ad:techSF07

April 30, 2007

Ad:Tech San Francisco '07 Coverage Recap

I’m back, and this time for more than a week at a time. Huzzah!

Hopefully, you got a little something out of our Ad:Tech coverage last week. We covered 17 sessions for SES NY and now another 17 sessions for Ad:Tech San Francisco. Someone is going to start having nightmares about the number 17 and that person is me. But I’ll save my issues for my therapist. Instead, you get all the sessions we covered in a somewhat organized fashion.

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Bonus Riddle: How many search engine optimization legends and well-groomed SEO analysts does it take to open the gas panel on a rental car?

Can’t figure it out? It’s a trick question.

The real answer is neither ~~Bruce Clay~~ the SEO legend nor ~~Robert Esparza~~ the highly-groomed SEO analyst will be able to figure out it. One will spend 15 minutes inside the car looking for the lever, while the other furiously digs through the users manual. Only the snarky blogger will have enough common sense to walk around the side of the car and open it herself.

(Don’t fire me, Bruce. It was funny.)

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/30/07 at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2007

SEO: Advanced Q&A

We did it. We’ve once again made it to the final session of another jam packed show. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, we’ve finally reached an Ad:Tech session on search engine optimization, and Bruce is moderating it. Finally, I get to listen to a conversation I actually understand, all while proving to Bruce that I really do work while him and the rest of the Bruce Clay gang are in the booth. I swear they think I go back to the hotel and nap while they’re talking to clients and explaining our services. I’m busy; I swear it!

But anyway, here we are at the SEO: Advanced Q&A session. Bruce “Lisa’s Not Done Until I Say So” Clay is moderating with speakers Aaron D’Souza (Google) and Sandor Marik (CondeNet) both fighting for his attention, I mean presenting.

Okay, let’s get to it.

Bruce starts off explaining that this session is on SEO, search engine optimization. (I love that he defines SEO for the non-geeks in the room.) This is the first time Ad:Tech has tried a panel that is geared towards Q&A. This session will focus on three different SEO perspectives – a company (Bruce), an engine (Aaron) and an end user/large publisher (Sandor). Bruce goes down the line and introduces the panel members. For some reason I don’t get a shout out. Whatever, Bruce.

Bruce says the panelists have opted for audience-driven content. The panel will make short comments in things that impact search engine optimization. But the real intent is to let the audience ask their questions. He’s so generous, our Bruce.

The first topic Bruce touches on is spiderability. Bruce says your site absolutely has to be spiderable. He’s a big supporter of site maps.

For a search engines perspective, Aaron says that making sure they have access to a Web site is a really big problem. There are sites where it’s incredibly hard to find pages because they don’t have links and robots are bred to follow links. Aaron mentions the new Sitemaps.org that help site owners show the engines where the content is on their Web sites. Aaron calls it “a great thing” -- it makes it easier for the search engine spiders to find these pages. Site owners don’t have to worry about links not being present or about deep pages not being crawled.

Sandor says from the publisher's perspective Flash is one of the biggest challenges. For those just tuning in, the search engines can’t read Flash. Shocking, I know. There are many techniques to get around it but you have to have the knowledge on how to implement Flash in a search engine friendly way. You don’t want to throw away valuable content.

Next the panelists move on to the topic of duplicate content.

Bruce says that the Bruce Clay Web site gets stolen about two times a week and I giggle. It really does. He talks about clients who write articles, offer them through syndication, and then before you know it the syndication version outranks the original content. This is bad. He says there are ways around duplicate content but it is something you’re going to have to contend with. It’s hard for the engines to identify the originator of the content.

Aaron says when Google looks at duplicate content in the index, they try to group it into one big cluster so they can then pick out the most relevant version. The advent of things like RSS has made it much more difficult for the engines to take a time-based approach to say that Person A was the person who first published the content. Someone can get your content before the engines have indexed either copy. However, if your site has historically been the producer of original content, it is easier for the engines to identify (read: guess) that your site was probably first to publish.

There are both tools and companies that can help with monitoring for duplicate content, says Sandor. A site’s biggest challenge is that you don’t know if your content has been stolen or reproduced. Tools can help you find out.

If you’re producing original content, you really have to pay attention to duplicate content. Content is what drives your traffic. Since the algorithms are complicated, it’s quite likely that good content that ends up on a different site may outrank you in the engines. Sandor says it’s definitively top of mind for him.

Bruce says creates Google Alerts to monitor for duplicate content. Throw a few sentences of popular pages into an alert and each time another site uses that content you’ll get a URL to the offending site. Then you can track down that person and poke them with sharp sticks. Huzzah!

Next topic – Linking strategies.

Bruce identifies the three kinds of links: Inbound links (when others link to you), Interior links (when you link to yourself), and External links (you link to other experts). He says you need all three kinds of links to be accepted and well-ranked in the search engines. One by itself won’t do it. This is quite important.

Aaron thinks of linking as another signal to help them determine where pages fall in the rankings. There are so many different way of linking that its use of a signal can vary with time. It’s like with any other signal -- if the use of that signal starts to be corrupted then its importance diminishes. In other words: stop spamming, you cheats!

Sandor says figuring out the best interlinking strategy is a complex question. The considerations are somewhat internal.

For example, every page of Sandor’s site includes a link to all of their other Web sites. This is an internal branding policy that they think helps users discover their other properties. There have been lots of discussions about whether this hurts them from a search engines perspective. This is something they have to think about when they’re thinking with their SEO hat.

Next topic – Spam.

Bruce says he runs into constant fights with clients over spam. (I’ve seen these fights. Everyone wears sumo suits.) He says that sometimes BC will make edits to a site, send that info to the clients, and the webmaster will change our considerations to “improve” them and inadvertently end up spamming. Bruce says that some of that has to do with the way people learn to do search engine optimization in general. They pick up spam by listening to how other people do SEO. Spam just creeps in there. He uses the telephone example where you tell someone something, they pass it down, and along the line the message changes drastically.

Bruce says that best practices are the way to go. Over the past 11 years, the spam rules have changes over 80 million times. The biggest problem we face is that a lot of people implement things not knowing its spam. They’re innocent errors but they’re clear violations of best practices. Spam has to be paid attention to.

Aaron says when he first joined Google he entered into Matt Cutts’ spam group (hi, Matt!). Aaron lies and says that working with Matt has been fun. When people ask him what’s the difference between spam and a bad site, he says he knows spam when he sees it. It’s people who are doing things not because they are misinformed but because they’re evil. For example, JavaScript redirects -- that’s not being misinformed, that’s evil. These are things Google classifies as spam and they’ll penalize you for that.

Aaron lets us know that Google has started to integrate more info about when and why your site has been penalized into the Webmaster Console. When they think a site may have been hacked, they’ll drop an email to your webmaster. They’re trying to increase the amount of information.

Sandor says that none of his sites have been banned but that he has found questionable techniques even on his site. Sometimes people who work on sites are not well informed and they enter into shady areas. It’s difficult to know which techniques are really going to get you banned and what you can get away with. He recounts a funny story about when he found a section of one of his pages that was invisible to the engines. If you looked at the source code it said “hidden text for SEO” in the comment section. Heh! This was done by an uninformed developer.

If you have a good site with good content, you don’t need the spammy techniques. It may be tempting at times to spam, but for long-term results, it’s worth it to go the white hat route. Let’s hear it for the good guys!

Next topic – Social, behavioral and local issues

Bruce asks how many sites are seeing Wikipedia outrank them for their keywords. Lot of people raise their hand and I begin growling and foaming at the mouth. [Down, girl. --Susan]

Bruce says it’s just a matter of time before the engines understand behavioral factors. They’ll know when you search for “java” if you’re looking for coffee or the programming language (or the island! Vacation, anyone?) What we’re running into now is that future buyers (people who are now 15, 16 years old) don’t see most of the traditional advertising. They’re not setting brands in their brain. They don’t see who you are. Bruce looks at it as a layer of ice that’s melting from the bottom up. Five years from now you’ll find that your brand has melted away or eroding. You need to play in the social space so that future buyers get your brand in their brain.

Bruce talks about the number of traffic we get from sites like del.icio.us or StumbleUpon. He says lots of his larger clients have staff on board solely for social networking.

Aaron says the new marketing technique will be satisfying user intent. If you have content but don’t know how to satisfy the users need, you have nothing. Being able to understand users’ intentions is going to become really important. That’s why social is exciting – we’re getting implicit signals from the users themselves about what they think is important content. Use that.

Sandor says social is a very interesting topic for publishers. It used to be that users were just an audience, now they’re becoming contributors. We need to find a balance for how to use this new content without letting it destroy the brand. An article with 200 comments is better content than the same article without the comments. It shows Google and the engines that this is interesting content.

From here, Bruce opens the session up to user questions. He says to speak loudly. Yeah, yeah, do that.

The first question-poser says that to get a site to rank you have to pick a keyword and build content around it. He’s working on a piece of content that focuses on several keywords and he wants to know how to get that piece to rank for multiple targeted keywords?

Bruce says it’s possible to get many keywords ranked on a page. The interconnectivity, how smart you construct your titles, etc, will help you to rank one page for several keywords. It’s about how that page is connected to other content on your site. Do you focus on these keywords or are you vague about everything?

Aaron says to look at the other pages ranking for your terms and ask yourself why your page should displace that page.

Another audience member asks Bruce if he feels there is corruption in the engines’ results?

Bruce says there’s no reason for the engines to risk their stature, position and reputation to help one site rank in the search results. That is the dumbest thing any search engine can do. Heh. He does believe results can be biased by gaming the algorithm. That’s what spam is all about. There was a case a few years ago when Yahoo admitted their algorithm was flawed and they began hard coding the top ten search results for certain queries. He doesn’t see that today. He doesn’t think the engines are fixing the results.

And that’s it. Lots of optimization knowledge covered in this session. My poor baby fingers.

On an unrelated side note, I want to say that hopefully Susan has treated you all to a Friday Recap by now. If not, I sincerely apologize for her suckiness. You’ve worked hard all week and you deserve a reward. If the girl hasn’t delivered, I give you my full permission to toilet paper Susan’s desk and steal her action figures. (Please don’t touch the stuff on my desk. I’ve been good). Thanks for tuning in to read the Ad:Tech coverage this week and I’ll see you on Monday when we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

[Lisa, today is Thursday. Stop threatening me with your loyal hordes and go take a nap. Folks, I promise there will be a pathetic imitation of Lisa's usual Friday recap tomorrow. There may even be puppies. --Susan]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 5:40 PM | Comments (3)

Tactical Search: Local and Mobile Search Engines

Stay with me, friends. It’s time for this afternoon’s Local and Mobile Search Engines session with moderator Kevin Ryan (Motivity Marketing) and speakers David Herscott (MEA Digital), Warren Kay (Yahoo! Search Marketing) and Ian Leuchars (24/7 Real Media).

Kevin starts with two math equations. He states:

Maps + Mobile phones = Dollars
Brands + Mobile devices = Dollars

That’s math? Apparently.

David says there are two issues with mobile. First, the user experience has been less than satisfactory, and second, the number of handsets that are mobile enabled is limited.

Warren says the early experience on the mobile device was simply a reflection of what was being delivered on the PC. Advertisers thought they could just export what they had developed for the PC Web and use it on mobile. However, like with most things, repackaged goods don’t work. Mobile is vastly different than the PC. The intent is different. On the PC, consumers are in a comfortable environment doing research. On mobile, they’re either at a destination or going to a destination. They need quick information.

Warren says Yahoo has a lot of assets that are valuable to the mobile phone. /plug.

Kevin asks if mobile is very category specific? Who are the early adopters and advertisers? What are you really doing with the advertisers?

Yahoo has two different ad models – a traditional graphical ad in its OneSearch and a traditional sponsored search ad. Is Yahoo ever going to break away from the “traditional” stuff and create something mobile specific? Warren says Yahoo’s seeing a lot of good momentum. They don’t expect a huge jump in ’07 but they see the light at the end of the tunnel, maybe in 2008. They’re getting advertisers like Lexus, Pepsi, Orbitz, choice hotels, etc. on board. Volume is low, but conversions are high.

On the marketing side, you need to really understand what a consumer is trying to do. They’re on a mission. If they had time to browse, they’d wait until they were near a PC and do it then. You need to figure out how to help them and give them a good user experience. Users use mobile as a conduit to start a conversation.

David says that whenever there is a new advertising medium, there are three types of early adopters: Big brands trying to test the waters, direct response folks on the hunt for ROI, and the porn folks. Heh, Kevin thanks David for bringing the conversation to a higher level. Apparently, porn generates 50 percent of mobile search. Good heavens people, adopt a kitten. (I have two if you want them.)

Kevin states that local search represents 10 to 30 percent of all queries. What are the barriers to entry for publishers getting into the space and for advertisers?

David throws more stats at us saying that 90 percent of the dollars poured into local search are from the small advertisers. What’s the opportunity for brands? Large brands need to decide how much they want to spend on this new opportunity. Okay. If I’m Brand A how do I know what my mobile or local budget should look like?

The hardest one is mobile, says Ian. One of the things you can do is simply to get started and use the data about your business to build a business plan. Get going by running one mobile-friendly ad. Use it to see what traffic is coming from mobile and what the queries looks like. Don’t spend a lot of money to get started. Don’t do a lot of desktop research. Dive in.

More stats: Warren says 1 percent of search budgets should be used for mobile. Make it an add-on to your existing campaign. Don’t create a separate campaign. It doesn’t make sense at this point in the game. You just want to be present and see what’s going on.

How are you measuring success?

Warren says it’s not about sales or ROI. It’s about consumer experience. We’re at the point where we’re just learning and testing.

To David, mobile is still early adopter, where local search is early majority. There’s actually earned metrics in local and you can spend more money. That opportunity is more real. Mobile’s not just about research; it’s really about testing to see what works.

To get excited about the mobile opportunity you have to look at how many mobile devices are out there. An amazing number of people have access to the mobile Web. He doesn’t know when mobile will hit critical mass, but he thinks advertisers need to find out how to provide relevant material. The opportunity is certainly there.

One of the things moving us forward in mobile is the Yahoo product offering, says Kevin. David says without products like that the question is not how many handsets are out there but how many new handsets are out there. There are a lot of old devices being used by people who can’t send a text message. These people are not mobile enabled.

Kevin shares that he’s a brand whore for Oakley and asks David about the testing they’re currently doing.

David says Oakley has a number of clients asking about both mobile and local. The bottom line is right now is how does local make sense for an advertiser? It makes sense in a number of ways. For a manufacturer not selling direct, it’s a stretch to see where local fits in. There are a lot of people doing searches for “golf equipment [city]”. That’s where the opportunity is. You can find retail locations. There’s clearly money to be spent there for advertisers.

In local search, you have to show the consumer the nearest outlet. You can give them directions to Starbucks and have them pass 3 on the way to get there. It’s an inclusion game. All they need to do is make sure the data is accurate on the Web. Companies like Yahoo work very hard to make that content available. You have to be comprehensive.

Warren: Do you think the big monetization opportunity for mobile is getting people to call? Does it have to be clicks?

Ian says no. The challenge for a marketer is that the consumer is way down on the purchasing cycle. If you’re searching for Borders, Barnes and Nobles is out of the conversation. There’s virtually no way for them to steal that conversion. However, if a user searches for “book store,” they have a chance.

Ian says advertisers should be cherishing these early mobile users and using them to learn what they want to know about the environment. They’re fantastic and definitely worth paying for. The data is valuable.

David talks about Google’s free 411 service and other similar services.

When we talk to our marketers about pay per call, says Warren, they look at us funny because we’ve been talking about the cost effectiveness of driving people to their Web site but you can’t always click. Sometimes users need to call.

You don’t have to spend a tremendous amount of money to start testing mobile and local. There are tons of opportunities. Every other week we have some new product to try.

David says one of the biggest challenges for agencies and advertisers is that the markets are so fractured. With traditional media there’s been a proliferation with the number of options but advertisers have more tools to manage.

Warren argues that local is no longer a nascent media. It’s a $3.5 billion industry and only makes up 10 percent of online ad spent.

Someone in the audience asks if the iPhone will change the world.

David says he hasn’t demoed it yet but he thinks it will be interesting to see what happens. It may speed up adoption but it probably won’t move the needle too far.

Kevin summarizes the session saying for mobile and local, metrics = tough, volume = not a lot. Ah, more math.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 4:36 PM | Comments (0)

Pay Per Click Strategies

It’s time to learn about pay per click. I’m excited, really, I am. Don’t I look sound excited? I heart pay per click campaigns.

Dana Todd (SiteLab, SEMPO) is moderating this afternoon’s session which features speakers Daina Middleton (Hewlett-Packard) and Mike Solomon (CJ Search). I have to admit. It’s very nice to see Dana Todd. It helps me feel like I’m at home hanging with the search folk instead of being surrounded by all these neurotic fast-talking advertising crazies. There’s not nearly enough geek in this room or at this conference.

Dana starts off by saying we’re only talking about paid search in here so if you want to know about organic, that’s a different session. Why, yes, Dana, it is a different session. In fact, it’s Bruce’s SEO Q&A session that’s coming up later today. Keep an eye out for the session recap. Huzzah!

Up first is Daina to talk about paid search in a large company.

[Heh. Daina thanks everyone for coming and says it’s hard to talk after lunch because people are typically in food comas. When she said that, the guy in front of me practically fell off his chair and freaked out thinking he missed the free grub. Don’t worry, weird friend. Lunch hasn’t actually happened yet. It’s coming up right after this session.]

Daina focused on where HP’s pay per click campaign started out about 18 months ago. Apparently, it wasn’t in such good shape. The campaigns weren’t tied to overall business objectives, there were too many stakeholders, campaigns didn’t have an investment level for minimum thresholds, the activity was invisible to management, there was no standard tracking or measuring in place, and there was no integration into marketing communications mix. I love that just 1.5 years even huge brands were pay per click retarded. (I mean that in a good way).

Daina outlines four pay per click pillars and best practices:

Positioning – Ensure your company is achieving an adequate spend level.
Test & Learn – Leave room to make mistakes and learn. Testing is important.
Standards – You need standards to benchmark where you started, where you are, and where you’re going.
Integration – Pull the pieces together to show the leverage and the results about what’s happening across the board.

Once HP revamped their pay per click efforts Daina’s proud to say that HPs campaigns now appear in 11 countries. They’re all tied into one another so they’re reaching business objectives and not trying to outbid another. The global, regional and country teams meet weekly to fine tune their campaigns. Their increasing coverage and keyword position, as well as direct sales to HP stores. They’ve integrated their pay per click campaigns with other company functions.

Up next is Mike from CJ Search to talk about outsourcing pay per click campaigns.

Michael says there’s a life cycle in search. When advertisers are first launching into the pay per click space they’re typically very happy to keep things inhouse. They have small keyword lists and they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s stage one. In stage two, advertisers find that their pay per click campaigns end up growing beyond their means and they decide to outsource them. They’ll stay with that for awhile and then they’ll decide to bring them back inhouse and adopt tools to help run and manage them. The last stage is that the advertisers make the choice to either continue running them inhouse or, more commonly, they see that pay per click isn’t as easy as they thought and they’ll choose to again outsource it.

There are some key decision points when you’re deciding if you should outsource your PPC or not. Ask yourself if you have the right people with the right experience. Can your team build out the campaigns? What tools do you need and how much do they cost? (Mike says you’ll need at least a suite of analytics, bid management, and keyword discovery tools). Decide if this is your core competency. Are you willing to dedicate your time to this?

To make outsourcing work you need to stay engaged – don’t just write checks. Educate your agency on your business model. Clearly outline your goals. Keep your agency aware of changes and new initiatives – What are you new products? What promotions are you running? What products are out of stock? Are you using TV, print and radio? If they are, work those into your pay per click campaigns and leverage those efforts.

When it comes to metrics you have to determine what your key business drivers are. Are you into sales, lead generation, brand and awareness, some incestuous combo? Tie that into your goals. Ultimately, you probably want to reach a combination of conversions and ROAS. Benchmark your competition. Know what a good conversion rate is and what a good clickthrough rate is. Communicate that to your agency.

How much should you allocate to search? Size the opportunity based on metrics. Determine the amount require to be up 24/7 on all engines (crazy!). Mike says if ROAS is positive, why limit your budget? (Mike must not have a boss…) Allocate a percentage of your budget to testing. The goal here is to learn about and explore additional opportunities. Set up different metrics for this campaign than for your core campaign since the objectives are very different. If you’re on a limited budget, look at search affiliates.

Use tools to help you increase the efficiency of your pay per click campaigns, Optimize your landing pages.

During the question and answer segment, an audience member asked how you go about tracking clickfraud.

Daina says she has key relationships with the top search providers and that they watch it very carefully. She’s certain that it happens but she doesn’t know what the direct impact to her business is yet.

Mike echoes Daina’s remarks and says for the most part advertisers are very dependant on the search engines. You have to work closely with them to watch it. There’s also software that can help you with the process, but Mike admits he’s not actually using software. He’s just relying on the search engines.

Another audience member asks, if you’re a traditional agency thinking about pay per click, where do you start?

Mike says it depends on what kind of service you want to provide. Are you going to be heavy technology or heavy service? Mike (obviously) recommends falling somewhere in the middle. From there it’s a matter of having the experience. You need to have trained search experts. Search is too complex at this point to accept anything else.

Amen, brother.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 1:50 PM | Comments (1)

The Promise of Hyper-Targeting

Rex Briggs is moderating this morning’s The Promise of Hyper-Targeting session with speakers Scott Symonds (AKQA, Inc.), Heidi Browning (Fox Interactive Media) and Simon Atkins (adidas America).

Or at least I hope that’s what’s happening in this room. Drew Ianni went ahead and changed the room assignments again on me so I’m not entirely sure I’m in the right place. I really wish they’d put the session title on the big projector looming in front of me so I know if I’m safe or if I have to kick off the heels and hightail it across the convention center, taking down slow-walking pedestrians in my path. My tummy is burning with anxiousness.

I feel better now. Rex Briggs just walked into the room so I must be in the right place. I’m going to stop worrying now and enjoy my organic Z bar granola bar. I heart snacks.

Rex starts things off by asking the panelists to introduce themselves and share with the audience their favorite color.

Scott’s favorite color is UPS brown, Simon and his cute accent tell us his favorite color is red and Heidi ignores the color question altogether. She’s no fun. (My favorite color is blue.)

[30 minutes later: Heidi finally admits her favorite color is red. You can now all sleep tonight.]

The history of online marketing has been direct response focused so people have been chasing that. We need a new model that’s about finding affinities. There’s a tendency today to be redundant and chase the higher response rate. You’re not generating the interest.

Simon says (hee!) Adidas has always developed programs around targeting. They’ve now matured into where they’re looking at hyper targeted programs. Today Adidas is everywhere, they’re not just on the sports field; they’re reaching into high fashion, high activity and to everyday consumers.

[Note: I love that Simon is rocking the white Adidas sneakers today. Way to represent, Simon!]

Rex questions the panelists on the future of hyper targeting.

Heidi answers that hyper-targeting is the next evolution of targeting technology. It’s based on user expressed information. She talks about MySpace and how people log on everyday to tell people about themselves. The difference between hyper-targeting and behavioral targeting is that the latter can’t see the nuances between the segments (enthusiasts vs buyer). With hyper-targeting, advertisers can create those specific segments. You can find the people who define themselves by Jeep and look at their common interests. What are their emotional needs? What other brands do they identify with? What are their demographics? How can we find other people like that? How can we target them? Hyper-targeting allows you to distinguish between the different stages within the conversion funnel and market directly to people in those different stages.

Rex asks how quickly marketers are going to adopt this kind of behavior.

A lot of marketers realize that this is where the world is going, but others are resistant. They don’t want to change the way they’re thinking about their customers. Simon says you fundamentally need to have a shift in the way the marketing department thinks. Once you pass that hurdle, there is a great opportunity to be had by focusing on a very specific target. Start thinking about the upstream. Who is the product really for? You should have a clear definition in mind.

Scott thinks Simon is simplifying this just a bit. Not every brand is as likable as Adidas. As an ad agency, you need to steer and cultivate that. He likes the idea of using brand evangelists for projecting your brand. MySpace is a really good litmus test for an advertiser or a brand. When Scott talks to a brand he wants to find out what personality trait/utility is going to make them likable? Why would people pick you over someone else?

The opt-in factor is the hottest part of hyper-targeting. It all starts with relevant messaging. Users don’t mind advertising as long as it’s relevant and authentic to them. People don’t want brands to advertise to them; they want them to be their friends. (Aw.) One of the ways to do that is to use hyper-targeting to provide relevant messages and bring them to interesting places. With hyper-targeting you can go out and say, hey, we know you’re a friend of someone who likes X, why don’t you come and try it out? You have to combine hyper-targeting with community.

Rex brings up the community vs. control issue again.

Scott acts as the voice of reason and says that people will take these things and do what they like but you can control the toolbox if you make it compelling. Ideally, you have a brand people like. The surer you are of your fan base, the more open you can be with these things. Brands have a responsibility and we need to address that.

We’re once again talking about MySpace. Heidi calls it a living, breathing focus group for brands. Marketers can see how users want to be communicated with. What brands/messages are they gravitating towards? Learn to speak their language and give them what they want.

Scott says consumers being in control is not a new concept. People will be blogging about brands whether they like it or not. The message and conversation is there no matter what. Just accept that and join in. MySpace is amplifying this discussion. It’s something that’s sponsored, endorsed and pushed.

The friend concept is something marketers are beginning to get their head around. What’s interesting about the “friend” analogy is that friends are there through the good and bad. Your brand has to be there for users. People like to have that feeling of exclusivity. That’s how you draw them into a long term friendship and relationship.

Are there some products where hyper-targeting doesn’t work, Rex asks? Toilet paper, for example?

The panel says that it’s up to the marketer to understand who they are and figure out how they can present themselves. What is their persona? You need to determine if social networking is applicable for their target base.

Rex: If I’m a marketer and I have that community site, how do you find people who aren’t yet engaged with your brand? How do I get in front of them?

Heidi says that’s the future of hyper-targeting. You need completely customizable advertising segments. You can plug in your demographics’ social/emotional needs and use that to decide if what you’re planning is enough. Use the data to create a plan to ensure your message is relevant. You can also create “look-a-like” models. If you want to target soccer fans, what else are they into it? Maybe they like yoga and pizza. The last thing to do is talk to your brand’s influential people and engage them early on and get them talking about you as their friend. That’s how you take a whisper and turn it into a yell.

The lesson for the day: Stop whispering and go make friends. Go. Now. Get out of here.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

Dreaming of Disruption

Are you dreaming of disruption? Do you call people late at night just hoping to disrupt their peaceful slumber? Do you spend your work days thinking of contraptions you can put over your coworkers office door to disrupt them and scare them half to death when they stumble in? Are you a mean, disruptive person in general?

I appreciate your honesty but that’s not actually what this morning’s keynote is about. It’s about the disruptive forces of digital technology that are transforming the entire industry. That’s why this morning’s keynote speaker David Clark (Joost) is here. As far as I know, he has no interest in your other mean-spirited activities. I, however, am appalled.

[Speaking of disruptive, if you’re reading this, are in the Bay area, and have access to some form of make-the-killer-headache-go-away medicine, I’d love you forever if you came and found me. It feels like chubby oompa loompas are jumping on my head.]

It’s another day at Ad:Tech and like all new days at Ad:Tech we start off with a few words from Chairman Drew Ianni. Drew’s talking about Kazaa and I got excited for a second because I thought he said huzzah. But he didn’t. Oh, well.

Time for David Clark to appear from the shadows. Good morning, David.

Drew says he’s been disruptive since high school and then starts talking about Dick Fosbury. Dick was the inventor of the Fosbury flop and showed the high jumping industry a new way to do things. He disrupted the norm and found a better way. His approach is still being used today.

Here’s the thing about disruption, says David, it’s too often associated with the term destruction. It’s used to explain a “better” world where only the new stuff is the good stuff. David believes that sometimes you have to let things stay the same. TV is one of those things, at least the parts of TV that make it a unique video.

You’re going to hear a lot of talk about how the Internet is going to disrupt and TV and that VOD may kill it, says David, but Joost disagrees. It’s forcing the TV to create better cinematic projects. Storytelling matters. It has mattered since the dawn of men, yet somehow it gets left out of every formulation of media. Well-told stories matter. Brands matter. Talent matters.

This is not easy stuff. TV is the most successful entertainment media invented, according to David. Joost is not betting against TV, however, they like the Internet too. It has what TV lacks – community, intelligence, accountability, etc. Plug yourself in from the right stream and you’re drinking from a firehouse. It’s incredible and addictive.

David says today we’re seeing a marriage of both. It will be the birth of a new medium. Viewers are already there.

What’s in this new world?

It’s founded on video content. That’s a no-brainer. With Joost, anyone with copyright ownership can create a channel and broadcast to the world. Joost has already received hundreds of thousands of emails from content producers wanting to set up a channel on Joost and the company has been around for about 10 minutes. The gates are coming down.

David brings up Ze Frank. Yey, Ze Frank! (I miss you, Ze.)

David says we’re going to see new kinds of entertainment models emerge. Your sister will ping you and you’ll be watching a show as it airs and chatting about it with her. [I do that already. It's how my friends and I watch American Idol. --Susan] We’ll be using widgets and interactive overlays to create new features and functionalities. Your programming guide will become your community. Channels are playlists. The wisdom of a crowd will help you navigate a huge range of choices.

Or something like that. David says these are just educated guesses. We don’t have a time machine. David’s just providing the technology to see what’s going to happen.

The key to changing our sport the way Fosbury did is to know what’s sacred and what is not. You do this by looking at things through your consumer eyes, not through the eyes of your boss or your marketing department. When you do this you will find that storytelling, control, quality, copyright and the opportunity to share with your peers is sacred. Everything else is up for grabs. David likes those odds.

So how’s all this going so far?

Joost is still in the early days of beta. They’re going to open up the platform to everyone very soon. Joost feels a lot like TV. That’s deliberate. Just like the first car looked like a horse buggy.

To David, Joost is great if you just want to sit back and watch or if you want to dive in and get involved. There’s lots of powerful stuff under the hood.

TV 2.0 is not going to happen overnight. One of things holding it back is an ad model that makes sense for both consumers and advertisers.

The consumer is now firmly in control. This has become such a cliché that we risk not understanding what it really means. For the ad industry this spells disruption. We’re an industry that hasn’t really had to deal with consumer control. It’s ironic but it’s true. The ad industry has been organized as a command and control center for several years. The architecture of the entire industry now needs to be rethought. We need to have the consumer on speaker phone, if not in the media chair itself. Advertising is not a product and it’s not entertainment. It’s designed to snatch you away and give you a pitch.

Clutter and fragmentation drown out brand messages. The number of brands fighting for your attention has doubled. Compounding the challenge, media has fragmented and users are overwhelmed with choices. As a brand advertiser, where do you place your bets?

Never has a marketer’s job been so difficult, says David. The marketing tactics of today were designed for the consumer behavior of yesterday. This is not because marketers are fools. It’s because new models have not emerged fast enough. The tired old models are still the most powerful we have. But things are about to change.

This is where the fun begins. Everything looks doom and gloom but all it takes is a little willingness to experiment.

It goes back to defining what’s scared. Marketing and communications is sacred, advertising is not. Reach is sacred, frequency is not. Invitation is sacred, frequency is not. It’s invitation over interruption, relevancy and engagement over impression count, ROI over CPM. Selling products and building brands is sacred. Everything else is up for grabs.

Marketers will have to teach consumers and consumers are still interested. That’s not going to change. The platforms that can unite them will be fine.

David remarks that Joost is announcing a series of new launch partners today, including Proctor & Gamble, Coke, Nike, Kraft, General Motors, Warner Brothers, Purina, Visa, Motorola, Taco Bell, Sony, Intel, etc.

And that’s it from David.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

Evening Keynote: Old Warriors Don’t Die!

Tony Perkins (AlwaysOn Network) is moderating this evening’s keynote with panelists Jonathan Nelson (Organic, Inc.), Kevin O’Connor (O’Connor Ventures), Bob Davis (Highland Capital Partners) and Gene DeRose (House Party, Inc.). Just by observing the boys interacting on stage, I’m thinking this is going to be less “keynote” and more like a bunch of guys hanging out at the bar talking about the old days. We’ll see if I’m right.

[Side note: My tummy hurts. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that doughnut. Darn peer pressure. Sigh.]

Tony starts off by saying that when Drew Ianni first called him about moderating the Old Warriors Don’t Die keynote he said he had to come…to defend his age. Rimshot! Careful people, it’s the late in the day and even the moderators are getting punchy.

Tony asks the panel to identify when their “a ha” Internet moment was.

Gene says his moment came back in 1994 when Jupiter began focusing on the online services, things like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServ, etc. Ah, remember Prodigy?

Kevin’s “a ha” moment was back in ’94 when he quit his job and was trying to find out what the big moneymakers on the Internet were going to be. His original idea was to post resumes online but people told him no one would ever look for a job online since no one used the Internet. Heh!

Bob says his big moment came today when he showed up at Ad:Tech and saw how large the audience is. It showed him the power of the companies paving the way to the future. He says that the people who are making money on the Web are the advertising networks, not the YouTubes and the MySpaces.

From there, Tony launches into a diatribe about how there was a cultural issue when the Jerry Yangs of the world landed on the Internet. He says the Web was formed as a free private network for guys with ponytails. Because of that, the idea of charging consumer for access was not going to work culturally. Instead, the Internet was kept free and they reached out to advertisers’ to back it. Good to know?

Bob responds that it wasn’t so much the entrepreneurs that made the Internet free. It was more than there was so much money flooding into the market from VCs at the time that nobody needed to charge anything. The money was always there.

Jonathan jumps in saying that in the early days there were a lot of people experimenting with those subscription models because users weren’t willing to pay for it. They were willing to put up in order to have a free Web.

[Amuse yourselves, the boys are bickering and name calling.]

Gene declares the Internet the greatest medium available but he says it’s just a medium. It’s no different than TV, print, or radio.

Kevin says, yes, the Internet is a medium, but it’s also a channel where people spend their lives. Over the next few years, we have to tap that potential.

As a medium, the Internet has grown deeper, faster, wider, and broader than any other medium in the history of the world. In other words, it’s fat.

Tony says that the instant messaging generation, those 26 and younger (holla!), have shown us different Web value propositions that we weren’t aware of before. What is the real value of the Internet?

Gene says the Internet has changed everything. It’s changed the way we interact, the way we buy, the way we sell, the way we found a date, everything. We’re seeing a little bit of change every year. Social networks were around 10 years ago. We didn’t call them that and they weren’t as fancy, but they were there. Web 3.0 is going to be about getting rid of the clutter. Evening something as powerful as Google doesn’t work the way it did two years ago. Because marketers know how to game the search results. [It's not gaming. It's optimizing and it is a noble cause. --Susan]

Tony doesn’t like that answer and practically bites Gene’s head off. He wants to know what’s hip, what’s cool!

Gene defends himself saying that there are so many basic things different with the Web. When you look for this “big leap,” you sell it short.

Tony’s still unimpressed. He says that 62 percent of the content the average 21 year old reads online has been produced by someone they know. That is a radical change of behavior, he argues, that’s a big deal!

Bog argues that the difference in the Web today is that it’s all encompassing. You can do anything and everything on the Web.

Tony asks if his daughter is living on blogs and on MySpace more than she’s going to CNN is that going to ultimately pose a challenge to the advertiser’s community? How are advertisers going to get to her?

The other panelists mock him and tell him they have to go to where she is. Heh.

And that’s pretty much it. There’s some more fighting and peanut gallery comments, but you got all the good stuff. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 12:44 AM | Comments (1)

Mobile Advertising: Fact or Fiction?

Heidi Lehmann (Chair of the Mobile Marketing Association) is moderating today’s Mobile Advertising panel with speakers Kim Olson (Sprint), Omar Hamoui (AdMob), Michael Bayle (Yahoo! Inc.) and Jack Hallahan (MobiTV).

This session seems to be starting a little late. Methinks it’s because of the 100 or so overflowing Krispy Kreme boxes located on the tables directly outside the session rooms. What’s more important to you on a gloomy afternoon: a session on mobile advertising or stuffing your face with some glazed gooey goodness? (You’re drooling.)

Why is there suddenly so much excitement about mobile? Is it real or is it just hype? Today’s sessions is going to focus on the promises of mobile, the threats, and determine if the buzz legit? Hopefully, anyway. I’m sure we’ll find a tangent along the way.

Heidi first educates us on the four types of mobile media. There’s SMS, mobile interactive advertising, downloadable apps and mobile video.

In order to explain to what’s working and what’s not, the panel presents some case studies.

Kim says the things working the most are campaigns executed with a very strong call to action, an offer or something that is designed to engage the consumer, rather than just a logo.

She talks about a campaign executed by Pepsi during this year’s Super Bowl to promote various new soda can designs that tied in with their Super Bowl ads. They did things like run several different banner ads, allowed users to submit soda can design ideas, gave them the chance to win Super Bowl tickets for life, offered downloadable wallpaper, etc. The campaign lasted a mere four days and the clickthrough rates for the banner ran between 3-7 percent. They also saw a 50 percent conversion rate for people downloading Pepsi-branded wallpaper, and a 60 percent conversion rate of people clicking through to watch Pepsi videos. That’s nothing to laugh at.

Next, she highlights a campaign run by Jack’s company MobiTV. Aw, panel love.

Omar shares an example of a campaign Adidas ran for the World Cup that let users download all sorts of targeted World Cup media. In the end, Adidas got forty percent of their leads at 4 percent of budget. AdMob alone delivered over 180,000 visits and over 4 million advertising impressions.

He also talks about a campaign for Paramount that illustrated by simply personalizing an ad and asking user a question, it can lead to a significant increase in the clickthrough rate. You can test things at a low cost before committing to a high spend.

The panelists remind us that mobility isn’t always about the mobile phones. Look at mobile as it passes through to WiFi as it passes through to broadband, etc. Mobile is everywhere. Jack says that integrated interactive advertising is the next big thing to hit mobile.

He notes that in Japan consumers are already more engaged via mobile than PC throughout the day. How much longer until that reaches over to the States? This year? Next year? Only time will tell.
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Heidi asks about consumer experience. How is the consumer reacting to mobile?

Kim says that was clearly one of the most important things she had to focus on as a carrier when they were contemplating opening their services up to advertising. She cares very much about doing things that her subscribers want. She doesn’t want them calling customer service. Sprint spent a long time conducting tests and trials. One of the things she did was expose 600,000 users to display ads over a 30 day period and tracked calls to customer care for those subscribers to check for a negative result. The results were positive.

Kim notes that Sprint purposely started in an area that was the least disruptive to someone browsing on their mobile phone. With display ads, it’s totally up to the consumer on whether or not they want to engage.

Michael says there needs to be a convergence towards dynamic pricing models. It’s odd when you have publishers that charge $3.99 for a magazine, charge the same for the content on mobile, and then gives it away from free on the PC. He’s convinced that mobile needs to reflect the best of advertising and the best of what’s available on the PC to be truly effective.

Omar argues that a lot of what’s being attempted on mobile is very analogous to what’s being done on the Internet. The ad models are similar. A lot of the lessons that were learned online are being followed on mobile. At the same time, there are unique targeted ideas that are being used on mobile. The initial attempts at mobile are very much colored by what’s being done online. Advertisers are measuring things the same way.

Jack says what’s interesting is where we’re going to see each of these media channels cross over and help each other out. You’re starting to see the ability to take advantage of the crossover.

Heidi asks if you are a brand that wants to launch mobile advertising campaigns, what’s the best way to find out the most important considerations? What’s working the best today?

Omar says what’s really working right now is knowing what you want and what you want out of your campaign before you launch. Your campaign should not be based or tracked by a third-party. You should be able to measure it yourself.

Kim says if she was a brand trying to get into mobile she’d work with her ad agency and ask them to think about ways mobile can extend the campaigns that they’re already running in other media. There’s a lot of interactivity that mobile can ad to print or TV campaigns. You really need to think about mobile from the standpoint from how can we and what offer do we put forth that will engage the consumer. That’s what’s working the strongest. The purpose of the ad should be to engage the consumer. Don’t just put up a useless graphic.

Mobile is putting the fourth leg on the advertising stool. It lets you target the right customers at the right time in the right way. Think about how mobile is going to help you drive your brand message and put the message in front of customers when they’re in the position to actually be at your location.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/26/07 at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2007

Marketers' Roundtable

Abbey Klaassen (Ad Age Digital) is moderating today’s Marketers Roundtable panel with Mel Clements (The Coca Cola Company), Andrew Shih (Procter & Gamble), Andrew Markowitz (Kraft Foods, Inc.) and Ken Loh (Oakley).

Abbey starts things off questioning the boys about the state of marketing today.

Andy Markowitz says his company has structured marketing into different silos and the challenge now is convergence. Things are accelerating so quickly that while there will always be a best of class of ad agencies, he’s not sure what things will look like a year down the road. Media and creative will merge, but beyond that, who knows? What his company is looking for now is ideas. That’s the cost of entry. It cuts across all the media fragmentation.

Ken says it’s important to hire the agencies that have expertise in a particular area or niche. There are a lot of agencies out there that claim to be able to do everything but what he’s found is that you won’t get the best of breed by going to a one-stop-shop. You need a specialist. Oakley has fewer agency relationships than they’ve had in the past. They currently don’t have a lot of agency relationships. They’re trying to bring a lot of things in-house. Something they haven’t brought in-house yet, however, is their online marketing which they continue to outsource.

Andy Shih says P&G doesn’t have a singular standardized model. They experiment and have very fragmented agency models for their different divisions. The core function of the leadership is to bring the talent together among the different layers. At the end of the day, you go where the talent is. You don’t want to necessarily be stuck to a single model if it’s going to hamper your ability to find the best talent. Find the best players in each of the spaces and go from there. It’s the Jason Calacanis approach to marketing!

Mel says they have specific agencies for specific tasks. It’s about getting them to the table at the same time and working towards the same goal.

Andy M rants that it’s not a sustainable marketing idea to keep rolling out multi-million dollar ad campaigns. Ad agencies have to find a new way to attract consumers.

Abby asks the panel: How much are you devoting to interactive media? Does interactive have to hold itself to a higher accountability?

Ken says it easier to make a case for interactive because the metrics are all there in front of you. There have been discussions about shifting more money to online because it’s easier to see the results and hold campaigns accountable. You can prove that they’re working.

Mel says it’s not as much a shift to interactive as much as it’s an expanding of the world of media. If you’re doing a direct mailing that postcard should have a URL on it. We are expanding the role of what digital can do and what digital can touch. Ken says, to him, AOL is traditional media, as is Yahoo. They’re not new. New to Mel is mobile or Internet gaming.

Andy S notes that it’s important for his brands to know where consumers are. It sounds cliché, he says, but it’s true. People aren’t hanging out in the same place they were five years ago. You have to go out and find them.

Andy M fights for putting dollars where users are consuming media. It’s really that simple. If users are online, you have to go online. If they’re finding you through print, you have to be there. You can’t look at media as a bucket of dollars. Each type of media supports different objectives. It’s your job to understand those objectives and know what’s going to get you the most engagement.

Measure and accountability is hugely important. The players that best know how to drive the measurements have a competitive advantage over the others. Since the space is not developed, those that have the best data are going to win.

Mel has a difficult time measuring in-house campaigns because the campaigns change 2-3 times a year and it’s usually something he’s never done before. How do you apply benchmarks to that? (Mel uses the word conundrum and I want to go up there and give him a big bear hug.)

Standardization is really important to Ken. So is being consistent with how you utilize your data. It’s not going to be sports vs. a community section. You know conversion rates are going to be better on different parts of your Web site simply because they lend themselves to that. You have to use different metrics to measure different areas of a Web site.

Andy S says one of the reasons people aren’t investing more in interactive media is because there’s a difference in language between traditional and new media. Also, it forces marketers to try and compare apples to oranges.

You can’t sacrifice innovation for the sake of integration. Video online is not going to look like what it looks like on TV. There’s a different world out there; accept that. You can’t try and make the Internet look like TV just because that’s what you’re comfortable with.

Abbey asks the panels if virtual worlds are a big PR stunt or if it represents a new era of marketing.

Mel jokes that if he wanted to go find a bunch of people playing Dungeons and Dragons, he’d go out and find a bunch of people playing Dungeons and Dragons. Hee. It seems Mel’s not sold yet.

In a time when dollars are pressed, you have to leave a little bit of room for innovation but when it goes up against guaranteed clicks or impressions, it’s tough to justify.

Andy S says while he doesn’t expect his company to make a lot of money through virtual worlds, they’d be crazy not to be testing them. Three years ago, would anyone have predicted how big MySpace was going to be? If you don’t learn about the new things going on you risk missing the boat. As established marketers, we have an obligation to learn.

Abbey: Are there any technologies that have surprised you over the past year?

Mel says no. The general themes that succeed are built on certain principles. AIM is big because he can log on and tell people he watched American Idol last night and that Sanjaya did well. (This is the second Sanjaya reference in two days. What is happening to the world?) [Sanjaya is the American Dream. --Susan]

Andy S says the “a-ha” for him has come from learning just how differently the Gen Y-ers consume media and how different they are in wanting to connect out and create communities. He thinks the future is going to be much different as a result of these consumers.

For Ken, there isn’t a technology that’s a surprise. The Internet is a medium that is a constant state of change. People are always coming up with new ideas.

Andy M says YouTube took him by surprise. It really changed the way consumers became producers. It’s something that’s still changing the landscape. He says something we have yet to solve is mobile marketing. The biggest issue he sees in the mobile marketplace is that it seems extraordinary fragmented and redundant. Andy’s still waiting for the tipping point and he has no idea how to tackle that market.

Abbey asks how the panel is using community?

Nowadays community is expected, says Ken. You have to have it. If your brand has fan sites outside of your site and there’s no community on your own site, that’s a problem. You have to accept the good with the bad. You can’t have a community where you’re always going in there and censoring disparaging comments. Once you do that, it’s no longer a community. Things have to evolve on their own, based on interaction.

Mel calls it super, super important to reach out to people who care about your brand. If people are saying something about you they want to connect and you have to give them a way to do that. Well said.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/25/07 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0)

The Next Big Thing: Is Advertising Really The Solution?

Pete Blackshawn (Nielsen BuzzMetrics) is moderating this afternoon’s media and branding session with speakers Scott Wilder (Intuit), Beth Thomas-Kim (Nestle), Paul Woolmington (Naked Communications) and Tip Rose (Resource Interactive).

The title of this session may be a little misleading because we’re not actually talking about advertising at all, at least not in the traditional sense. This panel is about the advertising beyond your traditional advertising. It’s about community and user engagement.

Pete starts the session off telling us something you probably already knew: There’s an erosion of consumer trust in traditional ad models. It doesn’t mean the traditional ad models don’t work; it just means they’re not as effective as they used to be. What we know with certainty is the issue of ad intrusion is getting even worse. Advertisers have to work smarter to win the trust of consumers.

Pete talks about some “zones” that allow for both a high amount of control, as well as offer a high amount of effectiveness. These zones include things like Brand Web sites, paid search campaigns, corporate blogs, human touch, RSS, on demand videos, etc.

Paul steps in saying that the dirty secret is out. The non-secret is that we’re moving from a world of interruption to an environment of engagement. We’re going from aggregation to interaction and unity. We have a consumer that is no longer ‘I’ shaped but “T” shaped, they’re broad and deep.

Beth works for Nestle and says her company “woke up” a few years ago and realized that their marketing efforts were having less and less of an effect. Their marketing efforts weren’t targeting consumers; they were targeting the marketers. Realize that your marketing department is not the consumer. You need to know who your consumer is to better reach them.

Tip advocated focusing on your retention activities and getting customer input. He says that online is the largest customer focus group you have. Pay attention to what consumers are saying about you and let them drive your product. Get your consumers more involved in the products they’re using.

Marketers today need to hear the naked truth, says Paul. Release yourself from the shackles of bias. Community is intrinsic to everything in his company and it should be the same way for you.

Beth agrees that community is the right way to go, but says there are two communities marketers need to focus on. There’s the external community and there’s the community that’s established from within the organization and the individuals working on the process. Everyone on your team needs to be on board with what you’re doing. If your company isn’t working as a community, it’s not going to translate to your consumer.

Tip agrees. Community has to have relevancy for what your brand is trying to achieve. You have to have a product that spawns that conversation. You can’t just say you want community for the sake of community.

The reason consumers gravitate towards brands with strong communities is because they understand that it allows them to have a deeper interaction with the company. They know that what they say gets fed back into the organization (or at least it should) and it helps them to feel like everyone is on the same team. It encourages them to become engaged with the brand.

Part of your job as a marketer is to present information to consumers in a way that it’s interesting enough to make them want to get involved. Make the community part of your project development process.

Tip says one of the first apprehensions his clients have is that if they let consumers speak freely, they’re afraid of what the consumers are going to say. This is a dumb thing to be worried about. Why? Because consumers are already talking about you whether you’re facilitating the conversation or not. You may as well join the conversation that’s already in progress and take in the insights. Tip says his company has seen a lot of success where your community will do your brand policing for you. They become your virtual consumer affairs. That’s the ultimate in consumer engagement, when they support and defend you so you don’t have to do it yourself.

Is a site with harsh criticism more credible than a site with no criticism?

I think so. I think it says a lot about a site who lets others use their site to voice concerns and complaints. It shows your confident about your product; it also shows you're listening. This is important. Beth says consumers that reach out to you about problems are doing so because they want you to fix it. They’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt. They’ll stay loyal through that process. You have own up, be credible and be open and honest.

Pete notes that even if it’s a subset of your overall audience, the consumers that are actively participating in your site communities are the consumers who have a higher propensity to recommend you to someone else. It’s worth your time to have a conversation with these people and turn them into brand evangelists.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/25/07 at 2:34 PM | Comments (0)

The On-Demand Universe

The term “on-demand” is the “linkbait”, “long tail” and “web 2.0” of this year’s conference season. You just can’t get away from it. I suspect we’ll be hearing it quite often during today’s The On-Demand Universe session with moderator Brian Wieser (MAGNA Global) and panelists Warren Schlichting (Comcast Spotlight Advanced Media), Aaron Radin (CBS), George Ehinger (Revision3 Corporation), Bob Martin (Universal McCarnn). Just a hunch.

I’ve officially missed all the panel introductions because I arrived at 10:44am for a 10:45am session. Apparently that made me late and I have no idea which face belongs to which name. I apologize for my inadequacy.

The first question at hand for the panel is how quickly does an industry change? How long before we’re all living in a video on-demand (VOD) world?

The answer seems to be not as fast as we like. The industry structure is being held together by regulations. It’s not a given that just because we can do it, a new media platform will become successful and/or ad-supported.

Something interesting is that despite all the talk about VOD, studies done by Comcast show only a modest growth per household. Even though there’s been an enormous rise in the wealth of content available through VOD over the past year, there was only a 4 percent increase in VOD services last year. Only 2 percent of the market logs onto ABC.com to watch rebroadcast episodes of Lost or Desperate Housewives.

The panel asks: Do people actually want these services?

I think the answer is yes. People want to be able to watch what they want when they want it. We like to be annoying. One speaker noted that human beings like convenience. If content producers can give them every show that they want when they want it will create a great experience user experience. However, when it’s not convenient and the list of choices is incomplete than you have people waiting on the sidelines to get in. And that’s where we are right now. Users are watching VOD from the sidelines waiting to see what’s going to happen before they commit. Ultimately though, users will want that content because it’s content that’s tailored to them.

The question right now is what is the unique value that the VOD distributor is offering the consumer during TV viewing hours? Why would they watch video on demand instead of the prime time shows they’re used to watching? What percent of the TV viewing can be garnered by video on demand? That’s what we’re still trying to figure out.

One panelist remarks that his company’s goal is to get everything on video on demand. That is the goal. Until that happens, however, until VOD is everywhere, it’s not going to be adopted by anyone but the tech savvy consumers. The main problem with VOD is that everything you might want is not available right now.

Something the panelists noted is that there are now two primetimes where advertisers are trying to reach users through video. There’s the work day prime time and the traditional evening prime time. The new work day prime time is that group of people using broadband at work for eight hours of the day. They’re a bored, captivated audience pretending to be hard at work.

Advertiser’s have a lot of investment requirement when doing anything with new media. Things they need to be aware of include:

Critical mass of unduplicated/unique reach
Uniform technological standards
What is the optimal creative formats
Smooth buying process
Is the data we need in place
High-quality service and product standards

As an advertiser, before you get involved with VOD you need to decide what your goals are. What are you trying to achieve?

Another reason for the slow adoption of VOD is that there’s a high barrier to entry. Think about VOD compared to traditional banner advertising. What does it take to produce a high quality video advertisement vs. a banner? There’s certainly a lot more effort and funding needed for quality video than for a static banner ad.

And how many advertisers actually produce high quality video content? Not as many as those who can produce banner ads. Bob says that there’s an expectation from the media/sales perspective that this is wonderful. That may be true but we still have a long way to go in terms of standardization before we can buy this media and have it make sense in terms of ROI. Part of that process includes informing the viewers that there is more content out there if they want it.

What about the logistics of VOD buying and selling? Why is so difficult to get big businesses to sign on? The panel notes the following:

Agencies with legacy T V business behave differently than agencies with legacy offline businesses.

Zero based planning is uncommon. Buyers need benchmarks to justify buys. Right now they have none.

Most sales organizations have commission structures favoring traditional media.

There is resistance to change because it’s very difficult to give up the business and the profit structure that you’ve set up to date.

George claims that we can’t expect the creativity and the solutions to this problem to come from the CBS's of the world because they have things that will not allow them to become the quickest movers. It was kind of surprising to hear George say that. Not because it’s not true, but because it something I wouldn’t want someone from a large corporation to admit to. If you know you’re not the quickest mover because you’re hanging on to legacy marketing tactics, then you should be working to change that. That’s the only way you’re going to grow.

There are hundreds of new media alternatives today. Advertisers can choose to use broadcast, stream and download, push and pull, unwired or wired, home and portable, etc. With all these new platforms, nationally-oriented, brand-based advertisers need broad targets.

George says he would not want to be in the chair of the person responsible for reaching mass eyeballs in this world of fragmentation. I don’t entirely blame him. Things are getting tougher. However, I have faith. As the panel notes, advertisers found a way to overcome magazines, the assortment of cable channels, etc, so there is hope they’ll be able to find new ways to advertise in an even more fragmented space. We’re heading into a world where measurements for the advertisers around engagement and clutter are going to be very important.

Once we’re living in a pure VOD environment standards will be set to help advertisers localize their efforts. VOD doesn’t have to be the mass advertiser’s only solution.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/25/07 at 2:16 PM | Comments (0)

Keynote Roundtable Panel: Content Is King! (Again?)

Happy Wednesday! You guys are totally missing out because I’m doing my happy I-got-coffee-and-life-is-good dance to the blaring Nelly Furtado playing in the ballroom right now. Take a second and imagine all the crazy shimmying in your minds, if you will. Huzzah!

Okay, knock it off. It’s time to get serious. Jon Fine (BusinessWeek) is moderating this morning’s keynote roundtable panel with speakers Jason Hirschhorn (Sling Media Group), Kourosh Karimkhany (Wired Digital), Suzie Reider (YouTube) and Caroline Little (Washingtonpost.com, Newsweek Interactive).

Before we get to the keynote, Drew Ianni is back to deliver some opening remarks and housekeeping details. He says that some of the session rooms have been changed due to overcrowding. Oh, no! I’m going to get lost again, aren’t I? More running in heels for me.

Drew shares some noteworthy terms he heard yesterday including:

Video Snacking – Heh. I heard this all day yesterday and it made me giggle and slightly hungry all day.
Web 3.0 – Thankfully, I haven’t heard this.
Engagement – Are we still talking about Rand? That happened 2 months ago, people. Let’s move on!
Mastering “The Art of Conversation” – Creating a brand dialogue.

Now that we’re updated on yesterday, it’s time for today. The keynote speakers are all comfortably seated on the blue couch and orange chairs that I’m stealing out of the conference hall Friday night. Don’t tell anyone.

Jon says if content is indeed king there are a lot of people in his neck of the woods not feeling it right now. The value of certain top tier content is not being recognized or monetized in the new media world. These new distribution platforms have also shown that professional content isn’t always needed.

It’s worth noting that today when we talk about content we’re not just talking about professionally written words. We’re talking about all forms of social media, but especially video.

Before the panelists are allowed to speak, Jon warms them that if they’re caught using the phrase “the consumer is in control” they will be seriously punished. Awesome.

Caroline starts out talking about her experiences working for Washingtonpost.com and says that her company has an unprecedented audience. Ad revenues are growing at alarmingly fast rate. Her goal is to make enough money in alternative forms of media so she can continue to build what is core to her mission which is newsgathering. And that’s newsgathering for all forms of media, not just print.

Jon asks if the power is with the content holders or the aggregators?

Kourosh says it’s still with the content holders. The aggregation is becoming less important because of Google and the search results. Having good old HTML on your site with good content is the surest way of getting content to your audience. Create the content and the engines will find it.

Suzie from YouTube says, like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other. Content and aggregators are in control because we need them both for the system to work.

Jason says content is still the King. Distribution without content doesn’t mean much but the biggest pockets on the Web are sites like YouTube, Yahoo, Google, etc. These sites aren’t creating content, they’re aggregating it. What’s genius about Google is Google’s platform is not Google.com. It’s everywhere AdSense is. Google doesn’t actually create anything but they’re involved in everything. That’s powerful.

Kouosh says where Wired gets the most value is making sure they’re ending up in the search results. Jason says a key factor is that not everyone needs to be a Time Warner. Sites are content to be smaller and getting less traffic. They know if you are doing a deal with AdSense or Panama, it’s not just about the big publishers. In aggregate, the small publishers mean something.

Suzie says the real question is what is content today? When you hear content people think of professionally created content. They don’t think of the stuff that’s on YouTube, but it is. That may be true but that just means all those people are wrong. All those YouTube cat videos are content. It doesn’t matter how you feel about cats.

Jon questions Suzie on the rumors that YouTube is experimenting with testing ad models and when they’ll “flip the switch” and make those live.

Suzie responds that YouTube cares a lot about their content partners and they want to reward them. YouTube is approaching testing in an academic way. They’re looking at the ad executions on the watch page (the page where the videos reside) to find a system that will not interrupt the user experience but will provide a revenue stream for these content producers. They’re testing very quick commercial intros at the beginning and than maybe one at the end. What they don’t want to do is interrupt the user experience. It’s not going to be a great unveiling, she says, it’s going to be an evolving process. Suzie says they’re being really careful not to screw it up, but content products may begin seeing ad models as early as this summer.

Jon says one of the reasons YouTube took off was the user experience. Will a bumper or pre-roll ad disrupt that experience?

Suzie says it might. She doesn’t think a :15 pre-roll in front of a :27 clip is going to be a great experience. YouTube is going to keep looking at it.

Jason argues that pre-roll ads don’t work because users are clicking expecting content and they don’t want to have to wait for it. Placing a bumper on a second video may work as long as users know where they are. No one has figured out a model that works yet. Advertisers need to be very flexible about what the units are.

Kourosh says he’s a big fan of YouTube and with that the love fest begins. He says Wired is a big supporter and they use it everyday. They have their own video solution but their journalists and editors prefer YouTube over their own. Aw, that’s nice.

Jason jokes that YouTube is cool but he’s selling Slingboxes out by the taxi stand.

Jon asks if advertisers are comfortable taking from what’s online?

Jason says they’re not because there’s a whole system built against NOT going down that road. However, what we’re seeing is that users care less about “quality” versus great, funny content. The utility that we’ve gotten out of SNL shorts has been the same as professional content. There’s a great farm club and they’ll pick talent out from there. Advertisers have to get with it and realize that they don’t control their brands online.

Jon asks Caroline what she thinks about Yahoo now partnering with 12 major newspaper companies to share revenue.

Caroline says that if you look at the people who have signed up with Yahoo they’re primarily smaller companies. The deals were originally built around jobs, now it’s changing. If you look at the larger newspapers (like Caroline’s), they haven’t signed up for big distribution deals because they already have fairly decent distribution. The smaller papers are looking at something very different than what we’re looking at.

Jason cautions that you also have to look at the long term. Who controls the sales in those deals? You have to protect yourself. It’s not about copyright; it’s about control and sharing.

Kourosh becomes the coolest guy in the room saying he’s totally comfortable with users mashing up Wired content. Wired allows users to take their content, modify it, and throw it up on their site as long as they link back and they’re not using it for commercial purposes. They realize their audience is actually smarter than they are in some areas.

Caroline doesn’t seem quite as comfortable as Kourosh with letting users take control of the content. That’s because she’s from a “big media company”. She believes there’s a scale with reporting and editing that is useful. If you’re a political reporter you know more than a layperson who just dabbles in it. I think there’s a role for reporters and journalists, she says. I think Caroline’s not making a lot of fans this morning, heh.

The difference with Wired and sites like Washingtonpost.com is that Wired really lays the framework for users and then let’s them take control over it. I think users respect that. I also think Wired has the perfect audience for adapting that kind of business model.

Jason says this stuff is going to happen the way it’s going to happen. Major media has put way too much effort into fighting it instead of letting the floodgates open and learning how to monetize it. I totally agree with Jason the approach Wired seems to be taking. Big media needs to wake up.

Caroline says there is a definite attitude in media NOT to send people off their site or link to a competitor and it’s a losing proposition; the Web doesn’t work that way. The major media still haven’t accepted things like blogs.

Kourosh says you make money from the conversation the same way you did before. The only thing difference is that these days the conversation is a lot more interesting than the static voice it once was. He shares a funny story where a Wired reported wanted to interview Jason Calacanis but didn’t want to do it through email (which Jason was fighting for) because the writer didn’t want to lose the conversation and the ability to go off on tangents. Jason blogged about it in the normal angry Jason way and proclaimed that Wired was afraid of email. Wire, smartly, used their blog to respond and before any knew it the conversation that was created was a lot more interesting than the actual interview probably would have been.

He’s right. That conversation is more interesting because it’s real. Not to use the popularity of reality TV analogy used in yesterday’s Blogging session, but there is some truth to that. It’s interesting to watch people react in their natural way. It’s always more interesting to see Jason Calacanis act out the way Jason does than to get him into a cold interview format over email. Which conversation would you rather ease drop in?

The lesson of the keynote is that video is content and that big media needs to recognize that people do want to have these conversations. Poor, Caroline. She’s taking all the heat for being part of “big media”. Jason wants to see traditional media companies taking the lead in these conversations. I think we all do.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/25/07 at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2007

Measurement and Metrics

I’m not sure it was a brilliant idea to put an analytics-based session at the end of Day 1, but here we are. At an analytics-based session on the end of Day 1. Ah, I crack me up. Good times, good times.

So, Rick Bruner (DoubleClick) is acting as moderator amongst panelists Young-Bean Song (Atlas), Chad Parizman (Scripps Networks Interactive), Darren Stoll (Macys.com) and John Squire (CoreMetrics). Am I the only one who just wants to scoop DoubleClick’s Rick up, lock him in a room, and grill him about Google? [Yes.--Susan] Okay, moving on then.

Rick starts off saying that the Internet is much more accountable than any other medium, however, it’s still very complicated. He asks the panel to talk about a client that from a measurement point of view has really made a breakthrough. Who’s getting it right?

Young doesn’t out a company, more a way of doing things. He thinks companies that are doing things right are those that combine their online presence with display advertising. He says it makes sense that there would be some kind of combined effect and obviously there is. He states that advertisers who run campaigns simultaneously with other online efforts saw a considerable lift in conversation rate. To those of us in search, this makes total sense.

Several of the panelists talked about the need for analysts to looking beyond the last click or the last ad seen in order to find a richer story. Darren talked about this in depth, highlighting some of the stuff Macy’s has been working on.

For example, he noted that Macy’s tracks their marketing programs through CoreMetrics, as well as a separate email tracking system. Often while comparing data he’ll find a significant discrepancy from what CoreMetrics reports to what their email tracking program reports. Digging deeper he can see that there is so much activity tied to multiple mediums that to have that cut and dry “this is what got them here” is insufficient. Often people will click through the email, then leave, and come back later in the day through Google and make a conversion. In this case, Google would get credit for the conversion even through it was really sparked by the email.

For advertisers, looking beyond the last click or last ad seen creates a richer story. Sometimes an ad that didn’t look good in reporting is actually found to be delivering really well. It just wasn’t the last ad seen so it doesn’t get the credit. More thorough analysis is used to see that credit and reallocate budgeting channels accordingly.

Darren notes that Macy’s is working hard to identify the different value points throughout the site. Historically, they’ve given the last click credit and used that to determine what’s working but now they’re looking at the long chain of events.

Chad chimes in from a publisher’s perspective saying that their differentiator is video. He says he’s had some really great success with custom Web-based content sponsorship. The hot buttons in measuring video are things like completion of content, watching another video, just starting a video, etc. He wants to see users watching multiple videos in the same session and coming back for more.

You can also using metric information to see the relationship between online researchers who buy things offline. John’s company does a lot of work with tracking customer behavior offline. He uses things like membership IDs, email addresses, and tracking cookies to see what ads are leading users into the physical store to make a purchase.

Young commented that you don’t even need a big CRN infrastructure to figure out the offline/online scenario. He says, imagine you have a simple promotion in the offline store where every time someone buys something you give them a ticket to go to a Web site and enter their email address to see if they “won” a free gift. You don’t need everyone to go, you just need a sample. Once they give you their email or some other identifier, you can go back and see if they’ve ever spent time on your site before. You can use that information to better target products to them in the future.

Rick polls the panelists and asks them to identify one aspect of analytics that is still a really big challenge for their company.

Darren says his company struggles with the cross channel analytics. Figuring out what their online activities are doing to drive offline activity. They’re striving to be smarter on an individual level in order to engage consumers more intelligently.

Somehow the other panelists are let off the hook and Rick moves on to his new question: Where do you think advertisers are not doing metrics well?

Chad says that marketers can come up with a compelling story but they have to get into the equation early on. The good thing about Web analytics is that you can track everything. The downside is that you can track everything. [*forced laughter*] The skill in analytics comes in knowing when to track, how to track and how to report on the date you’re receiving. Chad says this is his company’s stumbling block.

John says advertisers are getting caught up in the hottest new thing instead of spending that dollar on things that are already known to convert well. The thing people struggle with is that there are so many ways to go out and address customers that advertisers get distracted.

The always opinionated Young says advertisers need to get looking at view through conversions. VTCs are when a consumer sees an ad, doesn’t click on it, but then converts. Even though there was no click, the conversation is still attributed to the last ad seen. Young says he’s seen no evidence that VTCs are a significant measure of direct response. Actually, it’s not a measure of direct response at all. It is a measure of targeted reach. If you get more VTC from one site than another, you’re getting a more targeted reach. Basically, Young things VTCs are named wrong.

Darren agrees with Young and says he doesn’t put a lot of weight on VTCs. All they are doing is capturing a sense of the quality of the traffic that’s seeing that ad. When he’s optimizing his marketing he’s looking at what sales are being driven by this and clicks.

What is missing in the field of metrics?

Chad says talent. Heh. I think that’s a great place to end!

See you tomorrow. Blogger’s gotta eat.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/24/07 at 6:57 PM | Comments (1)

Trench Warfare: Blogs, Podcasts and Vidcasts

Rohit Bhargava is moderating today’s Blogs, Podcats and Vidcasts panel with speakers Karl Long (Nokia), Jeremiah Owyang (Podtech), Kent Nichols (AskANinja.com, Beatbox Giant Productions, LLC) and Steve Hall (Adrants). I won’t even lie. I’m kind of excited about this one. Blogging? Trenches? Who doesn’t love some good old fashioned trench blogging? I know I do! It feels good to be with my people.

Rohit opens talking about building brand personality and how blogs, vlogs and podcasts can help marketers to do that.

[Ew, Rohit says they’re going to be taking questions from Twitter later on. Twitter = bad. Everyone go give Rae Hoffman crap about jumping on that bandwagon earlier this morning. Bad, Rae! We expect more from you!]

Rohit polls the audience on how many people have personal blogs and how many write for corporate blogs. Surprisingly, not too many hands go up. I raised my hand twice and now people are staring at me. The fact that I’m furiously typing probably doesn’t help either. To the man reading over my shoulder, please stop staring at me. Otherwise, I’ll smack you in the face with my 10lb mammoth laptop.

Steve talks about the difference between a personal blog and corporate blogs. He says corporate blogs typically have a preset agenda before they even start. They do? Bruce Clay, Inc is supposed to have a preset agenda about what we write about? I’m in SO much trouble when Bruce hears about this.

The conversation turns to creating a brand or blog personality. Steve talks about the personality of the Adrants blog and how he doesn’t mean to always be so ranty. That’s just the persona he takes on when he blogs, he says. I totally relate to that. I swear I’m not really this whiny and mean in person, it’s just the blog personality. I make fun of Susan because it makes you laugh not because I find her incredibly and unbearably annoying. I don’t think she’s a bane on my existence at all. Seriously.

Karl says that podcasts and vidcasts are more personal than blogs because people can hear and see you. Karl wants to fight.

Kent, however, makes a good point about bloggers having to work to establish the brand and uses The Simpsons as an example. He says if you watch the first season of The Simpsons the characters aren’t drawn right and the voices are off because the brands hadn’t been established yet. However, if you watch it today, everything is seamless and perfectly branded. It’s the same way for your blog, podcast and vidcasts. You have to find your voice.

Jeremiah brings up something I talked about in the Friday Recap, the idea that blogs are the new resume. Along the same lines, people don’t hand out business cards anymore, they tell people to Google/Yahoo/Ask.com them. I think this is a much better way to get to know someone. If you want to know about me, at least from a professional angle, google me. All the information you need can be found in the top 10 search results.

Today’s branding is an emerging process. It’s the process of you putting pieces of you out there, it being reacted to and you moving forward. When you first start a blog, like The Simpsons, it’s a very badly drawn character. But as you continue, it starts to look more like you, you find your niche and you build your brand.

Rohit says sometimes the blogosphere is a scary place because bloggers are known to be snarky. What? Snarky? Bloggers? Why are you looking at me? Stop it.

Kent says if you’re entering the blogosphere, never try and control it. It won’t work and you’ll just build resentment. He uses the term “astroturfing” and defines it as fake grass roots or hiring low level employees to create fake good will for your company. Astoturfing is my new favorite word. I love this session already.

Karl says you have to be upfront about your blog. If you’re running a corporate blog, let people know you’re going to moderate comments. Let them know vulgarity isn’t allowed and that it may take a few hours for a comment to show up due to the moderation process. People will be understanding as long as you’re upfront. Girlfriends and mothers are the same way.

Social media helps employees to talk to real customers and engage with them, says Jeremiah. You want to have an active dialogue with customers using these tools. This will help you to build better products in real-time. Customers can tell you what kind of products they want.

Rohit talks about using blogs/vidcasts to give employees a voice and how sometimes people become accidental brand representatives or spokespeople. Yes. I would caution companies to pick their bloggers carefully. You don’t want to get into the same situation Bruce did where somehow I became the voice and personality of Bruce Clay. Don’t trust your company to a nitwit like me. Or to someone really boring like Susan. [You were doing so well. --Susan]

Karl says the problem is blogging is hard work. Companies may want the PR people to do the blogging but they don’t want to so instead other individuals and stars emerge.

Steve says now that customers have devices to talk back to you, they don’t just sit in front of the TV and listen. They talk back. A company has to create clear guidelines and let someone take control of the blogging and become the voice.

Rohit asks the panel how you go from being 1 of 72 million bloggers to becoming popular? Yeah, yeah, guys, how do I become popular?

Karl says popularity is somewhat loaded. When you’re a personal blogger there are different measures and it’s really about engagement and conversation. Blogs are not monolithic. There are a thousand different uses. You have to figure out how to measure success.

To stand out you have to have a clear focus and differentiate yourself from the pack. You have to read the industry conversations and decide which conversation you want to be a part of. It’s a very long process to go from that badly drawn character to something that’s fully formed.

To Kent, popularity is about consistency and being brave enough to plow forward. It’s easy to give up. It’s no one specific feature or link that’s going to make your success. It’s about delivering time and time again.

Jeremiah calls blogging/podcasting/vidcasting anti-marketing marketing. Social media is not a push strategy; it’s a pull strategy. Corporate bloggers should be a resource to their customers. You need to give to your community instead of pitching to them.

Karl talks about the long tail of social media and making content linkable. Three buzz words in one sentence! In the end, the sum total of a blogger is not a one-to-one measure, there’s an exponential return from the ideas you’re putting out there, the conversations you’re participating in, and the memes you’re creating it. It’s not just about the number of visitors.

Steve calls blogging the easiest way to engage in search engine marketing. You produce content and it lives on. It’s the easiest, cheapest way to get yourself or your company found in the search engines. I feel so cheap.

Rohit gets to the heart of the matter and asks about the ROI associated with blogging.

Predictably, the panel has a million different answers to this one question. Steve says his intended ROI at the time was a job and then it turned into something different. Now he just likes seeing his name print.

Karl says it’s really difficult to calculate the ROI of his blog experience. He started blogging as a way to break free from the academic form of writing. The ROI for him has been getting quoted and joining the conversation. The blogosphere isn’t one monolithic thing; it’s a bunch of small conversations and groups. The return on a personal level is pretty enormous.

Kent talks about how his company was started by a backer he likes to call “Mom” and this past year signed a 7-figure deal from Federation Media. Based on that, he says, yeah, video blogging has worked out okay for him. Heh. Kent said he started going onto the Web to avoid ever having to get a real job again and that’s still his goal.

Jeremiah talks about monetizing blogs and using AdSense. To make a lot of money using AdSense you have to have a good amount of traffic. You can also do sponsorships, sell T-shirts (No really. He actually said that.), use it as a medium to bring in more business, etc.

Putting on the corporate hat, social media allows you to engage with the customers that want to participate with your brand in a different way. No matter what your brand is there are probably a lot of passionate people out there who want to communicate with you in a way other than just buying your services or wearing your product. Blogs and social media are the best channel you have to interact with these people. You have a blog is the best way for you to engage with other bloggers and get buzz building around your brand. They don’t want a press release. They want you to leave a comment on their blog.

To sum things up, Rohit asks the panel to name one company or individual who is doing social media right.

Steve: GM is doing it right. They launched a blog 2 or 3 years ago. They were the first big company to ever launch a blog and they did it very well – it was written by the executives, they allowed for reader comments, responded well to comments, etc.
Karl: Nikon is doing a great job engaging with bloggers.
Kent: PromQueen.tv is doing things in a really fun, interesting viral way. It’s a nice hybrid of old Hollywood and the new medium.
Jeremiah: John Edwards. He’s everywhere.

Something everyone agreed on was that you can’t do a good job of creating a corporate blog if you haven’t done it yourself. There’s too much to learn and too many elements that go into it. You can’t read a book or read an article and get it. You have to full immerse yourself in it.

Someone in the audience asks if the success of blogs is due to the blogger’s personality, their intelligence, the conversation, what?

Kent, whom I’m really starting to love, says he rarely participates in his forum. He’s like a distant father who works a lot. Heh! He appears occasionally to give the fans a hug but mostly he’s doing business. To him, it’s the consistency and the great content.

Steve says it’s the content. Some of the best articles that appear on Adrants are the articles that get commented on the most. No one will come to your blog if the content isn’t interesting enough to read. The interaction is really what can make your blog powerful and dynamic.

Karl says there are many different models, Some blogs post 20 different times a day with news and others write long editorial articles to generate conversation. Your success depends on your business model and what you ultimately want to get out of it.

With all the talk about blogs, podcasts and vidcasts, how about a reader poll? Who wants to see (or hear, I suppose) a Bruce Clay podcast or vidcast? Do you want to see me/us in video or audio form? Let us know. Maybe I can rope one of the BC analysts (or Susan!) into making all your Bruce Clay dreams come true. [I love when you volunteer for these sorts of things. Then you can't blame me!--Susan]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/24/07 at 6:53 PM | Comments (3)

Online Advertising Industry’s Definitive Advertising Playbook

Happy afternoon, loyal readers. I need you all to do me a favor real quick, okay? I need everyone to hold hands and recite this simple phrase, “You will have power in your laptop until 6:30pm. You will have power in your laptop until 6:30pm”. Maybe if you all believe it will come true and my laptop will last through the day’s final session. What do you think?

Maybe you should cross your fingers and toes too?

Right now I’m planted and freezing in this afternoon’s Online Advertising Industry’s Definitive Advertising Playbook session where Ridgway “Taddy” H. Hall is set to moderate panelists Rex Briggs (Marketing Evolution), Stephen Kim (Microsoft), Kevin Doohan (ConAgra Goods) and Clark Kokich (Avenue A | Razorfish).

Taddy starts off recalling a dream he had last night about all of the panelists and the odd things they did. In Taddy’s dream world, one of the speakers gave their presentation while wearing a Ferrari helmet, while another speaker came in costume. Yeah, I don’t know either. I think someone visited the bar during lunch time. I kid, I kid.

Getting away from the scary remarks, Taddy says that the Internet is changing advertising. It’s making it more relevant, more interactive, more engaging, etc. And people are expecting it. All advertising is now being held to a new standard and a new metric of accountability which is, “what did my advertising do to generate brand demand?” There are some interesting repercussions that fall out of that finding, says Taddy. Agencies that are embracing new ad models to generate brand demand.

Taddy outlines three primary models for how advertisers are approaching the use of the Internet.

The On-Demand Model: Clients, Ad agencies are really focused on how they can help consumers get what they want when they want it. It’s about creating the empowered consumer.
The Engagement Based Model: All effective advertisers are looking to engagement models to attract customers.
Advertising that’s a service to consumers. Generate positive returns.

Taddy then invites the panel to share their advertising playbook.

Up first is Kevin. Kevin is a big Red Sox fan. I like Kevin.

Kevin’s online advertising playbook is effectiveness versus hype, and using experiments to discern between the two. Effectiveness may mean not using the Internet at all. Not every product is made for the Internet. Blasphemy!

Rex’s company looks at and measures three things: their current campaign (what can we learn today to help us tomorrow), past campaigns (what can we learn from past campaigns to improve effectiveness) and portfolio management. One of the things to look at in online advertising is the difference between innovators and imitators. The innovators are doing extensive research to determine how to make online marketing really work. The imitators come in, see what everyone else is doing, and then try to copy it. These people aren’t learning or evolving. They really know how to use the technology they’re trying to master.

Clark is up and admits to being a recovering traditional advertising agency. Hi, Clark. Clark talks about merging traditional and digital media.

Microsoft’s Stephen is up and is the only panelist using a wireless mic. Taddy snarks if we should worry that it’s going to crash. Ooo, low blow! Funny, but low blow!

Stephen says research and understanding consumers is the key to today’s online advertising. How do users consume media? Where do they consume it? How do they interact with each other? Microsoft has done a lot of research to see how people work with one another. From that they’ve gotten a lot of clues about how to reach people online and in the workplace.

Interestingly, he says with online advertising you have to reach most audience members between 9am to 5pm since this is when they’re online the most. This is different from traditional advertising where advertisers had to reach customers during prime time because user’s mindset is different. You have to know when people are online and what they’re thinking so you know how to appeal to their particular mindset. This changes by time of day, and even during various times in the work day. Are you in full work mode or are you taking a virtual smoke break, or are you in the first hour of work where you’re not really working but checking your email instead? Not that I do that. I hear Susan does. [I check on my Blackberry on the way in. If you had a Blackberry, you could too. --Susan]

Determine what the assumption is that you’re making about your online advertising efforts? Is there a number or metric you’re trying to reach? Or are you just on the Internet because everyone else is? What are you trying to do? If you don’t set goals for yourself, you’ll accomplish nothing.

The Internet is always touted as the most measurable and accountable medium. Meanwhile, advertisers are pulling out their hair because they don’t know how to use the information they’re getting.

Rex says instead of looking at research to prove a point, look at as how to improve effectiveness. That’s how you’re going to help your business over the long term.

Clark says there’s a big cultural chasm about having to prove what you’re doing is right, not finding what you did that was wrong. Instead of finding what you did that was right to make yourself feel good, spend your efforts trying to find out what you did wrong so you know where you can improve. This is will have a huge impact on your business and aide you more than just trying to pat yourself on the back. That’s the future of marketing. Accept that you’re doing things that are wrong, find them and fix them. Probably one of the smarter insights of today.

Stephen says Microsoft is looking at ad systems that never existed before like Xbox or display advertising. When they look at who they want to work at they’re looking for the people who can bridge the native and immigrant Web consumer base. They don’t just want to speak to the traditional world.

I have to say, I’m not liking these one hour presentations so far. They go by too fast. I feel like we never get to the meat of the matter.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/24/07 at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)

Workshop: Viral and WOM

After a quick snack break, we arrive at the Viral and WOM workshop where Daniel Stein (EVB) is moderating the crazy personalities of Jamie Byrne (YouTube), Benjamin Palmer (The Barbarian Group), Gaurav Misra (MTV/VH1) and Sean Carver (Microsoft). Susan totally wishes she was here right now; this is a seriously attractive panel. Hi, boys!

We’re starting a bit late, but it looks like this session is finally about to get underway.

Daniel starts off by showing a video highlighting some great viral projects as of late. We get glimpse of that now infamous SNL skit with Justin Timberlake, a Brady Bunch-esque video about not having pre-marital sex (it seriously is funny despite my lame description), that Diet Coke video, Ms Dewey (groan), the Star Wars Kid, the Ok Go treadmill video, Elf Yourself, and lots other stuff that I don’t recognize because I am old and totally unhip. Such is life.

Daniel says there’s not really a definition for what viral is. When clients come in saying they want something viral, what they’re really saying is they’re looking for something to engage their audience. They want something consumers will grab onto and be excited about. Viral isn’t new; the Internet just makes it immediate.

Daniel starts off by asking the panel what viral means to them.

Ben says viral is a bullshit term. Heh. It’s an effect, not a cause. It’s a sign of success. If you’ve launched something that people want to talk about afterwards you realize you created something viral. The big difference in terms of advertising now and a decade ago is that today you have to create things that people actually like. You can’t just inundate the market with crappy ads. There are so many channels of communication, choices and people who can talk about what’s going on, that you have to do things that people like in order to be successful in your marketing and your brand. The term “viral” isn’t used well, but the motivation behind it is trying to do something that will get people to like you. The best way to do that is to be as honest as possible about the essence of the brand. Do something that is serving your audience, not you.

Gaurav, who has the world’s most adorable accent, says it’s about others evangelizing your product for the good of your users. Users do the heavy lifting for you. Every time someone forwards something they’re staking a piece of their own reputation on that forward. The 100th person who sent out the Star Wars kid video is not as cool as the first person who did. When Susan tries to replicate my Friday Recap this week, it won’t be nearly as cool as the ones I’ve written. [Yes, lower expectations! Good! --Susan] You get the idea; it’s an arms race. As a creator you have to disguise the marketing and present it as something else. Let others take ownership of it.

Jamie says viral is when your consumers take over your marketing efforts. Because there’s so much choice, advertisers and marketers need to shift away from the intrusive marketing methods they’ve used in the past and focus on engaging viewers. You have to think about your advertising messages as content. Jamie says the term viral is a tactic that’s a one hit wonder. People want to produce a viral video with 2 million views but they don’t think about what will happen after that. You’ve engaged consumers, but now what? What are you going to do once you have users invested? If you don’t think of that upfront you’ll miss out on the impact you’ve created.

Ben says viral is not a long term branding strategy. It can, however, offer a boost to a brand that needed a kick in the pants. Shawn emphasizes that you have to focus on the demographic you’re targeting. What we’re seeing with viral is that it’s really the consumer who’s driving all of this.

Daniel asks how much brand is too much when creating viral videos?

Gaurav says it’s a very scary thing for a brand or a marketer to spend money on viral because you don’t know if it will do well or not. At least with display advertising, you’re guaranteed some percentage of traffic. With viral, the more home-grown it looks, the better. The more authentic and organic it looks, the better it will do. It’s the same reason why reality TV is more interesting than scripted television. It’s why people love Sanjaya. (We do? You love Sanjaya? I’m sorry; I don’t mean to laugh at you.)

For some reason Daniel asks Shawn about Ms Dewey. Why do people like to torment me?

Shawn says launching Ms Dewey unbranded wasn’t a popular move with the Microsoft legal department or the branding team, but in the end people are smart.

How do you create something that’s worthy of attention? We don’t want to saddle people with too many tasks for them to do; we just want them to experience the product.

When engaging success, Jayme says for each individual campaign you can look at the different metrics and determine if it was effective. How are you defining success? On MySpace it’s about friend-ing. On YouTube it’s about how many people commented, watched or forwarded your video.

Ben says there’s no hard science in measuring how successful something is, and says his company isn’t oriented in that direction. When he starts a project, it isn't about numbers. It’s about how do you want people to feel about you? It’s about raising awareness for the brand, not selling shoes. You have to have a good relationship with your client and collectively understand that it’s not something that will lead to an overnight increase in sales. There’s a larger goal.

Shawn agrees with Ben but says Microsoft uses two different kind if metrics. They use the branding metrics as outlined by Ben and then a different set for the suits who approve the budget since they want to hear about the dollars. For those people, they’ll look at unique visitors, how long users engaged with the site, etc.

There’s really no solid answer for defining the effectiveness of an ad. When it is, you just know. It’s more of an art than a science. Like judging someone else’s cool.

Unfortunately, since the session started late so we’re already out of time. I was hoping to dig more into engaging and the process that goes into creating great viral content, but no such luck. That’s a bummer, but this was a fun session with a really great group of speakers. They did, however, all have potty mouths.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/24/07 at 1:57 PM | Comments (0)

The State of the Industry

Drew Ianni followed me from the keynote presentation into this morning’s State of the Industry discussion with panelists Ted McConnel (Proctor and Gamble), Sheryl Draizen (IAB), Barry James Folsom (Motorola) and Bob Moore (Publicis USA).

Okay, I’m a little flustered. I wandered into the wrong room (gaming? What do I care about gaming?) and by the time I found the right room it was filled and the nice security lady refused to let me in despite my pouty lip, blazing dimples and me stuffing my press pass in her face. So, instead of learning about behavioral targeting, we’re going to get updated on The State of the Industry. You still love me, right?

By the time I got here, Drew was questioning the panelists on what’s on their top of mind and what’s keeping them up at night. If I remember correctly, this is one of Drew’s most favorite question to ask Ad:Tech panelists.

Bob shows us what’s on his top of mind today by showing us a picture of an important consumer -- his 9-year-old daughter Elliot (today’s her birthday. Happy Birthday, Elliot!) eating an ice cream cone. What’s keeping him up at night is that if marketers aren’t careful, the industry is going to become more about algorithms and less about creativity. Zing to the search marketers out there!

What’s top of mind for Ted is yesterday’s MySpace event where he learned that to users MySpace is like home. It’s lovely. He says you can take that to the bank about how to do good marketing on MySpace (take that to the bank? Who says that?). What’s keeping Ted up at night is the idea of the business model. Creative and media need to collaborate much more deeply than they are today.

The message and “the what” is also keeping him up at night. He says it’s typically crafted into taglines that are nicely condensed. It’s what you do, not what you say that’s meaningful on the Web. Ted wants to find better ways to do things for people rather than by carefully crafted words.

Barry’s top of mind is the psychological contract that the consumer has with the device or the box that they use. (Say what?) What keeps him up at night