Media Planning in a Web2.0 World

May 18, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

A very interesting post from Darren Herman (his blog: DarrenHerman.com) over at AdAge.com: How to Plan Media in a Non-Linear World :

We live in a non-linear world but are taught linear business processes. Yikes. We’re doomed. Grab the Starburst and let’s head down to the cellar to hide.

It’s 2008. Wake up. Drink some Patron and lets start thinking rational: How do we harness our non-linear world?

New digital brief given to [insert agency name] by a client.
“Can someone put together a ComScore run?”
RFP the top 25 on the list
Media planning time …
[…]
Linear thinking would lead us to pick the same process over time and usually select the top sites on the list and work with them. Non-linear forces us to work harder and sometimes, chaotic, but allows us to participate in a non-linear world much better. With this said, we need to start developing the tools, processes and technologies to harness our knowledge in a non-linear world. I haven’t seen many tools that do this, but I’m certainly willing to listen.

Darren is asking for input on new ways and tools/technologies to support and tap into the new possibilities which arise in this very fragmented Online world.I think the “chaotic element” is what makes this question really challenging. How do you account = plan for this?

Are you gunning for the big properties or what is your process to target your audience?

US Blogosphere = Big Business

May 17, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

The blogosphere in the USs is growing into “big biz” says eMarketer in its recent article called: Who doesn’t read a blog now and then?

US Bloggers 2007 - 2012

So, we would have 16% of the internet users in the US “producing” content! A really significant number which needs to be reflected even more in marketing campaigns in 2012 than what we see today.

Let’s look at the numbers on the “consuming” side of the blogospere:

US Blog Readers 2007 - 2012

We’ll reach 70% of “blog readers” of all Internet users in the US. This underlines the important role blogs will inhabit by 2012 and how important it is for brands to “play nice” with the still young “communication channel”.

Next: What money will be spent on advertising on the pages of blogs in the US 2007-2012?

US Blogs Ad Spending 2007 - 2012

From the eMarketer article:

“A big factor driving the increases is the niche orientation of the blogosphere,” says Mr. Verna.

“Once a haven for techies to communicate with each other in their own lingo, blogs have long since shed this mantle and tapped into the zeitgeist of American culture,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement from Grass Roots. “There are blogs for virtually everything under the sun, from celebrity gossip to political commentary to the most mundane personal minutiae.”

Are you writing your own blog or contribute to one?

Google Friend Connect to be announced at Campfire One

May 12, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

UH!

Techcrunch says:

Friend Connect is a new data portability initiative for spreading social connections around the web. It’s the third of such announcements to be made in less than a week; MySpace Data Availability and Facebook Connect are the other two.

To find out more check out the live coverage over at techcrunch. You’ll find a live videostream broadcasting from the event.

Update: Techcrunch shows now the recorded stream from the event.

A blog post by Forrester’s Charlene Li fits quiet well to this announcement from Google. She writes on her blog:

The future of social networks: Social networks will be like air

“I thought about my grade-school kids, who in 10 years will be in the midst of social network engagement. I believe they (and we) will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to ‘be social.’

This gets interesting now 🙂

More Ads to appear in Online Comcercial Breaks at abc.com

May 9, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Looks like we might need to watch through more ads Online, too. Online viewing moving close to the “TV model”?

MarketingVOX: ABC to Pump More Ads into Online Commercial Breaks

Starting this week, ABC will insert multiple commercials into ad breaks within shows streamed online. Each break typically serves one :15 or :30 commercial.

Because the medium is new, the standard for streaming TV shows is one spot per break. Some sites, like Hulu, give users the option of watching a single two-minute trailer at the beginning of a show, in exchange for an otherwise uninterrupted experience.

AdAge: Adults Spend 1/2 Their Media Hours With TV & Advertisers Loosing Confidence in TV

May 8, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Is this a loosing battle for the TV industry in its “traditional definition”? Time to move your media to the Internet and build a new business model? Or not yet?

From AdAge.com: Adults Spend 1/2 Their Media Hours With TV

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It seems marketers and TV executives are having a half-full, half-empty kind of argument over TV’s prowess. The results of a survey on consumer media habits commissioned by the Television Bureau of Advertising show that adult consumers spend a little over half of their media hours with TV. Meanwhile, a recent survey of marketers and advertisers by the Association of National Advertisers found many were losing confidence in TV as a medium.

From AdAge.com: Marketers Losing Confidence in TV

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Whether traditional TV advertising has truly lost its power, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. The Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research’s fourth biennial TV and Technology survey shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of video commercials.

Indeed, two thirds of the C-level-executive respondents said they are watching the medium closely, up from just half two years ago, and 87% of respondents said they were going to be spending more on web ads in the coming year. The study was conducted in January and is based on a survey of 78 leading advertisers across all major industries and categories.

Drop.io – Online File Exchange Revisited

May 4, 2008December 16, 2012 marco 2 Comments

Came across a new service called Drop.io which was mentioned on ZDNet: Weekend Gadget Guidance: Send a fax for free — digitally.

Well, no more, folks: Drop.io, a fairly innovative file-sharing service, sends and receives faxes for free.

It works like this: to send a fax, upload a document to Drop.io. Enter the fax number and click “Fax.” Boom — no beeps to haunt you in your sleep.
On the receiving end, Drop.io will generate a cover sheet you then e-mail to the sender. As long as they use your cover page on the fax, it will end up in your Drop.io account as a PDF.

It is true that a free fax service is always good to have 🙂 But on the receiving side for this fax solution to work you need to provide a special cover sheet to receive it in your “drop” and becomes available to download. This makes it not a solution for sensitive data which you don’t intend to share freely (even if you make your drop private…. ).

This is how the site describes its service:

Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.”

The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want.

And it gets even better: Drop.io supports different media types, like photos, videos and (text) posts! You also have the option to embed a widget in your blog or social network of choice. This enables visitors to upload and download files to/from your drop. You get 100MB per drop for free and you can add more storage for $10/GB. Embed the files located in your drop in another (e.g. blog) page and add comment to the files. This makes it a truly social app which should attract further users/traffic.

Please leave a comment and provide your feedback if you work with the service or want to test it out @ Drop.io!

Bizak.com: Get the Web 2.0 Valuation of Your Start-up

March 15, 2008December 16, 2012 marco 1 Comment

Check out the new site called bizak – The Web… Quantified.

You go to the website, enter “your biz numbers” and receive and estimate, called The Bizak Estimate. It creates an apples to apples comparison and benchmark that can be used as a starting point for comparative purposes.

The Site is created by Tom O’Keefe, you find further info about him on his site here: tomokeefe.com.

Bizak is a business network which computes the profitability of internet startups and connects entrepreneurs with investors.

Entrepreneurs – compute your business valuation, compare your performance to the industry and connect with investors.

Investors – evaluate the earnings potential of internet startups, compare them to industry benchmarks, and connect with entrepreneurs.

Student Entrepreneurs – are you a student entrepreneur? Bizak can help!

eMarketer: E-Comerce Sales in Europe

February 28, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Came across a chart from eMarketer about the distribution of e-commerce in Europe mentioned in the article: The UK Internet Boom:

E-Commerce Sales Distribution Europe 2006-2011

This is a very interesting find. I would not expect the UK to be this far ahead in Internet sales. Also if you take the size of e.g. UK vs Germany into consideration. To underline their numbers eMarketer says in the article mentioned above:

“A long tradition of catalog and mail-order shopping has contributed to the practice of online buying in the UK,” says Ms. von Abrams.

Is this why so many companies from the US pick the UK as their first “destination” in Europe (besides the language, of course…)? Or is it the other way round, that UK is “exposed” to have more Online shopping choices due to the fact, that there is no language barrier which stops them from ordering on US Internet e-commerce sites?

Integrated Marketing: Immersive Games – Wired Magazine

January 3, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

WIRED MAGAZINE has a very interesting and in depth article in ISSUE 16.01, called Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games. Below you will find a short excerpt:

On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails’ European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled “i am trying to believe.” Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing “iamtryingtobelieve.com” into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site’s contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: “I’m drinking the water. So should you.” Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?

A very interesting read and it shows the new ways used by marketeers to deeply involve the target group in the marketing campaign, make them part “of the story”. The TV show LOST is another example of this, combining many different “media channels”, but all using the Internet to integrate all of them.

Do you have other examples? Leave a comment!

Free film music: Moby makes (some) songs available for free

December 2, 2007December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

In a recent blog post, Moby is offering some of his music to be used in films for free!
All you need to do is to go to his site and register. This shows another move from a well-known artist to make his music (or at least parts of it) available for film makers. I want to advocate the use of this broadminded offer from Moby to everyone out there working on a non-comercial (short-)film!

Below you find the excerpt from his site:

hi,
i’ll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password. you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you’re looking for,
moby

Check out the website here
http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html

BTW: His main site is worth a visit for sure: www.moby.com! A really funny front page. I love it!