TV advertisers can now judge the effectiveness of their campaigns more accurately than ever. Thanks in part to the market research and rating company TRA, marketers are now comparing second-by-second TV viewing data with shopping behavior recorded by frequent shopper cards. Advertisers can now tell if single advertisements increased the likelihood that a consumer would buy their product. These data also allow more intricate use of advertising based on “target-rating points”. For instance, certain ads may be more effective on people who purchase soda. New data streams are allowing market research companies to find out what programs soda drinkers watch so that advertisements appear accordingly. Although demographic buys are still an effective tool at reaching one’s audience, whether its advertisers hoping to reach an older age group at CBS or younger Americans on Fox and ABC, advertising is becoming a finer art with ever-greater accountability and complexity.

Although potentially the best medium for a brand to directly interact with an individual over Facebook, Apps have had few success stories with the Facebook Platform. Mike Murphy, vp of global sales at Facebook argues, “if a brand builds an application as their social strategy and not as a tactic that contributes to their overall strategy, then more than likely they won’t see good results.” The best advice for apps out there is to keep them simple and useful. Social network users jump from activity to activity and appreciate short loading times and applications with functionality. Apps’ greatests mistakes are when they are little more than ads themselves.

Success stories such as FedEx’s packaging application, a digital gift-sending program, have been marked by over 100,000 installations in a three-day period. However, these numbers were not sustained and today there are only 1,500 monthly users. To spread brand awareness, rather than create their own branded apps, companies like Microsoft are integrating with existing popular apps in order to connect with a large audience. Apps may be an excellent resource, but they must be used wisely in order to be a worthwhile investment.