Who Writes This Thing?
Jim Thompson
New media vet, aspiring SEO/analytics enthusiast
Following ...
(+) Rand Fishkin
(+) Communication Content
(+) Mike Valentine, Reality SEO
(+) Michael Gray
(+) Danny Sullivan
(+) Avinash Kaushik
(+) Robert Scoble
(+) Vanessa Fox
According to comScore, very insightful explanation of why people watch video online -- has much more to do with convenience than it does advertising avoidance. Download the Media Fragmentation presentation.
"IAB Filmstrip is one of 6 new ad formats selected as winners of IAB's Rising Stars contest"
-- Credit: iab.net
Sounds like a new Marvel movie trailer from IAB ... [queue deep announcer voice]
"In a land where helpless brand advertisers cried out for something different, a team of heroes rises ... ‘Slider’, ‘Sidekick,’ ‘Pushdown’ ..."
Well, you get the idea.
IAB wants to lure big-dollar brand advertisers to the web and launched a contest to spur the creation of canvas-style ad units that allow Super Bowl-tier advertisers to capture the emotion of a TV-spot.
The winners of the Rising Stars competition deliver an Academy Award presentation that IAB hopes will catch-on.
See the new IAB ad units -- Billboard, Filmstrip, Portrait, Pushdown, Sidekick and Slider.
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The Interactive Advertising Bureau is quietly trying to change that, spearheading the creation of a gold standard for Web measurement.“The limitations and the confusion are very disruptive to our conversation with the client,” said Chris Hiland, president of media networks at Geomentum, a hyper-local marketing unit of IPG. “When you see a different number on the ad server and a different number on a log-based server, you don’t have confidence, and that keeps spend rates down,” said Dave Morgan, founder of Simulmedia, a company that helps TV companies improve the effectiveness of tune-in spots. ... Local newspapers have it tough because panel-based measurement isn’t well-suited to local sites, resulting in erratic results.
That’s why Mark Contreras is a vocal backer of the IAB’s standardization effort. He’s svp of newspapers for Scripps, he said that third-party audience estimates for Scripps’ sites range from 30 million all the way to nearly 100 million.
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Pick your company -- NielsenNet, Comscore, Compete -- their web audience measurements all have their flaws. So this IAB initiative is a good start to address some glaring weaknesses. Take for example that panel-based systems virtually ignore the workplace audience, which is pretty darn important to digital media properties. Add to that Scripps' audience estimates that range from 30M to 100M (really?) for their sites, and you can see why advertisers say, "Uh, I'm not paying top dollar until I'm sure how many people I'm really reaching."
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Jeff Moores
Law firms, particularly those that represent plaintiffs, are increasingly devoting resources to developing a presence online, where consumers—and potential clients—congregate. And some of those firms are also creating news sites, such as newsinferno.com andconsumerwarningnetwork.com, with content created by employees.
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You can see this troubling trend, -- DuPont, IBM and law firms are asking themselves -- "Why should I rent a media group's audience via advertisements, if I can create my own with targeted microsites?" This WSJ.com story points to a law firm's investment in "20 technology specialists who write copy for its roughly 300 websites" as the marketing avenue of choice. To compete, media groups need to be more savvy about developing custom presentations like the award-winning Gatorade campaign. These carry greater value for the client and can't easily be duplicated by in-house digital ad copy teams.
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Digital publishers are just starting to scratch surface of the true value of their content. And it's not a once-size-fits-all model. Savvy marketers are looking to collaborate on solutions to leverage the publisher's expertise with their ad goals. This Gatorade media plan succeeded by trusting a publisher that knew the content and the audience to develop a microsite that hit the mark.
Gatorade has faced stiff competition in recent years from Coca-Cola rivals Powerade and Vitaminwater and -- believe it or not -- tap water. (The recession had a lot to do with that.) As Gatorade's senior manager of consumer engagement Morgan Flatley observes, the target consumer is "all about getting that performance edge" -- and Gatorade would have to promise them that.
That gave Porcaro an idea. He tapped Stack Media (which produces and distributes performance, training and lifestyle content for die-hard athletes) to develop a dedicated site known as the Gatorade Performance Center. It would be a one-stop training destination for teens, complete with training tips, customized workouts, and an interactive "Ask the Experts" feature.
The effort (which captures the honors for digital Media Plan of the Year in the under-$1 million category) went beyond Gatorade's standing reputation as a sports drink and helped establish the brand as an athletic-training authority.
As Porcaro puts it: "It was a classic example of what happens when [a brand] finds the right [media] partner and they're both on the same wavelength."
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WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?
In this period of severely constrained budgets, where are clients finding the money to fund their search efforts? When money is shifted into search from elsewhere in the marketing budget, what takes the hit? ... A plurality of client respondents (49 percent) and an outright majority of those on the agency/consultancy side (69 percent) pointed to print. It's not that search is inherently a predator vis-à-vis spending in traditional media. At the moment, though, with budgets often shrinking, it seems like a zero-sum game.
Interesting AdWeek survey, covers what clients are looking for in regards to their SEO, SEM (namely sales leads, traffic) and what are the biggest challenges they face (optimizing pages, measuring ROI)? Plus, the first place they pull dollars from when looking to pay for search efforts ... the old print ad budget.
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Anyone who knows me, knows I live and die with the Red Sox, which means I also live and die with Red Sox coverage. And therefore every time I'm jammed into an 11-page slideshow to read a playoff preview for my favorite team ... a little piece of me dies.
Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography / Flickr
And it sparks questions like:
+ Why is this story taking so long to load?
+ Why can't I scan this article and separate what I know from what I don't?
+ Why do I need to wait for a new photo and page to reload with each new paragraph?
+ Wait a minute ... why I am clicking through a slideshow in the first place?
The answer is: The publisher that created this piece was not thinking about me or any other reader for that matter. They were thinking like Homer Simpson does about a donut -- "Mmmm ... 11 pageviews. (drooling noise) 11x the ad impressions ... mmmm."
Well the post below is a bang-on take of how some sites have become gluttons for ad impressions and pageviews at the expense of the user and the advertiser. I agree a story that features a one-graph lead to another site's story stinks (see my previous post "Google, Put A Stop To Keyword News). On the other hand, I do think top-10 lists and photo galleries have value when they're created to inform or entertain the user. But when they're generated solely to pump up metrics and ad impressions ... not so much. Shelby Bonnie blames the CPM, but we need to take some responsibility as well.
At some point, publishers decide that if all clients care about is impressions, then OK, we’ll give them impressions. The output is an industry that overproduces shallow, superficial, commoditized impressions. Why do we have so many bad sites that republish the same junky content–content that’s often made by machines or $1-per-post contractors? Why do sites intentionally try to get us to turn lots of pages with tons of top 10 lists,photo galleries,
The ironic kicker to this systematic approach to pumping out low-grade pageviews and ad impressions is that it punishes the two groups of people that sites are desperate to please -- users and advertisers. When an advertiser pays for an impression, there's a reasonable assumption that the impression will 1) be seen when the page loads and 2) the user will likely spend more than 1 second on that page. And for those consuming this type of content, are they likely to return for a second helping of this? I doubt it.
To me, this approach treats users and advertisers as disposable commodities that need to be replaced once they discover the limited value in the content or ad presentation. But there is an alternative -- accept the tradeoff of lower metrics/impressions for a user that shows more loyalty and is more engaged by well-crafted content that ... wait for it, here it comes ... that displays an ad users are more inclined to click on. After all, isn't that what users and advertisers really wanted in the first place?
I think it's time we started measuring the actions and behaviors that our customers and clients value -- and build content that drives those metrics. But for right now, I gotta go -- I'm only two-thirds of the way clicking through my Red Sox playoff preview.
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