The Revolution Will Be Widgetized! Among other Things
The Next Frontier: Advertising in Applications.
This panel struck me as one of the most relevant to marketers at ad:tech NY this year. Topics included widgets, in-game advertising and in-cloud applications (server-hosted productivity supplements to Word and Excel). A representative from Facebook also discussed what ad models work well for the social network.
Liza Hausman of Gigya introduced the talk on widgets. (See her discuss it, in part, in the video above. Try not to wince when Escourrou, bless his heart, says “marketeers.”) She observed people used to spend time on destination sites; now they bring content wherever they go: a social network, a blog, a desktop, their start page.
As a result, widgets present a real opportunity for marketers. “Anything that can be done on a website can be done on a widget,” she pointed out. “Most importantly, widgets have to be installed by a user to a page.” That’s the world’s best validation of your value add - and obviously also a huge hurdle.
Half-ass a widget, and it’ll never move past your subsite.
read more...Hey, Cool-Hunters. I’ve Got Your Millennials Right Here.
Obama, Apple and Ice Cream - Building Brand Passion Among Millennials.
This ad:tech panel consisted of six Millennials, which—according to the official (coughs) definition—represent those born between 1979 and 1994. Wanna know if they actually respond to your email blasts and big Flash banners? Watch the video above. And if you happen to be shilling for Urban Outfitters, pat yourself on the back.
Alloy’s Samantha Skey served as moderator and cow prod. This company’s entire raison d’etre is to know kids better than they know themselves, then package them in silver spoonfuls to ravenous marketers. Once in awhile, Skey made an irrefutable statement about their transparent whims, backed by video footage of some poor dope proving her right.
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It’s the Skinny on Search and Synergy.
At this jewel of an ad:tech session, each panelist lavished the audience with a drop of wisdom from their collective fountains. What follows are my scoopings.
Tips for managing a brand in the new media landscape, courtesy of MTVN’s Julie Sun:
- You’ve heard the expression “knowledge is power.” Well, sound social knowledge can protect a brand. Monitor user-created pages like Wikipedia; see what people say about you, and communicate your point of view. (Avoid the temptation to link-whore, though.)
- Do research to find out where your users are. (Don’t play with Facebook, for example, if your users aren’t there.) Given your objectives, ID which space works best for you.
- Support your online social initiatives year-round. (For chrissake, don’t take down a subsite just because you stopped running TV ads for it. What makes the web cool is its ability to keep ads going long after the money stops. KEEP THE SITE UP. DON’T DELETE THOSE VIDEOS, EITHER.)
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Even Nimble Long Tail Media Will Suffer in Economic Downturn
The ad:tech power panel “Will the long-tail go bankrupt?” was extremely timely given current economic conditions. Digital content is everywhere online and is growing exponentially. This epic flood of digital content and unprecedented media fragmentation has produced a fundamental conundrum: it’s hard to make money. This panel explored how the long-tail can make money, and the barriers to growth, especially given where the economy is going.
MODERATOR:
Emily Steel, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
PANELISTS:
Matt Palmer, Executive VP, General Manager, Stardoll
Jordan Bitterman, Digitas
Matt Coppet, Head of Global Media Strategy, UBS
Philip Mitchell, Ogilvy
Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3
The Billion $$ Question. How can the Long-Tail make $$$?
The extent to which advertising can be incorporated into content in a relevant and natural way has great effect on the “worth” of the ad impression. And this goes beyond display-based advertising. Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 used an example of how a beer sponsorship was incorporated into their podcast. The DiggNation podcast has long featured guys drinking beer. Incorporating sponsors for the beer was a logical and natural tie-in, without the need to directly relate it to the content. (DiggNation is a technology/news blog). According to Jim Louderback sponsors see as high as 100% unaided awareness from sponsorships which is significantly higher than display based ads.
read more...Mobile Social Networking: Now Is The Time for Innovation
“Mobile is both the most personal device and location-based device..its also the only 24/7 session,” stated Evan Tana, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Loopt. And so very true! I had just Twittered from one such mobile device a few minutes before to notify my followers of my presence in the session—how very appropriate, eh?
As the last session of the day, the last remaining stalwarts filed in to hear about this still very emerging platform, and disappointed we were not! With a solid panel consisting of some of the most active doers and thought leaders in the space, the session remained relevant and to the point (and kudos to moderator Mickey Alam Khan, EIC of MobileMarketer.com for keeping the audience engaged with frequent breaks throughout for Q&A). Ok so lets get down to the good stuff:
MODERATOR:
Mickey Alam Khan, Editor-in-Chief, Mobile Marketer magazine
PANELISTS:
Evan Tana, Director of Product Management and Marketing, Loopt
Mike Howard, VP of Sales, Kiwibox.com
Polly Lieberman, VP, Advertising Sales, buzzd
Andrew Osmak, Senior VP, Business Development, Lavalife
Jordan Greene, Principal, Mobile Media, Mella Media
DigiPublishers: Context is (Still) King, and Don’t Be Afraid to Leer
Publishing in the Digital Age—Context is King.
It’s odd that an ad:tech panel about publishing need reiterate the importance of context. Even before digital blew our minds or whatever, wasn’t that still the case? Great newspapers were forged in the fires of noteworthy current events. Great books exploit widely-felt (but little-articulated) sentiments.
Context has always been king. Tactical marketers have always fed on that: This is my message. How best to package it for Demo X? Where is their mind? Can I speak to a shared passion or crisis?
This sesh gives a fresh coat of paint to a trusty old model, with the crucial addition of being whiplash-worthy. (That is, encourage some hardcore voyeurism.) Highlights below.
read more...Master Class Roundtable: Growing Online Brand Advertising Dollars
This my favorite panel of Ad:tech because it included five marketers with a pragmatic view from the trenches on a hot topic. As with many Ad:tech sessions, the panelists didn’t stay totally on topic, yet I liked it because the panelists shared real experiences and talked candidly about what specifically works and what doesn’t work for their brands. I got some good, tangible takeaways and hope you will too.
Moderator: Pete Blackshaw, Nielsen Online
Panelists: Brian Kalma, Zappos
Scott Wilder, Intuit
Kevin Ranford, 1800flowers.com
Jeffrey Graham, New York Times
Andrew Markowitz, Kraft
Search Marketing Tactics and Strategies: Best Practices
... across current and emerging digital search platforms, that is.
It’s been a long week, and the day is growing longer and this is the final session of ad:tech. With all of that said, what the heck: I’m gonna try liveblogging the session (which I suspect may be a good way of blogging the sessions overall, but we’ll see how this goes).
read more...Beyond the Banner ... Beyond the Network ...
... beyond the sea
somewhere waiting for me
my Web ad stands on golden sands
and watches the clicks that go sailin’ ...
Okay, it’s the last day of ad:tech, so things are bound to get a little punchy. Still, I’d love to hear some Bobby Darin mixed in with whatever this is that’s being piped through the sound system before the session begins (which is pretty good, I have to say; sort of a modern spin on Motown).
Anyway, this is a session with big promise, “designed for the more advanced online marketer seeking new tactical approaches to leverage the unique features of the web beyond standard IAB units placed blindly across ad networks.”
Now we’re talking.
read more...The Emperor Has No Clothes – Maybe Because They’re Not Sold Online
”
Google recently told MarketingDaily that 94% of millionaires made a luxury purchase online in the last six months and that 56% of these consumers actually prefer shopping at a retailer’s Web site to visiting a store. So going into the session, “The Emperor Has No Clothes: The Affluent Consumer Online – A Market in Search of a Product?”, we might expect a discussion focused around luxury brands’ action plans to integrate e-commerce into what today are typically informational branded website experiences.
Well, if our expectation was that luxury brands are moving online to satisfy the seemingly overwhelming demand, we might be shocked to hear that many are, oddly, resistant to online commerce. Thomas Becker, CEO of Thom Browne, said, “If Thom Browne had his way, I think we’d all still be sending memos to each other on our typewriters. Everything from how we make our clothes to how our shoes are made – on a bench. It’s straight out of the 50’s. Everything about our process is similar to that.”
Browne is not alone in his hesitation on the future of luxury brand e-commerce. David Wish, Razorfish Partner, added, “there’s always been a feeling that I don’t know if our customers want to buy on the web.
read more...Tales from the Bleeding Edge
The Tales from the Bleeding Edge session was more of a product-demo roundtable. Each of the panelists gave a presentation or demonstration of their company and two stood out as being particularly relevant and interesting for marketers and advertisers.
Joe Marchese showed us Social Vibe (which I LOVE) which focuses on how brands can get involved in social media in an effective way. With Social Vibe “The only way for brands to get into social media is for someone to invite them” – the ultimate in permission based advertising. Social Vibe allows users to choose and showcase their favorite brands on their social networking sites and earn points that equal donations to their favorite charity.
Why does social vibe rock? It takes a new approach to social network marketing – users choose their own sponsors (Nike, Apple, etc) and take their sponsors onto the web with them – on their blogs, myspace, facebook, email, etc. Why is this powerful? The branding quality is high because the user is making the choice to advertise the brand and is making a personal endorsement. So what do you get for allowing a brand to sponsor your online activities? You get $$ donated to a charity that you select.
read more...Media and Entertainment Panel - I want it NOW!!!!!!
This panel was fairly similar to TV 3.0, which I covered yesterday; a discussion about how new mediums are changing how we consume media and the implications for both the media and advertisers.
The Landscape
The new reality = technology has enabled people to consume media when where and how they want to versus the old model where consumers could only watch on TVs a schedule predetermined by the network with approximately 8 minutes of commercials for every 22 minutes of television.
Today, Pirate Bay (an illegal download site) downloads 300 million videos a month. Television networks can sit back and watch these sites erode their audiences OR create a legal way where people can download content when where and how they want. The reality with technology today is that audiences can gain access to the content they want when and how they want it (albeit illegally). This poses a challenge for traditional media and they have to participate and develop platforms that serve these audiences, and protect or build their revenue streams.
read more...Future of Online Measurement: Beyond the Click
So, the future of online measurement! A question for quants and marketers alike. Moderator David Hallerman, Senior Analyst at eMarketer, opened the session with a perhaps obvious if not provocative question: “What techniques or metrics have made measuring campaigns online so effective?” Essentially asking, what the hell have we been doing for 10 years with regards to online measurement?
Moderator
David Hallerman, Senior Analyst, eMarketer
Panelists
Konrad Felman- CEO, Quantcast
Jon Gibs- Vice President, Neilsen Online
Marc Johnsn- CMO, Hitwise
Gian Fulgoni- Co-founder, ComScore
Young-Bean Song- Director of Analytics, Atlas Institute, Microsoft
The Great Transfer of Wealth: The Transformation of Local Advertising
Bravo to Gordon Borrell, President of Borrell Associates, for moderating a session with a minimum of PowerPoint slides (a notable lack thereof, in fact) and a maximum of real information and discussion.
What are we talking about when we focus on local advertising? How about this: $120 billion will be spent this year by local advertisers in local media—with interactive media claiming about a 9% share, increasing to about 13% next year.
A billion here, a billion there ... pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
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