October 19, 2010
Digital Hollywood, considered the premier entertainment and technology conference in the U.S., is blowing media minds this week in Santa Monica. PCA’s The Hot Sheet attended several hot panels, including one discussing “Advertising Accountability.” Speakers representing today’s biggest electronic advertising platforms – online banner ads, social media, “linear TV” (including cable and satellite), radio (and digital radio), online games – pondered the business conundrum: How does one best measure digital media advertising? Among the insights and questions:
- Social media offers the cheapest advertising, but is the toughest to quantify. Its bloggers and commenters are highly influential in their “pull” to consumers. Social media is also the most “disruptive” to other media because it is least susceptible to control.
- Behavioral targeting media – banner ads that zero-in on people’s online activity – can generate a consumer backlash. For example, someone searching for cancer cures online may not want to be served ads that remind them of their cancer.
- There is value in “social currency.” What customers are saying about a product or service online, even if negative, holds potential power. Therefore, boost your customer-service and integrate it into Facebook and Twitter.
- What is worth more: a blog post or a banner ad? Consistent metrics remain elusive.
- There is no substitute for good “creative.” Compelling advertising is good in any medium. But agencies will always feel the tension between research, account and creative departments.
- The digital divide: Most ad dollars still go to traditional, “linear” media. But a tipping point is coming, when younger, more tech-friendly demographics will dominate audiences. When that happens digital spending will zoom up.
Speakers included William A. Lederer, Kantar Video; Eric Forst, Visible Technologies; Mark Yesayian, MEC Interaction; Charlie Rahilly, Clear Channel Radio; Craig Mcdonald, Covario; Scott Ferris, Microsoft Advertising; Kenneth Papagan, Rentrak Corporation; Patrick Hayes, GSMG Global.
October 29, 2009
The cell-phone war brewing between Droid and iPhone – really between Verizon and AT&T – has served as excellent entertainment over the last few weeks. Personally, this Hot Sheet writer loves a little competition, and it is about time that Verizon fights back. My Verizon service has always been excellent, but the phone options have been less than appealing. And I have wondered why Verizon hasn’t been able to compete on the phone-technology level like other providers have. Well, now is their chance.
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August 3, 2009
Does the Kindle 2 — Amazon’s new wireless reading device — spell the end of books as we know them? There’s no question that the idea of saving millions of trees, gallons of ink, and all the resources of print distribution is a good one. But is Kindle 2 the best vehicle for that idea? Novelist Nicholson Baker gets deep into the product’s problems in this New Yorker article: Limited titles, whole sections of the New York Times unavailable, no “kick-stand” so you can read while eating, limited legibility from the “Vizplex” print display. Baker even recommends loading the free “Kindle for iPod” application for better nighttime bed reading. But take the writer’s criticism with a grain of virtual salt. The New Yorker, primarily a print publication, has “a vested interest” in dead trees, as the magazine’s semi-competitor, New York magazine, waggishly points out. It also notes that Baker ran up an awesome list of expenses buying books and gadgets for his review.
July 28, 2009
With his ever-unerring sense of when to embrace trends, and when to dis them, geezer rocker Neil Young appeared at the mega Fortune Brainstorm conference last week. According to reporter Charles Cooper – Coop’s Corner on CNET News – Young pushed for more sophisticated digital-to-analog converters in PCs.
“People’s understanding has been skewed by MP3s and convenience. It’s important to get music out there…but not at the expense of quality,” he said. Cooper also quotes Young saying, “All my life, I heard the best sound possible.” But that the “dumbed down” sound that comes out of computers sounds like toy instruments.
It might be remembered that when compact disks first appeared, Young rejected their sound as well, expressing preferring the richer, warmer analog sound of vinyl over the cleaner digital effect of CDs
July 23, 2009
If you use Google Docs or its new Chrome operating system, you’ve moved into the world of storing info and running code online rather than on your hard drive. The advantages are – for one thing – it’s free: No need pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for programs. Another advantage is you never lose anything if your hard drive crashes. It’s all up there, “in the cloud,” free to be shared. But is the cloud too accessible? Law professor Jonathan Zittrain says so in this New York Times article. He’s concerned that the cloud is more open to hacking and to censorship by authorities.
But there’s a competing philosophy, advanced by people such as those at PirateBay.org. It says not only that movies, games, programs etc, should be free and accessible, but that copyrights should be extremely limited, with most intellectual property part of the public domain.
July 8, 2009
Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, is a big production: Years in the making, a cast of thousands. Its recent debut has generated favorable comparisons to that king of search Engines: Google. David Pogue in his New York Times Personal Tech column says, “Bing is better.” And he encourages people to compare them side by side, via the useful new site bing-vs-google.com. For one thing, Bing gives you a summary of a search item without you having to click in and out of it. Bing also divides your searches – when appropriate – into categories: For example, if you search for a celebrity’s name, you get sub-searches in: News, Movies, Quotes, Biography and Images. Part of Google’s appeal has always been its uncluttered look. But Bing looks great with its additional design elements. Go to Bing and google yourself – I mean bing yourself – and see what you think.
July 6, 2009
In the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell takes a skeptical look at Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson is the editor of Wired and the author of the 2006 best-seller “The Long Tail.” The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” Which is why bloggers, working for free, are putting newspapers out of business. And why YouTube, despite its multi-millions of viewers, will lose close to half a billion dollars this year. Anderson may view all this through rose-colored monitors. But Gladwell pokes holes in Anderson’s theory, calling him a technological utopian. Just because something is cheap, that doesn’t mean it’s part of a sound business model. Remember how online stores were going to sell everything from pet food to groceries and destroy the brick-and-mortor economy? It was called the tech bubble, and it popped.
June 16, 2009
Over 50% of those who sign up for Twitter, never “tweet,” don’t “follow” any other Twitter user, and have no “followers” of their own. The news – according to the latest report from HubSpot (PDF) – has somehow has not penetrated the onslaught of Twitter hype, and was reported instead on obscure sites like Ars Technica. According to HubSpot’s analysis of Twitter’s 4.5 million accounts, 54.9 percent of users have never tweeted and 52.7 have no followers whatsoever. BTW, Los Angeles Times marketing columnist Dan Neil has a fun story today about advertising agency Cramer-Krasselt’s new Cultural Dictionary “of the zeitgeist-iest words and phrases” they can find or make up. This includes a new name for the avalanche of posts one finds on Twitter: “Twitterrhrea.”
February 5, 2009
In case it isn’t enough to know the status of your friends via Facebook or other social networking mediums, Google now makes it possible to GPS them! Yes, that’s right, you can track the physical location of your friends at all times with the new Google mobile application ‘Latitude.’ The application allows you to chat with friends and even receive directions to their location. Read More
January 20, 2009
With one of the most historical and monumental occasions for America taking place in the middle of a workday, it’s no wonder two of the largest media forces – CNN.com and Facebook -collaborated to deliver one of the largest, and most social, live events in web history – the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Read More
