bloggers
p2pnet.net News:- Do you blog? If you do, advertising companies may be spying on you and selling the results.
A growing number of marketers are, “using new technology to analyze blogs and other ‘consumer-generated media’ - a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums - to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands,” says the Wall Street Journal.
“Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.”
Blog watching helped advertising firm WPP Group develop a promotion aimed at teenagers for US Cellular Corp., the WSJ has Bethany Harris, senior vp of WPP’s G Whiz Entertainment unit saying.
“Using technology from Umbria Communications, a Boulder, Colo., company that aims to identify demographic groups online based on their speech patterns and discussion topics, G Whiz concluded that teens were ‘really anxious’ about exceeding their cellular minutes, often because parents make them pay if they talk too much. The teens also resented being ‘ambushed’ by incoming calls that pushed their minutes up. Ms. Harris says that led U.S. Cellular to offer unlimited ‘call me’ minutes.”
And bloggers’ unsolicited opinions and offhand comments, “are a source of invaluable insights that are hard to get elsewhere,” says the story.
"We look at the blogosphere as a focus group with 15 million people going on 24/7 that you can tap into without going behind a one-way mirror," according to Rick Murray, executive vp of Edelman, a Chicago PR firm.
And it seems blog watching can be lucrative.
Services, “typically charge big companies $30,000 to $100,000 a year,” says the WSJ.
“They say their technology goes beyond basic tools, such as keyword searches or counting links from one Web site to another, both features available at no charge from online services such as Technorati.com and Yahoo’s Buzz Index.”
Maybe we web publishers should start charging ad firms admission – or a percentage, at least ; )
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See:-
Wall Street Journal - Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights, June 23, 2005
