The Media Strategist will be responsible for developing media strategy, negotiation and cost comparison of media buys, creating presentations and presenting to clients.  The Media Strategist should have the ability to manage accounts with media mixes that includes physical and digital media.

It is critical that the candidate have solid experience in search engine marketing and SEO, and can grow to become the resident expert.  This person will be responsible for managing SEM across multiple clients and educating agency teams on best practices.

Sound like you? Find the full job description here.

This person will be responsible for managing a range of social media efforts for clients, ensuring the agency is effectively leveraging the latest in social promotions and programming. This person will also interact directly with account, creative and planning team members, as well as with clients, serving as a social media strategist and providing support for new business efforts.

Sound like you? Find the full job description here.

I found this article from The Guardian interesting.  You can’t debate it.  The Internet has given people a platform for anonymously spewing negativity and vitriol in a way they most likely wouldn’t when faced with a ‘real human.’

Psychologists call it ‘deindividuation’ – what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed.  It’s covert bullying, and it sucks. If you’re a parent of a kid who uses SM and dig into it, you’ll see it firsthand.

But I have found myself inspired by so many stories of how the Internet has been the vehicle for bringing people together for good.

I was struck by a story of a family who, after finding a paystub with someone’s identification hundreds of miles away from the site of a Midwest tornado, used the Internet to track down its owner, formed a relationship and lent assistance to a family who had lost all.  Similarly, I was blown away by the support that poured in to help Bertie County when @ProjectHDesign put the call out to their followers.

Then, there’s the Japan Earthquake that yielded too many social media miracles to count.  There’s organizations like Kiva. Social good websites aimed at kids. Even a program we helped create: 1 Million 4 Anna

There are two sides to every coin.  Here, both are readily evident.

The Internet has changed how we communicate: the way you use it, the way you teach your kids and companies to use it, can change the world…and each of us too.

So, our gift on this auspicious occasion?  Well, Firehouse was happy to contribute one of the visuals for the 500th post, creating a background by blending key images from posts of the past.  Congratulations again guys.

The campaign let us spark conversations with Stripes customers:

And about the brand amongst their customers:

Using Lamar Outdoor’s iSpot technology, the boards were up and streaming tweets almost instantly. And just as quickly, this mashup of social and traditional media was getting attention from followers and the industry. If you’d like to hear more about the campaign, @TrippWestbrook can tell you all about it this April at the OAAA Conference in Miami. See you there.

Until now, paid search has always been a pull medium with unknown amounts of inventory. The amount you get is dependent on the amount of times searchers hit the search button — which is currently around 530M times a day. This seems like a lot of inventory, but advertisers want more. Because of the consistently high ROI that paid search delivers, a lot of brands have allocated more and more of their budgets to it over the years. And even though this is good news for the medium, several industries are seeing a rise in rates to record highs — posing an uphill battle in continuing to achieve effective ROI metrics.

Behold…

Access to more scale is now available with search retargeting. Here’s how it works. I like to think of it like a boomerang.

A searcher types something into a search engine, but then they get distracted or they aren’t happy with the search results and walk away. A day or so later, that same person receives a display ad that is directly related to what they’ve recently searched for. In other words, it takes a qualified lead based on real and recent consumer intents, and gives your brand another chance to get in front of that person moving them along the purchase funnel. They threw something out there with search, and a relevant offer or product came back around to them through display – like a boomerang.

Even cooler are the different ways to target based on the search query data. You can target by keyword, topic or category. Location targeting is also an option. And frequency capping is another important consideration.

We’ve now met with over 10 ad networks that offer searching retargeting based on search queries from Google, Yahoo! or Bing. And as we introduce more clients to this product offering, we hope to have more success stories to share. There are endless opportunities for targeting scenarios and compelling creative! More boomerangs to come.

While the banner was great for driving clicks (and in some cases he will still be good for this), the artist formerly know as the banner looks way different. He’s more about finding messaging opportunities and developing content, rather than advertising. His purpose is to inform and to entertain, to create an emotional bond.

You might not recognize this guy, but he does stand out as being rich – living among marketing and content. Whenever you hear him speak, he’ll want to exchange something that’s of value. A real 2-way communicator. Lastly, he’s a big believer in doing more — whether inside the ad unit or the context of the entire screen.

I think you’ll be glad you met him particularly as we see the value of the impression going down and the value of attention going up. With that said, impressions aren’t going anywhere — they’ve been around for years. To quote Doug Weaver, who’s also been around the digital space for years, “There’s a reason we call it an impression, not a transfer.”

Let’s all be prepared to hit play on the artist formerly known as the banner and get ready to be engaged!