by Alan Schulman, Monday, January 22, 2007
NOW THAT WE'RE COMFORTABLY ENSCONCED in the culture of the viral video du jour, it seems only natural that more and more advertisers want to jump on the bandwagon. Which is a good thing for some of us in that we're finally getting our advertisers out of the habit of relying too much on :30 network TV spots, trade spiffs, a few print ads and some quarterly coupon drops--and getting them to think more about the emerging media imperative.
The danger in this, if you're on the agency side, is, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. If you're proactive and run out and sell your advertiser on the value of drafting off this momentum with another user-generated video contest, tying it to a campaign idea, posting it on the advertiser's Web site, YouTube or Google, and letting the home videos begin, you run the risk of being accused by the next CMO of being:
a) too tactical;
b) me-too;
c) amateurish; or
d) all of the above.
On the other hand, if you sit idly by and bask in the glow of your last TV campaign's million-dollar production values while your client reads the latest viral numbers on YouTube's most popular videos in The Wall Street Journal, then you run the risk of:
a) watching your client make a deal directly with two up-and-coming film-student-come-music-video directors who pitched them on a really "quirky" viral video idea;
b) having to write a POV on why you didn't inform your client about YouTube earlier;
c) not being innovative enough; or
d) all of the above.
What to do? Take a step back.
Viral video push is a big bonus to a well-conceived and executed media plan, but it's not in itself a substitute for a big brand Idea. And don't confuse trends with trendy. The trend is consumer as creator, not consumer as creative director. If we use it properly, as some consumer researchers and fan culture monitors are doing, the consumer as creator trend can provide lots of valuable insights into how people perceive and interact with brands, how much cultural currency those brands posses, and their real relevance to different segments. This is the trend to draft off of -- not the trendy.
Trendy are the terrifically clever one-off spoofs, commercial parodies and even laugh-out-loud amateur commercials being posted which, in most cases, lose their relevance and cultural currency almost as quickly as they gain it. They simply aren't grounded in the equity of a smartly conceived brand idea that leaves you longing to see the next one, and the next one and the next one. They're more like the photos you take on your cell phone -- made fresh daily, portable and perishable.
Which is not to say there haven't been great user-generated commercials whose humor might trump that of the Creative AOR's actual brand campaign. The question is, over time, which is truly promotable and which becomes perishable? Only the consumer knows for sure.
It's gutsy to throw your campaign idea out there to the hand-held consumer cameras and see how well they can draft off of your idea. Cadillac, Chevy, Coke and many others have blazed the trail, so you too can follow if you wish. But as the video shorts come rolling in, be sure you're mining for the right brand measures. Then, check their expiration date. We're living in times when we consume and spit out that which is considered "new" at an extraordinarily fast pace, so those user-generated videos you just collected are likely to become perishable... long before your campaign idea does.
Monday, January 22, 2007
adCenter Labs Shows off 'Breakthroughs,' Video Hyperlinks
Microsoft is this week offering what it says is a "glimpse at the future of online advertising" and announced that its video hyperlink technology will debut ahead of schedule.
Microsoft's third-annual Demo Fest two-day gathering in Redmond is showcasing "breakthrough digital advertising tools" by Microsoft adCenter Labs, which is tasked with spawning innovations for Microsoft's adCenter platform.
Microsoft adCenter Labs will work with a national retailer this spring to bring the first Video Hyperlink ad pilot to MSN, Microsoft said. The ad will feature a video segment with embedded hyperlinks for featured products. Those who click on the products will be taken to a page on the retailer's website where they can purchase the item.
"At last year's Demo Fest we said that this technology would take us three to five years to get to market, but due to overwhelming community feedback we've been able to release it in just one year," said Tarek Najm, distinguished engineer and general manager of Microsoft adCenter.
The seven focus areas of adCenter Labs are keyword and content technologies, ad selection and relevance, audience intelligence, social networking, video, platforms, and devices. Among the technologies being developed by the 120 or so Microsoft adCenter Labs researchers and engineers are the following (as described by Microsoft):
Keyword Services Platform. The platform provides a set of web service APIs related to keyword technologies, including keyword recommendation, forecasting, categorization and monetization, enabling developers to build more intelligent applications for online advertising and beyond.
Commercial intent detection. Advanced keyword analysis helps differentiate consumers who want to make an online purchase from those who are searching for information about products or performing other tasks.
Large display feedback. Vision-based technology creates interactive public displays that can measure the size of the audience, as well as track audience gestures and estimate demographics.
Social video sharing. This is a next-generation video-sharing solution that features a synchronized "commenting" technology. The introduction of in-video, synchronized comments enables a new level of interaction between users, opening up the video as a medium for collaboration.
Content classification. By accurately analyzing and matching the Web pages included in search results, Microsoft adCenter Labs technology helps increase the probability that the ads displayed during web searches are relevant to consumers.
Microsoft's third-annual Demo Fest two-day gathering in Redmond is showcasing "breakthrough digital advertising tools" by Microsoft adCenter Labs, which is tasked with spawning innovations for Microsoft's adCenter platform.
Microsoft adCenter Labs will work with a national retailer this spring to bring the first Video Hyperlink ad pilot to MSN, Microsoft said. The ad will feature a video segment with embedded hyperlinks for featured products. Those who click on the products will be taken to a page on the retailer's website where they can purchase the item.
"At last year's Demo Fest we said that this technology would take us three to five years to get to market, but due to overwhelming community feedback we've been able to release it in just one year," said Tarek Najm, distinguished engineer and general manager of Microsoft adCenter.
The seven focus areas of adCenter Labs are keyword and content technologies, ad selection and relevance, audience intelligence, social networking, video, platforms, and devices. Among the technologies being developed by the 120 or so Microsoft adCenter Labs researchers and engineers are the following (as described by Microsoft):
Keyword Services Platform. The platform provides a set of web service APIs related to keyword technologies, including keyword recommendation, forecasting, categorization and monetization, enabling developers to build more intelligent applications for online advertising and beyond.
Commercial intent detection. Advanced keyword analysis helps differentiate consumers who want to make an online purchase from those who are searching for information about products or performing other tasks.
Large display feedback. Vision-based technology creates interactive public displays that can measure the size of the audience, as well as track audience gestures and estimate demographics.
Social video sharing. This is a next-generation video-sharing solution that features a synchronized "commenting" technology. The introduction of in-video, synchronized comments enables a new level of interaction between users, opening up the video as a medium for collaboration.
Content classification. By accurately analyzing and matching the Web pages included in search results, Microsoft adCenter Labs technology helps increase the probability that the ads displayed during web searches are relevant to consumers.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking
Katherine Streeter
By RICHARD SIKLOS
Published: January 21, 2007
I WAS wandering around recently in Second Life, the much-ballyhooed online virtual world, and had a nice chat with one of its “residents.” But at the end of the talk he (or perhaps she; you never really know in these digital dioramas, where anyone can create an identity and just about anything else) asked if he could add me to his “friends” list and thereby keep tabs of my comings and goings in the online world. “Sure,” I replied, not because I was yearning to keep in touch but because it just struck me as rude to turn down such an invitation.
Last week, a similar episode occurred in my real life, when I prepared to leave a meeting with someone I had never met before but really liked. This time, my host asked me if I was part of LinkedIn, a buzzy Web site intended to link people with similar business interests. The site has gained much attention in the tech industry: Business 2.0 magazine recently hailed it as “MySpace for grownups.” (MySpace, the social networking site owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is, of course, the ne plus ultra of such Web sites, where young and youngish people put all kinds of information about themselves online in search of friends, dates, music and whatever.)
In the case of LinkedIn, I was privately relieved to be able to say that I had not yet joined, although I noticed that people kept asking me if I was a member. And, I must acknowledge that the invitation, like the one in Second Life, irked me on some level — though it was a nice gesture after one meeting. It struck me as far more personal than just exchanging business cards, yet less of a commitment than adding someone to your instant-message “buddy list.” Yet a tad forward nonetheless: like a three-cheek kiss from strangers on a distant shore.
Don’t get me wrong. I like people, and interacting with so many of them is one of the great pleasures of my job. And, heck, all that journalists do all day long is call people who may not want to hear from them. But that said, I have always recoiled at the use of the word “network” as a verb. I wouldn’t want to join any social networking Web site that would want me as a member. You might say that I am into antisocial networking.
I say this in full recognition of the rampaging popularity of social networks and the fact that big media companies — particularly the large club that still envies Mr. Murdoch’s snatching of MySpace in 2005 for what now looks like a knockdown price — have developed a full-bore teenage crush on these businesses.
Social networking is a close cousin of the other obsession of the moment: user-generated content. Of course, there is a difference. User-generated content is basically anything someone puts on the Web that is not created for overtly commercial purposes; it is often in response to something professionally created, or is derivative of it. So, it could be a blog, a message board, a homemade video on YouTube, or a customer’s book review on Amazon.com.
Social networking, on the other hand, is something potentially deeper — it represents a way to live one’s life online. In many ways, it is the two-dimensional version of what sites like Second Life aspire to be in 3-D: the digital you. And that ties to another earnestly overused term of art at the moment: engagement.
Engagement basically refers to the amount of time people spend doing one thing — reading a magazine, watching a TV show — but also to the depth of their participation. Do they vote on “American Idol”? Flock to Disneyland? Go to the NBC Web site after “The Office” to watch deleted scenes? Or, now, do they integrate their favorite media into their digital personas?
Sony, for instance, paid $65 million for a video-sharing site called Grouper.com and started a nifty service through which you can load your favorite clip from one of its movies — say, Jack Nicholson barking, “You can’t handle the truth” at Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” — onto your MySpace or Facebook page.
Over the last few weeks, other media companies have accelerated their efforts in social networking. For example, the Hearst Corporation on Jan. 8 bought a small company called eCrush.com. And the Walt Disney Company, the CBS Corporation, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites.
Many of the ventures sound like logical extensions of existing media brands because, hey, media companies are all about attracting and keeping audiences and then figuring out ways to bring them closer to marketers.
Hearst’s acquisition of eCrush and related Web sites fits nicely with a coming revamp of Cosmogirl.com, Teenmag.com and other online publications for teenagers. One of the sites it acquired, espinthebottle.com, is basically a flirting site for teenagers that vets its participants’ information before matching kids up, to keep the fun clean and safe. So far, the site has attracted more than 3.8 million “hotties” (its term).
Chuck L. Cordray, the vice president for Hearst Magazines Digital, noted that part of the appeal of eCrush is that it is a stand-alone business that can also become a feature of other Hearst online ventures.
“It’s a new way of fulfilling a mission magazines have fulfilled for some time, which is creating communities of interest,” Mr. Cordray said.
What is striking about many of these mainstream media ventures into social networking is that they mirror the big debate over whether Internet surfers will continue to migrate to big portal sites like AOL and Yahoo or will use widely available tools to fashion their own customized Web lives.
According to the online ratings firm ComScore Media Metrix, most of the Top 10 social networking sites as of December 2006 were still big portals like MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo Geocities, Lycos Tripod and AOL. Of course, if social networking soon becomes a popular feature of existing media brands’ Web efforts, its success will be measured by how much it drives traffic and revenue to existing brands, not just by whether it creates winning new ones. For now, NBC, like Disney, is placing most of its bets on integrating features like personalized pages into its existing Web sites rather than trying to build new destinations.
IT can be a tricky business when audiences evolve from being consumers to members. For instance, the need to keep out the wrong element adds a new layer of complexity to the media mix.
MySpace, which according to ComScore Media Metrix attracts more than one-third of the entire social networking audience in the United States, was sued last week by several families who accused it of negligence and recklessness; they said predators were introduced to their underage daughters on the site. MySpace denied any wrongdoing but has been working on ways to make the site safer.
Know this: if you are part of the social networking wave, you will have all the “friends” you can handle. The invite is the new handshake. Get ready for a lot of opportunities to join all kinds of networks — and, one hopes, some appropriately Webby new way to politely say, “No, thank you.
By RICHARD SIKLOS
Published: January 21, 2007
I WAS wandering around recently in Second Life, the much-ballyhooed online virtual world, and had a nice chat with one of its “residents.” But at the end of the talk he (or perhaps she; you never really know in these digital dioramas, where anyone can create an identity and just about anything else) asked if he could add me to his “friends” list and thereby keep tabs of my comings and goings in the online world. “Sure,” I replied, not because I was yearning to keep in touch but because it just struck me as rude to turn down such an invitation.
Last week, a similar episode occurred in my real life, when I prepared to leave a meeting with someone I had never met before but really liked. This time, my host asked me if I was part of LinkedIn, a buzzy Web site intended to link people with similar business interests. The site has gained much attention in the tech industry: Business 2.0 magazine recently hailed it as “MySpace for grownups.” (MySpace, the social networking site owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is, of course, the ne plus ultra of such Web sites, where young and youngish people put all kinds of information about themselves online in search of friends, dates, music and whatever.)
In the case of LinkedIn, I was privately relieved to be able to say that I had not yet joined, although I noticed that people kept asking me if I was a member. And, I must acknowledge that the invitation, like the one in Second Life, irked me on some level — though it was a nice gesture after one meeting. It struck me as far more personal than just exchanging business cards, yet less of a commitment than adding someone to your instant-message “buddy list.” Yet a tad forward nonetheless: like a three-cheek kiss from strangers on a distant shore.
Don’t get me wrong. I like people, and interacting with so many of them is one of the great pleasures of my job. And, heck, all that journalists do all day long is call people who may not want to hear from them. But that said, I have always recoiled at the use of the word “network” as a verb. I wouldn’t want to join any social networking Web site that would want me as a member. You might say that I am into antisocial networking.
I say this in full recognition of the rampaging popularity of social networks and the fact that big media companies — particularly the large club that still envies Mr. Murdoch’s snatching of MySpace in 2005 for what now looks like a knockdown price — have developed a full-bore teenage crush on these businesses.
Social networking is a close cousin of the other obsession of the moment: user-generated content. Of course, there is a difference. User-generated content is basically anything someone puts on the Web that is not created for overtly commercial purposes; it is often in response to something professionally created, or is derivative of it. So, it could be a blog, a message board, a homemade video on YouTube, or a customer’s book review on Amazon.com.
Social networking, on the other hand, is something potentially deeper — it represents a way to live one’s life online. In many ways, it is the two-dimensional version of what sites like Second Life aspire to be in 3-D: the digital you. And that ties to another earnestly overused term of art at the moment: engagement.
Engagement basically refers to the amount of time people spend doing one thing — reading a magazine, watching a TV show — but also to the depth of their participation. Do they vote on “American Idol”? Flock to Disneyland? Go to the NBC Web site after “The Office” to watch deleted scenes? Or, now, do they integrate their favorite media into their digital personas?
Sony, for instance, paid $65 million for a video-sharing site called Grouper.com and started a nifty service through which you can load your favorite clip from one of its movies — say, Jack Nicholson barking, “You can’t handle the truth” at Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” — onto your MySpace or Facebook page.
Over the last few weeks, other media companies have accelerated their efforts in social networking. For example, the Hearst Corporation on Jan. 8 bought a small company called eCrush.com. And the Walt Disney Company, the CBS Corporation, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites.
Many of the ventures sound like logical extensions of existing media brands because, hey, media companies are all about attracting and keeping audiences and then figuring out ways to bring them closer to marketers.
Hearst’s acquisition of eCrush and related Web sites fits nicely with a coming revamp of Cosmogirl.com, Teenmag.com and other online publications for teenagers. One of the sites it acquired, espinthebottle.com, is basically a flirting site for teenagers that vets its participants’ information before matching kids up, to keep the fun clean and safe. So far, the site has attracted more than 3.8 million “hotties” (its term).
Chuck L. Cordray, the vice president for Hearst Magazines Digital, noted that part of the appeal of eCrush is that it is a stand-alone business that can also become a feature of other Hearst online ventures.
“It’s a new way of fulfilling a mission magazines have fulfilled for some time, which is creating communities of interest,” Mr. Cordray said.
What is striking about many of these mainstream media ventures into social networking is that they mirror the big debate over whether Internet surfers will continue to migrate to big portal sites like AOL and Yahoo or will use widely available tools to fashion their own customized Web lives.
According to the online ratings firm ComScore Media Metrix, most of the Top 10 social networking sites as of December 2006 were still big portals like MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo Geocities, Lycos Tripod and AOL. Of course, if social networking soon becomes a popular feature of existing media brands’ Web efforts, its success will be measured by how much it drives traffic and revenue to existing brands, not just by whether it creates winning new ones. For now, NBC, like Disney, is placing most of its bets on integrating features like personalized pages into its existing Web sites rather than trying to build new destinations.
IT can be a tricky business when audiences evolve from being consumers to members. For instance, the need to keep out the wrong element adds a new layer of complexity to the media mix.
MySpace, which according to ComScore Media Metrix attracts more than one-third of the entire social networking audience in the United States, was sued last week by several families who accused it of negligence and recklessness; they said predators were introduced to their underage daughters on the site. MySpace denied any wrongdoing but has been working on ways to make the site safer.
Know this: if you are part of the social networking wave, you will have all the “friends” you can handle. The invite is the new handshake. Get ready for a lot of opportunities to join all kinds of networks — and, one hopes, some appropriately Webby new way to politely say, “No, thank you.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Don’t Like the Dancing Cowboys? Results Say You Do
Most online advertisements are becoming less obtrusive and more tailored to the interests of individual Web users. Among the stubborn holdouts are the two-stepping cowboys, frisky rooftop dancers and weird tattoos in ubiquitous Web banners from LowerMyBills.com.
The company, one of the Internet’s biggest advertisers, routinely festoons Web sites large and small with its ads, spending $74.6 million on them in the first 11 months of 2006, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The surprising success of the ads led LowerMyBills to a significant payday: the credit agency Experian bought the eight-year-old company for $400 million in 2005.
But on the path to prosperity, LowerMyBills has run into a lot of people who say the undulating characters in the ads are highly distracting and have so little to do with low-interest loans that they border on the surreal.
The most memorable LowerMyBills banners feature silhouetted dancers like the prancing cowboys, or the couple doing a jig on their roof under a full moon. In another ad, a suited man wildly pumps his fists under the headline “$510,000 Mortgage for under $1,698/month.”
In variations of these ads that are ever stranger, the same figures are tattooed onto arms or shaved into hair.
“The ads are like a Monty Python sketch,” said Dev Ravindran, a software developer from Jersey City who created a blog to track and humorously critique the ads (lowermybillswatch.blogspot.com). “Some of them are so out of the blue they make no sense.”
Rogers Cadenhead, an author and blogger, resorted to tinkering with his computer to block all ads from the company. “I was trying to read a news article and realized the dancing mortgage people were eliminating all rational thought from my brain,” he said.
There may be few online ads less aimed at a specific audience than the LowerMyBills dancers, who are equally likely to perform their fanciful boogie on a bulletin board for hockey enthusiasts as next to an article related to home finance or on a mortgage-related site. (They also appear on the Web site of The New York Times.)
Matt R. Coffin, the co-founder and chief executive of LowerMyBills, said the company’s ad campaign represented a return to traditional advertising principles rather than an embrace of the latest conventional wisdom.
“Building a brand is often about being different, and we are always looking for new and innovative ways to attract the attention of consumers interested in lowering their bills,” he said.
Mr. Coffin said that the company closely tracks the performance of its ads, removing the ones that do not attract clicks, and that the banners are highly effective at getting Internet users to fill out loan applications. “If you keep seeing the same ads, that means they are working,” he said.
Internet companies like LowerMyBills are called lead generators because they take loan applications filled out by customers who click the ads and give them to actual lenders like Citibank, which pay them for the referrals. The company’s success hinges on buying lots of low-cost ad space on Web sites and then persuading users to click.
But on Web bulletin boards, the ads are drawing a lot of criticism. In one discussion of the company, a user calling herself Jane Dough wrote, “Even if they had the best interest rate around, I would still find myself thinking, ‘But aren’t they the cheesy company with the stupid dancing people?’ ”
In another discussion last week on the site of the band the Beastie Boys, fans of the group pondered the prevalence of the ads and in particular the woman on the rooftop, who appears to have cornrows in her hair and an unusual body shape for a model.
Others wonder what the dancers have to do with home equity loans or debt consolidation. Mr. Coffin said by way of explanation: “Our view is that people are crazy about saving money, and when they do save money they are very happy.”
But that does not explain other LowerMyBills ads, like the ones featuring a dog wearing goggles and a scampering duck.
One person who can shed some light on the LowerMyBills mystique is Jennifer Uhll, a 35-year-old graphic artist from Los Angeles who joined LowerMyBills in 2002 and became creative director in 2005. She left the company last summer to start her own firm, Juhll Inc.
Ms. Uhll said the company has included maps of the United States in its ads for years, ever since executives read a brochure about online advertising that said people responded to the chance to specify their home states. Most LowerMyBills ads include this feature, though it seems to have little effect on the loan application that people are asked to fill out.
Ms. Uhll said she first used the silhouettes in January 2005, in an ad featuring a woman blowing colorful bubbles that represented the 50 states. Four months later, another LowerMyBills ad with three prancing, high-kicking sheep under the headline “Mortgage Rates Hit Record Lows!” also performed well.
So Ms. Uhll combined the two concepts, animating her silhouetted, pony-tailed woman with a swaying modern dance. Ms. Uhll said she is a dancer and took a variety of dancing classes for more than a decade. She is also a fan of the pet sequences in “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” which relates to the animal ads.
“I usually put into my creative work what I love and what makes me happy and gets my attention,” she said.
Ms. Uhll said her online advertisements for financial companies, including ones she created before and after she worked for LowerMyBills, typically earned around $4 in lender referral fees for each dollar spent on the ad. The average for most lead-generation companies is less than $2 earned for each dollar spent on Web ads.
LowerMyBills, which is based in Santa Monica, Calif., declined to say exactly how effective its ads are, and it seemed eager to prevent that information from becoming public. After Ms. Uhll spoke to a reporter, she said, the company sent her two e-mail messages and a formal legal letter, warning of her continued obligations and saying it was “extremely sensitive to the disclosure of confidential information.”
Ms. Uhll said she is aware of Internet users who hate the LowerMyBills ads and she does question whether the ads pollute the Internet, as some assert. But she said she decided that “there are lots of people who are glad they saw the ad and ended up paying a lot less money.”
Many online advertising experts express a grudging respect for the work of Ms. Uhll and her successors at LowerMyBills. “I do have a bit of admiration for the company,” said James Gardner of the online ad archive Adverlicio.us, which maintains a collection of LowerMyBills ads. “They are very comfortable flying in the face of scorn and ridicule.”
Timothy Hanlon, a senior vice president at the Starcom MediaVest Group, a media communications firm, called the company a “bottom feeder,” but he added: “The last time I checked, advertising was designed to draw people’s attention. On that level, LowerMyBills succeeds with a gold star.”
Mr. Coffin was not apologetic about his company’s methods. “One thing we will probably expand to the nth degree are the dancing silhouette ads,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity to double down on a proven winner.”
Display Ads Disappearing from E-Mail Sites
JANUARY 17, 2007
Now you see them, now you don't.
Display advertising is a large part of the revenues at major e-mail sites; nevertheless, it apparently is becoming a smaller part.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance, e-mail sites garnered just 44.2% of banner ads in December 2006, down from November's 47.5% and October's 51.1%.
Of course, it should be noted that display advertising fell slightly overall in December. Online advertisers ran 257.7 billion display ads last month, compared to 259.6 billion in November.
The top five advertiser categories for display ads for December was led by financial services, accounting for 29% of online display ads, up from 25% in November. Web media was the second-largest category, with 17% of impressions, though down from 20% in November. Retail goods and services accounted for 16% of impressions, flat from November; telecoms accounted for 13%, up from 10% in November; and public services held the fifth spot with 6%, down from 9% in November.
Nielsen//NetRatings also reported that, as usual, Google was the top search provider in November, as ranked by total searches, followed, by quite a ways, by Yahoo! and MSN.
Nielsen//NetRatings estimated that 3.1 billion search queries were conducted on Google, representing some 50% of all search queries conducted during the month.
According to comScore Networks, in December the story was much the same, with Google sites capturing 47.3% of the US search market, a slight .4% gain over November. Yahoo! grew .3%, maintaining its second-place ranking with 28.5% of US searches, and MSN was third at 10.5% of searches.
By comScore's calculations, Americans conducted 6.7 billion searches in December, up 1% over November.
For more information on online advertising trends, read eMarketer's US Online Ad Spending report.
That Slope Is Just Getting Slipperier
George Simpson
As if air pollution, astronomical real estate prices and the possibility of running into The Donald weren't reason enough to sprint to suburbia, here comes this news item from a New York Times story: "Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today."
Since the story was about place-based ads, one assumes the 5,000 messages don't include those we encounter in media--which, you will recall from earlier Over The Line dispatches, is where we bury our noses for about three hours a day. A single network prime-time TV show now has 634 ads per hour (956 if you count the promos they scroll under or paste over the content itself). The only good news is that ads are continuing to disappear from your newspapers and magazines. The bad news is that when they lose those cool auto ads, magazines replace them with cheapo, classified-looking ads from the retail equivalent of penis and breast enhancement creams, crapping up their layouts and just adding to the clutter.
But the bottom line is that overloading consumers with ads to the point that they can't sit quietly in a toilet stall without having to see commercial messages just puts them further over the edge, so they just hate the ad industry more than ever and forget how useful (and occasionally entertaining) ads can be to their lives.
Like everyone else, I have online ad blockers and I fast-forward through TV shows I have recorded. I either change channels during live TV commercials--or hit the mute and read a magazine for the duration of the break. (Given the length of most newsmagazine stories now, I can nearly complete an entire issue in two pods). I never listen to commercial radio anymore, since their ads are THE MOST obnoxious of all media. I am happy to pay for XM, which I listen to in the car and almost all day online. I only look at newspaper ads that have SALE in big letters plastered across them. ANYTHING related to advertising that comes in the mail (no matter how cleverly or deceptively designed to get me to open it) is dumped unread into the trash. In other words, I am a pretty typical consumer.
But at least I acknowledge that I love ads that are relevant to what I am in the market for on any given day. I don't really care which medium delivers them to me, either (except that online has spoiled me with instant gratification, so if a print or TV ad asks me to dial a number or go to a store, our love affair pretty much ends right then and there.)
I grew up on the premise that advertising was a form of information, and therefore useful for the consumer. But as ad exposure has climbed beyond the 5,000 units a day, the contest to gain my attention has resulted in the pollution of most urban landscapes, TV screens, print layouts and my computer screen. There was a story yesterday about a woman who produces some of the Internet's most annoying ads, which use constant motion to get your attention. While some might see her as a kind of ad industry folk-hero for producing ads that seem to work for her client, I suspect most consumers would rather she be drawn and quartered in Iraqi justice system-time.
I appreciate that one man's "best ad of the year" is the next man's "if-I-see-that-goddamned-spot-one-more-time-I-will-pitch-the-plasma-out-the-door," and that at the end of the day, it all comes down to what moves product out the door, but I would not underestimate consumer backlash to too-many-ads-trying-too-hard-to-get-my-attention. I know people who won't buy from companies just because they got a telemarketing call from them, or hate seeing the same ads run during every college bowl and pro playoff game. OK, it's me. But I am not alone (I don't think).
Too many in the ad industry chuckle when people in focus groups say they hate ads--but then go out and buy the product anyway. But all we've done is foster a resentment that will be reflected in enhanced electronic measures to avoid ads at all. Including the ones that we might have really wanted to see.
As if air pollution, astronomical real estate prices and the possibility of running into The Donald weren't reason enough to sprint to suburbia, here comes this news item from a New York Times story: "Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today."
Since the story was about place-based ads, one assumes the 5,000 messages don't include those we encounter in media--which, you will recall from earlier Over The Line dispatches, is where we bury our noses for about three hours a day. A single network prime-time TV show now has 634 ads per hour (956 if you count the promos they scroll under or paste over the content itself). The only good news is that ads are continuing to disappear from your newspapers and magazines. The bad news is that when they lose those cool auto ads, magazines replace them with cheapo, classified-looking ads from the retail equivalent of penis and breast enhancement creams, crapping up their layouts and just adding to the clutter.
But the bottom line is that overloading consumers with ads to the point that they can't sit quietly in a toilet stall without having to see commercial messages just puts them further over the edge, so they just hate the ad industry more than ever and forget how useful (and occasionally entertaining) ads can be to their lives.
Like everyone else, I have online ad blockers and I fast-forward through TV shows I have recorded. I either change channels during live TV commercials--or hit the mute and read a magazine for the duration of the break. (Given the length of most newsmagazine stories now, I can nearly complete an entire issue in two pods). I never listen to commercial radio anymore, since their ads are THE MOST obnoxious of all media. I am happy to pay for XM, which I listen to in the car and almost all day online. I only look at newspaper ads that have SALE in big letters plastered across them. ANYTHING related to advertising that comes in the mail (no matter how cleverly or deceptively designed to get me to open it) is dumped unread into the trash. In other words, I am a pretty typical consumer.
But at least I acknowledge that I love ads that are relevant to what I am in the market for on any given day. I don't really care which medium delivers them to me, either (except that online has spoiled me with instant gratification, so if a print or TV ad asks me to dial a number or go to a store, our love affair pretty much ends right then and there.)
I grew up on the premise that advertising was a form of information, and therefore useful for the consumer. But as ad exposure has climbed beyond the 5,000 units a day, the contest to gain my attention has resulted in the pollution of most urban landscapes, TV screens, print layouts and my computer screen. There was a story yesterday about a woman who produces some of the Internet's most annoying ads, which use constant motion to get your attention. While some might see her as a kind of ad industry folk-hero for producing ads that seem to work for her client, I suspect most consumers would rather she be drawn and quartered in Iraqi justice system-time.
I appreciate that one man's "best ad of the year" is the next man's "if-I-see-that-goddamned-spot-one-more-time-I-will-pitch-the-plasma-out-the-door," and that at the end of the day, it all comes down to what moves product out the door, but I would not underestimate consumer backlash to too-many-ads-trying-too-hard-to-get-my-attention. I know people who won't buy from companies just because they got a telemarketing call from them, or hate seeing the same ads run during every college bowl and pro playoff game. OK, it's me. But I am not alone (I don't think).
Too many in the ad industry chuckle when people in focus groups say they hate ads--but then go out and buy the product anyway. But all we've done is foster a resentment that will be reflected in enhanced electronic measures to avoid ads at all. Including the ones that we might have really wanted to see.
Europe: One Continent, Many Online Ad Markets
JANUARY 18, 2007
Online, the old world now looks like a new frontier.
Online, the old world now looks like a new frontier.
After years of being viewed as laggards in online advertising, the countries of Europe are catching up — and fast.
"eMarketer estimates online ad spending will hit $7.5 billion in Western Europe this year, up 25% from $6.0 billion in 2006," says Lisa Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and the author of the new Europe Online Advertising: Spend, Trend and Audience report. "It is literally gobbling up ad dollars from other media."
This year, the Internet will comprise 7.3% of total European ad spending — ahead of radio and out-of-home — but by 2010 it will account for 9.4% of all ad spending, at the expense of newspapers (28.1%) and magazines (15.8%). TV's share of the market will grow slightly, to reach 34.4% in 2010.
More than half (51%) of the growth in online ad spending in Europe has come at the expense of other media, according to the "Marketers Internet Ad Barometer" report, published by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA).
"Europe as a region is far from homogeneous, and advertising strategies must employ both national and pan-European elements," says Ms. Phillips. "The vast majority of online ad budgets are allocated by country, but regional and pan-European teams of marketers have strong influence."
There are definitely challenges ahead.
Nevertheless, marketers surveyed by the EIAA, representing global and European brands, expect the online spend to grow 67% between 2006 and 2008.
In the UK the Internet is expected to account for as much as 18% of all media spending this year, according to GroupM.
The UK is also the most expensive country in the world for online advertisers. eMarketer estimates that advertisers will spend $217 per Internet user in the UK in 2010, compared with $136 per French user and only $10 per Italian user.
By comparison, the US audience seems a bargain. Advertisers spent $86 per American user in 2006, and they are projected to spend only $130 per user in 2010.
"And don't forget Central and Eastern Europe," says Ms. Phillips. "As of right now, it is the fastest-growing region for advertising in Europe."
Even though its ad spend equaled just 27% of the ad market in Western Europe in 2006, ZenithOptimedia predicts the region will grow to a total of $13.8 billion by 2009, overtaking Western Europe, which will account for $12.9 billion.
Online advertising is keeping pace in Eastern Europe as well. Internet advertising in the region will grow 28.6% this year, to $292 million, based on PricewaterhouseCoopers/Wilkofsky Gruen Associates data, and hit $482 million in 2010. That year, Poland will account for 44.8% of Internet spending in the region, or $216 million, followed by Russia with a 32.4% share, or $156 million.
Keep pace with this diverse and dynamic market, read eMarketer's new Europe Online Advertising: Spend, Trend and Audience report today.
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