Meet YouTube's Most In-Demand Brand Stars
For Marketers, Web-Video Celebrities Offer Trusted Voices and an Engaged Viewership
by Irina Slutsky
Published: September 13, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Once upon a time, YouTube was considered the Wild West -- its so-called "stars" more likely to produce cringe-worthy performances than to displace the pitch-men and -women of traditional media. But now big-time brands like Lancome, McDonald's, Ford and Kellogg's are trusting YouTube celebs with their money and reputations. "The reason we turned to them is because they have a valid voice in their community, and people trust what they say and what they think," said Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors.
They've got trust and, it turns out, engagement.
"What these YouTubers have proven is that they have engaged viewers -- they comment, they talk on the YouTuber's Facebook page, on Twitter. The brands want millions of views, but they also want engaged viewers," said Caroline Giegerich, director of innovation at Initiative, which was one of the first agencies to run a successful YouTube stars campaign with Carl Jr's. "If they're engaged with the stars, clearly they are engaged with the brand ... it means someone is not just seeing an ad and forgetting about it."
In the beginning, neither the brands nor the YouTubers themselves had much of an idea how much they were worth. But the price of hiring a YouTube celebrity to pitch a product is now comparable to hiring a B- or C-level Hollywood celeb.
Ryan Higa publicly lists his starting rate as $75,000 per appearance, a fraction of what someone like Paris Hilton charged for her Carl's Jr. commercial. Some, like Joe Penna, a.k.a. MysteryGuitarMan, feel as comfortable pitching themselves to brands as they do their audiences. "I get millions of hits, and I know my demographic -- I know what kind of video will be in line with my channel," Mr. Penna, a 23-year-old former pre-med student, said. "The best thing the brands can do is come to me with a blank slate and ask me, 'What can you do with this product for us?'"
Ad Age teamed up with TubeMogul to find the stars racking up the views.
CHARLES TRIPPY
Charles Trippy WHO IS HE? Mr. Trippy, 26, and Alli Speed, 21, vlog a "home-made reality show" called "Internet Killed Television" that is widely known as CTFxC. Mr. Trippy has been on YouTube since 2006 and continues to vlog almost daily -- he hasn't lost interest or enthusiasm for the venue.
CONTENT: Daily life vlogs with his fiance.
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 159,489,749
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 2,122,380
BRANDS: Gillette, Google, Xacti Passion
DUDEPERFECT
dudeperfect WHO ARE THEY? Garrett Hilbert, Cory Cotton, Cody Jones, Sean Townsend, Panda, Coby Cotton, and Tyler Toney -- a team of trick-shot basketball entertainers from Texas
CONTENT: Impossible basketball shots
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 27,712,318
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 3,241,856 (top campaign for GMC snagged 1,917,028 views)
BRANDS:GMC, NBA (Sacramento Kings)
FRED
Fred WHO IS HE? Lucas Cruikshank
WHAT HE MAKES: Videos in which he pretends to be a child in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother
CONTENT: Screechy voice, occasional meltdowns
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 585,136,315
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 101,698,863 (includes promos for films and his own merchandise)
BRANDS:20th-Century Fox, Hot Topic, Nickelodeon, Taptivate
IJUSTINE
iJustine WHO IS SHE? Justine Ezarick, 23, LA-based freelance graphic designer. Ms. Ezarick's almost unbelievable ability to create videos several times a day, her deft editing skills, her Apple obsession and her long, blond hair and good looks snagged her a young, male techie fan base.
CONTENT: Techie girl vlog
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 171,403,990
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 7,408,587 (top campaign was GE, with 1,913,481 views)
BRANDS:AT&T, Fox, GE, Intel, Mattel, Nikon, Mozy, MTV, Carl's Jr. and Dick Clark Productions
MICHAELBUCKLEY
Michael Buckley WHO IS HE? Michael Buckley, 35, is a comedian who started with a public-access chat show called "Table for Two." He's benignly malicious -- the opposite kind of meany to Perez Hilton.
CONTENT: Celebrity memes/gossip
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 261,715,708
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 4,370,345 (top campaign was for Fox's Teen Choice, with 865,885 views)
BRANDS:ABC Family, BabelGum, 20th Century Fox, Discovery Networks, Fox television, Nickelodeon, OpenFilms, PriceDoc, Pepsi
MICHELLE PHAN
Michelle Phan WHO IS SHE? A Vietnamese-American who gained popularity afterher Lady Gaga "Poker Face" make-up instructional got 20 million views. Before YouTube stardom, Ms. Phan worked as a waitress in a sushi restaurant and studied illustration.
CONTENT: Cosmetics tutorials
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 221,989,434
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 22,095,935 (of which Lancome Paris represents 12,234,338)
BRANDS:Colgate, Lancome Paris, PriceDoc, Sandisk, Verizon
MYSTERYGUITARMAN
Mysteryguitarman WHO IS HE? Brazilian-born Joe Penna, 23, is an L.A.-based filmmaker, guitarist and animator who graduated from UMass with a pre-med degree.
CONTENT: Music videos and clever mash-ups of himself in his apartment in front of the camera
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 138,614,194
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,125,862 (top campaign is for Microsoft, with 8 million-plus views)
BRANDS:Garnier, Pop Tarts, Microsoft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola
NIGAHIGA
Nigahiga WHO IS HE? One of the highest paid YouTube stars, Ryan Higa is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii who started making lipsyncing videos with his friends during college breaks. YouTube stardom followed, and his content is now varied and wide.
CONTENT: Comedy, short films, parody videos, "rants," how-to comedy videos ("How to Be a Gangster"), advertising spoofs
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 546,333,874
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 13,405,781
BRANDS:Google, Carl's Jr.
RHETT & LINK
Rhett & Link WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal
CONTENT: Humor that's actually funny; not as viral but high-quality videos like "Facebook Song," and "T-Shirt War"; actual commercials
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 66,294,209
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 25,093,462 (top brand campaign was Microbilt, with 9,986,225 views)
BRANDS: Alka-Selzer, AJJCornhole (not a joke), Baby Ruth, Coca-Cola, Dentyne, GM, McDonald's, Spy Associates, Taco Bell, Microbilt
SHAYCARL
Shaycarl WHO IS HE? Shay Butler, 30, lives in Idaho with his wife and kids and produces family vlogs with a funny, edgy "cool dad" twist. His user name is ShayTards, his baby is BabyTard, and his other children are PrincessTard and SonTard. You get the idea. His most recent Footlocker campaign takes place in a school cafeteria and involves a giant food fight.
CONTENT: Family vlogs
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 250,954,220
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,725,254
BRANDS: AT&T, A1, Google, Kia, Kodak, Sanyo, Footlocker
SMOSH
Smosh WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Anthony Padilla and Ian Andrew Hecox, both 22, gained initial fame with the "Pokemon Theme Music Video," and this led them to be featured in Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year issue.
CONTENT: Sophomoric teen humor; video games
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 465,534,527
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 12,310,844 (top brand campaign was GE, with 4,717,047 views)
BRANDS: Carl's Jr., GE, Google (Nexus One), Kia, Nintendo, Puma
VENETIAN PRINCESS
Venetian Princess WHO IS SHE? Jodie Rivera, 26, studied opera at the New England Conservatory of Music before becoming one of YouTube's first partners. Ms. Rivera has said, "I can make anywhere from the mid-five to six figures per one- to two-minute video with product placement."
CONTENT: Parodies of popular music videos
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 258,098,945
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 1,697,996 (top campaign, for Pop Tarts, notched 1,562,269 views)
BRANDS: Pop Tarts, Samsung
WHEEZYWAITER
Wheezywaiter WHO IS HE? Craig Benzine, went to school for TV, radio and film, worked as a waiter at Big Bowl before YouTube success. He's a hungry up-and-comer with a promising start.
VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 13,350,225
BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 290,145
BRANDS: Ford
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Did the birth of social media change everything?
Did the birth of social media change everything?
Posted by Brian Fetherstonhaugh on September 7th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Did the birth of social media come to change everything?
It wasn't just social media that entered the game. There is a new phenomenon in marketing, which is actually an old idea but with new tools. It's called word of mouth. It's faster and allows us to amplify the voice a million times more, instantly, and globally. People talk about user generated content, but what is that if not the old "I heard a joke yesterday."? We hear, we build history, we make it our own. It is the old world with a new interpretation. Social media is word of mouth on steroids: bigger, faster, global, instant, amplified. And it works whether you like or you don’t like a product or service. I may say I bought a car at the X stand, from the Y seller, and I didn’t like the purchase experience at all. Or I may say that I loved it, that I was very well handled when problems arose. In this world of social media with Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, LinkedIn… there are tons of influencers out there. Marketers shouldn’t try to control conversations. You can influence and participate in a healthy way, but a new form of leadership is necessary, a braver one, a more inventive one. It’s about seeing the whole picture and letting little things happen.
OgilvyOne is no longer just about knowing how to write good letters. What has changed?
One-to-one marketing, direct marketing and interactive marketing are no longer the bulk of the business. 75% of Ogilvy’s business is digital and the future is essentially digital. We have big digital businesses with search marketing, SEO, digital communications, site building, and mobile phone applications. The deepest change that has occurred isn’t technological. It is that the consumer has taken control, all over the planet. Marketing no longer has the power to control or decide, it has to be where the consumer is and find a way to relate to him or her. A recent example of how the type of work we’re doing has changed is for Nestlé infant nutrition in Paris. In the old days, marketing was about knowing when the child would be born and starting to communicate with mothers from the birth date. But today, research begins months before the due date and increasingly that research is occurring on digital platforms. One of the first decisions a mother makes is finding a name for the baby, so we developed the Devenir Maman iPhone application featuring a game that shows different combinations of names that can be shown to family and friends. 70% of mothers who had iPhones downloaded the application. Today’s marketing is about interaction between the consumer and the brand and enriching the brand experience.
What can we expect of the field in five years?
Five years is a long time. We see four vectors. One of them is the mobile phone. Imagine if you compare the importance the mobile phone had in our lives five years ago, and the importance it has now. In five years there will be richer experiences, reality will be magnified, local search, Facebook, Twitter on mobile phone, the use of cameras. The second vector is research. A few years ago, if you went to buy a camera, what would you do? You would look it up in the press and go to the Internet. Today, no one buys anything without doing research. That will continue to grow. The third biggest trend is social media. There are 500 million people on Facebook, 150 million of them through mobile devices. The amplification of the word of mouth phenomenon and of social connections is a reality for the next five years. It will be more mobile, more related to video. It will be more interesting territory. The fourth vector is the digital point of sale, which is somewhat similar to the “Minority Report” movie. Within our digital lab network, we are working on digital messages that target people when they enter stores, and tailor messages based on the sex of the customer, for example showing female beauty products or the new men’s line of Dove products. This is done through facial recognition software and a video camera. The environment in which we move will increasingly be more personalized. There will come a time that when someone enters a shop they’ll receive personalized messages.
Do you have a theory about the end of the 4 Ps?
I do. The 4 Ps were invented in 1967 and were great when marketers were in control. We managed the product, the place, the promotion and the price. Now, the Ps have to be replaced and reinterpreted. Firstly, don’t think of the product, but of the experience. People like the Apple iPod. The product is good, but the experience is invincible: well-designed interfaces, good software, online Apple stores. It’s a great experience for the consumer. Looking at place, it’s not just about having the product in the store, but about being where people want to be. In the past, if you were to buy a trip, you would look for ads in the newspaper. Now, the consumer might be with a friend, and spontaneously decide that they want to go to London for the weekend, and suddenly they are on their mobile phones doing research on Google, going to Trip Advisor, etc. We can’t control where the consumer is when they want to but things. We have to join him where he is and create relationships. The price of the product might be two dollars, but if the brand finds that the consumer is a good ambassador, the brand marketers might sell it for one dollar, or give it away for free. Or they might give him five units for him to publicize to his friends. It’s a subtler trade, not always involving money. Lastly, what used to be promotion, based on the frequency of communication, is in the new world is based on invitations. Inviting the consumer into a conversation and let him decide if he wants to participate or not. We have to invite consumers in, to involve them, and if it is a good experience, to sell them the product. Experience, Everywhere, Exchange and Evangelism are the Es that make successful marketers in the 21st century.
Posted by Brian Fetherstonhaugh on September 7th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Did the birth of social media come to change everything?
It wasn't just social media that entered the game. There is a new phenomenon in marketing, which is actually an old idea but with new tools. It's called word of mouth. It's faster and allows us to amplify the voice a million times more, instantly, and globally. People talk about user generated content, but what is that if not the old "I heard a joke yesterday."? We hear, we build history, we make it our own. It is the old world with a new interpretation. Social media is word of mouth on steroids: bigger, faster, global, instant, amplified. And it works whether you like or you don’t like a product or service. I may say I bought a car at the X stand, from the Y seller, and I didn’t like the purchase experience at all. Or I may say that I loved it, that I was very well handled when problems arose. In this world of social media with Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, LinkedIn… there are tons of influencers out there. Marketers shouldn’t try to control conversations. You can influence and participate in a healthy way, but a new form of leadership is necessary, a braver one, a more inventive one. It’s about seeing the whole picture and letting little things happen.
OgilvyOne is no longer just about knowing how to write good letters. What has changed?
One-to-one marketing, direct marketing and interactive marketing are no longer the bulk of the business. 75% of Ogilvy’s business is digital and the future is essentially digital. We have big digital businesses with search marketing, SEO, digital communications, site building, and mobile phone applications. The deepest change that has occurred isn’t technological. It is that the consumer has taken control, all over the planet. Marketing no longer has the power to control or decide, it has to be where the consumer is and find a way to relate to him or her. A recent example of how the type of work we’re doing has changed is for Nestlé infant nutrition in Paris. In the old days, marketing was about knowing when the child would be born and starting to communicate with mothers from the birth date. But today, research begins months before the due date and increasingly that research is occurring on digital platforms. One of the first decisions a mother makes is finding a name for the baby, so we developed the Devenir Maman iPhone application featuring a game that shows different combinations of names that can be shown to family and friends. 70% of mothers who had iPhones downloaded the application. Today’s marketing is about interaction between the consumer and the brand and enriching the brand experience.
What can we expect of the field in five years?
Five years is a long time. We see four vectors. One of them is the mobile phone. Imagine if you compare the importance the mobile phone had in our lives five years ago, and the importance it has now. In five years there will be richer experiences, reality will be magnified, local search, Facebook, Twitter on mobile phone, the use of cameras. The second vector is research. A few years ago, if you went to buy a camera, what would you do? You would look it up in the press and go to the Internet. Today, no one buys anything without doing research. That will continue to grow. The third biggest trend is social media. There are 500 million people on Facebook, 150 million of them through mobile devices. The amplification of the word of mouth phenomenon and of social connections is a reality for the next five years. It will be more mobile, more related to video. It will be more interesting territory. The fourth vector is the digital point of sale, which is somewhat similar to the “Minority Report” movie. Within our digital lab network, we are working on digital messages that target people when they enter stores, and tailor messages based on the sex of the customer, for example showing female beauty products or the new men’s line of Dove products. This is done through facial recognition software and a video camera. The environment in which we move will increasingly be more personalized. There will come a time that when someone enters a shop they’ll receive personalized messages.
Do you have a theory about the end of the 4 Ps?
I do. The 4 Ps were invented in 1967 and were great when marketers were in control. We managed the product, the place, the promotion and the price. Now, the Ps have to be replaced and reinterpreted. Firstly, don’t think of the product, but of the experience. People like the Apple iPod. The product is good, but the experience is invincible: well-designed interfaces, good software, online Apple stores. It’s a great experience for the consumer. Looking at place, it’s not just about having the product in the store, but about being where people want to be. In the past, if you were to buy a trip, you would look for ads in the newspaper. Now, the consumer might be with a friend, and spontaneously decide that they want to go to London for the weekend, and suddenly they are on their mobile phones doing research on Google, going to Trip Advisor, etc. We can’t control where the consumer is when they want to but things. We have to join him where he is and create relationships. The price of the product might be two dollars, but if the brand finds that the consumer is a good ambassador, the brand marketers might sell it for one dollar, or give it away for free. Or they might give him five units for him to publicize to his friends. It’s a subtler trade, not always involving money. Lastly, what used to be promotion, based on the frequency of communication, is in the new world is based on invitations. Inviting the consumer into a conversation and let him decide if he wants to participate or not. We have to invite consumers in, to involve them, and if it is a good experience, to sell them the product. Experience, Everywhere, Exchange and Evangelism are the Es that make successful marketers in the 21st century.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
'Chief Listeners' Use Technology to Track, Sort Company Mentions
'Chief Listeners' Use Technology to Track, Sort Company Mentions
Relatively New Role Is Becoming More Commonplace in Major Marketing Companies
by Irina Slutsky
Published: August 30, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- The role of a "chief listener" evokes images of fuzzy sweaters, chamomile tea and sitting around with a patient ear. Instead, try sifting through unstructured data and building complex queries.
Beth LaPierre "We get about 300,000 new mentions of Kodak every month and we don't censor the comments or videos people create about our company," said Beth LaPierre, Kodak's chief listening officer, a role that's just starting to crop up in a few major marketing organizations and involves decidedly non-touchy-feely tasks. "I've spent the past five months defining how we handle those data via technology and tools."
The big task? Data mining -- and figuring out who needs the information.
"What kind of information does our marketing team need vs. our product team?" Ms. LaPierre said. "How do we classify the data? What is the process for handling 'ABC' information vs. 'XYZ' information?"
For example, she sends commentary about features and product requests to a product development team and so forth.
Her counterpart at Dell, Chief Listener Susan Beebe, describes her job, which she started in July, as building "complex queries."
Susan Beebe "There is a data-analysis research role to this job, and I have a very technical background," Ms. Beebe said. Dell has thousands of new mentions per day and the CLO's job is one of "broad listening" -- as Dell has such a deep penetration globally in so many different markets.
Unlike many social-media jobs, this position is very inward-facing. She's listening to Dell customers and consumers and giving all the intel to her Dell colleagues internally.
"Our chief listener is critical to making sure the right people in the organization are aware of what the conversations on the web are saying about us, so that relevant people in the business can connect with customers," said Richard Binhammer, communications executive at Dell. Mr. Binhammer points out that "Dell has been listening for four years and created a position called 'Listening Czar' two years ago. We are a leader in the listening space."
Ms. Beebe and Ms. LaPierre said their companies were driving innovation through customer feedback.
In a world where marketing managers are eager to get their perspective across, the idea of hearing the consumer is often more foreign than it should be.
Indeed, the author of the 2005 article that was one of the early descriptions of the CLO positions makes exactly that point. "Marketing is a dialogue but the listening part is often the poor relation to the desire to get 'the message' out. Just look at budgets and what is spent on listening vs. other marketing communications," said David Jackson, founder of Clicktools, who introduced the concept of the chief listening officer in an article on customerthink.com. "Few have made the investment needed to integrate these messages into a single, 360-degree view of the customer."
Since Mr. Jackson's article came out, social media has grown exponentially, and the amount of data available to a CLO is practically infinite. "Unstructured data is important, and more so as social networking amplifies the reach and impact of the voice of the customer," he said last week. "Tracking this is important from a company-wide perspective and its ability to shape product and strategic direction."
Ms. LaPierre and Ms. Beebe pay stringent attention to social media -- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, for example. But their advice? Don't get carried away when one person says something outrageous about your brand.
"My biggest thing is you have to look at the context before you look at the content. How many views is that video getting? Is that person an influencer? Do we need to contact them?" said Ms. LaPierre.
Mr. Jackson said that while only two companies right now have an official CLO title, many of the current positions will transform in the future. "There are a number of 'cut down' versions of the CLO in the shape of insight managers. Over time they will expand their role and grow into CLOs."
Relatively New Role Is Becoming More Commonplace in Major Marketing Companies
by Irina Slutsky
Published: August 30, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- The role of a "chief listener" evokes images of fuzzy sweaters, chamomile tea and sitting around with a patient ear. Instead, try sifting through unstructured data and building complex queries.
Beth LaPierre "We get about 300,000 new mentions of Kodak every month and we don't censor the comments or videos people create about our company," said Beth LaPierre, Kodak's chief listening officer, a role that's just starting to crop up in a few major marketing organizations and involves decidedly non-touchy-feely tasks. "I've spent the past five months defining how we handle those data via technology and tools."
The big task? Data mining -- and figuring out who needs the information.
"What kind of information does our marketing team need vs. our product team?" Ms. LaPierre said. "How do we classify the data? What is the process for handling 'ABC' information vs. 'XYZ' information?"
For example, she sends commentary about features and product requests to a product development team and so forth.
Her counterpart at Dell, Chief Listener Susan Beebe, describes her job, which she started in July, as building "complex queries."
Susan Beebe "There is a data-analysis research role to this job, and I have a very technical background," Ms. Beebe said. Dell has thousands of new mentions per day and the CLO's job is one of "broad listening" -- as Dell has such a deep penetration globally in so many different markets.
Unlike many social-media jobs, this position is very inward-facing. She's listening to Dell customers and consumers and giving all the intel to her Dell colleagues internally.
"Our chief listener is critical to making sure the right people in the organization are aware of what the conversations on the web are saying about us, so that relevant people in the business can connect with customers," said Richard Binhammer, communications executive at Dell. Mr. Binhammer points out that "Dell has been listening for four years and created a position called 'Listening Czar' two years ago. We are a leader in the listening space."
Ms. Beebe and Ms. LaPierre said their companies were driving innovation through customer feedback.
In a world where marketing managers are eager to get their perspective across, the idea of hearing the consumer is often more foreign than it should be.
Indeed, the author of the 2005 article that was one of the early descriptions of the CLO positions makes exactly that point. "Marketing is a dialogue but the listening part is often the poor relation to the desire to get 'the message' out. Just look at budgets and what is spent on listening vs. other marketing communications," said David Jackson, founder of Clicktools, who introduced the concept of the chief listening officer in an article on customerthink.com. "Few have made the investment needed to integrate these messages into a single, 360-degree view of the customer."
Since Mr. Jackson's article came out, social media has grown exponentially, and the amount of data available to a CLO is practically infinite. "Unstructured data is important, and more so as social networking amplifies the reach and impact of the voice of the customer," he said last week. "Tracking this is important from a company-wide perspective and its ability to shape product and strategic direction."
Ms. LaPierre and Ms. Beebe pay stringent attention to social media -- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, for example. But their advice? Don't get carried away when one person says something outrageous about your brand.
"My biggest thing is you have to look at the context before you look at the content. How many views is that video getting? Is that person an influencer? Do we need to contact them?" said Ms. LaPierre.
Mr. Jackson said that while only two companies right now have an official CLO title, many of the current positions will transform in the future. "There are a number of 'cut down' versions of the CLO in the shape of insight managers. Over time they will expand their role and grow into CLOs."
The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media
The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media
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To keep up with ever-changing advertising and marketing options, ad agencies are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. While many ad agencies have been slow to adopt social media, others have been keeping up with the trends quite well.
But keeping up with change is never good enough in this industry; the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve. It’s not enough to hitch your star to an existing facet of viral content; you have to create the content yourself. And you can’t wait for mass markets to catch up to new technologies before you begin thinking about how to incorporate new tech into campaigns and creative; you need to test how that tech will work now. Mobile and social ads are no longer new; what’s more interesting now is figuring out how brands can integrate creatively and effectively with location apps and casual games.
We talked with five people who are familiar with the connected worlds of digital media and ad agencies, and here’s what they had to say about the future of social media and advertising.
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Software Is the New Medium
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Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, an agency well-regarded for its digital and interactive work, a field in which AKQA specializes; you can see some recent examples of that work on the agency’s Facebook page.
He told us in an e-mail recently, “One of the newest forms of media is not media at all, but software and platforms. Increasingly, AKQA is developing applications and marketing platforms that provide greater utility, entertainment and information to our clients’ customers without relying on traditional media channels. One example of this is the Fiat eco:Drive application we created that allows Fiat drivers to monitor their driving skills and fuel efficiency and helps drivers to lower CO² emissions.”
More and more, agencies will be called on to be (or at least have the capacity to behave as) short-order web and mobile dev shops. You’ll need to make sure your creatives have access to skilled hackers and experienced web designers; you might even consider including a few highly technical, very creative engineers in your creative team, not just as part-time or freelance collaborators.
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Groups and Friends: The Power of the Hive Mind
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If you want to get inside your clients’ customers’ heads, just take a look at what their friends and peers are doing, saying and buying.
We asked David Armano, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.
“If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes.” For reference, the partnership between the group-buying site and the national retailer completely smashed sales records for both entities with a simple digital coupon.
But group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks.
“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”
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Transparency Is Still a Long Way Off
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Part of the art of selling is the illusion that the company is doing what’s best for the consumer and not for their own bottom line.
We asked Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of San Francisco-based agency Stage Two if he thought online marketing has (or should have) more or less transparency in this regard than traditional marketing.
“This might sound odd,” he began, “but I actually think online marketing has less transparency than traditional does.
“In traditional marketing, your advertising was effectively blatant, from TV/radio/newspaper ad buys to junk mail to billboards on the side of the road. Online companies use tactics like SEO, spam/spam-blogs, pop-ups, text-link-ads, fake viral videos, etc.”
Steve Hall, creator and editor of industry blog Adrants, wrote in 2008 that most of the “viral” videos then (particularly the “guys backflip into jeans” clip that ended up being part of a Levi’s campaign) were, in fact, advertisements. And earlier this year, another tattoo-related fake viral video was discovered to be a marketing gimmick from Ray Ban. Fake virility isn’t limited to YouTube(); often, we find commercial entities trying to “push” supposedly non-commercial content on platforms such as Digg(), Facebook() and Twitter().
Of course, consumers don’t figure it out… until they do. And they’re getting more savvy about fake transparency all the time.
Toeman believes brands and agencies should strive for more genuine methods of bringing an advertising message to consumers. “Personally,” he said, “I’d nix all the ‘hide the fact that this is an ad’ tactics completely and eliminate the methods of gaming systems.”
If you need more convincing that labeling ads as ads might be a good thing, consider Old Spice’s recent campaign. Pure creativity and Internet()-culture awareness drove a YouTube campaign that was very clearly advertising; still, the company’s sales doubled as a result of the YouTube clips.
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Location Campaigns Are the New Targeting Mechanism
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In the past couple weeks, Foursquare took over Times Square and Facebook launched Places. Clearly, location-based services and related ad campaigns are going to become huge very shortly.
“We’re right at the beginning of an exciting time for the development of location-based services and marketing that integrates geo-location into advertising and applications,” said Bedecarré. “Recent announcements by Facebook and Google() reflect the importance of location services.”
Hall says location-based marketing “will change everything.” He explained:
“With the ability to target people only when they are within purchasing distance, brands will be able to come that much closer to targeting nirvana. Offers can be made only to those meeting certain location (and even demographic) requirements, reducing waste and actually saving a brand a lot of money by minimizing its old school spray-and-pray mass marketing techniques. In a nutshell, mobile will, once and for all, make it possible for a marketer to target without waste.”
Getting your clients thinking now about how to integrate location and checkins into a campaign is key. While we can’t yet construct fully formed campaigns around Facebook Places, there are a slew of other services you can use as case studies for an at-scale campaign.
Starbucks, which does an excellent job in the social media advertising and marketing category, has seen good results from a recent Foursquare() campaign, as have many other brands. And they were right to jump on the bandwagon early. Between the intelligence you can gather about your clients’ customers and your ability to find more highly qualified targets than ever before, location is indeed the holy grail for advertisers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Display Ads Are Evolving
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse Thomas runs one of the most forward-thinking creative agencies around, but he’s not ready to pick out a headstone for display ads just yet. However, he did tell us that “the usual suspects” of banner ads and skyscrapers are definitely undergoing a change.
“Facebook’s ads have singlehandedly made ads social,” he wrote to us in an e-mail. “The idea of ‘liking’ an ad is genius… The idea of advertising a Page in Facebook via the Facebook ad engine and being able to access special advertising powers is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world of [expletive] Google text ads, Facebook’s social ads are a breath of fresh air. But we have a long way to go!”
And not all of Google’s ad-buy offerings are as excremental as Thomas thinks the text ads can be. “Google offered the ability to integrate the Facebook checkout (one-click purchase) option to their ads, and that was awesome at the time. You will see more of this in the future: Making ads better by integrating features from other parts of the platform that are no longer cool anymore.”
In other words, display can still be part of your ad buys and collateral, but you have to think creatively, target carefully, measure thoroughly and react accordingly. Use all the tools at your disposal to do so.
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To keep up with ever-changing advertising and marketing options, ad agencies are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. While many ad agencies have been slow to adopt social media, others have been keeping up with the trends quite well.
But keeping up with change is never good enough in this industry; the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve. It’s not enough to hitch your star to an existing facet of viral content; you have to create the content yourself. And you can’t wait for mass markets to catch up to new technologies before you begin thinking about how to incorporate new tech into campaigns and creative; you need to test how that tech will work now. Mobile and social ads are no longer new; what’s more interesting now is figuring out how brands can integrate creatively and effectively with location apps and casual games.
We talked with five people who are familiar with the connected worlds of digital media and ad agencies, and here’s what they had to say about the future of social media and advertising.
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Software Is the New Medium
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, an agency well-regarded for its digital and interactive work, a field in which AKQA specializes; you can see some recent examples of that work on the agency’s Facebook page.
He told us in an e-mail recently, “One of the newest forms of media is not media at all, but software and platforms. Increasingly, AKQA is developing applications and marketing platforms that provide greater utility, entertainment and information to our clients’ customers without relying on traditional media channels. One example of this is the Fiat eco:Drive application we created that allows Fiat drivers to monitor their driving skills and fuel efficiency and helps drivers to lower CO² emissions.”
More and more, agencies will be called on to be (or at least have the capacity to behave as) short-order web and mobile dev shops. You’ll need to make sure your creatives have access to skilled hackers and experienced web designers; you might even consider including a few highly technical, very creative engineers in your creative team, not just as part-time or freelance collaborators.
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Groups and Friends: The Power of the Hive Mind
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to get inside your clients’ customers’ heads, just take a look at what their friends and peers are doing, saying and buying.
We asked David Armano, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.
“If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes.” For reference, the partnership between the group-buying site and the national retailer completely smashed sales records for both entities with a simple digital coupon.
But group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks.
“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transparency Is Still a Long Way Off
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part of the art of selling is the illusion that the company is doing what’s best for the consumer and not for their own bottom line.
We asked Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of San Francisco-based agency Stage Two if he thought online marketing has (or should have) more or less transparency in this regard than traditional marketing.
“This might sound odd,” he began, “but I actually think online marketing has less transparency than traditional does.
“In traditional marketing, your advertising was effectively blatant, from TV/radio/newspaper ad buys to junk mail to billboards on the side of the road. Online companies use tactics like SEO, spam/spam-blogs, pop-ups, text-link-ads, fake viral videos, etc.”
Steve Hall, creator and editor of industry blog Adrants, wrote in 2008 that most of the “viral” videos then (particularly the “guys backflip into jeans” clip that ended up being part of a Levi’s campaign) were, in fact, advertisements. And earlier this year, another tattoo-related fake viral video was discovered to be a marketing gimmick from Ray Ban. Fake virility isn’t limited to YouTube(); often, we find commercial entities trying to “push” supposedly non-commercial content on platforms such as Digg(), Facebook() and Twitter().
Of course, consumers don’t figure it out… until they do. And they’re getting more savvy about fake transparency all the time.
Toeman believes brands and agencies should strive for more genuine methods of bringing an advertising message to consumers. “Personally,” he said, “I’d nix all the ‘hide the fact that this is an ad’ tactics completely and eliminate the methods of gaming systems.”
If you need more convincing that labeling ads as ads might be a good thing, consider Old Spice’s recent campaign. Pure creativity and Internet()-culture awareness drove a YouTube campaign that was very clearly advertising; still, the company’s sales doubled as a result of the YouTube clips.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location Campaigns Are the New Targeting Mechanism
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the past couple weeks, Foursquare took over Times Square and Facebook launched Places. Clearly, location-based services and related ad campaigns are going to become huge very shortly.
“We’re right at the beginning of an exciting time for the development of location-based services and marketing that integrates geo-location into advertising and applications,” said Bedecarré. “Recent announcements by Facebook and Google() reflect the importance of location services.”
Hall says location-based marketing “will change everything.” He explained:
“With the ability to target people only when they are within purchasing distance, brands will be able to come that much closer to targeting nirvana. Offers can be made only to those meeting certain location (and even demographic) requirements, reducing waste and actually saving a brand a lot of money by minimizing its old school spray-and-pray mass marketing techniques. In a nutshell, mobile will, once and for all, make it possible for a marketer to target without waste.”
Getting your clients thinking now about how to integrate location and checkins into a campaign is key. While we can’t yet construct fully formed campaigns around Facebook Places, there are a slew of other services you can use as case studies for an at-scale campaign.
Starbucks, which does an excellent job in the social media advertising and marketing category, has seen good results from a recent Foursquare() campaign, as have many other brands. And they were right to jump on the bandwagon early. Between the intelligence you can gather about your clients’ customers and your ability to find more highly qualified targets than ever before, location is indeed the holy grail for advertisers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Display Ads Are Evolving
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse Thomas runs one of the most forward-thinking creative agencies around, but he’s not ready to pick out a headstone for display ads just yet. However, he did tell us that “the usual suspects” of banner ads and skyscrapers are definitely undergoing a change.
“Facebook’s ads have singlehandedly made ads social,” he wrote to us in an e-mail. “The idea of ‘liking’ an ad is genius… The idea of advertising a Page in Facebook via the Facebook ad engine and being able to access special advertising powers is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world of [expletive] Google text ads, Facebook’s social ads are a breath of fresh air. But we have a long way to go!”
And not all of Google’s ad-buy offerings are as excremental as Thomas thinks the text ads can be. “Google offered the ability to integrate the Facebook checkout (one-click purchase) option to their ads, and that was awesome at the time. You will see more of this in the future: Making ads better by integrating features from other parts of the platform that are no longer cool anymore.”
In other words, display can still be part of your ad buys and collateral, but you have to think creatively, target carefully, measure thoroughly and react accordingly. Use all the tools at your disposal to do so.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Why Entertainment Will Drive the Next Checkin Craze
Why Entertainment Will Drive the Next Checkin Craze
In recent months, a crop of services have popped up that re-purpose the checkin concept, popularized by Foursquare, and connect it to media and entertainment, as opposed to location.
In theory, the idea of checking-in to cultural concepts (like media, music, etc.) and not places is one that doesn’t jive in the real-world. It would follow then that the apps that provide this service — GetGlue, Philo and Miso — are silly and far too extreme in ideology to attract anything more than a testbed tech audience.
In practice, this alternative checkin behavior is one that is more cultural and familiar than anything the location checkin offers. In fact, it emulates the way we experience entertainment in our everyday lives. The desire to share is unchanging — it’s how we share that will continue to evolve with the help of social media and entertainment checkin services.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Culture of Entertainment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Television shows such as Mad Men may not be monster hits when it comes to traditional ratings measurements, but those who do watch tend to do so religiously and with a fervor nearing obsession.
Watching Mad Men is a shared experience, whether you’re at a viewing party or alone in your bedroom, simply because of the culture surrounding the show. There’s a connected feeling you get when you experience a new episode for the first time. That’s why passionate viewers, if they’re socially inclined, are the type of people who will no doubt run to Facebook() and Twitter() to share their anticipation and viewing experience with the world.
Philo, Miso and GetGlue all have mobile and web applications explicitly designed to support and enhance that very natural entertainment-driven social behavior. They’re all using the checkin model so that app users can check-in to content, though each has its own slightly unique approach.
Philo is hyper-focused on live television. Viewers use the iPhone() app or web to check-in to the live content they’re watching. Philo pulls TV listings directly from cable providers, so viewers can even see the content that’s trending locally and pinpoint where to watch it. App users earn show-specific awards based on their behaviors and work their way up a Hollywood-style ladder to earn “Director” and “Executive Producer” “credits” for shows.
Miso is also about creating a social television watching experience. The alpha service currently has iPhone, iPad and web apps that support TV show or movie checkins. It bills itself as “Foursquare() for TV” and has its own game mechanics and badges that are designed to hook viewers with the promise of unlocking additional content.
GetGlue’s iPhone app extends beyond just television content and supports checkins for books, wines, topics, celebrities and video games. Rewards come in the form of stickers earned from app activity. GetGlue has been around for years attempting to master social recommendation via the browser. With the move to mobile, the company can marry checkins to the social intelligence previously harvested.
When it comes to game mechanics, each service is employing its own variation on the badge and point model made popular by Foursquare. GetGlue has stickers. Miso has badges and fan clubs. Philo has awards and hierarchy. These digital rewards systems are nothing more than tokens — mere memorabilia — of our minor television achievements. And yet, each service is hoping that its game mechanics and rewards are more enticing than the competition’s.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Checkin Connection
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Foreign as it may sound, the act of checking-in to television shows or other entertainment entities creates a culture connection between media consumers with similar interests. Philo, Miso and GetGlue provide services that allow individuals to make social connections to culture, and that’s what sets them apart from the Twitters and Facebooks of the social networking world.
It’s this cultural relevance that will create digital bonding experiences and will propel this trend to television watchers outside of the web-tech bubble.
Consider that the checkin has been a place-oriented notion for most of its short life. In a just a few months time, however, all three services are showing exponential growth and repetitive engagement behaviors that television networks are salivating over.
GetGlue, for instance, saw 5 million ratings and checkins in the month of July alone. A single episode of True Blood accrued more than 3,000 checkins.
Miso CEO Somrat Niyogi believes that the shared television watching experience, powered by the simplicity of the checkin, will be a breakout hit for mainstream audiences because it mimics offline tendencies and caters to the second screen behaviors of television viewers who use the web while they watch TV.
In fact, a recent Nielsen study indicates that three out of four Americans use the web and TV simultaneously. That same study showed that just 7% are consuming online content related to the TV show they’re watching, but Niyogi is confident that Miso can capitalize on this dual screen trend and even stimulate a renewed interest in television.
Niyogi says the iPad will help to open this door, if only because one study showed that 98% of iPad users use the mobile device while watching TV at least once per day.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tweets are Temporary, Checkins are Forever
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the surface it might seem that these destination checkin sites do nothing more than make the sharing experience more complex. The argument that you can just as easily tweet to the world that you’re watching The Real Housewives of New York is a fair one.
The problem is that these temporal updates have a limited association to the entertainment content being consumed and they’re ephemeral at best. A tweet will solve your immediate need to connect with other show fans and share the television experience, but that tweet has very little lasting value.
Enter the checkin. That explicit activity the user takes carries a lot of weight on any of these services. At any given time, staffers can pull data to measure popularity, television trends, engagement and a whole slew of other fascinating facts about user behaviors.
For the user, though, content is king, and their checkins will help Miso, GetGlue and Philo shape their entertainment experiences through intelligent behavioral analysis and social-based recommendations. None of the services are incredibly sophisticated just yet — GetGlue is probably the most advanced thanks to its recommendation engine — but that’s the direction things are headed.
Philo CCO Greg Goldman has 14 years of television production experience under this belt, and he’s already seeing this potential realized thanks to his service. He describes Philo as shaping his own television watching experiences every night, simply because he can see what’s popular with other viewers. For Goldman, Philo presents television viewers with a new opportunity for show discovery.
Niyogi sees a similar, albeit more complex, vision for Miso’s future. He’s anxiously anticipating “the day where you open up the app and it tells you what you should watch right now. And it’s perfectly accurate.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Industry Matters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After talking with GetGlue, Miso and Philo, one thing is crystal clear — networks are clamoring to take part in the television show checkin trend. Each service has its own relationships — some are public like Miso’s TNT partnership, but most are still stealth. All speak to the mutually beneficial relationships that exist between social entertainment services and television networks.
AdaptiveBlue CEO Alex Iskold confidently reports that GetGlue is “working with over a dozen top entertainment brands including HBO, Showtime, PBS, Random House, Penguin, Universal, Warner Bros, and more.”
Networks not only see value in checkin data but opportunity in checkin behavior. Philo’s Goldman has the most industry experience and insider knowledge. He was formerly the Executive Director of Development at ABC and asserts that Philo is “talking to everyone.”
He points to his service’s ability to track engagement minute-by-minute as one of the key reasons why networks are pursuing relationships with them.
For instance, when it came to the season finale of The Bachelorette, Philo was able to pinpoint exactly when engagement levels spiked on the service and ascertain that audiences appreciated Ally’s decision to break with the formulaic nature of finale show.
Of course, networks are also interested because they see an opportunity to truly engage viewers and create a cycle that keeps audiences tuning in each week. The ultimate end game is to boost ratings, and these apps have the potential to help them do just that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Too Much of a Good Thing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While each of the startups approach entertainment checkins in a provocative manner, there’s certainly no need for three services that essentially do the same thing.
It’s way too early to make predictions. We’re still on the cusp of an emerging trend, but eventually there will be one clear victor.
GetGlue has an advantage on the recommendation engine front. Philo’s live TV focus is inherently network-friendly. And Miso really gets why and how users will use its service.
A solid case could be made for each, and yet one will dominate, just as Twitter killed off its competition and Facebook finds itself leaps and bounds ahead of the rest. Right now, though, it’s still anybody’s game.
In recent months, a crop of services have popped up that re-purpose the checkin concept, popularized by Foursquare, and connect it to media and entertainment, as opposed to location.
In theory, the idea of checking-in to cultural concepts (like media, music, etc.) and not places is one that doesn’t jive in the real-world. It would follow then that the apps that provide this service — GetGlue, Philo and Miso — are silly and far too extreme in ideology to attract anything more than a testbed tech audience.
In practice, this alternative checkin behavior is one that is more cultural and familiar than anything the location checkin offers. In fact, it emulates the way we experience entertainment in our everyday lives. The desire to share is unchanging — it’s how we share that will continue to evolve with the help of social media and entertainment checkin services.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Culture of Entertainment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Television shows such as Mad Men may not be monster hits when it comes to traditional ratings measurements, but those who do watch tend to do so religiously and with a fervor nearing obsession.
Watching Mad Men is a shared experience, whether you’re at a viewing party or alone in your bedroom, simply because of the culture surrounding the show. There’s a connected feeling you get when you experience a new episode for the first time. That’s why passionate viewers, if they’re socially inclined, are the type of people who will no doubt run to Facebook() and Twitter() to share their anticipation and viewing experience with the world.
Philo, Miso and GetGlue all have mobile and web applications explicitly designed to support and enhance that very natural entertainment-driven social behavior. They’re all using the checkin model so that app users can check-in to content, though each has its own slightly unique approach.
Philo is hyper-focused on live television. Viewers use the iPhone() app or web to check-in to the live content they’re watching. Philo pulls TV listings directly from cable providers, so viewers can even see the content that’s trending locally and pinpoint where to watch it. App users earn show-specific awards based on their behaviors and work their way up a Hollywood-style ladder to earn “Director” and “Executive Producer” “credits” for shows.
Miso is also about creating a social television watching experience. The alpha service currently has iPhone, iPad and web apps that support TV show or movie checkins. It bills itself as “Foursquare() for TV” and has its own game mechanics and badges that are designed to hook viewers with the promise of unlocking additional content.
GetGlue’s iPhone app extends beyond just television content and supports checkins for books, wines, topics, celebrities and video games. Rewards come in the form of stickers earned from app activity. GetGlue has been around for years attempting to master social recommendation via the browser. With the move to mobile, the company can marry checkins to the social intelligence previously harvested.
When it comes to game mechanics, each service is employing its own variation on the badge and point model made popular by Foursquare. GetGlue has stickers. Miso has badges and fan clubs. Philo has awards and hierarchy. These digital rewards systems are nothing more than tokens — mere memorabilia — of our minor television achievements. And yet, each service is hoping that its game mechanics and rewards are more enticing than the competition’s.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Checkin Connection
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Foreign as it may sound, the act of checking-in to television shows or other entertainment entities creates a culture connection between media consumers with similar interests. Philo, Miso and GetGlue provide services that allow individuals to make social connections to culture, and that’s what sets them apart from the Twitters and Facebooks of the social networking world.
It’s this cultural relevance that will create digital bonding experiences and will propel this trend to television watchers outside of the web-tech bubble.
Consider that the checkin has been a place-oriented notion for most of its short life. In a just a few months time, however, all three services are showing exponential growth and repetitive engagement behaviors that television networks are salivating over.
GetGlue, for instance, saw 5 million ratings and checkins in the month of July alone. A single episode of True Blood accrued more than 3,000 checkins.
Miso CEO Somrat Niyogi believes that the shared television watching experience, powered by the simplicity of the checkin, will be a breakout hit for mainstream audiences because it mimics offline tendencies and caters to the second screen behaviors of television viewers who use the web while they watch TV.
In fact, a recent Nielsen study indicates that three out of four Americans use the web and TV simultaneously. That same study showed that just 7% are consuming online content related to the TV show they’re watching, but Niyogi is confident that Miso can capitalize on this dual screen trend and even stimulate a renewed interest in television.
Niyogi says the iPad will help to open this door, if only because one study showed that 98% of iPad users use the mobile device while watching TV at least once per day.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tweets are Temporary, Checkins are Forever
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the surface it might seem that these destination checkin sites do nothing more than make the sharing experience more complex. The argument that you can just as easily tweet to the world that you’re watching The Real Housewives of New York is a fair one.
The problem is that these temporal updates have a limited association to the entertainment content being consumed and they’re ephemeral at best. A tweet will solve your immediate need to connect with other show fans and share the television experience, but that tweet has very little lasting value.
Enter the checkin. That explicit activity the user takes carries a lot of weight on any of these services. At any given time, staffers can pull data to measure popularity, television trends, engagement and a whole slew of other fascinating facts about user behaviors.
For the user, though, content is king, and their checkins will help Miso, GetGlue and Philo shape their entertainment experiences through intelligent behavioral analysis and social-based recommendations. None of the services are incredibly sophisticated just yet — GetGlue is probably the most advanced thanks to its recommendation engine — but that’s the direction things are headed.
Philo CCO Greg Goldman has 14 years of television production experience under this belt, and he’s already seeing this potential realized thanks to his service. He describes Philo as shaping his own television watching experiences every night, simply because he can see what’s popular with other viewers. For Goldman, Philo presents television viewers with a new opportunity for show discovery.
Niyogi sees a similar, albeit more complex, vision for Miso’s future. He’s anxiously anticipating “the day where you open up the app and it tells you what you should watch right now. And it’s perfectly accurate.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Industry Matters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After talking with GetGlue, Miso and Philo, one thing is crystal clear — networks are clamoring to take part in the television show checkin trend. Each service has its own relationships — some are public like Miso’s TNT partnership, but most are still stealth. All speak to the mutually beneficial relationships that exist between social entertainment services and television networks.
AdaptiveBlue CEO Alex Iskold confidently reports that GetGlue is “working with over a dozen top entertainment brands including HBO, Showtime, PBS, Random House, Penguin, Universal, Warner Bros, and more.”
Networks not only see value in checkin data but opportunity in checkin behavior. Philo’s Goldman has the most industry experience and insider knowledge. He was formerly the Executive Director of Development at ABC and asserts that Philo is “talking to everyone.”
He points to his service’s ability to track engagement minute-by-minute as one of the key reasons why networks are pursuing relationships with them.
For instance, when it came to the season finale of The Bachelorette, Philo was able to pinpoint exactly when engagement levels spiked on the service and ascertain that audiences appreciated Ally’s decision to break with the formulaic nature of finale show.
Of course, networks are also interested because they see an opportunity to truly engage viewers and create a cycle that keeps audiences tuning in each week. The ultimate end game is to boost ratings, and these apps have the potential to help them do just that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Too Much of a Good Thing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While each of the startups approach entertainment checkins in a provocative manner, there’s certainly no need for three services that essentially do the same thing.
It’s way too early to make predictions. We’re still on the cusp of an emerging trend, but eventually there will be one clear victor.
GetGlue has an advantage on the recommendation engine front. Philo’s live TV focus is inherently network-friendly. And Miso really gets why and how users will use its service.
A solid case could be made for each, and yet one will dominate, just as Twitter killed off its competition and Facebook finds itself leaps and bounds ahead of the rest. Right now, though, it’s still anybody’s game.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Why Two Names Are Better Than One
Why Two Names Are Better Than One
Marketers Lucky Enough to Have a Nickname Shouldn't Abuse It
by Al Ries
Published: August 03, 2010
Al Ries
The one-day flap over the "Chevy" name should never have happened.
General Motors made a mistake by telling its employees to never use the "Chevy" name again and to refer to the brand only as "Chevrolet."
A nickname is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. People who use a brand's nickname feel closer to the product than those who don't. As a matter of fact, nicknames are one of the most under-utilized aspects of marketing. If at all possible, every company and every brand should have a formal name as well as a nickname. Two names are better than one.
Ad Age versus Advertising Age?
Should Advertising Age change its name to Ad Age just because everybody in the industry uses the nickname? I think not. That would destroy some of the connections industry people feel toward the publication.
Formal names and nicknames are somewhat like "vous" and "tu" in the French language. When meeting someone for the first time, it's common in France to use "vous." After a friendship or working relationship is formed, it would be common for one party to suggest using "tu." When someone uses "Ad Age" instead of "Advertising Age," you know that person is in the ad business or is familiar with it.
Nicknames serve a communication function. They indicate an emotional connection with the brand. Or in the case of a formal name, the lack of one.
The Chevrolet owner who calls his or her car a "Chevy" is communicating some emotional connection with the brand. Hopefully positive from Chevrolet's point of view, but it could also be negative.
Chevrolet is fortunate it has two names. Most automobile brands have only one. Of the six leading automobile brands, only Chevrolet has a nickname. Try to figure out a nickname for the other five.
•Toyota -- Toy?
•Ford -- F?
•Honda -- Hon?
•Nissan -- Nis?
•Dodge -- D?
Nothing works except "Chevy." This is a valuable aspect of the Chevrolet brand.
The original title of a book Laura and I wrote was "The 23 Immutable Laws of Branding." The 23rd law was "the law of nicknames." But we dropped the 23rd law because everybody knows that nicknames are a valuable aspect of a brand.
Apparently not.
The nickname killers.
Many companies and many brands are hell-bent on killing their nicknames by substituting them for their formal names.
•Kentucky Fried Chicken is now KFC.
•British Petroleum is now BP.
•American Association of Retired Persons is now AARP.
•Computer Associates is now CA.
•Federal Express is now FedEx.
These are just some of the formal name changes. There are many other examples of informal name changes.
"National Public Radio," according to The New York Times, "sent a note to all its staff members asking everyone to refer to it as NPR." The YMCA is doing something similar. The organization wants to be known by one and all as the "Y." (Companies that want to follow the ultimate downsizing trend had better hurry. "W" is a hotel. "Y" is a gym. "G" is a sports drink. "O" is a magazine. "I" is on the verge of being taken by Apple. That leaves only 21 letters of the alphabet up for grabs.)
In the short term, of course, it makes no difference whether National Public Radio uses its formal name. Almost everybody knows what NPR stands for. But the long term is different. There are some 12,000 people born every day in America. As these infants grow up, how are they going to find out what those strange "NPR" initials stand for?
And there are some 6,500 people who die every day, taking their knowledge of the NPR brand with them.
Longer names seem more important.
When given a choice, most people believe a longer name is more impressive than a shorter one. In the 22 presidential elections between 1876 and 1960, for example, the candidate with more letters in his last name won the popular vote 20 times. In two cases, the winners of the popular vote lost in the electoral college. In one case, both candidates had the same number of letters in their names. The only time the longer-named candidate lost was in 1908 when Taft beat Bryan. But hey, Taft had only a one-letter handicap.
The situation changed starting in 1964 when Johnson (7 letters) beat Goldwater (9 letters.)
Why? In a word, TV. In the 1960s, the visual became more important than the verbal. One important visual aspect is a candidate's height. The taller, the better.
In the 13 presidential elections between 1960 and 2008, the taller candidate won the popular vote nine times. In one election, the taller candidate (Gore) won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college. In one election, the two candidates (Clinton and Bush) were equal in height. In only two elections did the shorter candidate win the popular vote. (Nixon in 1972. Carter in 1976.)
In other words, the taller candidate was more than four times as likely to win the popular vote than the shorter one.
In addition to its formal name, a brand should have 1) a relatively short nickname, 2) a word it owns in the mind and 3) a powerful visual. If you can accomplish all three, you have hit the marketing trifecta.
Take Coca-Cola, for example. 1) Coke. 2) The real thing. 3) The contour bottle. No wonder Coca-Cola is the world's most-valuable brand.
The problems of a shorter name.
It's hard to make a short name seem important. Take the Gap, a chain that has been having problems. Competitors like Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters have names that make them seem more important and authentic.
Furthermore, what's the Gap's nickname? "G" is pretty much taken by Gatorade.
Then there's "Saks Fifth Avenue" often known by its nickname "Saks." Should the company call its stores "Saks"? That doesn't sound important.
Saks Fifth Avenue has a long, formal name that sounds important and a short nickname that's easy to say and easy to spell. An ideal combination.
Radio Shack is trying to use the same strategy with an advertising campaign focused on "The Shack." But you can't force consumers to use a nickname.
You can understand why Radio Shack is trying to do this. Names become obsolete. When was the last time you bought a radio? Or a part for a radio? Or an accessory for a radio? Radio Shack doesn't need a nick name. Radio Shack needs a new name.
Brands with nicknames have an advantage over the competition. Nicknames allow consumers to feel closer to the brand. You can show your friends you are cool if you use a brand's nickname instead of its formal name.
Let's go to Mickey D's.
How about a Jack & Coke?
Hop on my Harley and we'll go for a spin.
Let's take the Vette instead.
Two-buck Chuck and other examples.
Charles Shaw became one of the largest-selling wine brands in America even though it was sold initially in only one state by only one chain, Trader Joe's.
What made Charles Shaw wine such a big success? Its nickname: Two-buck Chuck.
Now what do you suppose the marketing gurus behind the rash of recent name changes would have suggested for Charles Shaw wine? Change the label to "Two-buck Chuck?"
And would they have suggested that "Macintosh" be changed to "Mac?" And Jaguar to "Jag?" And "Mercedes-Benz" to "Mercedes?" Or to "Merc?"
None of these name changes make sense. That's what makes marketing so difficult. Marketing often defies common sense.
One strategy is better than two strategies. Yet one name is not better than two names. The ideal strategy for every brand is to have a formal name and a more casual nickname.
Rules of thumb.
When should a company or brand use its formal name and when should it use its nickname?
In print advertising, a company or brand should probably use its formal name in the headline and the signature and its nickname in the body copy.
Chevrolet has often violated this rule, signing many of its ads "Chevy" instead of "Chevrolet." Here is a typical ad that uses "Chevy" in the headline and nothing in the signature except its "bow tie" trademark.
Recently, however, Chevrolet has been running this same ad with the "Chevy" in the headline replaced with "Chevrolet." So perhaps there was a good reason for the nickname memo. Chevrolet needed to spell out when to use which name.
In TV advertising, a company or brand should probably use its formal name in the first mention and in the closing signature. In between, the nickname might be appropriate. A good rule of thumb which publications almost always use is to use the full name in the first mention and then the nickname in the next mentions.
In an article, for example, a reporter might refer to a newspaper as "The Wall Street Journal." In the next mention, the reporter might say "The Journal." Should The Wall Street Journal change its name to The Journal? No, in the long run the publication would lose a lot of its identity.
When a company or brand has a well-known nickname, it shouldn't hesitate to use the nickname in the proper settings.
I'm surprised, for example, that McDonald's in its TV advertising seldom uses its "Mickey D's" nickname. It would seem to be an ideal complement to its verbal slogan "I'm lovin' it."
You really have to love the place to call it "Mickey D's."
Marketers Lucky Enough to Have a Nickname Shouldn't Abuse It
by Al Ries
Published: August 03, 2010
Al Ries
The one-day flap over the "Chevy" name should never have happened.
General Motors made a mistake by telling its employees to never use the "Chevy" name again and to refer to the brand only as "Chevrolet."
A nickname is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. People who use a brand's nickname feel closer to the product than those who don't. As a matter of fact, nicknames are one of the most under-utilized aspects of marketing. If at all possible, every company and every brand should have a formal name as well as a nickname. Two names are better than one.
Ad Age versus Advertising Age?
Should Advertising Age change its name to Ad Age just because everybody in the industry uses the nickname? I think not. That would destroy some of the connections industry people feel toward the publication.
Formal names and nicknames are somewhat like "vous" and "tu" in the French language. When meeting someone for the first time, it's common in France to use "vous." After a friendship or working relationship is formed, it would be common for one party to suggest using "tu." When someone uses "Ad Age" instead of "Advertising Age," you know that person is in the ad business or is familiar with it.
Nicknames serve a communication function. They indicate an emotional connection with the brand. Or in the case of a formal name, the lack of one.
The Chevrolet owner who calls his or her car a "Chevy" is communicating some emotional connection with the brand. Hopefully positive from Chevrolet's point of view, but it could also be negative.
Chevrolet is fortunate it has two names. Most automobile brands have only one. Of the six leading automobile brands, only Chevrolet has a nickname. Try to figure out a nickname for the other five.
•Toyota -- Toy?
•Ford -- F?
•Honda -- Hon?
•Nissan -- Nis?
•Dodge -- D?
Nothing works except "Chevy." This is a valuable aspect of the Chevrolet brand.
The original title of a book Laura and I wrote was "The 23 Immutable Laws of Branding." The 23rd law was "the law of nicknames." But we dropped the 23rd law because everybody knows that nicknames are a valuable aspect of a brand.
Apparently not.
The nickname killers.
Many companies and many brands are hell-bent on killing their nicknames by substituting them for their formal names.
•Kentucky Fried Chicken is now KFC.
•British Petroleum is now BP.
•American Association of Retired Persons is now AARP.
•Computer Associates is now CA.
•Federal Express is now FedEx.
These are just some of the formal name changes. There are many other examples of informal name changes.
"National Public Radio," according to The New York Times, "sent a note to all its staff members asking everyone to refer to it as NPR." The YMCA is doing something similar. The organization wants to be known by one and all as the "Y." (Companies that want to follow the ultimate downsizing trend had better hurry. "W" is a hotel. "Y" is a gym. "G" is a sports drink. "O" is a magazine. "I" is on the verge of being taken by Apple. That leaves only 21 letters of the alphabet up for grabs.)
In the short term, of course, it makes no difference whether National Public Radio uses its formal name. Almost everybody knows what NPR stands for. But the long term is different. There are some 12,000 people born every day in America. As these infants grow up, how are they going to find out what those strange "NPR" initials stand for?
And there are some 6,500 people who die every day, taking their knowledge of the NPR brand with them.
Longer names seem more important.
When given a choice, most people believe a longer name is more impressive than a shorter one. In the 22 presidential elections between 1876 and 1960, for example, the candidate with more letters in his last name won the popular vote 20 times. In two cases, the winners of the popular vote lost in the electoral college. In one case, both candidates had the same number of letters in their names. The only time the longer-named candidate lost was in 1908 when Taft beat Bryan. But hey, Taft had only a one-letter handicap.
The situation changed starting in 1964 when Johnson (7 letters) beat Goldwater (9 letters.)
Why? In a word, TV. In the 1960s, the visual became more important than the verbal. One important visual aspect is a candidate's height. The taller, the better.
In the 13 presidential elections between 1960 and 2008, the taller candidate won the popular vote nine times. In one election, the taller candidate (Gore) won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college. In one election, the two candidates (Clinton and Bush) were equal in height. In only two elections did the shorter candidate win the popular vote. (Nixon in 1972. Carter in 1976.)
In other words, the taller candidate was more than four times as likely to win the popular vote than the shorter one.
In addition to its formal name, a brand should have 1) a relatively short nickname, 2) a word it owns in the mind and 3) a powerful visual. If you can accomplish all three, you have hit the marketing trifecta.
Take Coca-Cola, for example. 1) Coke. 2) The real thing. 3) The contour bottle. No wonder Coca-Cola is the world's most-valuable brand.
The problems of a shorter name.
It's hard to make a short name seem important. Take the Gap, a chain that has been having problems. Competitors like Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters have names that make them seem more important and authentic.
Furthermore, what's the Gap's nickname? "G" is pretty much taken by Gatorade.
Then there's "Saks Fifth Avenue" often known by its nickname "Saks." Should the company call its stores "Saks"? That doesn't sound important.
Saks Fifth Avenue has a long, formal name that sounds important and a short nickname that's easy to say and easy to spell. An ideal combination.
Radio Shack is trying to use the same strategy with an advertising campaign focused on "The Shack." But you can't force consumers to use a nickname.
You can understand why Radio Shack is trying to do this. Names become obsolete. When was the last time you bought a radio? Or a part for a radio? Or an accessory for a radio? Radio Shack doesn't need a nick name. Radio Shack needs a new name.
Brands with nicknames have an advantage over the competition. Nicknames allow consumers to feel closer to the brand. You can show your friends you are cool if you use a brand's nickname instead of its formal name.
Let's go to Mickey D's.
How about a Jack & Coke?
Hop on my Harley and we'll go for a spin.
Let's take the Vette instead.
Two-buck Chuck and other examples.
Charles Shaw became one of the largest-selling wine brands in America even though it was sold initially in only one state by only one chain, Trader Joe's.
What made Charles Shaw wine such a big success? Its nickname: Two-buck Chuck.
Now what do you suppose the marketing gurus behind the rash of recent name changes would have suggested for Charles Shaw wine? Change the label to "Two-buck Chuck?"
And would they have suggested that "Macintosh" be changed to "Mac?" And Jaguar to "Jag?" And "Mercedes-Benz" to "Mercedes?" Or to "Merc?"
None of these name changes make sense. That's what makes marketing so difficult. Marketing often defies common sense.
One strategy is better than two strategies. Yet one name is not better than two names. The ideal strategy for every brand is to have a formal name and a more casual nickname.
Rules of thumb.
When should a company or brand use its formal name and when should it use its nickname?
In print advertising, a company or brand should probably use its formal name in the headline and the signature and its nickname in the body copy.
Chevrolet has often violated this rule, signing many of its ads "Chevy" instead of "Chevrolet." Here is a typical ad that uses "Chevy" in the headline and nothing in the signature except its "bow tie" trademark.
Recently, however, Chevrolet has been running this same ad with the "Chevy" in the headline replaced with "Chevrolet." So perhaps there was a good reason for the nickname memo. Chevrolet needed to spell out when to use which name.
In TV advertising, a company or brand should probably use its formal name in the first mention and in the closing signature. In between, the nickname might be appropriate. A good rule of thumb which publications almost always use is to use the full name in the first mention and then the nickname in the next mentions.
In an article, for example, a reporter might refer to a newspaper as "The Wall Street Journal." In the next mention, the reporter might say "The Journal." Should The Wall Street Journal change its name to The Journal? No, in the long run the publication would lose a lot of its identity.
When a company or brand has a well-known nickname, it shouldn't hesitate to use the nickname in the proper settings.
I'm surprised, for example, that McDonald's in its TV advertising seldom uses its "Mickey D's" nickname. It would seem to be an ideal complement to its verbal slogan "I'm lovin' it."
You really have to love the place to call it "Mickey D's."
Monday, August 2, 2010
Behind Disney's Digital Shopping Spree
Behind Disney's Digital Shopping Spree
The purchase of game maker Playdom may help Disney's brands with the Facebook generation By Andy Fixmer and Ronald Grover
BW Magazine
The New Abnormal
Dome Sweet Dome
Why Robert Dudley's BP Could Be Even Riskier
Commentary: America Sits Out the Race
Inflation: The Great New Divide
This Issue
August 2, 2010
American Consumers Are Cutting Back. Except When They're Not
Previous IssueNext Issue Story Tools
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linkedin connections Four years ago, Bob Iger, the chief executive officer of Walt Disney (DIS), tried to build a cell-phone business. Disney created a family-oriented mobile service that included a global positioning system so parents could track their kids. Too few consumers signed up, and the company killed the operation after 15 months. Disney Interactive, the division that ran the ill-fated cell service, is still unprofitable. It lost $55 million last quarter.
Iger retains his enthusiasm for digital business and has switched strategies to buying rather than building. He wants to acquire social games and other online services that come with established customers and talented creators—and can help sell Disney's famous brands. "You don't get the kind of growth we want by building from the inside," he says.
Since paying $350 million for the kids' social network Club Penguin three years ago, Disney has purchased Wideload Games, whose founder helped create Microsoft's (MSFT) hit Halo franchise. Early last month, the entertainment giant acquired Tapulous, a publisher of music-related games for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. On July 27, Disney made its biggest video game bet yet, agreeing to pay $563 million for privately held Playdom, the Mountain View (Calif.) maker of Sorority Life and Mobsters, which are played on Facebook, MySpace, and mobile phones. If Playdom meets performance targets over time, its founders and investors may receive an additional $200 million.
Sales Venue
Playdom specializes in games that sell virtual goods. In Mobsters, players try to build crime syndicates by buying—with real money—digital machine guns and henchmen. In Sorority Life, players buy clothing and
accessories as they climb a social ladder. Some 42 million people regularly play Playdom's games each month, according to Disney. Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities says the purchase of Playdom will give Disney a potentially fast-growing venue to sell every Disney character and media brand from Mickey Mouse to Spider-Man to ESPN.
For example, when Disney releases the Pixar movie Cars 2 next June, it could promote the film by using its soundtrack in a Tapulous-made music game for mobile phones and weaving Cars 2 characters into Playdom games on Facebook. Disney plans to launch a virtual world based on Cars this month. That would be in addition to more traditional product tie-ins—plush-toy merchandise, games for Nintendo's Wii console, coverage on ABC and the Disney Channel, and theme park rides.
"I don't think they're looking for Playdom's revenues as much as they're looking for Playdom's knowhow" in working social games into the Disney mix, Pachter says. Playdom CEO John Pleasants is moving to Disney, where he will continue to oversee social game development and become an executive vice-president. He'll be working with Iger's point man for digital strategy, Steve Wadsworth, who has run Disney's Internet unit since 1999 and assumed video game oversight in 2008.
Iger says the buy-don't-build approach is what drove some earlier acquisitions. His $8.1 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006, for example, buttressed Disney's flagging animation division; the $4.2 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment last year gave the company iconic comic-book characters that appeal to boys. (Disney had been known more for cartoon princesses than superheroes.) Club Penguin was the company's first acquisition of a virtual world. The site's founders are busy running online worlds with monthly subscription fees and sales of virtual goods; they built the Cars site that will launch this month and are overseeing older ones like Pirates of the Caribbean Online.
Board Talent
Iger has some Internet talent on his board to lean on as he makes digital deals. Apple CEO Steve Jobs joined as a result of the Pixar acquisition and is Disney's largest shareholder. Disney was the first to sell TV shows and films on Apple's iTunes online media store. In March, Iger tapped Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to become a director. Since then Disney has increased its presence on the social network and experimented with using it to sell tickets to the Pixar movie Toy Story 3.
It's been typical for big media companies to lose money online. News Corp.'s (NWS) digital media unit lost $150 million in the quarter ended in March. CBS (CBS) stopped breaking out results for interactive after that unit lost $41.3 million during the first nine months of 2009.
Could Disney's acquisitions put it on track to make some money online? "It's the right strategy for Disney to buy," says Gina Bianchini, a venture capitalist who co-founded the social network Ning.com with Marc Andreessen. "And they are looking at some very savvy acquisitions."
The bottom line: Disney's
The purchase of game maker Playdom may help Disney's brands with the Facebook generation By Andy Fixmer and Ronald Grover
BW Magazine
The New Abnormal
Dome Sweet Dome
Why Robert Dudley's BP Could Be Even Riskier
Commentary: America Sits Out the Race
Inflation: The Great New Divide
This Issue
August 2, 2010
American Consumers Are Cutting Back. Except When They're Not
Previous IssueNext Issue Story Tools
post a comment
e-mail this story
print this story
order a reprint
suggest a story
digg this
add to Business Exchange
linkedin connections Four years ago, Bob Iger, the chief executive officer of Walt Disney (DIS), tried to build a cell-phone business. Disney created a family-oriented mobile service that included a global positioning system so parents could track their kids. Too few consumers signed up, and the company killed the operation after 15 months. Disney Interactive, the division that ran the ill-fated cell service, is still unprofitable. It lost $55 million last quarter.
Iger retains his enthusiasm for digital business and has switched strategies to buying rather than building. He wants to acquire social games and other online services that come with established customers and talented creators—and can help sell Disney's famous brands. "You don't get the kind of growth we want by building from the inside," he says.
Since paying $350 million for the kids' social network Club Penguin three years ago, Disney has purchased Wideload Games, whose founder helped create Microsoft's (MSFT) hit Halo franchise. Early last month, the entertainment giant acquired Tapulous, a publisher of music-related games for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. On July 27, Disney made its biggest video game bet yet, agreeing to pay $563 million for privately held Playdom, the Mountain View (Calif.) maker of Sorority Life and Mobsters, which are played on Facebook, MySpace, and mobile phones. If Playdom meets performance targets over time, its founders and investors may receive an additional $200 million.
Sales Venue
Playdom specializes in games that sell virtual goods. In Mobsters, players try to build crime syndicates by buying—with real money—digital machine guns and henchmen. In Sorority Life, players buy clothing and
accessories as they climb a social ladder. Some 42 million people regularly play Playdom's games each month, according to Disney. Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities says the purchase of Playdom will give Disney a potentially fast-growing venue to sell every Disney character and media brand from Mickey Mouse to Spider-Man to ESPN.
For example, when Disney releases the Pixar movie Cars 2 next June, it could promote the film by using its soundtrack in a Tapulous-made music game for mobile phones and weaving Cars 2 characters into Playdom games on Facebook. Disney plans to launch a virtual world based on Cars this month. That would be in addition to more traditional product tie-ins—plush-toy merchandise, games for Nintendo's Wii console, coverage on ABC and the Disney Channel, and theme park rides.
"I don't think they're looking for Playdom's revenues as much as they're looking for Playdom's knowhow" in working social games into the Disney mix, Pachter says. Playdom CEO John Pleasants is moving to Disney, where he will continue to oversee social game development and become an executive vice-president. He'll be working with Iger's point man for digital strategy, Steve Wadsworth, who has run Disney's Internet unit since 1999 and assumed video game oversight in 2008.
Iger says the buy-don't-build approach is what drove some earlier acquisitions. His $8.1 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006, for example, buttressed Disney's flagging animation division; the $4.2 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment last year gave the company iconic comic-book characters that appeal to boys. (Disney had been known more for cartoon princesses than superheroes.) Club Penguin was the company's first acquisition of a virtual world. The site's founders are busy running online worlds with monthly subscription fees and sales of virtual goods; they built the Cars site that will launch this month and are overseeing older ones like Pirates of the Caribbean Online.
Board Talent
Iger has some Internet talent on his board to lean on as he makes digital deals. Apple CEO Steve Jobs joined as a result of the Pixar acquisition and is Disney's largest shareholder. Disney was the first to sell TV shows and films on Apple's iTunes online media store. In March, Iger tapped Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to become a director. Since then Disney has increased its presence on the social network and experimented with using it to sell tickets to the Pixar movie Toy Story 3.
It's been typical for big media companies to lose money online. News Corp.'s (NWS) digital media unit lost $150 million in the quarter ended in March. CBS (CBS) stopped breaking out results for interactive after that unit lost $41.3 million during the first nine months of 2009.
Could Disney's acquisitions put it on track to make some money online? "It's the right strategy for Disney to buy," says Gina Bianchini, a venture capitalist who co-founded the social network Ning.com with Marc Andreessen. "And they are looking at some very savvy acquisitions."
The bottom line: Disney's
Friday, July 23, 2010
The 10 commandments of content marketing
The 10 commandments of content marketing
By Eric Anderson
It's only a matter of time before some marketing pundit boldly declares this to be the Era of the Boldly Declared Era. Our attempts to make sense of the rapid changes in consumer media consumption have spawned such era-defining labels as "Web 2.0," "Emerging Media," "Generation Facebook," "The Death of Print," and most recently, "The Splinternet."
Historically, a mania for naming has been a sure sign of cultural anxiety, and in our industry, it's a sure sign that marketers are still percolating over the big questions: Will social media take over the world? Will streaming content kill broadcast? Will someone eventually click on a banner ad? Will society finally grind to a halt when there's nothing left to tweet about besides Twitter?
Stay informed. For more tips on freshening up your brand's marketing initiatives, attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Sept. 11-15. Request your invitation today.
As an industry, we're struggling with these questions because we're stuck in outdated categories. We still think advertising is advertising and social media is something else. In fact, advertising and social media are the same thing: They're content. We can find answers to the vexing questions of our time the moment we realize that all marketing is content. And at the risk of adding yet another era-defining label to the mix, I want to suggest that the new approach demanded by these rapid changes is something White Horse calls content marketing.
Content marketing is already occurring; it's all around us. Marketers that do it well might not even know that they're doing it because they weren't burdened by the old way of thinking in the first place. Fortunately, it's possible to bring a stone tablet down from that mountain and share what works about content marketing. Its 10 commandments are as follows.
Content shall be shareable
Advertising will have its renaissance the moment a majority of marketers care about creating something worth passing on. Consumers don't trust advertising because it shouts at them. But the broadcast advertisers that top the viral video charts week after week don't shout -- they amuse, entertain, and inspire. If every creative brief in every agency in the land asked, "Why would someone want to pass this on?" then we would have TV ads that don't make us reach for the TiVo remote and banner ads that can finally make us cry for reasons other than frustration. That's not just advertising, that's good content.
Content shall be malleable
I mentioned the Splinternet. Sorry. But it's true that we've got to start paying more attention to how the message fits the medium. It's hard to do that with advertising, but it's easy to do it with content. You stop worrying about reusing brand assets and think instead about things like, "Mobile's great at location-based stuff. What can I give my customer that's useful based on their location?" Our mania for brand consistency has allowed us to forget that brands are built on trust. And trust is built on relevance. Good content is always relevant.
Content shall be collaborative
Marketers love to let customers into the brand laboratory -- as long as they don't touch anything. We invite consumers to give us their ideas, but how often do we let their creations out of the lab to roam free? Doritos figured out that consumer-generated content was just as good as its own content -- maybe better -- and so it let consumers create the brand's Super Bowl ads. From scratch. The only monstrosities to come out of that experiment were the results: Doritos' ads were the most-favored and most-recalled of the Super Bowl. Oh, and they were the most-shared (see Commandment 1).
Content shall be measurable
Enough with the hand-wringing over ROI. If you can measure how much traffic a given piece of content has driven to your website, you have vastly exceeded the measurability of 95 percent of advertising since its invention. (Actually, 96 percent -- we measured it.) When you put content out there -- on social networks, on YouTube, on blogs, etc. -- you can measure the traffic that comes back. You can even measure what that traffic does next. It takes a bit of work. Notice there is no "Content shall be easy" commandment. But it's worth it. How do I know it's worth it? It's measurable.
Content shall be fearless
If advertising were a personality type, it would be obsessive-compulsive: ritualized, repetitive, controlling, and fearful of change. Content isn't like that. Content concerns itself with an exchange of ideas, so it morphs and evolves as new ideas are added. Take Starbucks' fearless crowd-sourcing experiment, MyStarbucksIdea.com -- a simple idea engine that shape-shifts its content with every comment and contribution, all adding up to a pretty durable brand proposition that says, "We care what our customers think."
Content shall invite comment
Most content that we produce for our customers will fail. This is a good thing; our success depends on knowing when things fail, so we can try something else. It's only a problem if we shut our ears to it. For decades our industry didn't hear customer feedback outside of the airless environs of the focus group; now we have a chance to get the full, pent-up barrage of feedback in every tweet, YouTube comment, and blog posting that our brands attract. We need to embrace it, monitor it, learn from it, and move on. We're fearless now, remember?
Content shall start everywhere
Marketing no longer belongs to marketers. For content marketing to succeed, we're going to need a big tent with room for the PR folks, the product managers, the researchers, the sales staff, and, yes, even the execs. They all have content to contribute, and we can't do it all ourselves. The marketer's core expertise will no longer be knowing how to produce marketing content; it'll be knowing how to channel marketing content in ways that keeps the conversation going. We're going to need ads, articles, opinions, advice, feedback, and pithy observations in 140 characters or less. And no, you can't get an intern for that.
Content shall go everywhere
In the beginning, there was the marketing funnel, and the ad impressions did delivereth leads unto the marketing funnel, wherein many were converted. Today, leads bounce all over the place before they ever get sucked into the funnel. They visit blogs, message boards, review sites, and social networks to get the real scoop on the brand. You need content in all of those places. You need to coordinate that content with your marketing funnel and measure its impact. How are you possibly going to get all this done? See Commandment 7.
Content shall be sponsored
It used to be that PR content went to PR outlets and advertising content went to advertising outlets, and the two might nod to each other in the hall as they passed. Not any longer. Publishers are inviting both over to dinner, with package deals that include sponsored content in your area of expertise seated right next to paid advertising. Marketers that haven't embraced content marketing will blow these deals by phoning in the PR content, or they'll miss the opportunity entirely.
Content shall be forever
OK, "forever" might be an exaggeration; the planet is 6 billion years old, and today's marketing content can't be expected to endure longer than a billion or so years, depending on what happens with Facebook. But that's a big change because traditionally advertising only lasted as long as you paid for it. Content marketing lives well beyond a campaign because it shows up in archives, on sharing sites like SlideShare and Scribd, on blogs, in tweets, and in content aggregators like Digg and StumbleUpon. It's the swallowed gum in marketing's digestive tract, except that the flavor endures.
That's content marketing, and it's where White Horse stakes its claim. Like all content marketing, this is an unfinished discussion; others will add and detract, and the end result is outside of our control. We're good with that. We're content marketers.
By Eric Anderson
It's only a matter of time before some marketing pundit boldly declares this to be the Era of the Boldly Declared Era. Our attempts to make sense of the rapid changes in consumer media consumption have spawned such era-defining labels as "Web 2.0," "Emerging Media," "Generation Facebook," "The Death of Print," and most recently, "The Splinternet."
Historically, a mania for naming has been a sure sign of cultural anxiety, and in our industry, it's a sure sign that marketers are still percolating over the big questions: Will social media take over the world? Will streaming content kill broadcast? Will someone eventually click on a banner ad? Will society finally grind to a halt when there's nothing left to tweet about besides Twitter?
Stay informed. For more tips on freshening up your brand's marketing initiatives, attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Sept. 11-15. Request your invitation today.
As an industry, we're struggling with these questions because we're stuck in outdated categories. We still think advertising is advertising and social media is something else. In fact, advertising and social media are the same thing: They're content. We can find answers to the vexing questions of our time the moment we realize that all marketing is content. And at the risk of adding yet another era-defining label to the mix, I want to suggest that the new approach demanded by these rapid changes is something White Horse calls content marketing.
Content marketing is already occurring; it's all around us. Marketers that do it well might not even know that they're doing it because they weren't burdened by the old way of thinking in the first place. Fortunately, it's possible to bring a stone tablet down from that mountain and share what works about content marketing. Its 10 commandments are as follows.
Content shall be shareable
Advertising will have its renaissance the moment a majority of marketers care about creating something worth passing on. Consumers don't trust advertising because it shouts at them. But the broadcast advertisers that top the viral video charts week after week don't shout -- they amuse, entertain, and inspire. If every creative brief in every agency in the land asked, "Why would someone want to pass this on?" then we would have TV ads that don't make us reach for the TiVo remote and banner ads that can finally make us cry for reasons other than frustration. That's not just advertising, that's good content.
Content shall be malleable
I mentioned the Splinternet. Sorry. But it's true that we've got to start paying more attention to how the message fits the medium. It's hard to do that with advertising, but it's easy to do it with content. You stop worrying about reusing brand assets and think instead about things like, "Mobile's great at location-based stuff. What can I give my customer that's useful based on their location?" Our mania for brand consistency has allowed us to forget that brands are built on trust. And trust is built on relevance. Good content is always relevant.
Content shall be collaborative
Marketers love to let customers into the brand laboratory -- as long as they don't touch anything. We invite consumers to give us their ideas, but how often do we let their creations out of the lab to roam free? Doritos figured out that consumer-generated content was just as good as its own content -- maybe better -- and so it let consumers create the brand's Super Bowl ads. From scratch. The only monstrosities to come out of that experiment were the results: Doritos' ads were the most-favored and most-recalled of the Super Bowl. Oh, and they were the most-shared (see Commandment 1).
Content shall be measurable
Enough with the hand-wringing over ROI. If you can measure how much traffic a given piece of content has driven to your website, you have vastly exceeded the measurability of 95 percent of advertising since its invention. (Actually, 96 percent -- we measured it.) When you put content out there -- on social networks, on YouTube, on blogs, etc. -- you can measure the traffic that comes back. You can even measure what that traffic does next. It takes a bit of work. Notice there is no "Content shall be easy" commandment. But it's worth it. How do I know it's worth it? It's measurable.
Content shall be fearless
If advertising were a personality type, it would be obsessive-compulsive: ritualized, repetitive, controlling, and fearful of change. Content isn't like that. Content concerns itself with an exchange of ideas, so it morphs and evolves as new ideas are added. Take Starbucks' fearless crowd-sourcing experiment, MyStarbucksIdea.com -- a simple idea engine that shape-shifts its content with every comment and contribution, all adding up to a pretty durable brand proposition that says, "We care what our customers think."
Content shall invite comment
Most content that we produce for our customers will fail. This is a good thing; our success depends on knowing when things fail, so we can try something else. It's only a problem if we shut our ears to it. For decades our industry didn't hear customer feedback outside of the airless environs of the focus group; now we have a chance to get the full, pent-up barrage of feedback in every tweet, YouTube comment, and blog posting that our brands attract. We need to embrace it, monitor it, learn from it, and move on. We're fearless now, remember?
Content shall start everywhere
Marketing no longer belongs to marketers. For content marketing to succeed, we're going to need a big tent with room for the PR folks, the product managers, the researchers, the sales staff, and, yes, even the execs. They all have content to contribute, and we can't do it all ourselves. The marketer's core expertise will no longer be knowing how to produce marketing content; it'll be knowing how to channel marketing content in ways that keeps the conversation going. We're going to need ads, articles, opinions, advice, feedback, and pithy observations in 140 characters or less. And no, you can't get an intern for that.
Content shall go everywhere
In the beginning, there was the marketing funnel, and the ad impressions did delivereth leads unto the marketing funnel, wherein many were converted. Today, leads bounce all over the place before they ever get sucked into the funnel. They visit blogs, message boards, review sites, and social networks to get the real scoop on the brand. You need content in all of those places. You need to coordinate that content with your marketing funnel and measure its impact. How are you possibly going to get all this done? See Commandment 7.
Content shall be sponsored
It used to be that PR content went to PR outlets and advertising content went to advertising outlets, and the two might nod to each other in the hall as they passed. Not any longer. Publishers are inviting both over to dinner, with package deals that include sponsored content in your area of expertise seated right next to paid advertising. Marketers that haven't embraced content marketing will blow these deals by phoning in the PR content, or they'll miss the opportunity entirely.
Content shall be forever
OK, "forever" might be an exaggeration; the planet is 6 billion years old, and today's marketing content can't be expected to endure longer than a billion or so years, depending on what happens with Facebook. But that's a big change because traditionally advertising only lasted as long as you paid for it. Content marketing lives well beyond a campaign because it shows up in archives, on sharing sites like SlideShare and Scribd, on blogs, in tweets, and in content aggregators like Digg and StumbleUpon. It's the swallowed gum in marketing's digestive tract, except that the flavor endures.
That's content marketing, and it's where White Horse stakes its claim. Like all content marketing, this is an unfinished discussion; others will add and detract, and the end result is outside of our control. We're good with that. We're content marketers.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
10 Technological Advances Marketers Can't Live Without
10 Technological Advances Marketers Can't Live Without
Liodice Continues His Series by Looking at the New Strategies and Tools Changing the Game for Brands
Inventions have changed the face of advertising consistently throughout history and will continue to do so, as technology evolves at an ever-increasing rate. The creation of new forms of media, from radio to TV and the internet, have caused the industry to create new strategies and tools to help brands find their own optimal media mix. This week, as the ANA hosts its inaugural Digital and Social Media Conference, we take a look at 10 technological advances that marketers of today and tomorrow cannot ignore.
HULU: Because of internet video's low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Advertisers always sought a way to track the elusive "word-of-mouth" phenomenon that affected their brands so heavily. Social media brought the conversations that consumers were having online, giving marketers the chance to monitor, further and contribute to them in real-time. Nielsen found that while 14% of people trust ads, 78% of people trust consumer recommendations. The conversation for marketers turned from the one-way nature of traditional media to a two-way dialogue that could not be ignored. Social media has shifted the conversation so forcefully that consumers have an unprecedented level of control over brands, rapidly turning themselves into a brand's best advertisers.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search engine optimization is one of the most important and cost-effective ways to attract customers on the internet. Research has found that almost two-thirds of the time, people look only at the first page of their search results. They rarely make it beyond the first 10, and virtually never beyond the initial 30 results. When it comes to e-commerce transactions, more than half originate from a search listing, proving the importance of being "found." SEO is a way to ensure that those consumers using the web to search for a product or service easily find it, resulting in a more targeted lead for the advertiser and easier search process for the consumer.
INTEREST-BASED ADVERTISING (BEHAVIORAL TARGETING)
Behavioral targeting allows ads to be more relevant, valuable and thus persuasive to the consumer. This has given the marketing industry an unprecedented level of precision. This comes with a level of caution, however, as consumers are wary of being watched on the web. As such, a group of the nation's largest media and marketing trade associations including the 4As, ANA, BBB, DMA and IAB released self-regulatory principles to protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media. The principles require advertisers and websites to clearly inform consumers about data-collection practices and enable them to exercise control over that information.
ONLINE VIDEO: VIDEO ON DEMAND
The arrival of video on demand and sites like Hulu and YouTube signaled a huge change in the industry. People started looking to the web for entertainment, and advertisers redirected dollars to take advantage of the growing world of online video. Because of internet video's low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit. Viral videos have shown potential to turn ordinary people into brand ambassadors as the clip gets instantly forwarded to friends and family. Internet broadcasting also has provided another online venue for measurable and targeted advertising in the form of attached text and pre-roll ads.
MOBILE: This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cellphones, smartphones and tablet computers. MEASURING ACTIONS VS. IMPRESSIONS
Online ads originally mimicked those in traditional media, where marketers paid for the amount of exposure gained. Since the cost-per-click model has emerged, advertisers have been taking advantage of the internet's ability to measure user action, something impression-based pricing cannot match. Those using action-based systems like Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter, and sites like Facebook, pay based only on how many people engage an ad with a click. Marketers can now see a clearer picture of ROI; consumers who interact with ads tend to be more valuable.
INTERACTIVE TV
As DVRs made their way into consumers' lives, many industry pundits mourned the end of the 30-second spot and wondered how advertisers would fare now that people could skip through their commercials. The answer was not just to formulate ads that worked in fast-forward, but to introduce interactive TV ads that worked within and in tandem with regular programming. Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV, and Canoe Ventures brought the first clickable ad to "receive more info" to the airwaves just last month. This area is one to watch, as consumers accept, and eventually seek, interactivity in all aspects of their lives.
BRAND-SPECIFIC COMMERCIAL RATINGS
More than $70 billion is spent each year on TV advertising. With such a large amount of funds devoted to commercials, the industry began calling for a better way to assess whether they were getting their money's worth. Where, on one hand, the digital realm was providing precise statistics on an ad's effectiveness, TV ratings were still based on the average of all commercials airing with a program. In 2007 the ANA began calling for ratings that were specific to each commercial. The industry is now starting to see a potential pathway, as a test conducted by Nielsen shows that the move toward brand-specific commercial ratings is clear.
MOBILE ADVERTISING AND PAYMENTS
According to eMarketer, the mobile advertising industry is expected to be worth more than $1.56 billion by 2013. This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cell phones, smartphones and tablet computers. Apple's iPhone and iPad specifically have brought the mobile arena to the forefront, as consumers increasingly look to their phones to aid in more aspects of their lives. While the internet can tell advertisers what sites consumers visit and for how long, the iAd platform gives a detailed picture of their potential customers' everyday lives. Additionally, mobile payments allow marketers to make appeals for instant buys, and dole out coupons and other rewards.
Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV. MARKETING-MIX MODELING
Marketing-mix modeling provided researchers and analysts the opportunity to think more precisely about integrated marketing. Technologists found ways to create highly productive media-decision models by weaving together analyses of consumer sensitivity to a company (or brand's) media platforms. This tool gave media planners the opportunity to increase the effectiveness of an integrated marketing plan while reducing overall costs . Modeling has become more difficult with newer forms of media, the management process for conceptualizing integrated media plans remains the same. This is expected to improve as marketers and agencies better assess consumer sensitivity to digital media platforms.
AD-ID
Since 1970, advertisers, agencies and TV networks used the ISCI commercial coding system to identify TV commercials. To help bring a higher level of accuracy to the coding process and consistency to advertisement identification, as well as enable the industry for digital convergence, a new identification system was created. Developed by the 4As and the ANA, Ad-ID came into the marketplace in 2003 as a digital identifying code for advertisements. It has since been dubbed the "UPC code of the advertising industry." Ad-ID helped transform the marketing industry for the digital revolution.
Liodice Continues His Series by Looking at the New Strategies and Tools Changing the Game for Brands
Inventions have changed the face of advertising consistently throughout history and will continue to do so, as technology evolves at an ever-increasing rate. The creation of new forms of media, from radio to TV and the internet, have caused the industry to create new strategies and tools to help brands find their own optimal media mix. This week, as the ANA hosts its inaugural Digital and Social Media Conference, we take a look at 10 technological advances that marketers of today and tomorrow cannot ignore.
HULU: Because of internet video's low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Advertisers always sought a way to track the elusive "word-of-mouth" phenomenon that affected their brands so heavily. Social media brought the conversations that consumers were having online, giving marketers the chance to monitor, further and contribute to them in real-time. Nielsen found that while 14% of people trust ads, 78% of people trust consumer recommendations. The conversation for marketers turned from the one-way nature of traditional media to a two-way dialogue that could not be ignored. Social media has shifted the conversation so forcefully that consumers have an unprecedented level of control over brands, rapidly turning themselves into a brand's best advertisers.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search engine optimization is one of the most important and cost-effective ways to attract customers on the internet. Research has found that almost two-thirds of the time, people look only at the first page of their search results. They rarely make it beyond the first 10, and virtually never beyond the initial 30 results. When it comes to e-commerce transactions, more than half originate from a search listing, proving the importance of being "found." SEO is a way to ensure that those consumers using the web to search for a product or service easily find it, resulting in a more targeted lead for the advertiser and easier search process for the consumer.
INTEREST-BASED ADVERTISING (BEHAVIORAL TARGETING)
Behavioral targeting allows ads to be more relevant, valuable and thus persuasive to the consumer. This has given the marketing industry an unprecedented level of precision. This comes with a level of caution, however, as consumers are wary of being watched on the web. As such, a group of the nation's largest media and marketing trade associations including the 4As, ANA, BBB, DMA and IAB released self-regulatory principles to protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media. The principles require advertisers and websites to clearly inform consumers about data-collection practices and enable them to exercise control over that information.
ONLINE VIDEO: VIDEO ON DEMAND
The arrival of video on demand and sites like Hulu and YouTube signaled a huge change in the industry. People started looking to the web for entertainment, and advertisers redirected dollars to take advantage of the growing world of online video. Because of internet video's low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit. Viral videos have shown potential to turn ordinary people into brand ambassadors as the clip gets instantly forwarded to friends and family. Internet broadcasting also has provided another online venue for measurable and targeted advertising in the form of attached text and pre-roll ads.
MOBILE: This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cellphones, smartphones and tablet computers. MEASURING ACTIONS VS. IMPRESSIONS
Online ads originally mimicked those in traditional media, where marketers paid for the amount of exposure gained. Since the cost-per-click model has emerged, advertisers have been taking advantage of the internet's ability to measure user action, something impression-based pricing cannot match. Those using action-based systems like Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter, and sites like Facebook, pay based only on how many people engage an ad with a click. Marketers can now see a clearer picture of ROI; consumers who interact with ads tend to be more valuable.
INTERACTIVE TV
As DVRs made their way into consumers' lives, many industry pundits mourned the end of the 30-second spot and wondered how advertisers would fare now that people could skip through their commercials. The answer was not just to formulate ads that worked in fast-forward, but to introduce interactive TV ads that worked within and in tandem with regular programming. Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV, and Canoe Ventures brought the first clickable ad to "receive more info" to the airwaves just last month. This area is one to watch, as consumers accept, and eventually seek, interactivity in all aspects of their lives.
BRAND-SPECIFIC COMMERCIAL RATINGS
More than $70 billion is spent each year on TV advertising. With such a large amount of funds devoted to commercials, the industry began calling for a better way to assess whether they were getting their money's worth. Where, on one hand, the digital realm was providing precise statistics on an ad's effectiveness, TV ratings were still based on the average of all commercials airing with a program. In 2007 the ANA began calling for ratings that were specific to each commercial. The industry is now starting to see a potential pathway, as a test conducted by Nielsen shows that the move toward brand-specific commercial ratings is clear.
MOBILE ADVERTISING AND PAYMENTS
According to eMarketer, the mobile advertising industry is expected to be worth more than $1.56 billion by 2013. This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cell phones, smartphones and tablet computers. Apple's iPhone and iPad specifically have brought the mobile arena to the forefront, as consumers increasingly look to their phones to aid in more aspects of their lives. While the internet can tell advertisers what sites consumers visit and for how long, the iAd platform gives a detailed picture of their potential customers' everyday lives. Additionally, mobile payments allow marketers to make appeals for instant buys, and dole out coupons and other rewards.
Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV. MARKETING-MIX MODELING
Marketing-mix modeling provided researchers and analysts the opportunity to think more precisely about integrated marketing. Technologists found ways to create highly productive media-decision models by weaving together analyses of consumer sensitivity to a company (or brand's) media platforms. This tool gave media planners the opportunity to increase the effectiveness of an integrated marketing plan while reducing overall costs . Modeling has become more difficult with newer forms of media, the management process for conceptualizing integrated media plans remains the same. This is expected to improve as marketers and agencies better assess consumer sensitivity to digital media platforms.
AD-ID
Since 1970, advertisers, agencies and TV networks used the ISCI commercial coding system to identify TV commercials. To help bring a higher level of accuracy to the coding process and consistency to advertisement identification, as well as enable the industry for digital convergence, a new identification system was created. Developed by the 4As and the ANA, Ad-ID came into the marketplace in 2003 as a digital identifying code for advertisements. It has since been dubbed the "UPC code of the advertising industry." Ad-ID helped transform the marketing industry for the digital revolution.
6 digital trends to watch
My colleague Steve Rubel and I wear many hats at Edelman. One of those hats is keeping an eye on the trends unfolding in real time and deriving meaning from them as they pertain to organizations and brands. Attached to this post is a slideshow where we identify what these trends are and at a high level how your organization needs to plan accordingly for them. They are:
1.Marketing in the age of streams
Your customers, consumers and employees are no longer only visiting static Web pages but participating in conversations which increasingly occur off domain in “streams” flowing from Facebook, Twitter and even apps. In order to catch them, you must be highly relevant in their streams.
2.The Googleization of media
Quality Content and potent social connections in addition to traditional keywords are influencing how visible you are to the search engines. Everyone is media.
3.The data decade
Data is increasingly becoming available to anyone and everyone. From it we can derive insights into behaviors. We must become “data junkies” to fully harness this trend.
4.Business becomes social
Moving from designated spokesperson to employee engagement at scale—business itself is beginning to look more social as organizations start to engage all stakeholders in open and mutually beneficial ways.
5.Location, location, location
Where you are is becoming the new what are you doing as multiple platforms begin to adopt the new geolocation status update generating new kinds of data.
6.Private becomes public
Despite privacy concerns, applications and behaviors which support social sharing are still going strong as what is considered private becomes re-defined as we continue engaging in networks.
We believe these trends are not future gazing but what’s happening at this very moment and that they will cause organizations to adapt to change, adopt new practices and innovate accordingly. For more industry insights, ideas and perspectives you can visit our newly created “branded channel” on Slideshare.
1.Marketing in the age of streams
Your customers, consumers and employees are no longer only visiting static Web pages but participating in conversations which increasingly occur off domain in “streams” flowing from Facebook, Twitter and even apps. In order to catch them, you must be highly relevant in their streams.
2.The Googleization of media
Quality Content and potent social connections in addition to traditional keywords are influencing how visible you are to the search engines. Everyone is media.
3.The data decade
Data is increasingly becoming available to anyone and everyone. From it we can derive insights into behaviors. We must become “data junkies” to fully harness this trend.
4.Business becomes social
Moving from designated spokesperson to employee engagement at scale—business itself is beginning to look more social as organizations start to engage all stakeholders in open and mutually beneficial ways.
5.Location, location, location
Where you are is becoming the new what are you doing as multiple platforms begin to adopt the new geolocation status update generating new kinds of data.
6.Private becomes public
Despite privacy concerns, applications and behaviors which support social sharing are still going strong as what is considered private becomes re-defined as we continue engaging in networks.
We believe these trends are not future gazing but what’s happening at this very moment and that they will cause organizations to adapt to change, adopt new practices and innovate accordingly. For more industry insights, ideas and perspectives you can visit our newly created “branded channel” on Slideshare.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The great survivor
Leaders.
In praise of television
The great survivor
TV has coped well with technological change. Other media can learn from it
Apr 29th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
NEWSPAPERS are dying; the music industry is still yelping about iTunes; book publishers think they are next. Yet one bit of old media seems to be doing rather well. In the final quarter of 2009 the average American spent almost 37 hours a week watching television. Earlier this year 116m of them saw the Super Bowl—a record for a single programme. Far from being cowed by new media, TV is colonising it. Shows like “American Idol” and “Britain’s Got Talent” draw huge audiences partly because people are constantly messaging and tweeting about them, and discussing them on Facebook.
Advertising wobbled during the recession, shaking the free-to-air broadcasters that depend on it. But cable and satellite TV breezed through. Pay-television subscriptions grew by more than 2m in America last year. The explosive growth of cable and satellite TV in India explains how that country has gone from two channels in the early 1990s to more than 600 today. Pay-TV bosses scarcely acknowledge the existence of viewers who do not subscribe to multichannel TV, talking only of people who have “yet to choose” a provider. This is not merely bluster. As our special report this week explains, once people start paying for greater television choice, they rarely stop.
The advantages of indolence
It helps that TV is an inherently lazy form of entertainment. The much-repeated prediction that people will cancel their pay-TV subscriptions and piece together an evening’s worth of entertainment from free broadcasts and the internet “assumes that people are willing to work three times harder to get the same thing”, observes Mike Fries of Liberty Global, a cable giant. Laziness also mitigates the threat from piracy. Although many programmes are no more than three or four mouse clicks away, that still sounds too much like work for most of us. And television-watching is a more sociable activity than it may appear. People like to watch programmes when everybody else is watching them. Give them devices that allow them to record and play back programmes easily, and they will still watch live TV at least four-fifths of the time.
Yet these natural advantages alone are not enough to ensure television’s survival. The internet threatens TV just as much as it does other media businesses, and for similar reasons. It competes for advertising, offering firms a more measurable and precise way of reaching consumers. Technology also threatens to fracture television into individual programmes, just as it has ruinously broken music albums into individual tracks. TV has endured because it has responded better to such threats than other media businesses.
One of the lessons from TV is to accept change and get ahead of it. Broadcasters’ initial response to the appearance of programmes online was similar to the music industry’s reaction to file-sharing: call in the lawyers. But television firms soon banded together to develop alternatives to piracy. Websites like Hulu, a joint venture of the American broadcasters ABC, Fox and NBC, have drawn eyeballs away from illicit sources. Gradually it has become clear that these websites pose a threat to the TV business in themselves, and that they are not bringing in as much advertising money as might be expected (which is similar to the problem faced by the newspaper business). So television is changing tack again.
With impressive speed, TV firms are now building online subscription-video services. The trendiest model is authentication: prove that you subscribe to pay-television and you can watch all the channels that you have paid for on any device. Such “TV Everywhere” services are beginning to appear in America and Canada. It is likely that Hulu will become a “freemium” service—mostly free, but with some shows hidden behind a paywall. The move from an ad-supported model to a mixture of subscriptions and advertising is tricky, but logical. It shows that it is not enough to embrace technological change. Businesses must also work out how to build digital offerings that do not cause their analogue ones to collapse.
Television has domesticated other disruptive technologies. Ten years ago digital video recorders like TiVo promised to transform the way people watched TV. The devices made it easy to record programmes and play them back, zooming through ads. The TV networks responded by running advertisements that work at high speed. Cable and satellite companies built cheap digital video recorders into set-top boxes and charged viewers extra for them. In effect, money flowed back to the television business. In Britain those boxes will soon be deployed to deliver targeted advertising, enabling the living-room television to compete with the internet.
Other outfits are learning from TV. Record labels sound terribly innovative when they talk about bundling music together with broadband subscriptions. Yet this model comes from television. For the past few years ESPN, a sports giant, has been showing games on its website. The cost is buried in monthly broadband bills. Hulu-style joint ventures are all the rage in media, too. Magazine publishers have set up Next Issue Media, which is trying to shape the evolution of digital devices to suit their needs. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem aims to do the same for films.
That box might appear to be sitting in the corner of the living room, not doing much. In fact, it is constantly evolving. If there is one media business with a chance of completing the perilous journey to the digital future looking as healthy as it did when it set off, it is television.
In praise of television
The great survivor
TV has coped well with technological change. Other media can learn from it
Apr 29th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
NEWSPAPERS are dying; the music industry is still yelping about iTunes; book publishers think they are next. Yet one bit of old media seems to be doing rather well. In the final quarter of 2009 the average American spent almost 37 hours a week watching television. Earlier this year 116m of them saw the Super Bowl—a record for a single programme. Far from being cowed by new media, TV is colonising it. Shows like “American Idol” and “Britain’s Got Talent” draw huge audiences partly because people are constantly messaging and tweeting about them, and discussing them on Facebook.
Advertising wobbled during the recession, shaking the free-to-air broadcasters that depend on it. But cable and satellite TV breezed through. Pay-television subscriptions grew by more than 2m in America last year. The explosive growth of cable and satellite TV in India explains how that country has gone from two channels in the early 1990s to more than 600 today. Pay-TV bosses scarcely acknowledge the existence of viewers who do not subscribe to multichannel TV, talking only of people who have “yet to choose” a provider. This is not merely bluster. As our special report this week explains, once people start paying for greater television choice, they rarely stop.
The advantages of indolence
It helps that TV is an inherently lazy form of entertainment. The much-repeated prediction that people will cancel their pay-TV subscriptions and piece together an evening’s worth of entertainment from free broadcasts and the internet “assumes that people are willing to work three times harder to get the same thing”, observes Mike Fries of Liberty Global, a cable giant. Laziness also mitigates the threat from piracy. Although many programmes are no more than three or four mouse clicks away, that still sounds too much like work for most of us. And television-watching is a more sociable activity than it may appear. People like to watch programmes when everybody else is watching them. Give them devices that allow them to record and play back programmes easily, and they will still watch live TV at least four-fifths of the time.
Yet these natural advantages alone are not enough to ensure television’s survival. The internet threatens TV just as much as it does other media businesses, and for similar reasons. It competes for advertising, offering firms a more measurable and precise way of reaching consumers. Technology also threatens to fracture television into individual programmes, just as it has ruinously broken music albums into individual tracks. TV has endured because it has responded better to such threats than other media businesses.
One of the lessons from TV is to accept change and get ahead of it. Broadcasters’ initial response to the appearance of programmes online was similar to the music industry’s reaction to file-sharing: call in the lawyers. But television firms soon banded together to develop alternatives to piracy. Websites like Hulu, a joint venture of the American broadcasters ABC, Fox and NBC, have drawn eyeballs away from illicit sources. Gradually it has become clear that these websites pose a threat to the TV business in themselves, and that they are not bringing in as much advertising money as might be expected (which is similar to the problem faced by the newspaper business). So television is changing tack again.
With impressive speed, TV firms are now building online subscription-video services. The trendiest model is authentication: prove that you subscribe to pay-television and you can watch all the channels that you have paid for on any device. Such “TV Everywhere” services are beginning to appear in America and Canada. It is likely that Hulu will become a “freemium” service—mostly free, but with some shows hidden behind a paywall. The move from an ad-supported model to a mixture of subscriptions and advertising is tricky, but logical. It shows that it is not enough to embrace technological change. Businesses must also work out how to build digital offerings that do not cause their analogue ones to collapse.
Television has domesticated other disruptive technologies. Ten years ago digital video recorders like TiVo promised to transform the way people watched TV. The devices made it easy to record programmes and play them back, zooming through ads. The TV networks responded by running advertisements that work at high speed. Cable and satellite companies built cheap digital video recorders into set-top boxes and charged viewers extra for them. In effect, money flowed back to the television business. In Britain those boxes will soon be deployed to deliver targeted advertising, enabling the living-room television to compete with the internet.
Other outfits are learning from TV. Record labels sound terribly innovative when they talk about bundling music together with broadband subscriptions. Yet this model comes from television. For the past few years ESPN, a sports giant, has been showing games on its website. The cost is buried in monthly broadband bills. Hulu-style joint ventures are all the rage in media, too. Magazine publishers have set up Next Issue Media, which is trying to shape the evolution of digital devices to suit their needs. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem aims to do the same for films.
That box might appear to be sitting in the corner of the living room, not doing much. In fact, it is constantly evolving. If there is one media business with a chance of completing the perilous journey to the digital future looking as healthy as it did when it set off, it is television.
Monday, July 19, 2010
YouTube Scores 101 Online Videos Per Viewer in May
YouTube Scores 101 Online Videos Per Viewer in May
Jack Loechner, Jul 16, 2010 08:15 AM
New data from comScore shows that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month of May. YouTube.com achieved record levels of viewing activity with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassing the threshold of 100 videos per viewer for the first time.
U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos in May, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 14.6 billion videos, representing 43.1% of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second, Microsoft Sites ranked third followed by Vevo and Viacom Digital.
Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)
Property
Videos (000)
Share of Videos (%)
Total Internet Audience
33,950,891
100.0 %
Google Sites
14,628,095
43.1
Hulu
1,174,844
3.5
Microsoft Sites
642,027
1.9
Vevo
430,257
1.3
Viacom Digital
346,755
1.0
Yahoo! Sites
336,314
1.0
CBS Interactive
333,189
1.0
Turner Network
331,897
1.0
Fox Interactive Media
328,492
1.0
Facebook.com
245,120
0.7
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Google Sites attracted 144.6 million unique viewers during the month, followed by Yahoo! Sites and Vevo.
Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)
Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Average Videos per Viewer
Total Internet Audience
182,918
185.6
Google Sites
144,550
101.2
Yahoo! Sites
46,031
7.3
Vevo
45,579
9.4
Facebook.com
45,492
5.4
Fox Interactive Media
44,266
7.4
Hulu
43,541
27.0
CBS Interactive
41,028
8.1
Microsoft Sites
39,416
16.3
Turner Network
35,307
9.4
Viacom Digital
34,572
10.0
Source: comScore Video Metrix
In May, Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 56.2% of the total video viewing audience, while ScanScout Network ranked second with a potential reach of 54.3%.
Top U.S. Online Video Ad Networks by Potential Reach of Unique Viewers (May 2010 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)
Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Potential Reach
Total Internet : Total Audience
182,918
100.0 %
Tremor Media
102,787
56.2
ScanScout Network
99,290
54.3
YuMe Video Network
87,508
47.8
Adconion Video Network
86,641
47.4
Advertising.com Video Network
83,877
45.9
BBE
83,026
45.4
Break Media
80,869
44.2
SpotXchange Video Ad Network
76,734
41.9
TidalTV
69,640
38.1
BrightRoll Video Network
67,521
36.9
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Notable findings include:
•The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group), BrightRoll Video Network, and Tremor Media Video Network
•84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
•144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos on YouTube.com (101.2 videos per viewer).
•The average Hulu viewer watched 27.0 videos, totaling 2.7 hours of video per viewer.
•The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.
Jack Loechner, Jul 16, 2010 08:15 AM
New data from comScore shows that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month of May. YouTube.com achieved record levels of viewing activity with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassing the threshold of 100 videos per viewer for the first time.
U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos in May, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 14.6 billion videos, representing 43.1% of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second, Microsoft Sites ranked third followed by Vevo and Viacom Digital.
Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)
Property
Videos (000)
Share of Videos (%)
Total Internet Audience
33,950,891
100.0 %
Google Sites
14,628,095
43.1
Hulu
1,174,844
3.5
Microsoft Sites
642,027
1.9
Vevo
430,257
1.3
Viacom Digital
346,755
1.0
Yahoo! Sites
336,314
1.0
CBS Interactive
333,189
1.0
Turner Network
331,897
1.0
Fox Interactive Media
328,492
1.0
Facebook.com
245,120
0.7
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Google Sites attracted 144.6 million unique viewers during the month, followed by Yahoo! Sites and Vevo.
Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)
Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Average Videos per Viewer
Total Internet Audience
182,918
185.6
Google Sites
144,550
101.2
Yahoo! Sites
46,031
7.3
Vevo
45,579
9.4
Facebook.com
45,492
5.4
Fox Interactive Media
44,266
7.4
Hulu
43,541
27.0
CBS Interactive
41,028
8.1
Microsoft Sites
39,416
16.3
Turner Network
35,307
9.4
Viacom Digital
34,572
10.0
Source: comScore Video Metrix
In May, Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 56.2% of the total video viewing audience, while ScanScout Network ranked second with a potential reach of 54.3%.
Top U.S. Online Video Ad Networks by Potential Reach of Unique Viewers (May 2010 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)
Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Potential Reach
Total Internet : Total Audience
182,918
100.0 %
Tremor Media
102,787
56.2
ScanScout Network
99,290
54.3
YuMe Video Network
87,508
47.8
Adconion Video Network
86,641
47.4
Advertising.com Video Network
83,877
45.9
BBE
83,026
45.4
Break Media
80,869
44.2
SpotXchange Video Ad Network
76,734
41.9
TidalTV
69,640
38.1
BrightRoll Video Network
67,521
36.9
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Notable findings include:
•The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group), BrightRoll Video Network, and Tremor Media Video Network
•84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
•144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos on YouTube.com (101.2 videos per viewer).
•The average Hulu viewer watched 27.0 videos, totaling 2.7 hours of video per viewer.
•The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Brands Offer Incentives for Location-based Check-ins
Brands Offer Incentives for Location-based Check-ins
Published on June 23, 2010
Share Brands such as Starbucks and Domino’s have pushed the concept of location-based marketing a little further with hard incentives.
Starbucks has introduced its first-ever national “mayor special” with Foursquare that rewards consumers - specifically, mayors that have checked in to the Foursquare location-based network at Starbucks outlets - with dollar discounts on Frappucinos. In the U.K., Domino’s has a Foursquare promotion running that offers free pizzas and discounts to Foursquare users who check in at its locations.
Now other less visible brands are following suit - and stepping up the concept a bit by rewarding customers for frequenting them through these networks through formal rewards programs. Tasti D-Lite, for example, has rolled out TastiRewards, a rewards program for customers to associate their Twitter and Foursquare accounts with their Tasti D-Lite membership cards. Customers can use Treat Cards - which also double as gift cards - to earn points for purchases, but those that opt in to the social media bonuses will automatically earn additional points, Mashable explains. Their Twitter and Foursquare accounts also get updated each time the card is swiped and points are earned or redeemed.
Bigger Picture
It’s the bigger picture that is significant for marketers, Mashable says as programs like these are an efficient way to tie social media to the bottom line.
“Imagine the data that Tasti D-Lite can now collect, analyze and apply to budget discussions around allocating resources to social media efforts. Will the company get accurate accounts on the quantity of tweets and checkins with card swipes? Absolutely. Can it quantify those social media updates with sales figures? Yes. Plus, it can track change over time, as well as the influence of these TastiRewards tweets and checkins as it pertains to growth of the program,” Mashable writes (via MarketingVOX).
WeReward
Another example is WeReward, a mobile app launched by social media firm IZEA that offers money to users for checkins. Basically, users snap a picture of themselves at the site and post it on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. Then they get paid - usually a penny per point but businesses can set other rates. One thousand points nets $10 through Paypal. Right now it is only available on the iPhone, but next month it is coming out on the Droid, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
“Our model is everyone gets compensated with cash,” Ted Murphy, IZEA’s founder said via the Sentinel. “What gets listed is based on who is willing to pay [users] the most.” Businesses like the data the app provides such as who checked in, how much they spent, other stores the users went to and what they bought there. Businesses could even contact the person through Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare, the Sentinel says.
The app also allows products to be listed - such as Jones Soda. Uses take a photo holding a sold anywhere and get a point.
Published on June 23, 2010
Share Brands such as Starbucks and Domino’s have pushed the concept of location-based marketing a little further with hard incentives.
Starbucks has introduced its first-ever national “mayor special” with Foursquare that rewards consumers - specifically, mayors that have checked in to the Foursquare location-based network at Starbucks outlets - with dollar discounts on Frappucinos. In the U.K., Domino’s has a Foursquare promotion running that offers free pizzas and discounts to Foursquare users who check in at its locations.
Now other less visible brands are following suit - and stepping up the concept a bit by rewarding customers for frequenting them through these networks through formal rewards programs. Tasti D-Lite, for example, has rolled out TastiRewards, a rewards program for customers to associate their Twitter and Foursquare accounts with their Tasti D-Lite membership cards. Customers can use Treat Cards - which also double as gift cards - to earn points for purchases, but those that opt in to the social media bonuses will automatically earn additional points, Mashable explains. Their Twitter and Foursquare accounts also get updated each time the card is swiped and points are earned or redeemed.
Bigger Picture
It’s the bigger picture that is significant for marketers, Mashable says as programs like these are an efficient way to tie social media to the bottom line.
“Imagine the data that Tasti D-Lite can now collect, analyze and apply to budget discussions around allocating resources to social media efforts. Will the company get accurate accounts on the quantity of tweets and checkins with card swipes? Absolutely. Can it quantify those social media updates with sales figures? Yes. Plus, it can track change over time, as well as the influence of these TastiRewards tweets and checkins as it pertains to growth of the program,” Mashable writes (via MarketingVOX).
WeReward
Another example is WeReward, a mobile app launched by social media firm IZEA that offers money to users for checkins. Basically, users snap a picture of themselves at the site and post it on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. Then they get paid - usually a penny per point but businesses can set other rates. One thousand points nets $10 through Paypal. Right now it is only available on the iPhone, but next month it is coming out on the Droid, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
“Our model is everyone gets compensated with cash,” Ted Murphy, IZEA’s founder said via the Sentinel. “What gets listed is based on who is willing to pay [users] the most.” Businesses like the data the app provides such as who checked in, how much they spent, other stores the users went to and what they bought there. Businesses could even contact the person through Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare, the Sentinel says.
The app also allows products to be listed - such as Jones Soda. Uses take a photo holding a sold anywhere and get a point.
Hulu, Google TV, And The Brewing TV "Desktop" Storm
Hulu, Google TV, And The Brewing TV "Desktop" Storm
Tom Wilde | Jul. 8, 2010, 10:50 AM | 808 | 7
The last twelve months has been one of the most remarkable times I can remember in terms of sheer innovation and disruption in the digital video market. The long awaited “watch what you want , where you want, when you want” vision seems to be closer to becoming reality than ever before.
Whether it’s subscriptions on iTunes, the ubiquity of video on demand from cable companies, the explosive growth of Hulu, the growth of broadband and fiber to the curb, or the fervent adoption of the iPad, the confluence of all the access, devices and offerings is making video everywhere a certainty.
These various armies of video enablement are marching towards a showdown that I believe will be the next battleground where video fortunes will be decided. This battle royale that I am referring to is for the control of the TV “Desktop”.
What exactly is the TV “Desktop”? It’s what used to be in the twentieth century the “Electronic Program Guide”, the dreadful scrolling interface we have all had to endure when trying to find a program to watch on television. It still lingers, but clearly its days are numbered. Its limitations became even more obvious and unbearable with the arrival of web search. There is a better way to search, browse and discover video content, it just has not found its way to the television yet.
While browser based (online) video is the current “shiny object”, watching television on the PC still pales in comparison to the amount of television watched on traditional networks and devices, namely your cable programming viewed on television. Getting the anywhere-anytime video to the TV is the Holy Grail for publishers and broadcasters, and the destination where everyone wants to get to, but only some will make it there successfully. As the multi-platform, multi-device world arrives, finding, organizing and searching for television content becomes even more crucial, and is equally critical real estate for everyone in the TV consumption value chain. I sat down the other day and wrote out a list of all the segments and players, and I was surprised by just how many are vying to control this valuable asset:
Next Generation Services: Comcast, Time Warner Etc.
Through their “TV Everywhere” initiative, they hope to be the gateway to all your TV viewing, regardless of platform or device. They control the pipe and critical payment and account authentication gateway and have the content relationships. Comcast is aggressively investing in the platform and data sides of their business, and the NBC acquisition leaves no doubt as to their belief that access to content is vital.
Next Generation Devices:
1) Traditional players such as Motorola and Cisco.
The set top box developers own a critical piece of the value chain, but their slow pace of innovation leaves them exposed, and they lack the relationships with the content providers.
2) New entrants such as AppleTV, GoogleTV.
These players suffer from the same challenge Tivo endured. Do consumers want another box in the living room to watch TV? The reality to date is that few consumers want to have several pieces of hardware in order to watch television. This was a big part of the reason Tivo struggled, despite having such a superior product.
3) Gaming Platforms including Nintendo, Sony, XBOX.
The biggest advantage here is that consumers have already added these devices to their consumer electronics “must haves” and they are connected to televisions, and increasingly, to the Internet. Streaming video to gaming platforms is growing explosively.
4) Consumer Electronics players such as LG, Samsung, Sony.
With 30MM digital TV’s sold each year, the opportunity around connected consumer devices is real. The consumer electronics brands want more than just a one-time sale. If they can generate some annuity revenue from some combination of content promotions, subscriptions, or a-la-carte content sales, their profits could explode. For mobile, the inclusion of an HDMI output on devices such as the 4G Sprint Evo creates fascinating opportunities to view the mobile device as a form of portable set top box.
Next Generation Middleware: NDS, Rovi, Hillcrest Labs.
These players develop the applications that integrate the content and metadata into an interface that can be used on the set top box. Owning both the metadata and application know-how combined with a datastream of user behavior puts them in a unique position
Next Generation Applications: Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Boxee.
The subscription movie cable channels like Showtime etc are terrified of Netflix. Its brand strength, ease of use and ability to go over the top has fueled its rapid growth. The risk is Hollywood decides it has too much channel power and begins to crimp its access to first run content. The others have access to content, and have seen tremendous growth.
Hulu, however is being pressured into a subscription model, suggesting the power that the content providers hold over its destiny. Boxee has run into barriers with the content providers. ESPN3, and HBOGo are examples of content companies going direct to consumers, albeit still in cooperation with the ISP’s. In ESPN3’s case, it’s via your ISP’s willingness to pay for it on your behalf, and ESPN3 broke records with its multimillion simultaneous streams of the US-Algeria game.
The weapons in the battle for the TV Desktop are varied, and will ultimately dictate the winner:
Access to content: without content, it will be difficult to create the value proposition to the end user.
Access to consumer: Most of the contestants described above believe they have access to the consumer. Whether it’s Apple via iTunes, Samsung via TV sales, or Microsoft via XBOX, access to the consumer is critical.
Metadata: All TV Desktops of the future will rely on a complete set of metadata. This metadata will not only need to include proper titles, descriptions, actors, genres etc, but increasingly will need to include frame level metadata to unlock future advertising, search, and content recommendation opportunities.
User Experience: The experts in online consumer experience bring a lot to the table competitively, with Apple and Google obvious examples.
Channel dominance: While not providing an insurmountable barrier, channel lock certainly helps, and the cable companies and set top manufacturers will be difficult to displace.
Regardless of who wins, it looks like consumers are close to having a new interface for television that matches the experience they have come to expect on the Internet, and the value of the TV Desktop will ensure an epic battle over the next few years.
Tom Wilde is President and CEO of RAMP. RAMP is the definitive Content Optimization platform solution for major publishers, media companies, and broadcasters, which provides customers with workflow, discovery and engagement solutions to drive monetization of online content.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-war-for-your-tv-desktop-2010-7#ixzz0tCU6LRop
Tom Wilde | Jul. 8, 2010, 10:50 AM | 808 | 7
The last twelve months has been one of the most remarkable times I can remember in terms of sheer innovation and disruption in the digital video market. The long awaited “watch what you want , where you want, when you want” vision seems to be closer to becoming reality than ever before.
Whether it’s subscriptions on iTunes, the ubiquity of video on demand from cable companies, the explosive growth of Hulu, the growth of broadband and fiber to the curb, or the fervent adoption of the iPad, the confluence of all the access, devices and offerings is making video everywhere a certainty.
These various armies of video enablement are marching towards a showdown that I believe will be the next battleground where video fortunes will be decided. This battle royale that I am referring to is for the control of the TV “Desktop”.
What exactly is the TV “Desktop”? It’s what used to be in the twentieth century the “Electronic Program Guide”, the dreadful scrolling interface we have all had to endure when trying to find a program to watch on television. It still lingers, but clearly its days are numbered. Its limitations became even more obvious and unbearable with the arrival of web search. There is a better way to search, browse and discover video content, it just has not found its way to the television yet.
While browser based (online) video is the current “shiny object”, watching television on the PC still pales in comparison to the amount of television watched on traditional networks and devices, namely your cable programming viewed on television. Getting the anywhere-anytime video to the TV is the Holy Grail for publishers and broadcasters, and the destination where everyone wants to get to, but only some will make it there successfully. As the multi-platform, multi-device world arrives, finding, organizing and searching for television content becomes even more crucial, and is equally critical real estate for everyone in the TV consumption value chain. I sat down the other day and wrote out a list of all the segments and players, and I was surprised by just how many are vying to control this valuable asset:
Next Generation Services: Comcast, Time Warner Etc.
Through their “TV Everywhere” initiative, they hope to be the gateway to all your TV viewing, regardless of platform or device. They control the pipe and critical payment and account authentication gateway and have the content relationships. Comcast is aggressively investing in the platform and data sides of their business, and the NBC acquisition leaves no doubt as to their belief that access to content is vital.
Next Generation Devices:
1) Traditional players such as Motorola and Cisco.
The set top box developers own a critical piece of the value chain, but their slow pace of innovation leaves them exposed, and they lack the relationships with the content providers.
2) New entrants such as AppleTV, GoogleTV.
These players suffer from the same challenge Tivo endured. Do consumers want another box in the living room to watch TV? The reality to date is that few consumers want to have several pieces of hardware in order to watch television. This was a big part of the reason Tivo struggled, despite having such a superior product.
3) Gaming Platforms including Nintendo, Sony, XBOX.
The biggest advantage here is that consumers have already added these devices to their consumer electronics “must haves” and they are connected to televisions, and increasingly, to the Internet. Streaming video to gaming platforms is growing explosively.
4) Consumer Electronics players such as LG, Samsung, Sony.
With 30MM digital TV’s sold each year, the opportunity around connected consumer devices is real. The consumer electronics brands want more than just a one-time sale. If they can generate some annuity revenue from some combination of content promotions, subscriptions, or a-la-carte content sales, their profits could explode. For mobile, the inclusion of an HDMI output on devices such as the 4G Sprint Evo creates fascinating opportunities to view the mobile device as a form of portable set top box.
Next Generation Middleware: NDS, Rovi, Hillcrest Labs.
These players develop the applications that integrate the content and metadata into an interface that can be used on the set top box. Owning both the metadata and application know-how combined with a datastream of user behavior puts them in a unique position
Next Generation Applications: Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Boxee.
The subscription movie cable channels like Showtime etc are terrified of Netflix. Its brand strength, ease of use and ability to go over the top has fueled its rapid growth. The risk is Hollywood decides it has too much channel power and begins to crimp its access to first run content. The others have access to content, and have seen tremendous growth.
Hulu, however is being pressured into a subscription model, suggesting the power that the content providers hold over its destiny. Boxee has run into barriers with the content providers. ESPN3, and HBOGo are examples of content companies going direct to consumers, albeit still in cooperation with the ISP’s. In ESPN3’s case, it’s via your ISP’s willingness to pay for it on your behalf, and ESPN3 broke records with its multimillion simultaneous streams of the US-Algeria game.
The weapons in the battle for the TV Desktop are varied, and will ultimately dictate the winner:
Access to content: without content, it will be difficult to create the value proposition to the end user.
Access to consumer: Most of the contestants described above believe they have access to the consumer. Whether it’s Apple via iTunes, Samsung via TV sales, or Microsoft via XBOX, access to the consumer is critical.
Metadata: All TV Desktops of the future will rely on a complete set of metadata. This metadata will not only need to include proper titles, descriptions, actors, genres etc, but increasingly will need to include frame level metadata to unlock future advertising, search, and content recommendation opportunities.
User Experience: The experts in online consumer experience bring a lot to the table competitively, with Apple and Google obvious examples.
Channel dominance: While not providing an insurmountable barrier, channel lock certainly helps, and the cable companies and set top manufacturers will be difficult to displace.
Regardless of who wins, it looks like consumers are close to having a new interface for television that matches the experience they have come to expect on the Internet, and the value of the TV Desktop will ensure an epic battle over the next few years.
Tom Wilde is President and CEO of RAMP. RAMP is the definitive Content Optimization platform solution for major publishers, media companies, and broadcasters, which provides customers with workflow, discovery and engagement solutions to drive monetization of online content.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-war-for-your-tv-desktop-2010-7#ixzz0tCU6LRop
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Don’t Look for a TV in Television’s Future
Don’t Look for a TV in Television’s Future
By NICK BILTON
Illustration by Nick Bilton/The New York TimesI have seen the future of television, and it doesn’t involve a television.
Growing up in England, I remember intently following World Cup soccer; we called it football of course. Back then, my viewing and engagement options were few. I could watch games live on the TV and follow the scoring brackets in the newspaper the next morning.
The way I have followed the 2010 World Cup is totally different — not only from my experience in England watching the 1982 and 1986 Cups, but also from any way I have experienced any other live television to date.
During this year’s games I followed along on Twitter and Facebook; on Twitter, I wrote a post, Goooooooool!!, when teams scored, and I vented about bad referee calls.
I checked in to games on Foursquare, joined chats on HotPotato and commented in real time with friends, family and strangers from here to Timbuktu, literally. I watched real time stats, graphics and professional commentary on iPhone apps, and read live blogging on The Times Goal Blog.
I also watched the game everywhere but on standard cable television: on my iPhone at a park streaming through Mobi TV, in the corner of my computer screen at work from Univision (shh, don’t tell my boss) and on ESPN through a computer hooked up to my standard TV at home.
I even watched a portion of a game from work last week while video chatting on my mobile phone with friends who were watching at a bar.
Just four years ago, during the previous World Cup, practically none of these options existed. The iPhone was a figment of the nerdosphere’s imagination; Facebook was still largely a college network; the word “Twitter” probably evoked the thought of birds; and no one was streaming live sports over the Internet, even illegally.
But now this is the way many people follow the Oscars, political debates and long-running news stories.
In 2014, during the next World Cup, the fully augmented experience of the South Africa games will likely seem as dated as 2006 does to us today. By then, products like Google TV, Boxee or Apple TV will likely replace the cable box in many living rooms with a Web-enabled viewing experience. New iterations or versions of Twitter and Facebook will exist.
The 2010 World Cup, and the sphere of digital interactivity that has surrounded it, offers a glimpse into the future.
By NICK BILTON
Illustration by Nick Bilton/The New York TimesI have seen the future of television, and it doesn’t involve a television.
Growing up in England, I remember intently following World Cup soccer; we called it football of course. Back then, my viewing and engagement options were few. I could watch games live on the TV and follow the scoring brackets in the newspaper the next morning.
The way I have followed the 2010 World Cup is totally different — not only from my experience in England watching the 1982 and 1986 Cups, but also from any way I have experienced any other live television to date.
During this year’s games I followed along on Twitter and Facebook; on Twitter, I wrote a post, Goooooooool!!, when teams scored, and I vented about bad referee calls.
I checked in to games on Foursquare, joined chats on HotPotato and commented in real time with friends, family and strangers from here to Timbuktu, literally. I watched real time stats, graphics and professional commentary on iPhone apps, and read live blogging on The Times Goal Blog.
I also watched the game everywhere but on standard cable television: on my iPhone at a park streaming through Mobi TV, in the corner of my computer screen at work from Univision (shh, don’t tell my boss) and on ESPN through a computer hooked up to my standard TV at home.
I even watched a portion of a game from work last week while video chatting on my mobile phone with friends who were watching at a bar.
Just four years ago, during the previous World Cup, practically none of these options existed. The iPhone was a figment of the nerdosphere’s imagination; Facebook was still largely a college network; the word “Twitter” probably evoked the thought of birds; and no one was streaming live sports over the Internet, even illegally.
But now this is the way many people follow the Oscars, political debates and long-running news stories.
In 2014, during the next World Cup, the fully augmented experience of the South Africa games will likely seem as dated as 2006 does to us today. By then, products like Google TV, Boxee or Apple TV will likely replace the cable box in many living rooms with a Web-enabled viewing experience. New iterations or versions of Twitter and Facebook will exist.
The 2010 World Cup, and the sphere of digital interactivity that has surrounded it, offers a glimpse into the future.
Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers, Snaps up Snarky Woot
Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers, Snaps up Snarky Woot
Published on July 02, 2010 | Comments: 0
Online retailer Woot, one of the first websites to sell just one product at a time until the item runs out or until midnight of the next day, has been purchased by Amazon.
Terms of the agreement were not announced. Woot will continue to be run the way it has always been run, says CEO Matt Rutledge (via Sci-Tech Today), “with a wall of ideas and a dartboard.”
Woot, which calls itself “an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap,” has about 2.75 million registered users.
Snarky Business as Usual
Woot will remain substantially the same, wrote Rutledge in a memo to employees. “From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love, and each and every one of their pre-written insult macros will still be just as valid in a week, two weeks, or even next year. For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk.”
Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers
Amazon tends to be a destination source for people who know what they already want, while Woot is “about persuading you to buy something you didn’t even know you needed,” says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst covering ecommerce for Forrester Research. The Woot deal will help Amazon attract shoppers that the company has so far not been able to capture, Mulpuru says.
Amazon has been Woot’s sole outside investor. Last year, Amazon purchased Zappos.com for $847 million, and in 2008 it purchased Audible for $300 million.
Published on July 02, 2010 | Comments: 0
Online retailer Woot, one of the first websites to sell just one product at a time until the item runs out or until midnight of the next day, has been purchased by Amazon.
Terms of the agreement were not announced. Woot will continue to be run the way it has always been run, says CEO Matt Rutledge (via Sci-Tech Today), “with a wall of ideas and a dartboard.”
Woot, which calls itself “an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap,” has about 2.75 million registered users.
Snarky Business as Usual
Woot will remain substantially the same, wrote Rutledge in a memo to employees. “From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love, and each and every one of their pre-written insult macros will still be just as valid in a week, two weeks, or even next year. For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk.”
Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers
Amazon tends to be a destination source for people who know what they already want, while Woot is “about persuading you to buy something you didn’t even know you needed,” says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst covering ecommerce for Forrester Research. The Woot deal will help Amazon attract shoppers that the company has so far not been able to capture, Mulpuru says.
Amazon has been Woot’s sole outside investor. Last year, Amazon purchased Zappos.com for $847 million, and in 2008 it purchased Audible for $300 million.
Email Drives Social Networking Use
Email Drives Social Networking Use
Published on July 06, 2010
Share Email can drive social networking use, says digital marketing firm e-Dialog.
Email was clearly the primary driver to social networking activities, participants in the Global Perspectives study said. Overall, 53% said email sent to a personal account was the primary thing that drove them to social networking activity, writes MarketingCharts.
Respondents also stated that they sign in directly to social networking sites (35%) and that SMS mobile messaging also drives them to social networking activity (19%). Consumers in Asia-Pacific selected email to a personal account (42%) and direct sign-in (31%) at the highest rates, while for North American consumers, these drivers were less popular, at 25% and 23% respectively.
Email-Inspired Purchases Prompt Further Research
In addition, two-thirds of consumers indicated that email-inspired purchases have prompted them to further research a brand and its products while more than half say it spurred a peer recommendation. Moreover, roughly half of consumers revealed they are willing to act as brand advocates in order to connect email content, such as special offers and promotions, to social networks. This activity is highest in Asia-Pacific where the number of consumers indicating such behavior exceeds the global norm.
This indicates a clear opportunity for companies to maximize their marketing investments by connecting email to various digital and offline communication and commerce opportunities, e-Dialog says.
Published on July 06, 2010
Share Email can drive social networking use, says digital marketing firm e-Dialog.
Email was clearly the primary driver to social networking activities, participants in the Global Perspectives study said. Overall, 53% said email sent to a personal account was the primary thing that drove them to social networking activity, writes MarketingCharts.
Respondents also stated that they sign in directly to social networking sites (35%) and that SMS mobile messaging also drives them to social networking activity (19%). Consumers in Asia-Pacific selected email to a personal account (42%) and direct sign-in (31%) at the highest rates, while for North American consumers, these drivers were less popular, at 25% and 23% respectively.
Email-Inspired Purchases Prompt Further Research
In addition, two-thirds of consumers indicated that email-inspired purchases have prompted them to further research a brand and its products while more than half say it spurred a peer recommendation. Moreover, roughly half of consumers revealed they are willing to act as brand advocates in order to connect email content, such as special offers and promotions, to social networks. This activity is highest in Asia-Pacific where the number of consumers indicating such behavior exceeds the global norm.
This indicates a clear opportunity for companies to maximize their marketing investments by connecting email to various digital and offline communication and commerce opportunities, e-Dialog says.
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