Coupon sites are, by far, the largest segment of affiliate marketing. The coupon site business model begins by aggregating coupons, sales, and promotions available on a retailer’s website or provided via other marketing campaigns (e.g. e-mail, search engine marketing). The coupon site then creates a separate page specific to each retailer highlighting all known promotions. In exchange, the retailer pays a commission to the coupon site for every customer who clicks on these promotions and then buys something on the retailer’s site. To be blunt, our advice to our clients is these coupon sites (note: we assume somewhere a coupon site adds value, but we haven’t seen one yet) are literally just diverting traffic already destined for their site and cutting into their profit like a toll booth on a highway.
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The BP Oil spill live feed offers the Anova Group a chance to demonstrate a few lessons in agile digital marketing. As of the time of writing this blog, millions of people have been searching on Google, Yahoo and Bing the following 5 words – “BP Oil Spill Live Feed”. I myself actually performed that search 4-5 times over the past few days in hopes that the ‘top kill’ procedure would have worked.
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Every day in social media, an event takes place that creates an unusual and uncontrollable social mania. My wife, who is Norwegian, introduced me to the Norwegian Curling Pants Facebook Fan Page. I have attached a picture of the pants in action at the Olympics at the right. As of February 22nd, this current mania can be measured by over 300,000 Norwegian Curling Pants fans. The fan page includes minute-by-minute score updates. As I write this blog, Norway is leading the French Team by a score of 7-2.

By their very nature, no marketer can predict exactly an upcoming social media mania. However, at the same time, I would bet that some social media activity concerning Olympic curling is not that surprising given the history of jokes (at least in the U.S.) about this sport. Furthermore, while a few entrepreneurs have jumped on the bandwagon in attempting to sell similarly styled golf pants, for the most part, this social media event may live and die without any marketing gurus taking advantage of the situation.

The lesson, I think, is that marketers who want to take advantage of social media should both be constantly brainstorming potential social media manias and have the capabilities in place to pounce within days or perhaps hours upon the temporal mania. For large companies, this is a scary proposition to have a team plotting for a social media eruption and expect that team to respond quickly without bureaucratic reviews and approvals. At the same time, considering the recent Toyota recall fiasco, not having a team in place to respond to social media eruptions may soon be the cause of senior executive firings.

Posted by Jeff Aliotta of Anova Group.

In science, fundamental theories create a foundation that provide context for ongoing study of that field. For example, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is the building block upon which astrophysics is conducted. As digital marketing scientists, Anova Group has developed our own fundamental theories that provide a foundation for our field of study. Through our blog, we will share our fundamental theories beginning with the Push Theorem of Social Media.
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In 2010, Anova Group began working with a university-based company that was seeking help in developing more leads for their proprietary technology. Given our mathematical and engineering background, we were intrigued by a technology that can specifically detect and locate any electrical intermittent faults in complex power systems. (more…)

My son Ethan, who has been reading the Harry Potter books, requested “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” movie for Christmas. Like most parents, I typed “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie” into Google. Unlike most parents, I became completely engrossed in critiquing the paid search ads.
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