The next time you dine out, take a close look at the menu—even if you already know what you want to order. The reason? Restaurants have learned a thing or two about convincing their customers to spend more money on certain dishes. "The use of menu engineers and consultants is exploding in ... more

Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports often collates valuable information that we might otherwise miss. Most recently, he reported on the successful test results achieved by various email campaign tweaks. If you need some inspiration for your own efforts, consider findings like these: Adding an extra ... more

The recession continues to ravage retailers: The downward trend of fewer shopping trips by consumers hit a new low in February 2010 with a 4% year-over-year decline in monthly all-outlet shopping trips, according to the Nielsen Company. more

Creating your visual brand mosaic requires a toolkit different from the one used by earlier corporate ID practitioners––one based more on shared thinking and approaches and less around rules, one that allows you to tune communications for different initiatives and constituencies, and one that can be taught and shared. more

Consumer-based word-of-mouth (WOM) information is viewed as the most reliable source of information about brands on social networking sites: 38% of social networking users say posts from other consumers are most credible, followed by posts from brands themselves (32%), according to a survey from InSites Consulting. more

Do you find the thought of seeking useful information from your analytics package an astronomically daunting one? If so, you're not alone. In a recent post at the Online Marketing Blog, Thomas McMahon notes that small-business owners often can't find the time to make sense of vast reams of analytics ... more

Last time, we explained how podcasts present a great opportunity to bring brand awareness to on-the-go users. But how can the average marketer produce a winner in the podcast-sphere? Here are a few tips to help you get it right: Stick to a schedule. A good podcast creates the impression that ... more

US Internet users who watch TV content online tolerate 6-7 minutes of online advertising per hour, substantially higher than the roughly four minutes of ads per hour currently delivered online as part of TV content, according to a comScore study of cross-platform TV content viewers. more

Most marketing executives cite email or search marketing as their company's top-performing advertising channel in 2009—39.4% and 23.6%, respectively—and over nine in ten (93.6%) say they plan to increase their budget allocation to digital marketing in the next five years, according to the Fourth Annual Marketing and Media Survey from ... more

Big insight: Content creation, pumped exclusively and relentlessly out by You, Inc., isn't the only way to leverage the power of social media. These days, you don't have to go it alone! Sometimes a strategic partnership with a site with a built-in, enthusiastic user base can take half the legwork out ... more

Marking the beginning of a moderate recovery, worldwide advertising expenditure is forecast to grow 2.9% this year, an upward revision of nearly 2 percentage points from the 1% forecast issued in October 2009, according to Carat. more

In the face if a weak economy and declining readership in the print space, the US newspaper industry generated an estimated $27.6 billion in total ad revenue in 2009, down 27.2% from the $37.8 billion recorded a year earlier, according to data issued by the Newspaper Association of America. more

How can you articulate your ideas, qualities, and capabilities in ways that connect to, and engage, your communities? Messaging, or communicating with a rigorous focus on a system of key ideas, is a fundamental activity of strategic brand development and management. Disciplined messaging helps organizations engage in productive dialogues, especially ... more

At a lot of marketing conferences, over-excited pitch people talk a lot about The New Thing that will Change Every Paradigm Forever. So much over-enthusiasm can jade just about anyone, so it was a relief to attend the Advertising Research Federation's (ARF) re:Think 2010 conference taking place in New York ... more

In a recent post at Search Engine People, Stephanie Woods reports there's been chatter lately about Google's making page-load speed an important part of its algorithm. That should come as no surprise, she notes, as usability studies have shown time and again that Web users like speed. According to Woods, here's ... more

Behaviorally targeted (BT) advertising generated on average 2.68 times the revenue per ad as non-targeted run-of-network (RON) advertising in 2009, while average CPMs for behaviorally targeted advertising were over twice (2.08 times) the average of RON CPMs, according to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). more

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of consumers surveyed say they referenced print or Internet Yellow Pages when looking for local business information in the previous month, according to a study by the Yellow Pages Association. more

Despite the buzz around application stores tied to specific mobile devices such as the iPhone and the BlackBerry, carrier app stores are alive and well in the US: one-half (50%) of all mobile apps consumers accessed carrier app stores at the end of 2009, according to Nielsen's new App Playbook. more

More companies seem to be realizing these days that they can use their power in the marketplace to aim for goals bigger than just bottom-line-related ones. That may be because more consumers, when buying similar products, are opting to choose ones that "give back" to a charitable cause. It's an easy way to ... more

Small business advertisers spent on average $2,149 on search advertising in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 111% from $1,018 spent in the same period a year earlier, and up 30% from the $1,658 spent in the third quarter of 2009, according to a study by WebVisible based on its ... more

When it comes to your search ad's landing page—the page that captures the imagination and clicks of your potential customers—you can't be too careful. So warns Jared Spool in a recent User Interface Engineering post that describes common pitfalls when creating landing experiences. To get the most for your search-advertising dollar, Spool recommends, ... more

If you don't think of podcasting as a mobile medium, think again! Any users with MP3 players (including smartphones) can load podcasts onto their devices and listen to them anywhere—while sitting on the subway, jogging, walking the dog, you name it. Podcasts are inexpensive to produce, and once you've loaded one onto your server, you can ... more

The global mobile applications market is forecast to reach $17.5 billion by 2012 and surpass the market for CDs (which is projected to reach $13.8 billion during the same period), according to GetJar. more

What's a Picnic (apart from the classic family activity involving a checkered tablecloth and a ton of ants)? A Picnic is a formidably large candy bar proffered by Cadbury, stuffed with caramel, wafers and nuts. But unless you're in the mood to strengthen your jaw muscles, it's not really the ... more

Total measured advertising expenditures fell 12.3% in 2009 from 2008 levels, to $125.3 billion, according to data released by Kantar Media (formerly TNS Media Intelligence). more