I read a dangerous quote recently from a truly reliable source. It came from McKinsey Quarterly actually: “The sheer volume of information available today has dramatically altered the balance of power between companies and consumers. As consumers have become overloaded, they have become increasingly skeptical about traditional company-driven advertising and marketing and increasingly prefer to make purchasing decisions largely independent of what companies tell them about products."
Dang. Have we really come this far?
The article makes the case that consumers may have gone in this direction. But I need to take issue with the premise. I’m in the information-driven ad business. If I meet with you or your company I want you to know that the possible margin of error between your marketing our audience and your success is minimal. It would be easy for me to very simply say that knowledge is power as so many companies seem to be saying these days. It would be easy to say that advertising to the right audience segment would allow you to take a long lunch or even move on to the social media dominance McKinsey suggests. But it’s not the case. Social media is a huge purchase influencer and a huge reputation machine. But it’s not advertising.
Traditional company advertising has become more effective in my estimation since social media has come to the fore. There’s still an art and science to communicating the right image and the right message to the right audience. I don’t see major retailers like WalMart, or major CPGs like Coke or Pepsi or innovative car companies like VW using social media exclusively -- it’s part of an integrated advertising plan… it’s driven by advertising... it’s creative... and it’s verified by data.
It’s useful to know that consumers are “increasingly unaffected” by advertising. But it’s all the more reason to be more innovative. Because I would argue that the right consumers will always be affected by the right advertising.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Data Responsibility: It's Still Job One!
There’s a part of me that thinks Facebook’s mea culpa earlier this month was most admirable. You could, and should, give Mark Zuckerberg kudos for acting quickly to reverse some bad decisions on the “Like” program and the virtual takeover of shared data.
From a sales perspective, I continue to stress to clients that Internet targeting, as we know it in all its forms, can be very effectively executed without the amount of personal data that Facebook, MySpace and other sites collect and use. I don’t think a major CPG advertiser, for example, is limited by targeting “moms who use coupons and shop for groceries three times a week.” That kind of non-personal profiling gives any company access to a campaign that will achieve superior ROI. Can that CPG company do better with names, addresses, birthdays, and names of friends? I don’t think so. That CPG company would certainly be limited by targeting only “moms.” That’s a big universe that has been defined in a far more scientific fashion.
This business has reached a tipping point with consumers because of the Facebook overreach and the Google wifi data grab. It’s unfortunate, because I do believe that responsible use of personally identifiable information will help consumers become smarter and more economically efficient when it comes to couponing, financial services and even government operations. According to the Pew Internet Project, for example, 40% of adult internet users have gone online for raw data about government spending and activities. But the events of the past month will understandably put consumers on guard.
For brand advertisers, its time to keep the momentum when it comes to targeting. I’ve always said that if consumers saw one day of the Internet experience without any targeting technology, they would be so disappointed with the irrelevant content and advertising that they would want the targeting back in a hurry. That momentum for right now needs to be with behavioral targeting rather than a blind run to gather as much personal information as possible.
It’s also important right now to restore consumer confidence. Data breaches will be magnified now. Data responsibility, while using it for good business purposes, is still job one.
From a sales perspective, I continue to stress to clients that Internet targeting, as we know it in all its forms, can be very effectively executed without the amount of personal data that Facebook, MySpace and other sites collect and use. I don’t think a major CPG advertiser, for example, is limited by targeting “moms who use coupons and shop for groceries three times a week.” That kind of non-personal profiling gives any company access to a campaign that will achieve superior ROI. Can that CPG company do better with names, addresses, birthdays, and names of friends? I don’t think so. That CPG company would certainly be limited by targeting only “moms.” That’s a big universe that has been defined in a far more scientific fashion.
This business has reached a tipping point with consumers because of the Facebook overreach and the Google wifi data grab. It’s unfortunate, because I do believe that responsible use of personally identifiable information will help consumers become smarter and more economically efficient when it comes to couponing, financial services and even government operations. According to the Pew Internet Project, for example, 40% of adult internet users have gone online for raw data about government spending and activities. But the events of the past month will understandably put consumers on guard.
For brand advertisers, its time to keep the momentum when it comes to targeting. I’ve always said that if consumers saw one day of the Internet experience without any targeting technology, they would be so disappointed with the irrelevant content and advertising that they would want the targeting back in a hurry. That momentum for right now needs to be with behavioral targeting rather than a blind run to gather as much personal information as possible.
It’s also important right now to restore consumer confidence. Data breaches will be magnified now. Data responsibility, while using it for good business purposes, is still job one.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Privacy Concerns and The Web Experience
I was unhappy but not surprised last month that the coalition led by the Center for Digital Democracy has petitioned the FTC to be more aggressive about behavioral targeting and real-time bidding. All due respect to the people and organizations that intend to protect consumer privacy, but there is one main point that they have all wrong. Behavioral targeting via current ad technologies is not out to stalk anyone. It is not out to collect irrelevant and compromising information. It is not out to do anything but collect enough relevant behavioral and demographic information to improve the web experience.
Now, I know I have a prejudice here. Behavioral targeting is my business. Most people in this business understand its power. But sometimes I find it hard to articulate to prospects and even friends outside the business. But I put it to a friend who’s not in the business this way: Imagine a web experience without ad targeting. The news site you check in the morning would be filled with completely irrelevant products and messages. The pages you visit on blogs and more specific interest sites would have ads that don’t match the content. I think the general internet public would notice it quickly.
The problem with privacy on the Internet has much more to do with content than advertising. The progress we need to make as a business depends on content privacy. We need to know that medical information that might be entered via insurance companies and even within doctor and patient relationships is tightly locked. The college student that uses a central server for a term paper or independent research needs to be confident that he or she is calling the shots as to who sees it and when.
Here’s the key difference that we need to convey to clients. My company may have enough information to know that a customer is interested in a second mortgage. But we don’t know that they need that mortgage to pay some medical bills. That would be an invasion of privacy. We know that a customer is interested in home care for an elderly relative, but we don’t know anything about that elderly relative.
I see behavioral targeting as an Internet experience booster. The way I look at it, you only know as much about me as I want you to know. The Internet is no different.
Now, I know I have a prejudice here. Behavioral targeting is my business. Most people in this business understand its power. But sometimes I find it hard to articulate to prospects and even friends outside the business. But I put it to a friend who’s not in the business this way: Imagine a web experience without ad targeting. The news site you check in the morning would be filled with completely irrelevant products and messages. The pages you visit on blogs and more specific interest sites would have ads that don’t match the content. I think the general internet public would notice it quickly.
The problem with privacy on the Internet has much more to do with content than advertising. The progress we need to make as a business depends on content privacy. We need to know that medical information that might be entered via insurance companies and even within doctor and patient relationships is tightly locked. The college student that uses a central server for a term paper or independent research needs to be confident that he or she is calling the shots as to who sees it and when.
Here’s the key difference that we need to convey to clients. My company may have enough information to know that a customer is interested in a second mortgage. But we don’t know that they need that mortgage to pay some medical bills. That would be an invasion of privacy. We know that a customer is interested in home care for an elderly relative, but we don’t know anything about that elderly relative.
I see behavioral targeting as an Internet experience booster. The way I look at it, you only know as much about me as I want you to know. The Internet is no different.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Marketing Brawls and The Battle Of The *Business* Brands
I love to compete in business. I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to be with good companies and good teams, and most of the time I face quality competitors. I love to watch competitors outside of business. Love the Lakers, love the superstars that come to town and try to knock them off. Now lately I see some business competition that is decidedly gloves off. My concern is that the consumer doesn’t lose. Here’s what I’m talking about. During the fourth quarter of last year and into this year you saw DirecTV and the Dish Network go toe-to-toe. But here’s the problem. Sateliite programming needs work, it is getting work, and it is a limiting factor in customer satisfaction. So regardless of who gained marketshare, who won?
The key to marketing brawls is in the foundation of excellence. If you’re going to have it out in the marketplace make sure the consumer wins as a result. When Coke and Pepsi come back to their occasional taste test strategy everyone wins. Everyone drinks more cola because the product is appealing and solid at the base. The few hundredths of a percentage points gained in marketshare don’t matter as much as the fact that everyone is talking cola.
Now get ready for a really big brawl. The Wall Street Journal is coming after The New York Times. And the Times will come after The Journal. There’s a lot at stake here. The Times is getting ready to set up online pay walls while WSJ.com is based on subscriptions. The Journal is going to be a part of the Fox Business channel and it has an opportunity to damage the fortunes of Bloomberg’s brand. This will be fun to watch. Everybody has a good game so the strategy is sound. Hopefully the end result is people consuming more business news. It’s kind of like the Final Four of business news. But no “maybe next year” for the loser.
The key to marketing brawls is in the foundation of excellence. If you’re going to have it out in the marketplace make sure the consumer wins as a result. When Coke and Pepsi come back to their occasional taste test strategy everyone wins. Everyone drinks more cola because the product is appealing and solid at the base. The few hundredths of a percentage points gained in marketshare don’t matter as much as the fact that everyone is talking cola.
Now get ready for a really big brawl. The Wall Street Journal is coming after The New York Times. And the Times will come after The Journal. There’s a lot at stake here. The Times is getting ready to set up online pay walls while WSJ.com is based on subscriptions. The Journal is going to be a part of the Fox Business channel and it has an opportunity to damage the fortunes of Bloomberg’s brand. This will be fun to watch. Everybody has a good game so the strategy is sound. Hopefully the end result is people consuming more business news. It’s kind of like the Final Four of business news. But no “maybe next year” for the loser.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
ABC -- Easy As... One, Two, Three
I like what the Audit Bureau of Circulations did this week. In fact, I like it a lot. As a mainly print entity the ABC was on the verge of irrelevance. Anyone in print publishing would either look forward to or rue the day when ABC quarterly statements showed up. It showed whether people were at least requesting your content, and at best, whether they were paying for it. I mean, what advertiser would advertise in a magazine that lacked a quality circulation?
As you can see that question has become a bit hollow in the digital world. As an industry we’ve come up with a lot of different ways of measuring readership and performance. Some of those methods are great, such as those driven by targeting technology. Some are not so great, like reach and frequency. But the ABC kind of back-to-basics measurements are needed right now. They’re needed because content sites that focus on one main property, like most newspapers and magazines, need to compete on fair grounds. The ABC has been working on some kind of audience subscription and measurement for about a year. It could have come back with something vague, which would have been organizational suicide. But it didn’t.
What it did was modify its definition of a digital magazine. Specifically: “a replica digital edition must include a print edition's full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine's circulation guarantee, or rate base.”
The board encouraged publishers planning new e-reader editions or mobile apps to seek ABC evaluation if they would like clarification on qualification and reporting of their digital editions. It also gave initial approval to create new U.S. reports that better reflect a newspaper's total audience across a range of products. So newspapers and magazines can add e-reader distribution, mobile app purchases, total paid and verified circulation from multiple newspaper products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship newspaper. These circulations will be detailed in the report and totaled with all circulation.
So digital content entities can show who’s paying, on what platform and who’s not paying. It’s up to the advertiser to decide the value attached. That sounds to me like a level playing field and one where the strongest content will win. As print publishing moves online, individuality will become more important. The New York Times will not survive on line as part of a network buy. Neither will WSJ.com, SI.com, or GQ.com. The ABC just did them, and themsleves, a big service.
As you can see that question has become a bit hollow in the digital world. As an industry we’ve come up with a lot of different ways of measuring readership and performance. Some of those methods are great, such as those driven by targeting technology. Some are not so great, like reach and frequency. But the ABC kind of back-to-basics measurements are needed right now. They’re needed because content sites that focus on one main property, like most newspapers and magazines, need to compete on fair grounds. The ABC has been working on some kind of audience subscription and measurement for about a year. It could have come back with something vague, which would have been organizational suicide. But it didn’t.
What it did was modify its definition of a digital magazine. Specifically: “a replica digital edition must include a print edition's full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine's circulation guarantee, or rate base.”
The board encouraged publishers planning new e-reader editions or mobile apps to seek ABC evaluation if they would like clarification on qualification and reporting of their digital editions. It also gave initial approval to create new U.S. reports that better reflect a newspaper's total audience across a range of products. So newspapers and magazines can add e-reader distribution, mobile app purchases, total paid and verified circulation from multiple newspaper products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship newspaper. These circulations will be detailed in the report and totaled with all circulation.
So digital content entities can show who’s paying, on what platform and who’s not paying. It’s up to the advertiser to decide the value attached. That sounds to me like a level playing field and one where the strongest content will win. As print publishing moves online, individuality will become more important. The New York Times will not survive on line as part of a network buy. Neither will WSJ.com, SI.com, or GQ.com. The ABC just did them, and themsleves, a big service.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
"Drowning In Data?" I Don't Think So!
Shoe leather and a nice tie. That’s what media sales used to be all about. You worked real hard, traveled, presented yourself nicely, talked a nice line. That’s what sold print contracts or even some other media before sales and marketing made it a fact-based process. Now that fact-based approach is starting to show some interesting signs of reconsideration. I don’t think Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was bemoaning that her company was “drowning in data” a couple of weeks ago, but she did use that phrase. Now I see even the medical profession is having a bit of a problem with the amount of data it has gathered. According to The New York Times on March 8, “statistical tools simply haven’t kept up with the massive amounts of data researchers now have access to. In medical (and economic) research, scientists claim a “statistically significant” finding if there’s a less than 5% chance that an observed pattern (between coffee and liver disease, for example) occurred at random. In the new age of data, that rule causes problems.”
Wow. Do we have too much data for our own good?
The short answer is no. I can identify with Carol Bartz, who was actually referring to a WalMart promotion that generated millions of responses. We’ve hosted and executed several such campaigns, and I still maintain that there’s no bad data, only bad analysis. Let me use the following example to illustrate.
Let’s say a CPG company runs a banner campaign promoting a sweepstakes on 10 different websites. The campaign has a reach of 20 million unique users. Now let’s say one million of those unique users completes a registration form to enter the sweepstakes, complete with permission for the CPG company to contact them with future marketing messages and offers. The number can seem to be overwhelming in some ways because now your sweepstakes is harder to administrate. But this huge amount of data does three things for the relationship between content provider and client. They are:
1. Strengthens client relationship. When we execute a successful customer data based campaign, I can’t wait to see that client again. There are so many innovative things a sales team can do to follow up with a client that has found that the Internet is still a customer and targeting based gold mine.
2. Takes focus off CPM and CPA. When a content company and agency or brand discuss customer data, less relevant metrics like last click attribution and “who gets the lowest CPM” find their proper perspective.
3. Updates targeting capabilities. When a client sees its database grow, the content company has to point out that it just gained a new ability to target the customers it finds truly valuable.
Let’s go back to the CPG sweepstakes. The CPG company doesn’t have to follow up with the entire one million new data points – it can slice and dice. If its next promotion is aimed at large households, it can target women, head of household, more than six people. One CMO told me, at the IAB Annual last month in San Diego, that his CPG company now has five different mom targets because of the diversity in his product mix. Bottom line, when it comes to generating data, it’s all good. It certainly makes being a sales professional a lot easier.
Wow. Do we have too much data for our own good?
The short answer is no. I can identify with Carol Bartz, who was actually referring to a WalMart promotion that generated millions of responses. We’ve hosted and executed several such campaigns, and I still maintain that there’s no bad data, only bad analysis. Let me use the following example to illustrate.
Let’s say a CPG company runs a banner campaign promoting a sweepstakes on 10 different websites. The campaign has a reach of 20 million unique users. Now let’s say one million of those unique users completes a registration form to enter the sweepstakes, complete with permission for the CPG company to contact them with future marketing messages and offers. The number can seem to be overwhelming in some ways because now your sweepstakes is harder to administrate. But this huge amount of data does three things for the relationship between content provider and client. They are:
1. Strengthens client relationship. When we execute a successful customer data based campaign, I can’t wait to see that client again. There are so many innovative things a sales team can do to follow up with a client that has found that the Internet is still a customer and targeting based gold mine.
2. Takes focus off CPM and CPA. When a content company and agency or brand discuss customer data, less relevant metrics like last click attribution and “who gets the lowest CPM” find their proper perspective.
3. Updates targeting capabilities. When a client sees its database grow, the content company has to point out that it just gained a new ability to target the customers it finds truly valuable.
Let’s go back to the CPG sweepstakes. The CPG company doesn’t have to follow up with the entire one million new data points – it can slice and dice. If its next promotion is aimed at large households, it can target women, head of household, more than six people. One CMO told me, at the IAB Annual last month in San Diego, that his CPG company now has five different mom targets because of the diversity in his product mix. Bottom line, when it comes to generating data, it’s all good. It certainly makes being a sales professional a lot easier.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Digital Marketers Need To Listen to Beyonce
Last month when I blogged I was inspired to connect the transformative powers of Pink at the Grammy Awards to the transformation happening in the living room between the laptop and the TV. I’d like to revisit that general neighborhood. This time my guest for all you digital marketers is Beyonce. To paraphrase the princess: “I need to upgrade ya.”
Here’s why. I’m starting to see a disconnect between what Internet content properties offer to brands and agencies and what those brands and agencies are valuing. This disconnect quite frankly is dangerous. It strikes at the heart of what we here at Fox and other content properties do well, and my concern is that advertisers are not appreciating audience, branding, and business model flexibility. Internet advertisers by and large want to buy a house in Malibu but they only want to spend 100 grand. And up until now, content owners have sold the real estate at a below market price. I believe that is about to change. Like Beyonce says: “I need to upgrade ya.”
Let’s look at three elements of that change. First and foremost, let’s look at the cost-per-click or cost-per-action deals that are happening all over the Internet. Let me pose a question to the top 500 brands in any vertical: Why are you letting online universities and questionable health tonics take your valuable real estate? If brands spend more on CPA deals, they win. The smaller brands, the ones that can drag down the overall image of a content property, and win out on network bidding are dominating Internet advertising. Right now, those maintain an even level with any other brand. Even a slight uptick in spending from the top 500 could turn that around tomorrow. I’d lose my lowest CPA deals in a heartbeat to get fewer but better profile advertisers.
Second: Maintaining the audience targeting technology is expensive. Just as a brand has to pay trade promotion, customer data services, and advertising to support sales, a content site has overhead. Yet, I don’t feel the love when it comes to that. Brands and agencies think a company like Fox can just “set and forget.” Not true. We constantly update and optimize our stuff, our content, our audience data. We provide a service that connects you directly to your best customers. Yet, I hear some short-term arguments that the ad payment models we provide are too expensive, or not generating short-term results. Believe me; I’ll put us up against a lot of different media. Give me 30 minutes. I’ll take that argument apart.
Finally, let’s look at the overall picture. With my sales team I keep coming back to the overall state of the market -- March 2010 -- customers are online: They watch video, they noodle around on social networks, they get news, they play games, and they do all this while they watch TV. Brands need to be online as much as they need to be on TV. They need to be there when the potential customer is. The real estate is just as valuable online, in my opinion, yet it is still not seen that way. Bad perception! I would not want to be the brand manager who gets called on the carpet for letting a competitor get to that understanding first.
Here’s why. I’m starting to see a disconnect between what Internet content properties offer to brands and agencies and what those brands and agencies are valuing. This disconnect quite frankly is dangerous. It strikes at the heart of what we here at Fox and other content properties do well, and my concern is that advertisers are not appreciating audience, branding, and business model flexibility. Internet advertisers by and large want to buy a house in Malibu but they only want to spend 100 grand. And up until now, content owners have sold the real estate at a below market price. I believe that is about to change. Like Beyonce says: “I need to upgrade ya.”
Let’s look at three elements of that change. First and foremost, let’s look at the cost-per-click or cost-per-action deals that are happening all over the Internet. Let me pose a question to the top 500 brands in any vertical: Why are you letting online universities and questionable health tonics take your valuable real estate? If brands spend more on CPA deals, they win. The smaller brands, the ones that can drag down the overall image of a content property, and win out on network bidding are dominating Internet advertising. Right now, those maintain an even level with any other brand. Even a slight uptick in spending from the top 500 could turn that around tomorrow. I’d lose my lowest CPA deals in a heartbeat to get fewer but better profile advertisers.
Second: Maintaining the audience targeting technology is expensive. Just as a brand has to pay trade promotion, customer data services, and advertising to support sales, a content site has overhead. Yet, I don’t feel the love when it comes to that. Brands and agencies think a company like Fox can just “set and forget.” Not true. We constantly update and optimize our stuff, our content, our audience data. We provide a service that connects you directly to your best customers. Yet, I hear some short-term arguments that the ad payment models we provide are too expensive, or not generating short-term results. Believe me; I’ll put us up against a lot of different media. Give me 30 minutes. I’ll take that argument apart.
Finally, let’s look at the overall picture. With my sales team I keep coming back to the overall state of the market -- March 2010 -- customers are online: They watch video, they noodle around on social networks, they get news, they play games, and they do all this while they watch TV. Brands need to be online as much as they need to be on TV. They need to be there when the potential customer is. The real estate is just as valuable online, in my opinion, yet it is still not seen that way. Bad perception! I would not want to be the brand manager who gets called on the carpet for letting a competitor get to that understanding first.
Friday, February 26, 2010
And The LA Judge Gives Them A 6.5
As much as I’ve liked watching Shaun White, Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller, Shani Davis and Apolo Ohno flying around this past week, I’m enjoying something else even more. Teens and young adults are going to use the Olympics to be even more tightly integrated online and you better believe this is a different sense of integration than the one that existed just three months ago. Teens and young adults don’t ask the question ‘did you see that?’ They just say, ‘here watch this.’
Now the obvious reaction is that this will all mean a huge boost for mobile, but I beg to differ. It will mean a continued uptick in online video and a continued sense of discovery for this demographic online. That sense of discovery is extremely important for any demo. It’s what keeps a user coming back. When kids are coming to social media, MySpace, gaming sites, they keep finding new content. Finding new content leads to more intense engagement online. When we deliver an audience for a client, engagement has a lot to do with the strength of that audience. Teens and young adults can be defined as more specific targets, of course. But let’s look at the bigger picture. We’re talking about 19.9 million total teens online, according to MRI. That’s 97 percent of the total teen population. Even mobile can’t come close to that.
Now, before I leave the cast of characters I described up top, let me leave you with one other thought. I think the Olympics are a very different sporting event in terms of marketing approach. History has shown that outside of Michael Phelps, it’s very hard to make an athlete mean anything six months after the Games. Once again that plays into online marketing. Constantly updated content and constantly optimized targeting is necessary to reach the always fickle teen and young adult audience. Sure, they’ll text about Lindsey Vonn. And she is gorgeous. But tell me one thing, how many people watching Lindsey Vonn remember Picabo Street? She won Olympic ski gold in 1998. Better to try to attach your brand to the spirit and lifestyle that the Olympics have started to establish. The athletes are going to walk out of that stadium. They will live online.
Now the obvious reaction is that this will all mean a huge boost for mobile, but I beg to differ. It will mean a continued uptick in online video and a continued sense of discovery for this demographic online. That sense of discovery is extremely important for any demo. It’s what keeps a user coming back. When kids are coming to social media, MySpace, gaming sites, they keep finding new content. Finding new content leads to more intense engagement online. When we deliver an audience for a client, engagement has a lot to do with the strength of that audience. Teens and young adults can be defined as more specific targets, of course. But let’s look at the bigger picture. We’re talking about 19.9 million total teens online, according to MRI. That’s 97 percent of the total teen population. Even mobile can’t come close to that.
Now, before I leave the cast of characters I described up top, let me leave you with one other thought. I think the Olympics are a very different sporting event in terms of marketing approach. History has shown that outside of Michael Phelps, it’s very hard to make an athlete mean anything six months after the Games. Once again that plays into online marketing. Constantly updated content and constantly optimized targeting is necessary to reach the always fickle teen and young adult audience. Sure, they’ll text about Lindsey Vonn. And she is gorgeous. But tell me one thing, how many people watching Lindsey Vonn remember Picabo Street? She won Olympic ski gold in 1998. Better to try to attach your brand to the spirit and lifestyle that the Olympics have started to establish. The athletes are going to walk out of that stadium. They will live online.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
How Pink Changed My Life!
When Pink got wet at the Grammy’s my life was changed forever. You probably saw it: The song, the sky thing, the water, the nudie suit. Well, the reason her performance changed my life is because I was watching this on TV and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing... so I grabbed my laptop, which recently has become a fixture in my TV room, in hopes of programming my own instant replay. My laptop was also by my side during the Super Bowl, and it was there, this past weekend, while my son and I watched the NBA All-Star Game.
This week we learned that 14 percent of home Super Bowl viewers, with Internet access, browsed the web at least once during the Big Game. Additionally, time spent on line for those multitaskers was up from 24 minutes last year to 29 minutes, with much of that concurrent time being spent on an integrated website or on a social network yammering about the event. Now as for me and my son, we reached for that laptop to socially yap. But we also looked at a ton of video. It has become clear to me that whether you look for video in the moment, while you watch TV, or look later, video, right now, is enjoying the kind of momentum typically reserved for the next big thing.
There are new numbers to support the fact that online video is now center stage. First and foremost, Fox Interactive served 125 million video streams in January, which is a huge number and among the highest total for a brand specific content group. Second, Nielsen recently announced the number of unique viewers of online video increased 5.2% year-over-year from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million in January 2010. Time per viewer on content streams is another very telling stat to me. It ranges from three minutes a day per user to almost ten minutes a day. That’s a huge deal to any sales and marketing team on the content side because it promises that average viewers are willing to not only open video content, they will stay engaged with them. ComScore has also checked in on this. Its Video Metrix service showed that U.S. Internet users viewed a record 14.3 billion online videos during January which is a 13 percent increase over December.
The online video opportunity is tried and true and is a welcome tool in all our sales kits. Online video will enjoy a phenomenal year in 2010 tied, in no small part, to enhanced integrated promotions from the TV networks and the popularity of social media. Having said that, I can't wait for the Academy Awards!
This week we learned that 14 percent of home Super Bowl viewers, with Internet access, browsed the web at least once during the Big Game. Additionally, time spent on line for those multitaskers was up from 24 minutes last year to 29 minutes, with much of that concurrent time being spent on an integrated website or on a social network yammering about the event. Now as for me and my son, we reached for that laptop to socially yap. But we also looked at a ton of video. It has become clear to me that whether you look for video in the moment, while you watch TV, or look later, video, right now, is enjoying the kind of momentum typically reserved for the next big thing.
There are new numbers to support the fact that online video is now center stage. First and foremost, Fox Interactive served 125 million video streams in January, which is a huge number and among the highest total for a brand specific content group. Second, Nielsen recently announced the number of unique viewers of online video increased 5.2% year-over-year from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million in January 2010. Time per viewer on content streams is another very telling stat to me. It ranges from three minutes a day per user to almost ten minutes a day. That’s a huge deal to any sales and marketing team on the content side because it promises that average viewers are willing to not only open video content, they will stay engaged with them. ComScore has also checked in on this. Its Video Metrix service showed that U.S. Internet users viewed a record 14.3 billion online videos during January which is a 13 percent increase over December.
The online video opportunity is tried and true and is a welcome tool in all our sales kits. Online video will enjoy a phenomenal year in 2010 tied, in no small part, to enhanced integrated promotions from the TV networks and the popularity of social media. Having said that, I can't wait for the Academy Awards!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Targeting Effecting Spending Limits? Nah!
Some people remember the pre-internet days. Seems like ancient history when print and TV were battling it out for dollars. Back before there was an internet, I took a detour from publishing sales into publishing audience research. I learned a lot, even when the universe was so simple. And one of the things I learned is that sometimes you can ask a question that is completely useless because it predicts your answer.
Witness Forrester Consulting’s report last week called “Media Buying Goes Real Time.” I agree with the main premise of the report, which states that the rapid acceleration of online inventory is bringing new publishing business and pricing models into the forefront. I’m not so sure I agree with its prediction that marketers will embrace bid-based ad buying. I wholeheartedly agree that performance-based ads currently make up more than half of all online media buys, and marketers fluent in cost-per-click deals where ad placement depends on bid price are ready to optimize display ad buys. But here’s where I part ways based on my even limited knowledge of research: the report shows that more than 80 percent of marketers surveyed would spend more money online if they had better targeting available.
That’s like asking me if I would go to more Laker games if I had better seats. Sure I would, at least in answer to your question. But whether or not I could find the time is still up for grabs, right? One thing I am very confident about right now is that marketers have a complete set of targeting tools available. At least targeting is not a limiting factor. If you want to dive deep, I would say that the things holding back total online spend from brands are creative in nature, and still steeped in the old ways of traditional marketing. The ability to have more and better targeting has very little to do with spending limitations right now. The normally excellent research machine that is Forrester asked a self revealing question. No one who sells or markets digital content should find a lack of targeting a reasonable explanation for online budget cuts.
Witness Forrester Consulting’s report last week called “Media Buying Goes Real Time.” I agree with the main premise of the report, which states that the rapid acceleration of online inventory is bringing new publishing business and pricing models into the forefront. I’m not so sure I agree with its prediction that marketers will embrace bid-based ad buying. I wholeheartedly agree that performance-based ads currently make up more than half of all online media buys, and marketers fluent in cost-per-click deals where ad placement depends on bid price are ready to optimize display ad buys. But here’s where I part ways based on my even limited knowledge of research: the report shows that more than 80 percent of marketers surveyed would spend more money online if they had better targeting available.
That’s like asking me if I would go to more Laker games if I had better seats. Sure I would, at least in answer to your question. But whether or not I could find the time is still up for grabs, right? One thing I am very confident about right now is that marketers have a complete set of targeting tools available. At least targeting is not a limiting factor. If you want to dive deep, I would say that the things holding back total online spend from brands are creative in nature, and still steeped in the old ways of traditional marketing. The ability to have more and better targeting has very little to do with spending limitations right now. The normally excellent research machine that is Forrester asked a self revealing question. No one who sells or markets digital content should find a lack of targeting a reasonable explanation for online budget cuts.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Super Bowl? What About Super Targeting?
The news and watercooler talk these days are all about new devices and who’s gonna win the Super Bowl… and I love it! Talk of new Google Nexus' phones, Apple's iPad and offensive football strategies are finally more frequent chatter than Tiger Woods’ girlfriend gossip. But when it comes time for the real work, I think brand marketers need to admit that sexy screen technology is simply a new way to communicate their image in more places. It will not be an advertising game changer anytime soon. So all those predictions you read in December about 2010 being the year of the device - well, maybe they’re true if you're a techie. But if you're a marketer, January was back to the basics of integrated promotions and enhanced audience data opportunities.
Now about that Super Bowl offensive strategy part. That has some decidedly useful parallels for digital marketing, especially when you discuss them in the context of integrated promotions and data. The integrated promotions trend is decidedly retro. When brands first started to hone their internet strategies back in the late 90s they did so by using TV to drive people to the web. Everyone remembers Pepsi’s Super Bowl/Pepsistuff.com promotion in 2001. The strategy is the same today but the destination is now slightly different. In fact, the answer to the million-dollar question "how are brands going to use social media" has pretty much been answered by this year's Super Bowl planning. Brands are going to use TV to not just drive people online, but to drive consumers towards social media, and that's a big, new development. Audi, VW, Pizza Hut. Coke, and others are using Super Bowl spots as the foundation for deep, long-term online efforts.
VW provides a good example. It will debut the "Punch Dub" campaign in a 30-second ad during the third quarter of the game Sunday as well as online. The TV spot will show a variety of people in different driving situations playing “punch buggy” gently every time they see a VW on the road. An online version of "Punch Dub" (www.facebook.com/vw) will launch on Super Bowl Sunday and will engage people with the entire Volkswagen product family and encourage people to dole out virtual "slugs" to friends and family. Players will pick any one of thirteen Volkswagen vehicles, customize their punch and choose a Facebook friend. An online guide will help players develop and hone their punching techniques. The more friends you punch, the better your chances of winning a weekly prize (6-month leases on specific vehicles listed online) and the Grand Prize: a new Volkswagen CC.
Now let’s look at this from an offensive strategy perspective. By using mass media to drive people online, a brand like VW is like a high-powered offense at the beginning of its drive. Its playbook is wide-open and it’s trying to pick up as many yards as possible just like a brand is trying to engage as many customers as possible. When that branding initiative is used to drive people online what you have is a collection of people and corresponding data points that fit into what I call a CRM bucket. Brands are good at filling the CRM bucket when they want to be. They fill it with social media network members, opt-in email responders, promotional purchase data, and frequent site visitors. It’s relatively easy to sell to customers that have already declared a level of interest in a product. If a brand marketer fills that CRM bucket with good data, to target relevant ads to valuable customers, they have fulfilled an important corporate expectation. The problem is the CRM bucket fills easily, strains customer engagement, and taxes data management capabilities. It can be like a good drive that breaks down at the 50 yard line.
TV guys are expected to broadly target valuable customers at the top of the marketing funnel, especially during “the Big Game”… You can read all you want about Super Bowl ads, but the real story with Super Bowl ads is their connection to the transaction (on the field), as they help move millions of consumers (the football) towards the ultimate conversion (the end zone). On Super Bowl Sunday, we in the online world, are akin to football players who excel in the red zone… we are, after all, the people who are closest to the conversion. We are, often times, a click or two from a purchase or registration. Not only are we closest to the goal line, we -- more often than not -- have access to some kind of data that will enable us to move the ball and ultimately break the plain. People like me and the rest of my sales staff, we’re expected to leverage targeting and, from time-to-time, micro or supertargeting in order to get the job done.
So the million-dollar question, today, is… Is this movement toward targeting and supertargeting part of a comprehensive plan for a brand? There are a handful of demand side platforms that would like it to be, and I will tell you that DSPs are having a huge effect on the sales and marketing efforts in the digital space. It seems like there’s a new DSP every day. If you don’t know, DSPs are basically optimized display ad network and scalable targeting platforms, most of them are owned or associated with mega-digital players. LucidMedia’s ADvisor just launched a couple of weeks ago. It enters a field that includes the Yahoo and Google Ad Exchanges and countless others. Agencies are also on the field with new found Internet offerings, like Publicis Groupes’ VivaKi and IPG’s Cadreon.
Like the Fox Audience Network, DSPs introduce customers throughout the marketing funnel, but most importantly, at the bottom. That’s vital as brands want to reach their sales goals. In many respects, it’s akin to bringing in the short-yardage personnel at the goal line in football. It’s a different team of guys, their playbook might be less creative, but they’re extremely effective.
By the way: Colts 34-21. You read it here first.
Now about that Super Bowl offensive strategy part. That has some decidedly useful parallels for digital marketing, especially when you discuss them in the context of integrated promotions and data. The integrated promotions trend is decidedly retro. When brands first started to hone their internet strategies back in the late 90s they did so by using TV to drive people to the web. Everyone remembers Pepsi’s Super Bowl/Pepsistuff.com promotion in 2001. The strategy is the same today but the destination is now slightly different. In fact, the answer to the million-dollar question "how are brands going to use social media" has pretty much been answered by this year's Super Bowl planning. Brands are going to use TV to not just drive people online, but to drive consumers towards social media, and that's a big, new development. Audi, VW, Pizza Hut. Coke, and others are using Super Bowl spots as the foundation for deep, long-term online efforts.
VW provides a good example. It will debut the "Punch Dub" campaign in a 30-second ad during the third quarter of the game Sunday as well as online. The TV spot will show a variety of people in different driving situations playing “punch buggy” gently every time they see a VW on the road. An online version of "Punch Dub" (www.facebook.com/vw) will launch on Super Bowl Sunday and will engage people with the entire Volkswagen product family and encourage people to dole out virtual "slugs" to friends and family. Players will pick any one of thirteen Volkswagen vehicles, customize their punch and choose a Facebook friend. An online guide will help players develop and hone their punching techniques. The more friends you punch, the better your chances of winning a weekly prize (6-month leases on specific vehicles listed online) and the Grand Prize: a new Volkswagen CC.
Now let’s look at this from an offensive strategy perspective. By using mass media to drive people online, a brand like VW is like a high-powered offense at the beginning of its drive. Its playbook is wide-open and it’s trying to pick up as many yards as possible just like a brand is trying to engage as many customers as possible. When that branding initiative is used to drive people online what you have is a collection of people and corresponding data points that fit into what I call a CRM bucket. Brands are good at filling the CRM bucket when they want to be. They fill it with social media network members, opt-in email responders, promotional purchase data, and frequent site visitors. It’s relatively easy to sell to customers that have already declared a level of interest in a product. If a brand marketer fills that CRM bucket with good data, to target relevant ads to valuable customers, they have fulfilled an important corporate expectation. The problem is the CRM bucket fills easily, strains customer engagement, and taxes data management capabilities. It can be like a good drive that breaks down at the 50 yard line.
TV guys are expected to broadly target valuable customers at the top of the marketing funnel, especially during “the Big Game”… You can read all you want about Super Bowl ads, but the real story with Super Bowl ads is their connection to the transaction (on the field), as they help move millions of consumers (the football) towards the ultimate conversion (the end zone). On Super Bowl Sunday, we in the online world, are akin to football players who excel in the red zone… we are, after all, the people who are closest to the conversion. We are, often times, a click or two from a purchase or registration. Not only are we closest to the goal line, we -- more often than not -- have access to some kind of data that will enable us to move the ball and ultimately break the plain. People like me and the rest of my sales staff, we’re expected to leverage targeting and, from time-to-time, micro or supertargeting in order to get the job done.
So the million-dollar question, today, is… Is this movement toward targeting and supertargeting part of a comprehensive plan for a brand? There are a handful of demand side platforms that would like it to be, and I will tell you that DSPs are having a huge effect on the sales and marketing efforts in the digital space. It seems like there’s a new DSP every day. If you don’t know, DSPs are basically optimized display ad network and scalable targeting platforms, most of them are owned or associated with mega-digital players. LucidMedia’s ADvisor just launched a couple of weeks ago. It enters a field that includes the Yahoo and Google Ad Exchanges and countless others. Agencies are also on the field with new found Internet offerings, like Publicis Groupes’ VivaKi and IPG’s Cadreon.
Like the Fox Audience Network, DSPs introduce customers throughout the marketing funnel, but most importantly, at the bottom. That’s vital as brands want to reach their sales goals. In many respects, it’s akin to bringing in the short-yardage personnel at the goal line in football. It’s a different team of guys, their playbook might be less creative, but they’re extremely effective.
By the way: Colts 34-21. You read it here first.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Danger Of Marketing Isolation
I’m starting this post with my usual standards of responsibly opining on fast-paced marketing events. But I must admit on this one I’m playing a bit of a hunch. It has to do with Extraordinary Measures, the Harrison Ford-led story about a father racing against time to cure a rare disease killing his kids. The film had a great digital campaign, exceeding traffic expectations as it asked viewers to create a “digital quilt” through the film’s website. But all I saw of the movie outside of that was marketing on CBS outlets. That’s a mistake.
Now, it’s a CBS Movie and it will lead a six picture slate from CBS Movies. It bombed at the box office. Was that a failure to drive foot traffic because the movie was limited in marketing scope? I’m going to bet that was a big part of it. CBS has a lot of properties that can effectively carry a marketing program. So does Fox. So does Disney. I have never seen either one of those companies limit a film to internal properties. But to limit the marketing budget for an entertainment property is to limit the overall audience exposure. I don’t see how you can budget for a $50 million box office take, or even a $30 million box office take, if you’re not going to market the picture in a fashion that fits a hit movie.
Integration is key and maximizing exposure to as many different target audiences is important no matter what you’re advertising. It’s an important selling point for the digital marketing industry to understand. Every content property exists because it is attracting a unique audience and serving that audience. Synergy is cool and can be effective. But there’s a big divide between synergy and marketing isolation.
Now, it’s a CBS Movie and it will lead a six picture slate from CBS Movies. It bombed at the box office. Was that a failure to drive foot traffic because the movie was limited in marketing scope? I’m going to bet that was a big part of it. CBS has a lot of properties that can effectively carry a marketing program. So does Fox. So does Disney. I have never seen either one of those companies limit a film to internal properties. But to limit the marketing budget for an entertainment property is to limit the overall audience exposure. I don’t see how you can budget for a $50 million box office take, or even a $30 million box office take, if you’re not going to market the picture in a fashion that fits a hit movie.
Integration is key and maximizing exposure to as many different target audiences is important no matter what you’re advertising. It’s an important selling point for the digital marketing industry to understand. Every content property exists because it is attracting a unique audience and serving that audience. Synergy is cool and can be effective. But there’s a big divide between synergy and marketing isolation.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Doing the Math on CPMs
There’s been lots of talk about CPMs lately, some of it well-informed, some of it a bit naïve. Most of this chatter concerns two good research reports, which I’ll comment on here. But first, it’s important to clarify two important things about CPMs that often get lost. First: CPMs are a measure of audience quality. Second, CPMs are a matter of yield management. That said, CPMs are often not easily compared quarter to quarter or even year to year -- so hold off on the pizza party, unless your CPMs are up and you’ve satisfied your goals with regards to both audience and revenue per page.
Let’s take first things first. Last week’s PubMatic survey shows that the average CPM of its non-guaranteed inventory rose 111 percent from Q4 2008 to 2009. Bravo! Even if that CPM had previously fallen to under $1 (which it may well have) anything that shows an increase in the inventory normally accessible to third party networks, or inventory that may have gone unsold by premium vendors is most likely a good thing. But the audience is still key. CPMs generally increase because the value of the advertising is increasing to advertisers. It’s saying that the pages may be fewer, but they’re more valuable because the audience available to read them is worth more. Advertisers pay for the quality of audience. CPMs reflect that quality.
Now let’s talk about yield management. Yield management involves adhering to a strict discipline of serving the advertisement which will increase the network or publisher’s revenue per page and RPM. There are, now, hundreds of companies and scores of technologies that help publishers measure RPMs, in real time, and ad serve the optimal ad each time there is an ad call. Many publishers have, only recently, begun to yield manage their remnant inventory, in a precise manner, through technology. Many publishers have introduced this stepped-up process immediately after their brand deals are served. Most often they are served in priority order tied to CPM value. Many publishers are also using dynamic rate cards on brand deals in order to eek every bit of value out of their ad inventory. CPMs reflect this management.
What encourages me is that everyone today seems to be focused on CPMs. When I see PubMatic’s numbers, and I see the recent JP Morgan numbers that predict a 10 percent CPM increase for display ads this year, I see three things at play. One: there are less remnant pages available. Two: the Internet audience is increasing in value. Three: effective yield management is at work. If your company is tracking well against these three metrics, don’t worry about the CPMs. They will take care of themselves.
On a side note… I’ve heard it said that some premium publishers would like to get away from CPM pricing models and move more toward project-based pricing. That may be more retro than it sounds. When I worked at Yahoo several years ago, we dabbled with this model with home page takeovers and guaranteed-rotation, performance deals. I’m sure you remember the “slotting” fee! Project pricing does have its place in the market and we, at FOX, sometimes use this pricing model in our business on popular, niche sites that advertisers like to road block, like Smartsource.com. Project based pricing and CPMs can’t really live in the same house – unless, of course, you have a team of analysts feeding you real time pricing data.
Let’s take first things first. Last week’s PubMatic survey shows that the average CPM of its non-guaranteed inventory rose 111 percent from Q4 2008 to 2009. Bravo! Even if that CPM had previously fallen to under $1 (which it may well have) anything that shows an increase in the inventory normally accessible to third party networks, or inventory that may have gone unsold by premium vendors is most likely a good thing. But the audience is still key. CPMs generally increase because the value of the advertising is increasing to advertisers. It’s saying that the pages may be fewer, but they’re more valuable because the audience available to read them is worth more. Advertisers pay for the quality of audience. CPMs reflect that quality.
Now let’s talk about yield management. Yield management involves adhering to a strict discipline of serving the advertisement which will increase the network or publisher’s revenue per page and RPM. There are, now, hundreds of companies and scores of technologies that help publishers measure RPMs, in real time, and ad serve the optimal ad each time there is an ad call. Many publishers have, only recently, begun to yield manage their remnant inventory, in a precise manner, through technology. Many publishers have introduced this stepped-up process immediately after their brand deals are served. Most often they are served in priority order tied to CPM value. Many publishers are also using dynamic rate cards on brand deals in order to eek every bit of value out of their ad inventory. CPMs reflect this management.
What encourages me is that everyone today seems to be focused on CPMs. When I see PubMatic’s numbers, and I see the recent JP Morgan numbers that predict a 10 percent CPM increase for display ads this year, I see three things at play. One: there are less remnant pages available. Two: the Internet audience is increasing in value. Three: effective yield management is at work. If your company is tracking well against these three metrics, don’t worry about the CPMs. They will take care of themselves.
On a side note… I’ve heard it said that some premium publishers would like to get away from CPM pricing models and move more toward project-based pricing. That may be more retro than it sounds. When I worked at Yahoo several years ago, we dabbled with this model with home page takeovers and guaranteed-rotation, performance deals. I’m sure you remember the “slotting” fee! Project pricing does have its place in the market and we, at FOX, sometimes use this pricing model in our business on popular, niche sites that advertisers like to road block, like Smartsource.com. Project based pricing and CPMs can’t really live in the same house – unless, of course, you have a team of analysts feeding you real time pricing data.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The New York Times and the Great Subscription Debate
Now that The New York Times has officially put a time and price on its internet access policy, the issue for digital sales and marketing people becomes one of value. In fact, I’ve already had these discussions with our brand and agency partners. On one side of the value debate, paying customers are considered to be more valuable than non-paying customers. So for example, a user who pays a yearly subscription rate for The Times is probably more engaged and therefore more valuable than a user who does not. There’s a strong case for that. A Wall Street Journal subscriber is, after all, part of a valuable audience, and certainly one I would value at a much higher level than a site that aggregates content or a site that does not place a premium on original content.
I wish things were that simple. But they’re not. The Internet has thrived on free content, and while more sites will switch to paid, it doesn’t devalue all free sites. I’m all for paid content as a way for premium websites to generate income, and the Journal is a great example. But engagement is still the most important currency on the Internet. Engagement, which I define as the time spent on a site, the frequency with which a user returns to the website, and the interactions taken consistently via that website, is just as important whether or not a user pays for content.
Here’s what I mean... Taking a look at the FOX universe -- Fox News is free. Now, the audience metrics for Fox Business, which is a subsection of Fox News, are different than those for The Journal, The Finanical Times, The Economist, and what will be the paid content on The Times. Yes, those other sites are attracting subs, and their income levels are high -- but they are, undoubtedly, for Fox Business as well. I would encourage any brand or agency to ask as much about customer engagement as much as I encourage them to ask about subscription-based demographics. It is that audience profile and the engagement of that audience that drives the most value for advertisers. Simply scaling a pay wall does not guarantee engagement, although it is a good indicator.
I wish things were that simple. But they’re not. The Internet has thrived on free content, and while more sites will switch to paid, it doesn’t devalue all free sites. I’m all for paid content as a way for premium websites to generate income, and the Journal is a great example. But engagement is still the most important currency on the Internet. Engagement, which I define as the time spent on a site, the frequency with which a user returns to the website, and the interactions taken consistently via that website, is just as important whether or not a user pays for content.
Here’s what I mean... Taking a look at the FOX universe -- Fox News is free. Now, the audience metrics for Fox Business, which is a subsection of Fox News, are different than those for The Journal, The Finanical Times, The Economist, and what will be the paid content on The Times. Yes, those other sites are attracting subs, and their income levels are high -- but they are, undoubtedly, for Fox Business as well. I would encourage any brand or agency to ask as much about customer engagement as much as I encourage them to ask about subscription-based demographics. It is that audience profile and the engagement of that audience that drives the most value for advertisers. Simply scaling a pay wall does not guarantee engagement, although it is a good indicator.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Don't Discount the Quiet Guy In Leno, OBrien Saga
The news that Jay Leno was returning to late night broke early last Thursday evening. I was surprised that few of the initial news reports reminded folks that a majority stake in NBC/Universal is in the process of being sold by GE to Comcast Corporation. Last Friday's Wall Street Journal covered off on the acquisition a bit. It attributed, to a person with close ties to NBC/Universal, that Comcast isn't involved in any way in the deliberations. "The timing of the (Leno/O'Brien) discussions and Comcast's agreement to buy control of NBC/Universal is a coincidence," it wrote. One piece I read early Sunday, did, in fact, attribute a "no comment" to Comcast COO Steve Burke, when asked about the continuing Leno/Conan O'Brien saga.
While Steve Burke may not have had a comment -- and he couldn't have because the Comcast, GE deal still faces regulatory approval -- he certainly has an opinion. You see, Steve Burke is the son of Dan Burke; part of the legendary, two-man, tag team that founded the ABC-station group, Capital Cities Broadcasting, and later used the affiliate as the vehicle to buy all of the much-larger ABC broadcasting company. I worked for Dan Burke for seven years and Dan is perhaps the biggest champion and most vocal advocate of the "think strategically/act tactically" decision making model. It seems to me, that if the strategy was to keep both Leno and O'Brien in the NBC family then the tactic of committing The Tonight Show to O'Brien five years ago may have made some sense. I believe however, that Dan Burke, and Steve Burke for that matter, would not have bought into that strategy -- and I certainly did not!
As Steve Burke prepares to take control of NBC/Universal, and begin the process of integrating it into Comcast Corporation, he is, undoubtedly, relieved that the Leno Prime Time experiment is coming to an end and the King of Late Night is being returned to his rightful place.... and rest assured, we will, all, be hearing alot from quiet guy, Steve Burke in the not-too-distant, NBC future.
While Steve Burke may not have had a comment -- and he couldn't have because the Comcast, GE deal still faces regulatory approval -- he certainly has an opinion. You see, Steve Burke is the son of Dan Burke; part of the legendary, two-man, tag team that founded the ABC-station group, Capital Cities Broadcasting, and later used the affiliate as the vehicle to buy all of the much-larger ABC broadcasting company. I worked for Dan Burke for seven years and Dan is perhaps the biggest champion and most vocal advocate of the "think strategically/act tactically" decision making model. It seems to me, that if the strategy was to keep both Leno and O'Brien in the NBC family then the tactic of committing The Tonight Show to O'Brien five years ago may have made some sense. I believe however, that Dan Burke, and Steve Burke for that matter, would not have bought into that strategy -- and I certainly did not!
As Steve Burke prepares to take control of NBC/Universal, and begin the process of integrating it into Comcast Corporation, he is, undoubtedly, relieved that the Leno Prime Time experiment is coming to an end and the King of Late Night is being returned to his rightful place.... and rest assured, we will, all, be hearing alot from quiet guy, Steve Burke in the not-too-distant, NBC future.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Pepsi Hits "Refresh!"
I could make an argument that Pepsi has been the most important brand for the development of digital sales and marketing. I’d have to put Samsung, Apple and AT&T up there too, but Pepsi has certainly been a bellwether. In the late 90s it planned and executed one of the first and still one of the most effective cross-promotional campaigns in the CPG category with Pepsi Stuff. Now it’s breaking new ground again.
Most of this new ground has been misinterpreted by the business press. Pepsi has not abandoned Super Bowl advertising as many headlines suggest. Anyone who has watched an NFL game over the past two weeks will have a hard time doubting its commitment to TV, and football. But rather than spend money on Super Bowl ads, Pepsi will spend around $20 million to launch the Pepsi Refresh Project on Wednesday. At that time, users can submit their ideas to Pepsi via social media for ways to “refresh” their communities.
I applaud the move and not because it values the Internet over other media. I have never been an internet exclusive advocate. I believe that cross-promotions and a balanced media approach is where brands should be. Taken on balance, the Internet will win out and continue to grow based on its ability to target the right audience and interact with that audience. The online social media component, from my way of seeing it, gets Pepsi closer to the engaged audience it will need to make this campaign work from both a participation and branding perspective. Voting will begin on February 1, 2010, and the projects that get the most votes will be funded by Pepsi. Pepsi expects to spend $20 million to fund thousands of projects.
Pepsi is a competitive brand in a competitive space. One mistake in the Coke v. Pepsi wars is worth millions. So it's worth noting that a bellwether brand is taking another big calculated risk online, more than ten years after its first one blazed a trail for everyone else.
Most of this new ground has been misinterpreted by the business press. Pepsi has not abandoned Super Bowl advertising as many headlines suggest. Anyone who has watched an NFL game over the past two weeks will have a hard time doubting its commitment to TV, and football. But rather than spend money on Super Bowl ads, Pepsi will spend around $20 million to launch the Pepsi Refresh Project on Wednesday. At that time, users can submit their ideas to Pepsi via social media for ways to “refresh” their communities.
I applaud the move and not because it values the Internet over other media. I have never been an internet exclusive advocate. I believe that cross-promotions and a balanced media approach is where brands should be. Taken on balance, the Internet will win out and continue to grow based on its ability to target the right audience and interact with that audience. The online social media component, from my way of seeing it, gets Pepsi closer to the engaged audience it will need to make this campaign work from both a participation and branding perspective. Voting will begin on February 1, 2010, and the projects that get the most votes will be funded by Pepsi. Pepsi expects to spend $20 million to fund thousands of projects.
Pepsi is a competitive brand in a competitive space. One mistake in the Coke v. Pepsi wars is worth millions. So it's worth noting that a bellwether brand is taking another big calculated risk online, more than ten years after its first one blazed a trail for everyone else.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Forget Apple and Google -- Here’s The Right Debate
What a great week for Apple and Google watching. Apple buys Quattro a day before Google introduces its Nexus phone, AT&T decides to sell Droid phones, Google uses the Quattro purchase to justify its AdMob purchase… it’s enough to make a CES attendee salivate with the possibilities of debates about Apple/Google battles around the Hilton lobby bar.
Problem is, these are the wrong debates if your business is digital content and marketing. Although the past week has been filled with fascinating news and rampant speculation about these corporations that the press is so obsessed with, the agenda for digital sales and marketing hasn’t changed. Any sales call that happens next week might begin with some friendly speculation about what Apple will do with a mobile ad network, or what the iSlate might do to iMac pricing, but eventually that meeting will get down to business… and that business will be all about the Internet audience that continues to be the most efficient and targetable audience in the media world.
Mobile advertising, the way I see it, will be based on downloads for at least the remainder of this year. Is that an opportunity for brands? Absolutely. Should a brand develop an iPhone app, and a Droid app, and a Blackberry app? Absolutely. But the biggest and most consistent branding opportunity still lies with the 200 million active Internet users. And although that number may be approaching critical mass, the interactivity of the audience continues to impress. If you don’t believe me check this out: comScore reports that nearly 4 out of 5 Americans visited a retail site during November, which for some verticals represents a 30 percent increase. I think we can make an argument for 80 percent of a retailer’s business.
Whether or not we win that argument, is a better conversation than whether the Nexus is better than the iPhone.
Problem is, these are the wrong debates if your business is digital content and marketing. Although the past week has been filled with fascinating news and rampant speculation about these corporations that the press is so obsessed with, the agenda for digital sales and marketing hasn’t changed. Any sales call that happens next week might begin with some friendly speculation about what Apple will do with a mobile ad network, or what the iSlate might do to iMac pricing, but eventually that meeting will get down to business… and that business will be all about the Internet audience that continues to be the most efficient and targetable audience in the media world.
Mobile advertising, the way I see it, will be based on downloads for at least the remainder of this year. Is that an opportunity for brands? Absolutely. Should a brand develop an iPhone app, and a Droid app, and a Blackberry app? Absolutely. But the biggest and most consistent branding opportunity still lies with the 200 million active Internet users. And although that number may be approaching critical mass, the interactivity of the audience continues to impress. If you don’t believe me check this out: comScore reports that nearly 4 out of 5 Americans visited a retail site during November, which for some verticals represents a 30 percent increase. I think we can make an argument for 80 percent of a retailer’s business.
Whether or not we win that argument, is a better conversation than whether the Nexus is better than the iPhone.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Listening to Hahhhhvahhhd!
Don’t listen to me. Go with the really smart guys. Harvard Business Review started the year out by identifying the twelve management trends of the past decade, and two of them play right into the digital sales and marketing wheelhouse.
Now, this is the past ten years mind you, not the past year. I’ll spare you the natural HBR obsession with IT, shareholder value, and open source technology. But I will focus on Behavioral Economics. “Okay, by now, you're all shouting "that's definitely older than 10 years" and you're right. But talk about a set of ideas whose time has come. In the prior decade, can you remember when someone with Steven Levitt's profile had a breakout bestseller? Or when someone modifying the word economist with "rogue" (or "rock star") could keep a straight face?,” says HBR. I’ll take it a step further. In 2000, could a brand consistently depend on reaching its most valuable customers with a customized marketing message? No. But they can today, and they can everyday through the part of behavioral economics that has become behavioral targeting.
Behavioral targeting has fed a rich set of analytics. There’s a whole science around analytics that can be intimidating without a doubt. But if you do as I do, and simply look at analytics as the numbers that define your client and customer behavior, you can take what you want and leave the rest to the research department. HBR says Competing on Analytics is one of its top management trends. It says: “Decades of investment in systems capturing transactions and feedback finally yielded a toolkit for turning all that data into intelligence. Operations research types, long consigned to engineering realms like manufacturing scheduling, got involved in marketing decisions. Managers started learning from experiments that were worthy of the name.” Digital marketing keeps moving from experiment to strategy to tactics. Good sales teams will push that envelope.
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