Promo Interactive

You’d think that the big news from a recent survey of 1,000 marketers by digital marketing firm Econsultancy and services provider ExactTarget would be that companies say they’ll spend more on digital media this year and they did in 2009—17% more on average, to be precise. It’s been the kind of year where a substantial investment in online campaigns should make a respectable splash.

Still, that hike is no big surprise, you say: Digital is measurable, and metrics lead to benchmarks and assurances of return on spending. These companies are simply migrating their money to channels that can produce the best provable performance at the least cost.

Not so fast. It turns out, the study reveals, that one of the online channels likely to get the biggest increase in marketing budget this year is the one that the large majority of respondents say is the hardest to measure, with the worst-understood ROI: social media. more

If you’ve seen it in a theater,you may know by now that James Cameron’s “Avatar” is the most innovative product to hit American movie screens since D. W. Griffith said, “Hey, maybe some close-ups would make the Civil War more interesting.” Whatever you may think of the story, if you’re like most audience members, you’re going to be blown away by computer-generated animation that’s at once totally lifelike and completely unlike life as we’ve ever seen it in the movies.

That’s why I was so anxious to get to my local McDonald’s and order up a Big Mac: because the quick-service chain went to great lengths to ballyhoo an elaborate tie-in with the movie’s Dec. 18 launch, promising everything from online game experiences (including some unlocked by access codes from Avatar packaging) to my particular interest: a set of augmented-reality “Avatar Thrill Cards” available on Big Mac packages that, held up to a computer camera, offered interactive visits to the movie’s planet Pandora.

The Internet reality may be augmented, but the commercial reality is that among the several McD stores near my office and home, I couldn’t find one that offered the Thrill Cards in the first five days after the movie opened. more

Suppose someone came to you in December 2006 and advised you to start thinking about a mobile brand strategy, and fast. The reason: a computer company was about to unveil something that would take marketing over wireless devices to a whole different level.

Come on, be honest. Chances are good you’d have nodded, maybe added mobile to your list of things to look into when you had time, and then forgotten all about it until Steve Jobs got up and introduced the world to the iPhone. And the brands that already had cellphone strategies in place—or at least on the drawing board—got to steal a few giant steps on those that didn’t.

Well, you just may have a second chance at being an early entrant, thanks to another company not known for phones. more

About two months after Pepsi’s Amp Energy brand began offering a free iPhone app that promised to teach men how to find social success with 24 different female stereotypes, the app has been pulled from iTunes because of an apparent flood of protests in blogs, in Twitter and on 24-hour cable business shows.

But the most interesting thing to me is that, having been damned because it did let one of its brands roll out this fairly cheesy app, Pepsi was then soundly damned because it didn’t—that is, didn’t insulate the parent company from this controversy but instead issued an online apology in a way that took it broader than just the Amp product line. more

Coupons.com, which offers members digital discount offers via Web and mobile phone, has expanded its platform with a new portfolio of services, including the ability to save discount offers to selected retailer loyalty cards, the company announced today.

The Mountain View CA-based company also unveiled enhancements to its popular Grocery IQ shopping list app for the iPhone, as well as an iPhone app version of its Coupons.com Web site and a new optimization of the http://www.Coupons.com site for other feature phones. more

Did you realize that October 5 to 9 was National Layaway Week? Value retailer Kmart did—after all, they called the holiday– and celebrated by launching an online center where customers can find, hold and make installment payments for the items they want to pick up in-store and give this holiday. more