"Many marketers haven't had the ability to tailor their display advertising messages at scale for different segments," said Yahoo spokesperson Gaude Paez, who described SmartAds as "Real-time custom advertising."...SmartAds makes heavy use of "customer insights" extracted from data Yahoo keeps on visitors, including their shopping, searching and Web surfing behaviors, as well as registration information and location data. The portal hopes the move will encourage large direct marketers to invest more heavily in online display ads, Paez said.
"Marketers are taking great pains to create better-targeted online campaigns...
Yahoo's product, coined SmartAds...switches in text-based offers and simple graphical elements on the fly, based off behavioral targeting data. But Yahoo is not alone in trying to help marketers come up with more versions of better-targeted creative without significantly increasing the dollars they've always spent on single, mass messages. Real Time Content, which is partially funded by British Telecom... hopes to serve up the most relevant content -- entertainment, news and advertising content -- on the fly based on information that's known about the consumer and is having discussions with ad network Blue Lithium to help it cull that data.
"If I'm a soccer mom and you shot this nice ad on a road in Scotland, am I likely to test drive?" asked Naj Kidwai, CEO of Real Time Content. "No. But if you shot an ad that speaks directly to me I'm likely to answer the call to action."
"What we do is identify users by device and identify their device as they enter a site on our publisher network. From there we can aggregate information and create a behavioral profile based on a variety of criteria. Our approach to behavioral targeting is then geared to bringing the three main components online advertisers have grown accustomed to into the mobile sphere, telling them who users are, what they do in real time and what ads they tend to be most responsive toward. If you can combine the three in a mobile context, you've got a heat-seeking missile. You've also finally leveled the playing field somewhat between mobile and online... For one thing, the intent of mobile searchers and browsers is far more directly related to actionable intent and information, so the quality of targetable information is far more relevant... In theory what it entails is knowing not just that a consumer is interested in shopping for a car, or even that their tastes seem to run in the direction of auto type A versus auto type B, but the chain of personalized decision criteria and the decision-making process."
"Interactive advertising revenues continue to show solid growth as advertisers and agencies recognize that it is a medium that can uniquely impact consumer behavior from product awareness, to purchase intent, to actual purchase and then brand loyalty. We have every confidence that this growth trend will continue as marketers allocate more of their total marketing dollars to interactive and the industry delivers effective and innovative platforms for connecting with consumers."
-Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB
"For many marketers, viral marketing or word of mouth (WOM) is fast becoming a compelling way to market products and services. But WOM has largely turned out to be a "hit or miss" proposition. That is changing, thanks to PopularMedia and its Pop Commerce platform that enables marketers to publish, manage, and optimize viral marketing programs capable of driving sales, leads, subscriptions, downloads and more.
"We're way beyond buzz at this point," said Jim Calhoun, CEO of PopularMedia, Inc. "By applying science and analytics to viral marketing, we're helping companies open entirely new distribution channels simply by tapping the wisdom and power of their customer base."
The Pop Commerce platform analyzes consumer behavior in real time, feeds results back into its publishing engine, and then makes adjustments to optimize viral programs on the fly. As a result, the platform produces reliable, sustainable results that create value for marketers. While it can be used for brand building and generating awareness, the platform has also helped customers build new prospect databases and open new, profitable sources of revenues that take them beyond search marketing."
"Brands with soul share a passion and motivation with their consumers, they have a clear reason for being. The brand soul is not necessarily a mission or a charitable cause, although it can be that. Brand soul is usually related to values and ethics, such as quality, self-esteem or integrity. The Brand is a champion of those values. ...The brand goes beyond the individual and is integrated into the community. Instead of brand evangelists, where there are leaders and followers, a brand with soul has a fan base of peers. The brand is equal and parallel to consumers; it is not in the center."
Bravo President Lauren Zalanick yesterday declared that the NBC Universal network's 360° multi-platform model was "over" after two years, telling an SRO PROMAX/BDA session that Bravo has moved on to a "4D model"--a "swirling mass of information" designed to reach consumers who "feel very comfortable living in a cyclone of a brand."...
With 4D,...the customer, rather than TV, is in the middle of four interlocking layers: 1. Advertising and push messaging. 2. "Truly back-and forth two-way interactive." 3. Experiential--"Our customers really want to touch Bravo [including buying things they see on the air]. They need to touch it for real, at festivals, book signings, or feel like they're touching it virtually." 4. Personal, which Zalaznick termed "the new version of pass-along," including social networks and "viral buzz" that gives users an "influential feeling."
"NetWinner provides a unique advertising vehicle based on a new, companion advertising model where video advertisements are a natural companion to the game experience, not a potential disruption. The companion advertising model is coupled with the frequency of active roll, a marked improvement to the reach of traditional pre-roll video models.
Placing advertising campaigns on NetWinner guarantees that your ad will be seen by a targeted and engaged audience, your campaigns will receive robust reporting metrics, and your ads will be delivered to your desired audience. We target broadband internet users by age, gender, geography, and other relevant demographics."
"What do I think is next? Predictive targeting.
What's that? Predictive is one step closer to the Holy Grail of delivering the right ad to the right person at the right time in the right place. It is about truly understanding enough about the consumer's state of mind at a moment... to predict what he or she likely needs, wants or desires - and being able to satisfy or advance that need, want or desire with a commercial message... you have to know a certain amount about their actual actions within media and marketing environments...
...you need to have an understanding of what types of commercial messaging are likely to create the desired results with the various types of consumers in a variety of states-of-mind and in various media and marketing environments."... This will be the next generation of our industry..."
While it must be noted that highly engaging advertising on MySpace is currently limited to very few brands, these are the areas of advertising that the network intends to take, favouring community-friendly advertising and lessening its reliance on banner ads."
"Shopping catalogs have enormous amounts of very rich information...Latent in all that data, though, are all sorts of demographic and psychographic attributes. Across all product categories for every brand, you can associate demographic and psychographic markers or tags... When users visit a Web page, there's an IP address associated with them which tells you the location they came from - which in turn gives you a good idea of their demographics as culled from census data.
Finally, if they've clicked through to the Web site using a keyword search, you then move from demographic information to purchase intent. So from the moment a user enters the site we have begun to frame a fairly detailed profile of who they are and what their interests are - a profile that will be continually refined based on other publications they go to. From there, we begin to evolve a more behaviorally based profile of them based on product browsing and sales history."
"The easiest way to think about user behavior is to ask yourself what you want people to do on your site. In web analytics, we refer to these actions as desired behaviors. They include such things as they paths you want users to take, the marketing initiatives you want them to come in contact , and the products you want them to buy. Desired behaviors may be as simple the movement of customers from your home page to a specific initiative. Or, they may be complex. For example, a content site may want its users to explore particular site areas that have higher-ad conversion rates than others. There are as many possible desired behaviors as there are business objectives; the important thing is to isolate what you want users to do. The second step is to monetize these desired behaviors."
"In a somewhat unusual move for ad networks, online display advertising is getting its own upfront season. Ford's Lincoln and Mercury brands have placed 12-month commitments with behavioral targeting ad network Specific Media.
"It's an exceptionally large advertising commitment," said Specific Media CEO Tim Vanderhook...
"... A lot of marketers now are saying 'we want to target people instead of content'," Vanderhook said.
Specific Media delivers ads by studying online behavior and delivering media buys based on where different demographics actually spend their time.
"We have cookie data on 95% of U.S. users--we can tell if one is male or female, the types of content you have been consuming," he said.
"With drinks business Diageo, the agency [Millions of Us] decided to recreate the feeling that consumers got from the company's brands, rather than concentrate on the act of drinking itself, which is meaningless in a virtual world. The result was a virtual bar kit that bar owners could buy. It enabled avatar visitors to share a drink, propose toasts and engage in a social network or dialogue with other drinkers.
"Experian, the global information solutions company, announces that it has acquired Hitwise, a leading Internet marketing intelligence company, which helps clients monitor the performance of their websites and target their online advertising spend more effectively. The purchase price is approximately $240m... Hitwise... brings new, unique data to Experian and complements the existing data, tools and expertise that we already offer to clients in other areas such as research services and email distribution"...
Founded in 1998, Hitwise collects and aggregates information from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on how over 25 million consumers use and search the Internet in the US, UK, Australia and other countries in Asia Pacific. Using proprietary technology, Hitwise reports on nearly a million websites each day and sells this information to companies who market their services online. The data allows companies to benchmark their websites against competitors in terms of visitor market share, visitor profiles and time spent on sites. It also helps companies to determine which are the best websites on which to advertise, which search engines drive traffic to their sites and which key words are most effective.
Joost, the world's first broadcast-quality Internet television service, has signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the world's leading talent and literary agency. CAA will assist Joost in its efforts to secure the most compelling and entertaining content for distribution on the online entertainment platform.
"Joost takes entertainment to the next level through its converged television-Internet platform, offering consumers the best content available via a superior interface," said Michael Yanover, head of business development at CAA. "CAA will provide Joost greater access to programming through our relationships with networks, studios, record labels, artists and independently-controlled content libraries. ..Currently in an expanded beta, Joost is the first online, global TV distribution platform that brings advertisers, content owners and viewers together in an interactive, community-driven environment."
... Using this system will allow advertisers to cross-index consumer data, market research data and retail point-of-purchase data with the ensuing sales results.
Near real-time updates of the database and optimization of campaigns will improve targeting and allow ads to be placed strategically across the channel lineup. This will help agencies achieve tremendous efficiencies and improve their return on investment.
Engaging Consumers in a Digital World, Backchannelmedia
Tracking You Over a "Lifetime"
"Visual Site's ad campaign optimization solution leverages our real-time analytics engine's capability to evaluate advertisement performance on a lifetime visitor-by-visitor and segment-by-segment basis. Visual Site uniquely enables advertising buyers to understand the lifetime number of impressions that each individual visitor or any segment of visitors receives across various media outlets. In addition, for those visitors that click-through directly or later view-through, Visual Site can calculate and allocate the value of any on-site conversions to one or more of the advertisements that the visitor had been impressed with across their prior lifetime," said Jim MacIntyre, chief executive officer of Visual Sciences. "In addition, Visual Site allows information to be passed in from ad serving vendors for use by Visual Site and for its visitor-by-visitor analytics results to be passed out to ad serving vendors, enabling closed loop online advertising campaign optimization."
"... In addition, Visual Site's openness and flexibility allows the rapid integration of data from ad serving vendors or other sources of visitor profile and campaign information. The same openness allows any of the analytics that Visual Site provides, for instance an individual visitor's lifetime value, to be output on an ongoing basis so such information can be used by external vendors for further targeting purposes. The result is improved advertisement relevance to the viewer and increased conversion rates, saving Visual Sciences' clients and their potential clients both time and money."
Advatars: Selling "You 24/7 in Virtual Worlds
"Greenberg, the vice president of marketing innovation [at
Electric Sheep Co.], wants to help "Second Life" residents to sell their own ad space, turning ordinary people into moneymaking publishers.
He sat down with the Austin American-Statesman to answer questions on how virtual worlds are disrupting the old advertising business model, and what other surprises Web 2.0 has in store...
What would an ad network on "Second Life" look like?
... And you so want to hear how the ad network would work? What we are going to do is, we are going to give ad units for free. Give ad units to people to put wherever they want, and we are going to share their ad revenue with them. So it could be a poster on a wall.
Just like in the real world where you might see advertising on billboards around you, you might see it the same way in "Second Life"?
Yeah, a poster on the wall, maybe a billboard outside, maybe a button somewhere. It may be a coaster on a wall. It may be sandwich boards on their body and walk around. And people will be able to place ads in the network. The advertisers will be able to choose their criteria and where they want to place it. And the publishers will be able to say there are the things I'm accepting. Just like in a regular ad network."
Great Leap Backward: China Gets its MOJO
"eWorld Interactive (OTCBB: EWIN) today completed its acquisition of privately held multi-media production house MOJO Media Works. The move will increase earnings and open up new markets for the combined company..."In today's marketplace advertisers are looking more and more for unique and diversified media strategies," remarked MOJO CEO David Tumaroff. "MOJO's history and competency to develop programming across all media platforms will give us a leading edge in this area."...MOJO has carved out a unique position bridging the gap between Western media and the difficult to penetrate Chinese market...MOJO is currently in pre-production on the CBSParamount format of America's Next Top Model, "China's Next Top Model" ("ANTM" and "CNTM", respectively). The original series created by supermodel Tyra Banks is in its 9th cycle in the US and is rebroadcast in 32 countries around the world. ANTM is the No#1 internationally sold program, and MOJO becomes the 13th country to produce a local version of the format."
eWorld Expands Media and Advertising Reach With Completion of MOJO Acquisition
Mapping Where and Who You Are: To Sell via Cell
"Acuity Mobile and Acxiom Corporation today announced a powerful new mobile marketing solution that integrates world-class consumer data and behavioral analytics with the industry's leading real-time mobile content delivery platform. The new mobile marketing solution exceeds current industry offerings by marrying Acxiom's data and analytical capabilities with Acuity Mobile's location-based technology and Spot Relevance offering -- the ability to deliver mobile content to the right user based on time, context, location and user preferences... Acuity Mobile's patented Embedded Mobile Advertising Platform (EMAP) is the only mobile marketing solution that delivers Spot Relevance. By incorporating customer information data from Acxiom into the EMAP Preference Engine, the technology platform will facilitate relevant content delivery to a specific person based on preferences, time, context and location."
Acxiom Corporation and Acuity Mobile Partner to Power Targeted Mobile Marketing Solutions
No Ad Skipping Allowed (or, how the cable industry will help further undermine Tivo's and other DVR's)
"RGB Networks, the leader in network video processing, is advancing the state-of-the-art in television advertising with the new digital overlay capabilities of its advanced Broadcast Network Processor (BNP). With its unmatched ability to directly overlay text, graphics and video onto more than 500 television ads simultaneously, the BNP dramatically reduces the cost for cable operators to deliver localized ads for both national and local advertisers....In addition to enabling new ad revenues, the BNP's digital overlay capabilities can help operators face two significant and growing challenges to their existing ad programs: ad skipping Digital Video Recorders (DVR) and competition from the Internet.
Cable operators can overcome the threat of DVR owners skipping ads by using the BNP to overlay ad content directly onto the programs themselves, therefore eliminating the ability to skip the ads...
Cable operators also face growing competition from the Internet, as websites tout their ability to reach specific geographies and demographics, luring advertisers to increase their spending on Internet advertising while reducing their budgets for television ads. The BNP's ability to deliver targeted, relevant ads using digital overlays is a key way operators can combat Internet competition."
RGB Networks Press Release, May 21, 2007
Virtual World Behavioral Research: Avatars Report for Marketing Duty!
"Spunlogic...announced today it has been approved by the virtual world Second Life as a preferred development vendor... Spunlogic's addition to the preferred vendor list means that companies interested in development can now contact the agency as a trusted resource.
Spunlogic's Second Life services include "in world" behavioral research, strategy development, marketing launch planning, and design and development of custom landscapes, objects and functionality... Also unique is Spunlogic's focus on behavior and research in the space, providing a deeper level of strategy for companies planning a presence in the space... Spunlogic...uses an in-depth understanding of the user experience to help companies attract, convert and retain customers. "
Virtual World Second Life Adds Spunlogic to Preferred Vendor List. May 14, 2007
Your Identity is Caught in These "Targus" Headlights
"Every time a consumer contacts you, you have an opportunity to make a conversion, build loyalty and increase your revenue.
You may have systems to help you accomplish this for your longtime customers. But what about consumers you don't know and have never engaged before?
With TARGUSinfo On-Demand DataSM services, you can make every interaction more productive and profitable, even with unknown consumers.
At the beginning of every contact, our solutions instantly give you an understanding of who they really are. In addition to their full contact information, you can capture deep household demographics, profiles, lifestyle characteristics and buying-propensity scores...
When consumers interact with you on the Web, their level of anonymity can create hassles for you at every stage of the sales process.
If you buy or sell online leads, then faulty consumer or business information can hurt lead quality.
If you need to approve online transactions, then hard-to-verify phone numbers and addresses can add up to significant investments of time and money.
With TARGUSinfo On-Demand VerificationSM solutions, you can accurately confirm contact information - at the instant it is submitted.
Unlike our competitors, we provide data on wireless, VoIP and other nonpublic phone numbers. So you can have more confidence in your leads, transactions and enrollments. "
TARGUSINFO: On-Demand Data
That "Mob" Wants Your Data
"Target Tree Technology globe icon AdMob's Target Tree allows you to make sure your ads only reach the users you want. This powerful technology enables you to target based on region, platform, device capabilities, and manufacturer. So if you want your ads to reach only Nokia users on MIDP 2.0 devices in Europe who have polyphonic ringtone support, we've got you covered. You're paying per click, and we want to make sure you get the right click.... AdMob's personalization engine allows you to personalize your ad to each user based on their device. Now instead of advertising "Fun for your phone", you can advertise "Fun for your S710A". When a user sees their device model specifically called out, it makes them all the more likely to click"
Why Mobile Advertising." AdMob.
U.S. Cable TV Industry Will Be Further Tracking & Targeting You
"New ways to present advertising over cable's two-way networks could present a bigger economic opportunity for MSOs than wireless communications - a sector presumed to represent the missing piece of cable's "quadruple-play" future.
So said Time Warner Cable Inc. president and CEO Glenn Britt at a May 7 Cable Show session... Britt sees electronic advertising at large shifting away from traditional one-way media and toward interactive platforms that deliver nimble targeting of viewers and precise measurement of audience levels. The Internet is where most of that activity now is occurring, but with new on-demand and interactive content delivery capabilities, Britt said "we have the technology to do that on television."
NCTA: Britt: For Cable, Advertising Could Outstrip Wireless. Stewart Schley, Broadcasting & Cable, 5/8/2007
Bill Gates: His new "foundation" for Microsoft is based on your data
"
Improve Your Campaign Efficiency
Successful advertising depends upon a number of factors, and getting your message to the right audience is vital for it to be effective...
Through the recent, rapid evolution of Microsoft's advertising technology, there are now three different ways to target your audience...
Profile
If you're aiming at an audience with specific attributes, you can add any combination of demographic targets, such as gender, age, and household income, geography, day of the week, and even day part.
Behavioral
Targeting consumers based on the way they act is powerful. Now you can target users who are likely to be receptive to your ads based upon their online search behavior. We combine this keyword search behavior with demographic data to identify a very specific audience-which means you can deliver highly relevant advertising.*
Combine and Conquer
All three targeting options play important roles in reaching customers, and using them together may help you create a highly focused media buy that could maximize the return on your investment."
Targeting from Microsoft
U.S. Cable TV Industry Will Be Further Tracking & Targeting You
"New ways to present advertising over cable's two-way networks could present a bigger economic opportunity for MSOs than wireless communications - a sector presumed to represent the missing piece of cable's "quadruple-play" future.
So said Time Warner Cable Inc. president and CEO Glenn Britt at a May 7 Cable Show session... Britt sees electronic advertising at large shifting away from traditional one-way media and toward interactive platforms that deliver nimble targeting of viewers and precise measurement of audience levels. The Internet is where most of that activity now is occurring, but with new on-demand and interactive content delivery capabilities, Britt said "we have the technology to do that on television."
Lifting All Your Data on Their Shoulders: Atlas AdManager Version 10
"Details of Atlas innovations and enhancements include...:
Unique Visitor Insights - Analyze unique-visitor information more easily to determine how campaigns performed. Generate reports to relay unique visitor statistics, including the number of unique visitors who saw or clicked on a specific campaign (or individual creative within each campaign) on any given day."... "We are pleased to partner with companies that embrace innovation," said Photobucket CEO Alex Welch. Welch continued, "We already considered AdManager best of breed, and now Atlas and AdManager are extending their offering to give us a revenue-generating tool with truly actionable analytics - sophisticated yet simple. The AdManager team anticipates the needs of publishers like Photobucket, and delivers."
Atlas AdManager V10 Delivers New-To-Industry Ad Network Control Panel to Publishers
By the Data-Collecting and Immersive "Silverlight" from Microsoft
"Silverlight is a great example of technology that will empower content owners, designers, advertisers and agency creative staff to deliver the next generation of the user experience, which will translate into more clicks, more brand connections, and more revenue for the whole ecosystem. Because the technology helps create more immersive customer experiences across a variety of browsers, you'll get deeper engagement of your content and your advertising, which will help us all grow our businesses."
Interview with Kevin Johnson, president of the Microsoft's platforms and services.
Microsoft Maintains Sharp Focus Post `Googleclick'. Abbey Klaassen. Advertising Age. May 8, 2007 [sub required]
Let's Hope Regulators Shine a Data Collection "Silverlight" on Microsoft and Co.
"Eyeblaster, the global leader in integrated digital marketing services and technology, today announced a collaboration with Microsoft to integrate Silverlight, a newly unveiled technology for next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications, with Eyeblaster's Advertising Campaign Manager (ACM) platform.
Microsoft Silverlight (previously called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) delivers rich, cross-platform interactive experiences that include animation, graphics, audio and video capabilities for the Web and beyond. Eyeblaster's collaboration with Microsoft gives creative agencies the ability to take advantage of the benefits of Silverlight for digital ad creation and serving, including ad "smashing," tracking, delivery, reporting, and interactive video capabilities that scale from HD to mobile scenarios...Eyeblaster's solution, based on Silverlight, will enrich the end user experience and increase advertisers' options for rich, immersive campaigns. The richer advertising results from a more compelling media and interactive capabilities, such as support for the industry standard VC-1 video codec and flexible graphics insertion on the fly."
Eyeblaster to Use Microsoft Silverlight for Development of High-Impact Rich Media Advertising
Your Personal Data is Tracked in the First and Second Life
"IAN is the biggest Ad-Network within the german SL community
The IAN sells Ad-Space on more than 700 billboards on over 50 sims within the german Second Life community. Germany is with over 13% the second largest and quickest growing community in Second Life. IAN is a company based in Berlin / Germany.
Impression Measurement
Our Network has it's billboard portfolio placed at the hotspots of the german community. Our Ad-Network makes about 100.000 - 200.000 impressions a month, with a average CTR of 8%. The impressions are measured with a self-developed methodology, that ensures are comparability with website impressions.
We measure a impression for every billboard seperated, if an avatar:
* can really see the ad
* is looking at it for a specific time
* is within a max. range of 20 meters
If an avatar remains within the range of a billboard he isn't count multiple. He has to leave and enter the range again to count as another impression."
Inworld Advertising Network: marketing ad space in virtual worlds
A "Perfect" Online Advertising Network
"Here are the things that I think make the perfect network:
- Large volume across all broad and vertical cuts, including deep behavioral segments.
- Ability to partner on DM or branding goals.
- Multiple cost models: CPC, CPM, CPA.
- Ability to reverse-model based on demographic or behavioral actions.
- Ability to purchase ads contextually through keyword phrasings.
- Superb targeting ability: dayparts, frequency capping, demo targeting, behavioral, domain, et cetera.
- 3 days of free focus testing (creative, targeting, et cetera) with any $20K or larger buy.
- Reporting on reach frequency metrics.
- Ability to control SOV across specific demographics/behaviors.
- Extensive reporting on demo, behavioral segments.
- Ability to accept all types of media, rich media, video, et cetera.
- Ability to customize advertising across the network (custom sponsorships, et cetera).
- Sales representation that is experienced and knowledgeable about the client's markets/products and how to use the network to optimize to client goals."
Build the Perfect Ad Network. Pam Stein. Comments by Ann Balboa, Orange 22. imediaconnection.com
Broadband Content That's Yours--But it's really about the Sell
"Brightcove is testing a service that will offer marketers a way to tap into the passion of consumers at a much deeper level by providing an easy way to create, edit and integrate 'approved' content into video creations that can be launched virally. Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Brightcove, demonstrated the service, Aftermix, during his keynote address at Media magazine's Outfront conference yesterday in New York... Marketers can exploit end-users as producers, he said, by supporting media and brand exposures in their online homes--i.e., blogs, playlists, social networks, communities of interest and RSS readers."
Tap Consumer Passions, Allaire Urges Marketers. Laurie Petersen. Online Media Daily. April 27, 2007
Broadband Video Spies: Not Joost Kidding
"Hot Web TV startup Joost yesterday announced an impressive lineup of 32 major brand advertisers for launch, some innovative ad formats, and a year-long partnership with Interpublic Group's Emerging Media Lab...The year-long IPG relationship guarantees special pricing and first-to-market opportunities for Interpublic's agencies and advertisers, including Microsoft, Intel, Motorola, Sony Electronics, Taco Bell, Unilever's Magnum Ice Cream brand, the U.S. Army, Lionsgate, and two European General Motors units, Opel and Vauxhall.
Similar to an ongoing relationship with TiVo, Interpublic's involvement with Joost rests heavily on research in order to better understand this emerging medium.
"These deals have a big research component so we can separate the value from the hype," said Schwartz [ Lori Schwartz, senior vice president, director of Emerging Media for Interpublic's Emerging Media Lab]. "We're really excited to see how we can leverage Joost's peer-to-peer technology, and how we can target addressable advertising based on user profiles and behavior."
Joost Unveils Stellar Brand Ad Launch Lineup, Partnership With IPG. Gavin O'Malley. Online Media Daily. April 27, 2007
The Billion Data March--Your Info into Private Hands
"Revenue Science...announced today that it now manages over 1 billion online behaviors per day.. The dramatic increase in the number of behaviors Revenue Science manages has allowed thousands of Fortune 500 brand and direct response advertisers to meet specific campaign goals and increase the return on their marketing dollars."
"Managing over one billion behaviors a day is an amazing milestone but it in no way alleviates our desire to integrate even more behaviors," added Hirsch. "It's the most proven, measurable way to strengthen audience relevance so advertisers can reach the right people at the right time."
Revenue Science Reaches 1 Billion Behaviors Per Day, Delivering Unmatched Precision for Behavioral Targeting November 7, 2006
Cell Phone's Prying Ears and Eyes
"Marketers are taking tools that they already use to track your Internet surfing and are preparing to combine that information with cell-phone customer data that include not just the area where you live but also the street you're standing on. The aim is to target the exact person who is most likely to buy a product at the precise moment they're most likely to buy it. It's the ad industry's dream come true: a perfect personalized pitch."
The Sell-Phone Revolution. Business Week. April 23, 2007
The "Nielsen Family" Calls on Your Mobile
"M:Metrics, the mobile market authority, today announced the launch of MeterDirect, the first research service to directly and continuously measure consumer mobile media behavior, unlocking mobile as a viable medium for advertisers.
For the first time, media companies will be able to understand how, when and how often consumers engage with the mobile medium, including mobile Web audience rankings by site, the demographic composition of mobile Web domains and day of week and time of day behavior that defines mobile Web traffic. The MeterDirect service also collects detailed information about mobile application usage, including messaging, title and channel level music and video consumption."
M:Metrics lauches MeterDirect the first syndicated mobile audience measurement service using metering technology. March 26, 2007
WhoseSpace? Not Really Yours Alone
"Each social networking site collects a plethora of personal and demographic data on each member," said [In-Stat analyst Jill ] Meyers, "and while selling these data to target marketing groups may be unappealing to site members, it may be the best route to profitability for site operators."
Honeymoon Is Over For Social Networks. Gavin O'Malley. Online Media Daily. Apr 20, 2007
"It all starts with data." YOURS!
"Publishers can collect two kinds of data to learn more about their customers. Declared data represents information consumers willingly disclose about themselves, while observed data is information compiled and collected based on how consumers use websites. Once the data is gathered, the challenge, according to [author Rob] Graham, is to make sense of it... the basic process is quite simple. Publishers create page tags for targeted webpages that are triggered upon a visitor's arrival. The data is then collected and analyzed. Visitors are next grouped according to similar patterns observed while on the site or within the ad network. The groups are then refined into groups of clearly defined audiences. Publishers can then sell advertisers access to highly-targeted audience groups...
"For the first time in the history of marketing, the ability to reach individuals based on their needs, interests, desires and sudden urges is within reach of advertisers," he writes... At some point in a conversation about BT, someone will likely use the S-word, according to Graham: spying. "There's no way to sugar coat this," Graham writes. "In order to learn more about individual consumers, marketers have to resort to 'spying."
Getting Ads to the Right Eyeballs. Michael Estrin. imediaconnection, April 20, 2007
The Doubleclick Cookie Never Crumbles
"The 'click-through' is truly a new paradigm in ad measurement: a mechanism by which consumers can react immediately to ad messages put in front of them....This is known as the 'view-through' effect. Advertisers can track view-throughs easily using cookies and match-back pixels (known as 'Spotlight tags' in DART) on the advertiser's site. When someone exposed to an ad in a campaign shows up at the site, the match-back pixel will recognize the exposed cookie. Ad serving logs can then identify whether the person came directly via a click or later on their own. We typically see half or more of the ad-related visits in a campaign being attributed to the view-through effect as opposed to direct clicks."
Best Practices for Optimizing Web Advertising Effectiveness Doubleclick. May 2006
That GoogleClick Ad Will Be a Very Persistent Cookie
"In acquiring DoubleClick, Google will operate the firm's 'Boomerang for Advertisers, Marketers and Agencies' to leverage behavioral targeting, 'the most effective form of targeting available', according to DoubleClick.
How DoubleClick's Boomerang works:
- User visits client Website looking for a product and browses, but does not make a decision. The user is 'now tagged' as an interested prospect in a Boomerang List.
- User continues Web browsing, visiting a site where the client has an ad campaign already running. Dart for Advertisers recognizes the visitor (thanks to the Dart cookie ID), and serves a targeted ad offering free shipping.
- Qualified prospect clicks on Boomerang-targeted ad and is taken back to client Website to take advantage of free shipping offer."
Google to Tag Users Across Web: Privacy Boomerang? Donna Bogatin, ZDNet. April 14, 2007.
Google's Local Search and Data Seizure
Battelle: What do you see as the web's biggest growth areas?
Schmidt: Mobile, mobile, mobile -- it's probably the most wide open space out there right now. Also, local. Most search companies don't take advantage of the local data inherent in the web.
Web 2.0 Expo: Eric Schmidt on Google Apps, DoubleClick April 17, 2007
Look Who's Calling!
"Greystripe's AdWRAP advertising network takes full screen images, videos, and scrolling banners and dynamically delivers them into mobile games and applications. Mobile in-game advertising provides advantages over other advertising channels for all of the key advertising metrics -- including reach, targeting, measurement, and high recall and conversion rates. Research shows and Greystripe has proven that consumers are strongly receptive to in-game advertising and ad-subsidized mobile content."
"The AdWRAP Campaign Manager (ACM) a robust advertising web interface that provides large advertisers and ad agencies complete control and flexibility in creating, trafficking, and monitoring their mobile in-game ad campaigns. Supported ad formats include full screen ads, scrolling banners and video commercials, while supported ad actions include click-to-call, click-to-WAP and click-to-jump-page."
While You Roam, You Will be Watched and Targeted
"4/7 Real Media, Inc... announced...Decide DNA 6.1 - the industry's first and only comprehensive offering that allows advertisers to manage mobile search campaigns in the same interface as Web-based paid search, search engine optimization (SEO), and feed management...Decide DNA 6.1 improves advertiser ROI by providing greater understanding of the most profitable creative units, keywords, and landing pages, automatically adjusting keyword portfolios based on parameters defined by the advertiser... With Decide DNA 6.1 we give advertisers the ability to seamlessly transition into mobile search marketing with all of the analysis, reporting, scale, and ROI vigilance..."
24/7 Real Media Extends Mobile Search Marketing Services With Enhanced DECIDE DNA Platform, April 10, 2007
The Searchers (not the John Ford version!)
"... Search is all about matching consumer intent with advertisers' content. It is seeing the field before we act. Search behavior, whether it is someone buying an air conditioner when temperatures hit a certain point or buzz around a new TV show debuting, can and will change the way all other media is planned and bought. The closer we get to understanding where people are in the funnel in search, the better we can communicate. Search is not simply a vehicle to push product or even build brands. It is a diagnostic for all other media."
The AOL Video Player is the Ad, or, 360 degrees of No Separation
"...we are trying to offer new video solutions, integrated within the page. Our goal is to help advertisers learn and understand there are other opportunities in video that go beyond pre-roll" [said Kathy Kayse, executive vice president/sales and partnership alliances, AOL Media Networks].
For example, AOL is currently shopping around its NetStream unit. The 200 x 250 unit functions as an embedded video player that appears within the actual Web page. As soon as the user clicks into a page, the video begins to play. "Our goal is to present propositions to the market that can cross almost every budget level," Kayse said, adding, "We want to give our advertisers an opportunity to leverage our unique audience to drive the results they're looking for."
AOL Will Give 'First Look' At Programming Strategy. Toby Elkin. April 13, 2007
Read about AOL and Gannett's PointRoll new alliance
AOL Netstream Ad Served Video Player
The other CIA: Commercial Intelligence Agencies
"It's a brand new world for brands. One requiring new approaches, technologies and a touch of innovation. Blindly rushing headlong into this new world has its risks. At Converseon, we help leading companies effectively engage in the conversation with holistic, proven strategic solutions; we help brands move into the web 2.0 world thoughtfully, creatively strategically and effectively... Converseon's proprietary Conversation Miner scours public, online discussion areas - including blogs, newsgroups, social media, and more - to capture, understand and report the issues, opinions and ideas that costumers share between and among themselves...Conversation Mining is an essential first step in developing an effective communications strategy to join and influence the conversation."
You Search for Information, They Search to Target You
"Next up is Brian Schmidt from Google.... Says Google has two parts, connecting customers to their information and "more important" (his words) connecting marketers with those customers. They are working on increasing control and providing more inventory...
John Kannapell from AOL Search... They are announcing the AOL Search Marketplace, a brand within the Google paid search network, letting advertisers advertise at the AOL segment of the Google network, targeting their ads to a more specific and higher quality segment than they might get with Google."
Advertisers Shape and Create Content Online: Digital Product Placement and (Way!) Beyond
"GoFish offers advertisers a unique and powerful set of options for engaging the fast growing universe of online video enthusiasts. As a leading platform offering original short-form and programmed user-generated video content, GoFish has pioneered new and exciting methods for bridging the gap between major brands and the fast growing user-generated video community. With a focus on rich-media advertising opportunities and integrated brand sponsorships, GoFish reliably delivers targeted advertising opportunities that help brands reach the customers and demographic targets that are most valuable."
Why advertise with GoFish?
"GoFish Corporation... today announced a strategic alliance with Mandalay Integrated Media Entertainment (MIME), part of Mandalay Entertainment Group, a leading producer of branded entertainment and integrated media. The strategic partnership will enable the two companies to enhance their offerings to advertisers and sponsors looking to capitalize on the recent explosion in Internet video. As part of the agreement, GoFish will leverage MIME's extensive experience in the development, creation and production of advertising and sponsorship programs, increasing GoFish's exposure to advertisers and providing enhanced revenue generating opportunities. In exchange, GoFish will enable MIME to broaden its offering of branded entertainment services to its clients, providing access to premium, original programming and targeted ad delivery in one of the fastest growing markets: online video."
Watch Your "Impulse" Control While on Yahoo! (and everywhere else)
- Target interested prospects at the right time: when they are ready to buy or make an impulse purchase."
Social Networks Breeding Ground for Data Collection
"...while monetization of social media/networking sites is still in its infancy, the ability to personalize/target content and ads is very powerful with these sites because they combine registration databases with massive amounts of behavioral surfing and interaction data."
Yahoo Needs a Face-to-Face With Facebook. Barrons Online. April 5, 2007
Not Like in the Library: They are Reading (and Tracking) Your Bookmarks
"Seethroo examines the content that individual users contribute to social websites and analyzes it to determine a profile for each person. In other words, we use Web 2.0 activity to learn what each person likes, how much they like it, and when that interest is strongest. Then we use that data to serve an ad that's the absolute best fit for that person's behavior...We examine what bookmarks a person has saved for themselves, as well as any bookmarks they've viewed that were found by other people... So imagine a person who has saved three mortgage-related bookmarks for themselves, and has also looked at another user's online bookmarks about refinancing. We might conclude that this person has an interest in both buying a house and refinancing their current home..."
Use Social Networks to Target Ads. Robert Moskowitz. March. 22, 2007
They Got their Data Collection `Engines' Running
"The Kefta profiling engine automatically acquires individual visitor information and builds an ever-increasing level of understanding about user needs and expectations. It is the detailed nature of this data that allows your team to target both prospects and returning customers. Each customer is handled as an individual case that keeps track of user and reporting data. The case user profile data is updated in parallel as the user browses your website, submits forms and so on, and case historical data is updated as the engine receives event notifications from Kefta probes (Kefta code snippets you insert to affected pages).
Defined by business needs and deployed by Kefta, these profiles are key to understanding the differences between site visitors. It is the grouping of these differences that allow you to target highly relevant communications to site visitors."
Dynamic Targeting - Four key building blocks
Your TV's Set-top box information, Privacy and Google: What Happens to All Your Viewing Data?
"Advances in set-top-box technologies make it possible to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed and whether it was watched through to the end. As part of this trial, we will be working with partners to use aggregate, anonymized set-top-box metrics to deliver timely and accurate viewing reports. Advertisers can use this data to understand the effectiveness of their TV ad campaigns and use this information to provide more relevant ads to viewers... Advertisers can target by demographic, daypart and channel and pay only for actual impressions delivered... The flexibility of this model also allows advertisers to make changes to their campaigns as often and as quickly as they like.
This is an early trial. We look forward to getting feedback and working closely with advertisers, agencies and partners to improve and expand our TV ads offering."
Why so-called "Non Personally Identifiable" Information Still Identifies You
comScore Media Metrix...introduced a new suite of metrics based on site "visits." The "visits" metric, defined as the number of times a
unique person accesses content within a Web entity with breaks between access of at least 30 minutes, is a way of measuring the frequency with which a person views content, thereby illustrating a key component of user engagement. Included among the new suite of metrics are: total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per usage day...Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix [said that] "The introduction of these new metrics based on 'visits' provides an alternative for measuring user engagement that tells us how frequently visitors are actually returning to the site to view more content."... While each of the "visits" metrics offers a different measure of frequency, the "average visits per visitor" is the most illustrative of return visits per unique individual during the course of a month. Used in concert with the "unique visitors" metric, this measure can help give a more comprehensive view of a site's performance.
Time Warner's Advertising.com Knows Where You are Going
"If you want to give every consumer every possible opportunity to convert, retargeting is the answer. Behavioral retargeting is one of the best ways to maximize campaign efficiency and ROI by ensuring that the traffic you drive to your site ultimately generates conversions. Retargeting works by anonymously observing consumer behavior while visiting your website. Then, based on that behavior and whether they complete the desired action, targeted messages are delivered to those consumers after they leave your site and surf elsewhere on the network. Because online consumers rarely click and make an immediate purchase, retargeting is the most effective way to prevent your offer from losing steam during this consideration phase."
Product Placement Gets a Software Analytics Boost
"With branded entertainment booming...Nielsen has launched a new tool allowing marketers to conduct faster evaluation of a product placement...Known as Place Values, Nielsen says the Web-based software provides 'performance indicators on brand recognition, attitude toward a brand and purchase interest.' ... a marketer could use the insights to discontinue the verbal mention of a brand in a reality series--or decide to insert a product in a more niche show, where it may have greater relevance to the audience."
Nielsen Launches Marketing Tool To Evaluate Product Placements. David Goetzl, Media Daily News. Mar 22, 2007.
Broadband Video Will Be Increasingly Tracking and Targeting You
"Online video advertising metrics are far more measurable, specific, accurate and actionable than television. Advertisers can get detailed information about reach, frequency, view time, impressions, uniques, interactions and clickthroughs... Online video provides actionable insight into the immediate and latent impact of that specific ad impression."
Who's Driving Online Video Ad Growth? Jason Glickman. Dec. 18, 2006
TV Advertising Decision System. Who Really Gets to Decide?
"For system operators, INVIDI ADS provides advertisers an advanced delivery platform that precisely targets video media to millions of digital households across America and around the world.
For the first time INVIDI ADS makes it possible to send targeted television media exactly where it needs to go - to the right household - every time.
INVIDI ADS is the Advertising Decision System that increases and captures new television advertising revenue for system operators and INVIDI has the proprietary technology that proves it....
Every advertiser and marketer has the ability to create their own unique geo targeting mapping criteria. ADVATAR's Geo Targeting used in combination with addressable, demographic and behavioral processes creates a new and powerful television advertising and marketing landscape."
Not such an "Idiot" Box: Nielsen DigitalPlus' "new set-top box measurement initiative"
"Global information and media powerhouse The Nielsen Company recently announced the formation of Nielsen DigitalPlus, a service that will essentially integrate a broad range of existing Nielsen data sets with the raw information being gathered by set-top boxes..." "[w]e're providing a deeper understanding of commercial activity, that is, the actual exposure of consumers to specific advertising messages" said Jed Meyer, SVP of Nielsen DigitalPlus.
"Take Action with Interactive Data." Robert Moskowitz. Imediaconnection. March 20, 2007
Segmenting and Focusing on You
"Gain a deep understanding of each unique customer's experience, facilitating improved usability, enabling the creation of focus group segments based on desired attributes with Virtual Focus Group."
TV Will Be Always Watching You and Reporting Back to [Fill-in Here!]
"Visible Measures' technology, which monitors user engagement throughout the entire video stream, will help its publisher customers get a better idea of what parts of their videos work, and what parts don't.
"They're not just tracking how many people are watching, they're tracking the full engagement within a video experience," he said. "Visible Measures is going to help our partners better measure what their users are interacting with, and track that engagement over time."
Brightcove hopes that Visible Measures' analytics package will help raise the bar for video analytics...
Visible Measures will be running a beta test of its analytics package with several of Brightcove's clients, Elia said. In addition to Brightcove, Visible Measures is also partnering with PermissionTV, and has received an endorsement from YouTube's chief marketing officer, Suzie Reider."
"Brightcove Partners With Video Analytics Start-Up."
Shankar Gupta, Online Media Daily. Mar 19, 2007
"Visible Measures' VXM suite is the industry's first comprehensive Video Experience Measurement solution. VXM enables Internet TV publishers, platforms, and advertisers to deeply measure and analyze audience engagement patterns to yield meaningful audience insights, superior customer engagement, and increased advertising ROI.
Our patent-pending technologies go further to "look inside" the video content to analyze how users experience and engage with specific moments within a video. This type of deep analysis and the objective indices produced allows Visible Measures to enable its partners and customers to offer new brand awareness advertising opportunities and to fully grasp the specific behaviors each audience segment uses to interact with the mix of video content and advertising."
Video Measures
A Little History Lesson on Behavioral Targeting: Under the Data Collection Hood
"What an audience management system does is lets a web publisher develop a picture and a database of their actual entire audience: who's coming to the site, what do we know about them, where can we serve ads to them, who do we have email addresses for, how many of them are registered, what are their demographics, what's the frequency they use our site, what's their loyalty...The information comes from the existing systems the publishers have...Yet no one ever thought to connect all the computer systems together to extract data out of them to determine who the audience is and what their behaviors are. So what we did is basically built a platform that takes all the data that's normally thrown away, and we extract it from the systems that serve the content, that serve the ads, that serve the email, that personalize the commerce experience - we pull it together from all of these disparate systems, and we unify it around a set of consumer profiles, which represent specific individuals who have interacted with the web publisher."
Interview with Tacoda founder Dave Morgan: "Mining the real value of web user data"
Jeff Bercovici. Media Life. June 5, 2003.
Your `User-Generated Content' is Showing!
"So, in the UGC world, in which we are all creators and consumers of content, an advertiser predicts what we want not only by what we watch, but also by what we post ourselves. This is not based on some "demographic study" but rather on our self-determined titles, tags, favorite content, et cetera... the advertiser also gets to know when we watch and when we post and how often we watch and how often we post...
Now, we no longer rely on the process of assuming that because I watch "Friends" on TV that I must be a 20-something city dweller and then guessing what other products, services or shows I would be interested in. It's knowing that I am posting videos about surfing at Redondo Beach, Calif., and that I do that twice a week and that I love pizza (because it's in many of my videos) and I watch videos that are funny, I watch late at night, and so on.
So, the opportunity is to integrate brand marketing messages in a powerful way that much more closely correlates to my life and true interests."
"Taking UGC on the Go." Nick Desai. [chair, Juice Wireless] imediaconnection. March 13, 2007
Watch Out When You Allow Your Data to Dance With This Partner!
"Traditional search interactions take only a matter of seconds - but interactive search with guides takes on average a few minutes. During that period, as searchers are working with guides to tailor their answers, display ads can be targeted by subject matter and user interest.
So imagine that someone is interested in athletic shoes. Not only do you base targeting on their keyword search but, based on the kinds of questions they've asked in the past, you learn what kind of athletic shoes, whether they're a middle-aged mom interested in taking up jogging or buying a gift for their teenage son. During the guided search session you can target short, video-rich media based on what their needs and interests are."
Interview with co-founder of "next generation search firm"
ChaCha. "
Beyond Keywords: New Dimensions In Search Behavior." Phil Leggiere. Behavioral Insider. March 14, 2007.
Mobile Mirror on Your Walk, Telling Marketers How You Talk
"As data sources converge from the carrier side, where you have demographic information, and then from our side, where we have information about what users are interested in and where they are amazing potential marketing synergies become possible. One way interest, behavior and location could work seamlessly together is, say someone has downloaded Madonna song ringtones and goes to the movie menu frequently. An entertainment company promoting a new Madonna movie can target based on that content and behavior, but also focus on the specific movie theater near where that user is. Then a Starbucks nearby having a special Frappuccino offer can target their promotion or a Barnes and Noble nearby the theater can promote a new Madonna coffee-table book. Very powerful stuff, but obviously something that needs to be done responsibly."
Interview with Lee Hancock, CEO of
GoTo (who did acknowledge that privacy is an issue).
"
It's the End-User, Stupid." Phil Leggiere, Mar 7, 2007.
Not a Silly Cymfony: From Your Words Online To the Marketers [and Others] Database and Strategy
"While Internet search engines use a keyword-based search, our technology uses a more sophisticated form of information extraction based on a detailed grammatical analysis of the text. Cymfony's engine dissects article, paragraphs and sentences to determine who and what is being talked about, whether something or someone is a key focus or a passing reference, and how the various entities mentioned (companies, people, locations and events) relate to one another...The engine combines grammar-based approaches with statistical models for natural language processing...Initial funding for the development of the engine was provided through US Government research contracts and intelligence agencies. The Department of Defense has sponsored continued advancements in this technology over the last eight years in the areas of information extraction, machine learning and text analytics."
Cymfony's Content Analysis Engine
MySpace's Prying Digital Eyes
"Levinsohn also talked about the wealth of data MySpace collects from its users. He said that 90% of users register, which includes "an enormous amount of information," which he said includes "age, marriage status, likes, dislikes, where you live." He said the site then "combines that data with data we extract from the profile pages...marry it with the enormous amount of inventory we have and then target our ads more effectively." He said he saw it as a way to dramatically increase the CPMs (cost per thousand) across the overall network."
Fox Interactive Claims 40 Billion Page Views in January. John Eggerton. Broadcasting & Cable. 3/7/07
Aggregating Knowledge About You: Washington Post and Others
"
Aggregate Knowledge offers the industry's first online Collective Discovery Service, which emulates the way people naturally discover and shop for products and information offline. Built atop a sophisticated, super computing architecture, Aggregate Knowledge harnesses the behavior of users to fundamentally change the way people navigate and engage online. Aggregate Knowledge delivers significant revenue enhancement to site owners by providing real-time, collective merchandising and navigation capabilities.
As AdAge reports, "Twelve companies -- including retailers such as Overstock.com, web publishers such as WashingtonPost.com and some as-yet-unidentified social networks -- are now piping vast amounts of anonymous buying and browsing behavior into what Mr. Martino [CEO]...calls "a pot... At this point, neither Overstock nor the work done for The Washington Post truly capitalizes on the scale of computing that Aggregate Knowledge brings to bear -- countless "predicates" that relay simple bits of behavior such as "User 27 added Item 83 to his cart at 4 o'clock" or "User 28 looked at news story 47 at 6 o'clock" collated into a recommendation system based on the behavior of large groups of people. Pick your metaphor to describe it: "Wisdom of Crowds" thinking meets the algorithm or an Amazon.com-style recommendation engine on steroids, blown out across a network of sites that gather vast amounts of browsing and buying information."
Power of Suggestion Forges New web Model.: Aggregate Knowledge Recommends Products Based on User Behavior. Matthew Creamer. AdAge. March 5, 2007
Global Interactive Ad Consolidation: Wherever You Are, Wherever You Go
"CONTINUING ITS INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION, AVENUE A|Razorfish, a unit of aQuantive, is buying Paris-based independent interactive agency Duke. Duke...joins Avenue A|Razorfish's growing international digital marketing family, which includes offices across the U.S. as well as Australia, Hong Kong, China, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. In the last year, Avenue A|Razorfish has acquired NDA in the U.K., Amnesia in Australia, and most recently, Neue Digital in Germany. A deal with Digital Palette added offices in Tokyo and Kobe....Enticed by the global reach of online communities like YouTube, clients are looking for digital agencies with a presence in a variety of markets."
Avenue A|Razorfish Buys French Independent Shop Duke. Gavin O'Malley, Online Media Daily. Mar 7, 2007.
A New Media Data Merger Targeting Users of Web 2.0 `Social Media'
"TNS Media Intelligence, the leading provider of strategic advertising information, has acquired Cymfony, the top market influence analytics company. The acquisition integrates Cymfony's expertise in tracking and analyzing the intersection of traditional and social media, such as blogs and social networks, with TNS MI's current extensive suite of advertising intelligence products. Furthermore, the acquisition establishes TNS MI as the only media intelligence company that can provide marketers with greater visibility into the most important influences shaping consumers' purchase decisions, including advertising, public relations and social media, through advanced analytics and proprietary data."
In a fragmented world, he said, the ability to reach key demos in an immersive, branded way becomes more and more valuable.... "Our business is to reach consumers through our content everywhere they are, and sell to advertisers that consumer relationship."
That immersion includes online shows, gaming and virtual worlds.
Viacom's Dauman: YouTube Wasn't Best Environment For Content John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, March 6, 2007.
Joost Is Fooling Themselves if They Think That Privacy is Protected This Way
"One of the Leiden crew's top priorities is a backend ad engine that can pinpoint viewers by location, time of day, viewing habits, and opt-in profile information to serve up a perfect ad. Developed by open source geeks in privacy-centric Europe, the central database doesn't store any identifying data. Personal information is stored only on the user's own PC. Clark, the ad sales chief, is happy to blue-sky the possibilities: 'Buy all the Desperate Housewives viewers in a zip code. Or the first thing a given viewer watches on a given day.'
In theory, that kind of control will make the network much more valuable to advertisers. 'We offer targeting they've never dreamed about in the TV world,' says Werdelin. 'And a deeper relationship with customers. Not just deeper than TV, but deeper than most of what you get on the Net. I don't think anyone really knows what those things are worth.'"
Why Joost Is Good for TV Spencer Reiss. Wired. Jan. 17. 2007
Emerging `Common' Market to Further Erode Privacy
"When you select a network for your behaviorally targeted campaign, by definition you limit opportunities to reach a target population to that network's base of identifiable visitors on that network's group of participating sites, using that network's technology exclusively.
An open marketplace, by contrast, is one where no single provider sits in the middle of every transaction. Instead, many networks, publishers, advertisers and technology providers all link together in order to give each one equal access to the combined pool."
3 Steps to Targeting Nirvana. Bennett Zucker. March 1, 2007
Mirror, Mirror on the Data Wall: Who's the Best Targeted Marketer Now
"We've assembled a diverse co-op of businesses that work together to identify customers who are likely to shop in a wide range of categories. Market Mirror uses advanced analytics to select users with a high likelihood of wanting exactly what you offer. Once we know a customer is interested in a category, we appeal to them with ad sequencing and specific offers that often convert them into a new customer... Using sophisticated profiling and modeling, we locate users who look similar to your best customers. Next, we appeal to them through targeted advertising delivered by our broad-reach media partners. We show specifically tailored offers designed to get users to visit your site and purchase or take a specific action. If someone has a high affinity for your product and services, they'll see a message or offer incenting them to visit your site."
aCerno: The Customer Creation Company Services Media
Retargeting You Once, Twice, Thrice and More!
"Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is one of the most effective forms of targeting, where you simply target a set of known consumers across the internet - known because they demonstrated a specific action or interest on your site. .. Remix Media's approach lets you retarget these consumers in real-time after they've left your site, giving you the opportunity to drive them back with compelling offers and targeted messaging."
Remix Media: Retargeting
Roll That (Targeting and Retargeted) Video Ad
"AdRoll is the first and only streaming video network that allows you to do behavioral retargeting, which has been shown to improve click through and conversion rates by >300%... Use BlueLithium's advanced targeting capabilities to refine the focus of your video campaigns, reaching those consumers with certain demographic profiles for instance, or those in certain geographic regions."
The first video streaming network with behavioral targeting capabilities
Joost Watch Those Targeted Ads!
"While personal IDs will not be stored on a central server -- they will remain on one's own PC -- advertisers will be able to cherry pick users by location, time/date of viewing, viewing history and preferences, and even profiles of Joost members who opt-in. In the future both advertisers (and programmers) will have the flexibility to upload content themselves... Joost advised Jack Myers Media Business Report that it is planning additional announcements that could represent significant advances in both program content and advertising relationships."
JOOST Seeks to Redefine Television for Viewers and Advertisers. Feb. 21, 2007
Come Spy With Me, While We Fly Away
"What we call dynamic retargeting can collect information on the fly. We work for several travel advertisers where destination intent is a key driver in response. Many of our travel marketers send us dynamically information as to where that user wants to go when they went to that Web site. So, instead of saying this user went to this airline site and left, we can know that they went to the Web site but searched for a flight to a destination... "
BT's Next Stage: Custom Creative By Steve Smith, Friday, Feb 23, 2007
MySpace and IGN Fans. Uncle Rupert (Murdoch) is Listening-in
"Fox Interactive is already taking steps to mine the wealth of personal information found on profile pages on MySpace and other sites to better target ads.
"With SDC, we'll be able to plug all that rich data into their ad optimization technology and be able to fine-tune our ad delivery on a much more targeted basis," explained Burkart. She said Fox is already working with brand marketers to figure out what kinds of user data are most valuable to them."
Fox Interactive Buys Strategic Data Corp., Plans Ad Targeting Upgrade
Mark Walsh, Online Media Daily. Feb 23, 2007
Regulators Looking into the Sirius and XM Radio Merger: Don't Forget Impact on Ad market--Let alone Privacy!
"Vernon Irvin, XM Satellite Radio's CMO, said his company is starting to play with the idea of recommending choices to the consumer. As an example, he cited the radios (which in the future will boast graphical color displays) could become devices that will point out the nearest Starbucks and perhaps even preorder your latte so it would be ready for you to pick up during your commute. He didn't mention it, but you can bet XM would gladly charge Starbucks (or McDonald's, or a host of other national franchises) for inclusion in such a network."
2020 Vision: The Future of Advertising By Rebecca Lieb, January 26, 2007
Excuses, Excuses from the Interactive Ad Industry About Protecting Your Privacy
"SpecificMedia targets up to 80 million unique users demographically, contextually and behaviorally across its ad network. Explaining to end users the technical details of cookie placement and anonymous tracking, let alone the B2B relationships among advertisers, networks, and publishers, may not be a cost-effective solution to the privacy debate, he argues. Vanderhook favors "higher level" education of the market through industry-wide coalitions and informing legislators."
BT And Privacy, Part 4: Higher Education, Interview with SpecificMedia CEO Tim Vanderhook By Steve Smith, February 2, 2007
Every Click You Take, Search You Make, Profile You Have While on the Go
"Currently mobile ad solutions are mostly based on either specific application contexts like 'we know someone likes to download ringtones so we can target ringtone ads,' or by profile, as in 'someone uses X sort of handsets.' Adding search behavior to that moves the mobile targeting learning curve ahead dramatically. But there's still another dimension that can make behavioral profile much more powerful. That's aggregating all the historical data related to search and browsing with all the demographic and subscription information in databases including off-network content. There are new technologies we're working with that will enable us very soon to move in that direction. "
The Emerging Nexus Of BT And Mobile Search by Jim Leggiere, Feb 14, 2007
Watch Out for that "Last Mile." Marketers are Ready
" As a savvy marketer, you've conquered every advertising medium from television, to radio to the Internet. What determines the success of your marketing campaign resides on the "the last mile"-the ability to influence your audience at the very moment they are ready to take action. Medio's Advertising Solution is the answer to reaching your target audience during the last mile while they are searching on a device that they use most-the mobile phone. With precise targeting capabilities, Medio enables you to identify and reach audiences that are interested in what you're selling-at just the right time-to achieve the best results for your campaign. And through our unique partnerships with mobile carriers like Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, your ads are intuitively integrated into the consumers' mobile search experience while its relevance drives maximum response."
Medio Products
Working with Verizon Wireless
Viral and Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Beware of Bending Reality for Brands
"For example, to break a new alcohol brand, you could use a stealth production association with music celebrities and people in their circles. Such a campaign comes down to hitting a select number of the music key influencers, surrounding them with the brand and to trying to get them to adopt the brand organically, instead of just paying them to do such. So, with music stars, you can give their limo drivers a payout to make sure your client's drink is the beverage of choice in the limo going into the city; you can pay the sound engineer and studio manager to have it in the booth at the recording studios; place it at the VIP tables at the A-list clubs, et cetera. Document the celebrities drinking it and having it at their tables and then give that out to the wire services and buzz it up online on the blogs and other places."
Q&A with guerilla PR's Michael Leifer (Part 2 of 2). April 26, 2006
Watch What You Say: Your Mobile (and Madison Avenue) are listening in
WPP, one of the world's most powerful advertising and marketing companies has invested in the "mobile search / advertising company, JumpTap." According to WPP, "[T]hrough this partnership, both parties will also partner to develop new techniques to target and profile customers via the mobile phone. ... JumpTap's President and CEO, Dan Olschwang, said: "Our mobile operator customers will have more than 250 million searches per month by the end of 2007. In order to help mobile operators capture value from this strategic asset, we have developed a strategy to attract advertisers and maximise profit, whilst helping them build and protect search traffic. In essence, our mission is to help advertisers and mobile operators build a thriving marketing ecosystem where people on the go can find exactly what they want."
That Video Streaming Ad is Tracking You--Every Click You Make
"We can now gather, buy and sell side data on more than 100 unique interactions in every rich media ad such as multiple exit links, counters, timers and video metrics, so you can know how long each ad was displayed or how the viewer interacted with the ad."
Watch What Your Wear! Advertisers `Suit Up' Consumers to Track and Analyze Our Brains
Advertisers and marketers, in pursuit of their new grail called "engagement," are working to better understand how to manipulate our emotions and other brain behaviors. Now they are fitting human subjects with so-called "smart garments" that are just one of the "new multiple technologies on the market that allow continuous unobtrusive monitoring of biologically based human responses..." In a recent study focused on testing "a biologically based measure of audience engagement," ad researchers fitted subjects with a "state-of-the-art smart garment that...simultaneously collects pulmonary, cardiac, dermal, postural, and vocal information...These multiple channels of biologically based information are combined across audience members and translated into an easily read, easily interpreted, moment-to-moment time-locked index of emotional engagement." The subjects were watching commercials.
Yikes! Next time you go to a tailor for an alteration, you better watch out how they fit you. Seriously, such efforts are designed to take advertising to places it should not tread.
"A Biologically Based Measure of Emotional Engagement: Context Matters." Carl D. Marci, M.D. Journal of Advertising Research. December 2006
You Will Be Phoning Home: To Marketers (and Perhaps even the NSA)
"Mobile carriers are sitting on one of the fattest, highest, most granular piles of consumer behavior data the world has ever known. And most of them haven't a clue how to use it as a foundation for media and marketing. Sprint's media group recently hinted that it would be using some kind of behavioral targeting in its newly launched ad networks for phone media, but I am not sure what, if any, form that will take. At a mobile marketing conference last spring, Cingular/AT&T's content honcho Jim Ryan admitted it had incredibly detailed data for marketers -but not in a form they could access in any meaningful way yet.
In the mobile world, parsing your client base by over and under age 34 is still considered nano-segmentation. The possibilities for BT off someone's commercial calling patterns is as scary as it is enticing. How much would Pizza Hit pay to get a coupon on the phone of the guy who calls Domino's once a week? How much would Domino's pay to keep Pizza Hut's coupon from its customer? Wisely, the carriers will not give up that user or that data without due diligence over its consequences. But the irony is that carriers need BT more than any other medium. That phone deck is the world's worst interface because it is so small and so dumb. Personalized, dynamic content served to my flip phone is the inevitable solution, but tracking my phone browser behaviors may be the best way to customize the user deck according to user habits. "
"Targeting the New Year. " Steve Smith. Behavioral Insider. Jan. 5, 2007.
Convergence Online Marketing
Take the online tour of Omniture's new Genesis "Plug and Play" online marketing product. Genesis links up many data collection, tracking and ad targeting vendors. Take a look especially at "chapter" 3.
Microsoft Makes You an Online Data Target
"By relying on demographic data that customers often provide during the sign-up process for Windows Lives services and by tracking usage and behavior across the network...we blend information that customers offer to us, such as their age or gender, along with browsing and search histories...AdCenter's targeting capabilities utilize data captured from a variety of sources. For example, using Windows Live ID Passport data, we are able to gather information about our audience's age, gender and location, and then utilize this to allow customers to target these specific audiences with their ads."
Interview with Alexandra Tibbetts, Microsoft adCenter director of product management
Behavioral Insider: Toward Channel-Agnostic Targeting. Phil Leggiere. December 15, 2006
Web 2.0 is Watching You
"'With the evolution of Web 2.0 and the more interactive, networked nature of the online customer experience, marketers are challenged with understanding their customers' behaviors across various distributed channels on the internet,' said Akin Arikan, senior segment manager, Unica Corporation. "Measuring click-throughs to a company's web site is no longer a direct line and is insufficient for visitor-to-customer conversion metrics. Unica's web analytics solution continues to provide companies with new capabilities for reporting, measuring and analyzing customer data across the distributed internet channels, tying customer behaviors across otherwise disconnected visit sessions and times. Perhaps even more importantly, NetInsight's unique open data warehouse and built-in connectivity means internet behavior is tied to other channels for richer customer profiles and understanding.'"
"Unica Releases Enhanced Web Analytics Solution: Affinium NetInsight 7.1 Offers Real Time, Visual Exploration Analytical Capabilities; Helps Marketers Analyze and Measure the Web 2.0 Customer Experience," 5 Dec. 2006
Tracking You Online in 2007
"I see behavioral targeting being a key component in most online advertising campaigns in 2007 and beyond. That's not to say that behavioral is the only targeting strategy, however it is clearly an advantage for an advertiser to truly reach an individual who has expressed an affinity for their product and/or service through their actions.... I believe that we will see BT involved in the successful campaigns and, through coordinating the capabilities of BT across other targeting and optimization strategies, we will see highly leveraged results. BT will be a key component in driving ad spending from more mass media to the one-to-one opportunities available on the web."
Roger Park, "Get More from Your BT Campaign" (interview with Revenue Science's Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Hirsch), iMedia Connection, 12 Dec. 2006
Microsoft is Watching You--via Your Video Recorder
"The company filed a patent application this week for a system that would maintain a database of ad
