Native advertising, or sponsored editorial content, is a new opportunity for brands to promote owned content through traditional news channels. As news publishers contend with declining advertising and subscription revenue, they have introduced a new business model that is erasing the boundaries between earned and paid media.
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iPhone owners who love Facebook are in for a treat. In early 2014, Facebook launched an app called Paper. As many have said, Paper is what Facebook would look like if it had been built in 2014. Frequent Facebook users, after spending a few minutes absorbing Paper’s magnificent visual presentation and horizontal scrolling, will switch permanently to the new app. So how can brands take advantage of this platform?
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Since 2011, the Broward Center for the Performing Arts has been promoting its capital expansion project, ENCORE!Building Community through the Arts, and Starmark has been working in tandem with the downtown venue every step of the way. (more…)
The bright lines separating owned, earned and paid media have disappeared. For example, a company can write content (owned) that looks like a news article (earned), and pay to have that article posted as syndicated content on the web (paid). A brand’s Facebook post (owned) can receive more views by turning it into a Promoted Post (paid). And the trifecta: Vending machines outfitted with Starmark’s FanWise™ social reward technology provide instant rewards to visitors for posting specific, brand-crafted social status updates from their mobile devices (earned/owned/paid). (more…)
How well is my paid media campaign supposed to perform? What kind of ROI am I expecting from this effort? Am I reaching new consumers? These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself prior to launching your next paid media campaign.
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Images are becoming increasingly important to social media success. Facebook and Twitter have both completed recent upgrades that make images and video more prominent in their streams. Furthermore, Instagram, owned by Facebook, and Vine, owned by Twitter, are surging in popularity and swelling with new features.
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When the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau unveils its festivities in New York City next week, a vending machine filled with Hello Sunny sunglasses will help brand the experience. The machine will dispense the sunglasses for free, thanks to Starmark’s patent-pending FanWise™ technology installed inside. (more…)
Twitter is looking a lot more like Facebook – beyond just a much-hyped IPO. Twitter has added photo and video previews to users’ timelines, both on the web and on mobile. Tweets that contain photos or Vine links will automatically preview those images. The change helps Twitter catch up to Facebook’s expanded emphasis on images.
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Starmark designed an online 360° experience for the El Conquistador Resort with the meeting professional, wedding planner and bride in mind. This initiative gave the resort’s relationship with these target audiences a boost. Since most planners could also select more accessible resorts, this cutting-edge 360° tool eliminated the need for them to travel all the way to the rainforest to choose a venue. An immersive virtual tour of the Puerto Rican paradise empowered El Conquistador’s sales team, differentiating them from their stateside competitors.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Gmail, like many email providers, had disabled email images by default. Images can be used maliciously — to load viruses to your computer or to expose details of your mailbox to spammers and hackers. In a major change, Gmail has decided to enable images by default. To protect users, Google will serve the images from Gmail servers.
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Reprinted from the South Florida Business Journal
Three megatrends in marketing and communications will be growing at lightning speed in 2014. Taking part in these growing waves of opportunity can reap big rewards for early adopters. (more…)
A December 2013 survey of nearly 10,000 women found that when it comes to making purchase decisions, Facebook recommendations from friends and family have the highest impact. The influence of friends and family was followed, in descending order, by professionals, website reviews, acquaintances, and bloggers, bottoming out with celebrities, who had the greatest impact on only 11 percent of purchasing decisions. (more…)