ad:techSF08

April 17, 2008

Making Widgets and Gadgets Work For You

Back from another classically Ad:Tech lunch, and it's time to talk about something we've been hearing a lot about this conference. Widgets! I'm seated right up front so that I can get every word. Also so I can see. Someone remind me to order new glasses, I'm blind as a bat here.

Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research) is moderating this panel consisting of Hooman Radfar (Clearspring) [Coolest. Name. Ever. - Lisa], Jane Felice (comScore, Inc), Ed Davis (ESPN Digital Media Community), and Kent Schoen (Facebook).

Lots of people here are already using widgets or are planning to use widgets. Like 75% of the audience.

What's the difference between a widget and a gadget?

Ed: Widgets are separated into two categories: public consumption or private consumption. It is meant to be consumed in a browser or on a desktop? Does it tap into the social graph or not?

Hooman: Gadgets are a specific branded term--it's a Google thing. The real distinction is between a widget and a social platform.

Kent: We call them applications and we focus on the platform. It's to be able to leverage a core set of functionality. The goal was to open things up and recognize that we're not the only ones with good ideas out there for connecting with customers. Why are you getting into this in the first place? What are your goals? That will help define your strategy. In some cases it's just about getting the brand out there, but more often it's about the brand doing something for the user. Think about what you want to get out of it and on what time horizon. Make sure that you're allocating enough time to get to your goal.

Jeremiah: We look at why people use widgets and it's a very different reason than why they use a search engine. So, why widgets?

Jane: Content based widgets extend your brand's reach and you get to place your brand on other sites instead of just being limited to your own. You get to engage the user. There's plenty of ways to monetize them which isn't to say that everyone is.

Ed: The case for widgets is that our users, sports fans, come to us for information but they spend time in other places too. We look at the Internet as our playground, or at least we can be available. Is it just our site or everywhere? We want to be available. First it's about offering something good for the user.

Hooman: Widgets are a platform for folks to reach audiences where they are. You need to extend your presence outside your site. You should reach your audience and go where they are. It's paramount. You need great compelling content to do so and widgets do that.

Kent: The opportunity that we saw was to give people a chance to bring their content and experience to our users. We want to give users the opportunity to decide how they want to be presented to. There's a decision to be made about whether or not you want to have an immersive experience.

Jeremiah: It's about reach and it's about fishing where the fish are. Why are you creating a new site when there are 80 million people on Facebook waiting for you?

Jane: Measuring widgets is an evolving thing. There are no standards, lots of different kinds of widgets. They look at measuring engagement. There are challenges with measuring them because they're not in just one site or location. The viral widgets, we don't know where they're going to end up.

Jeremiah: What makes a widget successful? What are the pitfall and challenges?

Kent: In terms of success, you have to ask what you're trying to get out of it first. It's easy to say its only numbers adopted but that might not have been the goal. It could have been about just targeting a niche. What's going to be success for you? Does it need to be millions or just a couple hundred thousand?

Hooman: Agrees wholeheartedly. They measure across networks. If you extend your reach by 30% is that success? You might not need a million, you might only need 1,000. If you're a movie, you might not care about longevity. After your movie opens, if no one else adopts, then it doesn't matter.

We've had the benefit of running hundreds of gadgets. The biggest issues are cross-platform capabilities and measuring across platforms. Some of them don't even give you numbers. You need to know what you're allowed to do, what the policies are and they change.

Ed: You have to be clear that it only works if people like what you do. If a user doesn't find it valuable and doesn't take it and put it somewhere, it's a failure. So you have to be sure that your widget gives value to the end user. Right now people seems to think that you can just do a 'rising tide lifts all ships' sort of thing and it doesn't work like that with widgets. They have to provide some premium content to the user or they're not going to use it.

Jane: Measurement is always a challenge. Connecting it from the widget to the impact later. If a widget was sent out into the world and a month later there was a rise in queries on those terms, for example, that's measurable.

To sum up: Audience reach, short term/long term, add value, measurement, creativity for a new medium--you can't just use a banner ad and call it a widget.

Ed: One of the interesting things in the space is that you can experiment. ROI is less difficult to justify because you're just experimenting and it's new.

Kent: There are tons of things that you can call successes. Things that engage interest, are targeted, drive traffic--like the NYTimes quiz or the TripAdvisor application.

Everyone is going to have their own notion of success. It's usually a balance of accomplishing the goals of the campaign. Success looks like presenting something out there that feels valuable to the users. It's going to vary based on the user.

Jeremiah: How do you monetize?

Hooman: We have an end to end platform with advertisers. We help them with creation, measurement, distributions. It's the whole thing. Think of it like an ad unit, like banners or rich media.

Ed: For us there's ad inventory but there's also just pushing out our other new content, "hey did you know we just started this new fantasy league", etc?

What do you mean by widgets should be simple?

Hooman: We found that people try to compress a lot of functionality into a widget and the value proposition isn't clear. When you keep it simple and easy to understand that tends to work better.

Are there limits of serving ads through a widget?

Hooman: It's kind of Wild West right now.

You've talked about cross-promoting. Have you seen impact on the search cloud? Have you seen the search lift? (this is Mark Silva, who is tweeting the whole thing. He's right in front of me.)

Ed: Yes, that's definitely the case. There's definitely an SEO result.

A woman asks a very long, confused, FAST question about a Dell campaign. I think it boils down to 'can someone else pay an application creator for ad space'? Kent basically says yes. Their business is centered around the platform, not on being the sole owner of all this.

Jeremiah: Thoughts on Open Social?

Ed: I think anything that delivers on the promise of building one thing that helps you deliver across a lot of environments is good. We're definitely looking at it. It's an interesting protocol. If it delivers, then use it.

Hooman: We've been using it since it was just Google/Orkut. The reality though is that it is .7, it's not ready. I think you should invest and investigate it. But it's not ready yet.

Kent: We keep an eye on it. We feel like we've had an open ecosystem. At the end of the day, a standard is useful if it's something that people adopt.

Jeremiah: So if everyone goes along with it, will Facebook?

Kent: Jury's out. You have to look at it at the end of the day, what does it mean? If you have to custom flavor every environment in spite of the common standard, maybe that's not worth it.

Hooman: Even the ones that are using open social are doing it differently. They need to figure out how to make that 80/20 happen.

What is your take on privacy policies? Mentions Blockbuster being sued by Facebook.

Kent: Privacy policies are critical to Facebook. We want to make sure our users feel comfortable.

I haven't seen many applications that drive direct response. Most of it is brand advertising. Why are big brands reluctant to get involved in widgets? [Yes, that question is as contradictory as it sounds.]

Hooman: I think there's been a fair amount of direct response or at least ecommerce. The world is big. I haven't experienced a reluctance on the part of big brands at all. We're actually overwhelmed.

Ed: We hired a third party to build our widgets. We have a very small team so we needed help. Our widgets are very specific and focused. Now we're working on things that are lot more customizable and tailored and they offer opportunities for advertisers.

Which content types have proven the most engaging in widgets? Video, Live data streams, friend behaviors?

Hooman: I think it depends on the difference between social applications and widgets. I think micro social apps have done well. I think video and feed based do best. Is it for you? Just on your dashboard or for everyone, on the sidebar?

Ed: For us: The faster the data was updated, the more adoption. People really notice if you're updating once every hour or once every minute. The faster was the better.

Jane: We can work with you to look at what would make the best response. We have very accurate data.

Opinions on Adobe Air?

Hooman: I think it's a great platform. We're supporting Air. He'd definitely look at it. Write once, run anywhere--it's really a great promise that they're delivering on.

What about mobile gadgets?

Jeremiah: Everyone knows about SDK and Android, right? There's a lot of reuse opportunities with widgets and gadgets.

Kent: We've already integrated mobile into our experience. We want to make sure that you can hook in via mobile.

Hooman: We're looking at going cross platforms including mobile. He says mobile is going to be big in the next couple years. The audience laughs. Flash won't work but Flash Lite will.

What's best practice for seeding or distributing?

Kent: It goes back to expectations and timeline. You need to promote it. Think about how much you think it's going to take off virally, what you've put into it that it'll do viral spread. [Jeremiah asks how Facebook is protecting users from spam] One, get that application off your profile. Two, block it. There are always going to be people who will abuse it.

Hooman: We have a widget promotion channel.

Ed: The widget take rate is an impulse thing, we think. That's how we get our distribution is through contextual promotion. You see a score and there's a call to action, 'here, take it with you'

Jane: We're just here to quantify it, we don't distribute.

Hooman: We had Cramer show our widget and the response was incredible. TV works.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/17/08 at 3:58 PM | Comments (0)
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Advertising in an On-Demand Universe

So we've heard a lot about how you have to go to your customers now. Let's see if we can't figure out how that works, eh? Hopefully moderator Abbey Klaassen (Advertising Age) and panelists Mitchell Oscar (CaratDigital), Christopher Curtin (Disney Parks & Resorts), Barry Frey (Cablevision Systems Corp) and Karen Bressner (TiVo) can shed some light on that. Also, eee! TiVO and Disney on the same panel? Did they do this line up just for me or what?

Abbey starts off by saying there was supposed to have been a 3-5 minute video but it's not going to run. Woe. She starts with a question instead. Are the consumers in control?

Yes.

Okay, so why is it still business as usual out there? How do you get people to opt-in to your message?

Barry gets to go first and answer "what's the vision for on demand advertising?" Basically it's to give consumers the controls to get or avoid messages.

Karen: Our on demand at Tivo is a little different. Our vision is to be the entertainment center of the home. We're a digital video retriever. With us, the consumer is absolutely in control. From an advertising perspective, we want to play off the 30 second commercial and to give them different ways to interact with the customers.

Is that what advertisers want?

Chris: The vision at Disney for television is to use it as an innovative platform. Walt started that with the Wonderful World of Disney. He would open that up with a piece of what the rest of the company was doing. We went from that to 20-30 years of 30 second spots but now we're going back to Walt's model. We started a Disney Travel channel that people can click and have someone call them to get more information. The average guest at DW is there for 4 or 5 days and people want to get the most out of that time. They've created a bunch of entertaining content based around that. If you want a DVD, email, or even book or the vacation then and there, you can do that. They have a 23% conversion rate. They're happy with not just the rate but also with the trend. And the fact that this is television (Cablevision) is amazing. [Karen jumps in to say that TiVo can do that too!]

Mitch: Mentions Wink and how that was very successful.

Barry: What's interesting is the evolution. The most powerful element is the learning and optimization. When they started out it was a child, now the channel is an adult on steroids. They can tell the successes through rewinds and the failures through fast forwards. That gives them the ability to optimize month over month. Plus this is all pre populated from the cable data.

Abbey: If this works so well, why aren't most advertisers doing it? What's the hang-ups?

Barry: It relies on content, creativity and vision. It's a new medium. To be successful you have to do the research and get engaged and be creative.

Chris: I think it hasn't taken off because there's a lot of trial and error. At first, the only option was a DVD and not many people wanted the same thing they'd just seen. They had to figure out what the next logical step was, and that was booking or getting more information. It's not as good as it can become, but it's not as bad as people might perceive. [I'm the same way. - Lisa]

Karen: If you are selling even the most obscure opportunity online, you can put it on your computer and there it is. For TiVo or Cablevision, they might not be familiar with it, they're not educated. She agrees 110% with Barry on the need for research and testing.

Abbey: It's very difficult to do a national campaign, isn't it?

Karen: We have a national footprint.

Mitch: Project Canoe is about having a technology that works with all systems and boxes, and that would allow national advertisers a one-stop-shop and the ability to go across all sorts of systems.

He's a big proponent of local. None of the operators on national platforms have come to tell him what works. They don't tell him that a banner plus different copy every week, etc. They need to optimize it better, show him the value.

Barry: It's getting easier to get national. But it's a world of niches out there; you need to participate where your customers are.

Karen: We have a lot of data on set top box information. We know every click of the button. [Um...] What we've noticed is that the top viewed shows are also the most recorded shows. So what we're noticing is that even though your commercial is playing, you might not get it shown because people are recording it and fast forwarding it.

Barry: It's true, we've noticed that too. The lower the engagement of the programming, the easier it is for people to leave. [Like why it's better to advertise on a re-run of Friends, not American Idol - Lisa]

Karen: People aren't necessarily not SEEING the ads. You have to pay attention while you're fast forwarding so you might actually see it more than someone who is ignoring the commercial altogether. You have to design your commercial differently. People look at the middle of the screen. With TiVo you can put a banner over the commercial 'click here for information on Disney'.

Chris: We're learning and applying those learnings with each deal. We want to know the message and the most creative way to bring that message to life. We have 22,000 hotel rooms, so each night we need to convince enough people to come. We're focused on what's the idea that spans channel? What is the universal message?

Mitch: What have we learned? We put our commercial on our micro-site (showcase in TiVo speak) because we didn't have video. On average people watched it for 35 seconds. It was a 30 second commercial. What's going on there? Were people watching twice? Was it confusing or did they want more information? [Do we get an answer or try and come up with conspiracy theories? - Lisa]

Chris: In the beginning, no one is going to know about it. You have to have a way to draw people to that. Once you get viewers to your offering, reward them with something new. It shouldn't just be the same thing. Give them incentive to come back.

Barry: There's a lot of learning by advertiser. [There is SO MUCH razzing going on between Barry and Mitch. It's adorable.] We've found that the audience is very sophisticated. They know they're being sold but they don't mind so long as they get entertainment, value and relevance, they're okay with it. This kind of product improves the brand. They have a better experience overall. They got excited about it.

Question & Answer

Are there any issues with clearing a Disney Travel channel? Can Chase have a channel?

Barry: We've set aside the ability to make it available. The problem is clearing it with talent, actors and stuff for VOD.

Wishlist for VOD?

Chris: We'd like to stay a little exclusive. There's a perception that it's not on the same level of sophistication and we'd like to see it get raised. We think it's important to put out programming that's worthwhile and quality. We'd also like better navigation. It's not user-friendly enough.

Who is responsible for promoting this?

Barry: It's definitely a partnership. It's also about environment. This is very safe environment. You're not going to end up on an ad network were your brand is going to be next to something you don't approve of.

Chris: It's been a collaboration. He gives some specifics about how that was accomplished.

Barry and Karen give how their companies do promotions. I'm skipping it because my hands hurt and it's very specific.

In terms of the platform, what are you doing to hook into Web 2.0?

Karen: Look for a press release tomorrow. But we're working on it.

Is this something that smaller brands can use?

Barry: Yes, absolutely. We've done this with package goods too. Mars just chose us for promoting Dove. [That's not a small brand, dude.] We also did one with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. [Neither is that one. Low consideration != smaller brand]

They drift off talking about lifestyle brands.

Mitch: It used to be that the media drove creative, now it's going to be the creatives coming to the media.

How would you advise a cable operator to improve their platform?

Mitch: Navigation is impossible, metrics are poor, it's not in perspective with the community and there's not enough definition. It all needs to be more consumer friendly instead of just squashed in. I'd rather go to a local person directly who I can threaten directly. [Oh my!] [That's the Sugarrae approach to business, I believe. - Lisa]

Chris: I don't think we'd threaten, that's not the tack we'd take. First they need to acknowledge the problems and then make a plan to improve it.

And with that, we're done with another session. I'm going to skip my next and let my hands rest while the Advil kicks in. See you folks again after lunch for three more sessions!

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/17/08 at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
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Building Lifetime Value: Acquisition and Retention Strategies in the Digital Age

First session, day three. Just six sessions to go and we can call this Ad:Tech a wrap. I have coffee and a bagel which makes this morning just about great. Less great, my hair which is doing some sort of weird thing right now. [This is where I'm supposed to cry, "Pictures or it didn't happen", right? - Lisa]

If I'm in the right room, we should have Darryl Gehly (Molecular) moderating a panel of Dan Felter (OLGA), Sandor Marik (CondeNet), Joe Ventura (Nikon) and Jeff Fleischman (Citibank). And huzzah, the gang's all here. Let's get rolling, guys.

Darryl's from Boston, he's filled with glee that he gets to corral four New Yorkers. It's an East Coast thing I guess? Lisa? [It's a New England thing. - Lisa]

Oh heaven's he's going to do this all Q&A.

But first he tells us a story about his adorable son's DS and how it broke at the hinge. He hopped online (behavior change number one) and found that it was a known issue. They had him call an 800 number with a call volume so high, they just tell him to go back. He continued looking around, found pages, videos on YouTube, blogs all about this cracked hinge issue. He found people who had gotten it fixed for free so when he called back to the number, he was able to get his fixed for free as well, but only after he'd been told that he could pay $75 to get it fixed. If he hadn't done research, he'd have had to pay.

The problem he says is that it trains your customers to not listen to you. Now the first behavior is to do research online so they have ammunition to make you help them. We need to encourage dialogue between you and your customers. They have so many choices; they don't have to pick you.

You have to stop thinking 'how to I drive people to me?' It's got to stop being about putting it on your Web site and on your own Web channel and start being about pushing it out to consumers, big time.

Dan Felter gets to go next. [Apparently the Yankees beat the Red Sox last night. Sorry, Lisa!] Yeah, it was pretty sad. Go Sox! He's responsible for lead generation. He says what's surprising to him is how big the crap got. That they're giving away $500 gift cards and it takes 35 pages to get through that. If you can earn $2 off each person who clicks through and you only pay $.50 for that click, why wouldn't you do that? It got huge.

He's seen a lot of advertisers who don't know where their offer is running and what it looks like. You need to know where your offer is and on what Web sites. Don't let lead generation go under your radar. Keep it a clean user-centric process. Don't force them to opt into the offer. Then chances are you have at least a relatively interested customer.

Sandor Marik from CondeNet is up next. They have an interesting problem. They're traditional media, with a traditional subscription model. How does that transition online where traditional subscription doesn't work? In his job, he focuses mainly on the online side. He goes through a list of online sites that they own. Epicurious, Wired, Style, NutritionData. For him, it's the quality of the traffic that matters. They have to determine what the lifetime value of a customer is; it's not as solid as the print magazine side.

He said he had multiple ways to handle this panel. He could point out how he could do lead generation for everyone else or how they do it for themselves. They've been using more performance-based tactics like paid search. They're specifically targeting user sign up. They're focusing away from pure traffic and towards value.

Darryl asks how they monetize RSS feeds. Sandor says they're working on that. If he said they had it figured out, he'd be lying but they're working on a few things. He doesn't know if he can point to the place on every reader where the investment goes to return but in general it's an extremely good way to build a brand. If you pick up the magazine before a flight, then you probably paid for the price of reading through RSS for a year.

Joe Ventura starts off by paraphrasing Eddie Van Halen. Over time things get really complex and things start to break down. He was saying this right before grunge happened. It got too big and then it collapsed.

He says that's what happens. For Nikon, the average tenure of an employee is 25 years. [OMG, that's like my entire life to date. - Lisa] You get a lot of wisdom out of that but at the same time, you also have that sense that it's already been thought of and discarded. They did an outreach program to talk to the stakeholders, the consumers, the bloggers, the PR people. They needed to not only show the results but also how to get there. They've started an initiative to connect the dots for the consumers. It's about a value exchange, giving value to the customers so they would give value back to you.

They needed to listen and cut the noise out. It was about selling in the right channels. They recently revitalized the Web site but it wasn't about the site, it was about getting the channel right.

The third insight was that it's never finished. After you cut the crap and after you start listening and reaching out, you have to know that you're not done and you never will be. Nikon hasn't traditionally been a very transparent company but they're working on that. They're trying to establish a dialogue. He's getting company buy-n slowly and he can see how it's filtering through the organization.

They used personas (Perfect Moment Patti) to model what their consumers wanted and what they cared about. It was eye-opening for them to realize that they had people who didn't care about how red eye reduction worked or how many megapixels, they just wanted better pictures of their kids. So they're gearing content to talk about the images, not the technology.

Jeff Fleischman says that traditionally they've had two challenges: new entrants and brick and mortars. Also it's really easy to lend money but it's not so easy to collect it. It's taken banks a while to get onto the Web. First it was just brochures, then slowly they started to get services online. Then ING launched their online banking. They made it extremely easy to move money around from bank to bank. He thinks that it's really the first time that large amounts of money started to move around from bank to bank. Now everyone has a high yield savings account.

The latest wave is the financial services social media companies like Mint and Wesabe that are aggregating your financial life. They're adding value because they're trading on trust. People want to know that they're getting a good deal but don't have time to do the research. These services do the research for you.

Customers first and foremost want trust.

Stats: Social networking sites were visited by 44% of people last year. He was blown away by that. He thinks that companies need to get engaged because that's a huge number.

Joe comments that that's a really good point. They'd go out and go to forums and networks and find a comment there and their natural reaction would be 'okay, we'll go back and put the answer on our site' and it was like 'wait, that's not where they were asking the question.' That's like hearing a question and going back to your office and answering it and hoping that somehow it gets back to the people who need the answer. You have to answer where the people are.

Do you go back to the forums and say 'hey I'm from Nikon, here's the answer'? Doesn't that get into legal issues?

Joe: Yeah, we've had to be careful about it. We try to identify true sources. We're doing blogger outreach in addition to traditional PR outreach. We wanted to get our products into influential hands. We didn't want to go out and answer everything in every forum but we wanted to answer questions that were meaningful. (He doesn't mean literal forums, btw. Their blog is a 'forum'.) Yes, it gets hard to manage all those messages otherwise.

What's the threat of sites like Mint?

Jeff: Five years down the line, banks could just become places to put your money. He'd like to be the company that when people need counseling and financial trust, they come to them. They don't want to become a commodity. They want to compete on trust.

Dan: Speaking of trust, we've all seen that spam that's 'log in and change your password'. How do you draw people to you to engage their attention and how do you keep that trust and retention?

Jeff: People don't come to you unless they need something. We're trying to figure out how to respond to that. Trying to figure out how to go to people instead of waiting for them to come to you.

Sandor: For us, content is our product and now everyone is a content creator so now we have to compete with everyone, your friends and your family. How do we differentiate ourselves becomes a major issue. We need to keep up that level of trust so that we stay the authoritative content.

What's the lifetime value of your customer and what's the top two or three retainers?

[Awkward silence]

Dan: We think our value and trust is the retention. You need to be completely transparent to them.

Sandor: For the publishing print side, lifetime value is pretty easy but for us, that's a little harder. We don't have that figured out yet. A lot of our users because of the free content, it's hard to put a value on a single user. We think we add specific add on value.

Joe: We have four or five broad segments of customers. Their values are wildly different and he can't talk about the specific numbers. The most important thing to keeping them involved and happy is shutting up and listening and also reading between the lines and answering their needs before the customers can even realize they were there. It's about simplicity. How do you simplify things for your consumer? It's in everyone's best interest to push themselves outside of their own interests and try to apply insights from other areas. It's that idea of never stopping. We want to inspire and educate and we never had a place where once we'd done that they could bring it back and say 'here's what I did' and that's in the pipeline now. He thinks the mindset is more important that specific actions.

Jeff: They can pretty easily determine lifetime value. Ease, recognition, and relevancy are his three top retention points. He thinks TiVo is the greatest American invention because it changed the way people watch TV. He tries to bring external information in. He plugs Ted.com and says it's great for ideas and inspiration. Also read Blink.

So...three out of four of you didn't know the answer to lifetime value. What are the metrics that you guys are using to decide?

Joe: For us, it's time spent with the brand. We have a number of different platforms for customers to interact with the brand and we try to measure all of that and pull that stuff together. It's a balance of crunching the numbers and gut feel. It's a little bit of a leap of faith. It's not transactional, intentionally.

Dan: We're B2B, we know what the lifetime value is but we can't actually answer it here. It's too loaded.

Sandor: If we wanted to, we could come up with a number but I was trying to highlight was how to increase it. The actual number isn't important. It's about the larger picture.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/17/08 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
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April 16, 2008

Trench Warfare in the Digital Age: Relationship Marketing Makes a Comeback

Last session, huzzah! While the exhibit hall shuts down, we're going to learn about reputation management. Moderator John Stichweh (Critical Mass) gets us started. Panelists are Benjamin Hill, Andy Shih (Proctor & Gamble) and Jeff Rohrs (Exact Target).

First question, what is CRM?

Benjamin: We don't really use that term. We use the term personalizing. The question really is who are we trying to have a communication with. We use personal marketing because it shifts the focus from us to what the customer needs and wants. We want to get inside the heads of the people that we're trying to communicate with.

Andy: Consumer relationship marketing. They want to improve the lives of the world's consumers. It's about a two way relationship that creates a value exchange. Our hope it that it drives trial and then loyalty. We want to give them something and in turn we hope to get loyalty.

Jeff: Consumer Relationship Management. It's that arc of technology, strategy and process. Being focused on the customer and out of that you serve your company and goals.

John: Why trench warfare? The machine gun created trench warfare. It changed the whole way of warfare; it's about containing the movement of the enemy and narrowly defining the way that you do engagement. Does that work with relationship marketing?

Jeff: It might work internally but not customer facing. He doesn't like pointing machine guns at the customers. [Greatest. Mental Image. Ever. - Lisa] Each has their own entrenched needs, entrenched technologies. It's about creating collaborative environments instead of fighting with each other.

Andy: They believe in the 80/20 rule. They want to find those people that are worth 5 or 6 times more than the people on the street.

Ben: Who are we really fighting? Is it marketing colleagues? Is it the consumer? Do they really want to engage with brands? Is it finances? It could potentially be a number of people but mostly he thinks that it's like rolling out new technology to an army that does what it does very well and now they have to change. It's not really between the brand and the consumer as much as it is the person pushing CRM and the organization.

John: Is it technology? Can you do CRM without the tools?

Andy: Not fundamentally. That plays a part but that's not CRM in and of itself. You definitely don't need a technology. You use the right tool for the right objective. We made mistakes with that and over bought tools that we ended up not needing

Jeff: It's not. You can get started without it. At its essence, relationship marketing is about being customer-centric. It's about learning the customer's needs and serving those in the best way. He tells a story about a bad experience with Wal-mart on Sunday but how the way they handled it and have managed the process have turned it into a better experience.

Ben: It's a cultural change more than anything. My insurance company sends me personalized emails. You don't have to be backed by multi-million dollar systems. It's about the mindset. You can start by changing the mindset.

Jeff: Has anyone seen the reverse, where the tool drove the technology? [Zero] How many think it started with philosophy? [More than zero]

Ben: Sometimes it's available and that's like a gift.

Audience comment: Sometimes the philosophy isn't present and a tool gives focus.

Audience comment: Technology can tell you what your philosophy is by what sort of tool you're choosing. It's not creating the philosophy; it's reflecting something you haven't defined.

Ben: There's a difference between strategy and tactics.

John: Do people really care about those things that are low level? Do they love their Pantene that much? [Those with pretty hair do. - Lisa]

Andy: They really do. Olay for example is a really huge consumer base that really gives value. There's a relationship exchange. With less sexy brands like Febreeze or Mr. Clean, they don't do their own relationship building but things like 'how do I make my life more simple'? We build programs around the ways that people are using the products, not the products themselves. You have to be more creative.

Ben: People form relationships with the product and the brand (on a higher price point). Not always and not everyone but it happens. The challenge is identifying the people who want to have a relationship. His wife for example doesn't want to have a relationship with her cell phone but his nephew really does.

Jeff: The way I look at it is that we're the connective tissue for a good CRM program. Subscribers control the engagement and we have to respect that. They will self-select. We all have an inbox (or two or three or four) and that's very personal to us. But if you get permission, the ROI goes way up. Text is not email, not a permanent opt in.

Considering the 80/20 rule and looking at the Wal-Mart example, you're not a frequent customer but making it better for you cost money. So how do you differentiate between the 80 and 20?

Jeff: It's about recognizing that "Happy Customer's Tell three friends, Angry customers tell 300". He gives an example about how Dunkin Donuts implemented a loyalty card and how the cream will rise to the top.

Now I'm hungry. Mmm, donuts.

Andy: The best tactic is to try to be proactive. Try to understand your consumers, and bring them in. 5 years ago it was about scale, scale, scale and so they were doing big sweepstakes. But that didn't get relevant databases. So now they're trying to get more targeted databases by creating incentives and tools. Context counts, numbers in and of themselves aren't valuable.

Ben: Look at broadening the definition of success. 20 percent might be driving the products but a different 20 might be interested in giving you feedback. We leave room for hand raising, for people who are likely to respond to get a chance to respond.

[More specific examples are discussed, I'm going to finish this up and head out for the day. See you tomorrow, folks!]

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 6:27 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Liveblog, ad:techSF08

Digital Ad Networks: Are they safe for brands?

After lunch and some emergency Advil, I'm ready for another exciting panel. This time moderator Brad Berens (ad:tech & iMedia) will join panelists Jocelyn Griffing (ICON international), Dave Zinman (Yahoo!), Tim Vanderhook (Specific Media) and Sean Cheyney (AccuQuote) to discuss whether or not ad networks are worth the buy in.

Brad jumps up and says that this is going to be interactive and that's it's all about fear and greed. What do you fear and what do you want? He acknowledges that there are some substitutions on the panel (par for the ad:tech course, as you know.)

Brad's silly thing about himself: He's been collecting comic books for 35 years. [Why is that silly? Don't even say it, Lisa]

Jocelyn's silly thing is that she hasn't thrown up since 1984. That gets her a lot of applause. David wants to know what happened in 1984.

His silly/interesting thing is about his grandfather meeting Babe Ruth and getting a bat. It's in his 3-year-old son's room.

Sean's next. His silly thing is that five years ago he was married at mile 10.5 of the Disney marathon. They ran the rest of the race holding hands and he carried her across the finish line. Aw!

Tim's thing is that he's old enough to vote and drink alcohol. [He's rather baby-faced.]

Some audience polling goes on: buyers, agencies, sellers, press, publishers. They're all behind me so I can't break it down for you.

Brad thinks there's a gap between the expo and the conference. I agree. There's a lot of change and upheaval and consolidation in the ad network space. How do you decide which is a good network and how do you build a good network.

Jocelyn: You start with your client and their media budget. Based on their needs, you do some looking and figure out who the networks are, which will match. At the end of the day, it's a relationship business. You tend to work with the people who service you well, who treat you well and who return quality. The technology is important, the capability is important, but the base of it is quality and relationship. There's an interesting article in the journal on adnetworks he says.

Brad: Yes, it's relationships but ad networks make their claims on their technology.

Sean: They use similar criteria. Do you work with a publisher directly? He wants to know that there's a level of quality control. He asks his peers who they use, particularly people that he knows do well. Transparency is important.

Tim: It's a trust game when it comes down to the networks themselves. It's about scale. They want 100 million people, not 5 million people. They want a lot of inventory with laser focus. It's about longevity and being good stewards. It takes years to build.

Brad: From Yahoo's side, your capabilities are changing rapidly with the things you're acquiring, leaving the Microsoft thing aside. How do you handle the trust issue?

Dave: We see what Jocelyn says about reach. It's like they say about golf. You drive for show but you putt for dough. In then end, you go with the people with reach. He's from Blue Lithium, a company that was acquired by Yahoo, he can see the difference already. It's about communicating who you are and what you can do.

Brad opens it up to the floor to see what people down in the audience think. The first question is rather specific but generally translates to: As a content creator, how do you choose?

Dave: A network is only as trustworthy as its least trustworthy publisher. They test new publishers all the time but they need to be able to say to their advertisers that they know where their ad is going to show up.

Tim: You really need to match the people who fit.

Sean: We can definitely tell when a network isn't doing its due diligence and are just filling their network with garbage. We want to see numbers but only numbers that we'd be willing to advertise on.

Jocelyn: She says that she can pretty much always figure out what's going to work. She asks them to optimize for her and how quickly and effectively they can do that tells her how close they are with their publishers.

Dave: Do you want your ad network to be like a private club or like a bus depot. You need to understand what the admission process is.

ESPN dropped ad networks. Thoughts?

Tim: Specific was mentioned but they didn't actually have any ads with us. Really the question is what is that value proposition? I think it was a mistake but if any brand can do it, they would be able to.

Jocelyn: It doesn't matter to me. I don't buy an ad network for one site. If I really want ESPN, I'd go get it but that wouldn't make me not choose an ad network.

Brad: The topic is what's safe for brands. What type of ads are good for networks?

Jocelyn: I think it's like building a sandwich. You're going to have some that you want as single site publishers and some that you want a mix. Maybe you want mass tonnage and that's when you want an ad network.

Sean: We're taking a similar approach. We go after the sites that we specifically want first, then we start looking at where is the volume that we want, whether it's sales, reach, volume, etc. Nimbleness is a factor that we're looking at.

Thoughts on user generated content? Blogs, politics, etc.

Sean: For us there are certain things that we want to steer away from. Today is the anniversary of Virginia Tech, we don't want an ad 'what would happen to your family if you die today' running next to a story about that or service men and women dying. It all goes back to the trust issue. We have to trust that we're not going to run on sites that aren't going to be bad for our brand. You're looking to minimize your exposure to risk. We have the same conversation with CNN as we'd have with the ad networks about what's appropriate. We're okay with politics.

Dave: Social media gets back to the trust factor. Monster.com, for example, is UGC but it's not the same kind of UGC as others. You need to make a distinction about what KIND of UGC is okay. We have a code of conduct for our publishers and it's the strictest in the industry.

Tim: It's an issue for most marketers still today. It's a risk that they're not willing to take. Some brands are okay with it but most are not.

Sean: You need to insist on that pre-buy transparency. We want to be able to select which sites are okay for us.

Brad: You're willing to spend more for that?

Sean: I'm willing to pay a little bit more for that. If there's 1000 sites and we want 600, then that's what we'll pay for.

Jocelyn: It really depends on the client. I have clients that don't care about the transparency. They care about metrics or conversions. It's about your pain threshold.

What about contextual relevance? Can networks offer the same quality there?

Jocelyn: Yes, in my experience I'd say so. What it's worth depends on the client. You look at performance and you start optimizing shortly after you start running. There are some ad networks that focus on the kind of industry. Not everything is Yahoo or Specific.

Sean: We buy ad inventory through CNN Money. But we also buy through ad networks as well, [Gives a specific example] Much smaller, much longer tail. It actually can perform better because it's more contextually relevant.

Dave: No, I don't think you can get the same branding from a network as a specific buy. The reason specific buys cost more is because you have the surety. Yes, you can still get value but he doesn't think it's the same value. You sacrifice value for reach.

Tim: Ad networks don't look at it from a contextual standpoint, they look at it more from a behavioral standpoint.

Do full site listings compromise your relationship with advertisers?

Tim: We're not fully transparent. The networks that are really successful are selling people, not brands. If you're trying to cherry pick, just call the publisher directly.

How do you form new relationships? How much do you spend?

Sean: we want to spend enough to get a statistically relevant sample. We'll throw $5-$10k at it to see if it works. If they say it has to be $25k or nothing, then we take that as being that they're not that confident. High minimums, lack of transparency, how upfront they are -- those are all red flags. I don't feel like I need to buy from one ad network in general.

Jocelyn: I encourage clients to spend at least $15k on a test. She disagrees that $25k minimums mean that they're not confident. She thinks it's because they're lazy. It's enough to make her not want to work with them though.

Tim: I think that's pretty reasonable. I think it's an overall service level, not just one campaign but a couple of campaigns.

Jocelyn: Delivery is a major test for me. If you consider the sales over at the insertion order, that's a failure.

Sean: By the way, there's a difference between minimums on auditioning an ad network and one that you have a trust level with.

Brad: How does the new-on-the-job media planner who is just starting out learn to do this? Any tips?

Sean: Network and seek out mentors. Find people who know what they're talking about or who say they do. Email them, ask questions. When I bring in a new media buyer, I give them books to read, places to go, people to contact. It's teaching a man to fish.

Tim: We just send them a case of beer and it works out.

Jocelyn: Attending conferences, reading. It's research. Reading case studies. Find a job where you have a good mentor. Go to a big solid stable company and learn there. Be around best-in-class people.

Dave: Training. Go to a company that's going to invest in you.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 5:36 PM | Comments (2)
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Gamer Nation: Exploring Advertising Effectiveness in the Gaming Ecosystem

Two sessions left. Seated in front of me are moderator Mark Friedler and panelists Chuck Frizelle (Xbox New Media), Dave Williams (AddictingGames/Shockwave-MTVN), Adam Naide (Gametap/Turner), Jim Nichols (Catalyst San Francisco) and Julie Shumacher (DoubleFusion). I hope we get to play the games they're going to be talking about. More demo, less typing please!

Mark welcomes us to the panel. Thanks, Mark.

We've come a long way since the 90s when it was arcade games and console games. (Is he talking about the 90s or the 80s. I remember having proper games.)

He just called The Sims "not a game". Um, Mark? Oh, and now he says that sales of it were driven mostly by young girls. Ebay is an online strategy game in his mind. Hee.

He's going to toss out some statistics very quickly. I'm going to skip it because he's spending like half a second on each very dense slide. We take a little quiz on how often we game. I? Am a geek. Hush, Lisa. [I said nothing. - Lisa]

Why is the gaming audience valuable to advertisers?

Dave: Games have gone from being a product to being a part of culture. It defines kids much in the way music does. It's important to understand that they've transcended being a product. They've crossed out of the 20-something male demographic as well. You can treat it like any other media in terms of segmenting it.

Julie: Games were really the first digital community. Games are always about community. You played your Sega Dreamcast [Am I the only one who just yelled SEGA? - Lisa] with your friends. You had LAN parties at work...after hours (Hee). We're just now helping marketers leverage those communities. 37% of gamers consider that the most significant form of social interaction in their world.

Jim: Engagement is at the core of gaming.

Chuck: Why are gamers the medium? It's a mainstream media. 75-85% of people game today. Everyone's a gamer these days. Who are those 15% that aren't gaming? [Hi. My name is Lisa and I am not a gamer. - Lisa] They're probably not on the Internet. [What? - Lisa] If you're trying to reach them, what are you doing in media buys anyway?

Mark: How are audiences responding to paid vs free models?

Adam: We started as a paid subscription service. We moved to an ad supported model about a year ago. There are a core group of people out there who are willing to pay for premium content but scale-wise, offering ones that are a little older 6 to 9 months, that's a good reach. They find that people playing the free games are also gaming elsewhere, on console, on PC, on WoW.

Chuck: There is a place for everyone to pay. Xbox live is an entertainment vessel. What happens if you give away a free movie? The consumers loved it. The chatter was very positive, which is surprising from gamers who are usually critical. [hee again.] They haven't had any real negative backlash to their advertising.

Julie: It's really about gamer currency. I think advertisers sat on the sidelines for a long time because they didn't know if they belonged there. We try to put the lens on ad deals that says are you part of the gamer's currency? We launched four ad-supported Ubisoft games host by McDonalds and we had a huge response.

Mark says that Julie's brought in more money single-handedly to the industry than anyone else back when she was at EA. She goes over a deal they cut with T-Mobile and some basketball game tournament.

Dave: There's a shift. Console games are integrating online games now and it's interesting to see where it's going.

Mark: What is the consumer response to advertising in this instance? How much is too much? What's over the line?

Dave: From an online perspective, a couple years ago games around the brand were very popular. Recently what we've been doing is integrating brands into already popular games instead. They used imagery, added functionality that was related to the brand.

Adam: Users are willing to deal with a 15-20 second pre-roll and some adjacent advertising. The difference is that they're offering games that are full, previously released games and so people are willing to sit through an ad for the opportunity to play Tomb Raider for example.

Julie: There is definitely a too far. We did the Burger King deal in fight night and that was too far. You have to have that lens of currency and why are you there. 40% of gamers strongly agree they'll watch an ad for free content. Why is the advertiser there? How much did the consumer pay? In terms of what Turner's doing, these are $60 games that you're getting for the price of watching an ad.

Jim: The casual gaming industry has done a good job of making it obvious that the game has value. It's amazing that on the core gamer side, these are the toughest critics on the web and they're not really complaining that much.

Julie: City of Heroes: They're communicating with their users first, and offering an opt-in. and the response was 'sure but what do I get out of it?'

Dave: Even if they don't like the advertising they agree it needs to be there so their free games don't go away.

Adam: The ones who are playing for free aren't playing quite as long or as frequently.

Chuck: We need to make sure a user experience metric is part of our strategy. I think we've done a good job of pushing it back on the agency to ask 'what would I want as a gamer myself?'

Mark: Are there any new innovations in the console market that you're seeing? What is the number of the console market in terms of revenue?

Chuck: I should have them but I can't divulge. Not an innovation but an advancement. In December, we integrated ad expert onto Xbox live. Those banners and things on Xbox live are all on Ad Expert. On micro-transactions, it's that there are all sort of things that Dad wants, then Mom wants something else, and the kids want everything labeled Halo...

Julie: It's about more than the console. It's about the game, it's about the engagement. It's a disservice to the industry to have to buy one game on multiple platforms. The next big shift is the Wii. If I sell 50% of my revenue on Xbox, then 30% is going to be on Wii because mothers are in the living rooms and they're connecting to their DS. It's about taking your gaming experience 360 and thus the marketing goes 360 as well. You can be a part after the release down with those downloads.

Mark: What's makes a game execution exciting?

Jim: You're fighting for dollars with a buyer who is buying a wide range of properties. The idea that the person is going to have time to learn the top 80 titles is unrealistic. So you need to give them the opportunity to buy a demo. They want flexibility. Speed to market with the download stuff is much much better now too. They can buy by ESRB level now too.

Mark directs the conversation toward how do you introduce buyer to these new platforms.

Adam: It's the same sales team that's selling Adult Swim and Cartoon Network and yeah, they're going to sell Gametap too.

Dave: We're absolutely selling across platform. If we're selling one thing, we're selling all the way across.

Julie: They did something with ADIDAS that promoted different aspects of shoes in a game and promoted it in other games and culminated all of it in a tournament in Spain. It had product placement and targeting and a live event so it was covering everything.

Mark brings up virtual worlds like Gaia Online. Where do the gaming world and the virtual world meet?

Julie: It is the place where Web is meeting games. Virtual worlds might be the fastest path for marketers getting into games because it's an easy enter.

Dave: Neopets, average time onsite is 2 hours 40 minutes. [Good heavens! - Lisa] It's about socialization and it gives them a shared experience.

How do you measure the effectiveness of in-game advertising without the possibility of clickthrough?

Julie: Most of the ads are clickable except on a console. I'm hopeful they'll look at it differently because the engagement is different. The rest is based on CPM. It's also share of voice.

Adam: We can provide impression as well as clickthroughs.

Chuck: we have panels, we work with Nielsen. It's really impressive the response.

Chuck asks the audience how many people have been to this sort of panel before. It's about half. He's excited by that and plugs the industry as being really exciting and growing and awesome.

We're about done. They're talking about Facebook as an exciting place for games. Dave says they're investing heavily in that.

Key Takeaway: Engagement. You need to define the engagement. Learn which sites you should be placing your money on. [Really, though, isn't "engagement" the answer for everything these days? - Lisa]

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)
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Tactical Search: Local and Mobile Search

Yay, a panel I know something about! Moderator Dana Todd (Newsforce) will be talking with Sean Cummings (Ask.com), Ian White (Urban Mapping, Inc) and Zach Anders (Ticketcity) about what might well be the future of search (and search engine optimization): local and mobile.

After a brief detour to the exhibit hall to make sure everyone was listening to our brand new radio show SEM Synergy [/shameless plug], I slip (late) into Zach Ander's presentation.

Ticketcity invests heavily in search engine optimization and PPC. Local search has been very good to them. They're seeing amazing returns. Users of local search are more likely to convert and buy. They're a targeted audience. Local search is effective because there are reviews, directions, ratings, comments, etc. It helps the buying decision.

Local search users tend to be earning $60k+ a year. The local search engines are spending millions every year to bring people to their sites which is like free advertising for those in their index.

Mobile is growing rapidly. They predict there will be more than 250 million users on mobile in the US by 2010. Mobile search advertising is growing exponentially. Get in now before things get crowded.

Tips:

• Spend in moderation
• Monitor how both mediums evolve -- know that people aren't always as savvy as they could be.
• Find a good partner
• Take advantage of free opportunities.
• Update your listings
• Get people to rate your business

Sean Cummings is up next.

He says the first question is how do I get into your search engine.

Site structure makes a BIG difference. [coughSILOINGcough] If you have location specific content then be sure it's in the Title that way. Organize it in a ways that makes sense. Make them unique and accurate.

Make people land on the right page. Don't drive everyone to a high level page if something further down the silo is better.

Make sure that you're listed properly. A lot of people don't check.

Buy local pay per click.

Develop local SEO content. Use semantically related words.

SEO Press Releases targeting local terms. Local PR is great for building backlinks. Simple joint press releases announcing service in a new area are usually picked up by local media.

Wow, that was a lot of good information, really fast.

Erika Moersch (Outrider) is up next. She wasn't in the program, hmm. [I love that continually call it a "program". - Lisa]

She's going to talk about how to set up a tactical mobile campaign.

Best Practices:

• Create a WAP site
• Experience specifically designed for the mobile user
• Decreased load time
• Ability to advertise on all mobile platforms
• Choose the right keywords
• Redirect so they can find you -- detect mobile devices and redirect them to something designed for mobile.
• Plan for on-deck and off-deck: 75/25 rule - 75% are using on-deck-- a propriety system. 25% are on a mobile browser
• Creative limitations -- Make the title really stand out. It's more important than the description. Get a call to action in there.

Issues and RoadBlocks:

• Only 13.3% of phones are smartphones. You can't use Flash and Java with stupidphones. [Hee! - Lisa]
• The engines haven't made their algorithms tailored to mobile yet. Yahoo is the biggest player and they're still using the same algorithm despite the fact that searcher behavior is different.
• No platform standardization on the major carriers.
• CTIA is creating standards
• Google is trying to create their own standard with Android
• No domain/sub-domain standardization: M., .mobi, wap.
• Tracking is more confusing with mobile. With paid search you have a lot of data but you don't really have that information with mobile. Cookies don't work well. You need to use log files more or get into a specific mobile tracking tool.

Mobile Search Insider Learnings:

• CPC may or may not be high. It depends on the industry.
• Yahoo vs Google Impressions - In the PC world, it's Google. In mobile, it's Yahoo that's the main player.
• Right now volume is very low. Make sure you're setting expectations.
• Underestimate impressions
• There is less real estate. You have to be in position one or two for Yahoo. MSN will only have one paid result.
• Right now because of the low volume. You can get into a competitive industry on pricey terms for less than $1,000 a month. They did competitive entertainment terms for less than $500.

The time for testing is now. Growth and cost are only going to increase, so now is the best time for experimentation.

Last but not least Ian White. His company serves major portals and IYPs.

He's a little tired of talking about local. The top of the market as he sees it is 30% of small businesses.

40% of searches are inherently local. 5% of search terms use city or state names. 2% use informal terms (neighborhoods). .05% of search terms use a postal code. They focus on that 7.05%

90% of local search queries that are transaction based result in an offline buy. Research online, buy offline.

IP-based Geotargeting Sucks [heh]

It's good for anti-fraud, regional content serving but otherwise he thinks it's worthless. If the geotargeting people tell you they can target a zip code, they're lying. Also, it doesn't really cover what a target area might actually be. An auto dealership and a hardware store have a different reach.

Other problems: Vacation planning based on geotargeting is worthless. Where you are isn't where you want to be.

Geographic keywords have arrived

They use the long tail, that's the 7.05%. Design campaigns around user behavior, focus on both natural and paid.

Switching over to mobile now. Ways your phone knows where you are: Thumb, WiFi, A-GPS, Cell-ID, GPS. What are the mobile trade offs? Power consumption, time to fix, accuracy.

Q&A

What kind of conversion rates do you see on mobile campaigns?

Erika: It's still pretty hard to get those right now. It's been pretty good though, very strong conversion. Entertainment is very strong. We haven't really narrowed down a great way to track conversions right now.

What did you do to make local search better?

Sean: Google doesn't have the conversion rates yet either. We learned not to overestimate what the consumer knew how to do. We're staying very basic, something that the consumer is comfortable doing. We're slowing down the process. Making it simplified.

Free listings for local--where are they?

Sean: I don't know where there's a list right now. Superpages maybe, if you query them. Ask if you buy a campaign if they have all your free listings.

Ian: Think about it going upstream. Free has a cost.

Dana: You have to redo your Superpages listing every year.

Which converts better free or paid?

Zach: The free give you more utility and freedom to talk about yourself but we've found the combination of the two has worked very well.

Have you experienced different objectives in mobile versus regular paid?

Erika: We started out just branding but with regular paid, it's more for a conversion. There really isn't a direct comparison.

Dana asks what needs to be done in the case of standards. Make it one standard or open source?

Zach says that WAP itself is the problem. No one likes it and people create their own standard. The cell carriers themselves are the biggest hurtle. He thinks everyone's going to the smartphones. But at the same time, people don't know how to use their phones. The learning curve is far behind the technology. It's not the tech, it's the carbon based lifeforms.

Erika agrees. The sooner a standard can be agreed upon, the better.

Any standard will do is the general consensus.

Which is more effective, the city name or the general term + regional targeting?

Ian: He questions the regional targeting.

Zach: Do all of it. That's what we did with our search engine optimization. It's simple to take your keywords and append your cities.

And that's it! Lunchtime! (Um, I may have confused Zach and Sean in the Q&A. I wasn't looking up.)

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 2:14 PM | Comments (0)
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Keynote Roundtable: You Don't Know Jack! Teens Speak Out

Or maybe it's called A Day in the Life of Millennials. That's what the title card says. Oh Ad:Tech, why are you so inconsistent?

As people flee the room (no, really, it's weird. Are they scared of young people?) Samantha Skey (Alloy Media + Marketing) is going to moderate our roundtable discussion today. I have to tell you, I'm interested in what these mystery teens are going to say but I'm dreading blogging it. If these kids talk like my 16 year old cousins, my fingers are going to fall off.

In case you were wondering a millennial is 12-24 years old [Did you just start feeling incredibly old? I did - Lisa]. There are 54 million of them. 10.5 million of them are in college. 1 in 5 are non-white. They have a lot of money. Lots of it. They say they're family oriented and close with their parents. Really? Man, kids these days.

They're also very self confident. 59% say that they know they're not perfect but there isn't much they'd change about themselves. They'll pursue their dreams no matter what the cost. They're used to customization, mobility, connectivity, visibility and value. They're very into self-portraiture.

In other words, they're kids. God, I'm old. Someone get me a walker.

We hear you need to be invited into the circle and accepted before you can engage them. [Like high school!] Okay, lady, get to the kids, we're short on time here.

Right to left and I apologize for any misspellings, they don't get their names on the slide. Not cool.

Vijay - High school student in the Valley, would keep his cell phone if all other modes of media were removed.
Anastasia - JCHS, computer.
Josie - Sophomore, couldn't live without her cell phone. Her skirt is adorable. [Ask her where she bought it! - Lisa]
Steven - UC Berkeley, couldn't live without his computer
Jewel - San Francisco State, computer

Stephanie calls them all smart and ridiculously over-educated. And she's still talking. Ask them something!

They're often doing three things at once. It doesn't really deplete their attention but it does need to be very efficient.

And now time for a short video.

What do you think about watching shows online?

Vijay: Usually I watch shows online if I miss it or if I'm bored. There's so much Simpsons that I haven't seen. [Hee! - Lisa]

Steven: I usually watch it on the Internet. No commercials, free, convenient.

Anastasia: Doesn't watch if very often. Does for the same reason as Steven. It's a lot more usable.

Steven: Hulu shows the same ad the whole episode, I get bored but I do remember the commercial. I don't tend to remember it favorably.

Jewel: I usually watch it as a break from the program.

They'll all avoid the ads if they can but they understand that it's necessary.

60% of young people say that if they could move their media onto one device, they would. Agree or disagree?

Vijay: Definitely agrees. The convenience would be great (and you can watch during class when you're bored.).

Do you use any social networks?

V: Facebook

Ana: Yes, but she would eliminate them if she could. She can't because of the social responsibility.

Josie: Yes, Facebook and a non-profit community

Steven: Facebook, used to have a Myspace

Jewel: MySpace mostly, has a Facebook

Online Gaming?

Steven: Scrabulous. Has friends on World of Warcraft.

Jewel: Her friends are into Xbox and Playstation online.

Josie: Doesn't play games online, but is obsessed with Tetris. (whoo!)

Online avatar?

Vijay: Was big on it in middle school, in high school didn't have time for it anymore.
Anastasia: Was into WoW but she can't afford it.

How do you feel about ads in your social network experience?

Steven: Too many ads is why he left MySpace. On Facebook the advertising is more subtle and he appreciates that.

Anastasia: The subtlety is very important. If there's a value, it's okay.

Josie: It gets a little annoying but they are trying to make it helpful. I never click on it because I'm afraid it'll lead to a virus.

Any ads on your cell phone?

Jewel: Has gotten some, usually ignores them. Doesn't like having to opt out.

Vijay: Really annoying when you get them. Understands if he's asked to be contacted. Wants it to be relevant.

[A little video about FreeRice.com]

What does the idea of social responsibility mean to you?

Anastasia: loves freerice.com, sent it to her friends.

Josie: is very into charities online. Wants to see that she's helping. She likes FreeRice.com. Some people like doing it because it's helping with SATs and some because it's fun. She likes it because it's helping.

Steven: Recognizes the broad appeal. Between playing a game that's meant for nothing and one that donates to a good cause, he'll totally pick the cause.

They all say that'd donate over getting something for themselves if they were given a choice. Oh sure they say that in front of a crowd.

Steven says that if he gets something it just feels like he's buying into advertising. He'd rather support a good cause.

Are you more likely to believe a company is doing a good thing?

Anastasia: if it's a reputable name/large brand. The others generally agree.

Steven points out that people start companies to make a profit so he would want to know what the angle is.

Who do you perceive as being socially or eco friendly.

Steven: Chevron is environmentally conscious.

Anastasia: EnergyStar

Josie: She doesn't know if she believes that Chevron is eco friendly what with the oil. She thinks you can make choices that are eco friendly without sacrificing quality.

Jewel: Starbucks--they do it for the company but they also do composting which is good. [I think the composting is a local thing.] She preaches composting for a while.

Vijay: Bill Gates and Microsoft, Warren Buffet.

They tend to hear it word of mouth, personal experience. At the source.

Sam points out that there isn't a lot of deep dive research in that. They take it at face value, based on what they see and hear.

What makes something viral? [Video time!] What makes you pass something along?

Anastasia: Is it legit? Is it something I support or funny?

Vijay: Have to check first to make sure it's okay and not dangerous.

They all do a filter check first.

Steven: Reputable source, it's not always humor, it's originality.
Josie: Humor, something enjoyable. She'll pass on deals that she gets. 25% off deals. Socially responsible things.

<>What is the most important component of your online identity and how would you like to enhance that?

Steven: It matters to find people. I miss the courses application on Facebook. I'd like to see all the silly useless applications go away. That's why MySpace died (died!), it got too pimped out.

Anastasia: Photos are the most important, and the ability to tag things. She'd also get rid of the applications.

Vijay: Photos. He'd change the ability to spam out mass invites.

Are you receptive to sponsorships on things you want?

Jewel: Yes, totally, if it's a value proposition.

Josie: There are a lot of things that aren't positive and that takes away from what is positive. She only likes ads for things that are for a greater good. Like FreeRice.com. That's an ad she does like and she found that on Facebook. (She has 600 Facebook friends.) Diet tips aren't of interest. [Give her a few years for that metabolism to slow down. They will be. - Lisa]

Anastasia: She feels like a lot of the causes are self-aggrandizing rather than being helpful. If they did something that would be better.

Any last words?

Josie: I really, really dislike it when people try to become hip and cool. Usually you're not. Don't use kewl. Do you think I'm five years old? Don't patronize.

Steven: I'm concerned by the idea that one device idea. There's a reason I keep it separate.

Anastasia: She understands that marketing has to happen but if it is, it should support something good.

Q&A

What fears are you confronting with digital media?

Anastasia: She had a picture of a sunset on Photobucket used on a porn site. Privacy is paramount.

Steven: MySpace had a clause that anything posted was their copyright, we had to take everything down.

Josie: She's been sexually solicited too so she tries to keep thing private as she can.

What makes you trust a Web site?

Josie: Nothing. It's on the Internet, it's going to come up. But you use it anyway because it's addicting.

Vijay: Big sites, I'll trust it. If it's a small site, I would be more skeptical. I'd check it out, check for a scam, virus, skimmers.

Have they changed their behaviors as a security measure? All nod.

Jewel: I'm aware of how I portray myself out there. I wouldn't put up a picture of me partying. Maybe reading a book.

Oooh, they get presents! $100 for iTunes and a $100 cash.

Nice panel.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)
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Keynote Roundtable: State of the Industry

No sooner does one keynote end than the next begins. That's how we roll here at Ad:Tech. Michael Theodore (IAB) is moderating this State of the Industry roundtable with panelists Todd Teresi (Yahoo), Jeremy Wright (Nokia Ad Service), Jennifer Moyer (Washingtonpost, Newsweek Interactive), and Curt Hecht (GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group).

While my computer freezes, Michael introduces the panelists. Gee, I hope that wasn't important. Thanks a lot, Word.

We're going to start by talking about the Recession. It's Web 2.0's first economic downturn. Are we really still pretending Web 2.0 is a thing? [I thought we were on like, Web. 7.0 now? It's like AOL that way. - Lisa]

Are there any positives that can come out of this?

Jennifer: What we're seeing is that advertisers in certain categories are reluctant to commit dollars. Jobs are down, cars is holding strong but that's obviously going to go down. On a positive side, marketers will move dollars to less traditional forms online where the measurability is. Branded publishers probably won't be the beneficiaries. It'll be portals, ad networks.

Todd: He agrees that things are going to be moved to where there is more accountability for ad dollars. This isn't like the first Internet downturn. They're very stable now, unlike the bubble.

Jeremy: He says mobile is still at an earlier stage of advertising so it's going to be interesting for them. Budgets are going to be cut, obviously, so it's either going to be that you're going to cut the new stuff (like mobile) or you're going to cut the traditional stuff and try for a new platform. Everyone seems to agree that digital media is going to be a winner just based on its ability to be accountable.

Curt: Speaking of representing agency platforms, on the marketing side, clients are focused on the data and analytics. They're really wanting to look a cross channel measurement. He believes that traditional media can drive digital media online. They're seeing more data and analytics guys getting hired in their company because that's really what people are looking for.

Michael: Traditional media is very certain. Is interactive really going to need to show that it has more definite numbers?

Curt: I think digital has proven that it's good at showing a moment or a period in time. It needs a better macro view, particularly in the social space. How can I prove the fantasy football league was a good ROI? I think social media has the ability to provide a multiplier effect on traditional media. We need to start tapping into that and quantifying it.

Todd: We need to draw out the attitudinal factor.

Jen: It takes longer in the social media space to create value and marketers expect fairly immediate results. You have to change expectations and figure out what the value is.

Jeremy: Mobile's in a different space in the way that it can be configured to get direct result and in that there's very rich subscriber data.

Michael: Even without any economic uncertainty, mobile has been the next big thing for a number of years but it hasn't happened yet. We've had some good handsets but we're behind the rest of the world. What's preventing mobile from fulfilling promise?

Jeremy: It has more than double the reach of TV and PCs. There are ways that people could and should be using it. SMS is now universal and people should be using it. [There's one guy in the audience without a phone. Someone escort him out, please? He must have gotten lost.] There are brands that should be using short codes with SMS and sending users to mobile Web sites. What's holding them back? People aren't really putting enough time and effort into developing things for mobile.

Todd: It really depends on the handset manufacturer, the carrier, the content providers. You have to look at how things are working. It's not just repurposed content. Yahoo! Go is a very simple experience that was developed specifically for the mobile environment. Its repurposed content with an experience built for mobile. You have to think about how people use their phone. It's finally getting to the point where agencies can develop for this.

Jeremy: Mobile is a different medium. It's not a reading medium, it's an impulse medium. If you send something to a phone, it's stored there on the person.

Michael: Can the agencies get their head around that? Why do they keep wanting to do banner ads?

Curt: One of the first questions is shouldn't we just extend our search campaigns for the phone? And yes, we should. It's about organizing your data so it's useful on a small screen. We're encouraging clients to go down the logical plan. What's useful, the search side of it, the data side of it? You need to think where people want to find information. For fantasy football, is there a mobile side to this?

Jeremy: What you need to think about it what mobile can do for you. Advertising comes later. First you need to think about how mobile can make a difference.

Michael: Your premise is that there is this great untapped functionality. What is it, how does it meet consumer functionality? Is there time for that to be figured out in a time of economic uncertainty? In the area of UGC, what's your patience like? How long before it's got to return your investment?

Jen: The business model isn't completely worked out. Advertisers don't know how to control it yet. But hey, it's free content, right? We need to get as large an audience as possible. We're confident that once the audience is there advertisers will work with us.

Todd: People want to trust the experience. Everything we do has to be trustworthy to the customer because they will up and leave if it's not. So we have to start with consumer experience and then integrate advertising into that without betraying the user. If you can engage the audience, marketers will love it. If they're just checking sports scores and leaving that's not as attractive as if they come and stay and are engaged.

Michael: Brings up digital video and (again) what's the next big thing?

Todd: Digital video is still just starting to come of age. There are some major impediments that are getting solved right now. Needing standards, etc. The simplicity of the past - here's my commercial, put it online - that's not really working as well as it could. We just launched clickable ads. And we have overlay ads. And it's more engagement without disrupting the experience.

Jeremy: Re: mobile--it's going to be very important. Not just putting video on phones but also brands using it to connect to consumers. The days of having a 30 second ad are at an end. We need the right ad formats. There's even less tolerance for pre-roll or post-roll ads on mobile.

Jen: Video on their site has been growing rapidly. The difficulty for advertisers is lack of standards. So publishers have been investing heavily in creating their own standards. Going forward where will the standards shake out?

Curt: Right now they're set up to deal with video irrespective of screen. He gives credit to CBS for moving first and giving people access to their online content. Most of their clients feel safe with the publishers that they've been with for 50 years, even if they're moving online. What do we do with UGC? How do we leverage that? That's what they're working on figuring out. On the advertising side, we're stuck in a pre-roll world and we need ideas. It's not good enough yet. They also need to remember that the marketer is a publisher too. What's the pipe? How do they figure out what their distribution channel?

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
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Keynote: Consumers, Content and Control - Big Media in the Digital Age

Day 2 of Ad:Tech and it's time for the first of three back to back keynotes. We're running ten minutes late already. Um, they do know we don't have a passing period, right? [Methinks they're trying to kill you. I hope you brought drugs today. - Lisa]

Anyway, today we begin with an interview with George Kliavkoff (NBC Universal). He's going to talk with moderator Adam Lashinsky (Fortune Magazine) about fragmentation, distribution and consumer control. I don't know what that means; I copied it out of the program guide.

First up, Drew Ianni is going to do some housekeeping. He wants to know how many people went to the parties. Not many by the applause. Those people are still sleeping. [I like overtired, snarky conference Susan. She's funny. - Lisa]

And now time for a commercial about the Olympics. All the many ways that I will be ignoring its existence: online, on your phone, on demand, on broadcast, on iTunes. Oh, hey, they're during my birthday? Cool. Oh, and during SES San Jose but that's not nearly as important.

Let's get going. George goes over a few of the many, many things that NBC is into. His group is about centralizing from a digital perspective as well as a tactical perspective. He's also responsible for doing search engine optimization for the sites that aren't big enough to have their own separate SEO team yet.

In three to five years all those things that he's centralizing right now will be big enough to stand on their own and his job will go away.

They're in the process of starting a bunch of digital cable networks.

Metrics: Topline revenue company-wide is $1 billion. Up 40% from last year. The operating profit is up 50% year over year. They're outperforming the market in some areas.

Pageviews for NBC.com is 17 million or 18 million for the last full fall season (pre-writer's strike.) They're changing from a Fall launch to a 52 week launch schedule, much more like cable so that there is always stuff launching.

Hulu is a joint venture between NewsCorp/NBC. They have the right to create a destination Web site that would go and get good content. They have distribution deals with several sites so that people can find the content where they want it. In terms of Hulu, their competition is anyone looking to take the consumer's attention away from their site. They wanted to develop something that was good for the customer and good for the advertisers. He thinks it worked despite the general mocking reaction at the announcement because the two guys at the top from each of the companies involved were very passionate about it.

They have deals with 50 different content providers. George thinks it's the best video experience on the Web. But then, he would.

The ad sales guys didn't like it so much because they didn't get to control what people saw and where they saw it. (Sales: Vertically and Horizontally, show and demographically)

They gave the Fox/NBC sales teams a first right to the inventory, they get it at a discount. It works great for Hulu sales because they get a good deal at no cost of sale.

They did 95% of their homework before they launched the site so things are running pretty smoothly.

What's unique about Hulu ads? The content has fewer ads than the TV broadcast version, just one ad at a commercial break. They sell demographic and psychographic and genre, not brand. They give people the option of watching either one movie trailer pre-roll or 5 ads sprinkled through the program. That just came out of beta (500,000 people).

Hulu is the syndication strategy for NBC Universal.

The player allows you to take just a clip or the whole episode and embed it anywhere. So if you just want Michael Scott saying 'That's what she said', you can do that. (Heh.) Depending on how long the clip is, you may or may not have ads embedded into that. They want to let people take the content, put it anywhere and use it. That was a 'difficult' conversation 18 months ago. (Heh, again) This is their viral strategy.

He sees Hulu as a shopping mall, lots of products, not much depth. NBC.com is the boutique, lots more depth, less products. They're building widgets that can be propagated and borrowed across the Web.

Adam: How did it feel to give Steve Jobs the finger? (When they yanked NBC content from iTunes.)

He says that with any distribution partner except one, they get to set the wholesale price and it's very hard to agree to a partner that says here's your wholesale price and here's the retail price and here's what we're giving you.

Adam: So you distribute films on iTunes. And NBC demands to set the wholesale price. Therefore?

George: Are you sure you weren't a lawyer?

He says that they're harmed every day by piracy. Adam asks if there are piracy problems in iTunes. George blames "leading mp3 players" with pirated content and says that if there is a way to manage that (again, no names given) and offer a legitimate

YouTube and NBC relationship?

He thinks it's a great promotional vehicle. Right now he thinks that the demand looks a little high because there hasn't been good quality professional video available online and that's what he thinks people really want. They don't have a distribution agreement with YouTube for full episodes.

Adam: How much theft is going on?

George: Much less and that's to YouTube's credit.

Adam: Is it thanks to Viacom?

George: No, I don't think so. They're doing what they're doing and I think that incentives work better. The best defense is a good offense. It used to be at the end of SNL, YouTube had the content up. If we didn't have an alternative for people to go to, there wasn't much incentive for people to come to NBC/Hulu instead.

Adam: Has anyone made a distribution deal with YouTube that you know of?

George thinks that maybe a sports network has but he can't think of anyone.

Right now they're getting aggressively into putting video on mobile devices. They have distribution deals with every major carrier in the US. It hasn't taken off yet though. Today Hulu doesn't have mobile rights but that isn't saying they never will.

It's the screen that's always with you and it's very personal. If you want a song on iTunes you pay $.99. If you want a ten second clip to represent you, you pay $3.99 so that tells you a lot about how people view their phones. The other advantage is that while they have to train people that everything on the Internet isn't free, people already know that everything on phones isn't free.

They talk a bit about distributing auto video. DriverTV make videos on the cars and they get to use it in their auto network. They're focusing on the top ten advertising categories to make digital networks about. They have so much endemic content that they can basically just repurpose existing content.

2200 live hours of programming on the Olympics. They partnered with Microsoft. There will be 3600 hours of on-demand content. You might not be able to see archery on NBC.com but you can find it on one of the other distribution channels. Advertising is being sold as a three part package.

Adam: What's the feeling about the Tibet stuff?

It's not appropriate for him to comment. He wants to focus on getting people to say 'wow, that was a great digital/media experience'. Nicely dodged.

Question & Answer

How did you deal with the affiliate local TV stations when launching Hulu?

The thought was that this would cannibalize the local viewership but three studies were done and it showed that after an episode was viewed online, ratings went up the next week for the same show. So it was an easy conversation. What they don't know is what having all this freely available on the Web will do to syndication.

Will you have more than one property per ad category?

We think about it like a network and there are often more than one channel per network. So yes, basically.

Are you happy with NBC direct?

It's still in beta, you get downloads peer to peer. It's an extension of NBC.com for them. You get a higher quality experience because it's a download. It doesn't really compete with Hulu except in the previously mentioned everyone competes with Hulu.

Okay, done. Quick turnover time.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/16/08 at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
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April 15, 2008

The Internet Economy

Last session of the day. My headache has declared war on my eyesight and my hands are cramping. Never get old, kids.

Our closing session is moderated by Imran Khan (JP Morgan Research). Panelists Yogen Dalal (Mayfield Fund), Jason Rapp (Interactive Corp), Dave Morgan (TACODA, Inc) and Elizabeth Ross (Tribal DDB West) are going to bring this day to a close with a discussion of the business side. It's like our Shuffles section of the newsletter come to life.

Imran starts off by asking about how the online ad market will be affected by the recession.

Elizabeth: People are starting to hunker down. They're going to start cutting costs in marketing.

Dave: I think online will do a little bit better than other media but we're dependent on optimism and hope. And when you don't have hope that marketing will get a return, you pull back.

Jason: I agree. One of the themes will be performance marketing versus general branding.

Yogen: Frivolous advertising gets cut in any down turn but online marketing is critical and it's going to be the ones that provide value that will be the ones that get continued spending. When you look at the advertising loop, advertisers want to ensure they're going to get something of value out of their spend.

Imran: Moving to online video, where are we in monetizing online video?

Elizabeth: I think pre and post roll are pretty lackluster. The interruption model of advertising doesn't work on the Internet. That's a smarter way to do it. We're a little lazy right now as marketers and agencies. We just want to roll the ad and not have to earn the attention. [Oooh, the guy from the previous panel will fight you.]

Dave: We're still trying to innovate. We still haven't seen a lot of things that work yet. The things we've seen haven't worked yet. It's going to involve a business model shift.

Yogen: That's really where the focus will be in the nest couple of years. Right now the current solutions don't work. Advertising is going to have to become entertainment. We're seeing it in American Idol and some of the beer commercials on YouTube.

Imran: How will brand creation change?

Elizabeth: The 360 marketing program works to build a brand. Can you build a brand with just text links? Probably not. A lot of the work on TV is for products that you're already aware of. What's the role, we should be asking ourselves. It's true of any channel. If we think it's going to work for every brand, we're fooling ourselves.

Dave: It's not really directly related. Audience down doesn't mean rates go down. Rates go up because it means that there's fragmentation and they're even more the only point of mass contact.

Jason: Fragmentation favors the quality content creators online.

Imran: What's the next big thing?

Yogen: I wish I knew for certain. He thinks its widgets. The content is brought to the user through the widget. It's advertising through entertainment. Better than banner ads.

Elizabeth: The next 'shiny' thing. 8 months ago it was Second Life. But it really is a matter of stepping back and looking at the consumer and seeing what's the driving force behind it. Don't call it Facebook or Widgets or Second Life. You need to think more broadly than that.

Dave: There's no pre-destined Next Big Thing. It requires someone focusing on it and investing in it and making it the next big thing. So many of the potentials are copycats and they're not going to be the real next big thing. [No, Lisa, I'm not trying to rank for Next big thing, that's just how many times he said it.] Liar.

Imran: How will the landscape change in the next couple of years?

Jason: No one knows but the shift in the lending market is going to change things. You need to get into where there's synergy. Play where you're getting the most bang for your buck. It's more difficult to be public now than before.

Imran: Yahoo+Microsoft?

Jason: It's a landscaping changing deal. Depends on where you're standing. You're going to have fewer paths to exist if you're a startup. If you're a mid-stage investor, you're looking at possible partners. But it's hard to say what will happen.

Dave: We have a big four today, so right now it's a good time to try to be selling. We might end up with a big two and if we do, it's doesn't just halve your opportunity. Right now it's all about cash. How much cash do you have in the bank?

Imran: How will VC investment change in the next year?

Yogen: Some of the greatest companies are started in the worst of times because the entrenched players are busy taking care of business so the little guys are looking for chinks in the armor. Big mergers slow down the market leaders and VCs love that. I expect to see a lot of companies getting funded in the next year that we won't hear about for three or four years when they break the surface. They want to look for people in lasting companies, not companies with a 12 month exit strategy.

Imran: When you look at the international ad market, what are you hearing from your clients?

Elizabeth: Our offices around the world are doing very different kinds of work. It depends on what people are looking for and how they're looking for it. Mobile penetration is higher in other countries for example.

Dave: Online advertising outside of the US is going to grow faster than inside. The biggest difference is that it's national markets not regional markets. In the mid-late 90s, the national markets weren't robust enough, that's not the case anymore.

Yogen: More and more international users are coming to "US" Web sites. How do you display ads to them so that they get relevant ads? Are there going to be new international ad networks?

Jason: Our experience at IAC, for example at Match.com, is that people have a hard time coming into our market. But it's not an easy import even if it's a 'great' business model.

Dave: what if they go after niche markets instead? They don't go for the whole thing, just their niche?

Elizabeth: I think the next big thing is the idea that I do something and things around me change. Harmony road in Japan and the Wii for example.

Imran: How do you get into mobile? He would argue we're a little behind the world in that kind of thing. You can download comics in Japan, etc.

Elizabeth: It's difficult to figure out how to buy mobile. You need to figure out why you're in mobile. It's not that you're walking by Starbucks and you get SMS that gives you a coupon, that's not a reason to be there.

Jason: Points out that mobile's been the next big thing for the last 8 years.

Yogen: Why did Google succeed? Because the user had intent and they fulfilled it. That's what needs to be done with mobile. How do you intercept and anticipate that intent.

[I'm skipping Q&A to get this over to Lisa for posting. See you tomorrow!] Go eat something and stay out of trouble, you hear?

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/15/08 at 6:15 PM | Comments (0)
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Futuresearch: Watch This Space

Back from lunch, it's time to talk search. Yay, something I know something about! My impending headache thanks you. Jeffrey Pruitt (iCrossing) will be moderating a panel of Grazia Ruskin (AMD), Jane Butler (Google - Sales), Jen Dorre (Microsoft), Lauren Coberty (Kodak) and David Kidder (Clickable, Inc). SEMPO is presenting this session. Hurrah! [Sorry. She's new to the blogging thing. She meant "huzzah!". - Lisa]

Jeff's going to start with an overview and then he'll ask the panelists two questions. They'll have two slides and six minutes each to answer. Here we go.

Two trends:

1. Non-Premium inventory - fastest growing inventory online. Site-targeting, content ads, display type ads, video ads, Display retargeting.
2. One-stop shopping for ad buying.

We need to look at engagement mapping. What part should be getting credit? Is it always the last click?

Google is now more than a search engine. They're an ecosystem.

As marketers we need program management that can integrate the digitization of all content. It's about understanding where you can find your customers both online and offline.

We lastly need to look at multi channel reporting so that we can see correlations

The questions:

What are three biggest opportunities and what are the three biggest challenges?

Jane Butler is up first.

They advocate that you have 100% of your assets available all the time. You should always be on. In the virtual world, you have unlimited shelf space. Salesforce.com is a good example of making it always on. You need to connect online and offline. People see information in one form of media and look for it in another, that's natural. You need to be ready and discoverable. The reverse is true as well. People research online then go to the store. The third thing is following people through the whole funnel.

The three challenges she sees are:

• Standards -- what is the right metric? Do we need a new metric? What's the engagement level? What's important?
• Sales Attribution -- which click counts?
• Measurement -- We don't know exactly how to tile this stuff together yet. How does all this stuff work together?

She turns things over to Jen Dorre.

She asks how many people are using MSN right now. It's about a third of the room.

Their opportunities for growth:

• The power of 2 -- Search and Display is better together.
• Stronger analytics and stronger yield management. They're looking to create tools that will give you more information about your customers.
• Engagement mapping -- They acquired aQuantive and it's helping you understand where people are looking, how they're being engaged. It's about moving beyond last click counts. It'll change what the definition of a conversion is. You can have half a conversion. You can know that the first click was the most important instead of the last.

Their challenges: Growing the advertising ecosystem -- more tools, access to better data, inventory management, forecasting, trying to connect advertisers and publishers. The challenge is getting it to market.

Lauren Coberty jumps up:

Search is one of their opportunities. It's a growing area for advertising. More entrants into paid and organic. Most clicks happen in organic. The way in which companies are using search is evolving. Search is extending into traditional marketing models as well.

Advancing Targeting is another opportunity. Anything that can enhance their ability to reach customers: behavioral, remarketing, etc.

Social Media is the last area for growth. It's an ongoing dialogue versus intermittent campaigns. It's a key integration for them. They have their blog, the gallery, videos, podcasting.

Challenges:

• Measurement -- impact of interactive activities on offline sales.
• Quantification of Web 2.0 Activities. How much is a positive blog comment worth?M
• Privacy -- you have to be cautious with consumer info.
• Content - content distribution. You can't rely anymore on people coming to your site, you have to go to them. You must learn how to let go of your brand. It's more important to be part of the dialogue than staying on the sidelines.

Grazia Ruskin is next up.

AMD is an ingredient brand.

Opportunities:

• Using current marketing leverage to increase budgets


• Advance strategic alliances -- working with the distributors


• Rethink virtual merchandising strategies -- how influential is offline and online on each other. Are you maximizing the opportunity? Is your online presence synergistic with your offline presences?

Obstacles:

• Stick it! You need time to make things pay off.
• Using what you've learned to make advances in other parts of the global economy.
• Budgets. Learning how to use your budget better so that you're making more out of less.

Last up is David Kidder.

He has a fever. I feel for ya, David.

Opportunities for brand growth in digital marketing:

• Reputational transparency - highly articulated message of the brand core.
• Universal Brand Penetration - meet the customer where they are and have a consistent message
• Authentic Customer Experience

Obstacles:

• Trust -- Branding needs to be in concert with corporate ethos


• Data Quality -- A conversion is a conversion is a conversion. It needs to get more granular.


• Simplicity -- What would Apple Do? Reduce friction.

He briefly brings up the law of 3x. That is that you overvalue your product by 3x and you undervalue your competitors by 3x. Mathematically that's a 9x difference. Um, math. Ow.

Question & Answer:

Question about areas that they can improve.

Jen: When we launched we didn't do a good job of helping people use information, there were no tools, no consulting. The data was there but it wasn't explicable.

Jane: They're very fond of the API approach; they'll continue to do things that way. They have Android and Open Social. They're going to continue to have new resources available. They're refining and simplifying messaging.

What's your perspective about how education on trust can be done?

David: We expose an unnerving amount of data to our clients. We're imperfect and so are they so we want them on our side. It's about transparency and simplicity. We have a group called the Clickable Ninjas. They have 5 guys who go out and pull the questions in and answer them in long, informative paragraphs.

How do you organize internally your ad data and budgets?

Lauren: We're still working on getting there. We set objectives. People react to what they're measured on. It's not necessary about having a target in each separate piece but about having a target that everyone has to hit together. We need flexibility from agencies.

Grazia: They're dying to get Omniture but budgets prevent it. They're currently realigning to recreate specialty teams that focus on specific markets like social media.

Jeff: That's similar to what we were trying to do.

To what extent have you been able to combine search and display advertising? And as advertisers, would that type of ad be more valuable to you?

Jen: We've just launched behavioral targeting and that plays into that. Right now it's just MSN network but they're looking to expand.

Grazia: We're interesting in advertising in what works best.

Lauren: She'd agree with Grazia. Results are better when you get search and display playing together so they'd be interested in that.

What kind of standards are you looking at? Would they cross network? (for Google and Microsoft)

Jane: Right now they're looking to video tracking.

Jen: Right now, for search standards, they usually follow the Google standards. They've worked with SEMPO and IAB to make buying easier for you. They definitely want to be able to port things over between networks.

Are we going to see display ads on search results?

Jane: We're respectful of the simplicity but we've been doing testing. Banner ads, probably not. But video maybe or graphics, maybe.

Jen: Same for us, we want to keep the search results, just the results. If we find a relevant algorithmic video, they'll use that but that's organic not paid results.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/15/08 at 3:48 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, ad:techSF08

Power Panel: Follow the Money -- The Buyers Weigh In

Moderator Jon Fine (Businessweek) and his panelists are ready to go with today's first non-keynote panel and so am I. Note I just say panelists. None of the speakers are as listed in the program and I can't really read their name tags. I'll try to get their names as we go. Hmm. No time to be witty, let's just get started.

Jon gets us started by noting two truisms. There's too much money and not enough. He says he represents the old way since he writes for a proper magazine.

Andrea Kerr-Redniss says you don't necessarily need to do advertising to brand yourself online.

Crest Whitestrips are a good example of building brand. They did their brand building online, both advertising and community building. No one medium should be forced to carry the burden of brand building alone. Multi-channel brand building is the way to go. [Why are you trying to make us rank for "brand building?" - Lisa]

Jon: Say what you will about TV advertising, it's a known quantity. Social networks haven't taken off as ad platforms, why not?

Greg Smith: Because they're not advertising platforms. Just because something has a big audience doesn't mean that it's good for advertising. Social networking is a manifestation of how people are interacting. What lies beyond advertising? Do you always have to come at this through advertising? Hulu is great at answering the promise of television, low clutter, high fulfillment. Social media can be marketing but not as an ad platform.

Scott: We just did a Facebook ad and it was far and away the most effective part of the campaign.

Andrea: It's about building a promise. [A brand building promise? Sorry. - Lisa]

Jon: Andrea, in your opinion, will premium placements always have a premium CPM?

Andrea: Yes, I think they will but it might not be the same CPM as now. It'll get more segmented and understood.

Scott: Car sites get better CPM than TV.

Greg: Don't try to get people to pull away from high involvement content. That's a good branding environment though.

Jon: How do you work search into the equation?

Greg: The marketplace dictates the CPM. There's what they want us to pay and what we're willing to pay. It varies based on what we're trying to target. [He's doing most of the talking on this panel.]

Scott: Right now the big players aren't really into online marketing yet. They're only 2-3% online at the moment.

Question & Answer

What's unexplored about search ads and what's overrated?

Mohan: In the search world, one of the areas of promise is mobile search. In my case, I use mobile search on a day basis. It has been 'the year of mobile' every year for the last 10 years. But it doesn't require a broadband connection, it can be done through text. How do you target that appropriately?

Andrea: I think it's integral the way people are building and selling products. People aren't integrating search into our campaigns as much as we should, as a response vehicle, as a branding perspective. It needs to be holistic. Yahoo and Special K were a good example of holistic usage. You can judge the effectiveness of a TV ad based on the resulting search volume on those terms/people involved. You need to connect with people in all stages of the buying cycle. Not everyone is going to buy a car everyday.

Greg: Google TV helps buyers understand things. It's a Dish Network partnership of 5 million homes. You can buy television spots the way you buy anything else, bid management and you can focus very nicely. Find out which programs are best. For example, a rerun of Friends is good for direct response because people are willing to be distracted. [Zing! - Lisa] We want to know why are people tuning out?

Andrea: it's good for learning but it's not going to replace anything.

Scott: I think what's not working in search is a maturation beyond 'last click wins'. Even in the search world, that's not really what's going on. We need more granular data.

Jon: Do you have any concerns that digital measurement is flawed?

Scott: Yeah you can look at the wrong thing but if you go back to the macro level, you'll be doing better. If you don't think something works, step back and figure it out.

Andrea says that all media is becoming digital. There's not anything that's not going to be part digital in the future and you can't hold yourself aloof from that.

Scott says you can either try to reach 2 percent of the audience through TV or you can go into a targeted online space and reach a much bigger portion of the audience online. Let the Web do your targeting for you.

Right now Facebook is working but it might just be a honeymoon period since it's not saturated yet. The exciting part of social networks is that people can opt in to the stuff that they do and don't want to see. Scott says he'll never buy a Ford Ranger no matter how many ads they show him so it would be good if he could say 'hey, stop spending money on me.'

Greg says that search doesn't work as well if it's all you're doing. Build a halo and awareness around it. Don't let people tell you that you need a certain amount to play in television, don't let minimum budget myths scare you.

Do you guys worry about losing customers as they learn to do their own buying?

Greg: Everyone's getting into our space. We are your agents. You hire us because you can't be bothered. Any agency is going to be better experienced just by virtue of having more clients than one. Agencies need to keep up with the models.

Andrea: If you can find enough people to hire to staff your own agency, good luck. It's really a lack of talent out there.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 04/15/08 at 2:26 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Social Media, ad:techSF08

Keynote Roundtable: The Art of Conversation

One keynote down, one more to go today. Our next event is focused on building great brands in the digital age. Moderator Pete Blackshaw (Neilsen Online) and panelists Tom Asher (Levi Strauss & Co), Beth Thomas-Kim (Nestle USA), Jordan Warren (Agency.com) and Todd Cunningham (MTV Networks) will be discuss how conversation is vital to marketing. Also joining Rick Clancy (Sony).

And with about 30 seconds (no, really) between one keynote and the next, it's time to go. Oi, have some love for the bloggers, guys!

We're not quite sure what conversation means. How do we deliver on the full promise of conversation? We don't have the answers but we're here to find them. Pete talks incredibly fast.

Everyone introduces themselves and their companies a bit.

We're going to start with Sony's corporate blog. Beth (who works in consumer interaction and with call centers) thinks that blogs are awesome; it's a great way to start conversation. Jordan thinks you need to have more than just one face, you need faces in a large company. Who is the face of each division? Todd agrees that it's great, guest bloggers, celebrities are great. Tom says it's a great reflection of blog 1.0. Why was it the corporate communications guy blogging? Why wasn't it the engineers, the people doing the work?

Beth says why not create an internal blog? Find out who is passionate and connected. Use the internal blog to find talent and then put them out there. Recognize who your brand ambassadors are.

Rick: This is just the beginning. We've had about 15 guest bloggers, engineers, marketing, even a celebrity. Long term we want to have microsites and develop an internal platform. We have a CEO blog, but we want the rest of the employees to have a voice too and turn them into brand ambassadors. However, right now there's a shortage of infrastructure.

Pete: We hear a lot about authenticity. What is that? How do you make yourself authentic? What does that mean?

Todd: We want to reflect our viewers' passions. That's being genuine, putting our money where our mouth is.

Rick: We wrestled with who should host the blog. It came down to us because I'm an 18 year veteran of the company. It's been about being honest, sincere, generous, transparent, straightforward. It's hard because you have to go from a "we" mentality to an "I" mentality. You need to be a personality that people can relate to, not just a global voice.

Beth: It comes down to person to person interaction. When you have that interaction, it needs to be real. You have to pull away those time constraints around talking to a customer. It's important to them, so you have to have empathy with them.

Pete: Do you really have TIME for listening?

Tom: We don't have a time limit. It's not a metric we use, what we want to do is solve the customer's problem. Connecting with consumers, sending them a personal thank you note is a great, simple way. They have a wall of letters going back to the gold miners.

Rick: We're bringing together consumer affairs and consumer marketing. The blog has gotten people talking within the co