May, 2014 - Mason Interactive

Heartbleed Gets Worse, Google Goes All Minority Report-y On Consumers, The Fins Pro-Hall&Oates, and Finally Social Media Marketers Get A Theme Song… What You Missed On the Internet from MasonInteractive.com:

You Haven’t Heard of Heartbleed? No, it’s not Kanye’s follow-up to 808s & Heartbreak. It’s the morbid but not entirely as scary a name as it should be for the massive security breach going on right now. Apparently because the problem is (very) technical, it’s difficult for regular users to understand why this vulnerability is a big deal, besides the fact that every news outlet tells you that it is. Trying to understand it all? Get the full Geeksplanation. [Mashable]

PLATFORM WATCH – Platform News Alert: Google is attempting the impossible…again. Getting very Minority Report-y. They reportedly just launched a pilot program with six advertisers to try and connect online marketing to offline sales with an ‘in-store attribution transaction reporting’ mechanism in AdWords. [SearchEngineWatch] Design Firms Realize Tumblr’s A Thing Tumblr Adds Curalate Visual Analytics To Platform [SocialTimes]

We should all be more like Finland. They put Hall & Oates on their stamps to celebrate homoerotic art… not really H2O but Tom of Finland, a global icon of contemporary gay culture. [TheVerge] What do nerds think of Mike Judge’s new HBO spoof Silicon Valley? They love it, or at least, we do. Some are dubbing it (not us, of course) the Nerdy Entourage. [Mashable] We are just in it for the sardonic take on the new it thing…Mike Judge always gets it just right (think Idiocracy). What do you think? Will you be watching? GONE VIRAL (for the the wrong reasons) viral videos from Mason Interactive boutique digital marketing firm NYC Let’s Get Social?

Finally, a theme song for all us social media marketers to rally around. [youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itvvFfeLh84” ] This “song” from the first Social Media Marketing Week in Vegas is well…something. And if by something, we mean horrific and completely cringe-worthy. Can we be Simon Cowell for a moment? Mason Interactive – Let’s Get Social Thanks. Also, we apologize for not posting this when we were first given this gem of an ear-sore last week but we didn’t think it warranted it’s own post (which it clearly did).

Lead Sources: At Mason, we’re lucky enough to work with our education marketing clients. It’s an exciting mix of for-profit, not-for-profit, graduate schools, pre-schools, undergrad and certificate schools. As a result, we’re able to try new things and see how they work for the entire .edu marketing field. Three new(ish) sources we’ve been trying are working very well for our education marketing campaigns. The platforms driving low-cost, .edu leads for us are iAds, Yahoo Gemini, and LinkedIn’s new offerings.

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is well known to attract two types of users. The first type is someone who is looking for a job. The second type is, drumroll please, also someone looking for a job! So what is the difference between the types, you ask? The difference is – intent to improve skills. The first type is someone who is browsing and will make a move when the right opportunity comes along. The second type is someone who is not ready to hop jobs. This user is preparing for something bigger – a career shift. This person knows that shifting careers means acquiring new skills. This audience is perfectly positioned for almost any education marketing campaign. In our experience, CPCs vary from $2-$5, a low range compared to Google for the education marketer. Targeting options include age, location, skill set, group affiliation, and other interesting segmentation. Ad copy features a small graphic and allows multiple exclamation points!! The only downside is phone numbers are not allowed in ad copy.

2. Apple iAd Workbench

Recently open for small and medium sized advertisers, this ad network features CPC and CPM display campaigns on Apple mobile devices – iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Banner ad sizes are odd to say the least, but CPC range is still very affordable! You can pretty much get away with spending under a dollar per click, which is rare to come by these days. There is a wide variety of targeting options. Age and geo is a must. The cool part is that Apple knows what you’re doing on your device, which allows advertisers to segment by types of apps, types of music, movies, and even user’s book categories!

3. Yahoo Gemini

We’ve heard from official Bing/Yahoo channels that the entire Bing mobile ad inventory will be shifted to Yahoo Gemini network in just a few months. Oh Microsoft, thanks for thinking up more ways to keep us busy! Being a recent addition to the Bing marketing mix, CPCs are low as advertisers are slow to jump on. There are two ways to advertise on Gemini: search ads and native ads (display) on Yahoo’s prime networks. Some of the great Bing AdCenter features were carried over to this platform. This includes the bulk upload feature via excel making it easy to manage large campaigns. These are the three relatively new ad channels – ideal for education marketers. Jump in, before they get saturated with advertisers!

10 Questions with Brook Shepard I would like to preface this post with the following disclaimer: BROOK SHEPARD DID NOT APPROVE THIS MESSAGE. Though, I suppose it really is his own fault that I happened to possess them by introducing me to a friend of his from high school in a business meeting…tisk, tisk. So Read On and Learn something you may not know about our Co-Founder and General Manager (he hates being called the boss, even though he is) at Mason Interactive.

Brook is an Ivy League Graduate, former NYC Cabbie and Artist who loves GBV (Guided By Voices), James Bond, a well tailored suit and Ninjas. Judge for yourself whether Brook lives up to his senior superlative title… Our “MOST UNIQUE” Boss. Image courtesy of Brook’s High School Yearbook Senior Superlatives Our “MOST UNIQUE” Boss. When your friends ask what you do, what do you tell them? I own a small agency on 29th St. If I wasn’t in digital marketing, I would… teach high school. If not in New York City, I would live in… Key West. If I had to be outdoors all day, I would… What? Does not compute. Error. If I could go back in time for one decade, it would be… The 1990’s because I’d like a do-over on my whole teenage experience. As a teenager, I was totally into… girls. (yeah he was ) LL Cool B (Ladies Love Cool Brook) A Young Brook Shepard, NBD just going to Senior Prom with 3 dates. The fictional character I’d be best friends with in real life is… Duncan Idaho’s Ghola(s). (We didn’t know either, but apparently it’s a character from Dune) The last thing I purchased online was… A shirt from ClayTompkins.com The last book I read was… Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis. The last song I listened to was… “Call Your Girlfriend” by Robyn. My cocktail of choice is… Vespers – 3 ounces of gin, one ounce of vodka, half ounce of Lillet, shaken and served in a deep champagne goblet with a long thin slice of lemon peel. Meet The Team is where we feature one member of our team a month, so you can get to know a bit more about us, apart from what our voices sound like on the phone during our weekly updates with you.

Mason Interactive Market Smart Big Data Quote #MarketSmart: “Data is important, but an idea rooted in INSIGHT is worth it’s weight in gold” Great quotes that inspire us to be better advertisers, communicators, innovators and content creators for MasonInteractive.com clients! Topics include: advertising, client relations, creativity and innovation.