von Roland Hachmann | Feb. 26, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Marketing, Online Advertising
Google has partnered with Sony BMG, Condé Nast and Dow Jones & Company to distribute video content to third party sites. At the same time, these videos will show adverts. Here is a short description how it would work, found on the NY Times Website:
On the financial news site StreetInsider.com, for example, videos from The Wall Street Journal, a Dow Jones property, are running within ads on the site. In one, Emily Friedlander, a Wall Street Journal reporter, narrates a video feature on the TKTS booth in Times Square; Sam Schechner of The Journal speaks about marriage in TV shows; and Jonathan Welsh visits a motorcycle show.
After the three videos, a commercial from Pantene Pro-V, a hair conditioner, appears. In that case, Google shares the ad revenue with StreetInsider.com and Dow Jones.
This is a step of Google to move away from pure text and image based advertising to the segment of big money: TV adverts. And quite possibly, a first test of acceptance since they’re probably still working on all sorts of ways of how to monetise YouTube.
Founded as a text-based search company, Google’s early advertisers were smaller companies and advertisers who bought ads to generate direct sales rather than to build brand recognition.
Large brand advertisers still spend the bulk of their money on television advertising, but Google sees potential for them to spend more online through the use of video ads.
(via here and here)
von Roland Hachmann | Feb. 24, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising
Mini apparently steps into the path of the no longer existing BMWfilms.com by producing its own little clip series. They are a homage to the old starsky&hutch series, as adweek writes, and are directed by Todd Phillips, who directed the movie in 2004. Here is a trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGrrPReQaOE
The website is hammer&coop, where you can find further movies. Three episodes are already online, the other ones follow one each per week.
von Roland Hachmann | Feb. 18, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital Marketing, Online Advertising
On Nagare Island within Second Life you can now test drive the new Concept-Car Mazda Hakaze. I have tried it of course, but controlling the car is not that easy. As you can see in that screenshot, I wasn’t the only one having difficulties. The one in front of me was no expert either. But it was fun, nevertheless. And I made the „Jump“. Which one? Go find out! (Coordinates are, apparently: Nagare Island 128, 128)
von Roland Hachmann | Feb. 14, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising
Here is a nice little idea: Jeep and Marvel Comics have started a „user-generated-comic“ campaign. They have launched the below website:
The first couple of chapters of this comic are already available online. The next chapters wait for content input by the users – that is us, all of us. A professional comic artist will then put these ideas into this comic strip. And i assume, he’ll always make sure that there is a Jeep somewhere within the story.
And whoever participates gets a printed out version of the comic later on – or so it says on Adverblog.
I never guessed that there was such a big target group overlap between Marvel and Jeep. Or are they targetting the kids of Jeep drivers?
von Roland Hachmann | Feb. 6, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising
Clickz references a study about user generated content – or consumer generated content, as it should rather be called. This is from August 2006, but nevertheless quite interesting, as there seems to be some interesting findings even related to „traditional“ internet advertising:
Almost three-quarters of people who publish amateur video content online are under 25, and of those, 86 percent are male. […] Other findings of the „Generator Motivations Study“ include that as many as 73 percent of content generators notice Internet advertising, a much higher ration than what’s found in the male 18 to 24 year-old demographic as a whole. Also, 57 percent of all content creators surveyed said they are willing to feature brands in their videos, and many within the group have already done so. […] The report suggests opportunity for marketers, if campaigns are executed properly. „Approaching the right communities, with the right tone and incentives can motivate users to generate content featuring brands,“ the report said.
Sounds good, being from Germany, I now wonder if the situation is (or will be) similar in Germany?
von Roland Hachmann | Jan. 20, 2007 | Blog, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Online Advertising
On the Church of the Customer Blog is an interesting Post about CBS Subscription figures on YouTube.
in the first three months of having CBS content on YouTube more than 40,000 people subscribed to the CBS channel. Plus, it had tallied 75 million total views of the 700+ CBS-uploaded videos.
They calculate out the possible (!) longer term figures resulting in more than 300 million pageviews and 160.000 subscribers. But the number of 160.000 is much more important and valueable than the number of pageviews.
Subscriber growth is really the new keystone measure of success because it’s the best indicator of your ability to create loyalty.
This is absolutely true. For some reason, we have forgotten about the bursting bubble a few years back and we have again started talking about millions of video and page views and downloads (and pageviews are no longer a strong currency).
But the true value of the new web2.0 platforms doesn’t reside in the reach of eyeballs itself, but in the stickiness factor of glueing these eyeballs to the site, day after day. Loyalty, in a word. And the possibility to extract complex profiles through user data and behaviour for targetting, as well as maximising the frequency of interaction by the user through this knowledge. Ever more important, since most web2.0 business models are relying on advertising for funding. (And it can’t all just be Google Adsense, I suppose.)
So, in order to avoid the web 1.0 bubble, you should ask the following questions when considering web2.0 business models.
- Will users come back frequently for new content? Easy in communities of user generated content, you should think, because the content changes all the time. But then: what is the start-page of the user for any given page? When I go to YouTube, it shows some of the latest videos, which makes it interesting everyday. Visiting Flickr, I see my own pictures&profile first and I have to click through a couple of menues in order to get to any new or interesting pictures. The first view of flickr is usually quite boring, even though the whole site is based on user generated content. So you need to consider if the page is actually suggesting added value right from the beginning.
- Can users easily be identified as unique users based on a registration? I suppose all web2.0-ish plattforms require the users to register in a more or less detailed way in order to publish content. However, not all websites make it easy to sign on, i.e. automatic sign on. Some platforms recognise you through a cookie, so that you don’t have to login, some don’t – so the user gets a generic start page. These users might spend a considerable amount of time on the site without registering and we will never be able to match their clickpaths to their profile.
- Will it be possible to profile these users on preferences? Speaking of visitors having to register, are we asking them for their preferences? Are we trying to find out, what they are interested in and what areas of interest they may talk to them about in the future? (In order to offer more targetted advertising, of course.)
- Will it be possible to profile these users based on behavioural data? And if they don’t register for certain topics, will we at least gain insights through behavioural data, measuring and tracking their paths through our website in order to find out, what they like? Would we even have it on top of the other data they gave us during registration (which would be best)?
Eyeballs are valuable, no doubt. But eyeballs that we know certain things about are even more valuable, especially if we can differentiate between the eyeballs of the top 20% and the other 80% – thinking about the Pareto principle. In future, those web 2.0 platforms will succeed, that can link the pure webstats to concrete user profiles that offer the possible insights of “qualified leads†to companies advertising on that site.
All of this is already possible, I think, but at the same time I get the feeling, that most web2.0 sites are still mostly interested in maximising eyeballs and (general) profiles – neglecting the deeper profiling opportunities that advertisers will soon ask for.
Wo ich sonst so bin...