Top 50 Internet Advertisers by Media Value, July 2009

The top Internet advertisers by media value. The data are provided by TNS Media Intelligence.

Note: Media value estimated by TNS is based on rate card pricing and does not necessarily reflect true media costs.

Top 50 Internet Advertisers by Media Value, July 2009
Position	Advertiser	Media Value ($000)	Sector
1	Scottrade: online	57,593.7	Fin
2	TD Ameritrade Brokerage: Consumer Services	22,311.1	Fin
3	FreeScore.com	17,229.6	Fin
4	Verizon: Consumer Wireless Service	15,224.7	Tech
5	E Trade Financial: Consumer Services	14,684.6	Fin
6	Sprint Wireless Service: Consumer Wireless Service	14,518.6	Tech
7	Netflix.com	14,303.0	M/E
8	Scottrade Stock Brokerage: Consumer Services	14,009.0	Fin
9	LowerMyBills.com	12,637.3	Fin
10	E Trade Financial	11,429.1	Fin
11	Classmates.com	9,170.5	M/E
12	AT&T: Consumer Wireless Service	8,129.3	Tech
13	University of Phoenix	7,644.0	Edu
14	ShareBuilder.com	7,310.4	Fin
15	ClassesUSA.com Adult Education	7,113.7	Edu
16	Directbuy Showroom and Design Centres	5,783.1	Ret
17	Ad Council	5,559.1	Misc
18	K12 Virtual Public Schools	5,383.4	Edu
19	Weight Watchers: Online	4,477.9	H/F
20	Travelocity	4,396.0	T/H
21	Seroquel XR: Bipolar Depression Rx	4,213.4	H/F
22	Bing	4,129.5	M/E
23	FindTheRightSchool.com	3,971.9	Edu
24	TD Ameritrade Brokerage	3,940.2	Fin
25	Bank Of America Home Loans	3,500.1	Fin
26	Lowes Building Supply Store	3,465.7	Ret
27	Charles Schwab	3,447.6	Ret
28	Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince: Movie	3,433.5	M/E
29	Degrees.info	3,334.4	Edu
30	Travelers: Auto Insurance	3,328.0	T/H
31	Monopoly, Oklahoma Centennial Edition	3,243.9	CPG
32	Directbuy.com	3,185.1	Ret
33	University Of Phoenix	3,109.5	Edu
34	Colorado State	3,087.1	Edu
35	Visa: Personal Credit Card	3,064.3	Fin
36	Identity Guard Service	3,054.6	Fin
37	Norwegian: Cruises	3,019.5	T/H
38	Nutrisystem	2,881.4	H/F
39	Constant Contact Inc.	2,865.8	Misc
40	Superpages.com	2,837.5	M/E
41	Quicken Loans	2,816.9	Fin
42	Best Western Hotels	2,750.2	T/H
43	Amerisave Mortgage	2,749.6	Fin
44	VacationsToGo.com	2,701.6	T/H
45	Volvo XC60: European Crossover Utility Vehicle	2,556.4	Auto
46	FRS	2,551.5	H/F
47	Nuvaring	2,519.9	H/F
48	Dermitage	2,500.6	H/F
49	Dell Studio XPS 16	2,401.1	Tech
50	Dodge Ram Pickup: Domestic Truck	2,392.5	Auto
	GRAND TOTAL	$351,961
Sectors: Auto - Automotive; Class - Classifieds; CPG - Consumer Package Goods; Date - Online Dating; Edu - Education; Fin - Financial Services; H/F - Health & Fitness; M/E - Media & Entertainment; Misc - Miscellaneous; Ret - Retail; Tech - Technology; T/H - Travel/Hospitality
View: Top 50 Internet Advertisers in June 2009

Methodology: The chart represents the value of display advertising in both standard and nonstandard ad formats using CPM-based methodology. Media expenditure estimates don't always take into account special considerations, including publisher discounts, barter agreements, cosponsorship, affiliate relationships, and the like.

Courtesy - Jack Marshall, ClickZ,

The Social Media Pay-off of Engaged Customers

It is no revelation that customers are spending less! What might surprise you is that, even in this economic crisis,

Most customers scrimp to splurge!

They scrimp by cutting back or bargain hunt to conserve money on commodities, items that don’t lead to emotionally meaningful outcomes. Scrimping on these types of products lets them splurge on items they do find emotionally meaningful and still balance the budget.

Scrimping and splurging are two different mindsets that are adopted by the same customer. Whether your customers scrimp or splurge will have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

The difference between scrimping and splurging is the level of emotional engagement. If an individual does not perceive any difference between product A and product B, in terms of the emotional outcome, they can mindlessly treat them both as undifferentiated commodities. Think about your customers. If they focus on price and convenience, they are signally that they don’t want to spend much money, time or mental effort on your offering or listening to your persuasion. On the other hand, if they act like the committed Starbucks customer who drives by other coffee houses to stand in line to pay full price and even a premium for their favorite espresso beverage, they are engaged and getting emotional gratification.

This doesn’t just apply to pleasures like a "latte." It happens with shoes (Zappos), cellular phones (iPhone) food (Whole Foods), clothing (Patagonia) and … (you add to the list).

Okay, what does this have to do with Social Media and a pay-off?

Over 70% of people now participate in social media and a very high percentage get engaged in order to make purchase decisions. People engage online to make decisions about cars, travel and even groceries and utilities. But here is the rub. They do so mainly through various forms of customer-to-customer conversations. Why? People trust peers, people like themselves, much more than they trust businesses. Also, peers talk about outcomes not things.

This creates both a challenge and an opportunity!

The challenge is that most participants in business sponsored social media initiatives are relatively passive. The opportunity is to dramatically increasing the level of customer engagement—to get more customers to scrimp elsewhere so they can splurge with your company.

There are three primary hurdles to making this shift:

• Earning sufficient trust to get customers tentatively engaged. You have to attract them to a hopeful proposition, hopeful in two ways: (1) that the outcome will be meaningful to them; and, (2) that your role in fostering the outcomes is genuinely helpful.
• Eliminating triggers or signals that put the customer into a closed minded "Scrimping" mindset. Fifty percent off signs will do this, but so will many other more subtle actions. But it is not just a matter of eliminating signals. When people are anxious or stressed they become closed minded and less trusting. Since stress and anxiety tend to last, the can carry over from one situation to another. This means that a customer might bring emotional baggage into their interactions with your company. You need to know how to defuse these negative emotions before getting down to business.
• Tentative engagement is not enough to build high levels of trust, desire and demand. This type of relationship takes a deliberate and systematic process based on customer psycho-economics.

If you would like to learn more about customer psycho-economics, I invited you to download our paper Customer Psycho-economics in a Down Economy.

If you are interested in a case study approach to seeing how this psycho-economic framework applies to social media, you might want to check out my upcoming Social Media Academy online course, Building Customer Relationships and Advocacy with Social Media.

Courtesy - John I. Todor, Ph.D. @ Perfect CEM

What do you see?

I am an Indian, and some what proud of it. But then when I see an image [1]like this of a boy eating roti (Indian bread) at a slum in Mumbai that gives an entire new dimension to my proud, and that is of shame. We are so much eagerly waiting for our stocks to go up, we are early waiting for the next big jump, we are eagerly waiting for the next big car, and so on. But then what’s next?

Yes once we are seating on our comfy couches enjoying the warm meal, no one thing about the kid who might have not eaten a proper or adequate meals for days. When we are seating in the comfort of our warmly shelters, watching the lovely wind and rain. Do we even take the time out for imagining that some one may loose his/her house blown away due to the lovely wind? I am sure most of us don’t.

Even by writing this post I cannot get away as I even don’t think what I am asking people to do. Hence through this post I am asking myself who can right posts but maybe not doing enough to help and play the real role in the society. Then why I have to share something that I am telling to myself. Well my answer to that would be this is my blog, I write and I post what I like. Then can’t I post something that I want to tell or maybe realize myself. You can email me if you want to force me to do what I am writing. I really want that.

So what is the society what I used above? Our society is not what friends we move around, what circle we are in, what locality we belong, and so on. But our society is of a human mankind. Sitting today and remember someone, whom you know or I know, I always remember often, want to do something for someone whom I may not know.

Look at the eyes of this kid, and tell me what you see. Well, I see questions. Question like don’t I deserve food, don’t I deserve love, don’t I deserve affection, don’t I deserve life and don’t I deserve more. So can we do anything, or our comfort zone has made us so redundant to do anything for anyone, anymore. Specially for the people whom we don’t know.

No No No, I am not asking for dollars, yens, pounds, rupees, and so on to be donated. I am just asking for the fundamentals of human mankind. Love, affection, care, and may be help.

I have not done all this in the past for someone special whom I love. But then I do care for my society, I do and want to do more for it. I am sure we all are enjoying our Sundays today and may be not in a mood to talk about humanness, mankind, donation, charity or something nearly in the vicinity of it. But then we are the one who can do. God or Allah has not chosen anyone but it has chosen all of us to do something.

So if you can look into the eyes of this child I would love to know what do you see?

---

[1] Taken from http://select.daylife.com/photo/04oAgLx850b19

Why Leaders Fail

Sharing a good article by Mark Sanborn published at Expert Access.

The Warning Signs of Impending Failure

Huge publicly traded companies Enron and Worldcom go down in flames under the guidance of capable leaders with highly questionable ethics. Gold medalist Marion Jones, once considered a positive role model, faces criminal charges for doping. The Catholic Church continues to agonize over lapses in leadership that resulted in sexual abuse of children. From the indictment of Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens to the imprisonment of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to the adulterous affair of former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards, politics is rife with leadership failures.

In the recent past, we’ve witnessed the public downfall of leaders from almost every arena of society business, sports, religion and politics. One day they’re on top of the heap, the next, shame and infamy are heaped on them.

We are incensed by the catastrophic failures of these leaders. After all, we cheered for them, voted for them, put stock in their companies, and consulted them for spiritual guidance. We trusted them, they let us down, and it hurts.

While our outrage at disgraced leaders may be justified, we fail to realize how quickly “they” become “us.” The distance between beloved leader and despised failure is shorter than we think. Like anyone, these fallen leaders never set out to sacrifice their integrity, abandon ethical behavior, or exploit those they led. But it happened anyway. Their failures should be our cautions.

Ken Maupin, a practicing psychotherapist and colleague, has built his practice on working with high-performance personalities, including leaders in business, religion, and sports. Ken and I have often discussed why leaders fail. Our discussions have led to the following “warning signs” of impending failure.

Warning Sign #1: A Shift in Focus

This shift can occur several ways. Oftentimes, leaders simply lose sight of what’s important. The laser-like focus that catapulted them to the top begins to wander, and they are seduced by the trappings of leadership, such as wealth and notoriety.

Leaders are usually distinguished by their ability to “think big.” But as their focus shifts, their thinking shrinks. They micromanage, get caught up in minutiae, and consume themselves with trivial decisions better left to others. To make matters worse, this tendency can be exacerbated by an unceasing quest for perfection.

A more subtle leadership derailer is an obsession with “doing” rather than “becoming.” A leader’s greatest influence flows naturally from inner vision and character. It is possible for a leader to become infatuated with action, and, in the process, lose touch with the all-important development of self. However, busier isn’t always better.

At the present moment, what is your primary focus? If you can’t write it on the back of your business card, then your leadership suffers from a lack of clarity. Take the requisite time to center your focus on what’s most important.

Would you describe your thinking as expansive or contractive? You should be willing to roll up your sleeves to do whatever it takes to get the job done. However, don’t take the reins from others on tasks they can do as competently as you can. Always strive to think on a higher plane. In doing so, you’ll make the transition from doer to developer.

Warning Sign #2: Poor Communication

Lack of focus disorients a leader and sets the stage for poor communication. Followers can’t possibly understand a leader’s intent when the leader isn’t even sure what it is! When leaders are unclear about purpose, they cloak their confusion with uncertainty and ambiguous communication.

Sometimes, leaders fall into the clairvoyance trap. They delude themselves into believing that committed followers can sense their goals and carry out their wishes without being told. When misunderstandings arise, managers blame their people for lack of effort (or commitment) rather than recognizing their own communication negligence.

“Say what you mean, and mean what you say” is timeless advice, but it must be preceded by knowing what you mean! Clarity of purpose is the starting point for all effective communication. The hard work of communication only pays dividends when you’re crystal clear about your message.

Warning Sign #3: Risk Aversion

Leaders on the verge of breakdown fear failure rather than desiring success. Past victories create pressure for leaders: “Will I be able to sustain outstanding performance?” “What will I do for an encore?” In fact, the longer a leader is successful, the higher his or her perceived cost of failure will be.

When driven by the fear of failure, leaders are unable to take reasonable risks. They limit themselves to tried and proven pathways. Attempts at innovation key to their initial success diminish and eventually disappear.

Which is more important to you: the journey or the destination? Are you still taking reasonable risks? Prudent leadership avoids reckless risk, but neither is it paralyzed by fear. On many occasions, the dance of leadership is two steps forward, one step back.

Warning Sign #4: Ethics Slip

A leader’s credibility depends upon two qualities: what he or she does (competency) and who he or she is (character). Deficiencies in either quality create an integrity problem.

The highest principle of leadership is integrity. When ethical compromise is rationalized as necessary for the “greater good,” a leader sets foot on the slippery slope of failure.

All too often, leaders see their followers as pawns—mere means to an end. As a result, they confuse manipulation with leadership. Such leaders rapidly lose respect. To save face, they cease to be people “perceivers” and become people “pleasers,” using popularity to ease the guilt of lapsed integrity.

As a leader, it’s imperative to constantly subject your life and work to the highest scrutiny. Are there areas of conflict between what you believe and how you behave? Has compromise crept into your operational tool kit?

Warning Sign #5: Poor Self-Management

Tragically, if a leader doesn’t take care of himself or herself, no one else will. Unless a leader is blessed with unusually perceptive followers, nobody will pick up on signs of fatigue and stress. Leaders are counted on to produce, but they aren’t superheroes running on limitless energy.

While leadership is invigorating, it is also tiring. Like anyone else, leaders are susceptible to feeling drained, depressed, and de-motivated. Those who neglect their physical, psychological, emotional, or spiritual needs are headed for disaster. Think of having a gauge for each of these four areas of your life, and check them often! If a gauge’s needle dips toward “empty,” make time for refreshment and replenishment. Clear your schedule and take care of yourself. Self-preservation isn’t selfish—it’s vital to the health of those you lead.

Warning Sign #6: Lost Love

Leaders face impending disaster when they abandon their first love. The hard work of leadership should be fulfilling and fun. However, when divorced from their dreams, leaders may find the responsibility of leadership to be frustrating and fruitless. To stay motivated, leaders must stick to what they love and rediscover what compelled them to accept the mantle of leadership in the first place.

To make sure that you stay on the track of following your first love, frequently ask yourself these three questions: Why did I initially pursue leadership? Have those reasons changed? Do I still want to lead?

Heed the Signs

The warning signs in life from stoplights to prescription labels are intended for our good. They protect us from disaster, and we would be foolish to ignore them. As you consider the six warning signs of leadership failure, don’t be afraid to take an honest look at yourself. If any of the warnings ring true, take action today! By paying attention to these signs and heeding their warnings, you can avoid disaster and sustain the kind of leadership that is healthy and fulfilling both for yourself and your followers.

I know You

Search an inevitable part of our daily life. At least for people who are acquainted to the world of Internet? Generations prior to me never had it, my and generation after me cannot live without it. The dependence on search and our ever growing appetite of discovering seems to boost by the googles, yahoos of the world. I use to to thing that Google and yahoo gives me what I wanted, but then I wanted to see various “other dimensions”, though I myself was not aware what all or the so called “other” dimensions I want to see but as mentioned about the so called discovery appetite was pushing me to go to the “next level”. So here I was again “searching” new ways to search.

This venture truly helped me to come out with some great findings like Alltop, Answers, Cuil, Popurls, Mahalo, Twellow (for twitter other than its own search), Addictomatic and so on. It was amazing to discover that what all I can discover. Some of these so called search or discovery engines provide with plethora of information on one single page. Taking an example that if I need information about India and its news then hit http://india.alltop.com/ and I will have all information from various site and blog right on single page.

While on my quest to discover I came across some other finding about “'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'.". Yes….Google’s company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said during a visit to Britain last year that he would like Google to provide answers to questions like “what shall I do tomorrow”. Of course there will be a role of human genetics, and that is the reason why Google invested £2m in a human genetics firm called 23andMe. You can read the entire article here.

The same article talks about the yahoo’s project panama, which monitors internet visitors to its site to build a profile of their interests. Google in the quest to provide the so called “personalized” results bought DoubleClick for $3.1bn, a company that helps build a detailed picture of someone's behavior by combining its records of web searches with the information from DoubleClick's "cookies", the software it places on users' machines to track which sites they visit. Of course this helped reinforcing my belief about the power of “profiled” database of users or universe.

Lets take this further how about wear your search, when I enter my query as a picture of the birds overhead and have the search engine identify what kind of bird it is, when I capture a snippet of audio and have the search engine identify and analyze it (a song or a stream of conversation) and tell me any relevant information about it? Phweeeeee….. you can read the entire finding here. This is a great post by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience at Google.

This tells us what we can “expect” or rather expect that we never expected. Goolge’s Universal search, program, which was released last May, according to the post is a an important first step to include images, videos, news, books, and maps/local information in the main Google search results.

A personal profile mixed with human genetics and technology……hmmmmm……I guess it can provide me with some look into the future where search will say “hey I know You”.

The tale of the Knight.

As mentioned in my earlier post, today I had an opportunity to meet a knight - Sir Martin Sorrell, an English businessman, currently the chief executive officer of WPP Group. As numbers always attracts me and with a number of over US$175 million net worth of Sir Martin Sorrel, this was one event that I couldn’t afford to miss. As mentioned earlier, I went there with an open mind and an opportunity to learn something.

It was a nice event that I manage to become a part of all due credit to my partner -141 Sercon. I did have a couple of minute’s discussion with the Knight. However I have to admit that it was certainly an engaging one, while I had an opportunity to chat with so many other like minded people. The speech by the Knight was certainly nice, and very much too the point, however the crux of it for me was what he identified three elements that he envisiones (and I echo his thoughts) would move the marketing business forward. They are – New Market, New Medium, and Ability to analyze your customers.

He admitted the fact that clients all across have pulled back the investments in marketing. And of course that trickles down from the phenomenal nightmarish losses that of the clients have made in past year or so. An un-disclosed example of a company was as bad as going from $ 6 Million monthly revenue to $ 1.5 Millions monthly. Of course this stands true if I am recalling, and getting my numbers right.

However coming back to what I note worthy felt was the three elements. Firstly without doubt that it’s the age of “super growing” economy or in some other words the emerging markets. The biggest and the strongest proof could be the stock market. Needless to say the kind of investments what India and similar countries are attracting vs. the developed ones. Mention of Pakistan was little surprising factor for me in the list, but I truly believe that there must have been some analysis done on that. What??? I don’t know.

Secondly New Medium. As we are moving toward the highly depend digital economy, in every sense of its true word, hence a move toward this space has gone beyond levels of criticality. It simply mandatory ( A Big Full Stop). We are at a stage that we need to put digital marketing into no matter which chapter of our marketing plan, be it right after the index page or just before conclusion page. It simply has to be there with a considerable amount of understanding, objective, further medium, goals, tactics and so on.

Thirdly and most important where we all or rather majority of marketers have done “a not so decent” job (being politically correct) is the ability to analyze our base. “Internet is the most measurable medium in the history of marketing. Now all that’s left to figure out is how to measure it”. Hence it always forces me to think that most marketers tend to foray into the digital domain attracted by the charm of its ability to analyze, but then stop. How many of us “effectively” do it? Or let me ask how many of us actually do it or may be further how many actually attempt to do it? Based on my experience with working with various companies I can assure you the results are disastrous.

In the age of globalization, globalization is your biggest challenge. Hence it’s imperative for us not only to spend resources, but have clear vision to understand our customer base. Analyze our current statistics and somewhat put our Nostradamus hat to vision or envision the future. Mathematics changed the face of the earth, similarly doing our analysis would change at least some face of us (marketers).

Thank You Sir Martin Sorrell and 141 Sercon. It was a knowledgeable evening well spent.

Have a good day.