Cee Mee – Cee Who – Cee What

I got into interactive TV in the late 1990′s.  I was so happy Canoe Ventures took up the challenge of interactive advertising  (though they now seem to be dropping interactive TV) and conducted some research but I just read the report that was posted – very light.  We are talking about 4,000 televisionaries and results around their tests and experiences.  The market for this in USA alone is 115 million -  4,000 does not seem a big enough sample.  Why aren’t more brands and agencies getting into this?  Canoe Ventures got some $150 million to make some headway into the new media world for the cable industry.  I sincerely hope there is a more detailed report somewhere.  Love the concept but feel we are missing the Internet, mobile, ipad and tablets and user interaction with TV +++

Publicis Chief predicts the end of free digital media

Publicis CEO Maurice Levy forecast a new era of the Internet and predicted the end of banner ads, the need to pay for content and said that advertising would not be able to pay for the continued expansion of digital media as it had with TV and publications.  No kidding!  The prediction continued with a forecast for a wealth of new intuitive and interactive features (I guess he was promoting their new web site).  Social networks also came under the gun with valuation questions and long term viability.

Certainly shows an opportunity for web 3.0 thinking and emphasized the need for metrics and targeting and probably the need to look again at how we do things manually and then replicate and improve on them in the connected digital world.  The big question is the fusion of creativity, process and technology and Im back to thinking the techies have the upper hand here and the agencies much to lose.  Frankly, the ad industry has been way behind the curve with trend forecasts for the Internet – maybe the bean counters are now starting to see how new media has impacted the bottom line and want to be earlier into the next wave!

Google – from science to creative

A recent WSJ article by Jessica Vascellaro highlights a major shift for Google from the science of search into creative for online ads and new tools for advertisers.

Big advertisers such as Hewlett Packard and Ford Motor Co along with JC Penney and PepsiCo are all actively working with Google on new online ad initiatives.  David Roman, a marketing vice president for H-P’s personal systems group, says Google recently helped it with a new Internet ad campaign.  As part of the campaign, Google engineers built a tool that allowed people to upload and edit their own video clips.  Mr. Roman declined to comment on the cost of H-P’s ad campaign, but says it was the most the personal systems group has spent with Google on a campaign. H-P shelled out nearly $58 million on Internet display ads in the U.S. in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

With the acquisitions of YouTube and DoubleClick, Google has huge space for non-search ads and it looks like Google is installing a team that can develop and run campaigns working directly with the client or via their agencies.

TV explores new interactive applications

Saul Hansell in the New York Times discusses the new approaches TV is making into the interactive age. DirecTV and Fios have both announced app stores modeled on Apple’s App Store. Pilots proved out that the user wants to interact at certain times when in front of the TV – so its not totally lean back, lean forward…. right! Now we have the potential for real traction in interactive with the cable companies backing a standard to enable applications nationally and the telcos launching TV services. The key challenges are still – what does the user want and how do we make money from new applications? It looks like revenue share is up for grabs again and both sides on slowly moving into interaction. 2010 – the year the TV goes interactive? comments welcome.

VideoEgg takes the lead in online ad pricing for cost per engagement

VideoEgg continues with the cost per engagement pricing bid.  The cpm rate is surely broken and charging the advertiser when the user actually touches or retrieves something from their ad sounds like a very logical way to go – of course not taking into account the number of us that have accidentally put our cursors over an ad or clicked on it by mistake – but its progress and typical charges are in the region of 50cents.  The focus for advertisers now is how to capture user’s attention rather than just impressions.  Nate Elliot of Forrester Research is another fan saying “Budgets ar getting tighter and every dollar spent has to do more.  If it helps advertisers get more bang for the buck, that will only be a good thing for advertisers and publishers”.  Display ad revenues fell by 4%  in Q4 compared to a year ago so introduction of new pricing and types of banners can only assist this market.

marketing automation – great webinar

I attended a webinar on marketing automation by Manticore Technologies. Great input and a service that all marketers need to be looking at to improve lead generation and increase sales. Sirius Decisions Jonathan Block gave a great intro and the fact that the software can integrate into Salesforce.com makes it another key element in the marketing automation dirve. The improvement in results quoted was substantial and any marketer looking to improve the bottom line needs to look at this service. One question that is lingering is how IT Departments and Marketing are working together to integrate this new application technology into the corporate infrastructure and I will get back with any comments I can glean from marketers and Manticore on this. We are going to trial the system – watch this space for a review.

Online advertising changes afoot

Interesting article from Ben Kunz at Business Week hailing a change in online advertising practices and pricing. I agree that we marketers can get a lot more savvy at our targeting. I also agree as a person who is advertised to that I am more interested in getting ads that might have a relevance to me but… I dont like cookies and I disable them whenever possible. The key to real targeting is getting someone like me to buy into a cookie because its giving me something rather than a feeling that its snooping on me. That I think is the real challenge. I agree that smart marketers will drive down budgets and improve effectiveness of ad targeting as Ben describes. However, the really good marketers are going to be the ones that get me to unblock the cookies.

Sharing my thoughts and welcome comments as to how we get the cookie phobics to lighten up and will cookie generated advertising plays win. A pricing revolution looms in online advertising

Web 2.0 in San Francisco – what was happening?

Where were all the people? I won’t comment on the size – or lack of size for this show, or who did or did not show up. It is a trade show happening during the worst economy in decades, about a relatively new market. The show organizer says 8,000 attendees.

So what was good?

Video. We have been is this arena for, well, decades and video is still the holy grail of information distribution, quantification and qualification and Web 2.0 had a few good providers. The usual suspects were showing mature products/services. Adobe managed to fill seats with Flash, Flex and Air presentations. Microsoft had a good sized booth, well located and showing Silverlight (almost) 3.0. Both of these apps are good vehicles for carrying video content and they showed well.

But it wasn’t all just the big players. Coremedia was showing an impressive digital content management system for video distribution called CoreMedia WebTV an excellent tool/service for re-purposing existing video content. ooVoo demoed their API designed to deliver a tool to developers and web app builders to integrate video chat into their applications. And The FeedRoom, a company focused on delivering a content rich experience for clients. They offer an excellent service for client engagement and content distribution.

Off the beaten path stuff. No wireless services for the time I was there. Or as my younger friends like to say “Web 2.0 wireless access FAIL” I had wireless on the ferry in from Marin, I had wireless with my morning coffee but nary a bit at the show. This was a major topic of discussion both in the Web 2.0 Tweats and around the various meeting areas. Here we sit in the middle of one of the most technologically advanced places on earth, talking about the future of human connections and communication and I had to go down the street to Peets to go online.

Final words. I know I wasn’t going to make a comment about the apparent lack of attendance this year but I do have one observation. When the world became comfortable with technology and the wow factor went off and we began to actually use the great stuff coming out of the labs and factories – we lost COMDEX and Supercomm and AEC and many more of the industry specific technology trade events. Even Apple moved away from MacWorld this year. We are all about solutions now. It is now up to the people with the tools to go out and actually start putting them to work. It may be that Web 2.0 is a victim of its own success. Internet applications are totally relevant – maybe everyone was back home building new applications or putting them to use – It all just happened at Web 2.0 speed!

Media Giants bring in new Digital Leaders

Both Hearst and News Corp have recently hired new heads of digital.  Jon Miller will be the new Chief Digital Officer at News Corp – formerly an AOL executive and more recently with Velocity Interactive Group.  Miller will need to guide Hulu and Myspace through to profits and to a winning advertising business model.  We wish him well.

George Kliavkoff, a former NBC Universal leader who helped launch Hulu and a guy Ive got a lot of time for (heard him speak on a couple of occasions and he is firmly planted in today but keeps his visionary glasses on and is not afraid to fail – as long he does it fast – I seem to remember him saying at one conference) joins Hearst to manage the company’s ownership in cable companies and to look for new investment and alliances presumably to bring the media giant into the new media world with a leading strategy for new businesses and applications to generate more revenues from current businesses and content.

Great to see traditional media looking to drive new media but having been part of one of Honeywell’s drive to ram marketing down the throat of an engineering oriented company, I continue to doubt that these appointments can be truly effective – its like saying we know the bus driver can no longer handle driving the bus so we have brought on this new guy who will try to drive the bus without access to the steering wheel…. hope Im wrong but if I was heading up these giants I would be doing it differently.  We wish them both well and continue to be on stand-by should either feel our advice and experience may be of use.