Martini Media Presents the “Share of Heart” Research Conference

This past Wednesday, June 15, 2011, top thought leaders gathered at the Harmonie Club on 60^th Street in New York City to learn about Martini Media’s recent research study: “Share of Heart.” Martini Media partnered with WPP’s research group, Added Value, to take a closer look at the influencer audience who comprises 25% of the population and is responsible for 70% of the spending online.

Panelists included Jordan Bitterman, SVP of Digitas, Ken Bracht, Land Rover Communications Manager, and Jack Myers, Media Economist and Chairman of the Media Advisory Group. Martini’s Chief Revenue Officer, Adam Chandler moderated the event while Michelle Madansky presented the research.

The research study examined the influencer audience, breaking the group into two subcategories: influentials and pollinators, while the rest of the online audience was deemed the general population. Pollinators, also referred to as “hyper influentials,” were of particular interest in this study, as they are the most active and engaged of the influentials, going out of their way to gather and share information.

In this study, influentials make up 45% of online users, pollinators make up 20%, and the general population makes up 35%. Overall, the study found that influentials and pollinators have a higher propensity to visit niche sites, which are websites that focus almost exclusively on particular areas of interest. Some interesting statistics that came out of this study include:

• Median spending for pollinators across passion categories is 7x what it is for non-influentials.

• 3 out of 4 pollinators access content about technology, food and wine, and the arts at least weekly, compared to 1 in 4 for the general population.

• 4 out of 5 pollinators visit niche sites related to their passion areas (compared to only 40% of the rest of the internet).

• 7 out of 10 pollinators made a purchase and recommended something to a friend after reading about it on a niche site

• 33% of those sampled reacted more positively to ads on niche sites, compared to 22% on general sites and16% on portal sites.

Martini Media is excited to see how these findings impact the world of online advertising, especially as it relates to influencers and pollinators. In an article for Media Post, Sarah Mahoney quoted Chandler as saying that “while automation trends continue to be important, research like this brings to light how important the right content and specific audience continues to be.”

Thank you to all who attended the conference and we are looking forward to seeing you at future Martini hosted events.

Martinis, Music, and Moonlight! Martini Media Throws the “Share of Heart” Research Conference After-Party

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Under the stars in Manhattan, Martini Media hosted a party to celebrate that morning’s “Share of Heart” research study conference.  About 100 top media insiders gathered at a private event hosted at Hotel Chantelle’s new rooftop bar to take in views of the Williamsburg Bridge, sip cocktails, and listen to acclaimed Beats In Space and DFA Records DJ Tim Sweeney.

Attendees included representatives from top advertising agencies and online publishers.

 

Martini Media Hosts Speakeasy-Themed Ad:Tech Happy Hour

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

ad:tech San Francisco is the place to be for digital marketers. This year’s keynote speakers included Arianna Huffington, Antonio Lucio (CMO of Visa), Guy Kawasaki (Co-founder of Alltop & Garage Technology Ventures), John Bax (CFO, LivingSocial), panels ranged from mobile marketing to location based services to marketing to moms, and attendees arrived from far and wide, from newbies to 20-year veterans, from start-ups to large corporations.

But let’s face the facts: this is still the advertising industry. It’s all about the cocktails, networking, connections (did we mention cocktails?).

Martini provided the perfect opportunity for the above through a Speakeasy Themed happy Hour at The Barrel House (80 Tehama Street), a gorgeous wood, brick and stain-glass venue, on the first evening of the conference. With a live band, classic 1920s-era cocktails, and co-hosted by Pereira O’Dell, NileGuide, World Golf Tour, and Vizu, this happy hour packed the bar for nearly 3 hours and drew over 250 attendees. See below for a slideshow of photos from the event, and contact contact@martini-corp.com if you’d like to be on the guest list for our future parties.

Martini CEO Skip Brand Speaks at the JFAM Focus Summit in San Francisco

The Financial Marketers’ Alliance, a group that brings together senior marketers from the world’s leading financial brands, hosted the third in a series of “Focus Summits” around Digital Marketing at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco last Friday. This specific summit focused on “social and emerging media.”

JFAM invited Martini CEO Skip Brand to speak on a panel entitled “The New Media Mix: Financial Strategies for Tomorrow.” The panel was moderated by Bill Wreaks, Chief Analyst of The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing, and other panelists included Oliver Snoddy, Director of Digital Services at Doremus and Randi Levine, Senior Strategist/Financial, AOL.

Martini has worked with a breadth of Financial Advertisers, from American Express to State Street to TDAmeritrade. Our Finance Channel, comprised of premium trade sites such as Schaeffers’ Research, The Fiscal Times, and ETF Market Pro, as well as our Affluent Lifestyle Channels have proven effective reach to an audience of finance decision makers engaged around their passions at work and at play. Contact us if you would like to hear more about our success in the Finance Category.

2011 DPS Martini with Mixology Event

After the DPS Panel, Skip, Alex, and Suri hosted a happy hour at the Stein Erickson Lodge at Deer Valley Resort. The “Mixology with Martini” event drew 50+ digital publishing decision makers, who also helped celebrate Suri’s 33rd birthday!

Martini Leads DPS Panel On Branding Online

Martini attended the Digital Publishing Summit, a gathering for leaders in digital media and publishing to share thoughts, trade tips and come together on a vision for the future of our exciting industry.

Skip Brand, Martini CEO, moderated a lively panel discussion on “The Pitch: Grabbing Brand Budgets.” The topic refers to the issue that today, 34% of marketer “direct response” advertising dollars are spent online, while only 7% of “branding” dollars are. While companies like Martini, by bringing together premium publishers, affluent audiences and luxury brands, are certainly doing their part, the discussion sought to define what are the other key things we in digital media can do to accelerate the shift and help advertisers bring their branding campaigns to where their consumers are already spending the most time.

Speakers on the panel were Joey Trotz, Sr. Director of Ad Technology at Turner, Henk Van Nierken, VP of Business Development at digital video platform Adap.tv, Celia Wu, Sr. Director, Sales Development at MSNBC, and Mark Zagorski, CEO of data company eXelate.

What all the panelists agreed on was the continued need for innovation in our space. Celia noted the success MSNBC has by having in-house technology and creative capabilities – allowing them to design media-relevant branding campaigns from the ground-up.

The biggest takeaway of the discussion was the need for online media publishers to use the same metrics as our branding-rich counterparts in television, radio and print. The wealth of brand dollars are spent on TV, and TV buyers have 50 years of understanding what works and what doesn’t – measured in their terms. Until we in digital media make the shift towards speaking this language and helping them use their measures online, we will continue to miss out on opportunity.

Martini continues to develop our ability to create 360-degree online full-service solutions for brand advertisers online. Our Branded Response measurement platform makes strong strides towards bridging the measurement gap between offline and online. We are deeply impressed by similar strides our partners are making across the industry, and look forward to growing the pie of brand dollars online together.

Martini Ads Target Affluent Consumers’ Offline Buys

Usama Fayyad has joined Martini Media’s board of directors. A data analytics scientist and architect of the Yahoo data systems, Fayyad will help the company develop the next generation in ad targeting technology. The platform aims to connect advertisers with consumers generating annual income of $100,000+. This group makes up 25% of the Internet population, but holds about 70% of the spending.

Branding that leads online consumers to make purchases offline has become an art — rather than direct purchases — especially for big-ticket items, such as cars and gems. mInstinct, the new targeting platform from Martini Media, allows marketers to insert ads that brand companies, products and services.

Fayyad will work to move the platform from “applied research” to “theoretical research” to “Martini 2.0,” making sure it supports brands that want to quickly scale up campaigns. The work will close gaps between audience targeting methods — contextual, demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and social-graph targeting — developing a closed-loop system that creates a direct pipeline from publishers to the most affluent audience online.

This audience — which is extremely difficult to reach — is coveted by many companies, so it’s important to know their passions. Those who like yachting and cruises are different from racecar enthusiasts. “Reaching this group was one of my big goals at Yahoo, but I couldn’t get enough data to get there, which Martini Media can do today,” Fayyad says. “It’s not about gathering data for the hell of it, but rather enabling the advertiser to engage with this audience in the most relevant way.”

Collected data provides hints about human behavior to assist 300 advertisers targeting ads across 1,000 publisher sites. A deep analysis of the context and an understanding of the frequency in users over time at those sites form the basis for exact targeting.

Skip Brand, CEO of Martini Media, says the company will begin building platforms that mix first-party, behavioral-targeting, survey or qualitative and third-party data to identify trends that help companies launch new routes for airlines or lines of cars. “These customers spend money to save time,” he says.

It shouldn’t be difficult for Fayyad to help build the system. He built several data-mining and predictive analytics systems for NASA JPL, which changed the way NASA’s data sets were used for scientific analysis. He also led the development of data-mining products for Microsoft’s Server Division, cofounded and led Audience Science, and then DMX Group, which re-engineered predictive applications for the automotive, financial services, telecommunications, and technology industries. At Yahoo, Fayyad built the data processing and the ad-targeting systems.

Other advisors include Greg Coleman, who built the sales organizations for The Huffington Post and Yahoo; Kevin Brown, a Reed Elsevier Ventures principal who led both iPhrase and AllBusiness acquisitions; Chris McKay, a managing director at Granite Ventures who led multiple software investments; and Brian Asher, a VenRock partner, who has led investments in ad technology such as Adify’s acquisition by Cox Communications.
Click here to view the Article

CES Deserves a New Name – Adam Chandler – MediaBizBloggers

By Adam Chandler

This year, brands and media dominated the stage at the biggest show in Vegas.

I’ve attended CES for 10 years as a digital media seller. While it’s always been invaluable for developing relationships, the role of technology in marketing and media has been largely peripheral as a topic.

This year, though, brand and media technology took center stage. This is an important change for our business. Technology changes how consumers experience our brands, and we need conferences like CES to put this emerging dynamic on display…

Click to view full article.

DigiRant: New Growth Models

by John Gaffney

A few years ago there was a big push for organic growth. A lot of consulting companies and academics were advocating for growing the value of current customers and adding new ones without “buying” them or even buying other companies. The advent of DSPs and Internet customer acquisition strategies have made organic growth look a bit antiquated. Growth seems to be accessible at light speed. But the issue remains. Digital publishers and advertisers need to add customers without buying them.
I like what Martini Media is doing…

Click here to view full article

Aston Martin and Burberry Create Media Rich Ads for Network Targeting Affluent Consumers

The luxury brands are becoming increasingly active on the internet. They are also conscious of the fact that the online business should not dilute their brand equity. In order to maintain their exclusivity top brands like Aston Martin and Burberry are engaging potential shoppers with rich-media ad units served across highly specialized verticals on a new ad network targeted specifically at affluent consumers. Both the British brands have taken the initiative and have created attractive and engaging video content and have used Flash.

Martini Media and TDP Media have come together to create the ad network that they claim reaches over 60 million consumers…

Click here to view full article.