Twitter just broke the ad barrier with a new tool that lets marketers deep dive into users' tweets to serve up the most relevant ads, rather than just analyzing their "interest graph."

Tests of the keyword-based targeting mechanism indicate a click rate of 11 out of 100 times an ad appeared, which "shows the power of the intent expressed in users' public tweets," Kevin Weil, a senior director of product at Twitter told Reuters. The ad tool leverages the essence of Twitter’s DNA—the ubiquity of hashtags. "It's already used today as a way to focus conversation," Weil added. "Now it's also a way for users who are talking about something to see really relevant [ads]."

Twitter, now valued at $9 billion with 200 million users worldwide, is preparing an IPO possibly by 2014. With that, the social service has set its sights on another engagement driver: video.Continue reading...

Only four percent of women worldwide consider themselves beautiful according to Dove, whose latest installment of its famed Real Beauty campaign presents a social experiment to dispell negative personal perceptions. 

The tagline of the campaign, "You are more beautiful than you think," demonstrates the disparity between a woman’s self-image and a stranger’s perception, playing on the common saying , "You are your own worst critic."

Created by Ogilvy Brazil, FBI-trained artist Gil Zamora, an forensic expert who has sketched more than 3,000 eye witness reports, first drew portraits of seven women of different ages and backgrounds according to their own description, followed by sketches of those same women according to strangers who had just met them on the same day. 

In the "Dove Real Beauty Sketches" video (watch below) produced for the campaign, the participants say things like, "My mom told me I had a big jaw," "I kind of have a fat, rounder face," and "I'd say I have a pretty big forehead."Continue reading...

Oreo has made an unlikely pairing for it's latest China campaign, and we're not talking about green tea Oreos or the host of other local variations (ice-cream flavor, anyone?) introduced by the Nabisco division of Kraft-now-Mondelez.

It's an irony of history that Oreo's new China spokesman, film director Feng Xiaogang, was last found at the helm of Back to 1942 (一九四二), last year's three-hour, brutal epic about the Henan family that killed at least three million people.

But then again, Feng Xiaogang's career is full of little ironies. He's one of China's most popular directors of the last decade and yet almost nobody has heard of him in Hollywood. For Oreo, a western brand that has localized for the China market better than almost anyone, it makes him a perfect choice. Oreo's localization strategies like cucumber flavors and square shapes have won it press accolades and, more importantly, leagues of happy customers.Continue reading...

Pepsi took YouTube by storm last month according to Google’s YouTube Ads leaderboard. The brand is benefitting from its latest viral branded content hit "Test Drive", which has over 33 million views. 

The video, which is the brand's second attempt on a spoof video, garnered more plays than any of 2012's leaderboard ads, earning 13 million more views than 2012's top performer, Nike's "My Time Is Now."

Samsung made the chart twice in March with its Galaxy S4 launch, while newcomers EA Sports, Adidas, ConAgra, ESPN, Doritos and the Anti-Defamation League’s "Imagine a World Without Hate" video, (the first non-profit to be so feted) all made it as well.Continue reading...

Every April 1st, Google tries to outdo itself with a new array of April Fools' Day pranks, and this year was no different.

Users of Google quickly spotted a “Google Nose” link that appeared on April 1st that invited consumers to smell what they are seeing on the site, whether it is a campfire or a flower. Or, at least, it would let them “leverage new and existing technologies to offer the sharpest olfactory experience available.”Continue reading...

Heineken marketing and design types are huddling these days to prepare for the final phase of this year's annual Your Future Bottle Design Challenge. A team of brand people and design experts are planning to select a single winning bottle design at Milan Design Week next month as Heineken uses the second consecutive year of the crowdsourcing initiative to mark the company's 140th year in the beer business.

The brand also is fielding new advertising videos under its two-year-old "Open Your World" campaign, unveiling a new multi-media advertising effort called "Get in the Game" around rugby's Heineken Cup tournament in Europe, looking for volume gains in central and eastern Europe by positioning Heineken as a "five-minute luxury," and enjoying a new designation as the winner of a "Digital IQ Index" for beer brands.

Heineken seems to be all over the place—all over the world, really—with these new branding efforts and mini-campaigns, which of course is the idea.Continue reading...

As rumors swirl of CEO Marissa Mayer’s imminent $200 Million spend on the "YouTube-of-Europe," Dailymotion, (valuation around $300 million), her greater plan for the Yahoo brand is coalescing.

During Yahoo’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Mayer said Yahoo’s four areas of focus are search, ads, video, and mobile. “Given that we do not have mobile hardware, a mobile OS, a browser, or a social network, how are we going to compete?” asked Mayer rhetorically during an interview with Bloomberg TV in January.

“I think that the big piece here is that it really allows us to partner. … Our focus, in addition to technology, but also on media, it ultimately means there is an opportunity for strong partnerships. That’s what we’ll be focused on.”Continue reading...

With four billion hours of viewership a month, YouTube’s leaderboard position in the evolving stream of video is more secure than ever, but the web video world has radically changed since YouTube first hit the scene in 2005, which is why the streaming giant is busy evolving its platform and creating new partnerships. 

YouTube today works hand in hand with social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to make videos trends like the "Harlem Shake" (with various versions scoring tens of millions of views apiece in weeks) a viral phenomenon.Continue reading...