Video Ads and Contextual Placement

Interesting research from VideoEgg came out on MediaPost. They've indicated that Video Ads are (duh) much more engaging than Traditional Online Ads. The more interesting bit comes at the end, where they discuss that Contextual Ad Placement did not make material difference whether it was placed in a relevant or non-relevant site.

I think there's a lot of promise in the idea of Contextual and Behavioral Advertisement Placement -- but the article does emphasize that the quality of the ad is still paramount in activating that relationship between Environment/Context and Ad Recall.

Study: Engagement Key for Rich Media Video Ads
March 16, 2010

-By Mike Shields

When it comes to rich media ads on the Internet that employ video, engagement really matters. Environment, not so much.

That’s the major, and perhaps, surprising takeaway from a new research study conducted by VideoEgg and comScore. The two companies surveyed the opinions of 14,000 Web users, who were presented with ad campaigns of various types of Web sites from six top brands: Doritos, GE, Hyundai, Telus, Toshiba and Alliance Releasing.

Specifically, the study examined the effectiveness of rich media video ads versus traditional banner ads. The idea was to prove the theory that banner ads which contain video are more engaging. And the more engaging a Web ad is the more it can impact brand metrics such as aided and unaided awareness.

In addition, the study looked to gauge whether site environment—particularly contextual relevance—played a role in how well such ads performed.

Overall, video ads proved to be more engaging, found the study—and engaging ads move the needle better than standard ads. Not surprising was that VideoEgg’s own AdFrame units, expandable placements that take over a portion of a Web page, were roughly twice as impactful as standard IAB banners when it comes to driving awareness.

“What we saw was the overwhelming power of engagement to change metrics,” said VideoEgg president Troy Young. “Online advertising is really easy to ignore. Knowing you have someone’s attention really matters. The takeaway here if you want your propaganda to work [is] get people to engage with it.”

But more eye-opening was the study’s findings on the importance of environment, or lack thereof. When conducting the survey, VideoEgg and comScore classified sites running video rich media banners into three groups: branded sites, smaller but still contextually relevant sites and noncontextually relevant sites. According to Young, while users responded to branded sites more favorably, ads on those sites were not any more engaging than they were on non-contextually relevant sites.

“There was not a significant difference in performance across environments,” said Young. “There is a relationship between environment and ad for some brands, but a great ad transcends environment.”

That will surely rile up some big brand publishers, who make their living on selling the importance of context. And many won’t love the idea that the study was commissioned by VideoEgg, itself a leading ad network.

But Young says the study proves context isn’t always worth paying extra for: “The implication here is, for a lot of media plans, premium environments may not be worth a three-times or five-times premium price.”

Webisode Links

Just checked out the webisodes... They are pretty fun to watch...


Great Bertoli Webisode site. conjures up memories of great al dente meals in the towns of Tuscany.... Makes me want to go back to Italy:

http://intotheheartofitaly.yahoo.com/#18448076

Breyer's Smooth and Dreamy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBc_pFcwCbE

Turn the Tub Around from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bo5DhUxtTw

Branded Entertainment

Here's a great article from Ad Age rouching on the current state of the branded entertainment (particularly webisodes) market. Ad Agencies really are turning more and more into Media companies as they get involved in creating branded entertainment content for Marketers.

How Madison & Vine Moved to Silicon Valley

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- If you're looking for the intersection of Madison Avenue and Vine today, you're more likely to find yourself somewhere in Silicon Valley.

When Madison & Vine made its debut in Ad Age in 2004, branded entertainment was still somewhat of a novelty to many sectors of Hollywood and the ad community. Cut to 2010, and the connection between brands and entertainment is cemented, and a robust ecosystem has flourished.



BIG SCREEN HITS THE WEB: Breyer's 'Smooth & Dreamy.' Today, brands are increasingly seeking to develop proprietary content and in some cases are becoming media producers on their own. This innovation is taking place on the web, and the key players producing original branded content come largely from outside of Hollywood's circle of A-Listers.

Efforts from stalwarts such as ABC Studios, Turner and United Talent Artists have folded, and a crop of mostly digital branded-entertainment shops has grown in their place. The web has emerged as the biggest breeding ground for branded entertainment, as sponsored web series crop up by the dozen.

What killed off some of the first entrants into the space was the belief that the web could be like TV, at least economically, and that eyeballs would naturally follow. But producing TV-like projects with six- and seven-figure TV-like budgets without sponsors or a network to offset the costs upfront quickly became unsustainable. Now, brands and producers are partnering earlier and more extensively than ever, with marketing budgets often replacing the thumbs-up from a network executive as the new greenlight.

New class
Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the influx of production companies and branded-entertainment divisions at media agencies and the TV networks that have cropped up to develop and distribute these new webisodes -- from the MSNs, Yahoos and MySpaces of the web-portal world to indie production companies such as Jordan Levin's Generate, "Lizzie Maguire" creator Stan Rogow's Electric Farm, Michael Eisner's Vuguru or Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst to recent online forays from established TV producers such as Reveille, Endemol, Fremantle and Magical Elves.

Even PR firm Edelman recognized the web as an emerging destination for branded storytelling -- in 2006, it acquired production company Matter Entertainment to develop projects for its marketing clients that could accomplish more than any press release.

Nathan Coyle, who leads the branded-entertainment practice at Creative Artists Agency and helped kick-start the next wave of sponsored web video by introducing brands into YouTube's "LonelyGirl15" series, credits the 2008 Writers Guild of America strike as a point of motivation for these new players.

"When you can't do your job, it accelerates your creativity and the metaphorical and actual bandwidth to create these new projects," he said. "We learned with shows like 'Quarter Life' [on MySpace] that the publishers aggregating the eyeballs aren't equipped to manage talent, so if you're going to find the money to make these shows, you have to go straight to the advertisers."


Keeping up with Madison & Vine online
Madison & Vine, Ad Age's original cross-section of the New York ad community and Hollywood, will be taking a broad look during the next year at the key players, projects and platforms in the digital branded-entertainment arena. Whether it's keeping tabs on established players, checking in with the media agencies and marketing firms that continue to staff up their branded-content divisions or profiling the newest studios and media companies entering the space, check in with M&V on AdAge.com for reporting from the frontlines of the friendly war between content and commerce.
It's difficult to quantify the exact figure spent on such deals. PQ Media estimates branded webisodes and in-game advertising, or advergaming, grew 15.1% to $306 million in 2009, with the web accounting for a small, additional chunk of the $3.95 billion spent on product placements last year. If Madison & Vine was about collaboration between marketers and media companies, then this new digital stage is about control. "Five years ago, the content creators were reluctant to collaborate; they didn't see the brands had any place in the conversation with networks," said Scott Donaton, who launched Madison & Vine and wrote a book of the same name in 2004 while editor of Ad Age. "[On TV], there's a lot of objectives the brand has no control over. In the digital space, you can work the other way to develop and design the content and control the audience. Now you have a chance, as a brand, to meet your objectives and find your audience."

Overwhelmingly digital
In his new role as CEO of Ensemble, a division of Interpublic Group of Cos., Mr. Donaton oversees branded-entertainment projects for media agencies Universal McCann and Initiative, and estimates 60% of the new-business pitches he receives from clients are for digital projects, while 35% are for TV and the remaining 5% for music and film.

For some, investing in digital content is a post-recession efficiency play. It's possible to delve into digital content for the same or often less cost of 30-second TV commercials. One branded-entertainment veteran said productions can cost as little as $20,000 or as much as several million dollars, depending on the number of locations, the quality of the video production and the cost of the talent. Although A-list stars aren't paid TV-level fees for their web work just yet, they're often earning paychecks "well into the six figures," said the executive.

Pepsi is leading the charge of marketers investing heavily in web video as an alternative to TV. That's Pepsi behind the sponsored "Blue Room" in the just-launched "If I Can Dream," a live-streaming talent competition from 19 Entertainment, producers of "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance," and Mtn Dew behind the MySpace/Paramount digital series "Circle of Eight." Up next: an animated series for Sierra Mist and collaborations with IAC's CollegeHumor and Electus, the production company created by former Reveille producer and NBC entertainment chief Ben Silverman.

As Frank Cooper, Pepsi's chief consumer engagement officer, put it, "Yes, more money is moving into digital and should move into digital, but we have to maintain a healthy budget on TV. However, you should push that TV button at the right time in the process for communicating to consumers -- it should not be your default switch."

Breakthrough hits
Unilever, along with media agency MindShare Entertainment, has produced what have arguably become web video's biggest branded success stories. It started in 2007 with "In the Motherhood," an MSN series created for Suave and Sprint starring Chelsea Handler and Leah Remini that eventually became an ABC sitcom, or "The Rookie," a "24"-themed series for Degree that also aired during the Fox series, both produced with Santa Monica, Calif.-based Science & Fiction.

More recently, its projects have become 30-second spot/webisode hybrids, pairing celebs such as "30 Rock"'s Jane Krakowski with Breyer's Ice Cream ("Smooth & Dreamy"), Megan Mullally with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter ("Turn The Tub Around") and Marisa Tomei with Bertolli Pasta ("Into the Heart of Italy"), all in the name of using TV as a push to original content on the web.



Suave and Sprint's 'In the Motherhood' "The wonderful component of digital is that there's an unbelievable amount of tracking and monitoring of consumer engagement," said Rob Master, director of media for Unilever North America, which has been active in the digital space since 2007, when it launched "In the Motherhood." "We're looking at everything from time spent to where users are viewing the content on our site, our partner sites and the rich-media units themselves, to length of time of these webisodes or entertainment shorts. There's really no clear-cut answer, yet other than it depends on the brand, objective and target. But we're starting to understand how much time a guy wants to spend with short-form content vs. a woman, and that insight is helping us."

There have been casualties along the way. Many web shows are sitting on the shelves of digital studios waiting for an advertiser to rescue them. Meanwhile, sponsor budgets and renewals for existing projects came in later and smaller than most companies could afford -- if they came at all. Startups such as Mania TV and Ripe Digital drained their venture funding while waiting for advertisers.

"If you think about the videos that do well online, it takes time to develop that audience," said Albert Cheng, ABC's exec VP-digital media, of Stage 9, which distributed two series, "Squeegees" and "Voicemail," before folding. "It could also very well be the nature of the content we were putting on. People weren't ready for that type of production quality."

Keeping at it
That doesn't mean they're not ready for TV talent on the web. The web's few major success stories -- Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," Marshall Herskowitz and Edward Zwick's "Quarter Life" and MSN's "In the Motherhood," directed by "30 Rock" and "Roseanne" veteran Gail Mancuso -- were all the direct results of having proven storytellers.

ABC.com, for its part, took its learnings from Stage 9 to focus on creating web spinoffs of popular on-air shows such as "Ugly Betty" ("Mode After Hours"), "Lost" ("Dharma") and "Grey's Anatomy" ("Seattle Grace On Call").

And not all the big networks and studios have given up. NBC, meanwhile, has been leading the charge of TV networks fully invested in creating original digital content, recently attracting sponsors such as Hidden Valley Ranch ("Garden Party"), American Family Insurance ("In Gayle We Trust") and Nestea ("CTRL") and name talent such as Jennie Garth and "Arrested Development's" Tony Hale.

Fox recently hired comic-book veteran Roger Mincheff to run its branded-entertainment division and develop projects for News Corp.'s digital entity. CBS is expected to put a larger stake in the game in the near term, and Viacom's Atom.com has been doubling as an in-house studio to develop branded content for Comedy Central, Spike and GameTrailers.com for brands such as Ford, Sony, Intel and Trojan condoms. Even young-male-targeted Break.com planted a bigger stake in the game last year when it acquired HBO's digital studio after the pay-cable network struggled to find sponsors for its digital series.

"Four years ago, clients were dipping their toe in branded entertainment. Now we're at the lessons-learned stage," said David Lang, president of MindShare, the WPP agency that produced many of Unilever's webisodes, and created 14 projects in 2009 alone. "It's very important to not just have the touchy-feely soft data points but verified proof that we're meeting our clients' goals and objectives."

Help Flo

I just found an amusing website that Progressive Insurance has been airing. The HelpFlo campaign (http://www.helpflo.com/) has people creating and uploading videos to explain to Progressive why they would make a great companion to Flo, Progressive's quintessentially cheery advertising personality. A set of winners will be chosen and flown to tryouts in LA to appear in an ad, and, if they're any good, become part of the running set of Flo-based Progressive Insurance commercials.

Great way to save money on nationwide tryouts!

The campaign's been going on since January 24th, and there are about 1,350 video entries to date, so competition's fierce. And Progressive doesn't have to pay a cent to YouTube for this.

Automating Campaign Management

Interesting perspective into the operational problems within agencies around search marketing and digital campaign management... Automating campaign management -- could this be another industry on the verge of disrupting the status quo at Digital Agences?

Razorfish Finds Efficiencies Automating Ad Processes
by Laurie Sullivan, 11 hours ago

Agencies looking to grow business need to search for ways to shave time off buying media and other processes to reduce operating costs. Companies ready to rebuild and recover from a downturn often look to software automation after cutting expenses to the bone to survive. Following the latest downturn, it appears that advertising and marketing execs are ready to give it a try.

Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, recently pointed to technology from the Mountain View, Calif. search engine that would assist the transition to this emerging business models aimed at automating processes. The assertion was made during the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif. late last month.

Agencies with in-house technology departments looked to keep up with APIs distributed by companies willing to share software and services, but now some find it more efficient to rely on help from the third-party companies, such as Marin Software.

When the electronics industry went through this automation surge, executives sang the mantra "focus on what we do best and outsource the rest." Razorfish took that advice and shaved hours from each search marketers' day, of which more than 100 support the agency.

"Everyone knows it needs to be done, but no one has put true numbers behind the automation," says Matt Lawson, director of marketing at Marin.

Razorfish has reduced the time spent on daily bidding, reporting, and campaign management by up to 50% for many of its brand-name SEM accounts, driving gains from efficiencies for its clients' large-scale paid-search marketing campaigns.

The search marketing team in the U.S. manages hundreds of accounts for more than 50 large brands, including Victoria's Secret, J. Crew, Shutterfly, Starwood, Weight Watchers, Disney, Polo Ralph Lauren, and CapitalOne.

Razorfish needed an application that could efficiently handle the paid-search programs of diverse clients. Those needs range from automating reporting for analysis and trend spotting to geographic targeting features for large accounts. It also requires an easy-to-use optimization and creative testing features for smaller accounts.

The ability to automate processes enabled Razorfish account managers and account executives to squeeze costs from bid management and reporting to campaign analysis and optimization, while managers use the dashboard to get a view of program performance.

Razorfish also managed to squeeze efficiencies from mobile campaigns. Experiments with mobile and local targeting drove higher click-through rates and conversions at a lower cost for the advertiser. Generated conversions on mobile devices were 7.5% more cost-efficient than conversions on desktop computers. With Marin technology, the agency also tested ad copy to increase conversion rates by 9.3% on mobile ads.

Marin supports 20 agencies. In aggregate, the group spends hundreds of millions of dollars in paid-search advertising.

Olympics and Yahoo!

The numbers are in... Yahoo! emerged as the website winner of the Olympics (at least in terms of Unique Visitor metrics) ahead of NBC. Interesting how new media aggregators can usurp the stage from traditional media carriers, especially considering how much NBC paid to cover the Olympics. Another example of disruption... Shouldn't the networks be worried?

I wonder if this "aggregator" disruption can start siphoning off significant shares from TV's non-live events? Instead of going to ABC's Lost site, what if they are able to get richer and more engaging information from an aggregator's site?

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=123786

Yahoo Wins Olympics Gold, Curling Drives Search
by Mark Walsh, Yesterday, 10:10 PM

Yahoo took gold in the online Olympics ratings, beating out NBC handily in total audience. The Web portal's Olympic site drew 32 million unique visitors during the 17 days of the Winter Games, compared to 19 million each for NBCOlympics.com and ESPN.com, according to comScore.

Yahoo Sports as a whole benefited from the Olympics-driven traffic surge, attracting 40 million users during the event. Because of its larger audience, Yahoo was also tops in overall time spent, at 314 million minutes to NBC's 218 million.

But the Peacock Network, which again broadcast the Games on TV and offered exclusive content on its Olympics site, claimed some engagement-related victories of its own. NBC averaged 11.5 minutes per visitor during the event compared to 9.7 for Yahoo, and 17.8 pages per visitor to 7.3 for Yahoo.

Based on internal reporting from Omniture, NBC last week said it served more than 45 million video streams from the Olympics and doubled its page views over the 2006 Winter Games to 710 million. Four years ago, the network said it had only 310 million page views and served only 8.4 million streams.

NBC's internal figures also showed a total online Olympics audience of 46 million -- more than double the comScore number. "Internal numbers, as you can imagine, can be wildly inflated," said a Yahoo spokesperson of the higher NBC estimate.

Taking the broader view, content delivery network Akamai said it provided more than 5,000 hours of live and on-demand video during the Games to a dozen broadcast partners, including NBC and Yahoo. At its peak, on Feb. 28, when the U.S. played Canada for the hockey gold medal, Akamai served 2.4 million pages per second. Not surprisingly, the bulk of that traffic came from North America and Europe, the regions that dominate winter sports.

Who were the online Olympics stars? Telegenic U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo -- and curling, the unlikely hit of the Vancouver Games, was the most-searched sport. Searches on esoteric queries like, "how heavy is a curling stone" and "why does Apolo Ohno yawn" were also very popular, according to Yahoo. Who doesn't know how much a curling stone weighs?

Repo Men and Bar Codes

More on mobile interactive barcodes!

Of course, if no standards are established for this service, someone's going to eventually reap the lion's share, collecting high rents for anyone who wants to use barcodes with the most number of "compatible" viewers. Good position to be in, but I'm sure Apple will take a good chunk of that value chain too!

Universal Uses Barcodes To Capture 'Repo Men' Fans
by Mark Walsh, 5 hours ago

Movie studios are often at the leading edge in digital advertising and Universal Pictures is no exception in its cross-media campaign for "Repo Men," the futuristic thriller starring Jude Law that opens Mar. 19.

Capitalizing on the growing popularity of mobile barcodes and tying into the movie's plot, the effort makes UPC barcodes a key element of its promotional push. Since Feb. 1, Universal has placed barcodes from startup Occipital, in 30,000 outdoor movie posters in 15 cities including New York and Los Angeles.

When the codes -- also embedded in online ads -- are scanned by iPhone owners using Occipital's Red Laser application, they get access to content including video teasers for "Repo Men." The film takes place in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, but also repossessed when users fall behind in their payments.

In that vein, the barcodes also include fictional movie-themed ads showing synthetic organs with snarky taglines, such as an artificial heart beneath copy reading: "Go ahead. Have The Cheeseburger." Another pushes a liver upgrade with: "We Encourage You To Drink Irresponsibly."

Barcodes also feature prominently in the film as a way for the organ repo men, including Law and co-star Forest Whitaker, to track transplant recipients.

Ben Blatt, manager of digital marketing for Universal Pictures, said the campaign developed with digital agency 360i and creative shop Visionaire marked the first time the studio has deployed barcodes in movie advertising.

Media companies and marketers from Hearst magazine to Sprint are increasingly using mobile barcodes to deliver coupons, product information and other content to cell phone users instantly. So it's hardly surprising that a major movie studio would deploy barcodes to help sell movie tickets.

While Blatt wouldn't discuss results of the effort so far, he said the studio was pleased with the approach appealing to the young male, tech-savvy demographic that can help build buzz for a sci-fi film like "Repo Men." "It's not a mass market reach, but a complementary mobile extension for the campaign," he said.

To that end, the promotion also includes a nationwide contest in which participants are challenged to find four "Runners" -- mysterious figures trying to evade capture. A Runner that lasts a month without getting caught will win $10,000. But contestants who can catch one will win $7,500.

To help spread word of the game virally, Universal partnered with Lone Shark Games and Wired, where writer Evan Ratliff last year went on the lam and was tracked by a horde of techno-hunters as part of the magazine's Vanish contest. For the Repo Men treasure hunt, players follow clues dropped online and via barcodes.

But the movie isn't aimed only at geeks. To reach a broader audience, Blatt said Universal begin making a bigger promotional push online and on TV in the next two weeks, including a YouTube home page takeover on Wednesday. The Red Laser barcode will appear in the large masthead ad for "Repo Men" on YouTube.

"We're definitely going after a wider audience," said Blatt. "For us, this was just kind of an interesting thing to try, and we're always trying to do new things -- and whenever we get the chance to tie in to creative ad elements with film, it works better."

Omniture and Facebook

Omniture and Facebook get into bed together... I predict that 2010/11 will be the year when we will really see a slew of marketing investments into external social networking "channels" now that marketers can back up their investment decisions with true social networking metrics.


http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=123533

Omniture And Facebook Ink Deal To Bring Analytics And Buying Tools To Social Marketing
by Laurie Sullivan, 3 hours ago
Omniture and Facebook will announce a deal Wednesday that turns the social network into an online marketing channel, complete with technology tools, audience segments and best practices.

Initially, the two companies will focus on the ability to automate Facebook media buying and access analytics that measure customer engagement. The partnership builds on Facebook analytic features the companies announced last year to help marketers join the conversation, rather than interrupt the experience.

This alliance is intended to help companies integrate Facebook as a marketing channel, connecting to relevant conversations with the site's more than 400 million active users. Facebook climbed to the No. 2 spot in the U.S. with 133 million viewers behind Google, according to Compete. These numbers drive more marketers to understand the impact and return on investment in Facebook.

Dan Rose, Facebook's vice president of business development and monetization, says Omniture developed an immersive toolset accessible through one dashboard to help marketers identify the value of Facebook advertising campaigns.

Omniture will identify members based on Facebook audience segments. High-value members have a preference for luxury brands. Knowing this, marketers that want to target this segment with luxury products might have more success converting the ads into sales. "It's a closed-loop system, so you can always look at the analytics to see how the campaign performed," says Aseem Chandra, vice president of product marketing at Omniture, an Adobe company.

Facebook will allow advertisers to buy the media through Omniture tools. Through the tools, advertisers can also track how the campaign performs. Tools like SearchCenter Plus, that combine search engine marketing application with functions that allow marketers to purchase Facebook ads and compare campaigns.

The analytics and optimization tool enables marketers to see the opportunity to build and reward customer loyalty on Facebook. The platform generates reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for some of the unique elements from Facebook Pages.

The deal has not been without challenges. Chandra points to lack of supporting proof that Facebook provides marketers with -- and advertises -- an alternative ad platform. Many have that gut feeling, but lack the numbers to get buy-in from C-level executives who control the budget. "A lot of what we do next will determine the feedback from the market," he says.

Although the companies chose to announce the partnership, the tools and the marketing guidance supported through Omniture's consulting team will not become available until later this year.

Omniture also will announce today an expanded version of its Online Marketing Suite, an integrated suite of applications and services that enables marketers to take control of data to optimize ad spend and conversions. The suite aims to help marketers create "relevant, personalized experiences for their customers," says Chandra.

The suite comes with display advertising optimization tools, and mobile and online analytics enhancements, along with the suite of features from measurement tools, to comScore integration.

NYT and RMG Network

Article about the NYT on Mediapost today.

All The News That's Fit For Cafes, NY Times Goes Out-of-Home
by Erik Sass, Today, 12:05 AM

This morning saw the unveiling of the biggest partnership between a media brand and a digital out-of-home network so far in 2010, with a new tie-up between The New York Times and RMG Networks (previously known as Danoo).

The new digital place-based media channel, NYTimes.com Today, will deliver a combination of text and video content and advertising, including options for mobile interactivity, to hundreds of RMG's IP-based network of digital displays in top markets around the country.

NYTimes.com Today will be delivered to RMG displays in 800 cafes and eateries in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco markets. Altogether, the NYT content will reach six million people every month, including a high proportion of professionals -- with content including news headlines, photos, and a selection of videos. Viewers who are interested in seeing more detail can follow on-screen pointers directing them to NYTimes.com Today's dedicated mobile site with www.nyt2day.com, where they can read the full text of articles. RMG CEO Garry McGuire said about 45% of the editorial content is online video from NYT.

On the advertising front, McGuire touted the flexibility of the digital network, which can deliver both video advertising and Internet-style rectangular display ads, making it relatively easy for advertisers to repurpose Internet and TV ads for the DO medium. RMG also offers highly targeted advertising tailored to specific locations, offering special coupons and promotions -- for example, a recent campaign for Walgreen's advertising flu shots, with directions to nearby stores. All these ad options can also incorporate mobile interactivity.

RMG will continue to handle ad sales for the network, and is already handling placements for a number of major NYT advertisers, including GM and Sprint. The NYT will also benefit by using the network as a marketing channel, as the venues reached by RMG sell copies of the newspaper's print edition.





The details from the RMG Network website are pretty flimsy, but the buzz around these out-of-home digital displays are growing.



Perhaps the future depicted in Minority Report of a world bathed in digital lights -- where subways and stores will be mini Times Squares and Shinjuku districts in Tokyo.

http://www.rmgnetworks.com/nytimes_network.html

A Decade of Digital Campaigns

I chanced on this older feature from Ad Week listing the Top Digital Campaigns of the Decade. Amazing how something like the BMW Films from 2001 is still remembered and is still being talked about.

Nike has always had a remarkable digital presence, and the success of its running shoe and the integration of digital and real world to create a sticky customer experience is remarkable. Here's the featurette from Ad Week:

Digital Campaign of the Decade
Nike Plus

If there was a knock against Nike Plus from the ad world, it was what it wasn't: an ad. Which was, of course, the point. Created in 2006, it defined how a brand can build a self-sustaining platform by giving customers an easy tool—a chip in their shoe that connects to their iPod music player—to track and share their training progress. Nike Plus takes "Just do it" and actually helps runners get it done. Since its launch, Nike Plus runners have logged more than 100 million miles—enough for more than 400 roundtrips to the moon. It's little coincidence that Nike steadily increased its running shoe market share from 48 percent in 2006 to 61 percent in 2008. Along the way it created something for brands to aspire to: a product experience that reinforces the brand message. —Brian Morrissey


Adweek also encloses the results of their Reader Poll. Proving that they are no populist, Nike Plus only scored 6% of the votes, scoring only #7 on their Reader's minds. Each of these campaigns deserve a case study on their own and make their way easily into the latest slew of digital marketing or "Marketing to the next generation" books.

Top of the charts? Burger King's Subservient Chicken, which is a campaign that's definitely worth checking out in a future blog posting.

Of course, BMW Films scores high as well, coming in at 2nd place (tied with Will.i.am's Yes We Can for Obama).

The Future (?) of Interactive Bar Codes in the US

I found this article on Interactive Bar Codes from Ad Age amusing:

Despite Small Numbers, Magazines Are Big on Bar Codes
Everyday Food, EW, Woman's Day See Technology as Way to Connect With Advertisers and Readers
by Nat Ives
Published: February 22, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- You could be forgiven for wondering why magazines keep adding interactive bar codes and icons, those symbols that let camera phones fetch extra content or special offers, once you realize how few readers use the things.

While magazine trials with bar codes haven't amounted to much, plenty of publishers and advertisers are busily experimenting. Although more than 1 million people pay for Everyday Food, for example, the magazine's November issue featuring seven different SnapTag codes only garnered 6,500 "snaps." And an Intel Core processors ad with a ScanLife bar code that appeared in the February issue of Wired, a magazine with paid circulation approaching 755,000, got just 740 reader scans over four weeks. Those figures could seem pretty close to zero. But the Everyday Food showing proved solid enough for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, its publisher, to plan SnapTags for the April issue of its flagship Martha Stewart Living. What's going on here?

"I don't look at it as 'close to zero,'" said Janet Balis, exec VP-media sales and marketing at MSLO. "I think you're talking about a very active level of engagement. We're not counting the number of people who read the ad, spend time with the brand and thought about the messaging. This is that highest form of engagement, where a person has pulled a phone out of her purse or off her desk and interacted with the magazine."

Intel seems all right with 740 scans of its bar code. "Yeah, it is a pretty small number to date," said Travis Hockersmith, global media manager. "There's no way to make that necessarily look like a bigger number. But that's okay to us."

"Print continues to be an important medium, but our audience is also more and more connected all the time, which has to do with the mobile devices they're carrying," Mr. Hockersmith said. "It just seemed like a natural way to connect our audience with additional and more immersive Intel content."

Entertainment Weekly, which has an average paid circulation approaching 1.8 million, typically gets about 5,000 takers when it runs an ad using a SnapTag. "These numbers, albeit smaller than a lot of people might expect, are growing," said Publisher Ray Chelstowski. The magazine's focus on entertainment also lends itself to codes that summon samples or an Amazon product page, he said. "Having mechanisms in place that allow readers to take action on what they read in the moment is a very important thing for us."

Not every magazine that has tried 2-D bar codes or similar systems, to be sure, is still at it. Men's Health, one earlier experimenter, hasn't used them since the summer of 2008, while Rolling Stone hasn't run bar codes since that fall.

How interactive should print be?
And there's a long-term question about how interactive print should actually be. Publishers still often describe magazines as a medium with which readers sit back and follow editors' lead -- the opposite of the hyperactive online experience in which you lean forward to flick both your attention and cursor around.

But in the nearer term, plenty of publishers and advertisers are busily experimenting. Some have gotten good results with a system called LinkMe Mobile, for example, that lets readers get content by sending in photos of whole ads -- no bar codes or other symbols required.

When Woman's Day -- paid circulation north of 3.9 million -- first published an "interactive issue" in November 2008, using LinkMe Mobile technology on 11 ads and 11 editorial features, it got 168,000 snaps. Woman's Day then used LinkMe Mobile in four issues last year, receiving more than 600,000 snaps in total. This year, however, Woman's Day plans to rely on Microsoft Tags, according to Carlos Lamadrid, VP-publisher. "We feel it's the next tech," he said. "It's easier to use for most users."

Conde Nast is also expanding its use of Microsoft Tag codes, which require readers to download an app but doesn't need readers to send photos anywhere. Golf Digest, a title with paid circulation near 1.7 million, included 11 tags in the editorial pages of its November issue, promising free video of golf tips, product demonstrations and a photo shoot with Michael Jordan. It got 30,000 Tags scanned, according to Golf Digest.

Sports Illustrated just ran six Jagtags -- bar codes from yet another contender in the space -- in its new Swimsuit Issue. It's too soon to say how many people will photograph those Jagtags, which offer to send videos of swimsuit models to readers' phones, but the Jagtags in three earlier issues of Sports Illustrated -- paid circulation 3.2 million -- were used between 35,000 and 60,000 times



I came across all the buzz around QR-Codes (Japan's Interactive Bar Code) back in 2006 -- particularly in the context of the thriving mobile music scene. What I've never figured out is how the Japanese managed to make the technology on their phones so ubiquitous and raise awareness and know-how among its mobile consumers. Too many pundits have declared that the time is ripe for QR-Codes to invade the West. Not anytime soon it seems.

Here's the original Japanese article from 2006:

MMW-104 -- QR Codes and Music Promotion in Japan
October 4, 2006

When reading about a new artist (offline) in a music magazine or newspaper, I often find myself wishing that I could hear a sample of that artist's music as I read the article or interview. With the proliferation of QR codes and code-reading mobile phones in Japan, that wish is fast becoming a reality, and the new combination of Internet-enabled mobile phones with traditional print media is changing the way music is marketed in Japan.

It seems that QR codes - two-dimensional matrix bar codes - are showing up everywhere in Japan these days. Increasingly, we're seeing the small square codes on business cards, print ads, and web sites. By taking a photo of one of these bar codes with your mobile phone, you are linked to a mobile web site containing more information about the advertised product, service or person. While they are not new, it seems it is only recently that QR codes have really started to catch on in a big way here, and they are still not widely used outside of Japan.

Not surprisingly, QR codes are proving extremely useful in music promotion and advertising. Many mastertone and full-song mobile download sites have magazine tie-ups in which a QR code is included in an article or advertisement to provide a free song or listening sample. Local indie bands include a code on their flyers linking to their mobile sites. Several CDs here include codes that link to 'extras' such as mastertones, videotones and artist wallpaper. There are many potential uses, and it seems new ones are being dreamed up each month.

One Japanese company has even started a QR-code service for indies musicians to promote their music via mobile phones. For JPY 40,000 (US$350.00), Tokyo-based Sunwish Inc. will
take an artist's CD and provide them with a 'sample listening' mobile site (for all three major Japanese wireless operators) along with its corresponding QR-code to place on flyers and
other print materials. The service is called 'QR-Clip', named for the 45-second audio clips that are used for the listening samples. The artist also receives reporting software which lets them know how many times each song has been downloaded, and how their site compares with others
in terms of accesses.

Use of QR codes for music promotion is not limited to indie artists. Just walking through the Shibuya district of Tokyo today, I passed a music club (Shibuya O-East) with a series
of large plain-looking posters plastered on the outside wall at eye-level, each consisting of a single sentence in Japanese at the top, and a big QR code in the center. As passers-by stopped to photograph the codes from the street, I moved in to get a better look at the posters. Turns out
they were part of a mobile download promotional campaign from Napster Japan and Tower Records, and the sentences were something to effect of:

1) A song for when you just can't keep that feeling inside anymore!
2) A song you want that special person to hear whom you've just started dating in the last two weeks!
3) A song to help you get back on your feet again!
4) A song to recapture that time by the sea in the summer!

These posters provide an excellent example of the power of advertising with QR-codes. To be effective, the ad only needs to make you curious enough about the song to take a picture of the code. In addition, the 'hook' to make you take the picture can be easily targeted at a particular
demographic group. Going out on a limb here, I'll bet the sentences above are probably aimed at females in their late teens and early twenties. And they will likely find other music marketed directly to them on the mobile site as they go to download their free songs.

In any case, these QR codes are here to stay, and they are having a noticeable impact on the way music is marketed and promoted in Japan - Consider, when was the last time you saw a group of people taking pictures of posters from the street? We expect that use of these codes by artists, record labels and music promoters will continue to increase rapidly here, and it's only a matter of time before they start making their way outside of Japan.

Finding Mermigas

Diane Mermigas, Editor in Chief of MediaPost, wrote this wonderful editorial late last year. I used to read Mermigas when she was in the Hollywood Reporter, and was baffled and disappointed when she disappeared from her spot on the weekly journal. It's great to find her again!

Digital Blueprint For Success: Interactivity
by Diane Mermigas, Friday, December 18, 2009, 7:32 PM

Acting on trends reshaping media will be more important than contemplating them in 2010. Propelled by an improving economy and mainstream digital adoption, the new year is time for companies to take a deep dive into interactivity.

The parameters for digital success are clear: Consumer connections must be all about heightened functionality and real-time relevance, as well as practical and social mobile applications.

The recession that seriously clipped corporate revenues and profits also instilled no-frills technology reliance. The new modus operandi is to pay only for what one needs and is value-added -- even when it comes to entertainment. This has serious implications for print and video content producers struggling to alter consumer expectations about the definition of "free."

Fortunately, there are apps. They already are embedded deep into our social media, mobile and digital activities, short cuts to precise news, data, guidance and entertainment. They also are mechanisms for payment and ongoing relations with target customers.

As the new bridges to everywhere, apps will become more sophisticated and mainstream as they connect consumers to more qualitative contextual information and services. The marketplace is rich with indications of where consumers are going. The widespread shopper use of mobile social and commerce related apps this holiday season is striking evidence that these trends are now woven into the fabric of our lives.

Consumers want what businesses want: more refined, actionable, specific information that has the context of customized interpretation and recommendations. Those mechanics have become as important as the devices and digital content .

Consumers expect immediate access to more refined interactivity. So it's no mistake that mobile phones outnumber PCs four to one, and that nearly one-third of Americans have permanently eliminated landline phones. Apple and RIMM understand and cater to consumers' mobile digital behavior and needs in ways that few other media-related businesses do. Heightened competition from Google's new Android ecosystem will make the next wave of mobile enterprise even faster and better.

The lowly flat, big screen television that is the new living room shrine to high definition still has a chance to join the interactive age rather than waiting for cable operator and TiVo set-top boxes to transport them. In fact, it is make-or- break time for all things TV. Much of the fundamental content has value, given new digital form and function. Too much of the legacy infrastructure and process of broadcast TV stations and networks does not.

Revitalizing content ties to consumers by devising mobile interactive functionality is one way to stay in the game. Publishing faces the same challenge. The electronic readers and tablets gaining favor with consumers will become mass conduits for temporarily displaced quality text and video, the baseline value of which will be reset. These digital readers will extend and enhance--not replace--newspapers, magazines and books.

Amazon already is carving out its niche as the "Netflix" of publishing. Netflix's user-friendly access from anywhere approach to movies and other video poses a serious threat to cable because it understands and respects consumer penchant for relevant social mobility. And it has a profitable built-in pay function to boot.

If others choose to boldly follow consumers' lead, some transformational change could quickly unfold.

Advertisers could cut to the chase by opting for secured transactional target marketing. Their involuntary spending respite during the recession prompted many marketers to reevaluate their business practices and strategies. With just a fraction of pre-recession conventional advertising spend on the rebound; it is the perfect time to take the digital plunge instead of waiting for a return of the old norms.

Pepsi is redirecting its ad dollars next year online to community outreach -- and virtual projects -- to strengthen consumer ties in ways that are relevant to people instead of corporations. It will be an interesting and important test case for giving interactive marketing a life away from static print and TV advertising.

Pepsi's approach also underscores the importance of local content as the new personal connection. It explains why Google is chasing after Yelp, and The Huffington Post and NBC Universal are pursing hyper-local services such as Outside.In. It is why Google is integrating social network posts at Twitter and Facebook into real-time search. These are the new hybrid sensors to everything that matters to people - at home and work. They are mining the physical communities on which many local newspapers and broadcast TV stations lost their once-firm grip.

Yet formidable obstacles remain to creating systems of accountability, quantifiable measurement, secured universal payment, privacy and permission-based sharing. An arousing deal market will render more strategic tuck-in acquisitions to enhance media players' capacity in mega mergers, like Comcast's proposed controlling ownership of NBC Universal. But there is no substitute for, and nothing more important than, media-related businesses completely embracing digital interactivity. The key to future growth is that simple, and that complicated.

Video Ad Serving Platform Goes Mainstream

Good news for all those looking to see how one could start building business cases around the user-generated video juggernaut. Ironically, a startup like this could have only made its toe-hold because of the enroachment of professional videos into popular user-generated sites like YouTube. Let the ad dollars start streaming in...

Comcast Interactive Media Taps Auditude For Video Ad-Serving
by Gavin O'Malley, 9 hours ago

Hoping to target online audiences more effectively, Comcast Interactive Media has tapped video ad management and monetization platform Auditude to manage and serve its video advertising across Web properties, including Fancast, Fancast XFINITY TV, and Comcast.net.

The first implementation, which just went live, includes Fancast and Fancast XFINITY TV, with Comcast.net to follow. More broadly, Auditude's platform will serve as the foundation to manage and integrate video advertising between CIM sites and its content partners.

David Kappenstein, director of advertising technology and development at Comcast Interactive Media, said the decision came after a "comprehensive review of the video ad platforms in the market," adding: "We are excited to scale and expand the advertising options currently available."

The deal marks the second major client win for Auditude in recent months. Late last October, MTV Networks agreed to implement its Connect video ad management platform across its online portfolio.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company works with other clients including MySpace and Warner Bros. to help them monetize online video. Its technology automatically analyzes uploaded video clips to identify copyrighted programming -- a "Daily Show" or Colbert segment -- and then serves targeted overlay ads within that content.

The company's platform promises Web publishers and big media companies a money-making alternative to copyright takedown notices and other legal means of blocking the distribution of pirated clips online.

This latest deployment of the Auditude Connect platform is designed to help content owners and publishers better scale the business requirements and ad-serving needs around premium video content.

Last March, Auditude closed $10.5 million in a financing led by Redpoint Ventures and including existing investor Greylock Partners. It brought the total raised so far to more than $23 million.

MySpace teamed up with MTV last November to use Auditude's platform to monetize MTV-owned clips that users upload to the social network.

Last February, meanwhile, MySpace and Warner Bros. began using the system to insert overlay ads in music videos on the site.

Paying for Content and Games

Apologies for the gap in contributing -- my Lenovo screen died on me last Thursday! Fortunately, my IBM Technician swooped in this morning to save me from many more days of unproductivity (laptop-less days are unproductive!)

Really fascinating piece I saw in MediaPost today -- is the time for paid content upon us? Assuming that the right price-point for content is determined for the consumer, and that a significant number of people already signed-up for micro-payment sites such as Paypal such that transaction costs do not ruin the customer experience, can old media properties reconstruct their old walls to complement the ones that online Advertising has hastily erected?

Apologies for the Image -- it wasn't attached to the real clipping and was far more fun than the image of David that was used (sorry, David!)

Bold Predictions From 24/7 Real Media's Moore: Publishers Should Create 'Toll Gate' For Premium Content
by Laurie Sullivan, Yesterday, 10:54 PM


Wouldn't it be a tragedy if the Internet was the cause of the demise of excellent content? David Moore, 24/7 Real Media founder and IAB board of directors chairman, posed the question to attendees during his opening remarks at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 on Sunday night in Carlsbad, Calif.

The digital premium content model is broken and advertising alone cannot support the cost of premium content, according to Moore, who laid out several predictions that will change online advertising forever.

The answer to charge sounds simple -- but it's not easy to implement, he says. With the mantra that totally free content is a thing of the past, Moore described a pay model that would require all premium publishers to cooperate.

Publishers are afraid to charge people for their content. No one publisher wants to become the first to charge. Moore suggests that the industry needs to collectively establish a toll gate for content -- an EZ Pass entrance that allows people to access preferred content at any site. Publishers would charge 10 cents per session or one penny per page, Moore says, citing a recent Nielsen survey that suggests that 52% of consumers would not object to a business model built on micropayments.

Publishers wouldn't charge consumers until subscriptions reached $10. "One user session at 10 cents equals $100 cost per thousands," Moore says. "Who's getting advertising rates like that today?"

This long-term strategy will enable the strong to survive because premium content needs to find a way to become profitable if everyone implements this "easy pay program" together, Moore says.

Prediction No. 3 turned to more precise audience targeting, which has been the promise of advertising for years. "In the old days when cable cost $6 per month we imagined a world where men didn't see ads for tampons, and women didn't have to watch ads for a jock itch remedy," he says.

Moore realizes that some people are "freaked out" that advertisers watch their behavior online, but once people realize their Web experience is "guided by their habits and preferences, it will seem a lot less freaky." He referred to audience targeting as one step away from the recommendation of a friend that will increase the ability for publishers to charge higher prices for content.

"Blocking our ability to target ads is bad for business and for the people who use the Internet," Moore says.

Moore also predicts that digital advertising will become the largest media market in the world within five years, with video advertising becoming the dominant format. For this to happen, the industry will need to develop better standard measurements, simplify the workflow that makes advertising easier for companies to buy, and find new ways to display ads to consumers. He also told IAB attendees the advertising industry has become much too nice, and companies need to stop being afraid to interrupt the consumers with ads. "Why are we so afraid to disrupt the user experience?" he says. "We're in advertising."

Moore says the new consumer online experience requires advertisers to become more disruptive -- but do it with targeted ads.

Well, for at least one industry (the Video Game industry), the segment of Casual women gamers have spoken! And the Video Game industry, unlike TV and Radio, started off by charging their customers...

Women Give Pay-To-Play Game Model Thumbs Down
by Laurie Sullivan, Yesterday, 7:30 AM


Most women enjoy shopping and spending money. Some even consider it mindless entertainment to walk through malls or scan favorite retail Web sites before opening their wallets to purchase special items. Not so for those who frequently play games on social media sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, according to a recent study.

Although women enjoy playing games on social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace, most put restriction on themselves if required to open their wallets, according to more than 700 women who shared their insight on social media gaming.

The study, conducted by Q Interactive and Engage Expo, reveals that 42% of women call themselves gamers -- of which 7% would consider themselves obsessed, compared with 45% who say they have an obsessed friend who like to play. About 24% of women admit that the games are additive, 21% believe it makes you neglect other areas in your life, 17% believe it's a waste of time, 7% call it a competitive indulgence, and 4% think it's childish. Ironically, only 16% "do" or "sometimes do" hide their gaming habit.

Sixty-seven percent who participate in the Q Interactive study think it's acceptable to play social games between one and five hours per week, and some believe it's okay to play much more.

Despite the love these women have for playing games, they don't want to pay to play. When asked whether they would play their favorite game if they were charged, only 11% said yes and 17% maybe.

More than half -- 55% -- of women remain fearful that companies will charge in the future, Marj Calinog, vice president of business development at Q Interactive, believes there are other ways to reach women aside from charging them to play the games. Game developers could work with brands, such as Pampers, to pay for leads, and give consumers the points to play the game, she says.

Companies that insert their brand in the game without asking consumers to pay have a much better chance of earning their trust and loyalty.

And while 77% of moms allow their kids under age 18 to play daily or weekly, 83% say spending on games remains off limits. Of moms who do let them spend, only 3% spend more than $20 a month.

Top Chef Restaurant Promotion

I was browsing through the New York Digital Agencies and came across Avatar New York. They had done an innovative application for Bravo's Top Chef.

Taken from their showcase site:

Objective
Introduction of an online application to generate more interaction on the Bravo ‘Top Chef’ site, connecting viewers and fans with their favorite ‘Top Chef’ contestant’s restaurant picks around the world.

Solution
Top Chef is a popular reality show that airs on the Bravo Network, in which contestants compete in weekly challenges to be crowned America’s favorite Top Chef. With plans to extend the show into two spin offs—Top Chef: Junior and Top Chef: Master—the fan base of this deliciously fun show continues to grow. To facilitate interaction between the Top Chef contestants and their loyal fans, Avatar created a customized application that lets users search the most enviable restaurants chosen by the chefs. Top Chef enthusiasts can filter their search by chef, judge, season, or city. The application features a Google powered mapping system, a section for reading and/or leaving comments, and a comprehensible navigational structure which allows an easy search for all restaurants and cuisines by city.

Results

Traffic to Bravo's Top Chef website increases and the Blogophere raves.

You can check out the application on Season 5 of the Top Chef website. It's a great app for fans of the show who develop strong attachments with specific contestants. The app tracks all contestants from the previous 5 seasons (and the sixth one when it finishes, I presume) so that fans can continue their relationship with their favorite chef long after the season concludes.

There's quite a lot of content on the Top Chef site -- and the applications, games and such are organized according to Seasons. The Restaurant application was tucked quietly away in Season 5. Though its information's probably relevant across the entire show, it can be found only by those fortunate enough to bookmark it last season, or for those lucky enough to know exactly what they're looking for.

As you can see from Games content (alone!) for Season 6, there's a tremendous amount of pre-recorded and "for the fans" content that is archived in the show's website.

A Tale of Two Olympics

Some interesting digital marketing efforts from the Vancouver Winter Olympics... Aside from the regular use of video streaming, the internet giants have used the event as a testing ground for more Social Media marketing (like Google Buzz) and, one of the "cool" things coming thru the bleeding edge pipeline -- Augmented Reality.

Yahoo's included a video of their prototype -- which starts allowing people to create their own "special effects" to enhance their boring old reality :-). The YouTube video demos, what's probably still the "Stone Age" for this nascent technology at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8ADxeGHaI&feature=player_embedded


The Winter Olympics Of Search, Blogs and Mobile
by Laurie Sullivan, Friday, February 12, 2010, 5:46 PM

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo got in the game. Each unveiled separate renditions on search, blogs and mobile to follow the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The opening ceremonies began Friday.

The Web has brought Olympics fans closer to the action at home, the office or on the go. Yahoo introduced a dedicated mobile Web site to provide people with news, event schedules, stats and pictures. At m.yahoo.com/olympics, fans can get up-to-the-minute access to the Winter Games through live results, schedules, medal counts, news, photos, blogs, and expert commentary. The site provides instant results from all the events, and people can search by athlete and Olympic sport to find information.

And for those lucky enough to visit Vancouver, Yahoo has partnered with augmented reality expert Total Immersion to put consumers in the action. Yahoo's Fancouver exhibit lets passersby insert themselves into the festivities through a digital out-of-home display, with dual windows that use augmented reality face tracking to give fans a different view.

Getting into the action online, Google takes Olympic fans on a snow mobile ride in Street View and Google Earth to capture what it's like on the slopes in Vancouver.

While Google Maps puts fans in the game from the air, the National Hockey League gives hockey fans All-access Vancouver at NHL.com, Facebook has a dedicated page from the Organizing Committee and International Olympics Committee, and @Yahoofancouver lets people follow the Winter games on Twitter, with a link that leads directly to the Yahoo Sports page. The site Twitter-Athletes also lets people keep track of the games.

Aside from real-time search on google.com, fans can log on to Buzz, Google's latest social tool add-on in Gmail, and connect with people who are chatting about Winter Olympic games. Simply open the Buzz tab and search on keywords to find information from anyone creating buzz around a topic, even if they are not part of your network.

Although Beijing brought Olympic fans streaming online video, Vancouver will provide features that allow people to pause, rewind and replay the action during a live broadcast. Microsoft says NBC will use streaming capabilities from Silverlight, the Adobe Flash rival, to provide some spectators with up to 720p high-definition resolution.

In fact, NBCOlympics.com on MSN will provide more than 400 hours of live event competition and more than 1,000 hours of on-demand access to full-event replays from broadcast and host-feed coverage of all 15 sports. It also gives people access to extensive highlights, such as event recaps, best-of montages, commentator analysis and athlete-specific clips, as well as options to connect with friends through Facebook about the videos, and share links through Windows Live, Twitter, Digg, and Reddit.

... End of Story


I was also looking at footage from 2008's Beijing Olympics, courtesy of OgilvyInteractive, who handled the Adidas Digital Marketing for the games. You can reach this at

http://www.ogilvy.com/#/The-Work/Galleries/best_of_ogilvy_2009_interactive.aspx/Shanghai_Adidas_Adidas

An interesting innovation that Adidas did was the creation of a Digital Trading Card platform and market. These Trading Cards (they call them Adikas) provided interactive features for the fan-base, and were created for the Athletes, Gear (Adidas, of course) and Countries associated with the Summer Olypmics. I grew up in Asia, and I assume that kids today are every bit as obsessed with collecting Trading Cards as I was during more leisurely times!



The numbers they saw from the Adidas site:
13,249,360 Adikas distributed
293,577 Registrants
12,145,456 Unique Visitors
18,589,458 Total Visits
Average of 16 Minutes Spent on the Site per Visit

Disney's Alice Promotion

I was looking for internet promotions for some of the current high-budget movies lately. My internet connection's rather slow in this apartment, but almost all movie sites call up Video automatically upon entry.

I still think that US internet speeds are on average frightfully slow compare to the rest of the world, but it's interesting that the more entertainment sites are catering to the boundaries rather than the mainstream.

The article below shows that Disney's even pushing the edge on mobile promotion of their movie.

Disney Pushes 'Alice' Through The Mobile Looking Glass
by Mark Walsh, Yesterday, 4:51 PM





Walt Disney Pictures is taking mobile users through the looking glass with its new campaign promoting the March 5 release of "Alice in Wonderland." The mobile effort behind Tim Burton's 3D update of the Disney classic features games, digital greeting cards and video packaged in motion-sensitive ads.

Created with Starcom USA, the campaign has kicked off with ads running in popular applications and games for the iPhone and the iPod touch including "Word Warp" and "Paper Toss." Clicking on the ads allows mobile users to watch the full "Alice" movie trailer or play the "Queen's Match-Up Game" in which the object is to match character images into pairs.

Through the ads, people can also send mobile greeting cards to friends, featuring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and other characters. And in a twist on the "shakable" iPhone ad made famous by Dockers, the unit employs Apple's accelerometer technology to let users "spin" their phones (on a flat surface) to simulate "falling" down the rabbit hole with Alice.

The iPhone ads, running through March 6, are being served through a trio of mobile ad networks: Greystripe, Millennial Media and Quattro Wireless.

Disney has separately released a free, stand-alone "Alice" app in the App Store, plugging both the movie and an upcoming game based on the film for the Nintendo Wii. It comes with an "Alice" trailer, related wallpapers and a series of movie-themed puzzles.

The iPhone-centric mobile push behind the movie may be nothing, however, compared to the plans Disney has for offering content through the forthcoming iPad. Speaking to analysts this week, Disney CEO Robert Iger gushed enthusiasm for the Apple tablet, calling it a "gamechanger" for creating new kinds of content.

"Obviously, it will be a great device to play games on and to watch videos, because of the quality of the screen, but the interactivity that it will allow on a portable device with such a high-quality screen is going to enable us to really start developing product that is different than the product that you typically see on an Internet-connected computer or on a television set," he said.

Sounds like Iger's gone down the rabbit hole himself. In the works are iPad companions to the Disney's digital books app, the ABC News app, Marvel apps and others.

...end

As marketers introduce new and novel forms of promotions to their high-budget movies, it raises the threshold expected for everyone hoping to land the next Hollywood blockbuster. I'm already somewhat inculcated into the world of movie promotion websites, and get somewhat disappointed when all they offer are what's usually expected (Photos, Trailers, Wallpapers, ...) Alice's website has a mini-game, a sort of "I Spy" game set in Wonderland, and another one that's coming soon.

The resolution from Flash 10.0 and level of interaction available is truly amazing, by the way. The game has the feel of a vibrant Myst-like environment, allowing you to scroll through the scenery in a much smoother way than what you typically see in those 360 scrolling photographs. I haven't played many Video games in a while (so pardon any naiveness or ignorance in this observation), but it strikes me that the feel you can achieve from Flash (and available to willing and able Marketers) surpasses a lot of the PC-based games I've seen of late.

I have been reading through an Tapscott’s book “Grown Up Digital”. Tapscott’s great – I read his last book, Wikinomics, and he does a great job trumpeting the disruptiveness of the incoming generation. He labels them the “Net Generation” – basically people between the ages of 11-30 who have not known a world without the internet… Anyway, changing topics. I like statistics, and Tapscott’s book is full of Statistics, so I thought it would be good to compile them somewhere…

• Net Geners only watch 17.4 hours of TV a week (that still seems like a lot to me!)
• 9 in 10 American Net Geners have Internet access and their own computer at home
• They spend anywhere from 8 to 33 hours/week on the internet… Hmm – I’ll need to check this stat with my Professor’s stat
• They are master multi-taskers (this was written before the “Multi-tasking makes you stupid” article that came out recently) – while they are online, 53% listen to MP3s, 40% talk on the phone (I’m guilty of doing this – unfortunately, typing and Skyping don’t make a good combination and often kills the receivers desire to continue talking to me), 39% watch TV, and 24% do their homework (scary!) according to Harris Interactive
• When asked which medium they would do without – TV or internet – TV is the big loser in 12 countries. In the US, 77% of Net Geners would not do without the Internet
• 80% of <28 years old visit Blogs, and 40% have their own Blogs. 64% create their own digital content in 2007

Another great article I saw -- not specific to Digital Media, but something that's bothered me in all the Marketing classes I took in Business School. Here is an excellent article in attempting to measure the financial impact of not investing in your brand...

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=120896

The Cost Of NOT Branding
by Pat LaPointe, Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 1:45 PM

It's a simple formula: Recession requires more tactical spending. This year's budget = + online spend + social activity + lead generation campaigns - brand investment.


When the dollars get tight, spend shifts to more tangible, less expensive marketing programs with the promise of shorter-term returns (or at least lower costs). Not that there's anything wrong with saving a few bucks wherever you can get the job done more efficiently. But when saving money becomes the goal instead of a guideline, something big always suffers -- and it's usually the brand.

While this is an important problem within the B2C community, it is absolutely URGENT within the B2B community. B2B marketers in large numbers have seen their marketing resources cut back dramatically for anything that isn't expected to generate significant near-term flows of qualified sales leads. Why? Because absent good metrics to connect brand or longer-term asset development to actual financial value, these items were seen as strategic luxuries that could be postponed.

If I were a CFO looking for strategies to free up cash, I might have reached the same conclusion -- unless my marketing team could explain to me the cost of NOT investing in brand.

Here's an example. A B2B enterprise technology player (Company X) dropped all marketing programs except those that a) specifically promoted product advantages; or b) generated suitable numbers of qualified leads to offset the cost. After a few months, leads were on target, but the sales closing cycle was creeping up. What was originally a six- to nine-month cycle was becoming nine to 12 months. Further analysis and research among prospects and customers showed that, indeed, some of this delay was being caused by the general economic uncertainty and the need for buyers to rationalize their purchases internally with more people.

But fully 45 days of this extended cycle (estimated by sales managers) was happening because the ultimate decision-makers weren't sufficiently familiar with the strength of Company X's product/service offering. (They thought Company X made small consumer electronics, and wasn't a serious player in enterprise tech.) So the sales team had to make repeated visits and presentations just to work their way into the game to compete on feature/function/price/value.

In this case, the question of the cost of NOT branding could be measured by the increased cost of direct sales associated with NOT branding. Specifically, if Company X strategists measure the sales cost/dollar of contribution margin among accounts with strong brand consideration, versus those with little-to-no brand perceptions, they should expect to see at least a 50% difference (nine months of effort vs. six), half of which would be attributable to low levels of brand consideration. Multiply that by the percentage of prospects in the addressable market with low levels of brand perception, and you can quickly derive a rough approximation of the cost of NOT branding, expressed either in terms of additional sales headcount required to compensate for lack of branding, or in terms of sales opportunity cost to compensate for an underdeveloped brand.

Either way, it's an imminently measurable problem that would better illuminate the business case for investing in brand development.

There are many other ways to measure the cost of NOT branding, including relative margin realized and strategic segment penetration, among others. The right approach for you will depend upon your organization's key business goals.

Now, I'm NOT advocating branding as a solution in every circumstance. Nor am I a proponent of the idea that marketing should generally be spending more money, versus less. But as a tireless advocate for marketing effectiveness and efficiency, I think we too often fail to examine the business case for NOT doing something as a means of pushing past cultural and political obstacles in our management teams. Remember, there are always two options: DO something or NOT DO something. Both are definitive choices requiring their own payback analysis.

The Renaissance of Digital Media

This is an exciting time for Online Media and Marketing Analytics. 2010 is the Renaissance for Online Media according to this article, which contains an assertion that I've always found somewhat wanting in many of the traditional Web Analytics books -- that the typical metrics for measurement are more tailored towards e-commerce versus brand building... They also view this as the golden time for more micro-segmentation of audience engagements...

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121356

Audience Insights, Not Audience Measurement
by Stephen DiMarco, Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 4:30 PM

I find myself quoting Randall Rothenberg, Chairman of the IAB, more and more these days. Earlier this month, Randy proclaimed that "the Web has been colonized by the evil aliens of the direct-response planet." In saying this, he acknowledged what others have also felt for some time -- that the precision of online media is a both blessing and a curse for marketers. Left unchecked for way too long, online advertising has been overrun by tactics and success measures that are singularly suited for direct marketers and are not so effective for brand builders. Leads, click-throughs, downloads and/or page views may adequately measure a Netflix campaign, but holding Coke to the same standard just doesn't make sense.
Why is this important? Because without more proof that marketers can use online media for brand-building purposes, many of the world's largest advertisers will continue to sit on the digital sidelines. Armed with better insights, these advertisers can finally get in the game. It's also important because so many in the industry consider 2010 to be the end of the recession and therefore the renaissance of digital media. The point is, outsized growth in our market can only return once online media is shown to be an effective way to reach and engage consumers across all product categories (not just direct response).

Indeed, hope abounds. In its forecast of interactive marketing spending, Forrester reports that the industry will grow at 17% compounded annually over the next five years, compared to just 13% last year. While interactive spending represented net new dollars in most marketing budgets up until last year, going forward, nearly two-thirds of marketers indicated they will shift dollars away from direct mail and print toward digital media. But it is one thing to predict a spending increase, and something altogether different to confidently take online from 1% to 10% of your total media budget if you're a CPG marketer.

Our work with clients clearly points to increased demand for new audience insights to help them spend more effectively online. Gone are the days when simple audience measurement tools were sufficient to plan and measure campaigns. Now brands are looking to define micro-audiences based on their interests and behaviors. Likewise, publishers are looking for deep audience data that describes consumer behaviors on and off of their sites. Audience insights eclipse audience measurement, providing new views into "who" and "what impact," versus simply counting "how many."

And there is a new crop of tools that have been designed to help buyers and sellers move beyond audience measurement to tap richer audience insights. Tools like Google Ad Planner, Quantcast, Comscore Direct and Compete's new offerings with Fox Audience Network and WPP Digital's Media Innovation Group all provide new audience insights that can be used for media planning and measurement (some of these services are free). All of these tools combine consumer panels and sophisticated analytics platforms to describe consumers in ways that other approaches can't match, including rich demographics, longitudinal behaviors and interests, and offline buying behaviors. With this kind of technology under the hood, all brands will benefit from new insights to market online.

It is difficult to imagine a future where P&G, Unilever, and other large brands don't allocate more dollars to digital media. While the pace and scope of this increase remains to be seen, we do know that each 1% shift from traditional to online translates into hundreds of millions of dollars. And this is a benefit shared across marketers, publishers and consumers. By introducing measurement and metrics that are more relevant to brand advertisers, we can ensure the next phase of digital growth (and save Randy from alien abduction).

PRIZM and Wireless Marketing

Some recent clippings I've found in the Digital Marketing Analytics space... The pace of mobile innovation has truly been tremendous and it looks like analytics from traditional marketing sources like PRIZM is now finally catching up...

Noticed that Mobclix is based in Palo Alto instead of being near elegant Madison Avenue... Just another part of the Western migration of the Ad industry...!

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121993

Mobclix Teams With Nielsen On Targeting Data
by Mark Walsh, 7 hours ago

Through an alliance with The Nielsen Co., mobile ad exchange Mobclix will give mobile advertisers and publishers the ability to target specific audiences based on their lifestyles, buying habits, media preferences and openness to adopting new technologies.
Under the exclusive deal, Mobclix will resell Nielsen's PRIZM and ConneXions audience segmentation systems to mobile ad networks and developers that use its platform to buy and sell mobile advertising. The anonymous Nielsen data will be linked to anonymous user information collected by Mobclix, where more than 20 ad networks bid for placement in the mobile applications of some 6,500 publishers.

Advertisers stand to benefit through more precise targeting of mobile users.
Nielsen struck a similar deal in November with DataLogix to extend PRIZM--which groups U.S. households into 66 discrete categories based on demographic, lifestyle, shopping and media use patterns -- to online media planning and buying. The Connexions product separately tracks peoples' willingness to adopt new consumer technologies at an early stage.

The geo-demographic profiling method behind the Nielsen systems has long been a tool of traditional marketers and agencies to fine-tuning campaigns based on actual behavior. The various audience clusters are assigned marketing-friendly names like "Young Digerati," "Kids and Cul-de-sacs," and "Heart Landers."

In the mobile realm, where audiences are already fragmented by different devices, operating systems and carriers, finding ways to link that data to offline consumer habits and lifestyles could prove especially attractive to mobile advertisers and sites.

Mobclix promises that integrating the Nielsen databases will lead to an increase in CPMs of 20% to 100% for mobile application developers and publishers and improved return-on-investment for advertisers and ad networks.

"This dynamic will be highly attractive to advertisers and very effective for publishers with in-demand audiences such as the finance, utility and shopping categories," said Mobclix co-founder Krishna Subramanian, in a statement.

Started in 2008, Mobclix handles advertising across devices including the iPhone and Android-based handsets. With its foundation in iPhone app analytics, the mobile ad exchange boasts reach across 85% of iPhone and iPod touch devices.