ad:tech New York Closes: Despite Economy, Optimism Reigns
While it’s said attendance was down slightly from past conferences, the New York ad:tech conference was, by all counts, alive and well despite 24/7 news reports of doom and gloom. It’s true the economy is not doing too well right now nor is it expected to improve over the course of the next year. But, thankfully, the online and interactive market space is one of the few bright spots amongst the graying economic skyline.
In his keynote address Tuesday morning eMarketer Co-Founder and CEO Geoff Ramsey said he expects to see a 14.5 percent growth rate in U.S. online ad spending in 2009, not bad for an economy that’s supposed to be tanking. Many other sources have proclaimed such health as well for the space which bodes well for those of us making our living in online marketing.
The election added a unique twist to this year’s ad:tech. Normally filled with a handful of sponsored parties, the second night of ad:tech was alive in a different way with election fervor sweeping the city. When it was determined Barak Obama won the Presidency, Times Square, Union Square and the entire city erupted with glee causing one to wonder if there was a Republican anywhere on the island. Cars were honking their horns. People were shouting. And there was this amazing group camaraderie in the streets which isn’t often seen.
Yes. Despite the economy, ad:tech was upbeat and full of activity. Despite what some might deem political turmoil, the city exploded with a far from subdued post-Presidential outpouring of glee and the feeling everyone was participating in one gigantic group hug.
If the optimism in the hallways of the ad:tech conference and on the streets of New York were any indication, 2009 may not be so bad after all. When we all regroup five month from now for the San Francisco ad:tech, hopefully that optimism will be alive and well. See you then.
The Revolution Will Be Widgetized! Among other Things
The Next Frontier: Advertising in Applications.
This panel struck me as one of the most relevant to marketers at ad:tech NY this year. Topics included widgets, in-game advertising and in-cloud applications (server-hosted productivity supplements to Word and Excel). A representative from Facebook also discussed what ad models work well for the social network.
Liza Hausman of Gigya introduced the talk on widgets. (See her discuss it, in part, in the video above. Try not to wince when Escourrou, bless his heart, says “marketeers.”) She observed people used to spend time on destination sites; now they bring content wherever they go: a social network, a blog, a desktop, their start page.
As a result, widgets present a real opportunity for marketers. ”Anything that can be done on a website can be done on a widget,” she pointed out. “Most importantly, widgets have to be installed by a user to a page.” That’s the world’s best validation of your value add - and obviously also a huge hurdle.
Half-ass a widget, and it’ll never move past your subsite.
Hausman demonstrated her case by going into detail about the Levi’s 23/501 widget Gigya helped build. It included music, a customizable ticker and - just as importantly - served as status-building eye candy. How it helped Levi’s:
- People kept the widget on their page months after it was released.
- It delivered an average of 10 product views per widget installed.
- Tens of thousands of people put it on their page.
- The product promoted sold out in less than a day.
Not sold by the stats? Play with it yourself.
Facebook’s Chris Pan explained Facebook’s ad model revolves around a single premise: that marketing messages are more effective when they’re from friends. Toward that end, all Facebook’s sponsored efforts are geared toward building both engagement and dialogue.
Video advertising on the site, for example, enables users to play a trailer on the right-hand side of their profile page. They can also leave comments, which some sponsors - including MTV - were able to use as feedback to improve their offerings.
On election day, Facebook offered users virtual Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cones, which they passed to other friends.
Here, Pan describes the challenges of putting user interactivity first:
Two representatives from Microsoft sat on the panel, each to tackle a different facet of its ad strategy. Dean Carignan discussed the company’s in-game advertising ambitions, explaining up-front why they bother:
- Everyone’s spending more time doing it - including Baby Boomers and women (on casual games).
- Games engage users for a long time, bringing them to a heightened state of awareness. “It’s the most ‘lean-forward’ of experiences. They’re very engaged, very active.”
- Advertising can enhance gaming. Carignan provides the example of a skateboard game slathered in Wendy’s billboards. User feedback toted the gameplay experience as more realistic with the ads. (Sounds like long-suffering outdoor media planners should get a royalty on in-game ad ROI.)
Last year Microsoft’s Massive worked in tandem with Electronic Arts to develop a dynamic in-game advertising platform. EA is using it to populate games like Sims 3 this year, and President-Elect Barack Obama used the platform to populate sports games with ads amongst gamers in swing states. The service enables clients to swap ads up to the hour, keeping media fresh.
But virtual billboard advertising isn’t the only means available to gamer-thirsty marketers. Microsoft used an entirely different approach for Halo 3, which Bungee thought was inappropriate for billboards. Instead, the US Army sponsored a tourney where users registered to play:
- Halo 3 users saw a prompt inviting them to enroll in the tournament, “sponsored by US Army.”
- Participants received access to “training videos” for playing more skillfully in the game, better shooting and navigating heavy vehicles.
- These efforts enabled the sponsor to enhance the gaming experience in a richer, but less direct way than billboard advertising.
Brad Kertson discussed Microsofts in-cloud productivity offerings, like hosted email, Word, Excel, calendar and online collaboration tools. He spoke of three major tenets:
- Don’t break my concentration
- Don’t waste my time
- Don’t invade my space
This model’s pretty simple. Productivity applications are different from typical apps - people are in work mode when they use them. So each app includes display ads that cater to the business audience, providing marketers “reach, relevance and engagement” within a niche market.
Here’s Kertson discussing how to find the right experience to precipitate brand lift:
Later, someone posed the following question: Will these arenas see more customization or more standardization in the years to come?
Hausman said it’ll be about balance. There are people trying to standardize aspects of the industry, which is necessary if the business is going to scale, to make it easier to make ad buys. But there also needs to be room for versatility.
Pan: As users are more familiar w/ something, they’re more likely to interact with it. ”Train users over time: this is how something behaves. ‘When I press this button, this is what’s gonna happen.‘“ Teach them to immediately understand how things work.
Carignan: bring elements of customization in-house. (This constitutes as a form of standardization, because in-house customization options tend to provide a limited array of options.) Create options for advertisers, optimized by execution/placement, so they have less work to do on the creative side. This will yield faster, more efficient buys that are more likely to convert.
Also standardize for amount of exposure. For example, Carignan’s team found 10 seconds of cumulative exposure to an in-game ad is the optimal impression.
Hey, Cool-Hunters. I’ve Got Your Millennials Right Here.
Obama, Apple and Ice Cream - Building Brand Passion Among Millennials.
This ad:tech panel consisted of six Millennials, which—according to the official (coughs) definition—represent those born between 1979 and 1994. Wanna know if they actually respond to your email blasts and big Flash banners? Watch the video above. And if you happen to be shilling for Urban Outfitters, pat yourself on the back.
Alloy’s Samantha Skey served as moderator and cow prod. This company’s entire raison d’etre is to know kids better than they know themselves, then package them in silver spoonfuls to ravenous marketers. Once in awhile, Skey made an irrefutable statement about their transparent whims, backed by video footage of some poor dope proving her right.
Here’s the run-through of Gen-Y’s fleeting loves.
What gadget do you carry with you all the time? Overwhelmingly, the cell phone, mostly to stay connected to friends and family; and to a lesser degree, for music. They’re also really, really fond of texting, and have plenty of charming anecdotes about their moms—funny little hens—exploring SMS in awkward little leaps and bounds.
The panel agrees that fewer and more relevant ads, and maybe a perk like free text messaging, would make SMS a happier medium.
Is there anything cell phones shouldn’t do? An apt question. “I think the more, the better,” says one guy. “It just makes everything more convenient for me.”
One girl agrees. “It’s like a safety for me,” she says, but another isn’t so sure. Mobile internet access strikes her as overkill because she doesn’t want to be perpetually accessible via email and to advertisers.
Later this same girl confesses technology in general makes life more stressful, because we’ve become incapable of organizing our lives on our own. In an odd moment of self-effacement, however, she also confesses she’s never lived without this degree of technology, so what does she know?
I frowned.
What ads would you stop your DVR for? Half specify funny or quirky ads. Target won two votes; Subway’s $5 foot-long ads got a suitor; Bravia, one; Sonic, one (by a guy who doesn’t even live near one); NBA/Nike ads, one vote by a guy who, for the duration of this session, would consistently reiterate his bias for the pagan Goddess of Victory.
Skey brings the projector to life. It reads:
62% learn about popular brands/products via advertising. “I’m a poor college student so bring on the ads!” - Michelle, college sophomore.
Where do you see ads most? Half say online; two said around the city; one referred to her friends’ shirts. “I think everyone’s a walking ad, basically,” she said.
Another guy says Facebook ads catch his attention. He feels they’re “specifically for me” and are unobtrusive and relevant.
“I love deals,” another says. She’s wearing a pretty plum blouse and sparkly long earrings. I can imagine them in last season’s ideeli or RevolveClothing.com email blasts. Who doesn’t love deals?
What brands do you love? Everybody picks a different one: Apple, Urban Outfitters, NBA/Nike (guess who!), Asics, Diet Coke, Bobby Brown, Trader Joe’s.
Perking up at the sound of Trader Joe’s, Skey seizes this opportunity to turn the tide toward greenwashing.
Panelists appear ruffled when she insinuates our generation will chase down most anything that purports to serve a good cause—even if we don’t quite understand how the brand interaction trickles down to hungry kids, or parts of the rain forest under siege by malevolent loggers.
“This generation cares about the appearance of social responsibility,” she spouts, then puts on a video clip of some kid claiming to like an app on Facebook that enables you to send virtual plants to friends, each of which ”[saves] a square foot of the rain forest or something.”
However, she hastens to add, there’s a growing backlash against companies whose authenticity is suspect.
Skey opens the panel to responses on top green firms, assuring them to say whatever comes to mind, even if they haven’t fully researched the company’s merit.
Ben & Jerry’s. Starbucks. Nike’s pop-up stores, which anatomize shoes to show people how each part of the shoe-preparation process is eco-friendly. Verizon donates cell phones to battered women. Nike sponsors teams that need sneakers or tournament funding. Disney—“always coming up with new ways to help the environment and reduce their carbon footprint.” American Apparel—no sweatshops, “doing things” for immigrant labor.
Any gripes about ads you’ve seen? Several cite the ongoing Mac vs. PC campaign. One girl found it cute and funny in the beginning, but Microsoft’s recent retaliation effort “makes me kinda nervous.”
One guy calls Microsoft’s ads more democratic than Apple’s; another claims they’re “pointless” because they don’t teach people anything about the product. Apple ads double as usability tools.
Three panelists own a PC; two use Macs, one has a ThinkPad.
Now for audience questions. Any privacy worries? Kids seem to agree that companies should help educate users about their privacy policies. No one’s ever read a privacy agreement in full; and while the idea of companies using their publicly-available info to advertise creeps them out, no one likes the idea of government regulation in this arena.
A woman in non-profit is shocked no one mentioned a non-profit in their list of favourite green companies. Skey confesses it was partly her fault for positioning the question a certain way, and the kids set the record straight: Habitat for Humanity, One Foundation, Greenpeace.
Do you buy from brands whose ads you like? Yes and no. Nike gets the most huzzahs out of this one, and one guy appears to like Diet Coke ads because he was already a heavy Diet Coke drinker. The girl in the pretty plum blouse says if she likes a brand, she’ll actually go looking for the ads.
Finally, one skeptic asks whether the kids think they’re really representative of their generation. My favourite response came from a panelist named Carlos:
I’d like to say that we’re all equal, but ... maybe I’m above-average.
Hear, hear.
Booths, Booth and More Booths. Exhibit Hall Explored Photography-Style
On Monday and Tuesday during ad:tech New York, the exhibit hall was filled with activity. Every last square inch of available space inside the Hilton had been converted to booth space for the final appearance of ad:tech in the Hilton. Yes, the conference will continue. It’s just moving to the Javits Center next year so everyone wil have some vreathing room as they traverse the exhibit hall floor.
ad:tech blogger Andrew Paradies strolled the floor and took several shots of exhibitors booths on Monday and Tuesday. Check out Andrew’s photo album here and see who you recognize. And here’s another album from Steve Hall.
It’s the Skinny on Search and Synergy.
At this jewel of an ad:tech session, each panelist lavished the audience with a drop of wisdom from their collective fountains. What follows are my scoopings.
Tips for managing a brand in the new media landscape, courtesy of MTVN’s Julie Sun:
- You’ve heard the expression “knowledge is power.” Well, sound social knowledge can protect a brand. Monitor user-created pages like Wikipedia; see what people say about you, and communicate your point of view. (Avoid the temptation to link-whore, though.)
- Do research to find out where your users are. (Don’t play with Facebook, for example, if your users aren’t there.) Given your objectives, ID which space works best for you.
- Support your online social initiatives year-round. (For chrissake, don’t take down a subsite just because you stopped running TV ads for it. What makes the web cool is its ability to keep ads going long after the money stops. KEEP THE SITE UP. DON’T DELETE THOSE VIDEOS, EITHER.)
How important is being involved in all social media? Does it really matter if you link your Twitter feed to your Facebook, or your Facebook to your blog, or your blog to LinkedIn? Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land argued in defense of heavy social network cross-pollination. People are dynamic, and social media enables you to express all facets of yourself. Better still, it enables others to decide which aspects of you they want to seize and share.
A user doesn’t have to read your blog, but he can link to statements you make on Twitter, for example, which increases your online girth. The more you’re out there, the more likely it is that your name - and the perception of its value - will spread like anthrax. Or Rubel.
No salad’s complete without a sprinkle of apocalypse. Mike Grehan of Acronym Media predicted search engine optimization as we know it will cease to exist. In SEO, anchor text and linkbacks are the most important “signals” that indicate a site’s industry merit. But the most important signals of the future are available in on-browser toolbars. They follow users outside the general crawl - and can track across-the-board online activity. The significance now lies in harnessing that data.
Adam Lavelle of iCrossing topped off the last question: Where does PR tie in with social media? Should you use your PR firm for social media outreach? His gift of myrrh:
This is very much an organizational question in terms of ownership. PR agencies better wise up DAMN fast because this is their business—but those of us in the geeky underbelly who understand these technologies are gonna learn PR fast too.
In other words, we’re in the midst of a horse race between the old guard and the new. If you didn’t already know that, well ... God help you.
Even Nimble Long Tail Media Will Suffer in Economic Downturn
The ad:tech power panel “Will the long-tail go bankrupt?” was extremely timely given current economic conditions. Digital content is everywhere online and is growing exponentially. This epic flood of digital content and unprecedented media fragmentation has produced a fundamental conundrum: it’s hard to make money. This panel explored how the long-tail can make money, and the barriers to growth, especially given where the economy is going.
MODERATOR:
Emily Steel, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
PANELISTS:
Matt Palmer, Executive VP, General Manager, Stardoll
Jordan Bitterman, Digitas
Matt Coppet, Head of Global Media Strategy, UBS
Philip Mitchell, Ogilvy
Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3
The Billion $$ Question. How can the Long-Tail make $$$?
The extent to which advertising can be incorporated into content in a relevant and natural way has great effect on the “worth” of the ad impression. And this goes beyond display-based advertising. Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 used an example of how a beer sponsorship was incorporated into their podcast. The DiggNation podcast has long featured guys drinking beer. Incorporating sponsors for the beer was a logical and natural tie-in, without the need to directly relate it to the content. (DiggNation is a technology/news blog). According to Jim Louderback sponsors see as high as 100% unaided awareness from sponsorships which is significantly higher than display based ads.
Though a small part of Revision3’s business, the sponsorship model is high touch and takes a lot of hand holding. Creating a self-serve, scalable version of this model is one of the biggest challenges.
What are the barriers to monetization?
The panel called out 3 key barriers to monetization: Analytics, Accountability and Scale.
Analytics
Analytics must become more robust to vet sponsorship before they gain mass adoption. Publishers and advertisers need to work together to ensure the right measures are in place to assess ROI. While testing can be costly (sometimes more expensive than the cost of the program), investment in analytics is key to the success of sponsorships as a revenue model.
Accountability
Accountability and consistency in measurement is primary as well. Currently, there are no consistent and accurate standards for measurement in emerging platforms. For example Neilsen and Comscore use panels to report measures which often don’t match the actual statistics for a website. Additionally, people rely on sites like Compete, Alexa or Technorati for statistics. And none of these sites are truly accurate. Finding universal measures that are accurate and accessible will be a key to success for long tail-style operations like Revision3.
Not only is consistency in metrics an issue but finding the correct measures for emerging platforms is equally important. For example, the IAB standard for viewing a video is 3 seconds. Downloads can take up to 10 requests to fully load – some companies will count each request as a “view” thereby incorrectly representing true viewership.
Scale
In order for long-tail players to realize this type of revenue stream, content producers must provide advertisers with simple, standard methods for making large, accountable ad buys across content. “You totally need to have automation for this thing to work… I mean, there aren’t enough hamsters in the world to keep this thing going,” one panelist lamented. The difficulty faced by long-tail and emerging media is the lack of streamlined methods by which campiagns can be implemented and measured.
Standard ad units are required across platforms to create scale across media, especially for new and emerging ad-platforms like video and mobile.
Who benefits from partnerships?
In the short term, long tail companies are benefiting. Traditional media companies don’t have a solid understanding of the space and are not likely to benefit in the near term.The question will always be “Does the partnership really make sense?”
And the economy? (yes, every panel touched on this)
Jim Louderback was asked about recent layoffs and show cancellations at Revision3. “If the world is going into a nuclear winter you need to survive that.” Hmm. That’s an interesting way of putting it. I bit extreme, perhaps.
In terms of marketing trends in the current economic climate, the panelists felt there weren’t big cuts coming but marketers are certainly pausing and re-thinking before spending. Though digital properties are more efficient an measurable, Jim said he had heard of a number of companies making cuts, which, sadly, may not bode well for smaller, struggling long-tail media properties.
Mobile Social Networking: Now Is The Time for Innovation
“Mobile is both the most personal device and location-based device..its also the only 24/7 session,” stated Evan Tana, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Loopt. And so very true! I had just Twittered from one such mobile device a few minutes before to notify my followers of my presence in the session—how very appropriate, eh?
As the last session of the day, the last remaining stalwarts filed in to hear about this still very emerging platform, and disappointed we were not! With a solid panel consisting of some of the most active doers and thought leaders in the space, the session remained relevant and to the point (and kudos to moderator Mickey Alam Khan, EIC of MobileMarketer.com for keeping the audience engaged with frequent breaks throughout for Q&A). Ok so lets get down to the good stuff:
MODERATOR:
Mickey Alam Khan, Editor-in-Chief, Mobile Marketer magazine
PANELISTS:
Evan Tana, Director of Product Management and Marketing, Loopt
Mike Howard, VP of Sales, Kiwibox.com
Polly Lieberman, VP, Advertising Sales, buzzd
Andrew Osmak, Senior VP, Business Development, Lavalife
Jordan Greene, Principal, Mobile Media, Mella Media
Take-away 1: Mobile networking is here, its growing, and its the future
“Its important to understand mobile social networking is here because of consumer demand,” noted Mike Howard of Kiwibox.com, “The most important thing to realize is that its not a killer app, its not going to kill wireline and SMS platforms, but its an opportunity for integration and it is needed to provide value to users, this is an important concept for both publishers and marketers.” With an audience of 255 million mobile users and 50 billion text messages exchanged each month, its clear that mobile has become a central part of our communications habits, and more importantly the mobile is not just for talking anymore. “Whats happening on the mobile web is mirroring what went on with online social networking adoption. We provide a sandbox for people to come and meet and develop whatever relationships they want, where they want,” said Adnrew Osmak, Senior VP of Business Development for LavaLife. LavaLife has developed several mobile communities in addition to their wireline community and the success of the mobile communities has nearly rivaled that of the online community. “We started Web communities a few years ago because that is where our customers were, we now have mobile communities because that is where our customers are…we go where they go,” he added.
Take-away 2: Design for the platform
There were several questions from the audience around how to implement mobile. Do you simply make a smaller version of your wireline? Do you start from scratch? Can you have a mobile community if you don’t have a Web community? And our panelists didn’t disappoint with their sage advice: Design for the mobile platform. “Our pure mobile communities do far better than the shrunken version of LavaLife.com…I really believe in paying respect to the medium. Design for the medium of mobile,” offered Osmak. The overwhelming recommendation was to be thoughtful in your design, develop strategy and build from there—don’t just shrink your wireline.
Take-away 3: Still some kinks in advertising standards, but innovation is king right now
While there are some standards around text message length, banner sizes, and mobile apps, the challenges for advertisers is designing campaigns that can deploy across multiple device types and interfaces. However, Tana offered a note of optimism saying, “If there were hard and fast standards now, you wouldn’t see as much innovation.” True, but audience members wanted to know how to plan for optimal campaigns in such a fragmented space. Polly Lieberman, VP of Advertising Sales at Buzzd remarked, “While there are challenges, there are services that provide a point of integration for advertisers with mobile campaigns. Its also a lot about experimentation right now.”
Take-away 4: Mobile isn’t a stand alone…integrate it with the rest of the marketing mix
Mobile is the ultimate “user experience”, its so personal, so immediate…but just like people are not locked to a single touch point, mobile too should be integrated with the rest of your marketing mix. “What I’m seeing in mobile is a shift—look at what happened with the internet and user adoption and the emergence of marketing there, a similar thing is happening with mobile. I think we will see the same trends that happened with the internet map over to mobile,” explained Lieberman. Jordan Greene, Principal of Mobile Media at Mella Media offered a glimpse into one such integrated campaign his company executed for the launch of a horror flick: “We created a mobile experience that involved a mobile site, downloadable ring tones and a wireline site. After sign up users would receive a ringtone, and we noticed that ringtone delivery would correlate to spikes in traffic to the wireline, much more so than when print ads were deployed.”
Moderator Mickey Alam Khan closed the session with his prediction for the future of mobile: “I think we will see that every corporation will have their own corporate mobile site in the next 5-7 years. Mobile doesn’t stand alone…integrate it…there are so many ways to think of mobile, not just as a mobile end but within the whole marketing mix. Now is the time for innovation.”
DigiPublishers: Context is (Still) King, and Don’t Be Afraid to Leer
Publishing in the Digital Age—Context is King.
It’s odd that an ad:tech panel about publishing need reiterate the importance of context. Even before digital blew our minds or whatever, wasn’t that still the case? Great newspapers were forged in the fires of noteworthy current events. Great books exploit widely-felt (but little-articulated) sentiments.
Context has always been king. Tactical marketers have always fed on that: This is my message. How best to package it for Demo X? Where is their mind? Can I speak to a shared passion or crisis?
This sesh gives a fresh coat of paint to a trusty old model, with the crucial addition of being whiplash-worthy. (That is, encourage some hardcore voyeurism.) Highlights below.
BusinessWeek’s BusinessExchange
“We saw a study [showing] people that consume news or info typically rely on about 16-18 brands per week,” said John Byrne, executive editor of BusinessWeek.com. People glean news from multiple sources; nobody ever reads just one site, he said.
BusinessExchange, a new BusinessWeek.com product, leverages that tendency. Like a cross between Google Alerts and Wikipedia (which lets users build on stories over time), it enables users to follow a beat—for example, to read every story about Yahoo’s slow, sad dance into Microsoft’s arms. Users can also share stories with other network members, or add a story that the Exchange didn’t index. (“News” bloggers, I’m sure, will go wild.)
“You wanna have a way to sort and sift through [data] that respects your time restraints,” Byrne explained, adding that the Exchange enables users to indulge a growing inclination to “organize around micro-communities.”
So far, user-developed topics include “conscious capitalism” and “commercial space travel”—unexpected insights into a rapidly-changing worldview. There are over 700 such items now, and BusinessWeek expects well over a thousand by year’s end.
There’s also a somewhat-creepy feature that lets you read what someone else in your network is reading—in real time. Byrne called it the ”voyeurism concept.”
“You can peer ‘over the shoulder’ of someone in the network - either in a given community or topic, or network-wide, and see exactly what they’re doing inside the product. There are privacy safeguards if you wanna turn them on.”
So far, advertising on BusinessExchange sites have exceeded expectations and outperform the core site. One component of this is that dynamic content sites are rapidly indexed by Google. 365,000 pages have been indexed so far.
“When I type my name into the Google search bar, my profile on this product appears before my profile on LinkedIn or anywhere else,” Byrne boasted.
HuffingtonPost’s Staring Problem
HuffingtonPost.com is one of the fastest-growing indie political sites this period.
What’s its secret? CEO Betsy Morgan points to the site’s cultivated obsessions: when HuffPo takes a topic of unusually high interest and “curates” posts about it from all around the web. Last week, for example, the hot flavor was Gov. Sarah Palin; this week, obviously, it’s all up in Obamamania.
To illustrate the merits of this philosophy, Morgan explained how its Sarah Palin obsession developed on the site:
- Among politicos, readers across the political spectrum were already obsessed with her.
- HuffPo clued in, then gave the news its own page. These are called “big news” pages on HuffPo; they can be created for either people or events.
- Within 24 hours of creating it, 400 stories were already linked on it. “You can get lost in that,” Morgan pointed out, which is part of HuffPo’s draw. Bonus points: Sponsorships on branded content pages are 36% more effective.
- Embeddable players enable them to bring critical interviews (like the Couric/Palin one) to users immediately.
- Prominent spots in the Living, Media and Style verticals enable Palin content to permeate non-political spaces.
According to Morgan, this speaks to the “un-siloed nature of the web [...] where people live in pockets that are a little unconventional.”
Online Video
During Q&A, somebody broached the topic of online video integration. Digital publishers have discovered online video serves them best when video supplements existing news content and is relevant—like a 20-second clip of Palin winking during the VP debates, if an article makes a reference to the wink, Morgan said.
BusinessWeek.com has 5000 videos on-site now. Byrne described the criteria for posting video content:
- Avoid the temptation to “turn computers into a 1950s tv set.”
- Consider the most important stories, and the complementary video products that would suit them, so the user has a fuller experience.
- Keep video from becoming a redundant repetition of the story content.
This strategy reportedly boosted video streams/month fourfold—from 30,000 to 60,000—in a handful of months. Byrne projects they’ll hit over a million by year’s end.
SVP/GM Vivian Schiller of NYTimes.com dittoed his point: online video could use deeper integration and more placement on homepages. Make it part of the consumption experience!
“When it comes to advertising, context is still king,” she said, neatly bringing the sesh full-circle. Sign of a good editor, I guess.
Wednesday an Eye Blasting Arena of Massive Guitar Hero Action
While not as busy as Monday or Tuesday night, Wednesday at ad:tech New York offered up quite a few things for ad:tech attendees to do after the day’s panels ended. Wine Library’s Gary Vaynerchuk gave a “motivational speech” to several hundred people at The Volstead but it didn’t turn out quite as planned. Even with a few hundred people there to hear Gary speak, the club refused to turn down the music in favor of serving the eight people in the club not associate with the Mashable event.
Gary, ever the resourceful one, was not to be deterred so he asked the crowd to follow him out to the sidewalk where, on a milk crate, he gave his talk to those who chose to stay. Gary never lets a road block stand in his path.
Before the Mashable debacle, ChaCha held an event right after the day’s panels ended in the Hilton’s Bridges bar. Several hundred attended and were treated to free drinks. After a long day at a conference, who can complain about that? Right and no one did.
Massive sponsored the Battle of the Agency Bands held at Hudson Terrace. Several bands battled for the coveted title by showing off their Guitar Hero skills (yes, these were “fake” bands, not real one) but the highlight of the evening was hanging with Darryl “D.M.C.” Matthews McDaniels who was one of three judging the battle. Photo opps ensued.
Once everyone had their fill of D.M.C., we all headed to Arena where, every year, eyeblaster holds its award show and the Nanninator shows up to heat up the dance floor. It’s always a good party but it always ends too early. So right around 11PM after the awards are over and everyone has had a few drinks and begins to hit the dance floor, the club plays some sort of signature cowboy tune, raises the lights and everyone is ushered out.
We could have dance for 2-3 more hours. Or watch the Nanninator dance. Or have a few more drinks (which we’d be happy to pay for on our own after the open bar closed). But no. we had to go to Marquee again to work off pent up dancing needs. We’re not complaining.Just making a friendly suggestion:-)
Akamai held an event at the IAC building, apparently a very cool place. We wouldn’t know as we never made it to the event. There’s only so many places one can be. and, apparently, it was more important to have “dinner” at a random diner where some kind of music video or commercial was being shot. The diner was filled with wires, lights, camera, photographers and a cadre of women dressed in African garb who, on cue, broke into song which, oddly, did sound like something that could be used as a jingle in a commercial. Who knows. We may have been present at the filming of next year’s greatest Super Bowl spot.
As always, the photographic goodness is here.
Master Class Roundtable: Growing Online Brand Advertising Dollars
This my favorite panel of Ad:tech because it included five marketers with a pragmatic view from the trenches on a hot topic. As with many Ad:tech sessions, the panelists didn’t stay totally on topic, yet I liked it because the panelists shared real experiences and talked candidly about what specifically works and what doesn’t work for their brands. I got some good, tangible takeaways and hope you will too.
Moderator: Pete Blackshaw, Nielsen Online
Panelists: Brian Kalma, Zappos
Scott Wilder, Intuit
Kevin Ranford, 1800flowers.com
Jeffrey Graham, New York Times
Andrew Markowitz, Kraft
Moderator Pete Blackshaw (a fellow P&G Alum and friend) opened this lively panel with this question: “If you had $5 where would you put them?” The answers were surprising in that they didn’t always involve advertising or building interactive marketing tools. Some would put the $5 into social networking tools or ecommerce but others would put it into the product itself or digital insights. According to Brian Kalma, Zappos would put it into people. At Zappos, there is the belief that service is the product, not shoes. Zappos would invest in the service model: invest it in the right people, people they want speaking to customers. Zappos wants to be comfortable with every employee engaging customers. It’s about the experience. It’s about service. Zappos has a scalable model— the product is not the product, it’s their people.
Next came a lively debate over measurement and the consensus was that there has to be a fair balance between measurement of results and insight for strategy. Marketing is an inexact science and you need to use intuition. How many times have you seen analysis paralysis? An overemphasis on analysis leaves a lot on the table. Good marketers have to do the right amount of analysis, then rely on intuition. The consensus was to focus on “What is the customer saying?” Verbatims is where you really learn. Intuit has its users as part of the development team. Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, has an article in the Harvard Business Review about user contribution systems in which he discusses the question whether a user can help another user make a purchase decision and how companies can facilitate that.
Kevin Ranford of 1800flowers.com said you need to clearly and concisely present what users want so they’ll convert. Andy Markowitz of Kraft maintains that the most common mistake is the type of message you put out there. Brian Kalma of Zappos mentioned the power of a simple feature like “tell a friend” which gets used immensely and is also the highest converting piece of the zappos.com site. Just try to create avenues for customers to evangelize you, and keep up a continuous dialogue.
The final question turned, of course, to the presidential campaign—everything at Ad:tech revolved around the campaign—which really retooled the mindset of what is possible online. Jeff Graham of the New York Times said that Obama did what we’re all taking about. Usually nobody gives up control, whereas you could go to the Obama site, download phone numbers, and call them yourself. There were also links to offline activities: find a living room to watch the debate, advertise within video games. A good balance on ROI vs. innovation. Andy Markowitz reiterated the famous quote, “if you’re not first you’re last.” Obama was first. A big challenge for his team was, “you can’t win southern Ohio and southern West Virginia”. Obama had a strategy: I need to mobilize this group of people. He took the challenger mentality, always thinking about how to innovate. Challengers are always more willing to innovate. It starts with that the tactics do you use, with research informing the strategy as opposed to sorting out the tactics. How does it ladder back to your strategy? Obama’s team grabbed the bull by the horns and was rewarded with victory.
For Scott Wilder of Intuit, Obama’s tactics and the way they were implemented enforced his brand as approachable and authentic. Jeffrey Graham of the New York Times said that until October the metrics of the campaign had nothing to do with donations or road signs. They were about volunteers, it was all people-driven. Most brands talk about the importance of social media but you might want to group social media into customer service. It shows you what can happen if you put people, “consumers”, first. At Intuit, social media is just a feature of their product. In the 2009 desktop version of Quickbooks, community is in the workflow—you can ask a question of the community through the application’s own command menus. Impressive.
A number of companies have proactively asked their marketers if they wanted to learn more about social media, and many said “yes”. At Intuit there is a training program on opt-in marketing. You need to feel comfortable with the medium to use it well. The New York Times is being transformed by the degree of interaction between journalists and the public. They have even gone so far as to write stories on Russia in Russian, get feedback from readers in Russia, and then write the story for the US audience based on that feedback.
Finally, the discussion turned to managing authenticity. For the Obama campaign authenticity is one of his brand characteristics. You manage it by making sure you have the right people working those programs. If you want to be authentic, you have to be authentic; you need a company culture that accepts mistakes and is OK with that. It’s the way you educate your people. Educate them then let them say whatever they want to say—just don’t be an idiot.
Obviously this won’t work in all industries (of course pharma comes to mind), but it sounds like a good approach. If you can embed this thinking in your company’s culture, you’re way ahead of the game.
Search Marketing Tactics and Strategies: Best Practices
... across current and emerging digital search platforms, that is.
It’s been a long week, and the day is growing longer and this is the final session of ad:tech. With all of that said, what the heck: I’m gonna try liveblogging the session (which I suspect may be a good way of blogging the sessions overall, but we’ll see how this goes).
Personnel on hand: moderator Kevin Ryan (CEO of Motivity Marketing), panelists Kendall Allen (Senior VP and group account director of New York, ‘mktg’); David Kidder (co-founder and CEO of Clickable); Motoko Hunt (founder of Japanese Search Marketing Strategist, AJPR); and Pauline Ores (principal analyst of social media for IBM).
3:03: Did Kevin just say “bullshit PR”? Hey, I think I may resent that.
3:08: iGoogle grew 268 percent between November 2006 and November 2007. Wow.
3:10: There are lots of pain points in managing PPC: Optimizing bidding is complex (“Thanks for the news flash,” says Kevin). Managing large keyword lists is cumbersome. Optimizing paid search islabor-intensive. The larger the campaigns, the larger the headaches. No duh.
3:18: For the most part, contends Kevin, most people are still not getting the basics right. For example, they’re not configuring their analytics correctly.
3:26: In big companies, the search team may be doing a great job driving traffic, but the landing page is owned by another division, so nothing’s integrated properly. So where does the responsibility to fix that lie? Is it a structural issue? Is the command and control structure of large companies a problem? Good discussion.
3:32: One of the problems in sessions like this is that issues for large companies spending $50k a month or more on search are significantly different from those spending $5k or less a month. It’s kind of like the same problem you get in ad sessions: Should the discussion take place in the context of the advertiser or the publisher?
3:34: Shoutout to this blogging image from Despair.com.
3:38: We’re hearing about “this, that and the other thing” and how it all needs to be integrated. So general. Why can’t a session with “tactics” and “best practices” in the title be overflowing with practical takeaways?
3:46: Mobile is an opportunity. Nobody’s really doing it.
3:47: David noted that five of the top 10 best-selling books in Japan were written on mobile phones. Yep. Here’s the story.
3:54: “The top 5 areas of opportunity” slide: (1) Don’t forget the basics, (2) Connect the dots: strategic blending, (3) Mobile and local: early adopters? (4) Spending in line with value proposition, (5) Think like your audience. Number 5 was cited as “most important” by Kevin, and it’s a good point that was pretty much glossed over.
4:06: I’m not sure whether or not the last session of the conference running over the allotted time is a good or a bad thing.
4:10: Overall, too many generalities about trends, not enough specifics about tactics you and I can use tomorrow.
4:11: Off to Penn Station to catch a train. See ya next year!
Headlines and Heroes Pacha Party Gets Photorific
If you didn’t get enough of the Money Makers II party at Pacha during New York ad:tech, here’s a photo album for you to relive the night. Or, live it for the first time if you didn’t make it.
Beyond the Banner ... Beyond the Network ...
... beyond the sea
somewhere waiting for me
my Web ad stands on golden sands
and watches the clicks that go sailin’ ...
Okay, it’s the last day of ad:tech, so things are bound to get a little punchy. Still, I’d love to hear some Bobby Darin mixed in with whatever this is that’s being piped through the sound system before the session begins (which is pretty good, I have to say; sort of a modern spin on Motown).
Anyway, this is a session with big promise, “designed for the more advanced online marketer seeking new tactical approaches to leverage the unique features of the web beyond standard IAB units placed blindly across ad networks.”
Now we’re talking.
I was surprised by the turnout. At the start time, there were less than 50 people in the room, and that included moderator Susan Bratton (co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media) and the four panelists: Tom Koletas, VP and Managing Director of ad sales for Imaginova Corp.; John Ardis, VP of corporate strategy for ValueClick, Inc.; Stanley Holt, VP of Publishing for eHarmony; and Rob Rustad of Collarity. The room filled up a bit, but it was nonetheless a relatively sparsely attended session.
“The mid-tail and the promise of engagement” was the session’s subtitle, and just in time: “mid-tail” is an emerging buzzword that’s been heard all week.
What’s the mid-tail? It’s that place between the fat head (the easily recognized global brands, giant networks, etc.) and the long tail (sites that are by no means household names, that may deliver lots of passion but only a trickle of traffic.
Why does the mid-tail deserve your attention? Here are a few reasons:
Your ads are less likely to be drowned out by a sea of ads ... the mid-tail sites are likelier to partner with you ... there’s less “City Hall” involved as mid-tail sites can generally act quickly ... mid-tail sites are, by definition, more targeted ... mid-tail sites tend to display more passion than the “big portal dabblers” as Stan called them ... mid-tail sites provide affordable reach ... there’s real opportunity for affinity, as many mid-tail sites are in fact extensions of offline brands.
Tactically, there are a lot of ways to work with mid-tail sites. You can do widgets, games, advertorials, forums, and so on, but John makes a great point: Whatever you’re doing, capture data. Build your own database.
How do you find good mid-tail sites? How do you identify ad networks that do a good job of aggregating mid-tail sites?
[insert pregnant pause here]
The panel was reticent to name names re: networks, and tended to dodge the question, but there was some advice given that pretty much boiled down to: lots of legwork. Do a lot of search and research. Has the network been around for more than five years or so? Do you know people who’ve dealt with them? Dig, dig, dig.
What are some of the personal favorite mid-tail sites of the panelists?
[insert another pregnant pause here]
Golflink.com and DoItYourself.com were the only mid-tail sites specifically mentioned (bravo to Tom and Stan for naming names).
Bottom line takeaway: A smart range of mid-tail sites should be a component of any smart online marketing campaign, so roll up your sleeves and break out the elbow grease: There’s clicks in them thar hills.
(Footnote: Check out Susan’s blog over on DishyMix—materials from the panel will be posted there on Monday.
Idea For Next Year’s ad:tech NY
How about setting up “laptop zones” in the main presentation rooms?
There’s a sizable contingent of people using laptops in sessions, so why not take, say, a quarter of the room and run power strips along the floor so everyone can plug in? Added benefit: All the keyboard-tappers are kept in one area, so won’t be as annoying to someone else who doesn’t want to hear it.
The Emperor Has No Clothes – Maybe Because They’re Not Sold Online
”
Google recently told MarketingDaily that 94% of millionaires made a luxury purchase online in the last six months and that 56% of these consumers actually prefer shopping at a retailer’s Web site to visiting a store. So going into the session, “The Emperor Has No Clothes: The Affluent Consumer Online – A Market in Search of a Product?”, we might expect a discussion focused around luxury brands’ action plans to integrate e-commerce into what today are typically informational branded website experiences.
Well, if our expectation was that luxury brands are moving online to satisfy the seemingly overwhelming demand, we might be shocked to hear that many are, oddly, resistant to online commerce. Thomas Becker, CEO of Thom Browne, said, “If Thom Browne had his way, I think we’d all still be sending memos to each other on our typewriters. Everything from how we make our clothes to how our shoes are made – on a bench. It’s straight out of the 50’s. Everything about our process is similar to that.”
Browne is not alone in his hesitation on the future of luxury brand e-commerce. David Wish, Razorfish Partner, added, “there’s always been a feeling that I don’t know if our customers want to buy on the web.
Wish echoes a line of thought luxury brands have upheld for some time – the importance of brand integrity, and that at least a portion of the overall price accounts for the retail experience. Luxury brands have historically found it difficult to recreate the retail experience online and thus many have shied away from offering e-commerce options.
Moreover, brands find maintaining their brand identity has new challenges in the online world, where social media tools have enabled consumers to connect and discuss brands at their leisure and search engines have archived and publicized these discussions for all time. As Bruce Rogers commented, “The idea that you can control your brand was always a myth. Going back to seminal work by Trout, the brand exists in the minds of the customers; not in the advertising agency…” or any other interested party for that matter. The consumer is king in deciding whether or not a brand lives or dies and whether a brand is perceived as luxurious or cheap commodity.
When you add up the commentary from the panelists; that the luxury consumer is more stretched on time than on money, that the luxury product marketers can’t control their brands, that almost all millionaires are shopping online, one would think the logical conclusion would be stampede towards online media. This is not the case. The same luxury consumer continues to search for luxury brands through random e-retailers and gray market sellers; neither provides consistent branding when selling their luxury products.
Eli Singer, CEO of WebCollage explains, “Chanel is one of our customers. If you go to Chanel’s site, you get a great brand experience. If you go to a typical retailer site, and you find Chanel, you get a general product catalog representation. If you’re Chanel, you want to cry from an experience like that. The experience is completely butchered.”
Despite the blood and tears – we’ll have to keep looking to eBay for our Chanel for now.
Tales from the Bleeding Edge
The Tales from the Bleeding Edge session was more of a product-demo roundtable. Each of the panelists gave a presentation or demonstration of their company and two stood out as being particularly relevant and interesting for marketers and advertisers.
Joe Marchese showed us Social Vibe (which I LOVE) which focuses on how brands can get involved in social media in an effective way. With Social Vibe “The only way for brands to get into social media is for someone to invite them” – the ultimate in permission based advertising. Social Vibe allows users to choose and showcase their favorite brands on their social networking sites and earn points that equal donations to their favorite charity.
Why does social vibe rock? It takes a new approach to social network marketing – users choose their own sponsors (Nike, Apple, etc) and take their sponsors onto the web with them – on their blogs, myspace, facebook, email, etc. Why is this powerful? The branding quality is high because the user is making the choice to advertise the brand and is making a personal endorsement. So what do you get for allowing a brand to sponsor your online activities? You get $$ donated to a charity that you select.
On hearing about Social Vibe there were two questions on my mind. First, how does this not violate the Terms of Service of sites like myspace and facebook? Since the profile owner is not getting paid, and they are choosing the sponsorship and brand assets, the social networks don’t view it as advertising (putting advertising on your social network profile pages is a violation of the terms of service). Second, are brands concerned about appearing on sites with inappropriate content? The social web is a bit of a monster and the reality is that brand messages already appear on social network profiles. Brands can also restrict their sponsorship to certain demographics (ie. teen males, etc). In my opinion Social Vibe is an innovative approach to social network advertising.
The next company that was doing something interesting was Navteq. For those of you who don’t already see enough ads in your lives, Denny Reinert from Navteq demoed their location based advertising with GPS systems. Ads will show up on your Garmin screen while you are driving and may even include coupons. They will also show you an ad when you are stopped (if you stop for more than 15 seconds) but you will only get one ad every 20 minutes.
OK, so why the heck would you agree to have ads showing up in your navigation system? You get access to free lifetime traffic….. There are two questions that I have about this business model. First, will people actually agree to have ads in their GPS? Is access to free traffic meaningful enough for consumers to agree to be advertised at? The second question is about the quality of the ad impression and the ROI for marketers. Will consumers act on the ads or will they largely be ignored? Will advertisers buy in to this model?
Media and Entertainment Panel - I want it NOW!!!!!!
This panel was fairly similar to TV 3.0, which I covered yesterday; a discussion about how new mediums are changing how we consume media and the implications for both the media and advertisers.
The Landscape
The new reality = technology has enabled people to consume media when where and how they want to versus the old model where consumers could only watch on TVs a schedule predetermined by the network with approximately 8 minutes of commercials for every 22 minutes of television.
Today, Pirate Bay (an illegal download site) downloads 300 million videos a month. Television networks can sit back and watch these sites erode their audiences OR create a legal way where people can download content when where and how they want. The reality with technology today is that audiences can gain access to the content they want when and how they want it (albeit illegally). This poses a challenge for traditional media and they have to participate and develop platforms that serve these audiences, and protect or build their revenue streams.
Ted McConnell, Director, Interactive Innovations, Procter & Gamble pointed out that the cost to deliver the content is relatively low, and continues to drop, however the total operational costs and content creation can be more significant.
How Will Advertisers and Networks Make It?
“There is very little appetite for consumers to pay for content online, except iTunes” – John Cantarella, General Manager, TIME.com. The TV industry seems to a few years behind the music industry – as illegal online consumption grows, the traditional outlets look for ways to provide a better service in a legal way.
The key with online television is to increase ROI with better targeting and formats. According to Jean-Paul Colaco, Senior VP of Advertising, Hulu, traditional television advertising isn’t great – you don’t know who is watching the programs or very much about the audience. Online provides the potential for advertisers to target in ways that they can’t with traditional media.
Hulu is one of the biggest phenomenons with online video – with virtually no marketing spending it is the best known destination for watching video online. The now famous Sarah Palin SNL clip was viewed more online than on the traditional television broadcast.
Why does Hulu work?
The Hulu ad model is 25% of the ads that you see on traditional television. From a cost/benefit perspective, hulu provides a clean way to watch media and most viewers see the limited ads as a small price to pay for a simple way to get access to premium content.
From my personal experience, I canceled cable 6 months ago and watch all of my television on sites like hulu and the abc online episode viewers. The commercial breaks are shorter and less frequent than what you see on television, which improves the overall experience. I think that one of the best opportunities for sites like Hulu to improve is to give viewers more control over the ads that are served to them and to do more/better profiling and targeting.
What is the competitive advantage for Hulu? They aim for the best consumer experience in both the viewing experience and by providing a single point to access the content. Rather than going to multiple sites for each show, Hulu aims to provide everything in one place in a simple and intuitive format.
What will the Future Bring?
On-line and on-demand are the future of the industry – traditional television viewing might not go away, but it will continue to decline. The reality of advertising online is that there are synergies and relationships behind different formats of advertising. For example, display and search advertising together typically provide better ROI than either does alone. With multiple platforms available (online, mobile, television, etc) advertisers have potential to create synergies among these different platforms. The KEY will be to make up the revenues lost from traditional media in the new formats to continue to support the production of quality programming.
Battle of the Agency Bands
With help from the disarming Alice Anda (and the kind indulgence of Massive’s Cassandra Nuttal), ad:tech’s blog crew crashed last night’s Battle of the Agency Bands, a Guitar Hero party sponsored by Massive.
Suited up like charming schizophrenics, agency bands played a random Guitar Hero song for a crowd composed of their own cohorts. I wish I could attach the agency name to each of these videos, but we were in and out in two shakes—too quickly to info-gather. One of them is MediaVest; and creatives from Ogilvy performed, but I didn’t catch footage.
More, more, more:
Bangin’ stage presence:
The requisite boa:
As an added bonus, DMC of Run DMC was part of the panel of judges. Here’s evidence of him confessing his undying love for me:
Or not. The (rough) conversation:
Me: “Why is everyone taking photos with you?”
DMC: “I was in a band.”
Me: “Which band?”
DMC (humble throat-clearing): “Run DMC.”
Me: “Raaaad.” (Moment of quiet admiration.) “How’d Massive get you to be a judge?”
DMC: “Oh, I know someone ... who knows someone ... who knows someone.”
Me: “Do you even play video games?”
DMC: “Nah. My son does though. You?”
Me: “No. But I’ve always been fond of Tetris.”
DMC: “I love Tetris!”
Catch more of last night’s photos—including footage from the Eyeblaster party and ChaCha’s happy hour—here and here.
Marketing = Opportunity
Okay, so this is only tangentially related to ad:tech ... in the sense that anyone walking through Times Square to get to the Hilton probably saw these guys ... but hey: We’re all here to celebrate advertising and marketing, and isn’t a significant element of those disciplines capitalizing on opportunity? Which is exactly what these guys are doing. A great day for America, indeed.
Future of Online Measurement: Beyond the Click
So, the future of online measurement! A question for quants and marketers alike. Moderator David Hallerman, Senior Analyst at eMarketer, opened the session with a perhaps obvious if not provocative question: “What techniques or metrics have made measuring campaigns online so effective?” Essentially asking, what the hell have we been doing for 10 years with regards to online measurement?
Moderator
David Hallerman, Senior Analyst, eMarketer
Panelists
Konrad Felman- CEO, Quantcast
Jon Gibs- Vice President, Neilsen Online
Marc Johnsn- CMO, Hitwise
Gian Fulgoni- Co-founder, ComScore
Young-Bean Song- Director of Analytics, Atlas Institute, Microsoft
Well, to that Jon Gibs, Vice President at Neilsen Online, answered, “One central piece that has made all techniques effective is the transparency and quality of the data.” Young-Bean song, Director of Analytics at Microsoft Atlas Institute concurred but with some caution for the future, “What we have done well is measurement for the bottom of the funnel…clicks, conversion, sales, revenue,etc. But we’ve turned the purchase funnel into a purchase spoon. We look at metrics that point to those literally at the bottom of the purchase funnel. We are now in a situation where online is still experimental for brand advertisers, we don’t have great metrics for brand advertisers. We need to go beyond those touch points”
With these opening statements, the conversation quickly turned to the future and the potential to capture brand advertising dollars, budget that is still largely the domain of traditional mediums like television and print. “It amazes me that we have gone ten years without providing basic brand advertising metrics like reach and frequency.” Song commented.
Gian Fulgoni, Co-founder of ComScore noted, “The industry has done a good job to date of measuring display advertising, but there is no way CPG is going to move their brand dollars over to online if the key online metric is the click. Just because something can be measured doesn’t mean it matters, for example, the Click. The click doesn’t mean anything to brand advertisers. The click needs to change to something like view-through, for example.”
Gibs offered that while there has been much success with online measurement, from a traditional measurement standpoint (for brand advertisers) there is opportunity to grow, and that one key area of research and growth is understanding better the relationship between online impressions and offline sales. The panel acknowledged that there are obvious challenges to this, but that is still a huge a area for discovery. Fulgoni noted, “We’ve got to be able to show that the dollars are going to generate sales, we need to sync with off-line databases, and we need to do a better job with measuring against ad delivery to individuals.”
This comment sparked a bit of a debate between the merits of cookie metrics vs. people visits, as Konrad Felman, CEO of Quantcast added, “We should be able to tell advertisers not only how many people they reached, but who those people are.”
The session rounded out with a bit of discussion around online video and how it will begin to bring more traditional metrics of reach and frequency online, “Video is going to force this issue of bringing traditional metrics to online. The nature of video is very upper funnel, its not going to get credit for direct sales, but its an excellent branding piece” Song noted. But again, as we know, online video faces its own challenges including limited inventory, no standardized metrics (including CPM rate), and syndication.
What surprised me was how little mention there was of conversation data’s ability to provide metrics around brand recall, awareness and engagement levels. Gibs briefly touched on this concept with a mention of Neilsen’s BuzzMetrics tool which captures such conversation data, but its is still largely a new an untouched concept. Surely while it is true that “conversation data” seems very soft and fuzzy, there are meaningful metrics which can be extrapolated from it, including volume of brand mentions, tonality, frequency and location of mentions (not to mention it provides rich insight into customer pyschographics, preferences and online habits).
One thing was clear, however, that while online measurement has functioned very well for its purposes over the past ten years in driving ad spend, there is much room for growth and improvement. The next few years will be a very interesting and exciting place. And if you ask me, some key places to start exploring are online conversation data and the use of social graph data as sources which can provide rich insight and robust metrics around consumer engagement online.
The Great Transfer of Wealth: The Transformation of Local Advertising
Bravo to Gordon Borrell, President of Borrell Associates, for moderating a session with a minimum of PowerPoint slides (a notable lack thereof, in fact) and a maximum of real information and discussion.
What are we talking about when we focus on local advertising? How about this: $120 billion will be spent this year by local advertisers in local media—with interactive media claiming about a 9% share, increasing to about 13% next year.
A billion here, a billion there ... pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
But Peter Hutto, VP of Business Development and Sales for local.com, points out that while that’s a sexy number, the landscape is a lot more complex than all that. You have national brands who want to reach out locally, regional businesses that want to blanket a geographic area, and very local mom and pop advertisers.
After each of the panelists—Eric Stein, director of local markets for Google; Kurt Weinsheimer, general manager of ocal marketing services for Spot Runner; David L. Smith, CEO of Mediasmith; and Peter Hutto—gave a few minutes of pitch, Gordon made the sobering point that in the local marketplace, the local agencies and companies are gonna kick the asses of the guys on the panel. David disagreed, noting that the local guys know traditional but don’t really know online. Eric pointed out the Google is partnering with the locals, with mixed results.
Maybe the most interesting point in the session was contradictory to the session’s title as Gordon argued that “the great transfer of wealth ain’t gonna occur, it’s going to stay in the hands of the Hearsts and the Cox’s” as they focus on their online properties and learn the medium. He went on to add that no media has ever gone away as the result of new media coming in—they simply transformed ... and that’s what’s happening today.
I’m just sayin’ ...
... if I hear the word “ecosystem” one more time, I’m gonna throw up.
Mobilizing and Leveraging Consumer Insights: Best Practices for the Digital and Social Media Age
This panel started out with, once again, the election. The leitmotif of this show.
This panel had some interesting points but didn’t really deliver on the topic of consumer insights. I did however get some good tidbits on a variety of subjects. I found an interesting contrast between the people with line marketing backgrounds (Jeff Hunter from General Mills, Kay Madati of CNN, formerly with BMW, and Chris Pan of Facebook, formerly with Pepsi) and the other panelists.
A juicy tidbit. Did you know that when you signed up to make calls for Barack Obama you cleaned their database for them? Brilliant. The session was worth it if only to hear just that.
Moderator: Jeff Flemings, Vivaki
Panelists:
Jeff Hunter, General Mills
Chris Pan, Facebook
Marc Ruxin, McCann Worldgroup
Kay Madati CNN Worldwide
Michael Lazerow, Buddy Media
Chris Pan from Facebook pointed out that this wasn’t a campaign so much as a movement. Brands typically run 3-4 campaigns a year and blast messages out. A movement is different: this is something I believe in. Brands should say: what is it I have to offer? It’s all about you the consumer, not me the brand. It has to be relevant and make sense to consumers. Be a good listener. Do something they already do instead of making them do something hew.
Obama is a great brand. The campaign had great media support, $300 million on messaging. All parts worked well together. This was not a placement effort. If you take social media as a way to listen and engage your consumers, you get a lot in return.
Another interesting tidbit: in the next 18 months TV will probably get less expensive given the economy, so TV may become more efficient in short term. As Mark Twain said, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.
At General Mills they recognize that it’s a conversation. You think about your brand as a person having a conversation, in terms of insights and how we capture them. There is good work coming out of brand relationship networks. Find brand enthusiasts and engage in a conversation. Some stuff feels pragmatic and tactical but you end up with a richer brand experience or relationship.
A lot of what we’re talking is technology. Is understanding the human behind it a lost art? Rishad Tobaccowala said no matter what the technology, you have to have emotion. However, tools like seatguru.com don’t engage emotion. They have to deliver something that has recurring value. I don’t feel emotion with seatguru.com—but I get utility. Emotion plus utility is the best combination—if you can do it.
Most companies don’t do the sifting part to get insight. There’s a big rush to get as much info as possible but companies don’t operationalize it. At BMW they decided what 6 data items they needed from BMW films: simple, actionable data. The purchase funnel could track stickiness based on 4 to 6 parameters. That leads directly to sales. Actionable and effective.
It all boils down to this: social media needs to drive the bottom line in some way. In the end it comes down to CRM. Build social brand loyalists, even if you are not Apple, Barack Obama, Starbucks. Your ad dollars will go a lot further with relationships than by screaming at people.
So Many Networks, So Little Time
“Analyzing the digital network landscape” (the subtitle of this session) in 60 minutes is a tall order. Plenty of people have been at this stuff for years and still have no clue what’s going on. But be that as it may, this standing-room-only session gave it the ol’ college try. In the spirit of this session’s title, I’ll approach this as a post “So Many Sessions To Blog, So Little Time” post—so given the limited time you have to peruse the ad:tech blog, here are the quick session takeaways you need ... or at least the half-dozen that stood out most in this session:
—-Advertising spending is highly correlated with GDP growth. Danger, Will Robinson.
—-Yahoo! is trying to put marketing back into search marketing; too often, said Bill Wise, head of business development for Yahoo! it’s not about marketing, it’s about sales.
—-To reach enthusiasts of a specific topic, says Brian Fitzgerald, co-founder and President of Gorilla Nation Media, go to the sites that focus on that topic as opposed to the portal. For example, if you want to reach food enthusiasts, go to epicurious.com and not food.aol.com. (Of course, he would say that—that’s what Gorilla Nation does—but in my own experience, casting a narrow and specific net is excellent advice.) To which Bill responded: Scale matters and brand matters. (To which I would add: It probably depends on the type of food enthusiast you want to reach: casual or hardcore.)
—-Rajeev Goel, President and co-founder of PubMatic, notes that there’s probably a need for some sort of industry-wide content-certification program for sites, to which Brian added that perhaps some sort of rating system is needed too.
—-How many ad networks are there? Too many. Seemingly infinite.
—-Why should I choose one network over another? Look at the top 10 ad neworks, suggests Andrea Kerr Redniss, Senior VP and Managing Director of Newcast @ Optimedia, Optimedia U.S., adding: “This is why advertisers need agencies.” Touche.
Digital Economy: The Future is Mobile and Video
Henry Blodget, CEO of Silicon Alley Insider, moderated the CEO-laden Digital Economy panel ostensibly discuss the future trends of digital media. No surprise that the two main topics of conversation were online video and mobile (and very little about say, the fundamental shifts in the Web, how its used, consumers’ changing relationship with media and how the definition of “what is content” is itself changing…but whatever). Mobile took center stage first with Blodget’s contrarian conversation-starter, “We’ve been hearing for years now how mobile will be the next big thing, have we been snookered again?”
MODERATOR:
Henry Blodget, CEO, Silicon Alley Insider, Inc.
PANELISTS:
Amish Jani, Founder and Managing Director, FirstMark Capital
Robert Raciti, Ph.D., Senior VP, Industry Strategist, GE Commercial Finance: Media, Communications, and Entertainment Business
David J. Moore, Chairman and Founder, 24/7 Real Media, Inc.
Imran Khan, Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase
Imran Khan of JP Morgan Chase definitively stated that mobile IS indeed the future….we’re just still not there, yet (still). “Mobile is the future, and UI and usability is critical, once that is cracked, more and more will mobile play a big part.” Awkwardly missing from this statement was any reference to the iPhone or the newly birthed G1. “Take a look at apps like Yelp that people access mobiley, its useful. If there is usage, advertising will follow.” While that tends to be the general rule of thinking in Silicon Valley, lets remember the immense “usage” of Facebook and how advertising has, well, not exactly performed as one would hope given the enormous potential of the platform. Perhaps the future of the digital economy also involves re-defining what exactly “advertising” is online…
Which brings us to….online video! So what of video? Video also seems to be the next holy grail of digital (much as social networking was in 2006) but again, challenges remain. “The biggest challenge to online video is copyright issues and of course distribution,” stated David Moore of 24/7 Real Media. “But quality content has a premium value, content creators need a new avenue to make money. I think the 30 second spot will remain, but targeting and relevancy will be key.”
Hrm, I may be going out on a limb here, but there seems to be a HUGE assumption here that if content is good enough, users won’t mind the disruptive commercial spots. But aren’t we overlooking that users watch video they download from iTunes or watch from YouTube or another online source precisely because there is not the commercial disruption. Heck, Gossip Girl’s immense success due to online viewage has led it to have to adopt an expanded revenue model: major product placement. Surprisingly, there was little to no discussion around beefed up product placement or content-as-advertising as potential models for online video. Rather, the idea seems to be same old way of reaching consumers (the 30 second spot) but with better targeting. As Moore summed up, “Its all about video on demand. With video on demand buy rates go up, and its a great place to put a commercial.”
If I may, it seems that one very key topic of discussion missing here is around the dramatic shift in consumer behavior online. It seems rather counter-intuitive to apply old advertising models based on channel-centric view of the Web when we know in fact that the Web is very much a network-centric environment. What does this have to do with anything? Well, within a network model where content is not under the control of a single distribution power, the path to least resistance rules. Users will consume that content which is easiest to access. Pre-rolls and commercials pose barriers to consumption of that content, and if available elsewhere without the disruption, to them go the spoils of consumer attention. Perhaps a vital ancillary discussion to the “future of digital media” is “what is the future of advertising, beyond the 30 second spot”?
Um…
There’s an armed guard of about five police officers, equipped with shiny black helmets and long-range rifles, standing outside the Hilton.
I crept up close to sneak a pic but wasn’t stealthy enough. One of them asked me to put my camera away. “My boss is watching,” he said—almost apologetically. When I ventured closer, I realized he wasn’t all that scary under the bulletproof vest and the rifle held in front of him with both hands.
He had eyeglasses and a plaid shirt. A long-range shooter with eyeglasses! For some reason that struck me as strange. Without the gear, I would’ve characterized him as an English teacher with a lisp.
“Why are you guys here?” I asked. “Did something happen?”
“It’s just a random sweep,” he said. “We do it in all the tourist areas.”
“So this has nothing to do with the election?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “We’ve been doing this since the attack on the World Trade Center.”
“You’ve been doing this for a long time.” I was skeptical.
“Oh yeah.”
“Do many terrorist acts occur in tourist areas?”
“Not since, thankfully,” he said.
“Well ... thanks,” I said, dashing back into the hotel and nearly slamming into an older woman holding her coat clutched shut at the bosom. She was murmuring, “I wanted to get away from that corner as fast as possible” to a husband or son, who hustled her along by the shoulders, looking nervously backward.
Keynote Presentation: The Big Idea 3.0 - Redefining Creative in the Digital Age
In the recurring theme of this Ad:Tech, Paul Woolmington started with some comments about the election, of course! Barack Obama is the biggest idea America has had in decades. The campaign wasn’t about ad slogans but “a way of being”. Political advertising will never be the same again. OK, on to the panelists.
Moderator: Paul Woolmington, Naked
Panelists:
Andy Berndt, Managing Director Google Labs
Stefan Olander, Global Director of Brand Connections Nike
Nick Law, Tech Creative Director at RGA
Jessica Greenwood, Editor of Contagious magazine
The panel started with a show and tell about creative, online and offline, then went into a traditional Q&A with the panelists.
The show and tell included:
- Uniqlo’s Uniqlock (yes, a clock), which generated 180million views in 214 countries
- Cadbury chocolate’s gorilla campaign (with a film about a gorilla). Lots of mashups and swarms of imitators, generated a 600% increase into Cadbury site, 350+ mashups and 150million views on Youtube. Presumably some candy bar sales too…
- The collaboration between Radiohead and Google: Radiohead, the world’s most innovative band (so the moderator claimed) worked with “Aaron”, a “genius” artist who focuses on visualizing humans, focusing on Google as open source music video. Frankly I didn’t get this one, nor did I get the point…
- A few other things (very UK-centered): Nespresso, Halo 3, Banksy, Coke happiness factory (coke.com/hf), Nike football (soccer for us Americans) with the “bad” Ronaldo
- A movie, Harvey Dent, where users logged in and each login removed a tile from the movie poster to reveal the image underneath, plus a “joke” easter egg (the words “ha ha ha” in html that appear if you drag your browser cursor to highlight the text). OK…
- A lot of focus on “look at me” creative, though I’m not sure of the effectiveness of it all..
Plus a few useful things:
- The UPS widget which tracks your package
- And my favorite, Nokia viNe which records your life (pictures, songs you listen to) with GPS locations. Upload stuff to the site or Facebook, and share. Makes it easy to share your experiences and be tracked by the Department of Homeland Security. No seriously, this one is worth checking out. I wonder if it works with iPhone. Well done, from RGA.
The Q&A session continued with a discussion of the redefinition of the creative agency. RGA claims they are increasingly taking the lead. Now we have a “hybrid creative”. The big issues we have to deal with revolve around collaboration. Cultural differences between countries are dwarfed by differences between creative, storyteller, copywriter, creative, etc. Sound familiar? The infamous “silos” at work again… The biggest impediment in more traditional agencies is the cultural arrogance of the story teller. There’s hope for smaller, nimbler guys.
The danger here is focusing on the technology exclusively. You need to take all layers that digital can provide and tap into what people are already doing. In the football campaign look at what people are doing: kids are playing soccer every day. They send emails, text messages, SMS to their friends. Clearly there’s an opportunity. Nike made an app called playmaker to schedule soccer games. Ask, “how do they live their lives and play their sport?” Then solve the problems.
Now we even have Dole bananas with a code that tells you where it was picked. Even bananas have gone digital. How useful is that? No idea. But with data you can be empowered about what the added value is. More data will transform the role of marketing.
The panelists concluded with the observation that more power will be in hands of consumers. We’ve heard that a lot but few companies go beyond lip service. Maybe digital can force marketers to really pay attention once and for all…
Keynote Presentation: Dispatches from the Digital Frontier with Shelly Lazarus
Barack Obama ran a truly groundbreaking campaign. 2 weeks before he won the Ad Age Marketer of the Year Award at ANA. He stayed on message, used all media. The smartest thing they did was to look at what’s happening in digital media. They recognized that the internet gave them the chance to go direct and stay in continuous dialogue without any interference from the press. Imagine if Obama governs the way he ran the campaign. Even at 11 pm last night Obama sent an email. He’s set us up to be his missionaries.
Shelly Lazarus was on a panel two weeks ago where Gary Hart and Bob Kerry were interviewed. They were asked, was the press fair? Answer: the question is irrelevant. We don’t need interpreters, we can talk directly to the people. The Obama campaign understood this. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter. The Race to The White House game. The Obama mobile network , the iphone app. Simply the best CRM network we’ve seen to date. Obama got 4 milllion donors who get daily updates—with a donate button on every email. If you didn’t sign up to call voters they sent you names to call. They even used a sweepstakes: the first 5 people (then 10) would be selected to go to Chicago to watch election returns. Then they told you each day who won. Just like Publisher’s Clearinghouse. They used every trick there was. Shelly’s husband actually gave money to Obama because he felt left out… He wanted to get the emails too.
In this world of digital marketing, if you can think it, you can do it. Next was an amazing “Show and Tell”.
2008 was also memorable for the Beijiing Olympics. For Lenovo (a client of Ogily), this was a signature moment. The question was, how did you use 21st century technology to bring the Olympics to life? Lenovo’s voices of the Olympics featured stories from the Olympics contributed by the athletes themselves. To make this same content available Lenovo made a widget for iphones. The result is the largest social media marketing campaign during the largest sporting event of the world and a way for people to continually interact with the games. The IOC came forward and tried to stop it because the site was “stealing” the content that they had sold to media content providers around the world.
Creative is still important. Shelly Lazarus talked about Shreddies, a Canadian cereal brand from Post which hired Ogilvy for a traditional brand refresh assignment. Shreddies was a traditional brand refresh assignment Ogilvy was asked to find a new unique way to refresh a cereal brand: “Write some clever copy for the Shreddies box”. A summer intern came up with the idea of Diamond Shreddies. Shreddies are square. An intern came up with the idea of Diamond Shreddies, shreddies turned at a 45 degree angle—a diamond! The rest is history: take the test at diamondshreddies.ca. Youtube and other sites immediately got 800.000 views, a lot for Canada. Post launched Diamond Shreddies in test market. Ogilvy started putting focus group takes on the web, developed a complete integrated instore sampling program, newspapers wrote reviews. The launch generated 81 groups on Facebook. Hundreds wrote the company. One complained that the box he bought contained only 50% diamond shreddies. Post then offered the combo pack! Word of mouth/viral provided 90% of the buzz. Sales went up 20% in weeks.
Shreddies wouldn’t seem like a candidate for a highly interactive or viral campaign. A little idea struck a chord or funny bone and turned into a big digital campaign. That is marketing innovation for a brand which had