In its first analysis of display advertising on the Amazon.com home page, Macquarie Group reported that CPG marketers such as Philips and Procter & Gamble accounted for the biggest share of ads during the second half of the fourth quarter, at 28%. Other top ad verticals for Amazon included media (23%) and financial services (10%). Another big chunk (28%) was dedicated to house ads for Amazon Local’s daily deals service.

Meanwhile:

Yahoo and AOL continued to show signs of weakening demand, based on home page ad trends, while YouTube remained strong and MSN had steady gains from both the third quarter and the year-earlier period.

Where is your brand advertising? And where do you find the best results?

A comScore analysis of online ad impressions from July shows CPGs have become the heaviest users of “socially enabled” ads that appear on sites outside Facebook but include “visit us on Facebook” or other “Click to Facebook” appeals to get users to brand pages.CPG marketers are 10 times more likely than advertisers to use “socially enabled” ads, which appear outside of Facebook but urge visits to a Facebook site, finds a comScore analysis.

They were 10 times more likely than advertisers generally to use socially-enabled online ads.

“In many ways the fan page is replacing the brand website as the primary destination for outbound marketing online,” said a comScore executive.

The only thing that makes me nervous about this is that it is a short-term strategy. Yes, Facebook is HUGE, but wasn’t MySpace? I worry when marketers spend all their time, energy and money building on one platform only to have it disappear a few years later. ultimately, marketers should have a diversified strategy that always includes their own brand website where they have full control on collecting data and emails.

TV Pros & Cons:

• No attention! Every day it gets easier to block commercials or simply access television content in commercial-free formats. A recent study indicated that over 60% of viewers had time-shifted some of their programming in one way or another.
• TV is expensive, even as its effectiveness wanes.
• There is now niche content to target, but less availablity to aggregate large audiences, which poaches viewers from the top of the market.

Online Pros & Cons:

• You can target audiences down to the minuatie, but do you want to? Many campaigns seek mass audiences, not niche and small.

• You’ve got to have a viral component. And to do that you have to prime the pump and leverage television. Campaigns can’t exist in an online vacuum!

• Online doesn’t offer quality videos – which could be a good or bad thing, depending on how you want your customer to engage.

• The context for online ads can be very exact, but it rarely has the same potential for emotional impact as a television event. Premiere League matches, NFL games, royal weddings and talent shows can make a brand part of a larger experience. Under the right circumstances, digital could do the same, but rarely does.

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

The report, by Kantar Media, part of WPP, found that ad spending in major media in the United States in the first quarter rose 4.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The percentage gain is the fifth quarterly increase in a row since the end of 2009, but it is the smallest of the five.

As for the advertisers that spend all the money, Procter & Gamble led the list of the top 10, as it often does. Procter spent $719.8 million in the first quarter, the report said, down 5.9 percent from $765 million spent in the first quarter of last year.

Of the top 10 spenders, seven spent more than they did a year ago. They include the Chrysler Group, up 58.6 percent; Toyota Motor, up 30.3 percent; Ford Motor, up 27.3 percent; L’Oreal, up 14.1 percent; AT&T, up 6.9 percent; and General Motors, up 1.3 percent.

The cost of converting people to sign-up for events, purchase products and register for services decreases considerably when businesses run Facebook advertisements that target existing fans, as opposed to non-fans. Registration acquisition costs can be 44% cheaper, while event sign-ups cost 33% less and purchases are 15% cheaper to achieve.

Do your Facebook fans or non-fans seem to offer greater value?

“Right now we have about 300 employees based in Silicon Valley,” CEO Steven Boal said. With this new funding, the company plans to add 100 new staff members in the next six months and add new sales offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Coupons.com will also focus on adding new mobile and social networking technologies, he said.

But while Boal was happy to discuss Coupons.com’s consumer traction, he was notably mum in the GigaOm interview on disclosing details about the company’s financial performance. He declined to answer questions about Coupon.com’s sales figures, its prior funding history, whether or not it’s profitable, or who exactly participated in this latest financing round.

Regardless, the news is great for all those involved in digital couponing as this space only gets larger and more profitable.

Since last year, ad organizations in the U.S. have been running a campaign meant to stiff-arm regulatory efforts of the sort that went into effect last week in Europe, where companies will now have to get permission from consumers before dropping cookies onto their computers. The centerpiece of the campaign to convince Congress and the FTC that self-regulation is good enough is the “Ad Option Icon” placed in some ads, pointing to information about behavioral targeting and offering a way to opt out of it.

Thus far it’s received relatively low response, a rare case where low click-through on an ad is positioned as a positive thing. The click-through rate is just 0.002% and of those people who do follow the link, only 10% opt out of the ads, according to DoubleVerify, which recently won a contract from the industry trade group to license the icon for ad clients. Two other companies, Evidon and TRUSTe, also provide the service. Evidon, which has the longest set of data, is seeing click-through of 0.005% with only 2% opting out from 30 billion impressions.

But the low rates alone don’t mean consumers aren’t interested in the issue of how companies are monitoring and using their online behavior. After all, click rates on display ads are generally low, often well under 1% depending on the product category, the audience and the kind of website.

Thought so.

Here’s a refresher on who she is:

She Is Not Paying Attention to Your On TV

“In broadcast primetime, ad recall levels are 8 percent lower among moms 25-54 than non-moms of the same age and the general population. Nielsen has found that the ads that resonate most with moms are often family- and convenience-oriented with relatable characters/situations, sentimental tonality and good natured humor. A heavy focus on products/services tends to reduce ad effectiveness among moms.  For moms, the 30-second sitcom (or drama) might just snag her much-divided attention.”

She Is Paying Attention To You Online

Moms are more likely to become a fan or follow a brand (31% more likely) than the general population and and comment on others postings (27% more likely). “Moms account for one-fourth of all video streams occurring on social networks, and are also more likely to post their own content: photos (37% more likely), links/articles/videos (25%), status updates (33%).”

“Moms make up more than one-fifth of online video viewers and spent an average of 258 minutes viewing online video in March 2011.  Compared to the overall usage in the US, Moms spent 25% more time, about 52 minutes longer on average, viewing online video from Home PCs.”

Uh… have they been awake lately?

Lucky for Facebook, they were able to show exactly how the site is driving commerce earlier this month. After all, where there is community, there is commerce.  Simple as that.

Facebook has long promoted the value of such social ads, saying that word of mouth from friends is more valuable for users and marketers alike than generic marketing messages. The company now says that, similarly, e-commerce sites are increasingly benefiting from tying their services into the Facebook platform. In other words, Facebook says a purchase shared on Facebook generates more purchases from friends.

“We now have a direct link between sharing on Facebook and revenue generation at e-commerce sites,” said Dan Rose, vice president of partnerships and platform marketing at Facebook. Mr. Rose said that 18 of the top 25 e-commerce sites are using Facebook features like Facebook Connect or the “Like” button. Giantnerd.com, a shopping site for outdoor gear, saw a doubling in revenue generate from Facebook within two weeks of adding the Like button, Facebook said. American Eagle saw users referred by Facebook spend 57 percent more than average on the site, Facebook said.

Nothing like some hard numbers showing your relevance and dominance to prove the naysayers wrong.