We are proud to announce that Launchpad Advertising has been recognized with a 2011 Outstanding Achievement in Web Development award. Congratulations to the Launchpad team that worked to bring the brand identity of CONTEXTWEB to life online!

WINNER NAME
Launchpad Advertising

WINNING ENTRY
CONTEXTWEB Web Site

AWARD
Outstanding Website

As you all know, the Google peeps have been working really hard on redesigning their products — Gmail, Google+, Google Mobile — so everything looks clean, easy to navigate, and user friendly. But, most importantly, they’re creating a platform with seamless integration between all of their products, and You Tube is no exception.

The redesign got a bunch of mixed reviews; some people think that YouTube is trying to compete with TV and that will not happen, some people don’t like the look. I think many of them are missing the bigger point: YouTube is not trying to reinvent TV, but is trying to bring the “TV experience” to a social platform.

Here are 3 (of my personal favorite) things you can look forward to in the new YouTube:

1-    Social Integration:

Now you can see what your friends are watching, you can connect to Facebook — and of course, Google+ — share videos and view a feed of videos posted by your friends. You also have the ability to filter videos, so only relevant ones will come up in your feed. Pretty cool.

2-    Channels

According to YouTube, Channels are the most important addition to the new redesign. “The future of the YouTube experience has channels at the center of it,” said Margaret Stewart, director of User Experience at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California. “It’s a container for all the world’s video, and it needs to be the best home for that.”

Think of channels like people you follow on Twitter or blogs you subscribe to. You follow them because they provide you with content you enjoy and you keep coming back because there’s always something new posted that you want to read. Channels work the same way. For many, YouTube is a place to go looking for a specific video. With the redesign, YouTube hopes users will make a habit of visiting the site just to see what’s playing on their favorite channels. “More and more, behind every great video is a great Channel, we want to make it easier for you to find and keep tabs of what you want to watch,” YouTube wrote on its blog.

3-    Movies

I was very surprised about how many people who reviewed the redesign left this one out. To me, this is the game changer. If you go to your homepage on YouTube, you’ll find “Movies” at the top of the page. Once you click, you’ll be amazed–you find the latest movies for as low as 99 cents. Yeah! It beats AppleTV, Redbox and of course, OnDemand. When I saw that, the first scenario that came to mind is this:

It’s Friday night, I’ve had a long week and I’d love to curl up in my couch, drink a glass of wine and watch a funny movie. I decide I’ll watch Bridesmaids, since I heard it was hilarious. I go to Netflix from my AppleTV, nope they don’t have it yet. I go to AppleTV, it’s $4.99. I think, maybe I can find it on FiOS OnDemand for cheaper… wrong — it’s $5.99.

Well, now there’s YouTube. For 99c, I could do a comedy marathon! And that’s not all; they have tons of other movies for… wait for it… Free!

So here it is, my 3 favorite new additions to YouTube. I invite you all to get a Gmail Account (If you haven’t already done so) and go checkout your homepage. Meanwhile, here’s a Tutorial YouTube put together to get you started.

Happy Video Surfing!

Mariam Guessous is a Junior Art Director at Launchpad Advertising, the Interaction Agency®, which is dedicated to developing and executing communications that drive relationships between customers and consumers from brand to buy.  Find out more at lpnyc.com.

While this sounds like an opportunity that’s worth diving right into—it’s not completely smoothed out just yet. It’s a finicky platform, with a slew of bugs and a ton of untapped potential.  That being said, in-app advertising has a good chance of being a commanding force in the immediate future (especially if it’s got DoubleClick’s ears perking up) and it is a perfect example of how it is the agency’s responsibility to be tapped into the cusp of digital innovation.

The article notes that $30 billion is spent on web advertising annually.  Mobile advertising alone is expected to generate $1 billion this year, projecting in-app advertising as one of the fastest growing areas of the online advertising industry. So those (not-so) tiny little ads that pop up during your Angry Birds lite sessions are not going anywhere anytime soon.  In fact, they’re most likely going to get more intrusive, and less avoidable.

So what does that mean for advertisers?  A few things:

1. First of all, through the creative development lens, agencies will have to constantly dissect how in-app ads function. What are the possibilities?  What are the specs and standards for ads (which – by the way – vary based on the app)? What phones/devices will ads work on? These questions are still debatable, as more intrusive and richer types of media formats arise, and hundreds of thousands of apps continue to be developed.  You don’t want to end up with an execution that either falls short or defies the limits of the technology.

1. Advertisers will have to be more creative in how they approach mobile advertising, as users may begin to avoid downloading apps if they have a reputation for being riddled with annoying ads that commandeer their screen and halt their mobile experiences.

1. Agencies will absolutely have to know their developers – nothing hurts more than working out a real slam-dunk-of-an-idea, selling it to a client, being promised by a developer that the idea is doable, and then finding out that your end product is actually going to be a shell that’s stripped down beyond recognition.  With all of the varying formats, operating systems, and capabilities, it’s more important than ever to know that the people you’re relying on to build out an idea are capable of communicating possibilities, and then executing it as promised.

DoubleClick and other adtech companies like them are going to find new ways to serve ads effectively through the in-app platform.  Over time, It’s going to facilitate a development of standards to be applied across mobile apps, require developers to understand how to work within those standards efficiently, and for other forms of mobile advertising (like search and text messaging) to get more creative and interesting to work in.  But, most importantly, as these formats become standardized – and as the public gets more familiar with seeing them – cool new ways to advertise digitally will emerge.  These will have their inherent glitches and inconsistencies for the industry to attempt to manipulate and discern.  Really the only question is, who’s going to know about them first?

Eddye Borgese is an Account Manager at Launchpad Advertising, the Interaction Agency®, which is dedicated to developing and executing communications that drive relationships between customers and consumers from brand to buy.  Find out more at lpnyc.com.

According to a recent survey from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, SEO is the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating Pay Per Click (PPC) and Social Media. Therefore, it is vital to show up at the top as often as possible to maximize your leads.

So, how do you optimize your site so that you not only show up, but that you show up higher than the competition? Well, here are the Top 4 SEO Factors That Determine Your Search Engine Ranking:

Anchor Text & Linking

Probably the most powerful factor in determining your rank in the search engines, internal and external links to your site are what boost your ranking above others. Basically, your site and pages are difficult to find until someone else links to it and says hey, this is a credible source. The more sites linking to you, the more credible you’ll be.

What is Anchor Text?

• Anchor text are the words that are highlighted and clickable in the hyperlink. It is important that the anchor text consists of the right keywords because they can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.
• Example, if every site linked to LaunchpadAdvertising.com using the keywords “best ad agency”, then when you search the phrase, “best ad agency”, guess who would be #1? Why don’t you give it a try?

What are External and Internal Links?

• External Links: links from other websites that point to your site. These are the most valuable.
• Internal Links: these are cross-links within your own site.

Title and Meta Tags

What are Title and Meta tags? These are the tiny bit of code that search engines read when looking for the best match. It’s important to have relevant Title and Meta tags with the right keywords and phrases you want to target. See the image below. Click here for more information on How To Use Meta Tags.

Heading Tags

The heading tags are HTML tags that are used to hierarchically organize the design and the content of a web page. These “H” tags range from H1 to H6 (H1 being most important). The heading tags are used to give a webpage structure of “what” the page is about. It tells the search engines the ontology of the page and how important a page section is. By doing this, search engines can understand the pages better and then boost rankings in search results accordingly.

Content & Keyword Density

The last, but not least, piece of the puzzle is your site’s content. In order for the search engines to recognize that your site is relevant, the right keywords and phrases need to be in the body content. Just don’t over stuff your pages with the same keywords and phrases or you’ll be penalized.
For more information on SEO, check out http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

Daniel Solomon is an Account Manager at Launchpad Advertising, the Interaction Agency®, which is dedicated to developing and executing communications that drive relationships between customers and consumers from brand to buy. Find out more at lpnyc.com.

If we put ourselves in the shoes of Walmart shoppers, the added value here becomes very apparent. For example, when I was in college, if my local Walmart had a calendar of what food samples they were featuring each day, you can bet I’d like their Facebook page, or follow them on Twitter. I loved free samples then as much as I love a four-dollar latte now (and who are we kidding, we all still love free samples). With my interest peaked from seeing the free sample post, I would remember that one thing I needed at the store, head over, grab a free sample on my way to the designated aisle, and probably buy an extra bag of trail mix on the way out. So while on the one hand this hyper-local strategy is a brand play, what we also see is the weekly circular, re-invented.

In the past, consumers would read about specials and sales once a week in the Sunday paper before planning their shopping lists. Now, in the place of that static paper, there is a dynamic social billboard that posts upcoming sales, specials as they launch, and can even be used to update consumers on inventory counts–think Tickle Me Elmo’s at Christmas. For the consumer this makes monitoring a good shopping opportunity even easier, and for Walmart it drives consumer interest more frequently, not to mention the ease at which they can now spread the word. Slashing a price? No need to run an expensive commercial or wait a week to print the news in the paper. Walmart can drive interest right away.

The more consumers can stay in the know, the more likely they are to visit for timely gratification, and the more sales the store makes. From a marketer’s perspective, this is one of the most ideal win-win situations. And in Walmart’s case, that slightly stronger connection, the small tilt of the needle across 3,500 stores, means one giant win for their social media endeavor.

What do you think of Walmart’s strategy? Would you follow them on Facebook?

Melanie Weinberger is a Digital Strategist at Launchpad Advertising, the Interaction Agency®, which is dedicated to developing and executing communications that drive relationships between customers and consumers from brand to buy. Find out more at lpnyc.com. You can also follow Melanie at @melruns.

Though the feature doesn’t fully launch until next Friday, September 30th, I used the Facebook Develop platform to gain early access (thank you, CNET, for the tip). After a few simple steps, I was in, and grabbed screenshots of the tour for you to check out:

Developer access success:

Step 1: Adding a “cover” to your profile. This sits across the top of your page, and gives the page a polished, photo-blog appearance.

Step 2: A dashboard at the top (instead of the former left hand side navigation) for access to your main assets.

Step 3: You now have an activity log. This shows you in a plain format all the activities you’ve done on Facebook.

Here is what the activity log looks like if you click on the “view activity” link:

Step 4: Here is the actual new timeline format. The line down the center acts as the timeline measure, and your activities pop out on the right and left alternatively, in the order which they occurred. Sort of a timeline that’s standing up, rather than running horizontally across the page.

Step 5: Another nice feature, you can customize your timeline to make certain events more prominent on the page. So for example, if I wanted to shamelessly plug my personal blog each day, I could amp up those posts, so they don’t get lost in the clutter of all my other activity.

Now that your life story is on display in a much more accessible fashion–you can add in events that you didn’t take the time to capture on Facebook before.

And there you have it. Here’s what my new profile looks like after completing the tour, and adding my cover photo:

The new profile, with cover photo. It looks like a blog, doesn’t it?

So, what do you think? Too much change to handle at once? Or are you excited to try it out? I hope this preview helps your transition next week!

Melanie Weinberger is a Digital Strategist at Launchpad, follow her @melruns

Hook, line, sinker. I wanted to know more.

The issue, it seems, is that as Netflix delved more and more into streaming video as opposed to it’s tried and true model of DVD mailings, they didn’t do a great job of explaining the price differentials to customers–and some people get pretty upset. I personally never used the mail-in service, so didn’t have the frame of reference to notice a difference, but I kept reading on because the opener had me at hello .

There are five things that this email did really well, making it a good example of how to turn a negative incident into a positive brand touch-point:

1. Acknowledged the issue at hand right away
2. Took full responsibility for it (entirely different from the point above!)
3. Explained why it happened
4. Laid out what steps have been taken to avoid issues like this in the future
5. Invited consumers to comment on the original blog post to share thoughts (Had I not recieved this email, I would have never known about the blog post. Hurrah for integrated digital marketing!)
6. Most people throw around the adage that acknowledging the issue is the first step–yes, that’s true. But taking complete ownership of the problem is another step up altogether. This wasn’t a case where the company claimed to be unaware of how it happened, or of who caused it. It was laid out all within the CEO’s (wringing) hands. Risky, and wonderful. Something consumers can truly appreciate, especially in the midst of an economy where no one wants to take ownership of anything these days.

Another striking thing about the email is the announcement of the segmentation between church and state the mail order DVD service and streaming video. The company’s definitive answer to what has been immediately changed to ensure the company does better business moving forward. The two services will now be treated as separate divisions–allowing Netflix to fully realize the necessary evolution of their product within available consumer cloud technologies, while maintaining and finding new revenue streams within the mail order segment separately. Not to mention the new brand launch of Qwikster for mail order services (pure marketing play of a name.. didn’t we used to call it snail mail?).

Hopefully this move will secure the future of Netflix as over time the streaming segment will certainly shoot up as the primary accessed channel. However, the new brand comes with a completely separate line of business for consumers–a dilution of the Netflix brand and additional line item on credit cards. Instead of a seamless integration, it is a pure consumer facing separation.

While many of the comments on the Netflix blog post from consumers are angry and unrelenting about this move, from my perspective, a company that I once had no feelings on whatsoever now won some positive mindshare from me.

The tone of the email really put the consumer first, and painted a picture of the CEO as a puppy with his tail between his legs. He messed up, he’s sorry he went into the garbage, he knows now it will get him in the doghouse, and he wants to earn his treats back sometime in the foreseeable future. While it might be a PR move, it’s a move in the right direction.

Melanie Weinberger is a Digital Strategist at Launchpad, follow her @melruns

New York, NY, June 7, 2011 – Fueled by continued organic growth and new business success, Launchpad Advertising announced today the addition of Noah Ross as Executive Creative Director. He will be responsible for overseeing the agency’s creative efforts and driving the creative vision for new business and existing clients.

“Launchpad was built around the concept we’ve coined ‘Interaction’, which focuses on delivering solutions that are designed to work across all communications levers from brand-to-buy,” said David Low, Principal at Launchpad. “Noah’s background and way of thinking truly exemplifies this philosophy. He is one of the most talented and forward thinking creatives in the business with a history of bringing great ideas to life effectively across many different channels.”

“Launchpad’s creative teams are extremely strong, and Noah will help raise our game even further,” added Scott Elser, Launchpad’s other Principal. “Noah is more than a great creative mind, he is a passionate, collaborative leader who will work closely with the team to continue to deliver exceptional work to our clients by delivering purpose-driven ideas that push boundaries and convention.”

“I think that Launchpad is doing an incredible job of developing smart efficient creative solutions to business challenges for an impressive portfolio of brands.” said Ross, “In a landscape of constantly evolving media and technology they are doing work that is tailored for each client individually – from the ground up, and having fun doing it. I’m excited to help shape the creative vision of an agency with a finger so firmly planted on that pulse.”

Ross brings over 12 years experience on both the agency and client side. He joins Launchpad from experiential marketing agency Fathom, where he served as Creative Director, following stints at TracyLocke and McCann-Erickson. In that time he has developed award-winning multidisciplinary campaigns for a range of clients including LG, DL1961 Jeans, Xbox, Absolut, Rolling Rock, Pepsi, Southern Comfort and Knoll. Ross also served as art and concept director for the award-winning independent noir feature, Able Danger. His work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, New York Magazine, Huffington Post, Gawker, Communication Arts, and 7 international film festivals, including a world premier at International Film Festival Rotterdam and a screening at Cannes.