Beware of the Doghouse

JC Penney has been producing ambitious interactive campaigns for the past year. Here's the holiday 2009 effort. It's funny. Long. Very long. But funny.

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Camera Toss (The Blog)

Camera Toss (The Blog)

The coolest part of growing up in the dot com era has been the incessant invention of new forms of expression. Today, my colleague Martin Serra turned me on to Camera Tossing. It's a form of digital photography in which the photographer sets the camera on auto-timer and tosses it in the air. What happens, happens. The images are wonderful.

The blog is a great resource. But there's a wild world of camera toss images on Flickr as well.

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MediaPost Publications - iPerceptions: 'Old School' Ad Units Fare Better Than Emerging Media - 10/06/2008

"I think the biggest takeaway from the data is that the current ad formats aren't very effective," said Jonathan Levitt, iPerceptions' vice president of marketing. "Brands are going to have to start looking at things like direct content integration and product placement. There's still a place for things like banners and skyscrapers, but it's much more about brand awareness than inducing conversions."

MediaPost Publications - iPerceptions: 'Old School' Ad Units Fare Better Than Emerging Media - 10/06/2008

It's not that banner ads (or as I'd prefer we call them, display ads) are ineffective. In fact, their presence increases brand awareness, recall and perception. The problem is that agencies and clients rely on display ads for clicks, a task they're less and less capable of performing.

The problem I encounter every day is that so many marketing professionals are just embracing foundational interactive tactics - such as banners - at a time in which the interactive sector is undergoing rapid change. So you've got agency people advising their clients to jump in with a mix of tactics - banners and microsites, usually - that don't fit the business problems and marketing outcomes the clients wants to address.

The game of catch up is no fun to play.

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Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here - WSJ.com

Complete episodes of about 90% of prime-time network television shows and roughly 20% of cable shows are now available online, according to Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. There are still notable holdouts, such as Fox's "American Idol" and current seasons of HBO series like "Entourage."

Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here - WSJ.com

Here we go. Another conspiracy theory: When the economy tanks, consumers will cut cable and keep broadband. Most of their favorite shows are online already anyway. Besides, we can't survive without Facebook. Now here comes a far-fetched (but eminently possible) prediction -- once the bad economy doesn't let up, consumers cut broadband and keep their mobile contracts. Why? We can't survive without Facebook. But we've got it on our phones already anyway.

In sum, the bad economy will accelerate the convergence. Discuss.

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Porn passed over as Web users become social

Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.

Porn passed over as Web users become social: author | Technology | Internet | Reuters

Pop the cork and pass the bubbly. I suppose it's safe to say the Web 2.0 era has officially arrived. When they write the history books, Web 1.0 will be remembered for spam, porn and phishing schemes. Yuck. With social media taking the Web 2.0 crown, what does Web 3.0 portend? Video? *.* on Demand?

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How and Why Adults and Youth Share... | Reuters

Adults Depend on Email as Source of Shared Content; Younger Generation Embraces Instant Messaging, Social Networking, Video Sharing and Text Messaging

New Independent Study Highlights Differences in How and Why Adults and Youth Share... | Reuters

Okay. Now this is getting to be way too obvious. There IS a digital generation gap.

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Bob Garfield: Your Data With Destiny

Assume that, in the near future, connections between marketers and consumers will not be principally forged via display advertising but will be otherwise cultivated online. Assume that technology will offer more and more highly refined means for the marketer to learn about the consumer and the consumer to enjoy a real benefit in exchange -- search and widgets being exhibits A and B.

Thank you for so stipulating. But if the lingua franca of our online future is indeed personal information, where will that come from?

Your Data With Destiny - Advertising Age - Digital

I assume most people who see this will be reading Garfield's Ad Age column. That's why I don't repost it here. But every now and then, Bob's got something big and important to say. Today's column fits that bill.

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Current TV to broadcast `tweets' during debates - Yahoo! News

During the debates, the network bent on viewer-created content will broadcast Twitter messages — or "tweets" — from viewers. In close to real time, Current will display comments on the screen while Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama face off.

Current TV to broadcast `tweets' during debates - Yahoo! News

Didn't see this one coming ...

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Digital Entertainment Consortium Nears Tipping Point

How do you make digital entertainment more entertaining? A sprawling consortium of Hollywood content providers, consumer electronics companies, and Internet players said on Sept. 12 that its members are planning to develop a standard that will let consumers buy movies and other digital content once and play them almost anywhere, on any type of device, without the onerous restrictions that have hobbled the growth of digital downloads.

The consortium is called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). Its members have been working since May to create rules that will let consumers share their purchased content on a number of devices in the home, or stream them over the Internet to laptops, cell phones, or other electronic gear. "No matter where you are in the world, if you previously purchased Spider-Man 3, you should be able to access Spider-Man and stream it," Mitch Singer, the group's president, said in an interview.

BusinessWeek: Digital Content Wherever You Want It

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3M Beats Everyone to the Micro Projector Business | Popular Science

3M Beats Everyone to the Micro Projector Business | Popular Science

Why get excited over a micro-sized projector? Well it's a portable television - with a cable to our iPod Touch or iPhone (or Zune, I suppose).

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Will New Media Save Television Ads? - Mashable

So what might be a strategy going forward? As an avid watcher of television, particularly political news, complex dramas, and reality shows, I could imagine many scenarios in which incentives are created to watch shows in real time – viewers pose questions for the guest, guide alternative dramatic scenes, or decide what challenge the players have to perform. How cool would it be to watch Donald Trump, Sr. using Twitter on a BlackBerry in the middle of the live Apprentice finale? And the advertising underbelly is that you are statistically more likely to purchase paper towels, basketball sneakers, or a dream vacation cruise.

Will New Media Save Television Ads? - Mashable

What a great, original thought. In order to remain competitive in an increasingly time-shifted environment, TV content developers and the networks themselves will adapt. Of course they will. The audience can be given incentives to watch live. Only some formats will stick. But it's adaptation that drives innovation. Or vice versa.

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TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

TV advertising is poised to change dramatically over the next decade, embracing the kind of targeting and user control already common on the Web, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
 
Forrester lays out a decade-long evolution that will ultimately result in most programming delivered on-demand with targeted ad messages based on location and behavior, along with community functions.
 
This "Personal TV," as Forrester calls it, would also deliver a Web-like experience for consumers, with a portal-like menu of programming options and search functions.

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

More evidence for one of my favorite media conspiracy theories -- "mass" media out of home while "personal" media moves indoors.

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Quote of the Day

Generally speaking, the ad agencies continue to demonstrate an unconscionable level of ignorance toward the power of search. Yes, there are a few brave souls championing search as the linchpin of tomorrow’s marketing successes (several write for MediaPost), but they’re lonely voices in a wilderness whose inhabitants still speak in the outdated acronyms of Gross Rating Points and think that online advertising means banners that nobody clicks on.

Search Insider » Blog Archive » No Time For Gloom Or Doom!

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Content is Content. But Can Content Replace Advertising?

From the Wall Street Journal: "...Model.Live tracks three models as they navigate casting calls, catwalks and airports for fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris. The first of 12 eight-minute episodes will debut Aug. 19 on-demand on Vogue.tv, a site that runs advertiser-sponsored videos and allows consumers to buy the featured products."

Vogue Models a New Reality Series - WSJ.com

Content like this is beginning to prove that online "shows" can attract a verifiable and sizable audience. The question remains if advertisers should strive to produce this kind of content -- as Holiday Inn Express has recently begun doing -- or just sponsor it. Should it be scripted like LonelyGirl15 and Quarterlife? Unscripted seems to be the more popular format, at least so far.

At least advertisers and content producers have a common goal. They both want to land a big audience. Though it appears the content producers are making most of the investment in R&D.

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Personal Web Page as Social Necessity

Plenty of people have personal Web pages. But are we reaching the point where you need one?

The answer is still "no" -- but that "no" is no longer quite so firm as it used to be. And sometimes that hesitation is a sign that the wheels of social change are starting to turn -- that "no" will turn into "maybe" and then from there move quickly to "yes" and then finally to "it's weird that you don't." If you're a thirtysomething, you've seen answering machines, voice mail, email addresses and cellphones complete the journey from curiosities to perceived necessities, just as our elders saw the same thing happen with TVs and phones.

Real Time - WSJ.com

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Big-name brands booking ads on Facebook

With millions of users riveted to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, big-name brands are venturing into the newly charted territory of social media advertising, seeking to unravel the real opportunities from the flurry of hype."They are reading about it a lot, their children are using it," said Ian Schafer, CEO and founder of Deep Focus, an ad agency that created Facebook campaigns for HBO, Coca-Cola and New Line Cinema. "And they are finding that the social media networks are too big to ignore."

Big-name brands booking ads on Facebook

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About Us | Peer39* Semantic Advertising Solutions

Based on natural language processing and machine learning, Peer39's patented algorithms understand page meaning and sentiment, and deliver the most relevant and effective brand safe display and text advertising.

About Us | Peer39* Semantic Advertising Solutions

Do yourself a favor and re-read that sentence a couple more times. Let me try to translate: the "patented algorithms" are computer program calculations that "understand page meaning and sentiment" -- literally reading the content and understanding it -- by using "natural language processing" and "machine learning" -- so the computer program processes language the same way our brains do, and the computer gets smarter, better and more accurate as it goes along.

This isn't science fiction. Get your head out of the sand. It's a wonderful, phenomenal breakthrough in being able to target advertising messages to people who are receptive to the offer in the moment.

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Springwise: Zero cents per minute: 100,000 takers so far

Blyk targets 16- to 24-year-olds with its free mobile phone service, which includes 217 texts and 43 minutes every month. In exchange, of course, they get advertising—up to 6 messages sent to their phones each day. Britain's youth don't seem to mind, though—Blyk reached that 100,000-member target six months ahead of schedule. Response rates to the ads in question have also achieved a whopping average of 29 percent—far surpassing the norm, which tends to hover in the single digits.

Springwise: Zero cents per minute: 100,000 takers so far

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Shops Strive for a New Formula

Without interactive experts to bring ideas to life, he adds, the big ideas are like "a fart in the wind."

Shops Strive for a New Formula

Now that's the quote of the decade!

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Vint Cerf: Video streaming to give way to downloading | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

Honestly, this isn't immediately comprehensible to me. I need to read more. So, join me will you?

Cerf expects that video will be downloaded rather than streamed over time. With gigabit for second speed, users could download an hour of video in 16 seconds. "It's like the iPod--you can download music faster than you can listen to it," he said. Cerf also said that broadcasting, rather than downloading a separate copy to every user, is a good delivery model, and that users will have more control over which ads to watch.

Vint Cerf: Video streaming to give way to downloading | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

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