Why Search Advertising Works in Internet Applications by Patrick Murphy

There are two primary ways to make advertising revenue on the internet – display advertising and search. For our browser themes, search is a natural to include, so it should come as no surprise that Brand Thunder is announcing its relationship with Yahoo! Search, a premier provider in this space (view the press release here). But the question you may ask is “why is search the dominant advertising vehicle for internet applications like browser themes and toolbars?”

Available real estate is the short answer. A search box is small and a critical function that launches a full web page. There’s simply not enough real estate to make banners a significant element for advertisers in most applications. Naturally, there’s a deeper answer that can be explored.
Search enjoys heavy use and includes contextual and relevant search advertising. The ad is directly related to the search term used, or at least it should be, and the advertiser only pays when the user clicks on the ad, not when they view it.

With display ads, when the web page loads and the ads appear, the advertiser is charged – regardless of whether any one looks at or clicks on the ad. (Yes, were ignoring the whole remnant advertising category for the sake of this discussion) Now, think about an application that is open all the time. The potential number of ads that can be served is immense. Combine that with the limited space available in the application itself and both of these elements suppress the power of this space.

What helps the advertiser in the case of custom browser themes is knowledge of the type of person using the theme. Since the browser themes are centered on a single brand, there’s existing data on the demographics of that brand making it more valuable to the advertiser. So, we expect our partners demand some form of placement and anticipate it will come first as a value-add to sponsors that are already buy an advertising package (think sports team sponsorships) to establish a benchmark of performance. Fortunately, the flexibility of our product will allow us to meet whatever the next request is.

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Brand Thunder Announces Partnership with Yahoo! Search to Extend Web Search into Internet Browser Customizations by Brand Thunder

For Immediate Release

COLUMBUS (September 29, 2008) — Brand Thunder LLC, the browser customization specialists, announced today its relationship with Yahoo! Search to integrate their web search into all Brand Thunder browser customizations.

Brand Thunder reworks the visual style of a browser theme to match the colors and logos of its partners while also adding content and functionality to the browser. The browser customizations also provide marketers with a more persistent connection to their customer whenever they are connected to the internet and regardless of the web page they are viewing.

The growing list of company’s extending their brand to the browser includes the leading internet news blog site, The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/firefox), NHL’s 2007/08 Southeast Division Champs Washington Capitals (http://capitals.nhl.com/browser) one of the top celebrity and entertainment news sites, Starpulse.com (http://www.starpulse.com/SPBrowser). In the coming weeks, additional browser themes will launch for sports teams, universities and special interest groups in the US and UK. The full list of announced and active custom browser themes can be found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

“Finding the right search partner was critical to offer our custom browser themes to more companies and keep it as a free, value-add download for their customers and fans,” says founder Patrick Murphy. “Brand Thunder has some of the leading brands in the music, sports and internet industries as clients. Including Yahoo! Search, one of the best brands in the category, is a substantial ‘next step’ as we grow our company.”

“While you’re seeing more customization in web applications and toolbars, nothing is as relevant and prevalent as the browser when someone’s on the internet,” continued Murphy. “When you take a standard browser, like Firefox, and wrap it to look like it belongs to a user’s favorite team – you’ve got something compelling.”

About Brand Thunder

Formed in April, 2007, Brand Thunder creates a more persistent presence between corporate brands and their internet consumer through its browser customization which leads to increased web site visits and revenue. Through a software installation, end users change the look and feel of their internet browser into an immersive experience from their favorite sports team, entertainment franchise or internet site. The customized browsers feature official logos, colors, content and functionality, but can also extend capabilities including video, music players or other internet widgets. Current business partners and clients include the Huffington Post, NCAA, NHL, Starpulse.com, and Universal Music. Samples found at http://brandthunder.com/gallery/.

Contact

Patrick Murphy, CEO
Brand Thunder, LLC
614-408-8202
patrick@brandthunder.com

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2 Reasons to Create Design Mock-ups for Prospects by Patrick Murphy

This feels like a basic business idea, but having seen it both practiced and not practiced – we’re weighing in. It’s worth the effort to design a mock up of our product for each prospect we present to. Here’s why we think that.

Reason 1: It avoids the wrong discussion.

While our product isn’t overly complex, when you try to talk about it too much is lost. “Well, it’s a custom browser theme which incorporates your brand’s logos, color and style into the internet browser creating a persistent presence with your online audience.” Or, we can show them a mock-up of what we’re talking about. Now, we can limit the talk about us, and focus on what it means to them – isn’t that the point of every sales effort?

Reason 2: It shapes the right discussion.

We don’t just brand the browser; we add functionality and content. For example, we can invoke the sidebar which gives us a blank slate of HTML to really create whatever the customer wants. That’s too much freedom to convey in a presentation and is paralyzing.

Since we’re the experts of our product, we look at the prospect’s site and make a recommendation as to what we think works well in the browser theme. In the eyes of the prospect, we may be right or wrong but we’ve created a jumping off point for the discussion. Now the customer has an idea of what we might do with their stuff and that becomes the topic of discussion. We better understand the needs of our client are when they ask, “can you do this?”

You can see some of the mocks we’ve created on our Media page as well as screen shots of live product. Naturally, if you’d like to see a mock for your own company, we’d love to hear from you so feel free to contact us.

Posted in Commentary | Tags: browser theme, custom browser, mock, sales presentation, screenshot, start-up | No Comments »

Start-Up Business Development – Partnering for a Sales Lift by Patrick Murphy

Early on, we had a hunch that sports teams would be a natural fit for our browser themes. If anyone has a propensity to show their affiliation – it’s sports fans. That has largely borne out to look at our early clients and our upcoming pipeline. With that scenario at hand and given the limited resources of a start up, how do you focus your business development and sales energy? Here’s what we are doing.

Instead of pursuing the sports segment ourselves, we’re partnering with firms like DMB Sports Group, a premier design and marketing firm in the sports industry. Given our portfolio and the data from released products, we feel we can close more deals by using an expert in the sports field and being a consultant to them – offering documentation, sales material and product knowledge directly relevant to their industry.

Putting the sports industry in capable hands allows us to focus on prospecting in new industries. Our experience is showing there’s tremendous value in capturing that first client in a market segment because that leads to other sales within that category. And since we are very comfortable talking about our product, regardless of the industry, we feel our energies are better placed in the prospecting role and creating those new opportunities.

That’s our new hunch – that as a start-up, we’ll gain more leveraging the expertise of a company like DMB Sports to help us exploit a category than trying to do it all ourselves. What’s your hunch?

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Does Google Change the Landscape for Custom Browsers? by Patrick Murphy

The announcement this week that Google is launching its own browser, Chrome, could be a major obstacle for a company like Brand Thunder that is building its business on building custom browser themes – and primarily for Firefox. This is just the nature of business – the landscape changes. Each change will present some measure of opportunity and threat, but the share of each remains unknown. Are you prepared?

Our position is this creates greater opportunity for Brand Thunder. It generates more awareness in the market of alternatives to IE (still roughly 75% market share). There are already other alternatives besides Firefox. Users have Safari, Opera, Sea Monkey, Konqueror and others available to them. But Google has considerable clout and may be able to make the mainstream user more aware of their options. And, we’re betting that effort will help level the playing field meaning greater market share for all non-IE browsers.

Chrome is also open-source. Theoretically, that gives us the ability to create the same kind of immersive experience we do today with Firefox. Though, the ability to extend functionality is not built into Chrome today – so how functionally cool you can make it remains to be seen.

A bit of early reassurance was found in a TechCrunch posting which showed a reduction in IE visitors to their site and growth to both Chrome and Firefox percentages. It reinforces our immediate assumption.

In the long-run, it won’t matter. We’ll be where the users are, and where the capabilities exist. Today, that’s Firefox. Tomorrow it could be Chrome or something different altogether. We’re browser agnostic, and experience focused – connecting brands to their consumers in a landscape that’s sure to change.

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