von Roland Hachmann | Mai 14, 2007 | Ad News, Blog
There is a new technology, that counts the eyeballs that are viewing a billboard. And not just the ones close to it:
Xuuk eyebox2 is a $999 portable device with a camera that monitors eye movements and automatically detects when you are looking at it from up to about 35 feet away. Until now, Vertegaal says, such eye-trackers have been ineffective beyond 2 feet, required people to remain stationary and cost more than $25,000
Another example of classical media becoming measurable. Even better than the internet, where you still can’t measure eyeballs, only pageviews – yet you don’t know if the person really saw your ad.
(found at here)
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 11, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising
There is a Businessweek article about Honeyshed, which seems to be a new site for branded content. Apparently, this was launched by agencies in the Publicis Network (Droga5 and Digitas). From what I gathered, it is supposed to provide a platform for clients for offering branded content, be it videos, text, audio, whatever, I don’t know.
Honeyshed intends to erase the line between branding and entertainment altogether. But its content won’t be traditional online advertising. No banners. No rollovers. No 30-second spots. Instead, it will provide a mix of live programming and character-driven sketch shows paid for by—and promoting—sponsors, which will collaborate with Honeyshed to come up with suitably entertaining concepts aimed at the ever-capricious but nonetheless influential demographic of 18- to 35-year-olds.
(I am glad they chose this age bracked – it means I am *just* still part of it!)
„There’s a lot of so-called branded content out there, but it doesn’t have many places to live,“ he says. „It gets lost on YouTube or it’s like bud.tv, a brand in isolation. In contrast, this is totally transparent and completely entertaining. It’s overt advertising based on the idea that people love brands. They just don’t necessarily love it when brands interrupt or deceive them. This will make brands the life of the party rather than the uninvited guest.“
Seems to be an interesting concept. Some launch they’re own channel (Bud TV and Audi TV), and some launch things on YouTube. Which will get more attention? Umair from the Collectivegeneration Blog doesn’t quite agree with the approach of honeyshed…
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 10, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing
- Online web presences are finallly compulsory according to this post. Even if the businesses aren’t doing any business online, consumers expect to be able to find information online, many even expect to be able to purchase online, even if they never actually would.
- According to this article at emarketer, the music industry is complaining without a cause, since even with decreasing sales on CDs, etc., net growth is strong. It’s just the fact that sales now increasingly come from digital music, merchandising and live performances. I never thought the music industry was in any danger any way.
- Forbes features a short essay, apparently written by Rupert Murdoch himself. It shows, that he has truly understood the signs of the times, but in essence, there is nothing new in this essay. Why am I posting it? It can serve as a good source for quotes when you’re preparing another one of these „convince the client’s bosses to invest in new media“ presentations.
- The Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog lists some more information on the advertisers that have made deals with joost, the much hyped new IPTV platform. Apparently, you can even find their ad content, when typing their names into the search function of joost!
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 9, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Marketing, Online Advertising
This is something Frederick Samuel asks here, having presented a viral spot for Ray Ban (which looks, if you ask me, like it has been well post-produced to achieve this effect…)
My reply in the comments was:
good viral means good content and that will continue to be king, nevermind if it is an ad or not. think about it: people don’t forward it, because it is an ad for xyz, quite often, they won’t even be able to tell you the name of the brand or product a few days later.
the challenge with viral is really, to produce good content. to have a remarkable story worth spreading. with an increasing number of viral spots, it will be more difficult to stand out of the clutter enough to be liked&spread. but that is a challenge that classical advertising had all along, so there really isn’t anything new, don’t you think?
What do you think?
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 8, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News, Marketing, Marketing Trends, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing
While I am still unsure about the real value of Twitter in marketing, Rohit Bhargava mentions four ideas of how Twitter can be valueable. I still ain’t convinced completely, but getting there…
Capture the live pulse of an event
This is one of the most popular marketing uses that I have seen for Twitter, where it is used to offer a visual display of conversations happening around an event. More and more interactive events have this, and I suspect other non-Web related events will start to incorporate it as well to offer participants a visual way to track the pulse of an event and determine where to spend time.
Undoubtedly, this could work. The question is: who is the target audience? If it is all those people at the event, who subscribe to one twitter feed about the event, it could be brilliant to let everyone know what is happening elsewhere within the event. If it is for people outside the event, the whole twittersphere of the event will sound like 140-character long gibberish to those not present, I suppose.
Deepen a static experience through live commentary
I saw an interesting story last week about how Fox is going to be using Twitter to promote their new show Drive by having the director provide live updates and directors commentary via Twitter throughout the show. We will definitely be seeing more of this type of marketing in the near future.
This could be nice, but only if the show is live, too. Otherwise, we’ll be reading tweets about stuff that we know nothing about until we see it a few months later on TV.
Facilitate collaborative watching
When it comes to watching video content online or on television, Twitter can allow you to watch something „alongside“ anyone anywhere by sharing your impressions and reading impressions from others as a program unfolds. This is a powerful new method of sharing feedback and ideas
This won’t work, if we truly believe in the end of programmed television. If people are not watching things at the same time, because everyone can watch „on demand“, then how can you share your thoughts with other viewers via twitter? Unless there is a „twitter group“ for that particular movie or series – and I just underestimate the scale of randomness: the fact that for some shows, there will always be somebody, at any given time, watching the same show as myself…
Add a new dimension to promotions
Scavenger hunts, user generated content campaigns, and other reality based marketing promotions are growing popularity as ways to encourage interaction from customers. Twitter can offer a way of encouraging dialogue between promotion participants and adding an „instant message style“ dimension to a promotion without the privacy and contact acceptance barriers normally associated with using IM for marketing.
This, I think, could be a fantastic use for twitter. A connection of customers in Twitter groups during promotions, enabling „swarm intelligence“, as we call it here in Germany, would be a brilliant setup for all sorts of ideas for promos, alternate reality games, real life social games or gatherings, etc.
So, in general, I start to like the idea of using Twitter for marketing, having been sceptical a few weeks / months ago. But I do think, that we still need a lot of refinement to make sure it’s not just a gimmick, but does actually contribute value to campaigns.
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 8, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising
Some links to stories of the last week or so:
- Print publications in the US are increasingly forced to guarantee hard metrics to advertisers, writes Marketing Vox:
The new demands for better metrics can be attributed to the evolution of web metrics and consequent instant-accountability curve, in addition to the myriad of media options now available to marketers.
- Widgets or Gadgets seem to be on the rise in online Advertising. They’re small customizable ads that can include interactive elements or even streamed rich media. Another reason why „traditional“ metrics in online advertising might have to be rethought.
- NBC Universal, as one of the biggest broadcasters in the US, is moving to „paid per effectiveness“ instead of a regular CPM model… as it says here:
„We were based on a CPM model, and that was fine in the past, but ultimately we would like to be paid [for] advertising effectiveness,“ Comstock said. „It’s about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, and television doesn’t do that now.“
So if they don’t do that now, have they ever done it?
“A select group of content creators will get promotion on the YouTube platform, and we will help them monetize their content,†said Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing, in an interview on Thursday. “This will help erase the the stigma around the user-created content, and, to be honest, these guys are media entities in their own right.â€
[…] While YouTube had previously said it might populate videos with pre-or-post roll ads as soon as this summer, the monies for the new program will come from the sales of banner ads.
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