Which companies made social media work for them this year?

Forrester calls out the corporate projects that it says best used social applications to accomplish business goals.

Below, the winners of the 2008 Groundswell Awards, in the various categories:

• Embracing: MyStarbucksIdea.com by Starbucks
• Energizing: Hershey’s Bliss House Party by House Party
• Listening: Mattel’s “The Playground” Community by Communispace
• Managing: Borderless Workplace by Accenture
• Social Impact: Artshare, Click Exposition, and Posse by
  Brooklyn Museum
• Supporting: Nerd Network by National Instruments
• Talking: Young & Free Alberta by Common Wealth Credit Union

You’re invited to check out any, all, or none of these projects.

Some words of wisdom – from the press release, where they are not often found. [Bold mine.]

“The reality is that consumers are in
control, and companies must be in tune with them in order to constantly
adjust to their needs and behaviors. Aligning with customers is the only
way to maintain loyalty and market advantage, particularly in a down
economy where fighting for every customer counts.”

                                                        – Carrie
Johnson, Forrester VP and Research Director

Are they swearing off China? Not remotely. It's too juicy to pass up.

But the new guidelines – drawn up by "leading Internet companies" along with human rights organizations, investors and academics – do lay out some do's and don'ts of the sharing of personal information in these emerging markets, the AP reports.

Only this time around, it's not with private companies who want you to buy their stuff, but governments that want to shut you up. Okay, maybe not you. But someone equally as opinionated – who is not as fortunate to live in a country as rabidly defensive about free speech.

The Global Network Initiative guidelines direct companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to…

1. Consider human rights issues ahead of time as they decide which countries to operate in and what services to offer.
2. Train employees and develop mechanisms to resolve conflicts.
3. Require written requests for information, along with the names and titles of the authorizing officer.

…Ultimately figure out on their own which "practices" to change in order to comply. Because the guidelines are just, well, lines in the sand, and do not ban any specific
conduct, many of them are open to interpretation – and they are certainly not enforced by any third party.

Google and Yahoo have come under the gun for some of their practices in China – Google for censoring about 2 percent of its search results and Yahoo for turning over emails that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese journalists – though the repercussions of that gaff have already been settled, wrote Wired.

Taking a break from the battle of the search engine advertisers (which is getting boring anyway, unless of course, they're rapping), let's take a crack at trying to understand what's going on in the world of e-commerce. Yes, e-commerce. It's not as pretty as search, or contextual advertising, but it's kind of hard to ignore.

Despite the crappy economy, people are still buying stuff – and perhaps because of it, they're turning to the online channel. Think about it: You get all your choices right in front of you, when you want them, and you don't have to drive anywhere! Sure, the cost of shipping may go up because of higher fuel prices, but since you're not actually seeing your own gas needle dip, it's like it's not even happening.

But let's skip over all of those middle conclusions about how e-commerce is so, so resilient to a faltering economy, and get right to the playa's.

eBay's third quarter results were disappointing and Q4 doesn't look like it's going to be much better, InternetNews reports. Under pressure to compete with Amazon, the company started focusing more on fixed price sales rather than the auction/marketplace model that it used to grow its wings. It also started pissing off sellers with new fees and regulations. And then, lo and behold, 10% of its 15,000-person workforce is shown the door. Oops.

Amazon, on the other hand, has committed no such travesty – and apparently profits are up 48% from Q3 last year, writes Retailer Daily. Revenue was also double-digit-y, squeezing out 31% more from consumers. However, much of this revenue was not from Americans – Amazon is capitalizing on foreign markets like the UK, Germany, Japan, France, and China. (Amazon's biggest American fan might just be Oprah.)

You gotta wonder what's going to happen when the spending slowdown starts affecting those markets as it's been hitting us for the past year. I think Amazon's wondering that, too: It gave a glum Q4 outlook as stock prices plummeted last week, down even more from the 40% plunge from the past two months.

eBay's stock has lost half its value so far this year. Ouch.

Brad Stone from the NYT shed some light on the situation:

"While
eBay was buying into classified advertising, online payments and
Internet telephony, Amazon spent hundreds of millions of dollars
building its brand as a trusted retailer – hiring customer service
representatives and returning money to customers when transactions went
awry."

I think he's leaning more toward Amazon, don't you? What do you think? Where are these two e-tailing giants going? All the way? Or to the grave?

In case you're thinking I made a typo in the title, think again. This battle is worthy of any Supreme Court.

Forget sugar mamas – affluent women are ten times more valuable when they start talking. A study by the New York Times showed that “Marketing Multipliers” – a new subset of rich chicks – use dramatically more online and offline word-of-mouth to
drive increased purchases, writes Social Media Biz (a new resource for aggregated social media news that I just stumbled upon – lowercase intended).

They also spend twice as much on the "good things in life" – you know, consumer electronics and
fashion. (I know, what happened to "wine and vacations"? And when it comes to fashion, boy do they talk about it:

See chart (via MarketingCharts, click to enlarge):

"Marketing Multiplier" women are also:

• Twice as likely to post to blogs or to publish their own web pages, compared to other women
• Mmore discriminating in vetting their online sources: 71% of Marketing
  Multipliers say it is important for an ad to be “on a website that I
  consider trustworthy."
• More likely to seek out in-depth information on products.
• Going to take twice as many trips, and talk more than four times as often about
  travel brands – including hotels, airlines and car rentals – than other
  affluent women.

Today a 27-year old Canadian’s dream came true: bloggers round the world – or at least those that are hip to saving the world – will publish, donate, promote the issue of poverty on their blog.

See the video that inspired this kid to use social media for social change:

So, as we’re registered and all, I figured I should chime in about global poverty. Here’s what I think: it sucks. No, it worse-than-sucks. It’s unacceptable. However, I shall leave the job of making it disappear up to those highly skilled in the art of philanthropy and social change.

One opinion I do have, however, is that out of all the solutions presented by world-savers, I think that microfinance is one of the best. I mean, it’s sustainable, kids. And harnesses the power of capitalism. Yum.

So, hat’s off to the creme de la creme of the microfinance projects in third world countries: The Acumen Fund. Anti-malarial bed net factory in Tanzania? Ambulances in Mumbai? They got it covered.

See the Osocio blog – one of the few blogs about non-profit advertising to make it into the Ad Age Power 150 – for some ads created to further the anti-poverty movement.

Seven in 10 ad and media agency execs agree: Viral video marketing is worth the dough.

A report released this week from LA-based Feed Company shows that the majority of the 40 admark execs from major advertising agencies and media-buying
firms such as San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners;
Seattle-based Wieden + Kennedy and New York-based Digitas and McCann
Erickson said they will increase their spending on producing and marketing viral videos.

So they’re gonna spend more money on it in 2009 than 2008 – big whup. But wait, look again. Citing benefits such as "brand engagement," (87%) and "exponential views" (92% said so), making us remember that viral video really does pull consumers – and hella lot of ‘em – in to the message.

But how to do you know, really, how many? There reporting tools like Tube Mogul, but considering that About 95% want greater accountability from
vendors, that just ain’t enough. Moreover, the desire for "better metrics" goes  beyond the
clicks and into knowing where the viral video falls on the page
alongside other text and graphics, Mediapost reports.

And here’s something else: No one seems to really know how many views make a video a success. 250,000? A million or more? See the perplexing chart and ponder the missing benchmark.

Check out the first in Adotas’s series on "How the Internet Changed Everything," or, the role of online culture, journalism, commerce, and advertising in the upcoming presidential election.

Part deliberative town square, part raucous debating society, part
research library, part instant news source, and part political comedy
club, the Internet connects voters to a wealth of content and
commentary about politics.

Might be worth peeking into, to see what they have to say. In the meantime, we’ll just keep reading HuffPo.

And maybe Tina Brown’s new "beastly" online pub, which claims to "sift, sort, and curate. "We’re as much about what’s not there as what is," she wrote. My god, the woman is just as scary as she was when she took over The New Yorker and fired all the good writers.

For a rundown on how social media is really affecting politics, see MarketingVOX’s "Social Media’s Election Frenzy: Resources, Memes, and Stats."

Cast your vote a few weeks early – for the best digital ads, that is.

Eyeblaster is holding its seventh annual awards event for Digital Advertising Campaigns – and you can have a voice by voting for the People’s Choice Award. Go here to vote before October 17.

New this year is the award for best cross-channel campaign, or the campaign that exemplifies excellence across multiple digital channels.

North American Nominees

• HP Touchsmart, Goodby Silverstein & Partners
• Buckleys, Saatchi
• British Columbia Dairy, Tribal DDB, Vancouver
• San Diego Zoo, M&C Saatchi LA
• Sheraton, AvenueA Razorfish

International Nominees

• Non-Stop Fernando, Lean Mean Fighting Machine
• Mini R55 Launch, Glue London
• Springfield, OnTwice Interactive
• Texas Poker, Ogilvy & Mather
• Cacique, Doubleyou ES

Winners will be announced in New York City on Wednesday, November 5th at the Eyeblaster Awards bash. Will you be there?

Our club basketball team used to have to compete with the big bad badminton team for court space in teeny-weeny Dillon Gym – which does not look like a gym at all, but rather, a medieval dining hall.

One day during a particularly poignant battle, one badminton winner – whom I suspect had had a particularly bad day in the Engineering Quad – triumphed over his longtime rival. Dripping with non-sweat, he raised his racket in air and let it lead him in ever-increasing circles, yelling, "I. Am. CHAMPION!"

And this is about how online advertising industry execs might be feeling right now. The financial crisis has finally started hitting marketing budgets, but instead of sucking money equally out of all mediums, it’s pretty much just traditional advertising that is getting smacked down like a badminton birdie.

Here are the numbers, via the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report:

• Internet advertising revenues in the US
  were $11.5 billion in the first six months of 2008, setting yet another new half-year record that
  represents a 15.2% increase over the first half of 2007.
• 2Q’08 was up 12.8% over the same period of 2007 and
  showed just a slight decline of 0.3% from the first quarter.

The rock stars leading the surge are Search and Display. (Nice to meet you.)

• Search revenues totaled almost $5.1 billion for the first six months of
  2008 (up 24% from the $4.1 billion for the same period in 2007)
• Display-related advertising, which includes Display Banner ads, Rich Media, Digital Video, and
  Sponsorship, totaled close to $3.8 billion for first six
  months of 2008, compared to the $3.2 billion reported for the same
  period in 2007, showing about a 19% increase.

EMarketer made quite a few interesting predictions in the beginning of this year, such as "Networking goes beyond MySpace and Facebook" (yes), "Beijing Olympics pumps up ad spending" (obvi) and "YouTube decides the election" – well, maybe not YouTube flying solo but definitely all of rich & social media.

Here’s another one, though: VIDEO SURGE SLOWS. (Sounds New York Post-worthy?)

"The surge in online video growth is expected to slow in 2008 with a 74
percent growth (down from 89 percent in 2007) and a spending increase
of $1.35 billion. In 2008, the array of video available online will jump dramatically,
both from professional content producers – such as TV networks – and
from of amateurs churning out user-generated content."

But wait, there’s more:

Online video players such as Google, Microsoft and the TV networks will
fortify their video offerings by buying small, ad-related companies. However, ad dollars on video will remain small relative to the total US online ad spending."

Take that, Brightroll, VideoEgg, and yes, YouTube. But wait, are they right? Has video ad spend slowed?

The revised forecast, via ClickZ: Online video ad spending will hit $5.8 billion by 2013, up from $505 million right now. That’s a jump in share from 2 percent of total online advertising to 10 percent. But the report warned that CPMs may drop in the coming years due to 1) the novelty wearing off 2) lack of scarcity and 3) web users are less inclined to watch video ads than TV viewers.

But, as Lost Remote points out, that last point "makes little sense." Yes, the commercial load is lighter, but in the long run, this results in higher ad recall and high CPM – though with increased inventory the rates should drop down again.

And here’s something to chew on: The Financial Crisis is giving online viewership some incredible boosts. See this WSJ article on the growth of streaming video. Everyone’s doing it. They can’t not.