Monitoring social media campaigns can be difficult. There are some wonderful tools out there but most require registration or paid subscription. Google just launched a new service that simplifies the real time monitoring of updates made from Facebook and Twitter.

The system dubbed “Google realtime” is as easy to use as any Google search. Simply type in your search term or wrap your term in quotes if you want an exact match, and click search. The system will then provide you hour-by-hour results for the current day.

What’s even more impressive is you can also select where the content was posted from geographically. So if you have offices or stores in different physical locations you can select the city and state where you would like to see comments.

This simple to use service provides a great tool for determining social comment trending for any organization.

They measure all kinds of media usage these days, how much time you spend with it, how often you zip and zap it when it gets on your nerves for one reason or another and how much you get out of it.

One thing they don’t look at is which ads will chase you away from the environment in which the ad is featured and possibly motivate you not to return – either during that program/issue or possibly any programming/issue in that environment.

In my case the ads that will always get me to retreat – change the channel, put down the magazine, etc. are any ads that feature cruelty to animals. Not only will you not get a donation from me, you will cause me to abandon the ad environment altogether.

Now I’m sure some of these ads are big money generators or they wouldn’t be run by so many organizations, but I’m a huge animal lover and I will not tolerate those cheap and tawdry tactics. Tell me the good things you’re doing for animals, don’t show a sick looking creature locked up in a crate with a horror story or a tacky sad song.

When I know a network or magazine, etc. features these manipulative ads frequently I ban it from my existence. And I would not want my media buys to be impacted by this sensationalized bullying.

While animal cruelty ads are the number one reason I will “change the channel” there are others as well. I always avoid networks that show horror flick promos while I’m eating a meal – and for that matter I tend to avoid them in general.

As a marketer it is worth evaluating your medium with this concern in mind. How do you think a McDonald’s barbeque special commercial would fare run between two pods featuring animal cruelty? I know it would affect my appetite – that is if I hadn’t already abandoned the channel permanently before the McDonald’s spot even ran!

The median age of the broadcast nets’ viewers has climbed at twice the rate of the general U.S. population.

According to a report by veteran media analyst Steve Sternberg for Baseline Inc., CBS’s median age last season was 55 (up from 45 in 1991), ABC’s was at 51 (up from 37), NBC’s was 49 (up from 42) and Fox’s stood at 44 (up from 29).

Note, for example, that Two and a Half Men is an aging show, with the median age of viewers at 50.  Meanwhile, Dancing with the Stars, another hit, remains on the air with a median audience age of 60.

Alan Wurtzel of NBC points out that there are more older viewers available – the American population’s median age jumped from 33 in 1990 to 38 last year, according to the Census Bureau – and that advertisers have begun to recognize that older viewers have money and are receptive to advertising.  Fox’s Glee has a median age of 38 and CBS’s The Good Wife and the NCIS franchise skew the oldest at 58 and 57 respectively.

Boomers

TV dominates with Boomers.  Boomers specifically watch about 9  hours of video daily.  Boomers are responsible for one-third of television viewers, online/social media users and Twitter users.

Twitter may have millions of active users, but many, many more millions don’t even have accounts. Which is what makes this latest news, big news. Twitter’s newest feature called “Fast Follow” uses a classic short code approach and makes it easy to follow anyone via SMS, even if you don’t have a Twitter account.

If you see a Twitter @username at a restaurant or store, on a billboard or on TV, or if you hear one mentioned on the radio, you can simply text “Follow [username]” to 40404 and you’ll start receiving all of that user’s updates via text message. The service can simply act as an SMS-based newsletter or text alert program. This would be a great way for bars and restaurants to simply and inexpensively promote daily deals or special promotions.

Certainly this could become annoying really quick if you follow someone who tweets all the time. But it looks like you’ll have some granular control over SMS messages you receive. Even more control if you have a Twitter account. But with SMS, you can turn text messages on or off by sending ‘on’ or ‘off’ to 40404.

You can follow @twittermobile to keep up with the latest mobile developments.

OTHER TWITTER UPDATES:  Twitter is launching an official Tweet Button for sharing articles on websites and counting how many times a URL has been shared, according to documents Mashable has obtained. The Tweet Button could launch as soon as this Thursday. Read>

Using location-centric mobile social services like Google Buzz, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare could raise your home insurance premiums, or even result in the denial of insurance claims.

A gag Web site called “Please Rob Me” raised the obvious truth about location-based mobile social networking: When you tell the public where you are, you’re also telling burglars you’re not at home.

Insurance industry watchers predict that after customers get burglarized and file claims on stolen property, the insurance companies will probably investigate to see whether the customer broadcast information over social networks in a way that constitutes “negligence.” They could also make “social networker” the homeowners insurance equivalent of “chain smoker” in health insurance — a category of customers who are charged higher premiums.

TIPS

• Only use location-based services when you need them. Sites like Foursquare may be fun, but letting everyone know your routines could spell bad news for your home security.
• Don’t post your address anywhere. This should be a given!
• Don’t tweet about vacations, unless you have a house sitter.
• Think before you tweet! Something as simple as tweeting about your meal while out to dinner could tip someone off that you’re away from home.
• Don’t friend anyone you don’t know on a location-based app or service. Yes, Twitter may be all about the numbers, but you don’t want someone knowing where you are all the time because you friended them.

I have to admit that I use all of these services mentioned above and I never thought that this could impact my home insurance rates.  I will continue to use these services but I must admit that I will exercise greater caution now.

With all of the good in the world we must remember that there is unfortunately the bad as well.

Typical weekend errands. On my list was toothpaste. Simple right? Not so much! Usually I just grab my preferred brand and off I go. Paying little attention to the entire shelf. But on Saturday, it so happened that the toothpaste aisle in this particular store was very wide and as I turned the corner, I had a visual perspective that caused me to stop dead in my tracks. The number of choices, even among the same brand (Crest for example), was staggering.

At what point does choice cease to be compelling and become instead, a burden? Have we devalued real choice by making such a big deal out of small differences? Are we diluting brands with too many line extensions? These questions had me curious and interestingly enough while doing some research over the weekend, I found an excellent new video presentation on TED on this very subject. Definitely worth watching. It may give you a fresh perspective.

Findings from a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project report that adults are just as likely as teens to have texted while driving and are substantially more likely to have talked on the phone while driving. In addition, 49% of adults say they have been passengers in a car when the driver was sending or reading text messages on their cell phone.

Overall, 44% of adults say they have been passengers of drivers who used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger. Beyond driving, some cell-toting pedestrians get so distracted while talking or texting that they have physically bumped into another person or an object.

According to Pew, 82% of American adults (those age 18 and older) now own cell phones, up from 65% from the first reading in late 2004. 58% of adults now send or receive text messages with their cell phones. By comparison, a September 2009 Pew Internet survey found that 75% of all American teens ages 12-17 own a cell phone, and 66% text.

According to research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2008 alone, there were 5,870 fatalities and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported.

Some of the key findings from the survey include:

• 47% of all texting adults say they have sent or read a text message while driving. That compares to 34% of texting teens ages 16-17 who said they had “texted while driving” in a September 2009 survey
• This means that 27% of all American adults say they have sent or read text messages while driving, compared to 26% of all American teens ages 16-17 who reported texting at the wheel in 2009
• 75% of all cell-owning adults say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. 52% of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 reported talking on a cell phone while driving in the 2009 survey
• Among all adults, that translates into 61% who have talked on a cell phone while driving, which compares to 43% of all American teens ages 16-17 who said they had talked on their phones while driving in the 2009 survey
• 49% of all adults say they have been in a car when the driver was sending or reading text messages on their cell phone. The same number of all teens ages 12-17 said they had been in a car “when the driver was texting.”
• 44% of all adults say they have been in a car when the driver used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger, compared to 40% of teens who said they had been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a dangerous way.
• 17% of cell-owning adults say they have physically bumped into another person or an object because they were distracted by talking or texting on their phone. That’s 14% of all American adults who have been so engrossed in talking, texting or otherwise using their cell phones that they bumped into something or someone.

More details from major findings include these notes…

47% of texting adults say they have sent or read a text message while driving:

•  Male texters are more likely to report texting at the wheel; 51% of men who use text messaging say they have sent or read messages while driving while 42% of women texters say the same
• Those in the Millennial generation (ages 18-33) are more likely than any other age group to report texting while driving. While 59% of texting Millennials say they have sent or read messages at the wheel, 50% of text-using Gen Xers (ages 34-45) and 29% of texting Baby Boomers (ages 46-64) report the same

75% of cell-owning adults say they have talked on a cell phone while driving:

• Men are more likely than women to report this distraction; 78% of cell-owning men say they have talked while driving, compared with 72% of cell-owning women
•  80% of cell-using Millennials say they have talked on their mobile phones while driving. However, Gen X stands out as the group most likely to chat at the wheel when compared with older generations. While 86% of Gen Xers who own cell phones talk while driving, just 73% of Boomer cell owners and 50% of those age 65 and older say they talk on their phones while at the wheel

49% of all adults say they have been in a car when the driver was sending or reading text messages on their cell phone:

• Men and women are equally as likely to say they have been in a car when the driver was texting. However, non-white American adults are more likely than whites to say they have been passengers of texting drivers. While 56% of black adults and 58% of Hispanic adults say they have been passengers of texting drivers, 46% of white adults report the same
• The likelihood that someone will be a passenger of a texting driver decreases dramatically with age. While one in three (75%) Millennials say they have been passengers in a car with a texting driver, 59% of Gen Xers, 37% of Boomers and just 18% of adults age 65 and older say they have had that experience
• Parents are considerably more likely than non-parents to say they have been passengers of distracted drivers; 58% all parents say they have been passengers when the driver was texting, compared with 45% of non-parents

44% of all adults say they have been in a car when the driver used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger:

•  Men are more likely than women to report being passengers of cell-distracted drivers (48% vs. 40%) 
•  Millennials and Gen X are about equally as likely to report being passengers of drivers who use the cell phone in a dangerous way (59% vs. 52%). However, both groups are considerably more likely than older generations to report this experience. Just 37% of Boomers say they have been passengers in a car while the driver used a cell phone in a dangerous way and only 21% of adults age 65 and older say they have had that experience

The physically-distracted crowd is also slightly more urban and well-educated than others. Cell owners who live in cities are more likely than rural residents to bump into other people and things (20% vs. 13%). And cell owners with college degrees are more likely than those with high school diplomas to be looking at their screens when they should be looking at their surroundings (20% vs. 14%).

The findings for those ages 18 and older come from a nationwide phone survey of 2,252 American adults conducted between April 29 and May 30. 1,917 were cell owners and 1,189 used text messaging. The margin of error in the full sample is two percentage points and in the cell subpopulation is three percentage points.

Source:  Center for Media Research & Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Calvin Klein has a reputation of pushing it in their advertising and so I’m always curious to follow them to see what they are up to. A couple weeks ago Calvin Klein replaced some of its billboards (in NY and LA), not with controversial or racy imagery, but with a giant QR code with the tease to “Get it Uncensored”.

Although widely used in Europe and Japan, QR codes are still somewhat of a novelty here in the US. However, as smartphone penetration increases, it’s becoming more and more common to see QR codes appear in ads, on packaging and used in general promotions. We’ve played with these a bit here at Bozell, but since most U.S. citizens still do not own smartphones, and even those that do don’t necessarily know what a QR code is or have the necessary scanning software to read it meant pretty limited exposure. However analysts predict that smartphone penetration will match feature phones by this time next year, so the picture could change drastically.

Since I live in neither NY nor LA I obviously didn’t have the opportunity to scan the CK QR code myself to see what happened (although I tried from online images but couldn’t get it to work). When I finally saw the exclusive, 40-second commercial (below) that the QR code brings up featuring Lara Stone, I was disappointed. I guess I expected something way more provocative given CK’s history. Seems like a missed opportunity to me. From what I understand, it’s a test for CK, but marks the official premiere of Calvin Klein Jeans’s Fall 2010 advertising campaign. At the conclusion of the video, viewers can then share the code with their Facebook and Twitter networks.

One is a typical star-studded montage. The other is a charity F-bomb-a-thon. Read More

The verdict is in from Forrester Research, Foursquare is too small for major marketers right now.  Read More