Videoactive
AR Continues to Make Inroads in Magazine Publishing
Summary: German magazine Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s 33rd issue uses augmented reality throughout the book, giving users new multimedia content that can be accessed by a smartphone. AR provider Metaio says SZ, the magazine supplement of Germany's top newspaper, is the first publication to make an entire issue available with mobile augmented reality. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).
People, Other Pubs Now Free on the iPad. So How Will They Make Money?
Summary: After months of an inexplicable hold up, magazine publishers starting with People magazine, will be able to offer their publications free on the iPad to magazine subscribers. Up until now, the iPad versions of People, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune have cost the same as the newsstand price. (via Fortune). Other magazines will be adopting this pricing structure within the next month.
What Facebook 'Places' Means for Marketers and Developers
Summary: If you're like me you probably watched and are digesting the Facebook Places announcement. I've had some time to check it out and to read the documentation and what follows is a brief perspective from my point of view.
The Apps Have It, the Browsers Don’t
Summary:
Wired’s fascinating September cover story proclaims that the web is dead, but lo, the Internet is alive and well. Internet users are just increasingly shunning their browsers for apps, shifting the way online content is consumed and likely how advertisers approach consumers.
SNL Kagan Analysis Shows U.S. Multichannel Market Declines for First Time in History
Summary: A new SNL Kagan analysis reveals that the U.S. multichannel market delivered its worst performance on record in the second quarter, losing 216,000 customers compared to a 378,000 gain in the same period last year.
SNL Kagan data shows that full subscriber counts for cable, DBS and telco video dropped to 100.1 million in the second quarter. Cable suffered its worst quarterly video loss to date, plunging by 711,000 subscribers, with six of the eight MSOs reporting their worst quarterly video losses as well. DBS and telco managed to add 81,000 and 414,000 subscribers, respectively.
Android Rules for Marketers - But Which Android?
Summary:
Online ad network Chitika has looked at ad click rates across its network, comparing both iPhone and Android. It came to the conclusion that Android users are far more valuable than iPhone users as they clicked on ads 81% more often.
Why Apple's iTV Will Change Everything
Summary:
The rumor: Apple will be releasing a revamped/renamed version of their 'Apple TV' set-top box, called 'iTV'. The box will run the Apple iOS (same as the iPhone/iPad), and be priced around $99.
Why will this change everything?
Cisco Makes Another Buy In Online Video Space
Summary: Acknowledging that online video is officially big business, Cisco has agreed to buy online video content manager, ExtendMedia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Boston-based ExtendMedia had previously raised about $33 million in venture capital.
Groupon Preps for More National Marketers After $11 Million Gap Promo
Summary: It looks like Groupon will be topping retailers' holiday wish lists. For Groupon, there's been a flood of publicity. In an average week the company adds about 500,000 subscribers. In the week after the Gap promotion, it added 750,000 subscribers. The company is growing at a dizzying pace.
Station Finder Patent Filed
Lucid Commerce has filed a Patent Application relating to television targeting. The Patent application was filed as U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/372,974 Method and System for Automatically Targeting Ads to Television Media using Demographic Similarity. Lucid Commerce has also claimed trade-mark on the term “Station Finder”.
U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/372,974
METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY TARGETING ADS
TO TELEVISION MEDIA USING DEMOGRAPHIC SIMILARITY
Cross-Channel Effects: Are they big enough to worry about?
Television tends to create conversions on other channels. Is this anything to get worried about?
Below is a little diagram from one anonymous retailer showing product sales in each channel due to television commercials. The television commercials included a 1-800 toll free number, web URL, and also mentioned that the product could be purchased at retail stores. The sales in each channel due to TV were calculated by comparing experimental groups to controls, calculating difference in lift between the two, and then converting the lifts into actual number of sales. The method is unusual because it is able to quantify the difference between groups which translates directly into the effect from television commercials. (we’ve also applied for a patent on the technique).
The ittybitty shopping cart represents phone orders and is drawn to scale. Of the sales being generated from television, we found that for every 1 conversion occurring on the phone, there are another 3.7 occurring on the web and 5.2 on retail.
Optimizing a television campaign based on just telephone orders – which is kind of the “state of the art” in Direct Response TV (DRTV) – would therefore leave this retailer blind to the 9x of conversions that are occurring on other channels. I don’t think any marketer would get excited about “nailing” the ittybitty cart! DRTV is a major advance and the future of TV will increasingly use these techniques. However it relies on sometimes imperfect consumer recall and is not capable of measuring all of the activity that is happening across channels – customers still type in generic URLs, use search engines, and visit retail stores. Because these cross-channel conversions are extremely large, it is imperative that marketers deploy instrumentation to quantify these effects and optimize media with full knowledge of its behavior across channels.
TV Targeting: Ready, Fire, Aim
Early in my career I had the pleasure of working with Mike Galgon, co-founder of online media agency Avenue A. Mike once described for me the changes that the Internet would bring to the traditional ways of planning and buying ad space. He explained that the traditional media planning method was a ready, aim, fire process. He compared this to an archer who had a single arrow and was tasked with hitting the bullseye of a target that was obscured by a curtain. Since the archer cannot see the target and will not get visual confirmation that her arrow hit the mark, she will spend a significant amount of her time and energy aiming. In the advertising world this aiming translates to conducting primary and secondary research, focus groups, competitive analysis and the like – anything to help deduce the likely location of the bullseye. Only then would she let fly her arrow. The fact that she is getting no immediate feedback means that she will logically continue to fire at the spot in the curtain that all of her aiming deduced was the hiding the bullseye.
Mike then went on to contrast this to the world where the archer had many arrows and the target was not obscured, but rather in plain sight. In this scenario where arrows are plentiful (read: cheap) and she can immediately see where her arrow hit in relation to the bullseye (rapid and rich feedback loop) the optimal approach is ready, fire, aim. Aim as best you can quickly and then fire your arrows in rapid succession making the necessary adjustments to continuously increase your proximity to the bullseye. This indeed came to be one of the fundamental ways that online advertising differed from traditional – it’s emphasis on testing and rapid optimization.
The television is in the throws of a transition from the traditional ready, aim, fire to the more dynamic world of ready, fire, aim. As the television media space continues to fragment and the feedback loop becomes richer and more timely this will only accelerate.
At first blush, this transition may seem to diminish the importance of intelligent targeting up front. This is not the case. Instead it adds the additional requirement of media planners and analysts to continuously measure, analyze and optimize each plan. Targeting places the first arrow as near the bullseye as possible, reducing the number of adjustments (read: waste) necessary to be placing all of your arrows in the bullseye.
Responsibility in Direct Response Advertising
Having just read Delivering Happiness, the new book by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, I am struck by the contrast between the customer care standards put forth by Tony and those I’ve witnessed in and around the DRTV industry.
Marketers find success in many different ways. Some find profits by simply filling an existing and unmet need. The mere existence of their product or service, combined with awareness and positioning leads to success. Other marketers must stimulate the dreams and aspirations of their target consumers to generate sufficient demand. The desire to look better, feel better, earn more, find love or simply have more free time drives their customers to purchase. I believe that marketers who tread into this field of dreams should recognize that along with the potential spoils, a good measure of responsibility is incumbent upon them to deliver on these promises.
Two Examples:
Need Fulfillment: If the napkins I purchase don’t deliver on the promise of superior durability and absorbency, I am not emotionally broken up about it. While I certainly feel disappointed, possibly a bit swindled, I change my future purchase decisions and move on with my life.
Field of Dreams: In contrast, if after years of struggling with my weight, my complexion or hair loss, my hope is renewed by emotionally charged testimonials that I too can finally look and feel great by subscribing to the latest solution. This product better deliver. Otherwise I am in a very different emotional state. Despair may not begin to describe it. That said, if this bold promise is delivered upon, it’s not a product, it’s a revelation!
The point I am making here is that the napkin manufacturer and the weight loss solution provider have taken on very different levels of responsibility in the consumers’ mind.
“You mess with my dreams, you better be able to deliver.” -Your Customer
In the direct response business the burden of this added responsibility is shared by the product designers and the customer service department. The product should be thoughtfully and rigorously designed to maximize its probability of delivering the promised results. The customer service department should help those customers get the promised result or they must do what is necessary to make it right.
Too often in direct response I have come across a grossly inadequate handling of this responsibility to customers. Undelivered promises hurt us all. Let’s take the advise of Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Tony Hsieh (Zappos) and obsess about our customers. Less “save the sale” and more “thrill the customer”. It’s worked for them and it can work for us.
Why the San Fran Chronicle Is Running Demand Media Content
Summary:
Two Hearst newspapers' websites have gone live with new sections from Demand Media, one of the content-generation companies that tap thousands of freelancers to generate countless articles.
Some observers argue that these so-called content farms are winning web traffic and ad revenue away from traditional publishers without matching the quality that traditional newsrooms provide.
As Display Ads Take off on Facebook, Don't Discount SEO
Summary:
Facebook's ad traffic is expected to post phenomenal growth - even as its ad prices rise, according to comments made by the company's COO Sheryl Sandberg. Advertisers have taken advantage of the stable pricing, with some of Facebook's biggest advertisers boosting spending 10-fold and a few increasing spending by as much as 20-fold or more, Sandberg told Bloomberg. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).
Facebook Launching Live Video Channel
Summary:
As if Facebook wasn’t live enough, the top social net recently debuted Facebook Live — a live video streaming channel. Along with special celebrity-oriented videos, the live video channel will be used for official Facebook announcements, press events, live chats with Facebook engineers and live streaming of its developer conference, f8, ReadWriteWeb reports.
Revamped Ad System Brings in Cheese for StumbleUpon
Summary:
StumbleUpon CEO and cofounder Garrett Camp recently talked about the social discovery site’s revamped ad system.
About six months on, the site reports that on top of a 20% growth in users, the year-over-year ad inclusion rate has doubled, with about 2,000 active monthly customers (a 20% increase) running around 3,000 campaigns daily.
Qoof Makes Rich Media App-tacular
Summary:
Since the iAd announcement, the advertising world has been delighted by the idea of apps within apps. Video tech company Qoof is the latest to offer a similar solution — apps within rich media.
enableTV Leverages New Relationship with S3 Group to Launch InterActive TV Application Center
Summary:
enableTV, the interactive TV software and services that in 2008 was spun out of Vidiom Systems by Vidiom founder, Tim Wahlers (see the article published on itvt.com, September 29th, 2008), announced its InterActive TV Application Center, which it bills as a "fully integrated solution providing a robust interactive application delivery and test system."
Rachael Ray Adds to iPhone Foodie Apps
Summary:
Rachael Ray, the best-selling cookbook author and TV personality, is expanding her brand in the digital arena with a new iPhone app and Twitter account.
The app, called Tasty Bytes, is similar to the growing number of foodie and celebrity chef apps in that it has a range of tools designed helps users get a meal from the grocery store to the table - besides, of course, the obligatory signature recipes.
