Two wrongs don’t make a right. I think I learned that as a 4-year-old. Apparently, HP and Condé Nast skipped out on that life lesson because they’re combining two dying things—print media and printers—to create the unholiest of unions: your HP printer at home will print out Condé Nast magazines for you to read.

It sounds straight out of the webpages of the Onion but it’s true, Condé Nast magazines like Wired, Details, Epicurious, Glamour, Allure, Golf Digest etc. will be “delivered” to people’s personal HP web printers so that they can presumably read them without having to go to the magazine stand. This is real! You schedule when you want to read the mags and your HP printer starts spitting out the pages. (I’m assuming you have to staple the pages together yourself)

I guess this could work in a bizarro world where there is no such thing as tablets or laptops or computers or smartphones or the Internet or common sense but we’re not living in that world! Instead, we live in an era where people are ditching their printers cause they’re useless, people who have printers never print anything because printer ink is ass expensive and print media is dying (which is legitimately sad). But still, combining print and more print is the dumbest thing HP’s done this… month, I guess.

But HP is serious about this. And since they want to revive the printer as some sort of news hub, they’re offering a subscription service for printer ink delivery. It’s like Netflix but for printer ink! Subscriptions for HP Instant Ink will start from $5.99 to $10.99 per month depending on the product line (shipping included). This will not end well. [HP, Image Credit: photographer2222/Shutterstock]

—
drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

It’s starting to get a little frustrating when people ask whether or not they should get an eReader. Yes. If sales are any indication, whether you opt for a Kindle, Nook, or even your iPhone, ebooks are officially the present.

The Association of American Publishers is reporting that ebooks outsold their print counterparts in February, with sales coming out to more than $90 million. That comes a month after Amazon reported that Kindle ebooks were outdoing paperbacks. Paperbacks sold $81.2 million last month.

It should be noted, however, that the report isn’t definite. Andi Sporkin, spokeswoman for the AAP, told CNN that the findings don’t account for every book sold as some publishers may choose to not submit their numbers. What’s more, they do admit that the numbers are coming out of the Christmas season. However, 202% growth in any medium can be used as a barometer for what’s going on right now. [CNN Money via AAP]

Lift in search volume for particular terms – like non-generic brand names – is useful because it indicates that the target customers not only saw the ads, but also remembered them and then took action. It is a better metric than those that only estimate whether ads were even seen or heard – i.e., reach and frequency-based metrics. This even works well for online banner or branding campaigns because it is not the click-through from those ads that we are concerned with, it is the lift in search volume that indicates interest and intent. The habit of search by modern users is now commonplace; as they all go online to look for additional information before making a purchase decision, we now have a universally applicable metric to correlate the effectiveness (and thus the relative ROI) of advertising across channels.

What about absolute ROI? We’ve got that covered too. Beyond lift in search volume, with proper analytics on online destinations, advertisers can track where customers came from, calculate how many took desirable actions like completing a purchase or printing a coupon (for items purchased offline). With these metrics, advertisers can correlate with other known data such as conversion rates of coupons, etc., to derive real-world ROI, scientifically. Obviously there are nuances and caveats, but if applied carefully these methods can help CMOs overcome what keeps them up at night.

Read More:  How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising

Erik_SontumClickZ: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising. http://bit.ly/ardDy5 via @tomtsinas #merkevare

acfou@clickZ How to calculate relative ROI across channels using lift in search volume #ROI #IntegratedMarketing - http://bit.ly/g5FUu

Carroll_PowellRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

hilloupayjouRT @travelwithdayo: Solid article on how to use Search to Calculate Ad Awareness ROI: http://bit.ly/aHqGQV #SEO #Advertising

iamgfcRT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the #ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

jumpcurveRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

SthdesignRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT

lawton_chilesRT @TomPick: RT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

RobHerremaRT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

chead95Good article, but Search misses other brand relationships – RT @clickz Using Search to Calculate ROI of Awareness Ads-http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

doughayRT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

mobiaconRT @eMarketer: “How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou”

ADMAFORUMRT @dpletikosa: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising http://www.clickz.com/3633054

dpletikosaHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising http://www.clickz.com/3633054

KristenShueRT @TomPick: RT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

TomPickRT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

joskouiHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising. #Search, #ROI, #Marketing, #Advertising http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

followtorontoRT @tomtsinas: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising | http://bit.ly/ardDy5

vidaimaginariaHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou @eMarketer

conversionationHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://ow.ly/1QSFR – very interesting for the integrated thinkers

micheleguidoRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

ChrissyZhouLeverage search marketing to boost up your bottom line http://www.clickz.com/3633054

AdvertisingPRCalculate the #ROI of Awareness #Advertising through #Search http://bit.ly/99y2HG

pweiderholmRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

oleagaRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

travelwithdayoSolid article on how to use Search to Calculate Ad Awareness ROI: http://bit.ly/aHqGQV #SEO #Advertising

kingstonjrGreat article. RT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

telerobRT @digeratti: RT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

digerattiRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

tomtsinasHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising | http://bit.ly/ardDy5

AgeSluisRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

Slingshot_SEORT @eMarketer How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

gailtwistRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

pathamilton3How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG

iancsouzaUsando mecanismos de buscas para ajudar no cálculo de ROI de publicidade tradicional. Útil! http://bit.ly/99y2HG (via @eMarketer e @acfou )

micklalalaHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou via @eMarketer

cxdigitalRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

IdeaViewsRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

NASinsightsHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

Lisa_CorcoranRT @eMarketer How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

RobertoCarrerasRT @eMarketer: How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

eMarketerHow to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising - http://bit.ly/99y2HG RT @acfou

jrmostellerRT @clickz How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising – ClickZ http://bit.ly/7zp3FE

acfouCMOs bemoan inability to track ROI across channels - http://bit.ly/bAM4gu; lift in search volume can solve that - http://bit.ly/g5FUu

What if there was a way to cut out most or all of the media cost?  And what if we could also substantially reduce the cost of “creative development” and “content creation?”  Look at the JetBlue example below.  On Twitter, JetBlue has nearly 600,000 followers.  Each of these followers has basically “opted in” to receive their updates, often multiple times a day (“costless media”). There is no “media cost” for getting these messages out. Compare this to what it would cost to air a TV ad that reaches 600,000 viewers (assuming all the viewers wanted to receive the ad, and were sitting there in front of the TV watching the ad when it was aired).

Also, the cost of content is nearly zero too. JetBlue has their customer service people (and fans) help create content by tweeting. These tweets range from customer service (“twitter customer service”) , to service notices (e.g. dense fog in NYC area airports causing delays, etc.), to tips from frequent travelers. This type of content is more “real,” valuable, and trusted than an advertisement. And there is no cost of “creative development” because the content does not need to be dressed up into a glossy ad for TV or print — it’s just 140 characters of text at a time. It’s more effective AND lower cost?!  Imagine that!

Finally, notice in the “bio” area on the upper right of the screen shot that it reports who is currently on duty — “Morgan and Lindsey” — this gives the normally faceless customer service system a name and a face and perhaps even a personality.  JetBlue’s twitter is a great example of social marketing done awesome!

For example, the dollars that used to fund newspaper classified advertising has been replaced by free online classifieds through Craigslist. While newspapers had incremental costs due to materials, printing, labor, and distribution, online classifieds have virtually no incremental cost.  

Similarly print advertising, which was based on targeting ads to specific demographics of readerships are being replaced by online ads which can be more finely targeted to even more niche readerships — e.g. contextual advertising. And the revenue models based around cost per click are inherently more efficient (and thus lower cost) than the impression-based revenue models of magazines. Again for every dollar taken out of print advertising, only a few cents are needed to replace it in “digital.” 

Agree with me or tell me I’m stupid @acfou