Several brands are finding they can get a solid ROI from online media buys by picking and choosing a small number of partners. Samsung CEO Peter Weedfald, however, favors a “the more the merrier” philosophy.
“If I was to scream, `I’m Peter Weedfald,’ at 4 a.m. in Times Square, people are going to think I’m crazy. and I’ll probably get arrested,” Weedfald said during his Sept. 27 keynote at the OMMA East Conference & Expo. “But if I was to scream, `I’m Peter Weedfald, and I’m a friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger,’ people may take notice.”
Weedfald didn’t underestimate the importance of selecting Web partners that offer the best match for Samsung’s products and audiences. But as a company that sells several forms of electronics and technologies, Samsung is able to partner with a broader base of online partners.
Samsung runs banners on 426 Websites, which gives it a 24/7 online presence. By building this network of partners, Samsung has been able to obtain more consumer data than its competition, which Weedfald said leads to more brand awareness, a greater ROI, and an ability to act as a marketer for others.
For example, Samsung was able to impress rocker Jon Bon Jovi with its marketing penetration and effectiveness, which led to a partnership that had Samsung launch albums online and stream live concerts to hundreds of thousands of fans it targeted through banner-ad data.
Samsung also ran banner ads for retail partner Best Buy (promoting Samsung products) on its own Website, which resulted in 600,000 clickthroughs. “Had we partnered with a broader Website like Yahoo! for something like this,” Weedfald said, “the cost would have been greater, and we may have needed 6 billion impressions to achieve the same clickthrough rate.”
Weedfeld said he would love to be on television 24/7 in addition to the Web, but the Internet is a much more cost-effective and trackable measure than TV.
“Let’s say there was a network than ran nothing but ‘Friends.’ What do you think they would charge me to run a banner at the bottom of that 24 hours a day?” Weedfeld asked. “A billion dollars? Five billion dollars?”
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