Today we're starting a Hawthorne Direct blog -- all the news and views on integrated response advertising from our Hawthorne staff, that's fit to post. But as befits the best blogs I read, content will be unpredictable, biased, opinionated, with no guarantees of relevancy, importance or accurate spelling. Enjoy and feel free to give us your feedback. After all, it's all about interaction, right?
 
Miami eRetailer Summit - at the Intercontinental Hotel last week.  Great turnout; seemed to be the busiest, best attended "spring" ERA convention in years. Lots of electricity in the air. All educational sessions were packed. For Hawthorne, it was the most productive ERA spring meeting ever. I moderated a panel called "Earning Attention with Video." Panelists were 4 bright guys from Britecove, Ogilvy, Avenue A / Razorfish and Resource Interactive. (See the slide content I prepped to set up the topic.) Lots of activity online in the video space, as we all know. (Impossible to keep up with all that happens every day! - That's why we started the Hawthorne Videoactive Report - we digest and report all the top news about interactive video advertising; check it out at:  www.videoactivereport.com.) Despite all the online video experimenting going on (new video ad units, rollovers, adjacents, overlays, telescoping, etc.) no one, I mean no one has any idea where interactive video advertising is going.  Why do we care? Because this is the space that DRTV marketers will soon have to play in. My big question to the panelists went unanswered (at least to my satisfaction): In a world where all video consumption is "on demand," how will advertisers - especially DRTV marketers -- get viewers, response and sales?!!
 
For more on the topic, check out last week's article called "Five Tips on Online DRTV Success" in Target Marketing at: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/story/story.bsp?sid=92488&var=story
 
How to do you think DRTV will change/morph in an interactive world?  Your thoughts on my "big question" above?
 
Talk it out...