Digital CPG Blog

Here’s the latest on Twitter ads from AdAge (and see our opinion on it all below):

Twitter is “enhancing” its promoted tweets feature, the company announced in a blog post today, to help make sure users don’t miss promoted updates from the brands they follow.

For those brands who choose to buy into this the new feature, Twitter will place the brand’s tweets at the top of a user’s stream — only on Twitter.com for now — so that no matter when the user logs in or refreshes his or her screen, the latest update from a brand the user follows will appear at the top of the timeline. Typical tweets are easy to miss if users aren’t looking at their screen. The paid tweets will only appear once and can be dismissed from the timeline with a single click.

Twitter said it will limit the amount of ads a user may see in a given period of time, but it hasn’t settled on a specific boundary. Insiders say users could see as many as four or five ads in a session, provided they already follow the brands placing sponsored tweets.

Initial testing will include about 20 marketers, including Virgin America, Sephora and Starbucks, which will each be bidding to push their ads into a user’s timeline. That means a marketer could be bidding against no one, or against 20 other brands if there are enough users who follow that many companies.

Brands bid on a per-engagement price and only pay when the user engages with the promoted tweet — in other words, the tweet costs money only when users click, reply, favorite or retweet the tweet.

I personally think Twitter ads are quite successful. When I see a promoted tweet, it always stands out and perhaps because of the succintness, brands seem to be offering relevant and meaningful offers and information. It doesn’t seem intrusive nor does it seem to be an ad – something more intimate and in between.

Have you experimented with Twitter ads

Dive into these two great presentations on your lunch hour or your mid-afternoon slump:

Here’s an interesting new start-up in the CPG space:

Consmr, besides not liking all of its vowels, is attempting to build the Yelp, or Rotten Tomatoes, of consumer packaged goods (CPGs). While at this point Consmr may not be able to offer you a thoroughly detailed treatise on the value of Scope over Listerine, that’s the bent of its long-term goal.

Consmr Founder and CEO Ryan Charles left his full-time job at Zagat (where he was the head of mobile and was responsible for its partnerships with Foodspotting and Foursquare) at the end of March to pursue his new startup. Why?

The genesis dates back to the height of the recession, he says, when a lot of we consumers became more discerning (and price conscious) in regard to their daily product decisions. While there’s been tremendous growth in web research on CPGs, the sources for this information are fragmented. There’s no Yelp or LibraryThing, or sites taking advantage of crowdsourced data or social integration to help you choose which product is right for you. And he has a good point; all-in-one sources for movie, TV, book, and restaurant recommendations (to name a few) are alive and well, so why not for CPGs?

What will motivate people to write reviews on toothpaste? Well, from experience, we know people are pretty passionate about their toilet paper and toothpaste, but Consmr will also be incentivizing users through game mechanics, which will give CPG manus a good opportunity to hook loyalty programs into the platform.

Today, I wanted to highlight the two panels that myself and my colleague Craig are going to be participating in for the following conference. If you register, don’t forget we have a special discount for DigitalCPG.com readers!

The Smarter Shopper: Marketing to the Digital Consumer
Tue – Wed, September 20-21, 2011
Stamford, CT
Register now >
Use the code “digitalcpg”  at registration for a 10% discount just for DigitalCPG.com readers!

Client-side marketers discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with engaging shoppers effectively at the intersection of digital & shopper marketing. Learn how they’re getting the most out of their agencies, their retail partners and themselves.

CVS.com and Alice.com: The E-Tailers Speak
Speakers Craig Andler Dustin Humphreys Michael Lewis

What manufacturers can learn from eTailers about staying relevant to smarter, digitally-empowered shoppers

Speaker Info

Dustin Humphreys, General Manager – CVS.com and Director, Digital Strategy & Operations, CVS
Craig Andler, Co-Founder & VP of Business Development, Alice.com

I have long argued that social networks aren’t really social and we shouldn’t let a few platforms define what social means online. Now, others are coming around. Econsultancy argues:

Social technologies have seen great advances and widespread adoption. But the way we behave socially online is still unnatural and stilted. The technology doesn’t yet fully reflect the way we socially interact in real-life.

Amen! The article goes on to reveal the results of an interesting psycholgy study carried out amongst UCLA students:

Interestingly, In contrast to similar studies conducted previously, it found that:

…the overwhelming quantity of [social network site] use among college students is more consistent with the global use paradigm, which sees internet use as universal, as opposed to a realm inhabited by people who are somehow different than non-users.

The Internet isn’t just for the lonesome any longer, which will hopefully mean some increased innovations into mirroring technology to our human interactions.

Is your brand doing anything interesting to mirror offline behavior online?

Want to hear from the best in digital marketing, including myself, my Alice.com co-worker, the COO of Peapod, Facebook’s VP of Sales and other speakers from Groupon, Campbells, 3M, Google, Unilever and more? Ah, I have just the conference.

Details below and a special discount just for DigitalCPG.com readers!

The Smarter Shopper: Marketing to the Digital Consumer
Tue – Wed, September 20-21, 2011
Stamford, CT
Register now >
Use the code “digitalcpg”  at registration for a 10% discount just for DigitalCPG.com readers!

Prepare to Engage Today’s Digitally Smarter Shopper!

Developed with the director- and VP-level shopper marketing professional in mind, PMA’s Digital Shopper Marketing Summit provide two days of strategic focus on how you and your organizations can adapt to a world in which digital technologies have disrupted the path to purchase.  Download the agenda. (Don’t forget: Use the code “digitalcpg”  at registration for a 10% discount just for DigitalCPG.com readers!).

Lunch Keynote by Peapod COO Mike Brennan!

Join Peapod COO Mike Brennan as he takes a look at the dynamic environment that was, is, and will be online grocery shopping . Get an insider’s view on how CPG companies can effectively harness the category’s unique drivers in order to participate, promote and thrive within the channel.

Facebook: A place for commerce

Tom Arrix, Facebook’s VP of US Sales, shows you how the platform is evolving from its roots as a place where brands showed up simply because it’s where consumers were to a social commerce channel that will drive brand sales and share increases.

Hear

· A keynote from Coke on retailing

· Perspectives from shopper marketing leaders ConAgra and Unilever

· Insights on e-commerce from 3M, Google Wallet and Facebook

· POV’s on eTailing from Alice.com and CVS.com

In addition, explore topics such as:

· Is the sales force obsolete? What’s the impact of e-commerce on organizational structures?

· Is the path to purchase dead in an always-on world? For example, if your shoppers are using mobile and buying direct, where exactly is the path?

· Which social media metrics drive shopper marketing success?

PLUS: Don’t miss out on

· Retail store checks featuring digital demonstrations and the chance to meet new service providers in the Digital EXPO!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE AGENDA!

PS – Remember to use the code “digitalcpg”  at registration for a 10% discount just for DigitalCPG.com readers!

Every announcement lately seems to talk about how a commerce company is partnering or buying a media company. Is there a difference between commerce and media? Business Insider muses:

A lot of people will certainly treat this commingling of media and commerce with suspicion. But media is a vehicle to sell things–it’s a vehicle for advertising, but advertising exists because it sells things. If a magazine story entices someone to buy something, then that media publication should be compensated for generating that purchasing intent. And no, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that all newspapers would start pushing product down people’s throats, because if they started doing that their readers would eventually desert them.

From a manufacturer perspective, the commingling of commerce and media is a win-win. But will consumers put up with it? Do you have to separate commerce and media anymore? I wonder…
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But you know the answer to this by now, don’t you? Of course they do!

Next up in charts and infographics, we’ve got a great one on social commerce growth and f-commerce:

Think people aren’t buying CPG online? Think again! We’ve got lots of great infographics this week, starting with this one that says people buy lots of drugs and health aids online. Who knew?