SEO Tactics for Every Flavor: Mobile, Local, and Video Search

Today’s search landscape shifting beyond doing using SEO to optimize for your text-based websites for people doing searches on their desktop browser. In the era of search anywhere via mobile and where even your grandparents are sending you YouTube videos, it’s a changed landscape for SEO as well. Partnering with the SMX conference series, well known for covering the search marketing space, ad:tech hosted some great panelists on the topics of SEO for mobile, local and video search which introduced the audience to very actionable and tactical information you could implement right away.

MODERATOR:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com

PRESENTERS:
Cindy Krum, CEO, Rank-Mobile, LLC
Matt McGee, Assignment Editor, SearchEngineLand.com
Drew Hubbard, Senior Linking Analyst, SEO, The Search Agency

Cindy Krum on Mobile SEO
Cindy Krum kicked off the session by introducing the audience to SEO for mobile users. While traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo are available on phones,  marketers do need to tweak their SEO campaigns for to more specifically target the mobile user.

Different Search Engine Landscape
Unlike traditional search, mobile search can be divided into three areas:

• On Deck Search: They carrier’s own search engine, which is typically white-labeled versions of JumpTap and Medio. Their ranking mechanism relies not only on algorithms, but on submission by websites and payment.
• Off Deck Search: This is the traditional players we known: Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live. However, they do have their own mobile search algorithm, which can be different from the results seen on a computer
• In Mobile Apps: These are specific topical apps with search functionality, such as the Yelp iPhone app.

Krum stated that the focus on the presentation will be on “off deck” search, since that is has the widest growing use and also uses more traditional SEO tools to implement. She lists six basic guidelines in conducting SEO:

• Traditional & Local SEO Best Practices: A lot of traditional SEO best practices still apply to mobile SEO:1) no fancy flex, flash or ajax; and 2) make content relevent with carefully chosen keywords.
• Appropriate Site Architecture: 1) Avoid using dotMobi for your mobile website. It is bad for SEO and presents a poor experience for your users. 2) Designate ares on your website as mobile, such as m.website.com or website.com/m;
• Clean Code: Since ranking is half the battle in SEO, marketers need to also keep in mind that download speeds are still an issue with mobile users and to take care to use clean XHTML code is not only more readable by mobile browers but can be optimized for download speeds.
• Good Mobile Rendering & User Experience: Just like the early days of the Internet, there are many different types of web browsers for the hundreds of different mobile phones out there. Be sure to test to make sure the website renders well for major mobile browsers from Nokia’s Symbian browser to Opera Mini Browser.
• Mobile Site Map & Bot Instructions: Help guide search engines by using mobile sitemaps and robot.txt codes to direct which areas mobile search bots and traditional search bots shold crawl to, e.g. Google’s mobile bot should only crawl m.mysite.com not http://www.mysite.com.
• Appropriate Mobile Search Engine & Directory Submissions: Beyond submitting to Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live, there are carrier-specific search engines such as JumpTap: http://www.jumptap.com/content-publishers-submit-content. Krum included an entire page of other specific mobile websites from Sprint to Nokia.

Drew Hubbard on Video SEO
Drew Hubbard gave a great best-practices course on how to do Video SEO for both hosted-video websites, like YouTube and Vimeo, and self-hosted websites (vidoes hosted on your website). He listed out six very actionable points for optimizing both types of videos.

Six Best Practices for Video SEO

1. For now, we assume that video is invisible to search engines. Good, spiderable content is the key to good rankings Use the word “video” in titles and URLs: As in the screenshot above, Google cannot “see” a video. So for YouTube, for example, it relies on all the text that surrounds a vide: title of the video, description, synopsis, transcripts, tags, captions and subtitles. Currently, YouTube matches the title, description and tags you give a video uploaded to YouTube as its title, description and keywords. Also when hosting the video on your own website, make sure to make the name of the video file descriptive and not just something like MVI_1439.AVI.
2. Use the word “video” in titles and URLs: Sounds very simple, but is is an often forgotten fact.
3. Always carefully consider video thumbnails: Hubbard showed an example where an attractive looking thumbnail garned far more video views than a plain looking thumbnile of a tree, despite being of the same video.
4. Watermark your videos to protect branding: Videos uploaded on a single website frequently appear uploaded to another website by an independent person. While this person maybe well meaning in making the video more widely available, you can ensure that your branding and video’s origin is intact using watermarks.
5. Take advantage of video services’ tagging options in order to create keyword-rich content and meta data:
6. Allow others to interact with your videos: This can sound like a scary proposition, but the this allows you the leverage the viral-nature of the Internet. The more people can interact and share a video - your video - the better chance for the video to be able to spread virally online.
7. Include XML video sitemaps when appropriate: When hosting a video on your own website - and not on Vimeo, YouTube etc -  use an XML video sitemap so that search engines can more easily identify the file on your website as a video file.

Matt McGee on Local SEO
Matt McGee gave some great easy to understand best practice tips to ensuring a website is optimized for local search. McGee began by emphasizing that even in local search, Google still dominates. And that starting in March 2009, Google has been automatically applying a “local search algorithm” regardless if a searcher uses “flowers” or “flowers san francisco” search. Presumably, Google determines the location of the searched either from being signed on a Google Account (like Gmail) or via IP address data.

1. Separate page for each location: For search engines to understand the different locations your business may have, there needs to be a separete webpage for each of your locations that also clearly marks in plain HTML text the address of each of your business location.
2. Write a detailed Location/Directions page: To help reinforce the fact that your business is at a specific location, it is helpful to write a detail locations/direction page, which literally spells out the location of the business rather than simply show a graphical map.
3. Do regular SEO – page titles, link text, H1/H2 tags, etc.—but with geo modifiers: That’s easy enough. Instead of talking about “Joe’s Flowershop”, be descriptive and say “Joe’s Flowershop in San Jose.”
4. Standardize & Optimize Business Profiles: One of the ways Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live build understanding whether is a business is local is from looking at data from local directory listings. McGee recommends using websites like GetList.org.
5. Create & acquire citations:
6. Acquire/Encourage ratings and reviews: McGee made an interesting note that search engines do list the number of reviews a particular local business received (good or bad) from third-party websites. A potential customer is most likely inclined to click on the listing that mentions it has “203 customer reviews” rather than a business that only has “1 customer review”. see below.

Big Parties, Small Parties, Dinners Add to ad:tech Experience

If one could identify a trend in parties at this year’s ad:tech in San Francisco, it would be this; more, smaller and no open bar. It all makes perfect sense in a “down economy.” Excepting a couple of parties, most were small events held at small venues with limited or no open bar. That didn’t seem to stop people from having fun though this year.

As early as Monday night, the eve of ad:tech, Glam Interactive held a small event atop the Clift Hotel in the Spanish Suite. From 7P-9P, members and guests mixed and mingled before the general ad:tech crowed began to glow in. While it was open to all, it never really got all that busy.

On Tuesday night, there were more than ten parties ranging from affairs like the Tatto Media party to large blowouts like the Advertise.com party held at ad:tech party standby, Ruby Skye. Both parties, while wildly different, were a good time. Oops, and, even though we didn’t attend, NickyCakes would love us to mention the fact he, along with several others, held a party at which Jello wrestling, apparently, turned into an all out brawl between two women wearing, well, nothing. There’s a video of the spectacle floating around on YouTube.

On Wednesday night, after a great dinner with Hollis Guerra and Erika Golden from Blast! PR,  RockYou and Rubicon hosted an event in the Lobby Lounge of the Intercontinental Hotel, Notable.tv had a small gathering at Aventine and AdverCircus2, held at the multi-room 1015 Folsom, closed out the conference with fire dancers, acrobats and a troupe of musicians.

Thursday, the last day of the conference, is always a quiet experience. The exhibitors have packed up their booths and the number of people roaming around Moscone drops dramatically from about 13,000 to 2,000. It’s sort of sad and anticlimactic in a way but also a great day to process the learnings and experiences o the first two days.

Next ad:tech? Chicago in September. See you there.

Invoke’s Ryan Holmes Demonstrates Serious Interviewing Fortitude

Posted by Angela Natividad · Friday April 24, 2009

Forget, for a second, about the vacuumy café noises and the girl with the crutches in the background. The weather is pretty, Schoggi is cozy and we have pistachio and rosewater macaroons.

Fun fact: Founder/CEO Ryan Holmes of Invoke Media, parent company of HootSuite, has never had a macaroon before. When I ordered them at the register, he asked if they were “Asian hamburgers.” And then I died.

Notes on this video:

1. HootSuite is one of the cooler tools available to marketers on Twitter right now. It has a proprietary URL shortening feature (ow.ly) with a built-in ad and revenue sharing model. HootSuite can also manage multiple accounts at once.

An update, slated for the near future, will boast still more features and turn the HootSuite UI into a cross between Firefox (with tabs!) and TweetDeck. Yeah, that sounds scary, but Ryan assures me they’ve got good info architecture/usability peeps back at Invoke.

I believe everything he says. EVERYTHING.

2. (And most crucial.) Krista Neher (remember her?) tagged along with us for the interview, and in an odd compulsion to be productive she asked if she could record us both.

This interview format makes me uncomfortable—I’m more Louis Malle than Oprah—but she said we should try it and didn’t tell me I had hair sticking up on the side of my head the whole time.

It drives me bananas, but it’s not like you can just NOT post an interview because of flyaways.

Notably, Camera Eye Krista didn’t notice because she was too busy trying not to laugh at Crutches Girl. (Observe how the frame shakes violently when the latter arrives. At this point, both Ryan and I take pains not to look at her.)

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Amielle Lake on Mobile Marketing, (Copper) Mining and Pinot-Friendly Cheese

Amielle Lake on Mobile Marketing, (Copper) Mining and Pinot-Friendly Cheese

Posted by Angela Natividad · Friday April 24, 2009

Amielle Lake is the CEO of Tagga, a Vancouver-based company that helps agencies add a strategic mobile component to their campaigns. (Think broad SMS efforts, mobile websites, etc).

The service—currently live in Canada and the US—includes reporting and dashboard management, and payment models are flexy.

We sat down yesterday to talk about Tagga in a video interview. As luck would have it, I ended up gleaning a lot more than I expected. Amielle tells this great story about Tagga’s birth and the state of agencies at that time; it also turns out she worked in mining and knows French cheese like this. (*crosses fingers*)

Funny what you can find out when the pressure’s on (ad:tech was ending, hence the skulky suited man in the BG) and you know your first take MUST be perfect (I don’t know how to use my video editing software. But you probably guessed that).

Compulsive Twitterers can hit the Follow button at: @tagga and @amiellel.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » ADSPACE Workshop Series - Contextual Advertising The ad:tech Way

ADSPACE Workshop Series - Contextual Advertising The ad:tech Way

Posted by Brent Terrazas · Friday April 24, 2009

Still relying on image and text ads to drive online traffic? Wish you could pre-sell the consumer before they clicked on the ad and you were charged? Wondering how mobile ads can actually increase your conversion rate? You should have gone to ADSPACE, the first ever contextual advertising conference and expo located within ad:tech San Francisco this year.
During a series of workshops held during the one day event, experts and business owners of the latest and greatest technologies now being introduced to the public shared their secrets to how to increase your conversion rate without having to sacrifice costs. Best of all, they did it using new forms of contextual ads available for mobile and the web!


Workshop Series: Emerging Platforms
Moderator:
Josh McFarland, Entrepreneur in Residence, Greylock Ventures
Panelists:
Mani Iyer: CEO and Founder, Kwanzoo Inc.
Steen Andersson, Co-Founder and VP, Marketing, 5th Finger

First up was Mani Iver from Kwanzoo Inc. Their company specializes in widget advertising. Now some of you might have the wrong idea by the term widget. All that means is that it acts as an interactive feature of some sort. This isn’t just a flash movie or roll-out banner, but a way to help you pre-qualify your customer not only before they reach the purchase page, but before you’re even charged for the click.

The example he showed the crowd was a widget for someone looking to purchase a car. With a drop-down menu of auto manufactures embedded in the widget, you are better able to pre-qualify the consumer not to mention use their responses to hyper-target each stage of the ad. These widgets all can have multiple screens within itself (i.e. before leaving the partner website) that further qualify the individual before sending them to the landing page which will carry through all their previously answered information. With widget advertising, you’re also able to chart the metrics behind the conversion and pass-through rates of the users who interact with the ad.  So for example if it was a two question widget but they left the website before answering the second portion, you aren’t charged for the click but will still be able to see all the typical analytical information on the user. This will result in you being able to alter your questions until you find the best messaging that converts these users into customers. Mani also said that their service was completely Google Content Network certified and that they’re working closely with other network as well. 

Next up was Steen Andersson from 5th Finger who showed some interesting new opportunities available for mobile advertisements. We’re not just talking about banner or text ads here but full-blown call-to-order features that the user can click on and immediately be connected to your sales department. Another example shown was for a product where it initially looked like a regular banner at the top of the mobile-enhanced website but then expanded to include a “Buy Here Now” button upon clicking the ad. They’re taking the tools already present and using them to cut out unnecessary steps involved in the process of connecting a customer with your product.

As technology advances, so will the way in which we can advertise on them - workshops like this are critical for you to be able to separate your brand from your competitors while at the same utilizing this new technology to maximize conversion rates.

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Home » Targeted Ads for Television: As Elusive As It Ever Was

Targeted Ads for Television: As Elusive As It Ever Was

Posted by Daniel Riveong · Thursday April 23, 2009

One of the interesting aspect of the “digitalization” of media is “traditional” media slow movement to become more trackable and targetable. Televisions, the grand-daddy of all mass media, is one of them. The “TV 3.0: Reach + Targetability” session covered this very topic. Unfortunately, the holy grail of targetable television has proven as elusive as the actual Holy Grail. From the case studies presented, we seem no closer to targetable television advertising than from what I saw from last year’s ad:tech session on the same topic.

MODERATOR:
Daisy Whitney, Host/New Media Minute and Reporter, TVWeek
PANELISTS:
Mitchell Oscar, Executive VP, Televisual Applications, MPG
Joshua Herman, Digital Marketing Innovation Leader, Acxiom
Davina Kent, Director of Strategic Alliances, Comcast Spotlight

 

While the panelists were great in talking about the mechanics of how targeted and interactive TV advertising works, the meatiest topics were focused around the challenges of targeted/interactive advertising with some helpful case studies to indicate possibilities for advertisers.

Challenges
Privacy and Implementation
Cable operators have issues with allocating bandwidth to allow for interactive advertising (ads that you can click on with the TV remote) and targetable advertising (target cable users by demographics etc).

Additionally, legal laws regarding privacy issues surrounding have also to be worked out. How narrow can you target base don the cable company’s database? To what extent can advertisers marry their CRM data to the cable operators for targeting purposes? Indeed, one of the attendees stated to the panelists that he was unable to execute the type of targeted advertising the panelists discussed; the cable operator told him it went against privacy policies.

Project Canoe
Project Canoe has been a lot like mobile marketing: it’ll hit mainstream next year. Project Canoe‘s aim is for cable operators to build a method for advertisers to purchase advertising time through a single mechanism, instead of separately contacting and negotiating with dozens of cable operators. The project aims are high, yet results have proven elusive.

Level of Segmentation
The panelists discussed the issue of over segmentation. Cable operators are still attempting to define how much they can segment users, balancing between: 1) being highly targeted ads; 2) having a large enough audience; and 3) the budget to create targeted ads. As Daisy Whitney of TV Week, if an advertisers segments too narrowly, you may end up with only a reach of two cable users.

Results
When it came to results, the panelists had a few case studies but it was apparent it lacked depth in terms of metrics and insight. The lack of a formal PowerPoint case studies may have been a factor.

Dog Ads
A targeted advertisement in Huntsville for dog food found that TV viewers were 38% less likely to turn away from a commercial if they were actual dog owners versus a non-targeted dog food ad.

ING Insurance
Mitchell Oscar of Televisual Applications talked about a targeted advertisement for ING Insurance. They used Acxiom to marry ING’s CRM data and the cable operators to target and upscale existing ING customers on insurance products. Acxiom was also used as a “safe harbor” so personal information from ING and the cable operator were not directly exchanged.

Oscar explained they used a Domino Pizza coupon to attract sales leads. He noted a high CTR rate.

Pricing
In terms of pricing, the panelists stated that the average cost for targeted advertising was 30% higher than regular TV advertising. From the panelists, it seem the higher cost seemed to be worth in terms of achieving successful engagement but more case studies are needed. But, with targeted advertising also comes to requirement to create relevant advertising for each segment.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » The Next Frontier?  Apparently it’s Social Media.

The Next Frontier?  Apparently it’s Social Media.

Posted by Krista Neher · Thursday April 23, 2009

Display based advertising is so web 1.0.  What’s hot now is connecting with consumers beyond traditional display ads through social media according to the panel at The Next Frontier: Advertising in Applications session.

Moderator:
Mark Naples, Managing Partner WIT Strategy
Panelists:
Luis E Castaneda, Global Digital Marketing, Xcentuate LLC
Hooman Radfar, CEO and Co-Founder, Clearspring
Ira Rubenstein, Executive VP, Global Digital Media Group, Marvel Entertainment
Ben Pashman VP Sales and Business Development, Gigya

Social Media is Everywhere
Hooman Radfar kicked of the conversation asking “Is all media social? How do we integrate social features into all of our media?”  People are social by nature.  In the “real world” (ie. Offline) people are inherently social; web 2.0 is now enabling these social interactions to take place online.  All online efforts should include the opportunity for consumers to interact with each other and the brand or content producer.

More people are using social networks than email.  Marketers get really excited about this, but it isn’t revolutionary – people are choosing a new medium for communication and conversations that were already taking place.  Marvel said that facebook is one of the top referring sites and one that they expect to continue to grow in importance.

How Do Brands Play in the Social Space?
Prior to jumping in to twitter, plaxo, facebook, myspace, etc brand should ask themselves “What are the socialization traits that your brand will have in the social media space?  You are asking for your brand to participate in conversations -  it has to be relevant and invited.

“Now you have to build an ongoing relationship with your customers via a variety of mediums – Facebook, Twitter, etc” said Ira Rubenstein, Exeutive VP of Marvel Entertainment.

Permission Matters in the Social Space
Marketers need to have permission and add value to play in the social space. “I think that permission is key.  Facebook learned that with beacon.” said the panel. As long as there is permission granted along the way consumers are interested in engaging with brands online.  Make sure that your application permissions are set right – they can be controlled and that users are respected.

Facecbook provides a better communication messaging platform vs. email.  The permission based nature of it makes it easier to control who can connect with you.  For example on email anyone can send you messages which is where the proliferation of spam came from.  On social networks consumers have greater control over who they can connect with and marketers need permission to connect with them.  In order to get permission they have to be relevant and respectful.

A Key Social Media Advantage: Flexibility
Marketers have to be flexible online – often times after launching something it will be used in a way that wasn’t initially intended.  You may also see results that are successful but perhaps don’t match your original metrics.  For example, you may launch an app and not meet your # of download goals but find that engagement among those who have downloaded them.  Be flexible.  How can you leverage the success that you have (ie. High engagement) to build your brand?

You can change your media quickly and fluidly online.  There is the potential to morph quicker and it can be cheaper vs. traditional media.

Before you Jump In
Prior to jumping into social media you have to ask yourself “How does communication and how does the conversation fit into your campaign?” 

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Standing Room Only at Media Metrics Panel

Standing Room Only at Media Metrics Panel

Posted by Krista Neher · Thursday April 23, 2009

Measuring digital is hot right now and it was standing room only at the Media Boot Camp Power Session: Defining the New Media Currency – How to bring traditional media metrics online.

Moderator:
David Smith, CEO Mediasmith
Panelists:
Jon Gibs VP Media Analytics, Nielson Online
Erin Hunter Executive VP, comScore
Young-Bean Song Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute, Microsoft
Scott Ernst President, Compete
Todd Teresi, Chief Revenue Officer, Quantcast

There is a pretty big delta between the amount of time, energy and engagement that people have online and the amount of money that marketers are spending online.  One of the barriers is understanding how to track and measure online spending to show results.

So what are some options for measuring?
Virtual Panel – Create a virtual panel to assess the effectiveness of your online campaign.  Use survey methods similar to traditional methods used for measuring the impact of TV and print.
Split Testing – Serve different ads to different people and measure the effectiveness of each ad in driving action from your target.  Rotate ads and creative to optimize your spending.
Search Data – Analyze search data to find out what people are searching for online.  Are you seeing an increase in searches for your brand or terms related to your brand?  Are there searches related to your campaign?  Search is a great real-time way to understand what is actually going on in the space.
Online Buzz – Measure online buzz – use services to track the number of mentions and sentiment of mentions about your brand.  Online buzz gives you an immediate read on whether or not your campaign is inspiring conversations.  You can get results quicker and cheaper than traditional methods and make adjustments as needed.
Target - Evaluate whether or not you are connecting with the right target.  Poor results may stem from reaching the wrong audience online.  Understand who you are trying to reach and where they are online. 

So what should I measure?
The first generation of measure was click-through.  The second generation was action taken directly related to the ad – how many people took a specific action after clicking on an ad?  The third is attribution measurement; looking at the meaning and importance of the integrated campaign – how does each portion of the campaign help lead to purchase.

The base question is “Can you reach the right people and get them to do something?”

Ask yourself, “Does my campaign create awareness in a new way that I can measure online?”  Ask the same questions that you do offline – measure persuasiveness of the campaign via surveys, DynamicLogic, InsideExpress.  Leverage the web for what it is good at – are people buzzing/talking about your brand, are they searching for your brand, are they visiting your website?  Leverage social media to look for conversations about your brand – these measures can be more powerful than traditional measures.

Just because you Can doesn’t mean you Should
Select measures that are relevant to the actions that you are trying to drive online.  Be sure that your measures tie back to the objectives of your campaign.  Look for ways to measure the impact of integrating digital into the rest of your marketing mix.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Tuesday Night Filled With Multiple Parties

Tuesday Night Filled With Multiple Parties

Posted by Steve Hall · Wednesday April 22, 2009

Tuesday night at ad:tech San Francisco, the first night of the conference was filled with no less than eight parties. We didn’t make it to all of them but we did make it to the Tatto (no, that’s not a typo) Media party, the Oldtimers party and the end of the nigh blowout, Advertise.com party at Ruby Skye. From elegant cocktails to sloppy dance floor action, the night had something for everyone. If you were there, then you know. If you weren’t, well, there;s always the photos (here, here and here)

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Conversion Success: Using Retargeting and Clever Newsletter Marketing

Conversion Success: Using Retargeting and Clever Newsletter Marketing

Posted by Daniel Riveong · Wednesday April 22, 2009

The Conversion Success session was a great, rapid fire case-study review of different ways companies have been employing methods to increase conversions rates. Client case-studies discussed included Overstock.com, Moen and Skechers with the partners Optiem and ChoiceStream that helped them.

The panelists included the following:
Chris Caputo, VP, Digital Media Strategy, Optiem, Inc.
Laura Christine, VP of Direct marketing & Ecommerce, SKECHERS
Geoff Atkinson, Senior VP, Marketing, Overstock.com
Cheryl Kellond, Senior VP, Advertising Business, ChoiceStream

With no expectations of what the session will cover, I was happy to see real case studies of how display marketing (with retargeting) can function just like search, in terms of match the audience with a relevant message from advertisers.

Understanding what 360 Analytics Is
Before jumping into the case studies, the moderator, Christopher Marriott of Acxiom Digital, along with the other panelists kicked-off the session by defining analytics: 1) what it means to have a holistic view of analytics; and 2) how to approach analytics as part of the analysis and optimization cycle of marketing campaigns.

360 View of Analytics Means:

• Understanding how media (search, display etc) overlap in reach and interactions
• Have an optimization mindset
• interactions are interrelated…connect the dots

The Components of 360:

• There three components: 1) Media: Paid, Display, Conversions; 2) Behavior: Visits, Engagements, Conversions; 3) Customer History: Products, COGS, Profit
• With analytics about knowing: media, behavior, customer history. Google Analytics is 1/3 of queation

 

Case Study #1: Overstock.com and ChoiceStream Retargeting System
Working with ChoiceStream (a retargeting platform), Overstock.com employed a display campaign that retargeted based available and past behavior on the Overtstock.com website. Overstock showed some examples of the types of creatives that were dynamically generated:

The creatives were customized on the fly based on the user’s Overstock.com cookie - items left in the shopping cart, wishlist etc - with the landing page matched as well. It provides a relevant dynamic experience from the creative to the landing page. 

Results:

• Conversions per Thousand Impression: 3x
• Revenue per Thousand Impression: 3x-5x

Case Study #3: Moen & Refresh CRM Data
Moen was faced with the challenge if refreshing CRM database and introducing new products, while choosing not appear on trade shows. Trade shows was their traditional opportunity to be in contact with customers and introduce new clients.

The solution was decidedly “low-tech” but highly clever and appropriate for the audience. They sent along a newsletter to their current customer database:

• Sending the newsletter emails the same time trade shows
• Showing new products being launched in the newsletters
• Masking the CRM refresh as a sweepstakes where they need to update their contact information

The underlying logic was that customers, as they were trade show attendees, had the mindset of wanting new product information and interact with Moen. So while Moen was not present at the trade show phsycially, Moen was able to get “top of mind” of the customers when they were interested and looking in the information.

The Results from the Newsletter:

• Open Rate: 7% Increase
• Response Rate: 32% Increase
• In 48 hours: Half-Responded responses

Case Study #3: Skechers and Retargeting Display with Optiem
The goal of the Skechers campaign was to bring current in-store Skecher customers to shop online. Retargeting was used much in the same way as Overstock.com. Based on cookie data of people who have already visited Skechers.com, they showed specific displays for children, men or women shoes.

Results: 67% ROAS with weekly optimization

Laura Christine of Skechers remarked that for them, display with targeting delivered just as good, if not better, ROI than search marketing.

On an interesting side note, the retargeting system ran on cheap run-on-network buys. As most Skechers employes visited their own website, there were many emails to to marketing department asking how much they’re spending on display since the ads appeaed to be “everywhere,” when instead it was just targeting whoever had visited Skechers.com

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Home » ‘Damn! If Only We Did Some Landing Page Testing’

‘Damn! If Only We Did Some Landing Page Testing’

Posted by Steve Hall · Wednesday April 22, 2009

The biggest learning that came out of the ad:tech Omniture Sponsored Workshop: Close the Deal—Techniques and Technology That Will Increase Your Conversion Rates panel was a quote from Jupiter Research which stated, “Although only one third of the market is currently testing…79% of these companies have increased registration per visit, 74% have improved customers’ satisfaction and 68% have increased conversion rates.”

It’s a sad fact only two thirds do engage in testing because after listening to this Omniture panel which covered landing page testing, it sounds like a very painless process. Buy setting up simple multivariate tests to measure landing page elements like image, headline, call to action and on-page widgets, Omniture is able to dramatically improve CPA.

Using its Test and Target functionality, Omniture was able to help BabyCenter increase its conversions 66%. In another case study, Shockwave saw a 24% increase in completed sales.

Pretty simple, huh? Sadly, not enough companies engage in this testing process before launching an online campaign to millions which, sadly, can results in the loss of…well…millions of dollars.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Press Room Hijinks: The Marketess Blocks Duck9’s Self-Promo Game

Press Room Hijinks: The Marketess Blocks Duck9’s Self-Promo Game

Posted by Angela Natividad · Wednesday April 22, 2009

This casual ad:tech SF press room convo takes place between Brent Terrazas of Everything’s Better with Brentter, Krista Neher of The Marketess and Larry Chiang.

Larry runs a company called Duck9, which helps college kids improve their FICO scores. He also explains the premise behind (read: plugs the living dickens out of) his BusinessWeek column, What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School.

Krista, never one to resist an opp to antagonize, loudly observes Larry never actually went to business school.

Witness with awe how a (too) smooth operator eases out of that snagglety-snaggle.

(But wait, there’s more...)

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall, SF 09 Parties

Home » Employing Data for Insights…in Three Steps

Employing Data for Insights…in Three Steps

Posted by Daniel Riveong · Wednesday April 22, 2009

Being a contrarian, I opted to attend the “Know Thy Customer: Hard Data + Fresh Insights” while next door, the “UGC + Social Media” session with CNN and Facebook had a standing-room only crowd.  This decision was based on how the session intended to address challenges facing a modern agency of continual optimization: 1) how to derive insights from data analysis; and 2) how to connect insights to decision making.

The panelists included the following:
- Cindy Roche, VP, Site Experience, TripAdvisor
- Janet Eden-Harris, VP of Web Intelligence, J.D. Power and Associates
- Emily Sawtell, Founder and Managing Director, GradeGuru.com

The main topics of panel was centered around three main ideas: how to understand the customer, always tests, and use analytics for more than measuring ROI. Indeed, taken together, they can be taken together as three steps involved in optimization.

Understanding the Customer
Janet-Eden Harris of J.D. Power discus focusing sed how the use of customer data allowed them to measure the amount of consumer discussions around the environment and sustainability, beginning in the summer of 2008, and adjust their content to those needs.

Emily Sawtell of GradeGuru.com took the discussion further by discussing the integration of ethnographic research and customer segmentation to help communicate with their customer at an emotive level.

I think something to explore further is how to link hard analytics data (numbers) with ethnographic/segmentation data. Ethnographic research and segmentation research is old-hat for major consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies, but there is a question is how to correlate and match that with analytics data.

Always Be Testing
A common topic throughout the panel was not so much illuminating, but effective in hammering the point home: “Always Be Testing.” While this a known fact among creative-types and search engine marketers doing landing page testing, the reminder here is that this needs to be applied to everything.

Sawtell of GradeGuru.com and Cindy Roche of TripAdvisor discussed the use of testing for non-traditional media, like Facebook updates A noted metric was that there was a 50 different subject lines for Facebook message, which saw conversion rate difference of 21x from the worse to best creative.

Roche added that it took three different videos by different groups to develop a viral video that worked. They began with a video from the CEO which failed, and on the third try had Rosario Dawson and got over 1.5 million views.

Diversifying the Term “ROI”
Cindy Roche of TripAdvisor measured the need to move away from ROI defined as being “finance.” This was also shared by the Modern Agency panelists earlier during the day, who felt the need for “Return on Objectives” rather than just ROI. Roche felt that analytics needed to provide trending analysis, not just financial data, to feed back to strategy and optimization.

Closing Thoughts
The session’s topic was very ambitious but in the end the ideas were simple: continually test and optimize campaigns, use all tools (social media to ethnographic research) to better listen to your many different types of customers, and analytics is not just for ROI.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » The Modern Agency Session: Agencies Continue to Evolve

The Modern Agency Session: Agencies Continue to Evolve

Posted by Daniel Riveong · Wednesday April 22, 2009

Working at an agency, e-Storm International, with long and old digital roots - the issue of defining the modern agency is a personal one for me. In last year’s session, I found myself with more questions than answers…

What is a modern agency? How does analytics change the nature of agencies? How can an agency be effective when so much of media is now fragmented? Can you “just” be marketing or creative agency and be effective partner for the client?

The panel included a strong selection of diverse backgrounds and known players in the interactive space: Neo@Ogilvy, Enfatico, Agency.com and Crispin Porter + Bogusky. This year’s panel proved very illuminating. Discussions were not so much defining what the “Modern Agency” is, but rather the external forces that are forcing agencies to change:
- Analytics required part of a company’s DNA
- Analytics enables the measurement of “return of objective”, not just ROI
- Creative and media integration, also requires alignment with technology
- Challenge is more than integrating offline and online media, online media is the most fragmented media

 

The full discussion points from the panel are found below:

The Advertising Space
Torrence Boone kicked off the session by outlining the current environment in which advertising agencies operate: 1) Media Fragmentation; 2) Digital Media (I think he meant the digitalization of Media);  3) Consumer Empowerment; and 4) Globalization.

Boone stated that Enfatico embraces these challenges by focusing on being an agency that is founded on being cross-channel and cross-discipline under a single P&L. Indeed, throughout the session he stressed the need to treat all channels as a unified experience for the audience and thus under a single P&L (informed by multi-channel analytics). Boone also noted that globalization allowed Enfatico to leverage their global offices to provide cost savings to their clients.

Winston Binch of Crispin Porter + Bogusky took the discussion of the state of advertising to a different direction, declaring flatly: “Advertising. Not a big fan of it.” He added that there is a need to do brand advocacy, not advertising. Binch admired companies like Zappos and Amazon, which linked the brand to the multiple customer touchpoints in the company experience. Binch admitted, however, that while many agencies are advancing the need for integration, clients can still be siloed (e.g. “let’s talk to that search marketing agency”, “we have a branding agency” etc).

Integrating Media: How About Integrating Digital Media?
Across the board, all of the panelists agreed that while there’s been a lot of discussions on the need to “integrate offline & online” worlds, this ignores the even more immediate challenge: integrating digital media itself. There now exist search marketing agencies, social media agencies, digital creative agencies and so on. Digital media seems to fragment more day by day. So the topic is no longer about “how do we integrated offline and online”, but rather how do we integrated disparate channels, disciplines, tactics around a set strategy and outlined goals?

The Great Re-Bundling
As I’ve seen in last year’s session, there were continuing questions of how creative and media should work together.  There was general agreement, led by Sharon Gallacher from Neo@Ogilvy , that creative and media do need to work together, but many of the panel have not seen it executed well.

Jordan Warren of Agency.com stressed that technology needed to be added to the creative/media discussion. A lot of the possibilities of digital creative and media are afforded by technology. Creative and Media shops need to be united with their technology teams to take advantage of the digital space.

ROI & Analytics
When it came to analytics, Torrence Boone of Enfatico seemed very strong on the issue declaring that Enfatico embraced an international footprint (which can help keep cost low, e.g. offices in Bangladesh) and analytics. He brought up not only their reliance on analytics, but is also the first agency person I’ve seen talk about employing “agent-based modeling” to create media mix models for their clients. Agent-based Modeling is a new field being employed from the likes of Boeing to military strategist. Boone was very strong on the issue of analytics and media mix modeling, stating that anything less leads to inaccurate ROI metrics and sub-optimal campaign optimization. 

Jordan Warren, of Agency.com, added that analytics is not just for ROI, but also for “Return on Objective.” A great answer considering that answers can help measure engagement, branding, and experience. Identifying sales ROI metrics appears straightforward issue when compared to defining metrics for branding, engagement and other advertising objectives.

Winston Binch of Crispin Porter + Bogusky added that he’s seeing client-agency relationships where CP+B brings up the issue of defining the ROI for a particular campaign and where the client sets the targets. The overall message is that agencies need to take partnership role in helping defining the targeted ROI with the clients.

New Talent: Innovation versus Strategy
Sharon Gallacher of Neo@Ogilvy stressed the point to bring in new talent who are “digital natives” and able to contribute new approaches and new ideas to the agency culture. Torrence Boone of Enfatico stressed that while new talent can bring innovation, an experience old hand is needed to translate those ideas into strategies that can be sold to the client.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » ad:tech SF 2009 - End of the Day Show Report

ad:tech SF 2009 - End of the Day Show Report

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Here’s my end of the day show report for the first day of ad:tech SF 2009. Make sure you check out my midday show report as well for more coverage.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Humanity Interactive Builds Amazingly Lifelike Virtual Characters Starting at $1000

Humanity Interactive Builds Amazingly Lifelike Virtual Characters Starting at $1000

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Richard Scott of Humanity Interactive shows off their virtual characters that truly mimic human movement. Watch it in action.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Paintblack.com is the Non-Programmers Site Development Environment

Paintblack.com is the Non-Programmers Site Development Environment

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Tavis Parker of Plainblack.com makes an open source Web GUI software that allows non programmers to create content rich site with message boards and wikis.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Nokia Demos its Image Recognition Technology

Nokia Demos its Image Recognition Technology

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Nokia Point and Find is an image recognition tool that allows users to capture an image with their mobile phone that will launch a site on your phone. It’s similar to the way 2D bar codes work, but instead of taking a photo of a funky code on a movie poster, you just take a photo of the movie poster itself. Once you do that, the phone then can launch any Internet activity like watching a trailer of the film, check out where the movie is playing nearby, and then purchase tickets.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Advertisers Increasing Demand for Performance Based Advertising

Advertisers Increasing Demand for Performance Based Advertising

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Scott Milener, CEO of AdRocket, an email targeting network is looking for partners in the CPA (cost per action) and targeted offer arena to help monetize his business for his customers. He’s noticed there’s been a trend to more performance based advertising. Advertisers would like to pay CPA rather than CPC (cost per click). Because of that desire, that’s why he’s seeing more CPA firms at ad:tech. They’re filling a much desired niche.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » According to Advertise.com, Everyone in the Ad Business is at ad:tech

According to Advertise.com, Everyone in the Ad Business is at ad:tech

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Daniel Yomtobian, CEO of Advertise.com (formerly ABCSearch) is a huge fan of ad:tech. He claims he’s generated higher ROI from attending ad:tech than any other industry event.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Greg Sterling on Pete Blackshaw’s Innovate or Die Keynote Panel

Greg Sterling on Pete Blackshaw’s Innovate or Die Keynote Panel

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

I spoke with Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. Sterling and I used to work together at ZDTV/TechTV. I unfortunately didn’t make it to Pete Blackshaw’s “Innovate or Die” panel (see Steve Hall’s write up “In a Crappy Economy, Innovation is Key” and my interview with Pete Blackshaw from last night). Even though I wasn’t there, Greg Sterling was. I asked him about what innovation insights he got out of Pete Blackshaw’s panel.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Livemercial: From Product, to Web Site, to Sale

Livemercial: From Product, to Web Site, to Sale

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

I spoke with Johnny Mathis Jr., CEO of Livemercial, a company that manages the entire promotional and sales cycle of product. They make money by investing in products they help sell online.

 

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Keynotes, Parties, and New Business - ad:tech’s Holy Trinity

Keynotes, Parties, and New Business - ad:tech’s Holy Trinity

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

I spoke with Mandy Kakavas of the Horn Group about her impressions of Jimmy Wales’ and Pete Blackshaw’s keynote presentation at ad:tech in San Francisco.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Looking for Opportunities on the ad:tech Show Floor

Looking for Opportunities on the ad:tech Show Floor

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

I spoke with Rachael Alter of DSNR Media Group. She repeated what many had told me before. She and everyone else comes to ad:tech for meetings and to look for opportunities.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Looking for opportunities on the ad:tech show floor

Looking for opportunities on the ad:tech show floor

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

I spoke with Rachael Alter of DSNR Media Group. She repeated what many had told me before. She and everyone else comes to ad:tech for meetings and to look for opportunities.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Can You Get Course Credit Roaming the Floor at ad:tech?

Can You Get Course Credit Roaming the Floor at ad:tech?

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

I bumped into two marketing MBA students at San Francisco State University who were roaming the floor soaking up the vibe of the exhibitor floor at ad:tech in San Francisco.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Meetings, Meetings, Meetings at ad:tech

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings at ad:tech

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

At ad:tech in San Francisco, I spoke with Robert Gleichenhaus and Bryan Greer of DoublePlayMedia, a firm that specializes in lead generation for advertisers and publishers. In between their endless stream of meetings on the trade show floor, they stopped and spoke with me about what they’re getting out of ad:tech.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Looking for Partners on ad:tech Show Floor

Looking for Partners on ad:tech Show Floor

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Here’s the first in a series of interviews I conducted with attendees at ad:tech in San Francisco. The first video is of a couple of media entrepreneurs of the yet to be launched BrandOfTheWeek.com. I asked them about the launch of their media entity all about brands and what they’re getting out of ad:tech.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » In a Crappy Ad Economy, Innovation is Key

In a Crappy Ad Economy, Innovation is Key

Posted by Steve Hall · Tuesday April 21, 2009

During the ad:tech San Francisco Keynote Roundtable “Innovate or Die! Great Brands in the Age of Disruption,” Nielsen Online EVP of Digital Strategic Services led a panel which focused on the need for brands to innovate as they move forward. Panelist Eric Feng, Senior VP of Audience and CTO, Hulu noted true innovation can come after a product is released and the end user feedback - which is now a real-time waterfall thanks to social media - is analyzed and put to use for future product releases.

Part of the discussion centered on where innovation originates and how that location can affect it. For example, in the U.S., innovation is built on years of previous product generations versus China where there is a lot of generation skipping. Legacy is not always part of the equation. Because of this, foreign markets are sometimes a better place to innovate because there’s less legacy and less baggage.

When Blackshaw asked Eric Feng, Senior VP of Audience and CTO, Hulu if he’d succeeded ad innovation in advertising, he laughed and replied, “No, we are not there, we have a long way to go.”  Which isn’t to slam Hulu. It’s just to note, for a business that, for the most part, gets its revenue from advertising, they do, indeed, have a long way to go.

The rest of the panel was fairly basic with suggestions such as companies urging people to switch jobs every few years to stay on the top of their game and avoid complacency.

It’s really a no brainer. For a company to survive, the must innovate. If they don’t, a competitor will and they will lose.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Ad:tech SF 2009: Midday Show Report

Ad:tech SF 2009: Midday Show Report

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

In just two hours roaming the floor I conducted a bunch of interviews and met a lot of different companies. Watch this 5 minute midday show report for an overview of some of the stuff I saw and the people I spoke to, plus highlights as to what’s coming up tomorrow (Wednesday) and on Thursday. Stay tuned for lots more.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Exhibit Hall

Home » Jimmy ‘Jimmidee’ Wales, Post Keynote

Jimmy ‘Jimmidee’ Wales, Post Keynote

Posted by Angela Natividad · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Shortly after his keynote at ad:tech San Francisco—and David Spark’s timely pre-talk grab—founder Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia sat down with me to talk shop.

Expect to hear his dish on where consumer generated media is now and why brands should dive in (as well as where). We also talked about what-in-hell happened with Wikia, why branding’s underrated, and what keeps Wikipedia afloat. (It ain’t advertising.)

I tossed one last question in to finish off my videocam juice: childhood nickname. His was Jimmidee.

Mine was pukang. Don’t ask.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Keynotes

Home » Geo-locating The Money

Geo-locating The Money

Posted by Brent Terrazas · Tuesday April 21, 2009

In yesterday’s session, Case Studies in Location-Based Advertising: Innovative Business Models That are Paying Off Today, we were taken through the various ways in which websites & applications can determine the location of the user. The panel was moderated by Josh Goldman, a Partner with Norwest Venture Partners. He started us off by breaking down the various methods used to ‘find a user’ into three categories:

• Solicted : This would be when you’re prompted to enter either your current location or the location of your destination
• Inferred : Locations picked up via the usage of the site or service, for instance doing a search on “cheap tickets from LAX to Las Vegas” would probably mean that the consumer was in Los Angeles but was in dire need to get to Las Vegas….and for cheap.
• Computed - This is the most preferred (when available) method, it involves using the device to tell the service where it is located, using any number of different methods from GPS, IP location lookup to even partnerships with telecommunication carriers.

Included in the panel was Sam Altman, Co-Founder and CEO of Loopt, Scott Dunlap, Founder and CEO of NearbyNow, Gordon Whitten, Founder and CEO of Sojern and Alistair Goodman, CEO of . Each was given a chance to first present a sample case study where they’ve been able to bring a unique angle to geo-targeting consumers and then they all were subject to a Q&A session based on questions sent in via SMS messaging to a specific short-code specific for the event/panel.

One of the strongest takeaways from this panel was that agencies as well as the companies they represent are starting to realize that products (and even store locations) should be linked with a location, both in the big search engines (which is something companies like Google are happy to help accommodate) as well as in their own marketing. Rather than the user first searching for where the product is sold and then being forced to perform a secondary search for where the closest locations are of that store, they should be able to find all that information through their initial product search. Google already does this to an extent with both business listings as well as that initial list of products for sale that you see if you perform a specific product search, but why should it stop there? Consumer sites and applications should be able to do the same.

On a side-note, we were also shown what Josh Goldman (who also was kind enough to provide me with the graphic used in the header) described as “Hollywood’s vision of where we’re eventually headed with geo-locating services.” Shown below are the two clips, a mall scene from the futuristic thriller Minority Report and then a short clip showing him entering a Gap store only to be greeted by name and asked if he liked his recent purchase.

The Mall Scene taken from Minority Report

The Gap of the future, taken from Minority Report

Now onto the case-studies, first up was Scott from NearbyNow who presented their Hallmark OnTheWay campaign which would display a special discount offer to users who were searching for products sold in a store close to a Hallmark location. They were also provided with direction from the store they were searching for products on to the closest Hallmark, for example it might tell the user at the bottom of the ad, “Located just two doors down from J Crew.” Something brought up was that because this kind of campaign was so hyper-targeted, it essentially put a self-imposed limitation on the reach that any single campaign could have because of the lack of opportunities where the ad would be ideally served.

Next up was Gordon from Sojern who showed us an example of how they customize a consumer’s boarding pass based on not only the search and eventual purchase but also based on whether or not it was the online version of their ticket confirmation or the actual printed boarding pass. An example offer would be a discount offer for a vegas show located in or near the hotel that the consumer just booked their reservations for.

Placecast showed an example of how they’ve been able to create dynamically generated web banners that would not only promote one of the current offers from Avis, but would also display the address to the nearest location to the user. This was also translated into mobile searches as well as in banner ads featured on sites like AccuWeather.com.

Sam from Loopt then presented an example map that a user might encounter on their phone with various store or product ads appearing that could be customized by the client to be displayed only under specific conditions. An example might be an ad that would only display when the user is located within four walking blocks of the store from the hours of 1PM-2PM EST and also only appearing when the initial search was for local pizza restaurants. The possibilities available to hit extremely specific demographics, users or even location trends is endless.

Briefly talked about was also a shared horror story regarding the miss-use of push SMS messaging. A campaign that was described would text users who were in a certain distance of a Starbucks with a discount if they were to use it within a short period of time. They quickly learned that this was not only seem as invasive advertising by the user, but that it also resulted in a mass opt-out and general distaste for the tactic.

Overall, we were not only presented with examples where geo-targeted advertising is successful, but were also shown the many possibilities that are available to any company, regardless of size or product, to help connect their consumers with products at a much earlier level than ever imagined.

(header image courtesy of Josh Goldman)

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia on the Future Brand Building with Consumer Generated Media

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia on the Future Brand Building with Consumer Generated Media

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Minutes before Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia, jumped on stage to keynote the opening session at ad:tech SF, I caught him for a short interview about his presentation on the future of consumer generated media, specifically for brand advertising. We talked about wikis being very valuable for information dense brands most notably in entertainment (e.g. “Lost” and “World of Warcraft”), but it’s not useful for consumer goods like Doritos.

BTW, there is no Wikipedia entry for Dijonnaise, but there is an entry for dijon. I invite readers to make the first Dijonnaise entry. Let me know when it goes live.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Keynotes

Home » How Reach in Digital has Changed (From 2003 to 2009)

How Reach in Digital has Changed (From 2003 to 2009)

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

What’s popular always changes. Not just in content, but also in categories of content and services. At the Chairman’s reception at ad:tech in San Francisco, Charles Buchwalter, SVP, Research and Analytics, Nielsen Online provided some eye opening research about the “Short Tail” in digital, which is defined as those online subcategories that achieved a reach of 20% or more.

In 2003, these categories were used by at least 20% of all online users:

• General Interest Portals & Communities
• E-mail
• Classifieds/Auctions
• Search
• Software Manufacturers
• Mass Merchandiser
• Shopping Directories & Guides
• Internet Tools/Web Services
• Member Communities

Here’s how the “Short Tail” changed in 2009 (reach > 20%):

• General Interest Portals & Communities
• Member Communities
• E-mail
• Classifieds/Auctions
• Search
• Videos/Movies
• Software Manufacturers
• Mass Merchandiser
• Research Tools
• Weather
• Maps/Travel Info
• Apparel/Beauty
• Hardware Manufacturers
• Multi-category News & Information

Shopping Directories & Guides, plus Internet Tools/Web Services didn’t make it to 2009. And look at all the niche categories at the end of the 2009 list. We’ve definitely shifted our attention and our content consumption by great numbers online.

 

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Glam Interactive Kicks Off ad:tech San Francisco Social Festivities

Glam Interactive Kicks Off ad:tech San Francisco Social Festivities

Posted by Steve Hall · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Glam Interactive kicked off ad:tech San Francisco with a Monday night party at the Clift Hotel’s Spanish Suite. It was a swanky enough event. Just the right vibe to get an early start on the conference’s social festivities before all hell breaks loose Tuesday night. See more pictures here.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Innovate or Die…OK, Maybe It’s not Going to be that Bad

Innovate or Die…OK, Maybe It’s not Going to be that Bad

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

At ad:tech in San Francisco, I interviewed Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen about the panel discussion he was going to lead the next day entitled “Innovate or Die.” When I asked him off camera who died from not innovating Blackshaw admitted that maybe the title of his session was a little too extreme. Regardless, I asked him about great innovators and he talked about his panelists from Babycenter.com, Hulu, and Adobe.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » People Who are Spending More Online Have a Top Down Directive

People Who are Spending More Online Have a Top Down Directive

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

At ad:tech in San Francisco, I spoke with Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA about an issue he brought up on the panel at the Chairman’s Reception discussion on branding. He said that if a company makes a decision to spend $2 million on TV ads, there’s no discussion or proof point. But if you want to spend $2 million in digital, then you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. “With online media there’s a higher expectation that you’re going to supply data for any buy recommendation,” Bedecarre said.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Why Isn’t Online Advertising Accountable?

Why Isn’t Online Advertising Accountable?

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

You would think that since the Internet traffic is so measurable that we could prove the effectiveness of advertising. Sadly, that’s not always the case. And according to Bruce Rogers, Chief Brand Officer at Forbes, it’s something his industry needs so advertisers can gain the confidence to spend ad dollars again.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Is YouTube our Lifeline?

Is YouTube our Lifeline?

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Every day YouTube is bleeding $1.2 million in bandwidth costs. I was chatting with John Manulis of Buzztone who alerted me to that statistic. So many people rely on YouTube for their content hosting and distribution, from mom and pop organizations to Time Warner, said Manulis. How long can Google sustain YouTube’s bleed rate? What happens if YouTube goes away? Manulis says there will be significant ripple effects.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Coca-Cola Admits to the Good and Bad of Digital Branding

Coca-Cola Admits to the Good and Bad of Digital Branding

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

At ad:tech in San Francisco, I interviewed Carol Kruse, VP of Global Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has done tons of online branding projects. Some have worked well, and some haven’t. Kruse admits to some of the winners and the losers.

 

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Are Agencies Ready to Build Brands in the Digital Age?

Are Agencies Ready to Build Brands in the Digital Age?

Posted by David Spark · Tuesday April 21, 2009

Such was the discussion at the Chairman’s Reception on the eve of ad:tech in San Francisco. The moderator was Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Worldwide President of Babycenter.com. Her panelists included:

• Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA
• Adam Bain, President of Fox Interactive Media Audience Network
• Carol Kruse, VP, Worldwide Interactive Marketing Coca-Cola
• Ira Rubenstein, EVP, Global Digital Media Group, Marvel Entertainment

Here’s some of the insights about branding that came from the discussion:

• With larger purchases we know the need for online (e.g. mortgages). But what about small purchases? Is digital branding necessary? Does it bring value to the purchase cycle?
• Making that emotional connection allows the brand managers to make their art.
• Digital has a higher threshold of proof than other media. When you spend money on TV it’s not a leap of faith. That’s because people know TV. You say you want to spend $2 million on TV and they don’t blink. But when you say you want to spend $2 million on digital then you get pushback. Give me some facts that this “digital” thing is going to work?
• Digital has caught the American psyche (e.g. Oprah’s on Twitter). That’s why everyone wants to be on digital.
• Casual free to play gaming has taken off in the past year. First week for a Wolverine game Marvel had over 2 million game plays within a week.
• Don’t get too clever or caught up in the digital experience that you forget that you’re trying to make a connection with your audience.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » We’ve Got Web 2.0. Why Not Advertising 2.0?

We’ve Got Web 2.0. Why Not Advertising 2.0?

Posted by Steve Hall · Monday April 13, 2009

Uh Oh. Seems Tuesday night at ad:tech San Francisco is getting crowded party-wise. Luckily a couple early events are right in the Moscone (West) center and the others aren’t too far away. Adding to the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden, ad:tech SFAMA Mixer, Digital Social Media Networking and Oldtimers Foundation parties is the Advertising 2.0 (oh, please) Party which will be he;d at the W hotel.

Check out all the details on the Facebook invite page.

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Home » Sitting Down with Robin Sloan

Sitting Down with Robin Sloan

Posted by Angela Natividad · Monday April 13, 2009

Last week at ad:tech Paris I got to sit down with VP-Strategy Robin Sloan of Current TV. We built rapport over Extremely Important Stuff: why the universe needs Battlestar Galactica, how you (or, well, I) can’t get a good burrito in Paris, and whether the talking space ship in Flight of the Navigator would look as cool today as it did when we were weebies.

Anyway, at some point I randomly said, “Can I take video of you talking?” or something to that effect, and he was all, “Cool,” and by some strange juju I managed to catch him saying some pretty agreeable stuff about the media industry: what it needs (in the context of the perfect conference) and where it’s headed.

I should explain why I was laughing so hard in the first few seconds. Sloan mentioned earlier that he had an interview with the host of a French web TV show, and he asked some of the better questions he’s ever been posed. Among them was this question about constructing the perfect conference.

I don’t think Sloan expected me to rip it wholesale, but I was planning to from moment 1.

Related topics: adtech Paris 2009

Home » ad:tech Paris: Blake Chandlee on Why We Should Bow to Guru Zuck

ad:tech Paris: Blake Chandlee on Why We Should Bow to Guru Zuck

Posted by Angela Natividad · Friday April 10, 2009

ad:tech Paris wrapped up with a keynote called Facebook Today and Tomorrow, conducted by Commercial Director Blake Chandlee of Facebook’s EMEA segment (Europe, the Middle East and Asia).

I already LiveTweeted the sesh so the last thing I want to do is type it all out again. The biggest takeaways: Mark Zuckerberg is God, and God’s particular mantra is “Efficiency, Effectiveness, Scale.”

One of the bigger bits of news eclipsing this talk was a recent announcement that Facebook is now 200 million (active) users strong. According to Chandlee, 50% of those users log in every day and spend an average of 25 minutes on the site.

And while the US once composed 70% of Facebook’s total user figures, it’s now just 30%—not because growth has slowed on our turf, but because it’s blossomed elsewhere. (France, for example, exploded from 2 million users last year to 9 million this year.)

Here are a few key video moments, punctuated by random Tweetdom.

o ‘Social environments’ are changing how we engage (yeah, you know you’re getting an Obama potshot):

o On Zuck being God (part 1):

 

I don’t want anyone thinking I have any problem with Mark Zuckerberg being God. Few of us can do what he’s done—at his age, and with such an even hand. I’m just reserving my prayer beads for when Facebook actually becomes profitable (2010, right? Riiiiiight).

o Facebook users worldwide:

 

o On how social media is changing our behaviour, and will ultimately change the way we advertise:

 

o On Zuck being God, part 2:

 

o How Engagement Ads work:

 

Worth noting: Chandlee thinks Engagement Ads will ultimately make or break Facebook in the next handful of years.

o On Facebook extending itself beyond the web:

 

o On being platform-agnostic, and not being “precious” about where users go from Facebook:

 

o On knowing Twitter “very, very well”:

 

This was in response to someone asking whether Facebook and Twitter have beef. Sometimes I wish I could karate-chop audience members if I begin to smell the birth of a stupid question.

The Big Takeaway was a lot of touchy-feely “we love our peeps” stuff that Google used to spout during its “Don’t Be Evil” heyday. Users know best, and Lord Mark shan’t run his business at their expense.

Good to know the iron hand has such a gentle grip.

Related topics: adtech Paris 2009

Home » After Three Days of ad:tech, You’ll Need the SF New Media Drink Up

After Three Days of ad:tech, You’ll Need the SF New Media Drink Up

Posted by Steve Hall · Thursday April 09, 2009

By Thursday night after three days of ad:tech San Francisco you will be tired and ready to go home, right? Wrong. No, you will go to Otis on 25 Maiden Lane where the SF New Media Club will be hosting one of its monthly drinkups. Come hang with agency, brand and new media types and, and and…get the chance to win an Acer Netbook.

Check out the Facebook event page and then register here.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » ad:tech Paris: The Expanding, Contracting Media Ecosystem

ad:tech Paris: The Expanding, Contracting Media Ecosystem

Posted by Angela Natividad · Thursday April 09, 2009

No ad:tech’s an ad:tech unless there’s a session that speculates, however pointlessly, on the future of advertising. This particular variant featured New Media Director Robin Sloan of Current TV and General Director Travis Katz of MySpace. The moderator was Editor in Chief Nicolas Arpagian of Prospective Strategique.

Interesting sidenote about this panel: Arpegian posed all questions in French; Sloan and Katz wore magic insta-translating devices that enabled them to respond in English without missing a beat. It was so “Star Trek.”

Sloan was up first, and he kicked off with something unexpected. Positioning his presentation as if we were already living in the year 2019, he walked us through the “past” 10 years.

Video snapshots below.

The birth of the “homo sapiens mediaphile” in 2010 (“the internet is actually changing our brains”)—and the grand failure that was Apple iGlasses, augmented reality devices that provide handy metadata on whatever you’re looking at. Like that computer Sailor Mercury wears on her face.

In 2018, social networks “apply the logic of NASCAR” to their business model. Tastemakers connect with big brands, give birth to new buzzword (which, like every new buzzword, already feels like it’s been tossed around the yard a few times): “social sponsorship.”

 

The conclusion to the big 2019 presentation was that advertising, marketing and media are an interconnected ecosystem, much like all the elements that make up our natural one. The atmosphere’s fragile, and we have to take care to strike as much of a healthy balance with our communications as with our carbon footprints.

Breaking away from the futurescape, Sloan demonstrates how on Current TV, users create the ads and decide which are worthy of dissemination.

“WOM is the great dark matter of advertising,” Sloan said. “It’s impossible to scale, hard to quantify, but we know it dwarfs everything else.”

Here’s a Current “Viewer Created Ad Message” for the Prius. It’s called “Eugene and Jeannette.”

 

And finally, in Q&A, Sloan’s philosophy on producing ads that people want to see—design-oriented material that respects the context, rather than fights with it:

 

Q&A was especially interesting, and I wish I’d gotten more footage. Sloan ruminated that people think the ‘net’s a unified, singular utopia, but it isn’t; it’s divided by region (France versus the US versus Russia, for example) and regulations (the Great Firewall of China, or licensing barriers: how Hulu doesn’t work outside the States, or the BBC’s iPlayer won’t play outside the UK).

Apropos to net neutrality, certain media have always favored certain kinds of connections over others. Consider how the iPhone and Xbox are really good for really specific things, but not everything, that you want to do online.

All this left us with the sense that the internet—which in a way serves as the framework for our media ecosystem—is expanding, and we as people are carving dividing lines across it, marking territory and negotiating space. In contrast, Katz argued that “we are undoubtedly seeing that the world is becoming smaller through the internet. We see it on MySpace all the time.”

Neither guy is wrong.

But for the purposes of this session, Katz was tough to nail down. Pretty much all he said was that MySpace absorbs about 50% of social networking ad spend, and gets buys from 90% of Fortune 500 advertisers.

The entire crux of his argument was that MySpace is robust enough that it can experiment with advertisers to build more relevant advertising. And in fact he seemed less interested in contemplating the industry’s future than he was about reminding us of his brand’s fading relevance. (Seriously. At some point he casually attributed the global success of Justice in great part to his company’s grand scope. You could hear the entire French audience sucking its teeth in.)

Not to say the MySpace half was a complete bust. Katz did say one thing worth scribbling on the mirror: “There’s no cost of ignoring an ad.” It brought to mind something Paula Berg of Southwest said at Marketing 2.0: that where social media’s concerned, you shouldn’t think of what it’ll cost you; you should consider the cost of not participating.

Nice juxtapo there: if you’re having a one-sided conversation with users, it costs them nothing to ignore you. But if they’ve grown to hate you, and you fail to respond, that same ignorance could cost you plenty.

In the ongoing conversation between brands and people, the former has more to lose.

Related topics: adtech Paris 2009

Home » ad:tech Paris: Evolving Media with the BBC

ad:tech Paris: Evolving Media with the BBC

Posted by Angela Natividad · Wednesday April 08, 2009

Yesterday EVP/GM-Global Ad Sales Chris Dobson of the BBC conducted a keynote on what it takes to succeed in the rapidly-changing media landscape.

The BBC, of course, was his primary example; though whether you believe it’s one of the most forward-moving brands in the stratosphere is subjective. (Frankly, I’ll buy it when the iPlayer is finally Mac-ready.)

Here Dobson ties brand adaptation to Darwinism (always a fun comparison!):

On surviving the ad recession:

 

As media evolves, content will increasingly scale toward high reach and personal communication. That is to say, great stuff will get to more people, but everyone will experience said great stuff in the manner most appropriate to them.

That romantic mental picture you have of the whole family eating pot pies in front of the tube? That’s dead. Because maybe Skippy’d rather watch the game from his iPhone, and Dad sure as hell isn’t switching off Bloomberg.

 

Have your content how you like it. That’s the thing about knowledge: it wants to move, to be fluid, to spread.

 

Amid so much flux, here’s one constant you can count on:

 

Big takeaway: the media landscape is both expanding and shrinking. There are more options for consuming content than ever before, but at the same time all those options have to be unified—the better for advertisers that want to make smoother ad buys, and for a more consistent brand-to-user experience. Dobson repeatedly positioned the BBC’s iPlayer as a frontier-breaker in this regard.

Another interesting thing worth noting: Dobson is adamant that advertising continue to help fuel content dissemination. But a brand, particularly a news brand, needs to be ever conscious of how intimately to wed advertising into its fold.

Asked how the BBC addresses concerns that advertising may sully the quality of its content, Dobson said the company takes a “separation of church and state” approach—with content as the church. Advertising regulations for the BBC are extremely stringent, and in the end there’s no real pressure to sell remnant ad space.

“If a position [on the site] isn’t sold, it’s replaced by more editorial,” he said simply.

Bottom line for brands concerned about losing the crowd? “If you get quality right, you start to drive a lot of catch-up behaviour.”

Related topics: adtech Paris 2009

Home » Notable.TV to Host “Official” ad:tech Party Wednesday Night

Notable.TV to Host “Official” ad:tech Party Wednesday Night

Posted by Steve Hall · Monday April 06, 2009

On Wednesday, April 22 from 8PM until whenever at Aventine in San Francisco, Notable.TV will host what it’s dubbed “The Official Wednesday (ad:tech) SF 2009 Event.” The organizers claim it will be the “must attend” event of the week. Tell that to the organizers of AdverCircus2 who are also pimping their event as kick ass.

But who cares. We love party hopping. Get sick of one, just go to another. And if you’re really a sadist, you could invent a drinking game that involves traveling between multiple parties to see who can snag the most drinks in a given nights. Cabbies will love it!

Here’s the organizer’s description of the venue: Aventine is the newest addition to the San Francisco lounge and after-work crowd. The distinguished ambiance attracts the who’s who of San Francisco, it is a must-see for locals and visitors to SF alike. This 150-year old former opium den was recently renovated into a mixture of half-history, half-gorgeous. The espresso-hued floors and bar are made from onsite reclaimed wood, and the exposed brick walls of the downstairs bar are stained with water marks from when the San Francisco waterfront came right up to Washington St.

See you there.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Glam Interactive to Host Two Events Evening Prior to ad:tech San Francisco

Glam Interactive to Host Two Events Evening Prior to ad:tech San Francisco

Posted by Steve Hall · Thursday April 02, 2009

On Monday April 20, Glam Interactive Group will host two events at The Clift Hotel’s Spanish Suite. The first, from 7P-9P is open only to members and their guests. The second, which begins at 9P, is open to all ad:tech attendees. If you’re going to attend, you need to RSVP here. Unless you are a member or a guest of a member, you will not be able to attend the early party. Respect that.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » Afiliate Summit to Host Beer Garden Networking Event

Afiliate Summit to Host Beer Garden Networking Event

Posted by Steve Hall · Tuesday March 31, 2009

Parties, parties and more parties. Yes, the avalanche has begun. On Tuesday April 21 from 5:30P - 7:30P, Affiliate Summit will host a networking event at the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden, an actual tent-like structure set up on level 2 of Moscone Center West. All attendees are welcome.

The Beer Garden will also be open from 10A – 6P on Tuesday and 10A – 5P on Wednesday. Need a place to hang and get away from conference commotions? This sounds like the place.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » It’s Not Bikini Bullriding But It Is A Party

It’s Not Bikini Bullriding But It Is A Party

Posted by Steve Hall · Sunday March 29, 2009

If you will be in San Francisco April 21, the first night of ad:tech, Shelly Palmer and Jeff Pulver are hosting a networking party at a location yet to be determined. We’ll share the location with you as soon as it’s known. It will be somewhere close to the convention center.

You can find out more details and register for the event here.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties, Adtech SF 2008, SF 08 Parties

Home » Oh Wait. It’s Party TIme Again at ad:tech San Francisco

Oh Wait. It’s Party TIme Again at ad:tech San Francisco

Posted by Steve Hall · Friday March 27, 2009

Yes, it is that time. Time when companies, despite the not so great economy, begin to announce the parties they will host during the ad:tech San Francisco conference. So far, we have Moss Networks which is hosting its VIP MIXX + MINGLE event Wednesday, April 22 from 9PM to 11PM at Infusion Lounge.

Now we have AdverCircus2 sponsored by ClickBooth and many others. Yea, it’s that party. Which is to say it will probably be good. It’s at Ten15 (1015Folsom) April 22 from 9PM to 4AM. Ten15 has five different venues within the property. Each room houses its own private DJ booth and sound system. The place is big with a capacity of 1,200. Compare that with the 650 or so capacity of Ruby Skye, a regular, and pretty big, spot for ad:tech San Francisco parties, and you’ve got a really big place. RSVP here.

Photo credit: MincyFresh

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » It’s Party Time at ad:tech San Francisco

It’s Party Time at ad:tech San Francisco

Posted by Steve Hall · Monday March 23, 2009

As ad:tech San Francisco approaches, it’s time to start collecting the party invites. the first one on the tabel comes from Moss Networks which is hosting a VIP MIX + MINGLE Wednesday, April 22 from 9PM to 11PM at Infusion Lounge. Other sponsors include Adknowledge.com, AdManage, GenieKnows.com andReply.com.

So stop by. Grab a drink. Mix. Mingle. Ya know. Do the social thing. There’s more information about the event here.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Parties

Home » ad:tech San Francisco to Feature Search Marketing Panel Track

ad:tech San Francisco to Feature Search Marketing Panel Track

Posted by Steve Hall · Thursday March 12, 2009

If you are going to ad:tech San Francisco April 21-23, be sure to check out SMX @ ad:tech, a series of panel tracks focusing on search marketing. The panels will be led by search guru Danny Sullivan and cover topics such as trends in search marketing, search engine optimization tactics, paid search, mobile, local and video search tactics.

The panels will occur Wednesday, April 22. Speakers will include iCrossing EVP Jeffrey Pruitt, Conde Nast Digital Director of Marketing Sandor Marik, Match.com Search and CRM Senior Manger Jim McDonald, SearchEngineLand Editor Matt McGee, Rank Mobile CEO Cindy Krum The Search Agency Senior Linking Analyst Drew Hubbard and many more.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Contextual Advertising Launches Its Own Conference

Contextual Advertising Launches Its Own Conference

Posted by Steve Hall · Wednesday March 11, 2009

Many have had a good time poking fun at contextual advertising, a $1.6 billion industry, over the years for its awkward mishaps and curious mismatches but it’s still a viable practice. So viable, there’s now a conference dedicated specifically to the practice.

On April 22 at Moscone Center West, alongside ad:tech San Francisco, ADSPACE Contextual Advertising Conference & Expo will be held. The organizers describe the event thusly:

“ADSPACE is the first conference and expo of its kind tailored both to small-to-midsized publishers wanting to increase their digital revenue through the use of ad networks as well as advertisers seeking to maximize ROI and optimize their ad targeting. Split into two distinct tracks - one for each audience - ADSPACE will blend best practices, how-to techniques and success stories as advertisers and publishers alike get a first-hand opportunity to engage leading contextual network providers such as Google AdSense.”

So if that’s your deal, this is your conference. Give it a look here.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Congerence Info

Home » Media Boot Camp Series to Help Boost Your Digital Media Skills

Media Boot Camp Series to Help Boost Your Digital Media Skills

Posted by Steve Hall · Thursday February 26, 2009

Designed to "feature the fundamental 'dos and don'ts' of today's digital media ecosystem while providing even the most experienced publishers, agencies and advertisers with the latest tricks of the trade," the Media Boot Camp series of sessions will make their debut at this year's ad:tech in San Francisco April 21-23.

Sessions will focus on improving accountability, using digital to drive brand preference, using data to improve improve marketing results, advice from the buy side on how the sell side can get a higher share of budget, how digital OOH fits into the marketing scheme and more.

Speakers and panelists will include iMedia & CMO Executive Summits Chief Content Officer and Editor at Large Brad Berens, Enfatico CEO Torrence Boone, Cisco Web Marketing & Strategy Director Michele GibsoncomScore Advertising Effectiveness VP Evan Neufeld, Forbes.com Chief Brand Officer Bruce Rogers, Microsoft Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute Young-Bean Song and many more.

Check out more information on the Boot Camp here and the full conference session line up here.

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Sessions

Home » Recession be Damned! ad:tech to Rock San Francisco in April

Recession be Damned! ad:tech to Rock San Francisco in April

Posted by Steve Hall · Tuesday February 24, 2009

OK, wake up people! It’s time for another ad:tech. This one will be in San Francisco April 21-23 and will be packed full of content and networking opportunities. Some of the highlights to expect during the three day conference:

Ogilvy Worldwide Vice Chairman Steve Hayden, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales will keynote.

A series of Boot Camp sessions will offer up real world dos and don’ts when it comes to digital media and the tricks of the trade.

ad:tech Brand YOU forums and seminars will help people evaluate their skills, become better leaders and broaden perspective.

The exhibit hall, as always, will be packed with hundreds of companies for you to speak with and do business with.

In partnership with Danny Sullivan’s Search Marketing Expo, ad:tech will feature a track of sessions geared specifically to “current techniques, best practices, and emerging trends for SEO and SEM, local search, mobile search, and how social media and search are being utilized in concert to create entirely new marketing platforms.”

An entire session track is being devoted to mobile from DR applications to digital distribution to building brand loyalty.

The ad:tech Awards will take place highlighting and awarding the best interactive campaigns, search strategies and websites.

An entirely separate and new conference has been added called ADSPACE which is all about contextual advertising. Publishers and advertisers will learn tips, tricks, tools of the trade, new technologies, metrics, social media applications, performance branding and methods to increase eCPM.

And in another conference withing a conference twist,

Affiliate Summit is hosting a Beer Garden April 21 from 10AM to 6PM and April 22 from 10AM to 5PM in front of the second floor exhibition hall. There also be an Affiliate Summit Marketing Networking Party in the Beer Garden April 21 from 5:20PM to 7:30PM.

Check out all of this and more on the ad:tech conference website and, for the socialites in the crowd, be sure to follow @adtech on Twitter, join the Facebook group and check out the Flickr group,

Related topics: San Francisco, ad:tech SF 2009, SF 09 Congerence Info

Home » ad:tech New York Closes: Despite Economy, Optimism Reigns

ad:tech New York Closes: Despite Economy, Optimism Reigns

Posted by Steve Hall · Monday November 10, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Conference Info

Home » The Revolution Will Be Widgetized! Among other Things

The Revolution Will Be Widgetized! Among other Things

Posted by Angela Natividad · Sunday November 09, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Hey, Cool-Hunters. I’ve Got Your Millennials Right Here.

Hey, Cool-Hunters. I’ve Got Your Millennials Right Here.

Posted by Angela Natividad · Saturday November 08, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Booths, Booth and More Booths. Exhibit Hall Explored Photography-Style

Booths, Booth and More Booths. Exhibit Hall Explored Photography-Style

Posted by Steve Hall · Saturday November 08, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Exhibit Hall

Home » It’s the Skinny on Search and Synergy.

It’s the Skinny on Search and Synergy.

Posted by Angela Natividad · Friday November 07, 2008

Search and Social 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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Even Nimble Long Tail Media Will Suffer in Economic Downturn

Even Nimble Long Tail Media Will Suffer in Economic Downturn

Posted by Krista Neher · Friday November 07, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Mobile Social Networking: Now Is The Time for Innovation

Mobile Social Networking: Now Is The Time for Innovation

Posted by Alisa Leonard-Hansen · Thursday November 06, 2008

“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.”

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » DigiPublishers: Context is (Still) King, and Don’t Be Afraid to Leer

DigiPublishers: Context is (Still) King, and Don’t Be Afraid to Leer

Posted by Angela Natividad · Thursday November 06, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Wednesday an Eye Blasting Arena of Massive Guitar Hero Action

Wednesday an Eye Blasting Arena of Massive Guitar Hero Action

Posted by Steve Hall · Thursday November 06, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Parties

Home » Master Class Roundtable: Growing Online Brand Advertising Dollars

Master Class Roundtable: Growing Online Brand Advertising Dollars

Posted by Richard Cacciato · Thursday November 06, 2008

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. 

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Search Marketing Tactics and Strategies: Best Practices

Search Marketing Tactics and Strategies: Best Practices

Posted by Craig Peters · Thursday November 06, 2008

... 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!

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Headlines and Heroes Pacha Party Gets Photorific

Headlines and Heroes Pacha Party Gets Photorific

Posted by Steve Hall · Thursday November 06, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Parties

Home » Beyond the Banner ... Beyond the Network ...

Beyond the Banner ... Beyond the Network ...

Posted by Craig Peters · Thursday November 06, 2008

... 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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Idea For Next Year’s ad:tech NY

Idea For Next Year’s ad:tech NY

Posted by Craig Peters · Thursday November 06, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Conference Info

Home » The Emperor Has No Clothes – Maybe Because They’re Not Sold Online

The Emperor Has No Clothes – Maybe Because They’re Not Sold Online

Posted by Andrew Paradies · Thursday November 06, 2008

”

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Tales from the Bleeding Edge

Tales from the Bleeding Edge

Posted by Krista Neher · Thursday November 06, 2008

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?

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Media and Entertainment Panel - I want it NOW!!!!!!

Media and Entertainment Panel - I want it NOW!!!!!!

Posted by Krista Neher · Thursday November 06, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Battle of the Agency Bands

Battle of the Agency Bands

Posted by Angela Natividad · Thursday November 06, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Parties

Home » Marketing = Opportunity

Marketing = Opportunity

Posted by Craig Peters · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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.

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Home » Future of Online Measurement: Beyond the Click

Future of Online Measurement: Beyond the Click

Posted by Alisa Leonard-Hansen · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » The Great Transfer of Wealth: The Transformation of Local Advertising

The Great Transfer of Wealth: The Transformation of Local Advertising

Posted by Craig Peters · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » I’m just sayin’ ...

I’m just sayin’ ...

Posted by Craig Peters · Wednesday November 05, 2008

... if I hear the word “ecosystem” one more time, I’m gonna throw up.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Conference Info

Home » Mobilizing and Leveraging Consumer Insights: Best Practices for the Digital and Social Media Age

Mobilizing and Leveraging Consumer Insights: Best Practices for the Digital and Social Media Age

Posted by Richard Cacciato · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » So Many Networks, So Little Time

So Many Networks, So Little Time

Posted by Craig Peters · Wednesday November 05, 2008

“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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Digital Economy: The Future is Mobile and Video

Digital Economy: The Future is Mobile and Video

Posted by Alisa Leonard-Hansen · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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”?

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Sessions

Home » Um…

Um…

Posted by Angela Natividad · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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.

Related topics: New York, Adtech NY 2008, NY 08 Exhibit Hall

Home » Keynote Presentation: The Big Idea 3.0 - Redefining Creative in the Digital Age

Keynote Presentation: The Big Idea 3.0 - Redefining Creative in the Digital Age

Posted by Richard Cacciato · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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…

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Home » Keynote Presentation: Dispatches from the Digital Frontier with Shelly Lazarus

Keynote Presentation: Dispatches from the Digital Frontier with Shelly Lazarus

Posted by Richard Cacciato · Wednesday November 05, 2008

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 been dormant for years.  The idea is not the big deal.  What you can do with it now is the big deal.  The intern, Hunter Summerville, is now a fulltime creative in Ogilvy’s Toronto office

Another brand.  Capri Sun.  Introduced in the 1970s, it features an unusual foil pouch.  The target is 6-10 year olds.  Capri sun’s primary aouudience lives digitally, and the brand had to do something buzzworthy.  They created a series of short irreverent TV spots showing what happens when kids don’t “respect the pouch” and a website, Respectthepouch.com.  It was an instant hit which went viral immediately.  Kids started posting their own commercials on Youtube.  The brand has created Respect the Pouch games with Ubisoft to integrate the pouch into Wii—the game (rayman raving rabbids) will be released later this month.

Now from the supermaerket shelf to luxury goods: Louis Vuitton.  Ten years ago the focus would have been print ads.  Now print ads with photos by Annie Liebowitz.  In a huge serendipitous stroke of good luck, the shot of Gorbachev in a car with his Louis Vuitton bag had a magazine poking out of it with a headline about Litvinenko, the Russian agent who was poisoned with plutonium.  The ad became a viral phenomenon with a lot of buzz about the headline—was it deliberate or a coincidence?  The campaign also features Andre Agassi, Catherine Deneuve, the Coppolas, Keith Richardson. 

Ten years ago it would have stopped at print.  Now they’ve put each of the stars on the web.  Each takes us to a city they love.  Gorbachev Moscow, Deneuve Paris, Richards London, etc.  The website also shows what you might find in the luggage of each person.  The response to this brand-turned-experience has been phenomenal.  Actual time spent on site is 16 minutes.  The campaign is driving double digit growth in shop visits and sales.  A clear cause and effect.  The latest portrait: Sean Connery, at 78 still an icon.  Connery breaks this month.

Shelly Lazarus moved on to IBM, not dry technology but stories of how IBM people solve big problems, told on the web.  The team created short films 2-3 minutes long so we can share how IBM technology is behind some of the great endeavors of our time.  The work frst ran on a website codeveloped with CNBC, “The Business of Innovation”.  Films are digital so they can work anywhere.  Usually you see static facts.  This is storytelling.  When people watch one they watch 4.  To date 23 million people have watched these and we’re just getting started.

If you are uncomfortable with change and ambiguity this is not your time.  Lazarus loves this world where we have to think differently.  She loves making it up as we go.  This is a most happy collision of advertising and technology where we can be really creative.  We can respond instantly.  When Lazarus started in direct marketing, we tried to simulate conversation.  Now we can have a conversation.  With these new tools we have to think in new ways. 

Two final examples.  Last spring Six Flags had to distribute 45,000 free passes.  The client asked for radio and direct mail.  A creative guy said “let’s put it on craigslist”.  5 hours later ALL the tickets were gone.  For Hellman’s mayonnaise Ogilvy created an online show where mayonnaise was the central character.  It was on the Yahoo Food Network.  TV isn’t interactive.  Online you can ask questions, submit recipes and interact with brand.  The campaign doubled sales and achieved the hightest ROI: 250%!

Does this stuff work?  You betcha as, Sarah would say.  500 million people saw Dove’s campaign for real beauty.  That simple video cost $50,000 to create and starred the Creative Director’s girlfriend (who said “no one is going to see this, right?).  Who would imagine that it would ignite a global movement and become the first ever double winner for film and interactive at Cannes?

These are challenging economic times.  It is at precisely times like this that we need to experiment.  Smart, strong, insightful, brave, fa sighted marketers spend more behind their brands in times like these.  It’s been proven to be a most successful strategy.  Those that spend in recession come out with stronger brands.  Don’t just spend, though—grab the new tools.  Then test, and optimize.  Bring it on.  New tools, tech channels, devices, partners, ideas.  Cereal, mayo, high end luggage.  We’ve just begun to move and motivate.  It’s a time of great possibility.  It’s up to us to seize this moment and lead our industry into digital. 

If the next president of the USA can do it, so can we.

Shelly Lazarus started her keynote with gleeful comments about the election.  It’s a fabulous day.  Shelly Lazarus has a 20 year old son who has been working for Barack Obama’s campaign full time.  He took 400 of his best friends to Pennsylvania to campaign.  Her daughter is in labor this morning—just imagine the newspaper commemorating the day of her grandchild’s birth.

The campaign was groundbreaking.  As a brand builder and marketer this is the season that digital won.  Obama knew how to use the tools we have now.  Hillary announced she was in the race online.  Obama announced his running mate online.  Everything was focused on digital.  Obama’s “Yes We Can” music video on Youtube got 10+ million views.  Two thirds of those who saw Tina Fey as Palin watched it online after SNL.

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Home » “So ...”

“So ...”

Posted by Craig Peters · Wednesday November 05, 2008

As long as we’re all going to agree to nuke the word “ecosystem” from our vocabularies (we ARE going to do that, aren’t we?), can we also please, please, PLEASE agree to eliminate “so…” as a verbal tic that begins every third sentence uttered around here?

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Home » If You’re Not Making It Up As You Go Along, This is Not Your Time

If You’re Not Making It Up As You Go Along, This is Not Your Time

Posted by Steve Hall · Wednesday November 05, 2008

As if there weren’t a Republican in the house, ad:tech keynote speaker Shelly Lazarus gushed with excitement about the uplifting optimism brought on by Obama’s presidential win the night before. No doubt, she had planned to speak about Obama’s campaign, universally agreed to have been stellar and one of the best ever, but the fact he won couldn’t contain the glee clearly resident in the room.

In her keynote, Lazarus commented the Obama campaign dubbing it a masterstroke of CRM and the digital realization of Obama’s “yes we can” mantra.  While the Obama love in the room was, without doubt, palpable, Lazarus did not spent the entire keynote talking about Obama.

Stepping off from her belief “if you’re not making it up as you go along, this is not your time,” Lararus shared work done for Lenovo in relation to the Beijing Olympics. As you may already know, Lenovo handed out laptops and other digital devices to Olympic athletes giving them the power to share their experiences with the world as they lived it. Hmm…maybe that’s why it seemed every single athlete at the closing ceremony had a camera.

The experience of the Olympians became Voices of the Olympic Games and was dubbed, by Lazarus, “the largest social media campaign ever conceived during the largest sporting event of the world.” With blogs and video, the Olympian’s experiences were seen by 1.6 million viewers on a daily basis. The outreach was so successful in terms of it’s delivering “the Olympic experience” to the masses, The IOC actually threatened (idly) to shut it don claiming the effort was “stealing” from the multi-million dollar deals put in place with the networks and other media outlets. As Lazarus pointed out, that line of thinking just doesn’t play any longer.

Another campaign Lazarus discussed was Diamond Shreddies. That was the campaign which centered on a fake focus group which attempted to explore the introduction of a new diamond-shaped cereal—which was nothing more than the already existing cereal turned 45 degrees. Hilarity ensues, of course. Even to the point of introduction Diamond Sheddies, The Combo Pack, offered in reaction to people’s claim to having found square-shaped Shreddies in boxes of Diamond Shreddies. Hilarity ensues.

But hilarity did not ensue when sales for the 67 year old dormant product rose 20 percent. Again, not the normal approach to an ad campaign but one which closely follows the “if you’re not making it up as you go along, this is not your time” line of thinking.

Lazarus touched on the Dove Evolution campaign which, originally, was intended to be nothing more than a lark. The girl in the video was the photographer’s girlfriend who assured her not many people would see it. 500 million views later, the couple is, uh, no longer a couple. So yes, making it up is a good thing. But there can be unforeseen side effects.

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Home » Obama Ignites Souls—and Dancing Feet—of Manhattanites

Obama Ignites Souls—and Dancing Feet—of Manhattanites

Posted by Angela Natividad · Wednesday November 05, 2008

I was fresh into university when California governor Gray Davis was ousted. In what I shortsightedly conceived to be the most politically significant moment I’d be destined to see in my lifetime, Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced him in Sacramento. I felt seized by the fever of the time, and vowed to always remember what it was like to be passionate about the pulse of government.

That was just a handful of years ago. Today my mind is filled with watershed events that vastly eclipse that first taste: a mortgage crisis, the dramatic collapse of hulking financial institutions, and a black Presidential incumbent pitted against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic ticket, then against another woman—Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin—for the right to walk with proprietary pride across the vast square footage of the White House.

Last night, a handful of ad:techies learned the results of the November 4 election over a dinner hosted by Susan Bratton, the DishyMix queen bee. I sat between social medialyte Dave Evans and a well-traveled guy called Roy. We ordered duck gizzards and spun casual, but slightly taut, conversation.

Anticipation hovered like a mist. Every five or six minutes we committed cardinal formal dining faux-pas: whipping our mobile phones out anxiously, scouring Twitter or news headlines for updates to the polls. Every once in awhile we leaned forward and, like eager sports aficionados, hissed something like, “So what’s the tally? Anything on Indiana yet? Who’s reporting the numbers?” I remained pessimistic we’d learn anything certain until well after midnight.

It was nowhere near that late when California’s electoral votes were counted, adding to a running total that definitively cemented Obama’s win. A palpable change at the table occurred: collective breaths were released, shoulders loosened, and Susan raised her glass and proclaimed (more than once), “I didn’t dare to hope!”

Glass-tinkling all around. Dave beamed like a ruddy kid (it was all we could do not to start shoving each other with glee), Steve Hall snapped photos, and Roy smiled smugly and shared news headlines with me from his iPhone.

Around 11:30, Steve and I hit the 236.com bash at the Huffington Post. This was no ad:tech party; it teemed instead with cheering Millennials kissing and hugging, exhibiting the political fervor one acquires in college—or maybe on YouTube, if you’ve seen a “Yes We Can” mash-up.

Beer caps popped. Somebody took pictures of a cardboard McCain with a plastic bag wrapped around his head. (I visibly winced, then reached for my camera.) I partook of a fortune cookie whose fortune read, “Either Hillary wins the candidacy or this cookie is really, really old.” And it was, I discovered with quiet dismay, chewing in slow, unspeakable agonies.

Screamers fell silent when Obama hit the podium for his acceptance speech. There was crying, and a great deal of cheering, and I covertly snapped a shot of a couple standing in front of me, transfixed, the girl’s arm wrapped loosely, intimately around her man’s rump. They could have been from any period in time, but they were here, watching with quiet elation as Obama attributed his victory to the people, not himself.

We left the HuffPo offices at our own peril. The streets were alive with honking cabs and dancing groups. It was sort of like a state wedding, or maybe the fall of a tyrannical regime. Needless to say, it was impossible to catch a cab heading back to Times Square, which is where the real insanity was happening, so a pile of revelers hit a random bar to drink too much and dance. Between reggae riffs and snippets of BIG’s Juicy, Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech weaved in and out, inciting kids to riotous cheering.

“YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!” they shouted in unison at one point, bringing dormant memories of MLM meetings back to the surface of my imagination.

“Jesus, it’s like a cultural movement,” my companion observed, shaking his head with the kind of awe that belongs to hardened skeptics. (He’d twice attested, with restrained pride, to being the only “red coat” at HuffPo’s shindig.)

“It was always a cultural movement,” I answered, and we smiled wry, meaningless smiles at each other. Little by little he was being won over—by the infectious atmosphere, by the sound of Obama’s voice, by the pictures we were all painting of an America we vaguely remembered from stories we were told a long time ago.

It isn’t yet clear whether Obama will effect the change he promised. But last night, on the riotous free-wheeling streets of New York, it struck me that he’s already been used as a vehicle for dramatic change in his disciples. People care about politics again. Once-apathetic non-voters actually flaunted their involvement yesterday. Others policed the ballots on video cams or on Twitter.  However they expressed them, their passions united under one desire: to demand a new direction with eyes to the zeitgeist.

The crucial part is, the system changed dramatically as a result. I feel incredibly lucky to be young at such a time—a time when, like tectonic plates on fast-forward, my parents’ Promised Land is being reshaped and revived for new eyes. If I actually had a set of tear ducts, I’d probably cry.

More photos here.

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Home » Elite Commision Wins ad:tech Booth Schwag Award for 2008

Elite Commision Wins ad:tech Booth Schwag Award for 2008

Posted by Steve Hall · Wednesday November 05, 2008

In terms of booth schwag at New York’s ad:tech, there wasn’t much that stood out. There were pens and pens and pens and more pens. There were matchbooks. There were hats, cups and mints. There were stress balls, pins and badges. A few, however, rose above the toss-in-the-nearest-trash-can category. Ifbyphone had yo-yos. Anchor had shot glasses.And Batanga had miniature stereo speakers which could plug into an iPod or other musical device.

The best, though, and the winner of this year’s Booth Schwag Award goes to elitecommission for hiring a custom cigar maker who sat at the booth and rolled fatties (well, not that kind) for attendees. Clearly, not your normal booth schwag.

See them all here.

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Home » Amidst ad:tech, A New President is Chosen, Union Square Celebrates

Amidst ad:tech, A New President is Chosen, Union Square Celebrates

Posted by Steve Hall · Wednesday November 05, 2008

So after dinner at West Branch with several colleagues and industry acquaintances and a visit to the Huffington Post election party, a 40 block walk home ensued. Yes, 40 blocks. Hey, it was a nice night for a walk. On the way home, a large crowd of people had congregated in Union Square as if Obama himself was about to show up. Of course, he didn’t but that didn’t stop the hundreds (thousands?) from celebrating. No matter one’s political leanings, the engagement of so many in this election process and win is impressive.

Photographic goodness here.

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Home » State of the Industry

State of the Industry

Posted by Richard Cacciato · Wednesday November 05, 2008

My first Ad:tech session was a lively discussion about the $64,000 question: where are we all going?  There was good chemistry among the panelists and some great points were made.  The logical first question: what about the recession? 

Panelists
Randall Rothenburg, President and CEO IAB
Tina Sharkey,  Chair and Global President of Babycenter LLC
Rob Master,  N. America Media Director Unilever US
Rob Norman,  CEO Group M Interaction
David Morris, Chief Client Officer CBS Interactive

In true Palin-esque form (amazing how influential she is), the discussion veered to this election, the most historic presidential race we’ve seen.  So, what lessons from this campaign will apply to marketers?  Candidates are first and foremost marketers and media planners.  Using comedy like Saturday Night Live, mobile marketing like the Obama signups for a text message about his VP choice, the use of infomercials like Obama’s 30 minute spot, or Facebook’s get out the vote initiatives, the candidates have used media as a creative means to get the message out and engage their audiences.

It’s also been fascinating from a media mix perspective.  The Obama campaign fused the combination of geography, technology and how people use it, and the value of integrity into the broadest reach and more microactivation opportunities than we’ve ever seen, true evidence of the maturity of our medium.  CBS saw unbelievable audiences—the only thing that beat this was March Madness. 

This election has been a perfect example of both campaigns following where voters are going.  The immediacy was striking.  Not everything goes well, but the campaigns did a good job of listening, discussing issues with their fan base, then fixed or admitted when they were wrong. The panelists were impressed with how candidates have listened, learned, and fixed when they were wrong. Brands can learn from this.  According to Rob Master of Unilever, this election is a perfect example of both campaigns following where voters are going—which is what marketers need to do.

Of course this all leads to the question, where’s the media mix going?  Consumers are spending a lot of time online, nonetheless the panelists resisted defining its effect on TV.  However, we are seeing new traditions in how people consume media: consumption of short form is higher.  People are not watching SNL in its entirety, they’re watching Weekend Update—or even just clips of it—online.  Looks like we need a new concept of media units.

Randall Rothenburg of IAB was adamant about the fact that given the outcome of this election, it’s likely that regulation will become more important.  In fact, Randall recommended we all look at pending legislation in New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania governing the interaction between web users and content. One of the issues is that all data that is used on the internet is by definition behavioral because it involves somebody taking action and responding to it.  The industry has a good record of how it’s self-regulated and we don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs since advertising permits users to see free content.

Finally, despite the Palin-esque sidestep at the beginning, we returned to the first big question: what wlll the impact of the recession be?  Will online win more share from other media, will there be declines overall?  The consensus is that there will be a share war between media, and then between players—there won’t be 300 ad networks a year from now.  Things will be tough for the next 18 months.  This is about reach, engagement and relevance.  All the panelists agreed: it doesn’t matter what media are used, there are strong brands and there will be new strong brands.  The focus is on identifying where to find reach, engagement, and relevance.  Interactive will grow in modest double digits.  The panelists are seeing a definite shift to digital—and they are bullish.  A hopeful outlook in the end, despite the dark clouds we’re seeing in the economy.

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Home » TV 3.0 – Will traditional networks survive?

TV 3.0 – Will traditional networks survive?

Posted by Krista Neher · Tuesday November 04, 2008

“Not only is the advertising industry somewhat desperate looking around the corner into 2009… Not only will advertising revenues go down, viewership will continue to disintegrate and go places where there isn’t any advertising.” – Peter Price, President and CEO, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

TV networks, like most traditional media outlets, are in rough shape right now… live viewing audiences are dropping with the growth in digital video recorders and alternate viewing channels, like the internet.  Sites like hulu allow viewers to watch shows online and the networks are now launching episode viewers where shows can be watched online with limited commercials.

What exactly does TV 3.0 mean?

“The first I heard of it (TV 3.0) was when I was invited to this panel”, responded Michael Steib, the director of TV Ads at Google (I appreciate his acknowledgement of the made-up buzz word).  In TV 3.0 there is a proliferation of channels, people are watching TV in different places (online, DVR, etc) and at different times.  Connecting advertisers and audiences as people start to watch TV in new and different times and places.

Sooooo… you have to ask – what role does “traditional” or “linear” TV play in this new space?  According to Stacey Lynn Schulman, Senior VP of Turner Entertainment, Ad Sales Research, Turner Broadcasting, there is an ecological system that surrounds the content.  The content exists in many different places and they all interact together differently.

When you look at all the different ways that TV programs can be consumed, are they actually converging?  Content must be served in a contextually relevant format.  For example, sports.  When you look at fantasy sports, all of the different devices are increasing consumption and expanding the # of interactions.  As someone participates in fantasy sports, they tend to watch more sports, they track the stats online while they watch and they track the scores on their mobile devices.  The usage is increasing because of the breadth of the options and how participating in something like fantasy sports leads to growing media consumption.

Another opportunity to look at the ecology or opportunities that multiple platforms can be seen in the recent interest in music associated with certain shows.  The networks noticed that people were talking about the songs that they were hearing on shows such as The OC, Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.  These tracks are now available online to buy and listen to, which increases the total interaction with the show.

The Billion Dollar Question
How are TV stations going to make up the ad revenue that is lost by DVRs and those who watch online?  Online television does provide advertising opportunities that are more targeted may have better metrics, however there are fewer ads, which don’t make up for the losses from traditional media.  The panelists agreed that all forms of traditional media are in trouble….

Anthony Soohoo, Senior VP & GM, Entertainment, CBS Interactive said that they think of themselves as an “audience network” and not just a TV network.  As content becomes more ubiquitous and there are more outlets the TV networks have to interact with audiences beyond traditional television.

Here is the billion dollar question: will TV networks be able to make up the ad revenue lost from the shift away from traditional TV?  People will watch 400 billion hours on their TV and watch 10 million hours of online video – online is still a small segment.  For networks to stay afloat, they need to either increase the # of ads 4x vs. what they are showing now, or increase the effectiveness.  The solution?  Technology.  Technology can be used in 2 ways to help solve this problem.  The first is better targeting through technological solutions.  The second is by using technologies to improve the effectiveness of the interaction or ad that is served (ie. rich media).  Advertisers are finding new creative ways to get to consumers – they won’t stop running 30 second ads on TVs BUT many of the ad dollars will go somewhere else.

And on the Economy?
No panel on any topic would be complete without a short discussion on the economy – that black cloud hanging over our heads.  Budgets are largely in-tact for 2008 however drops are expected for 2009.  Marketers are looking to stretch their budgets and drive efficiencies vs. making large cuts.  Specifically, digital continues to grow but some more “experimental” channels or websites (like mobile) might be facing difficulties due to the perceived risks.

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