Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Paying tens of thousands of dollars to companies that scan blogs helps companies decide on products and advertising, the Wall Street Journal reports. For example, the practice helped U.S. Cellular better understand prospective teenage customers: 'Using technology from Umbria Communications, a Boulder, Colo., company that aims to identify demographic groups online based on their speech patterns and discussion topics, WPP's G Whiz concluded that teens were really anxious about exceeding their cellular minutes, often because parents make them pay if they talk too much. The teens also resented being ambushed by incoming calls that pushed their minutes up. U.S. Cellular says that led U.S. Cellular to offer unlimited call me minutes.' Also of note: Intelliseek's Pete Blackshaw 'says companies used to dismiss vocal complaints from one or two consumers as an aberration. But now, they have to pay attention because now those complainers may have blogs. '"

Comments

Do me a favour.

[grub]

Pick one for your blog:

- Donchu h8 it when no1 sends grub cash?
- any company giving grub money gets my business!
- grub does so much and asks for so little.
- i'd buy an SUV if a car company gave grub some l00t!

Thank you.

Re:Do me a favour.

[mpontes]

Offtopic? Parent is funny, dammit. Only if mods RTFA instead of modding down anything that they don't understand.

Am I the only one who doesn't buy this whole "blogsphere" crap? I mean, blogs aren't that relevant, not even for advertising. As a company, what are you going to find by searching Livejournal? That teenagers juse love to cut themselves and therefore, they should all start selling razor blades? Wow, I can't wait till I start seeing DoubleClick's razor blade Flash ads, with wrists getting cut in different directions every time you hover the cursor over the ad.

[Interesting or Insightful, not Funny. Just because I am ironic in every post I make that doesn't mean I'm trying to be Funny. (But mommy, all the cool kids were karmawhoring too!)]

Re:Do me a favour.

[Anonymous Coward]

grub does so much and asks for so little.

Fuck that, I use LILO

The future of the internet

[alvinrod]

Behold the future of the internet:

50% while be whiny, angsty teens complaining about the world in blogs with poor grammar.

The other 50% will be companies data-mining those blogs for insights about what kind of products to market.

Then again I could be wrong as this means that the internet will be 0% porn, which as we all know just isn't going to happen.

New feature.

[yotto]

After scanning chat room logs, Nokia has decided to add an a/s/l button to their next line of phones.

Got your insight right heah!

[Tackhead]

*scan scan scan*

> "DoubleClick Warns Against Ad-Blocking Browsers"
( Read More... | 482 of 587 comments

...which range in vitriol from "Fuck Doubleclick! Fuck them in their stupid asses!", to "Doubleclick sucks double donkey dick", and all the way up to the thoughtful, sensitive "What did the poor donkeys do to deserve having their poor schlongs assaulted by the tonsils of a Doubleclick executive?"

And on that note, I would just like to say:

> Using technology from Umbria Communications, a Boulder, Colo., company that aims to identify demographic groups online based on their speech patterns and discussion topics, WPP's G Whiz concluded that t

*coffeespew*

"G Whiz? G. Whiz, of WPP? You're a jerk, Whiz. A complete asshole."

(Yeah, it sucks being immortal, but some days suck less than others.)

Bloggers not representative... shock!

[bayvult]

The most interesting part of the article:

"Not everything bloggers have to say about brands correlates to the real world. Last summer, Umbria, working for a fast-food client, was monitoring Burger King Corp.'s Angus Burger and found it got some bad reviews from bloggers. Some were deriding Burger King's tongue-in-cheek TV ads that called the burger a diet food. Bloggers notwithstanding, the Angus Burger has become a hit.

In other news: Banana Republic cancelled a range of unisex one-piece pyjama suits, after discovering that its blog research didn't represent its potential market.

Re:A single angry customer makes a lot more noise.

[MightyMartian]

Or, in other words, "I saw it on the Internet, so it must be true..."

Re:You know...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Thats beyond ludacris.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that...I've heard that Ludacris is actually rather tech-savvy. ^_^

I'm tired of content...

[feloneous cat]

Where do I go just to read ads?