For those of you who are familiar with us, you know we've been involved with fastest way to lose weight

://www.skip1.org”>Skip1.org for a couple of years now. We were honored to attend Skip1's Skip1Night on Saturday, April 6 to support its cause: Skip something. Feed a child. The event celebrated the World Changers that have helped Skip1 along the way, and provided many surprises for its guests. Read more about the event here.

With the swift rise of social media marketing and mobile advertising, the FTC has decided to expand its online advertising guidelines to cover all online, social, and mobile marketing. The three most important things to note are that disclosures should be placed “as close as possible” to the relevant claim, that hyperlinks should be labeled clearly, and that the use of them is discouraged for health, cost, and safety related disclosures. Read about all the updates here.

If Boomers still lead in consumerism, is newspaper really all that dead?

My biggest fear in writing about newspaper as a potentially valid media is that I will be perceived as an “old advertising person,” someone who can’t keep up with the times. For those of you who know me, though, I doubt this is a concern.

So let’s think about this for a minute or two. Clearly newspaper has declined in readership over the last 10 years. But then again, so have their rates. Most of the papers my agency deals with are offering us substantially reduced costs. Thanks to ABC circulation audits that show the drop in circulation and readership, newspapers can’t deny that they have to sell for less. One newspaper that will rem

ain anonymous used to have advertisers waiting in line for full-page ad placement on a cover that cost about $7,000. Now that paper is selling this space for a little over $2,000 and covers are not very hard to get.

No doubt most newspapers now lack the high clout they retained in media for many years. But the question to answer would be, “Does x-investment in a full page ad that’s read by x-number of most likely Boomers fit your business marketing needs? How much needs to be sold to make sense out of a $2000 full-page ad with cover placement? That’s the only question needing an answer.

Lastly, if businesses are hesitant to advertise in a newspaper because they think it will make them appear somewhat unsophisticated in today’s new media market, remember, the only people who will see it are those reading the paper.

And, by the way, most Boomers reading the paper these days are far from unsophisticated.

-Cheril

With YouTube joining the billion users club and Facebook’s News Feed re-launch, consistently updated visual content is key to a brand’s online success. how to stop smoking weed

//www.adweek.com/news/technology/youtube-joins-facebook-billion-user-club-148065″ target=”_blank”>Read more about YouTube becoming the second largest social network and learn how to most successfully use Facebook’s re-launched News Feed.

One might wonder why there’s such a fuss about Google’s surprising decision to shutdown Reader by July 1. Why is it such a significant tool? The answer is what we at Brandtailers have long incorporated as one of the most important aspects of our Online Brand Management program, “listening.”

While Google Reader is a great way to keep up-to-date with one’s favorite blogs and websites, it’s also an amazing tool for “listening” to a brand’s consumers, competitors, and opportunities online.

What is “listening?”

The act of “listening” isn’t just comprised of recognizing consumers’ comments and complaints; it provides vast benefits including developing new leads, identifying additional business opportunities, discovering content, learning about industry news and trends, keeping an eye on the competition, and increasing understanding about a business’ core consumers’ demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and patterns.

The Real Reason Reader’s Disappearing:

Google blamed low usage for its decision to kill Reader, but the LA Times reports it has continuously struggled with compliance and privacy issues and “did not want to commit a full staff to it to ensure the service complied with privacy laws.”

Other RSS Feed Options:

Search Engine Journal’s Marcela De Vivo lists 6 feed readers to replace Google’s Reader. These include Digg, The Old Reader, and Feedly, who reported 500,000 new users joined the site in the 48 hours after Google announced its decision.

Sure, we’re sad to see Reader go (because it was, in our opinion, the most reliable feed reader), but we’re also excited to see how these other readers perform in comparison to Google Reader, and are hoping to see great social integration, something Google’s service seriously lacked.

According to Borrell Associates, spending on local promotions is expected to reach $176 billion in 2013, up 33% from $130 billion in 2007. This spending includes coupons, discounts, promotional products, event marketing, licensing, point-of-purchase, sponsorships, and specialty printing, among other promotions subcategories.

Total promotions spend is expected to reach $628 billion this year, with local promotions calculating to roughly 28% of that total.

Why local promotions?

It’s important to establish reciprocal relationships within a business’ community. The business expects a transaction from their local consumers, and consumers ever-increasingly expect more than just the product or service in return.

Going one step further than the competition by providing discounts to local friends and family or sponsoring a little league baseball team not only provides the business with a positive reputation, but also gets the business’ name out in the community more and develops meaningful relationships with potential consumers.

Additionally, local promotions can establish increased levels of trust for the business because the community recognizes the business cares about them and their specific needs. And as all marketers know, consumer trust is the number one marketing challenge.

Digital on the Rise, Again

Another promotions area to take note of is digital, which is forecasted to rise to $36.1 billion by the end of 2013 and $80+ billion by 2017. If consumer-facing businesses haven’t already taken advantage of digital promotions, these numbers prove it’s time to start.

Data-driven creative can be amazing. It can also be a disaster. Let’s consider what data is in the first place — an overabundance of spreadsheets that provide broad analytics. When it comes to a big idea or taking a risk, data can’t make the call. Which is why even in auto advertising when setting apart a specific dealer brand it is imperative to not just listen to data, but also take a stand, make it engaging and give it time to take effect. Recently, we produced a handful of spots for Cerritos Ford that are quite different from the typical car ads. We certainly followed the analytics that strongly suggest people don’t like dealer ads that scream at them and then took a chance by focusing on the people who work there to humanize Cerritos Ford and gain consumer trust. Not to mention entertain them along the way.

-Dane

(Learn more about Dane here.)

Is it just us or has the term “Native Advertising” been used in marketing conversations more than “social media” lately? We’re here to explain what it is and why it’s catching on.

What is “Native Advertising?”

Put simply, Native Advertising mixes high-quality content into the natural experience of a platform. Examples of Native Advertising are Promoted Tweets, Sponsored Stories (Facebook), and Paid Discovery.

Why “Native Advertising?”

As one can assume from the definition, Native Advertising is a seamless part of the user’s experience on the site they’re already navigating. While it stays true to the brand and specific messaging, it doesn’t interrupt the flow of content from the site, rather, it adds to it.

This thought process of being what consumers are interested in rather than interrupting what consumers are interested in ends up turning into more engagement and impressions for the brand.

Opinions Galore

There have been many opinions about this “new” form of advertising (new is a relative word because it has existed for a long time; now it just has a shiny new name).

One opinion we agree with is HubSpot’s when they say in order to be successful, inbound marketing should be incorporated into Native Advertising, however, we’re not so sure about all of its suggestions. For example, in order for Native Advertising to work, the user experience needs to mimic the experience they would have on the publisher’s site without the businesses’ ads. This means linking to a third-party site or landing page should be minimal.

One might wonder, “how do businesses collect leads, then?’” There are behaviorally targeted programs like LCX Digital that create ad overlays that never require engaged users to leave the publisher’s site, but still collect mounds of information, a system proven to increase engagement and follow-through.

Time Will Tell

Like all marketing and advertising trends, we’re sure there will be plenty of case studies to learn from (good and bad), but we’re pulling for this trend because it’s our belief that brands should find their fit in consumers’ lives instead of trying to force a relationship.

It wasn’t a Facebook phone, but Facebook Home that stole the spotlight at the media event on April 4. This almost-too-invasive Facebook integration into Android devices allows users to view status updates in the home screen and when the phone is in the locked position, as well as chat with Facebook friends. Brands’ updates will appear on Home as they do in the News Feed. Read more about Facebook Home on Mashable.