Search results matching tag 'online advertising'

eModeration's Social Media Round-up #14

2543443 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Welcome to eModeration's weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate). This week: President Obama's thumbs; Twillionaires; and 'intextication'.

Next week, eModeration is sending me on a social-skills course (day one: eating with implements) - so the next round-up will be on Friday the 4th December. See you then.

THE HEADLINES ...

President Obama has revealed that his absence from Twitter is due to a lack of dexterity in the thumb department. He was asked by a group of Shanghai students if they should be able to use Twitter freely – and the thumb quip launched a careful response about freedom of speech: “I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

Stephen Fry this week claimed that Twitter celebs like himself can now opt out of the ‘pact with the devil’ which required them to open up their private lives to journalists, in return for press coverage of their work. Now, he says, Twillionaires like he and Britney can “reach their circulation just by typing into my keyboard.” Grave news indeed for Sleb magazines, which are already clinging on for dear life to the sinking ship of print.

Facebook came in for widespread and heavy criticism this week, for failing to follow Bebo’s lead in including a ‘Report’ button developed by the Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre. CEOP’s boss Jim Gamble urged the social networks to adopt the feature, which allows young users to log bullying, hate speech and sexually explicit content, and to contact trained advisers: “there is a responsibility, a duty of care, to the young and the vulnerable”, he said.

The scam offers scandal could spiral still further: a team of Sacramento lawyers is investigating complaints that unauthorized charges were made without users’ knowledge – and are considering class actions against Facebook, MySpace, Zynga, and Offerpal amongst others.

Yes, it’s that time of the decade already: as we inch painfully towards 2010, the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences bestowed Webby Awards on the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 years. Amongst the chosen: Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone, along with the birth of Wikipedia and the Iranian elections.

Channel 4’s landmark deal with YouTube went live this week, unleashing around 5000 videos – 80% of which are full lengths shows – upon a grateful nation. Peep Show and Gordon Ramsay's F Word are among the goodies, which Channel 4 is hoping will lure in fresh advertisers.

The Digital Economy Bill was amongst those trailed in The Queen’s Speech yesterday. The bill proposes that those caught in the illegal-download act would first be sent warning letters – but would lose their connections if they continued to break the law. No mention, though, of the hotly-disputed Broadband Tax, which now looks likely to be slotted into the Finance Bill, due in 2010.

THE LOWDOWN ...

Every now and again comes a piece of news to which the only response is a brief contemplation of the expression “it takes all sorts to make a world”, and here is just such a one: a French company has developed a set of bathroom scales which will tweet your weight to your followers.

Teens are risking their own lives, as well as others’, by texting while driving- and worse, the figures seem to show that they’re learning from their parents. A new report claims that people are well aware of the dangers of texting on the road – but their desire to stay connected to their networks is stronger than their desire to stay connected to the tarmac.

Which leads us neatly to the American Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year shortlist, which, in an example of terrifying cultural serendipity, this year contains the word ‘intexticated’: the condition of being distracted by texting while driving. Sadly it was pipped at the post by ‘unfriend’ - possibly more useful but not quite as clever.

UK Twitterers are confirmed lefties - the Citizen Smiths of the Interweb. The news comes from a joint poll by Prospect Magazine and YouGov, which found that the average Twitter user is under-35 and London-based – and somewhat to the left of the Labour Party.

Trying to sell your house? Facing a wall of indifference, despite your original features and your central location? Could be that potential vendors are put off by your slow broadband connection. ISPreview.co.uk's survey reveals that 75% of people won’t buy a house – even an adorable one - if the best broadband ISP speed it could achieve was just 1Mbps.

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Yelps of excitement here, as Bing is launched in the UK – with enhanced visual search, Twitter integration and an “instant answers” service for real-time news on football scores and suchlike. But should Google be perspiring slightly and watching its back – or has it nothing to fear from the young pretender? iCrossing reveals the Five Things You Need To Know about Bing.

Bebo, whose web TV slate includes KateModern, Sofia's Diary, and The Gap Year, has nixed all new commissions, following parent company AOL’s announcement that it would slash 100 jobs globally.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s admission last week that his paywall plans were likely to be delayed, it’s been announced that Times Online will start charging for content in the spring. James Harding, editor of The Times, said the site would offer 24-hour passes, as well as subscriptions.

The European Interactive Advertising Association – which includes stalwarts like AOL, the BBC, and Condé Nast amongst its members – predicts that online advertising will laugh in the face of the recession next year, with a projected 7.6% year-on-year rise in Europe, and a further 15% increase predicted for 2011.

And if further proof were needed that it is customers who are now directing the brand message, 360i reports that 77% of social media search results are generated by individuals with no affiliation to the brand.

ON FACEBOOK ...

It’s good news for Facebook this week: it towers above the nearest competition in the British social network league, netting half of all visits in UK last month. Twitter languishes a distant fourth, with a contextually-microscopic 1.9% of UK visitors.

But wait! Whispers of coming gloom can be heard, as research by WPP Group’s Mindshare suggests that the crucial older teen and twentysomething demographic might be drumming its fingers and looking round for something new.

Sony is catching up with rivals Microsoft, which recently hooked Facebook and Twitter to their Xbox 360. New software for the PlayStation means that gamers can now link their PS3s to their Facebook accounts to share game-play updates with friends.

ON TWITTER ...

Despite the recent slowdown in Twitter’s growth, it can still produce stats that make us gasp: according to Pingdom the average number of Tweets per hour is 1.1 million; the daily figure is 27.3 million; and at this rate, we’re looking at 10 billion tweets a year.

The typical Twitter user is male, and in his late twenties/early thirties – and wants brands to listen and respond to his questions, finds new research from InSites. News which sits uneasily against this other study, which finds, amongst other interesting tidbits, that 76% of brands on Twitter are infrequent users - and only 9% use it as a customer-service channel.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Marmite has formed a secret society – the Marmarati – to develop an extra-strong version of the loveit/hateit yeast-based spread. Members were chosen because they expressed their love for the Unilever-owned brand on social networking sites, and fans will be able to win a sneak-pretaste of the new spread by uploading marmite-centric content.

Mydeco.com, which sells homewares and furniture, has inked a deal with Sony's PlayStation Home to sell iconic pieces of virtual furniture – for example, the famous Marilyn ‘Lips’ sofa – on the community-based network.

Maclaren, who produce children’s buggies, recently offered a voluntary product-recall on one million of its pushchairs, amid reports that children had lost fingers in their folding mechanisms. But it found itself at the wrong end of a sharp social-media stick when UK customers discovered that only US customers were included – and this week it was force to roll out the offer worldwide.

For this year's Los Angeles Design Challenge, Audi has tapped its Facebook community of famously partisan fans to help design a fantasy Youthmobile for release in the year 2030 – you can see some of the designs here. http://www.facebook.com/audi

ON GOOGLE ...

The tech world was agog this week, as rumours swirled that Google’s eagerly-awaited new Chrome operating system might be available for download as soon as next week, with Search Engine Journal suggesting that the traction being gained by Windows 7 might be motivating a hasty launch.

Eek. Californian developer Frank McCabe created a programming language in 2004, and named it Go. He published a research paper about it in 2004. And a book in 2007. All the more surprising, then, that Google has just called IT”s new language by the same name. McCabe says he doesn’t have a trademark and can’t afford a lawsuit, but is determined not to let the search giant steamroller his prior claim.

Meanwhile, the Swiss data protection organization says its complaints to Google about breaches of privacy in Street View have fallen on deaf ears. It alleges that the company has refused to fix insufficiently blurred faces and numberplates, which could lead to individuals being identified in ‘sensitive’ locations - outside hospitals, prisons and schools.

Google means business with its latest policy on scam and malware advertisers who use Adwords – it’s imposing a blanket policy of ‘guilty till proven innocent’ on all suspect ads, and a lifetime ban on confirmed scammers.

Social Search, Google’s snazzy new feature which allows users to combine search with social data, has gone down – and according to a baffled Mashable, will remain down till early next week. What, Mashable wonders, could have happened to Social Search that could possibly take that long to fix?

ON YOUTUBE ...

YouTube has launched a dedicated channel called YouTube Direct, specifically for citizen journalists to bring their work to a larger audience. The tool allows media companies to connect directly with user-reporters, and request and rebroadcast news clips.

The video-sharing site is also testing a new approach to making online ads relevant – allowing users to skip the ones that bore them – with the idea that they will then engage more deeply with the ones that they do in fact watch.

ON MOBILE ...

T-Mobile faces consumer wrath again this week after it emerged that one of their workers had been selling customers’ details to a rival company - a major breach of data protection regulation.

In the first mobile-Twitter deal, Orange have snagged an agreement with Twitter to let users upload photos by text, via Snapshot - a custom picture platform developed by Orange.

73% of marketing execs think mobile is the UK’s ‘most likely to expand’ medium, says the IAB, whose survey canvassed the opinions of 100 senior agency reps.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Hi-yah! Kung Fu Panda World – in development for the last 2 years and targeted at kids of 8-12 – is to be launched in early 2010. The world will feature high levels of parental control, and will offer both long-term and one-day subscriptions.

Despite a spot of bother with its in-game ads – which some have suggested are rather dastardly - social games company Zynga’s investors are clearly chomping at the bit. The upwardly-mobile games enterprise, whose biggest success is the Facebook mega-game Farmville - has just received a massive injection of cash: $15.1 million to be precise, bringing its total haul to over $54 million.

Quick work: Gravity Bear, who declared as a social games developer less than four weeks ago, has already unveiled Battle Punks, a Facebook app which it bills as a ‘3D social game. It’s due to launch in open beta before 2010.

Subscription revenues for Disney’s Club Penguin were up a cozy 4% last quarter, contributing to a overall increase in revenue for the company - despite an icy economy.

That's all folks!

eModeration's Social Round-up #13

2543443 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:25:00 GMT

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).

This week: News Corp and Google; Twitter's wailing grumps; Britney's encounter with the Dark Side; and why Stephen Fry is like a giant St Bernard.

Check back soon!

THE HEADLINES ...

Rupert Murdoch plans to hide his content away so Google can’t see it. He told Sky News that he’ll prevent the search giant from indexing News Corp sites, to ensure that users pay up to view his news.

Many commentators pointed out inconsistencies in Murdoch’s interview, not least the vexed question of how readers would find the content if not through search engines – at least 25% of traffic comes via Google alone. All in all, the news was taken as the paid-content equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand.

But hold on, paid-content naysayers – is that the cavalry I hear? A new poll finds that ¾ of us would consider paying a 10p micropayment per article – with Jeremy Clarkson, Charlie Brooker and the redoubtable Richard Littlejohn being most likely to tempt us to splash the cash. So perhaps there’s life in the old paywall yet.

COI boss Mark Lund says that digital is the key to solving Britain’s social ills, by increasing trust and brokering a new relationship between citizen and government. “Digital is at the heart of behaviour change and to make the revolution we need."

The social gaming ads controversy continued, with Facebook banning Zynga’s FishVille before it had barely had a chance to wiggle a gill, blaming ‘deceptive ads’ for the red card. Now Zynga has decided to nix all cost-per-action ads till further notice.

Parents are obsessed about the perils which face children outside the home – but are far less clued up when it comes to the dangers of the internet, according to Prof Tanya Byron, who investigated the possible dangers posed to children by videogames and websites for the government. "An integral part of development is risk taking. Children are taking risks online because we live in a risk-averse culture."

Toyota is in a little hot water – having purloined some UGC photos for a crowd-sourced ad campaign, without asking the photographer his work first. The image, along with some others which the car company aggregated from Flickr, has now been removed – Digital Marketing offer advice for brands eager to avoid a crowd-sourcing headache here.

THE LOWDOWN ...

A Stephen Fry recommendation is the digital equivalent of an enormous St Bernard jumping up to lick your face. Flattering, but leaves you floundering on the floor, scrabbling for your glasses and a tissue. Fry, who also revealed that he now considers himself to be a ‘content provider’, says that he has to warn websites that he’s going to recommend them, or they crash within seconds.

From the sublime (Mr Fry), to the ridiculous. Poor Britney Spears has had her Twitter updates hacked, and, for a while there, was posting as a Lucifer-lovin’ Satanist who longs for the new world order. Which isn’t true, of course - unless pop music really is the work of the devil, as my old headmistress was fond of saying.

The Telegraph raised an eyebrow at the £3175 per year which the taxpayer coughs up for Lord Mandelson’s three Twitter accounts. Between them, @bisgovuk, @digitalbritain, and @BIS_Science have 9,894 followers. About 30p a follower on my calculations - cheap at half the price.

Hurrah – a story which contains Facebook, the Law, and a Young Person - and yet doesn’t end in a jail term. A judge has accepted that the Facebook update which 19-year-old Rodney Bradford posted at 11:49a.m. on October 17 gave him an alibi for the mugging charge he faced.

The first of the Twitcoms? The Twitter account of Justin Halpern, who passes on the world-weary, no-bull pronouncements of his 73-year-old dad (Example: "You look just like Stephen Hawking...Relax, I meant like a non-paralyzed version of him.”) has been snapped up by CBS, who will turn it into a comedy series [Advisory: red-blooded language].

IN OTHER NEWS ...

Bing UK is not yet up to scratch, according to sources close to Microsoft. The site has been in beta for four months, but isn’t yet fully relevant to us Brits, who are quickly turning back to Google. Microsoft is now hiring natives to create UK-centric search categories.

But it’s not all bad news for Microsoft – seems Microsoft sites harness 15 percent of worldwide online time – swiftly followed by Google and Yahoo, with Facebook bringing up the rear.

Enterprises are grasping Twitter to their bosom – business use is up a tweet-tastic 250%, from just six months ago. Facebook is also benefitting, with workplace use ballooning by 192%, despite the 20% of companies who block social sites.

The IAB has said that online media companies need to significantly raise their game if they want brands to really get behind internet advertising – at the moment, ad formats and creative simply aren’t making the grade, according to AdAge.

Hmm. We seem to be rather conflicted at the moment when it comes to research. Lightspeed says that ‘only’ 33% of consumers trust social nets to help them make purchasing decisions, compared with 68% who trust search, product reviews and comparison sites.

While Performics is pleased to find that (a separately-surveyed) third of us think social media is a good place to find out more about brands – and touts the fact that 25% have clicked directly to an online retailer or e-commerce merchant as evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, hard marketing may not be a social media no-no.

LinkedIn and Twitter have partnered up – their users can now publish Tweets on LinkedIn, and vice versa. In a simile which really only works if you are a fan of high-calorie nut-based confectionary, Biz Stone said the deal was “like bringing peanut butter and chocolate together to make the perfect combination."

ON FACEBOOK ...

A quiet few days at Facebook Towers – though brands will be quietly pleased about the launch of ‘Friends of Connections’, which will allow them to personalize ads to target the friends of their fans.

The ‘Book also launched a new set of guidelines for brand promotions, which contained a few significant changes concerning where promotions and competitions can live. Brands pondering their next Facebook foray could consult Fresh Influence’s ‘Five Things You Should Know‘ – a handy breakdown for brands to flick through.

ON TWITTER ...

Facebook must have been sniggering into their hands this week, as Twitter faced the same wails of disgruntlement that have been plaguing Facebook recently. The complaints concern the rollout of Twitter’s new Retweet feature, which makes it impossible for Retweeters to edit or add comments. Hubspot's Dan Zarella warned that these will “completely eviscerate most of the value out of Retweets" - but Ev Williams insisted that the feature was here to stay, and was deliberately designed to be super-simple so that tweets can be clearly attributed and traced.

The horizontality of Twitter’s stats is causing some comment in the Socialsphere, with mashable’s Stan Schroeder pointing out the oddness of Twitter's grinding halt, given its till-now explosive growth, and the media’s current obsession with its cultural importance. But, he expands, none of this will matter in the long run – Twitter is becoming ‘part of the net’s infrastructure. It doesn’t have to be popular, it merely needs to be there.’

ON GOOGLE ...

Google’s world domination plans are going swimmingly – it now intends to pimp the web, having been working quietly on a replacement for the HTTP protocol, which will make the internet infinitely faster.

Time for some Caffeine then. Google announced the launch of their latest incarnation, telling the waiting world portentously that “we believe Caffeine is ready for a wider audience. Soon, we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data centre’. Rather brings to mind Donald Pleasance, stroking a white Persian and pressing big buttons, no?

The search giant also launched a big upgrade to Latitude, adding location history and location-based alerts. The latter will let you know, via email or sms, when you’re near friends and connections. And took another step towards social with the introduction of a Twitteresque ‘Following’ feature to Google Wave. The follows can be temporarily removed from your inbox at the click of a button, to avoid social exhaustion.

BRANDS GET SOCIAL ...

Alfa Romeo is using Twitter to promote its MiTo model to a youthful, more urban audience. Users are challenged to spot one of 1300 MiTo-shaped stencils around major UK cities, and post a photo of it with the hashtag #MiToStencil when they do.  

Burberry has used Facebook to launch a new site – called Artofthetrench.com – which encourages fans to submit images and comments on the brand’s iconic outerwear.

Tesco is bringing x-factor-style thrills to the nation with the launch of ‘performance pods’ outside some stores, where users can record an audition video to be entered into a competition run by talent search site 1Click2Frame.

Nikon is leveraging Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter presence to launch its Nikon Film Festival, a UGC contest which offers $100,000 for the best video. The festival, whose theme is ‘a day through your lens’, kicks off with Ashton’s own entry, in which he records a day he spent in Africa with wife Demi.

ASOS has relaunched its fashion-forward community, having consulted members on how to improve its features. Users will now get RSS feeds, emails to notify them when fellow members reply to their posts, and a spanky new look.

Disney follows other Hollywood studios in using Facebook and Twitter to drip-feed advance promotion for upcoming films, this week releasing two new posters for Tim Burton’s March-slated 3-D extravaganza Alice In Wonderland’. 

UNDER THE GAVEL ...

The government has had to climb down from its April announcement of a new law to prevent more than 30,000 registered sex offenders from accessing social sites like Facebook, after it was ruled likely to restrict the right to privacy. The Home Office is seeking leave to appeal the Court of Appeal ruling.

Privacy campaigners are still determined to pursue Blockbuster for its participation in Facebook’s Beacon programme – they’re urging the court to reject an argument from the video chain that its ToS requires mandatory arbitration in any class action.

SOCIAL STATS ...

Almost 65% of consumers surveyed by Razorfish made first bought a brand because of a digital experience - via website, microsite, mobile coupon or email.

And there’ll be tumbleweed blowin’ down Oxford Street this December, if these figures are anything to go by: a new study finds that 93% of us plan to buy our gifts online this year, with a quarter buying more online than last year. What’s more, 17% of us are looking to social sites like Facebook for gift-buying, with 60% of that number looking for offers and discounts, and another 52% checking the wish-lists of friends and family.

A full 23% of the women surveyed by Q Interactive and Social Media World Forum visit social games like Farmville and Causes several times a day – and more than half have used virtual currency. Plus, they’re not averse to watching ads to get it – many more details here on MediaPost.

Looks like the younger women are, the more brand-social they are. Gen Y women make double the mentions of brands and products of their Gen X compadres, and are significantly more influenced by blogs, according to a study by PopSugar and Radar Research.

ON MOBILE ...

Last week Verizon sold an astonishing 100,000 Droids in a week. This week, Apple effortlessly trumps them with a jaw-dropping 30,000 iPhones sold by Orange in 1 day. Remember folks, that’s 30,000 of a smartphone which has already been freely available for a full 2 years.

News which neatly supports Nielsen’s prediction that the majority of mobiles will be smartphones by 2011 – just a couple of years away.

VIRTUAL AND GAMES ...

Massive and comScore have worked out a way to get detailed insight into how in-game ads work for gamers, building a picture of engagement for the first time.

Games developer Playfish has been caught by Electronic Arts, for a reported $400m. The purchase means that EA is now Facebook-forward, as well as leading the way in console, PC and mobile gaming.

Microsoft is pulling the plug on up to 1 million Xbox Live players who have illicitly modified their consoles to play pirated or other-region games.Twitter and Facebook Come to Xbox Live November 17 SAVE The rest of the ToS-obeying Xbox Live community will be enjoying a Twitter and Facebook dashboard from November 17th.

Habbo-creator Sulake have announced the launch of Bobba Bar, a series of virtual social venues for mobile users. Over-17s can make friends with and date other guests via an avatar which can be customized to a total of 1 billion combinations.

THINKING ...

If you’ve got any downtime over the next days, the following might get your brain-cells whizzing:

iMedia Connection looks further into ad networks and online reputation-protection for brands - and finds it not as straightforward as you’d think.

In case the worst-case scenario should arise, here are some steps to take in order to make your company’s crisis-plan ‘social-media compliant’.

Finally, if you are suffering from social media shellshock, you will appreciate this guide to reducing the noise, whilst remaining connected.

That's all folks!

Who needs Ad Agencies

2116546 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:10:00 GMT

After spending a couple of days digesting this news I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it so excuse the brain dump.

I do think it fits into the viral subject however as Ideas Bounty is surely a viral exercise in itself but can this really work as a sustainable model across a brand's advertising. I'm not a huge fan of over-inflated ad agency models myself but there's more to creative than just shitting out a one-off idea. Isn't the Peperami brief (which is a tactical element of the overall 'Animal' creative concept) essentially another lazy UGC campaign in the same vein as Doriotos, Confused.com and quite a few others? It's great news if a client is taking more responsibility for the creative output of their brand, but it's not like Creative Agencies have been doing absolutely nothing for the past 50 years; is it?

Interaction in Advertising – New White Paper from eModeration

2543443 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:32:00 GMT

We’ve just published our latest white paper, Interaction in Advertising, which is summarised below. The paper examines how advertising is evolving from a one-way communicative process (the advertiser telling the consumer what they should be thinking), to a more collaborative, engaging format where brand and consumer communicate with an open dialogue.

The paper discusses examples of campaigns that are putting interaction in advertising into practice and highlights the risks and benefits of the developing trend.

Included in the paper:

From ‘interactive’ to ‘interaction’

- Brands are switching from paid display advertising to promoting themselves through branded online communities, virtual worlds/games and social media
- Advertising campaigns are evolving into an interaction between brand and consumer, rather than the traditional one-sided communication.

Opening the dialogue

- Engagement is all about basic human behaviour. People don’t want to be talked at. They want to interact, share opinions, be heard.- Advertisers are naturally gravitating to where their audience can be found, in communities and social networks. But the way that they engage has to change. It’s not enough to buy buttons on Facebook: research by Uvizz has shown how poorly people respond to this. They don’t want to interact with advertisers on social networks, but with friends.

Engaging, not interrupting

- Online display advertising can be viewed as an ‘interruption method’ – stopping the user from doing something that s/he wants to do.

- Brands are starting to move towards engagement to deliver their messages: asking users to get involved in activity that they can enjoy, whilst at the same time helping to get the word out about the brand, and contributing to the campaign.

- Brands need a launch plan which will create a base of fans/early adopters as the basis of their community.

- To create interaction within the community a brand has to participate, listen to feedback and adapt to it if necessary.

- Brands need to consider what will happen with the community they have helped to create, once their campaign is over.

Who’s doing it, and how?

Five ways to engage consumers in ad campaigns:

Engage with people individually. By showing the individual what the company can do for them, the brand is taking the ‘background noise’ out of the campaign and highlighting its relevancy. Making people more likely to listen and participate. Such as the campaign by Vitaminwater, where passersby were addressed directly from giant screens “Hey you in the pink top yeah you taking my photo, say cheeese!”
Provide incentives for participation (for example the extremely successful campaign by fast food brand Chick Fil-A, which offered the first 250,00o participants a free chicken sandwich in reward for uploading photos of their faces - which then take part in a grandstand ‘chicken wave’.)
Involve the consumer in the creative process by asking them to hep you create an ad or develop a product – such Tourism Queensland’s “Best Job in the World” campaign.
Create a community that is the campaign. Pet owners came together to form the Cesar’s ‘I promise’ community.
Develop a community around an existing campaign. Brands that have developed an entertaining traditional television advert are starting to capitalise on the popularity of their creation by bringing its fans together with the creation of online communities – here, we need look no further than comparethemeerkat.com.

Brand reputation

- By opening up the brand and the campaign to input from the audience, brands are effectively handing over control of content and messages to users.

- This is correctly seen as a risky strategy. But the rewards are huge, and the risks largely mitigated by effective moderation and response.

- If brands are going to create online communities, they have a duty of care to the participants to protect them from harmful or malicious content by means of moderation.

Moderated, not censored

- Whilst interactive advertising does give brands insight into what the consumer really thinks about their product, the brand needs to respond to the feedback, and do so in the right way. Brands should not try to manipulate responses.

How should you approach interaction with consumers through advertising?

Advertisers should consider:

- What they are trying to achieve
- Who they are targeting
- How they will encourage people to participate
- If they have the right level/kind of incentives
- What success looks like to them
- Whether they are able to respond quickly
- If they are willing to listen to both positive and negative feedback
- Their approach to the moderation of user-generated content

In Summary

Advertising is a no longer about the brand trying to make the consumer hear their message; it’s about engaging the consumer in debate, finding out their opinions and responding to them.
Whilst this is something that some brands may find difficult, feeling it leaves their brand vulnerable to attack, the rewards in the form of engagement and loyalty can be huge. Engaging consumers has a positive financial impact. according to the Engagementdb Report, which states:

“... this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.”

The Interaction in Advertising white paper can be downloaded for free from the eModeration website. Do leave comments below to let us know what you think of it.

A graph that made me laugh

1368741 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:17:00 GMT

I’m supposed to be having a day off. Fat chance.

You might have noticed a story put out by our cousins at the IAB that claims online advertising has now overtaken TV to become the ‘biggest single advertising medium in the UK’ (by spend). We find the IAB’s story odd because the internet is not a single anything; it is a fantastic technology that is home to many different marketing activities that do different things. It even delivers TV. It is a pretty meaningless statistic but it has garnered plenty of headlines and no small amount of apocalyptic predictions. Journalists expect us to respond, so here I am blogging instead of planting my daffs.

As I have said many times before, I love the internet. I love the way that it complements TV – nothing else works better. I love the way people can respond instantly to TV ads via search and websites; I love the way social media helps make the buzz around TV programmes so visible and so much more fun. I’m happy for online advertising to increase - so long as it is not at TV’s expense. And so far it isn’t. (I can almost hear your eyebrows rising at this point).

That’s the depressing part of this story; the implication that online advertising is taking broadcast TV’s money is just not true. Last year broadcast TV spot advertising declined 2.9% compared to total advertising declines of 4.2% and display declines of 5%. Not the spectacular share growth of online maybe but growth nonetheless and in the horrific ad market that is 2009 the same pattern is emerging; TV and online are increasing their shares, mostly at the expense of print and DM, though print remains the biggest overall advertising medium, not online.

If the IAB can’t resist making comparisons with TV then the fairest would be to compare all forms of online display with all forms of broadcast TV - spot, sponsorship, AFP, Interactive etc. - not an easy number to get hold of because TV has never bothered to lump its own advertising revenues together. TV would never try to compare itself with any form of classified advertising, DM or search because it wouldn’t make any sense.

Anyway, Thinkbox’s thoughts on this are already out there so I won’t repeat them all here.

But I would like to draw your attention to The Guardian’s coverage of the story today. They produced a little graph that made me laugh (it isn't online though). Along the x axis we had a list of advertising sectors, each with a bar representing revenue that got a bit taller as it went along. We had cinema, radio (spot only), business magazines, consumer magazines, directories, outdoor, national newspapers, press classified, direct mail, regional newspapers, press display, television (spot only), and then…internet. Just internet. No more explanation than that.

We think these numbers would be more meaningfully represented in one of two ways, either by technology/platform or by the genuine distinctive advertising sectors . We’ve had a go, based just on the IAB’s figures. Take your pick.

Older people passing on viruses

2116546 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:37:00 GMT

I was sat in a meeting this morning talking about a Christmas concept we're working on. A lovely chap from the agency we're working with pulled out his iPhone and showed us an email he'd just got from his brother 'Look at this it's a cracker' was the subject line. I'm not going to tell you what the picture attachment was as I'm sure you can work it out for yourself.

This slightly boring story is a random link to talking about how different demographics interact with 'viral'. My Dad still sends me PPT files with a few funny pictures in and I usually respond in a Kevin The Teenager way of "oh gaaawd Daaad, I saw that yeeaaars agoo, pah". At Ralph we work predominantly in entertainment aimed at the youth market who are seemingly up for interacting with brands more than my parent's generation. Or is this bollocks? Is it just that the entertainment is different, perhaps a Hale and Pace sketch from the 80s on YouTube is the best way of reaching my Mum and Dad?

P.S. Ben, if you read this, I'm not saying you're old by receiving the cracker email!

Win £500

2116546 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:12:00 GMT

~~Confused.com's~~ Moneysupermarket.com's latest's viral campaign is a sure-fire way to win £500 by the looks of it, at the moment you have a 1 in 10 chance of winning (probably more like 1 in 2 as most of those videos don't look like the creators are legally allowed to win).

I always think it's pretty ballsy to put views as publicly available when you're running an online promo and especially a UGC (User Generated Crud) one such as this. Prove me wrong, upload loads of videos of you being stupid (those that are obviously filmed in an agency office don't count) and then add to their views by watching all of the videos. Everyone loves watching videos of people being slightly wacky to try and win a bit of cash don't they? Bollocks they do, same as people hate the gits on the Confused.com TV Ad (hatred = viral). If they had been asked to do something truly horrendous then maybe it would work (pain = viral), but based on what's there at the moment it's like the cutting room floor of You've Been Framed or YBF as I believe it's now called.

A YouTube commenter has potentially got it nailed with "VIRAL MARKETING... FAIL!".

Advertainment

2116546 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:09:00 GMT

I didn't make up that term, promise. It's something I've been thinking about recently though and ties into what Louise has written about here.

Digital has driven advertising to become much more about entertaining people than straight sales messages; and as I've said a few times, this has driven the term v***l to be something that all markeeters strive for. To be an advert online you need to: entertain, engage, enable, educate, economize . Holy crap that's tricky, more tricky than a lot of people give it credit for (don't get me started on budgets) and kudos to all out there that do it well, there are plenty of digital agencies out there only happy doing one of those things, usually entertainment, and forgetting about all the others. No wonder traditional ad land has a tendency to hate us digital types and refer to us as 'below the line'.

Shouldn't some brands just stick to advertising instead of advertainment, we've got a lot of shite entertainment on our media as it is; oh and are we still referred to as 'below the line' or was the guy I punched in the face for saying that to me the last one?

It’s time to forget behavioural targeting of ads

2604343 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:55:00 GMT

Behavioural targeting has been heralded as the light at the end of the tunnel for the likes of Facebook and YouTube who still need to prove their commercial viability.

But as that promise unravels, it provides a timely reminder that the principles of off-line marketing do not necessarily apply online. The new world of social media dictates a completely different approach – people use to the power of community to rebel against sneaky advertising and overt sales messages – so it might be time to forget behavioural targeting and move on.

Behavioural targeting offers a system to reach web users according to who they are and what they’re looking for. If advertisers could target consumers based on content and demographics, it was assumed that click rates and engagement should suddenly soar. Website owners could charge a premium. The accountants can sit back down.

But, as Facebook, Google, Phorm and others have been pouring money in to behavioural targeting there has been a growing concern amongst many sections of both government, NGOs and industry groups about how these systems work.

This has been brought to a head recently in the UK by Phorm’s secret trial with BT.

Phorm is a system which runs within an ISP’s networks and monitors every user’s behaviour. Based on these browsing habits, it alters what ads users receive.

There are major issues with this. Firstly, the trial itself was connected in secret and BT users who were ‘guinea-pigging’ the system without being informed at any point that they were being monitored. This is certainly illegal, at least according to the European Union, which is currently looking at taking legal action against the UK government, possibly Phorm and BT too.

Any trial run under these circumstances should start ringing alarm bells. Amazon, amongst others, has asked to be permanently removed from the Phorm system and it is widely expected other major online advertisers will start to follow suit.

There is however a bigger problem, especially from an EU perspective. European law on data privacy is amongst the most stringent in the world and all members have to have laws that match the EU directives.

If not already killed off by the Phorm trial, the 2002 European Privacy Acts will almost certainly be the end of behavioural targeting before it starts.

Unlike traditional forms of media, the web is an active experience, where a user actively chooses where to go and what to read or watch. In this environment ads are more naturally seen as an annoyance getting in the way.

Things have gone so far that browser Firefox has an ad blocker available as a free download which removes all adverts across every website.

Even adopting the opt-in route used in email marketing is not going to work in the long run.

Why, as a web user, would anyone choose to give advertisers all of their details for nothing?

And why would I choose to have my browsing experience interrupted by advertising at all?

I can already get all the content I want from millions of sources at zero cost.

Ultimately, passive, lazy advertising does not work in the social media space – indeed, it can do more harm than good and no amount of behavioural targeting will make the difference in a world that is shaped and reshaped by the consumer on an almost daily basis.

If advertisers want to engage with online audiences then they need to get creative. Far from being a no-go zone, social spaces offer the lure of huge traffic and plenty of opportunity to get involved, but brands need to regard them not as traditional websites. The people who inhabit them regard these spaces as places to express themselves and connect with people.

If brands want to join in with the engagement then they must be sympathetic to the nature of social spaces. Any activity must be able to provide a benefit to the community, not simply attempt to sell them something.

Successful social media strategies add value, presenting brands as facilitators, enhancing the experience for the end user. Rather than jump onto someone else’s network, more and more brands are choosing to create their own community spaces – and some are even being brave enough to take their logos off!

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2606247 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:09:23 GMT

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