by Ernest Kim

For any readers in Singapore, I’ll be speaking at the MediaMind Inspire event Wednesday, 28 November, at the beautiful Chijmes (see below for the address).

Speakers include Dean Donaldson, Global Head of Innovation for DG MediaMind, and Joe Nguyen, SVP for APAC at comScore, among others. The topic of my session will be data and how agencies can use it to fuel great creative work.

It appears to be an invitation-only event, which may explain why I can’t seem to find any information about it online. In any case, it kicks off at 2pm and, if you’re in attendance, please do stop by and say hello!

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Today, I’m proud to share a plug-in that will help to make campaign tracking more efficient within Omniture’s s_code.js file ¹. It’s called setCampaignVars. It’s free, it’s easy to use, and — best of all — it’s open source.

Background: Campaign Tracking with Omniture SiteCatalyst
At its simplest level, campaign tracking works this way: the Omniture code reads a value from the URL and saves it as your campaign tracking code. For example, let’s say that I have the following URL:

http://www.my-wonderful-site.com/index.html?cmp=foobar

The Omniture code can be configured to get the campaign tracking code whenever it sees the “cmp” query parameter in the URL. In this example, it will save foobar as the tracking code.

But Omniture recommends that campaign tracking doesn’t stop there. It suggests the following:

• Store the tracking code in an Omniture traffic variable – to report on pageviews, visits, time spent, and similar metrics
• Store the tracking code with your landing page name and enable pathing on this combination – to track how users navigate your site from the landing page

In addition, depending on your requirements, you might also need to

• Make the user’s browser retain the tracking code for a period of time ², regardless of how he subsequently returns to your site.

Campaign Tracking introduces New Problems
To implement the above, your Omniture technical account manager should have provided you with a set of code that you can just copy-and-paste into your s_code.js file, or the file may already contain the code when it was first given to you. That’s all well and good. BUT (and you knew there would be a “but”), that code normally applies for external campaigns only, for example, to track users who enter your site from a paid search campaign.

On the other hand, you may have internal campaigns, e.g. banners within your site, like on your homepage, for certain promotions. You’d want to track these in the same way as external campaigns. (Omniture recommends that you do so too.) But that means you’d have to (a) write the code yourself, or (b) get your account manager (or savvy web developer) to do it for you.

New Problems demand a New Solution: setCampaignVars
Now I give you option (c): setCampaignVars. After adding the plug-in to your s_code.js file, you will be able to:

1. Get the (external or internal) campaign tracking code from your URL
2. Store the tracking code in both traffic and conversion variables
3. Store the tracking code+landing page combo as a traffic variable for pathing (optional), and
4. Retain the tracking code only once for a certain period of time (optional)

Here’s how to use setCampaignVars:

1. Get the file, setCampaignVars.txt
   • Refer to setCampaignVars_maximized.txt for the plug-in’s details and its “maximized” version
2. Copy-and-paste the contents of setCampaignVars.txt into your s_code.js after “PLUGINS SECTION”
3. Make sure your s_code.js contains Omniture’s getQueryParam, getAndPersistValue and getValOnce plug-ins
4. Use setCampaignVars within the s_doPlugins block

Getting Started with setCampaignVars
Here are a few example scenarios to get you started with step 4:

• Save your external campaign tracking code (from the “cmp” URL query) to s.campaign and s.prop1, and expire the tracking code within the same visit
  s.setCampaignVars('cmp','campaign','prop1');
• Save your external campaign tracking code (from the “cmp” URL query) to s.campaign and s.prop1, keep the tracking code for up to 7 days, and enable campaign pathing (using “:” to separate the tracking code from your landing page name) on s.prop2
s.setCampaignVars('cmp','campaign','prop1',7,'prop2',':',s.pageName,true);
• Save your internal campaign tracking code (from the “intcmp” URL query) to s.eVar7 and s.prop7 and retain the code for the next 30 days
  s.setCampaignVars('intcmp','eVar7','prop7',30,,,,true);

Now It’s Your Turn
I’ve used setCampaignVars with great success for a major project. Knowing that it works properly in a production environment, I’m now making it publicly available for the Omniture community to use as well. Hopefully, it makes your lives much simpler, as it did mine.

If you encounter any implementation errors with setCampaignVars, please log it down at the setCampaignVars support section in SourceForge. Or help me fix it ³.

Disclaimer: setCampaignVars is not endorsed, verified or supported by Omniture. Use at your own risk. Also, by using this code, you agree not to hold XM Asia Pacific or any of its employees, both past and present, liable for any data errors and/or loss.

At XM, we’ve had a long and fruitful experience with Omniture, makers of a suite of analytics tools. This ranges from setting up a complete tracking solution to using its data to generate dashboards and reports. And this is our simple gesture of contributing back to the Omniture community.

Footnotes:

1. The “s_code.js” file is a required JavaScript file that performs the guts of web tracking for Omniture’s tools.
2. The retention period for your campaign tracking code is measured in days. Ideally, it should match your campaign variable’s setting within your report suite’s Administration section.
3. setCampaignVars is entirely open source and licensed under the GNU General Public Licence v3.

This entry was written by Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui. He has worked as a Marketing Analyst at XM Asia Pacific since 2006.
You may remember him as author of “What is Web Analytics?” or from within the Singaporean social media circles. When he’s not working on Web Analytics, he can be found analysing the performance of his love life.

Wired.com heads to San Francisco’s Exploratorium to see four exhibits that explore the effects of visual illusions and perceptual phenomena.

The third and final day of the iMedia Agency Summit was packed with presentations on digital marketing outside of the norm and some roundtable discussions. Since this was a looooooong and packed day, I’ll use bullet points and focus on my takeaways to keep this readable.

Nielsen:

• advertising is not embracing Internet use as fast as consumers
• questions that marketers ask:
  • “Did the right people see my message?” — importance of data and measurement
  • “Did my message impact them?” — importance of listening (monitor communities) and asking (brand health tracking, online customer relations)
  • “Did they buy more as a result?” — intro to Nielsen AdEffectiveness

David Smith, CEO of Mediasmith, “The Medium is the Metric: Using Social and Other New Media to Track Campaigns”

• social is good for: graphical ads, real-time search, data (map of connections), consumer conversations
• how to track:
  • setup tools prior to campaign – take note of parameters, e.g. dates
  • keywords – brand/product, competitors, vertical, campaign tagline
  • plan for follow-up action
• tips: front-end planning, progress planning (before-during-after), damage control

Kim Walker, SILVER, “The Rise of the Silver Surfer”

• “Population ageing is unprecedented, a process without parallel in the history of humanity” – UN World Population Report, 2007
• in APAC, 2008-2018, ages 0-14: -6.5%, 50+: +33.5% reaching about 1 billion people
• not all are the same: demographics, culture, gender, attitudes
• APAC Aug 2009: 18.5% of all surfers are older than 50 years old, more than 100 minutes in online gaming per month
• homepage viewing time 42% longer, look at same content but for longer
• errors made: 20-50% more
• less likely to register (Forrester, Q3 2007)
• Web 2.0 technology can distract, but users embrace creating/sharing/community
• 55+ and older: 16.5 million on Facebook (fastest growing segment), 204 minutes per month on MySpace, 70 hours per month with 1.2 million active users on Second Life
• Baidu created 123Baidu with clustered search for older people
• degree of age-related: low >– importance of web as channel — what web is used for — how web is used –> high

Roundtable discussion: “The Social Media Effect”

• agencies need to invest in social monitoring, which will lead to sell-in
• objective is important, e.g. brand management, crisis control, SEO, etc.
• social networking as CRM tool –> use CRM metrics, no short-term goals
• every topic will become a social network due to “hyper-local” nature
• apps: games, polls, competitions, in China – social commerce
• many variations of the same engine, e.g. skinning, to contextualise to specific audience
• repurpose same app on different geography / networks (Friendster, MySpace, etc) / platforms (Web, mobile, iPhone, etc)
• app’s virality can depend on building virality into it, e.g. Mafia Wars
• social media is also paid media, e.g. Farmville bought ads on Facebook
• Best Buy – allows in-store staff to respond to customers through Twitter
• enable advocates, convert critics to advocates
• track sentiment of competitors, reach in different networks

Greg Paull, R3, “The Future and Getting Paid for it”

• ask clients what they want
• satisfaction = performance / expectations, need to address expectations
• 38% of advertisers cite creativity as most positive aspect of digital agencies (26% – knowledge, <5% – analytics)
• 44% cite lack of ROI as barrier to increasing digital budget (42% – marketing understanding, 41% – understanding agency)
• 69% are not cautious about spending due to current market instability
• new agency model:
  • consultative – e.g. Meikao in China: work directly with client’s CEO, flat fee, sales incentive
  • collaborative – e.g. Coca-Cola China: created own agency to bring people from different agencies together, no ego, common goal
  • creative – e.g. Mars: agency in China spent five days in US office, ran ideas of marketing director directly
  • cashed up – differentiate on results not price, seek out new relationships
• market your brand as if it was your own client

Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui, with Rueben Anthony, is representing XM Asia Pacific at the iMedia Southeast Asia Agency Summit in Phuket, Thailand. The conference is on 5-7 October at the Indigo Pearl. Stay tuned to find out what’s happened at the conference.

In my view, the iMedia Southeast Asia Agency Summit started proper today. It consisted of some presentations, the keynote address, and a panel discussion — all in the space of four hours in the morning.

During the agency breakfast, we heard two presentations, one from MediaRing Talk, the other from Eyeblaster.

MediaRing Talk:

• besides its telephony service (like Skype), it also has mobile advertising solutions – banners, skins
• case study: Singapore Airlines – 4.26% click-through rate, 2.9% conversion rate
• (what was not discussed thoroughly is that MediaRing Talk’s users are mainly in India)

Eyeblaster

• four new technologies: tabbed ads (display video, text, downloads, etc. in a tabbed banner), dynamic data (e.g. for airlines to pull the latest fares from their booking engines), behavioural targeting (ad’s content that is displayed is based on how you interacted with it previously), and smart versioning (create new versions of the same ad through a non-programmatic user interface (like multivariate testing, but for ads))
• new metric: dwell time – average number of seconds a user is engaged with an ad; sort of similar to how TV is measured, so it’s more easily understood by traditional marketers
• 2008 worldwide trend: 0.14% click-through rate, 0.32% conversion rate
• rich media increases conversion by 2.5x
• optimization increases conversion by 1.5x

Next up was the keynote by Randall Rothernberg, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. In his presentation, he listed seven reasons for digital marketers to join the IAB Southeast Asia:

1. networking
2. intimate association with customers through research
3. government lobbying
4. training and development
5. develop standards
6. IAB as a platform to market itself
7. stay ahead of trends

Benefits of joining the IAB include:

• committee participation
• webinars
• professional development
• networking
• access to IAB products and services
• discounts

(Note: I am not necessarily advocating IAB nor do I receive any kind of kickback for listing the above.)

Randall continued with his second keynote, “What marketers REALLY want from digital media!”

• Marketers face the following challenges:
  • measurement standardisation
  • cross-media measurement
  • antiquated media-mix modeling (e.g. “we’ll buy ads in Yahoo and Facebook)
  • overuse / misapplication of direct response standards and methodologies
  • government regulations
  • creative shabbiness
• Marketers seek new insights capabilities (82% want consumer insights, 80% behavioural targeting)
  • Source: Marketing and Mobile Ecosystem 2010, arranged by Pricewaterhouse Coopers
• Marketers increasingly valuing media and media strategy
  • 58% think direct partnerships with media are more important than going through an agency
  • 60% think media should be integrated with full service agencies or build up their own (26% think media and creative should remain separate)
• Marketers want “social”, “dialogue / conversation”, “intimacy”
• Interactive advertising has ignored creativity, e.g.
  • disincentivizes greatness (e.g. no more names on doors)
  • fails to penalise mediocrity
• Interactive marketing revolution = creativity + data + analytics + digital media, i.e.
  • consumer insights
  • boundary-less creative
  • conversation and community
  • 360-degree embrance
  • metrics that matter
  • true behavioural targeting

Immediately after the keynotes, we dived straight into the keynote power panel, with Randall as the moderator. The panel was entitled, “How should agencies organise themselves to avoid extinction”. However, the panelists pretty much discussed the problem, rather than coming up with solutions. As a result, I noticed that most attendees had zoned out about halfway through and were more busy doing their own things.

For me, I thought that maybe there could have been a few intelligent audience questions, but we were all suffering from lethargy already and looking forward to lunch, thus the silence when Randall asked for questions from the floor.

The afternoon was spent at our recreational activities (snorkeling, golf, archery), in spite of the rain. But I won’t bore you with those details.

Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui, with Rueben Anthony, is representing XM Asia Pacific at the iMedia Southeast Asia Agency Summit in Phuket, Thailand. The conference is on 5-7 October at the Indigo Pearl. Stay tuned to find out what’s happened at the conference.

It’s the first day of the iMedia Southeast Asia Agency Summit, here in rainy Phuket. Yes, the rain has been off-and-on, but so far, that hasn’t put too much of a dampener on spirits, unless anyone was craving for the beach.

Today’s event started at 5pm with a “One Minute Match Up”. All of the agency delegates sat at their assigned seats, while members of the media and publishers moved around the table, kind of like musical chairs. The idea was that the delegate and media member would have one minute to get to know each other, exchange namecards, that sort of thing. Every minute, there would be a bell and a recorded voice, saying, “Please move.”

Of course, few people actually stuck to the rules. One minute was probably too short for a proper introduction. Nonetheless, in the hour allotted for this session, I got to meet a few folks, half of whom were already familiar with XM (yay!).

A cocktail reception followed, where we could mingle more casually and catch up with old friends or make new ones. Later, we were ushered to a ballroom for dinner, sponsored by Tribal Fusion. There was a short presentation about what Tribal Fusion does (it’s an advertising network that sells advertising solutions across content verticals, it’s key difference being that it also scans those content to better understand the websites in those verticals), and then the buffet dinner commenced. Another round of drinks followed after that.

Today was a short day, with delegates arriving almost the whole day. But the next two days should be packed with keynotes, discussions, and fun!

Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui, with Rueben Anthony, is representing XM Asia Pacific at the iMedia Southeast Asia Agency Summit in Phuket, Thailand. The conference is on 5-7 October at the Indigo Pearl. Stay tuned to find out what’s happened at the conference.