Sunday’s big game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was nearly as splashy in social media as it was on TV.

Marketers that paid millions to advertise during the telecast also put sizeable energy into making sure that their ads had visibility on the social web. Coca-Cola Co. teamed up with Facebook to distribute Coke-themed virtual gifts and preview its Super Bowl spots for its fans. Pepsi notoriously bowed out of advertising during the game in favor of a cause-related digital marketing initiative that included a major presence on Facebook. Other marketers took to Twitter to keep their ads top of mind among consumers.

Even before the game telecast, the online buzz surrounding football star Tim Tebow’s ad for Focus on the Family was strong, according to Nielsen Co. In the two months ending January 31, the ad garnered 33.4% of all Super Bowl ad-related buzz online. Meanwhile, the NFL created a Twitter tag, #SB44, and encouraged fans to use the tag when they discussed the game.

With all the hype, what was the end result? The most-watched television event of all time. CBS estimates that the 2010 Super Bowl drew 106.5 million viewers, beating the famed 1983 “M*A*S*H” series finale, which was watched by about 105.9 million.

There’s no doubt that all the activity surrounding the Super Bowl is a signal that TV is finally getting more social, though we’re certainly not all the way there. While the coming onslaught of Internet-ready televisions will play a role, the entertainment industry has yet to figure out how to logically incorporate social media into the act of watching television. But they will.

The socialization of TV is one of eight trends that I cover in my new eMarketer Insight Brief “The Future of Social Media Marketing.” Some of my other predictions include:

• Advertising will not be the primary revenue driver for social media.
• Status updates will be key.
• Social will make search more personal—and more powerful.
• Social media monitoring will bring true insights.

“The Future of Social Media Marketing” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

While the buzz in 2009 was all about social networks as a function of the Web, in 2010, marketers’ attention will focus increasingly on the ways social networks are becoming the medium for communicating on mobile devices. Video is likely to play a key role as well, as mobile users are “socializing” video from their devices to a far greater extent than they are watching it.

I wrote about this phenomenon and other key trends in mobile marketing in my latest iMedia Connection column, which went live today. Following is a clip from the full article:

Consolidation among mobile ad networks is clearly lining up to be a major theme in the year ahead. Even so, achieving scale in display advertising on mobile devices is just one piece in a much larger puzzle — that of using mobile to showcase full-blown marketing and commerce experiences.

Marketers often talk glowingly about mobile’s flexibility and how effective it is at activating other media. However, mobile has traditionally been a less effective vehicle than other media for end-to-end consumer experiences. In order for mobile to reach mass adoption among marketers, the medium has to develop beyond its core strengths in communication and messaging.

Fortunately, startup activity is rife across many keys areas of the mobile sector, and the next 12 to 18 months should see many of the missing pieces fall into place. The continued fusion of mobile and social and the appetite for apps (among both consumers and brands) will facilitate more involved marketing experiences. In fact, location- and social-aware apps and utilities will be a key avenue for brands looking to engage consumers on the go.

Mobile advertising will likewise grow more sophisticated, with improved targeting capabilities and richer, more engaging options across multiple channels, from apps to browsers to SMS. Augmented reality (AR) seems destined to generate more ink than activity or revenue in 2010, given the limited number of mobile handsets that support it, but AR is worth keeping an eye on nonetheless because of what it portends for the future of mobile marketing. It represents an innovative way of creating a virtual overlay to the physical world by combining and maximizing on-board device features (e.g., camera, GPS, accelerometer, broadband connectivity).

With the rise in mobile broadband access and the proliferation of multimedia smartphones, video viewing (and consequently, video advertising) is set to become a more integral part of the mobile experience. Paid content models such as iTunes will continue to expand to mobile devices, but the growth in mobile web and application usage will also create opportunities for marketers to engage with viewers in both professional and user-generated video content.

The article takes a detailed look at different segments in the mobile marketing space and profiles a number of companies to watch, so be sure to read through to the end to get the complete picture.

Social Media Week hit New York City with a vengeance last week and at one of the more spirited events–SUXORZ–a panel and a Greek chorus-style crowd identified the worst social media campaigns of 2009. In case you’re flummoxed by the word “suxorz” (I was too), it’s a word derived from the “sucks”. Campaigns by Pepsi, Charmin, Pampers, General Motors, Mars, Time Warner Cable, PETA, Pizza Hut and Ryanair were among the contenders for suckage honors.

Among the “winners”–a campaign by Old Spice that showed an animated video of a hairy, crusty armpit and Ryanair’s offensive attitude toward customer feedback.

So how can you use social media to fix campaigns that don’t click with your targets? Reacting correctly to negative feedback is crucial. According to a survey by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia, direct engagement is the number one method of rectifying issues and addressing not-so-positive response.

In the newly published eMarketer Insight Brief: “Social Media Misfires: How to Head Off Trouble Before it Hits,” we highlight how marketers can avoid four kinds of social media meltdowns–employee abuse of social media; complaint response; how to avoid getting caught offguard; and how to avoid breaking the rules of engagement. From the brief:

Negative comments and false statements about brands can spread fast. Because consumers have the ability to create, publish and distribute their own content—as well as comment, debate, recommend and share their opinions—marketers and their brands are more vulnerable than ever. For instance, brands can be damaged by people who use Twitter to post false information. And they can just as easily be affected for the worse by employees who post prank videos on YouTube.

Listen up: Failing to appropriately research a social media strategy and establish relevant best practices can cost your company dearly.

“Social Media Misfires: How to Head Off Trouble Before It Hits” is a part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

Gartner recently issued several predictions detailing how companies will use social software in the future. Here’s one that caught my eye: “By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.”

This is a particularly bold statement given the fact that a growing percentage of businesses strictly control how their employees use social network sites at work. Manpower, for example, found that 29% of businesses in the Americas have a formal policy governing social network usage.

Gartner thinks that those barriers will start to fall away as companies integrate internal social networks and realize the value of using both public and private social networks for status updates and to find people within an organization who have the expertise necessary for a project. 20% isn’t a huge number, and so I certainly think this is in the realm of possibility. But it will definitely require businesses to have a more open attitude toward the utility of social networks.

Update: TechCrunch is now reporting that Facebook is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product called Project Titan, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Facebook has long kept its messaging service static, making only slight improvements over the years. But if Titan — which would have full POP/IMAP support, meaning you could access the mail account when not on Facebook — can even near the functionality of something like Gmail, it certainly makes Gartner’s projection a bit more feasible.

The UK’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) published a statement today supporting the Grocery Supply Code of Practice. The code aims to deter retailers in the UK from forcing brands to slash prices to damaging levels.

As the financial squeeze continues to shape consumers’ expectations and buying habits, the IPA is concerned that brands may be suffering unfairly. While retailers lean on advertisers to keep prices down, shoppers too are anxious not to pay over the odds.

Price promotions have been an obvious weapon for advertisers during the 2008-2009 recession. A spokesman for the Institute of Sales Promotion (ISP) noted that the proportion of goods sold at discounted prices in the UK rose by 25% in 2009, and reached a value of £14 billion ($22.3 billion) in the month of November.

The ISP also noted that 70% of sales directors polled recently said they expected significant discounting to continue in the near future.

But the IPA’s October 2009 report, “Pricing for the upturn: How can brands fight back?” argued that advertisers and their brands could suffer long-term damage if they depended too much on discounts to attract shoppers.

The IPA had already explored the potential impact of discounting in an earlier report, “Price promotion during the downturn: shrewd or crude?” Data collected for that study indicated that price promotions eroded consumer loyalty toward brands.

The WARC’s coverage of the later IPA report also discusses further implications for advertisers. Worth a look.

TechCrunch reported data from comScore yesterday that Web traffic to Facebook is now nearing that of Yahoo!. The world’s largest social network has already surpassed Yahoo in monthly page views, and will soon overtake the search engine’s mark of more than 594 million unique visitors. eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson recently shed some light on Facebook’s future growth potential, revenue opportunities, and how marketers can take advantage.

eMarketer: Do you see Facebook continuing to experience its recent huge growth in the future?

Williamson: I do see significant growth potential for Facebook, especially in developing markets. I believe it is reaching saturation in its original dominant markets: the US, UK and Canada. But there are many countries where its user growth is still quite large.

Here’s one data resource that shows that:
Mapping Facebook’s Recent Global Growth Versus Rivals

eMarketer: If the site does continue to grow, can it generate enough revenue through advertising to offset the huge costs involved in supporting so many users?

Williamson: Advertising has been Facebook’s main revenue stream since its inception. But I believe that this year will be the year that we see the company opening up significant new revenue streams.

One of those will probably be virtual currency. Another might be e-commerce, in which Facebook could take a cut of sales from any person or company that sells something within Facebook.

In a few years, I believe another source of revenue for Facebook will be analytics–selling information about its users to marketers, agencies and others who are interested. Facebook is sitting on a gold mine of consumer information and I am certain it is trying to determine how to maximize the revenue potential from it–without invading its users’ privacy.

eMarketer: Do you think it’s likely that Facebook will go public anytime in the near future? Or should its focus remain on generating revenue through advertising and other streams?

Williamson: I believe that Facebook does not need to go public anytime soon. It has a deep-pocketed investor in DST, the Russian firm, and its advertising revenues are growing nicely. I expect that it will generate $605 million worldwide in ad revenue this year, up 39% over last year. If it succeeds in creating some of the new revenue streams I mentioned above, it will be doing very well.

Related:

• Facebook’s Revenue Trajectory
• Social Network Ad Spending Trends for 2010
• Students Still Find Facebook Cool
• Facebook Now Has Yahoo In Its Sites, Already Bigger In Pageviews (ComScore)
• Baby Boomers Get Connected with Social Media
• What Social Followers Want

More consumer packaged goods brands are getting into the online video content game. Take the case of consumer products giant Clorox–its Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing brand has produced “Garden Party”, a series of original Webisodes extolling the virtues of fresh, seasonal veggies. The series of Web shorts star actress Jennie Garth of “90210″ fame, a mom of three and an advocate of healthy eating. The Webisodes are being distributed via iVillage.

(Read more…)

We recently spoke to Julie Krueger, the senior vice president of e-commerce and direct marketing at OfficeMax, about the company’s efforts to build relationships with busy working moms through chic merchandising, lifestyle presentations, social media, mobile, and more. Here’s a snippet from the full case study:

Ms. Krueger: In an industry that is rather utilitarian, we wanted to position the company differently, but not with “fu-fu” stuff. I’m talking about using a little color—besides manila—to decorate your office. While a few high-end niche companies offer fashion, traditional office supply vendors do not.

We approached many vendor partners and asked them to help us. There was not a lot of interest. So we started designing and sourcing the products ourselves. We created a proprietary brand that includes new designs of everyday items such as file folders and binders—and, as in apparel, we introduce new designs twice a year.

(Read more…)

Let’s be blunt. What the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been telling the online ad industry is simple:

Either you create and put into practice effective ways to regulate the use of consumer data and give the public tools to control the privacy of that data, or we – and probably Congress – will impose restrictive regulations and laws on your industry.

As reported yesterday by The New York Times, one segment of the online ad industry – the Future of Privacy Forum – has implemented a first step in this process: The I-Button. This little icon (see above) is designed to be added to online ads that use demographic and behavioral data for targeting, to inform Internet users why they’re seeing that ad.

(Read more…)

There are at least 3 points to consider about Yahoo!, which released its full year 2009 revenues on January 26th.

1) Compared with search advertising revenues, display advertising is becoming more important than ever to Yahoo! (which just reinforces the necessity of the Bing deal with Microsoft).

2) Yahoo!’s Q4 results indicate that brand spending is slowly coming back overall, not just for that company but in the overall US online ad market.

3) Back to search: Google is continuing to eat not only Yahoo!’s lunch, but its breakfast as well.

The backstory for those 3 points can be fleshed out by these 5 related spending trends, all US market only (which made up 73% of the company’s 2009 revenues): (Read more…)