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.

Accenture enters the digital marketing world

Accenture announced their Intelligent Digital Platform offering which includes the technical infrastructure (hardware, software, support) and the design and development services needed to create a fully outsourced web marketing operation.  P&G has decided to work with Accenture.  The latter two sentences put all agencies on notice.  If marketing cannot handle technology – technology will handle marketing.  We saw it with Google – who would have thought no creative and search would have such an impact on the world of advertising.  Now we are seeing major players like Accenture and Deloitte getting into marketing services under the banner of digital.  Time to stop paying lip service to new media and rolling up our marketing sleeves to make technology and creative and analytics work as a team!

Verizon working with Ad Council to deploy cross-platform advertising

Congratulations to John Harrobin at Verizon for taking the initiative to approach the Ad Council.  The two organizations have worked together to expand the reach of a public service message to teens.  The informational campaign is running across FiOS TV, Verizon mobile and FiOS Internet.  At last we are actually seeing some innovative thinking and pushing the envelope!  I am looking forward to hearing the results and challenges if Verizon and the Ad Council choose to share them.

Interactive Ads are coming….

Recent announcements by MySpace and and Socialmedia.com on collaboration to make ads more personalized to the user as well as the Tremor Media  in-stream interactive ad formats announcement seem to be showing progress from basic re-purposing of old ad formats into something new and meaningful for the Internet age.  Heavy hitters like Procter & Gamble, Universal Pictures and Microsoft evidently all participated in the beta test of the new formats.  The new formats showed triple digit increases in video completion rates, time spent and click-through rates.  This all sounds very exciting but Real Time Content already has a system that can perform these sorts of functions on the fly and be more highly personalized.  My experience with templates and ad formats was that they were only good at to start with and then (like windows) you wanted to break out of the formats and do more exciting creative.  Comments welcomed

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

Intema Solutions – bringing technology to marketers

A colleague of mine just sent me info from Intema Solutions – based in Montreal Canada and with a mission to bring technology to marketing.   I am investigating their solutions but they look totally on the money for marketers seeking new applications that can automate and improve campaigns and projects.  Watch this space for more news – plan to go and meet the leaders in the next couple of weeks.

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.

Web 2.0 what is being launched and why aren’t marketers paying attention?

I was looking at digiday daily – its tag line is “where content and commerce collide” and I looked in events.  No mention about web 2.0 at all.  Now isn’t web 2.0 supposed to be applications that help us share and collaborate and its definitely about content.  So why are marketers not paying attention to this show?  Last year I saw at least five new services that could help marketers improve effectiveness and reduce costs.  However, the main visitors were technology people.  I am looking forward to seeing what is new and know that Web 2.0 will be well attended but more work needs to be done on making the new applications known to marketers.  Waterland has decided to focus on new technology and how it can help contribute to traditional marketing.  We will be explaining in basic terms some of the new types of applications and their potential benefits to a variety of companies.  We are looking to work with Web 2.0 companies that have applications and services targeted at improving marketing results.  Contact me to set up a meeting during Web 2.0 on Wednesday or Thursday during the show.

Jimmy Fallon late night talk show that aims to cross media platforms

Im looking forward to the new talk show (even if I record it as its on too late) with Jimmy Fallon who promises to embrace all new media formats as well as broadcast TV.   The key will be the interaction and integration across the various platforms and I think we will see some new experiences if the network gives Jimmy some freedom to experiment.  Want to get one of my clients onto this show to talk about where casual games are today and a new concept – the game plays you versus you playing the game.   Id also like to see some advertisers pushing the envelope with new formats – any brave brands ready to dive in?