POST DIGITAL

On: Jargon 2.0

Today Sean Mills posted a great piece that rings very true.

I keep hearing folks in the online media world, with an ominous sense of fear, say that things feel like “it’s 1999 again.” I assume all the new cleverly named digital media companies, the big acquisitions, and the increased media attention towards online advertising are part of the reason. As for me, I see stark differences. The growth is driven by blue-chip advertisers, not an irrational IPO market. Broadband and wireless connectivity is everywhere and time spent online, especially for key advertising demographics, has and will only continue to increase.

In fact, unlike that sense that the bottom could drop out at any time which crept into conversation at the ubiquitous open-bar parties around the end of the last millennium, I believe the future is bright. Studies have shown the Internet is responsible for 25 percent of overall media consumption, while Web advertising only receives 6 percent of total marketing budgets. That spread spells clear opportunity for successful online publishers in the years to come.

Read Entire Post at: http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_publishing_insider/?p=59

ON: Under 25 Eyes on Viral Video

TV watching, moviegoing and music listening all took a backseat to the internet for Americans under 25 this year. So it's no surprise the viral video has made such a strong impact on the ad industry in recent months.  Leo Burnett Worldwide, Contagious magazine and Campfire Media hosted "Wildfire: Ideas That Spread and Sell," a veritable film festival for the emerging genre at Tribeca Cinemas yesterday, featuring clips and stats about key moments in viral history from 2006.

YouTube's 'magic number'
For a traditional ad campaign, generating millions of dollars in retail sales of the product is the No. 1 goal. For a viral campaign, 1 million YouTube views is the "magic number," said Paul Kemp-Robertson, editorial director at Contagious. Smirnoff's "Tea Partay" spot, for example, garnered 1.3 million YouTube views in its first two months. The clip was a dead-on spoof of hip-hop videos, featuring an all-rapping, sweater-and-polo-clad cast of Martha's Vineyard WASPs.

It is out-of-the-box, irreverent approaches to marketing that are catching on with consumers and generating the most of what drives today's ad campaigns: word-of-mouth. "The beauty is if you understand the audience, you're guaranteed to see them responding," Mr. Kemp-Robertson said. "People enjoy content when it's speaking to them."

Success with the under-25 set
Recent examples from ABC Family's "Schooled" promo, McDonald's sundial billboard in Chicago and Australia's Lynx Jet campaign for Unilever's Jet body spray were all huge successes aimed at the under-25 set. Adidas' recent series of "Adicolor" shorts has also generated internet interest, including director Roman Coppola's animated "Red."

ON: Blackberry Perl Microsite

The Blackberry Perl site is has creative hotness written all over it. The use of video is great and the video and the site flow together as one.

Visit it at: http://www.blackberrypearl.com/

ON: ABC's Video Player

ABC tooks a stab at a flash video player that injects ads and sponsorship into free content online.

Today my tests revealed that the player could use some help.  Also the player is playing long (30sec.) ads instead of 15-second IAB standard ads.   Perhaps they have not seen the behavioral data that shows what users want.

The ads were NOT annoying… there were only three “interstitial-like” video ads that came up. In my tests (in Mozilla / MacBook) the player crashed on me on four occasions and I did find way to roll past the ads.

ABC really needs to roll this out as a BETA and allow the expert online video community to give them some feedback.

I can identify three ways to improve the player so that it integrates the ads into the content without stitching it together and asking the user to perform tasks all while recording the users behavior for future learning’s.

Why is this relevant???
ABC HAS INKED $3.6 MILLION worth of deals with 36 advertisers for its new abc.com streaming video that promotes its prime-time lineup. Media buying and selling executives equate the figure as about double the CPM viewer prices of traditional TV.

ABC released the names of 21 advertisers that have bought into abc.com's streaming video efforts, which started Sept. 22 and run through year's-end. Those advertisers include Visa, Honda, Johnson & Johnson, Red Lobster, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Sears, Remax, Nissan, Masterfoods USA, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Toyota Motor Sales, Royal Caribbean, Subway, Verizon Wireless, Verizon Online, Sprint, Walt Disney, Century 21 and JP Morgan Chase.

A couple of weeks ago, Disney-ABC Television reached an agreement with ABC affiliates. Armed with a new ABC video player, stations could sell and insert local video Internet advertising. ABC will run three 30-second spots in each hour show, and two 30-second spots in a half-hour show.

ON: Public Image Issues?

The advertising industry is once again suffering an inferiority complex which the American Association of Advertising Agencies hopes to cure with a good old dose of public relations.

Earlier this week, "Ad Age" reported 4As' chief O. Burtch Drake has hired one of the country's largest PR firms to conduct a public-image campaign to address the problem of "negative headlines" the industry has been suffering of late. Julie Thompson, co-chair of the 4A's PR committee and communications chief at Leo Burnett characterized the move as  "a refusal to keep taking lumps." 

Do you think the advertising industry needs its own PR campaign or a lobotomy?  Speak up marketers!

ON: Digital Brand Building

This week I was asked by a number of advertising execs how I could build a brand through an online expereince.  Over the last ten years the answer to that question has evolved...

I believe that building a brand is more than just creating a logo, mark or putting up a fun website. Brand building means taking the personality of a company or product and all that embodies it, to build a consumer experience from each of the elements and characteristics that made it successful to this point.

First I use Personas (and have for the last 6 years) to build the a story.  Using emotional design while expressing brand through technology has been the key to building a compelling story that a consumer will interact with.  Each time I establish a vision for a brand I work with in order to approach building powerful online brands which inspire loyalty in its consumers.

In each project I approach or pitch, I utilize the ten commandments of brand development.

1. From Consumers To People - Consumers buy, people live.
                  
2. From Product To Experience - Products fulfill needs. Experiences fulfill desires.
                  
3. From Honesty To Trust - Honesty is expected. Trust is engaging and intimate. It needs to be earned.
                  
4. From Quality To Preference - Quality for the right price is a given today. Preference creates the sale.
                  
5. From Notoriety To Aspiration - Being known does not mean that you are also loved!
                  
6. From Identity To Personality - Identity is recognition. Personality is about character and charisma!
                  
7. From Function To Feel - The functionality of a product is about practical or superficial qualities only. Sensorial design is about experiences.
                  
8. From Ubiquity To Presence - Ubiquity is seen. Emotional presence is felt.
                  
9. From Communication To Dialogue - Communication is telling. Dialogue is sharing.
                  
10. From Service To Relationship - Service is selling. Relationship is acknowledgment.               

Utilizing these high standards and understanding consumers online behaviors (instead of using the focus group of one approach) allows me to formulate an evolutionary online brand that communicates with its loyal consumer base as well as woo new consumers in a natual organic and viral fashion.

ON: The Infectious Power of a Common Agency Language

I found this article by Bart Cleveland in Advertising Age relevant and VERY true.

PR recently aired a story written by Richard Harris about a young scientist at Princeton University named Bonnie Bassler. Bassler recently made the world-changing discovery that all bacteria have a universal language that allows them to talk to one another. Like-minded bacteria use this language to team together for a common goal. For example a cholera bacteria is harmless alone, but if other cholera bacterium is around they start talking by producing a toxin that kills. I was really fascinated by this story because though we in advertising are sometimes compared to bacteria, we're not really communicating like bacteria. Many of us don't have a universal language that allows us to succeed.

The disciplines within an agency are either left-brained or right-brained. (For those who aren't familiar, the right side of the brain is the analytical side and the left side is the creative side of the brain. At least that's what left-brained scientists have told us.) One of my partners is a media planner and a math whiz. Me, I'm a creative director and hate math. If we're not communicating with a common language we can't really help each other do our best.

It's common for agencies to be run by only one side of the brain. The subordinate side usually doesn't function too well because it is relegated to a utilitarian role. History shows the most successful agencies are using both sides of their brain in concert. Are these agencies using a common language, or are they just lucky enough to have clients who give them the freedom to try revolutionary things? When I was young I used to think that places like Fallon, Chiat Day and Wieden were utopian agencies with amazingly docile clients who nodded yes to every suggestion. Remember when Chiat Day wrote the book about their first 25 years? They revealed a much different story. If not for a falling-on-the-grenade determination, Apple's 1984 spot would not have happened. The client tried to kill it at the eleventh hour, but oddly enough a determined media person saved the classic commercial from extermination. Why did a media person care enough about the creative to tell the client they couldn't pull the spot from the Super Bowl? That media person was speaking the same language as the rest of the agency. He or she knew that spot must run. It was too good to die. It would work if given the chance.

If your agency is to do great work, people in the agency must know that great work is their personal mission. Each has a different role to accomplish this goal. It may be developing the strategy, concepting the execution, or convincing the client to trust you, but each member knows the common goal is to keep great work alive. It's reason there are so many bad agencies is a simple one. If you run a small agency and you don't have a common goal from the beginning, it will be more difficult to do great work as you grow. If bacteria can communicate to achieve a common goal, certainly we should be able to do the same.

If you'd like to hear the story about Bonnie Bassler here's the link

ON: Online Video Ad Measurement

As I sit with my interactive peers this week at OMMA and the Wild Fire seminars, I realize that there are many new young and inexperienced entrants into our digital universe who are clouding up the simplicity of online reporting and measurement. 

If you haven't been on a "measurement task force" or been to at least 10 panel discussions on the subject, then you just haven't earned your stripes. For those of us who have served as interactive account directors or strategist and were beaten down in the early days due to the confusion that our offline agency counterparts caused by not understanding the power of interactivity or a simple way to measure traffic, clicks and behavioral data - rest assured that same confusion has now found itself at the forefront of every online video discussion I have had today.

I'm not a video skeptic. In fact just the opposite -I am an interactive video evangelist and early adopter. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have done wonders and shown tremendous patience on many of the OLA fronts. It's just outrageous to me, as I spearhead online video opportunities in my new position that the debate on measuring video ads has surfaced.

The digital equivalent to sliced bread called online video advertising is here to stay, and traditional media buyers as well as online buyers have to take a serious look at how much of it to include in their media plans. Here is the most common question I heard today

Do we measure online video advertising like an online ad or like a TV ad?

Many advertisers who are still steeped in the offline world just don't trust or understand online metrics, and they need to be assured that they can decipher our language.

Ironically, creating ratings points as a form of online measurement is simpler now than ever. Given the feasibility of taking an online video unit, in the form of pre/mid or post roll, and doing the math to come up with rating points would be the great equalizer. (An interesting equation would be : users viewing divided by users in the universe)

Wouldn't buying video advertising be so much simpler if indeed it were measured by GRPs (Gross Rating Points) or TRPs (Targeted Rating Point)?

For my OLA media sisters, GRP is a term used in buying time for TV ads. If an ad is shown twice, and seen by 10% of people the first time and 8% the second time, it achieves 18 GRPs. A more specific version of GRPs. In a broadcast media Gross Rating Points (GRP's) are used in media buying and media effectiveness analysis. They represent the reach or audience share of your spots or placements (a function of what stations you buy and when the ads run) times the Frequency or number of spots (advertisements) run. Each GRP represents 1%.

Over a period of time and with multiple impressions, the GRP can be 200, 500 or more. For example a GRP of 100 could mean that you bought a hundred spots with a 1% reach or that you bought 2 spots with a 50% reach.

Targeted Rating Points are a refinement of GRP's to express the reach time frequency of only your most likely prospects. For example, if you buy 150 GRP's for a television spot, but you know that only half of that audience is actually your market, then you would state your TRP as 75 to calculate your net effective buy.

As for modeling, you will probably want to use the net effective buy figure or TRP, particularly if you are including costs to calculate return and sales.

Many networks, publishers and vendors now provide the tools that make these measurements possible, with one significant difference: accountability.

Unlike offline GRPs, online numbers are not based on sample data. Online numbers are based on actual traffic, and they are even richer when combined with behavioral data and subscriber data.

Audience accountability is a significant advantage for marketers when they consider online video advertising. For instance, advertisers can count actual viewers of video when they are actively watching--not getting up for a snack. The other advantages are the ability to track completion rates and geographic data, frequency cap and targeting based on historical behavior, optimization of spots based on real-time effectiveness--where there's no need to wait for the focus group; also, with companion units, online video advertising can offer immediate user interaction.

The holy grail of media measurement has a lot of buzz, and I welcome the idea of ratings that are universally understood so we can get on with what we do best: articulating the value of our audience and helping marketers achieve their communication goals.

ON: Blog Networks Expand Rosters, Ad Offerings

Some major blog ad networks are expanding rapidly, and therefore confronting inevitable growing pains.

Federated Media recently added a new automotive category and some 20 assorted blogs, including Guy Kawasaki's, boosting the blog network's monthly impressions to "hundreds of millions," Federated's chairman, John Battelle, told ClickZ (via MarketingVox). However, the recent batch of acquisitions could be the last for a while as Federated seeks to build the infrastructure needed to support further growth.

Competitor AdBrite is also growing quickly, having recently added the 20,000th site to its network; the company plans to shortly introduce new demographic planning and campaign management tools. Though the network's roots are in blogs, it has expanded to other publisher sites, and blogs are now only a small part of the network.

Meanwhile, Henry Copeland's BlogAds network is moving to a more robust platform to accommodate even more sites. Copeland wants to expand the stable of blogs available to advertisers, and also increase the number of "mini-networks," blogs segmented by topic, such as football or politics. He also wants to arrange ad buys on political blogs by state, in time for the 2008 election.

ON: Al Gore’s Current TV Joins With Yahoo for a Video Venture

Reading my copy of the NY Times I ran across something that seems like an interesting video model and speaks to a smart Web 2.0. 1.21 model.

Yahoo said yesterday that it was creating an online video programming venture with Current TV, the media company founded by former Vice President Al Gore. The service will combine professional and user-generated video clips.  Current’s editors intend to weed out videos that are offensive or contain copyrighted materials, in an attempt to make viral videos ­ one of the hottest trends on the Internet ­ attractive to advertisers. Most clips will be preceded by a 15- or 30-second commercial ­ the first time Yahoo has included commercials with user-generated content.

The deal is notable because Mr. Gore has been an early and visible adviser to the top executives of Google, another Internet powerhouse. Indeed, Google has provided content for regular features on Current’s television network that offer peeks into people’s Internet searches.

The Google segments had been broadcast twice an hour on Current’s channel, which mainly features videos submitted by viewers. Now, Yahoo will produce a segment that will appear every hour on the hour, and the Google segments will appear every hour on the half hour.

The service, which is called the Yahoo Current Network (video.yahoo.com/currenttv), was set to begin today with four channels. One section, called Current Buzz, will feature segments related to the news. It is produced by Madeleine Smithberg, a former executive producer of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Three other channels will relate to specialized topics: travel, action sports, and cars. Over time the companies hope to add more channels.

Each channel will have one professionally produced segment each day and 8 to 10 segments contributed by users.

Amateur videographers whose clips are chosen for the Internet service will receive $100. If the clips are also broadcast on Current’s television network, the maker will receive between $500 and $1000. Videos that are not selected to be part of the Yahoo Current offering will be included on Yahoo’s broader site that includes user-contributed video.